"On the October 3, 2014 episode of the HBO talk show Real Time with Bill Maher, the panel included New York Times bestselling author (and key figure in the New Atheism movement) Sam Harris; actor/filmmaker Ben Affleck; Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof; and former chairperson of the Republican National Committee Michael Steele. During the panel’s discussion, both Bill Maher and Sam Harris asserted that Islam fundamentally clashes with liberal principles, yet liberals in the U.S. fail to point this out because of their commitment to political correctness. The only solution to this problem, Maher and Harris argued, was for the West to throw support behind “nominal Muslims”—Muslims in name only, not in practice—in the hopes of effecting reform. The other panelists challenged these comments, and the episode soon went viral, prompting yet another cycle of op-eds and news coverage in which Islam’s diversity—or lack thereof—was debated" (Alsultany, Evelyn. "The Limits of Liberal Multiculturalism Islamophobia and Real Time with Bill Maher." Mizan. September 6, 2018).

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