On Friday night's "Real Time with Bill Maher," host Bill Maher slammed those critics who took him to task over previous comments he made about Islam.
During a free speech segment on the show, the host first addressed the students who protested his invitation to give the UC Berkeley commencement address in December:
"Since they were protesting me for once saying that Islam is 'the only religion that acts like the Mafia (and will) kill you if you say the wrong thing or draw the wrong picture …' And then two Jihadists gunned down 12 people in Paris for saying the wrong thing and drawing the wrong picture," he said. "You have to tell me, where do I go to protest you?"
Maher then went on to criticize what he considers liberal "bullying":
Liberals hate bullying, all right. But they’re not opposed to using it. When they casually throw out words like "bigot" and "racist," it does cow people into avoiding this debate. And if you’re doing that, you don’t get to wear the #JeSuisCharlie button. The button you should wear says #JeSuisPartOfTheProblem. [...] This may surprise you, but I am not a big fan of Rush Limbaugh. However, if you're one of the people with a website devoted to making him go away, you are part of the problem. And ironically, you're not even a proper liberal because you don't get free speech. You’re just a baby who can’t stand to live in a world where you hear things that upset you.
Speaking to the San Jose Mercury News in the fall, Marium Navid, the student who authored the Change.org petition against Maher's Berkeley speech, said preventing the comedian from coming to campus was not an issue of free speech.
"People say he has the right to freedom of speech, and I agree with that," Navid said. “The problem is that when you bring him to the university, you're pretty much putting him into a privileged position. You're raising his voice."