[rubecube]

Originally Posted by blankall

I think Maher does have a point in that liberals often do not criticize the poor treatment of gays/women/minority etc.. when muslims are the perpetrators. It's also true that islam is being treated differently than other religions. A great example is South Park pulling their picture of Mohammed.

Sure, that's one example, but I don't think you need to look very hard to find an example of secular doctrine causing similar restrictions of free speech. Take American nationalism and the devoutness with which many adhere to and deify the constitution, specifically the second amendment, and then tell me it doesn't have a similar effect on things like this:

http://www.latimes.com/nation/nation...014-story.html

The Salt Lake Tribune reported that the email to the university threatened "the deadliest school shooting in American history" if Sarkeesian were allowed to speak on campus.

"Forced to cancel my talk at USU after receiving death threats because police wouldn't take steps to prevent concealed firearms at the event," she tweeted. "Requested pat downs or metal detectors after mass shooting threat but because of Utah's open carry laws police wouldn’t do firearm searches."

Originally Posted by SebC

There seems to be quite a bit of extreme cultural relativism out there though, often under the guise of "freedom of religion".

Well again though, "freedom of religion" is one of the basic tenets of modern liberalism, and it could easily be argued that this creates violence. Many core values of liberalism, which are based around various doctrines and myths, are pursued as if they were objective truths (i.e. that democracy is the best form of government), often resulting in the perpetuation of violence. And the devoutness to these core beliefs is as real and unreasonable as their religious counterparts. How many times have you seen people parrot some liberal platitude whenever free speech is limited?