Bill Maher said the attacks on the French satirical magazine should serve as a wakeup call to American liberals that mainstream Muslims do not share their democratic values.
The comedian and talk show host appeared Wednesday night on Jimmy Kimmel Live, where he addressed the murders of 12 people at the Paris offices of “Charlie Hebdo.”
“This has to stop, and unfortunately, a lot of the liberals, who are my tribe — I am a proud liberal,” Maher said.
“No, I’m not turning on them,” Maher said. “I’m asking them to turn toward the truth as I have been for quite a while. I’m the liberal in this debate. I’m for free speech. To be a liberal, you have to stand up for liberal principles. It’s not my fault that the part of the world that is most against liberal principles is the Muslim part of the world.”
Maher claimed the attacks were supported by mainstream Muslims throughout the world.
“I know most Muslim people would not have carried out an attack like this, but here’s the important point,” he said. “Hundreds of millions of them support an attack like this, they applaud an attack like this. What they say is, we don’t approve of violence, but you know what, when you make fun of the prophet, all bets are off.”
He said American liberals turned a blind eye to Muslim extremism.
“They chop heads off in the square in Mecca,” Maher said. “Well, Mecca is their Vatican City. If they were chopping the heads off of Catholic gay people, wouldn’t there be a bigger outcry among liberals? I’d ask you.”
Maher called on liberals in the U.S. to unequivocally condemn the attacks and the supposed motivations of the attackers.
“We have to stop saying when something like this that happened in Paris today, we have to stop saying, well, we should not insult a great religion,” Maher said. “First of all, there are no great religions. They’re all stupid and dangerous — and we should insult them and we should be able to insult whatever we want. That is what free speech is like.”