The “New Atheists”
Sam Harris, Bill Maher, Ayaan Hirsi Ali
The “New Atheist” critics insist harsh criticism of Islam-as-ideas is protected critique wrongly smeared as bigotry, while opponents argue their rhetoric slides into stigmatising the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims — making this the debate over the definition itself.
What happened
On HBO’s Real Time, Bill Maher and Sam Harris argued that liberals fail to criticise Islam’s treatment of women, gay people and apostates; Ben Affleck called their characterisation “gross” and “racist.” The clip became a defining public argument over whether “Islamophobia” is used to shield ideas from critique. (Ex-Muslim critics like Ayaan Hirsi Ali make the same free-speech claim; the murder of her collaborator Theo van Gogh in 2004 is condemned across every framework.)
“We have to be able to criticize bad ideas, and Islam at this moment is the mother lode of bad ideas.” (Sam Harris)
Under each definition
“Reasoned criticism of Islamic belief is not per se Islamophobic” — with the caveat that sweeping claims about all Muslims can shade into hostility toward people.
The APPG protects “criticism of religion,” but critics fear its “Muslimness” test could capture ex-Muslim/atheist critique.
Calling Islam “the mother lode of bad ideas” counts as denigration under this frame.
This is the paradigm the secular test is built to protect: critique/rejection of Islam as ideas, including by ex-Muslims.
Who called it Islamophobic
Affleck (and later Nicholas Kristof) argued the framing stereotyped over a billion ordinary Muslims — bigotry against people.
The defense
Harris argued he was criticising doctrine, not people, likening it to criticising Communism without hating Russians.
Outcome
The exchange became a touchstone in the debate over the word “Islamophobia” itself.
In their words
We have been sold this meme of Islamophobia, where every criticism of the doctrine of Islam gets conflated with bigotry toward Muslims as people… My criticism of Islam is a criticism of beliefs and their consequences.
How about the more than a billion people who aren’t fanatical, who don’t punish women, who just want to go to the store…? It’s stereotyping.
The verdicts above are how each framework would most likely treat this case — illustrative guidance, not official rulings. The frameworks diverge most on speech and ideas: the OIC “defamation of religion” lens and the secular/free-speech position often reach opposite conclusions on the same act. See the Definition tab for each framework’s full text. Inclusion is documentation, not a finding.