Lord help me, but I’m beginning to like, or at least respect, Bill Maher.  I’m no fan of snark, but I have to respect someone who is willing to think clearly about such important issues as women’s rights in Islam.

An excellent example of this is his October 2 interview with left-leaning British academic Richard Dawkins.  The two of them, but especially Dawkins, make trenchant arguments for why those who cherish classic liberal principles should rebuke Muslims and their ideology of Islam for their many illiberal attitudes and actions, especially the subjugation of women.  In passing, Dawkins also excoriates academia for suppressing free speech.

This is important stuff.  For well over a decade, brave and outspoken former leftists and liberals such as David Horowitz and Phyllis Chesler have pointed out that the left has aggressively defended Islam despite its violation of many values sacred to the left, especially but not exclusively women's rights.  Led on the intellectual front for decades by the likes of Edward Said and now on the foreign policy front by his feckless protégé Barack Obama, the left has enabled Islam’s radicals to immiserate tens of millions of people around the globe.

Now, as Maher and Dawkins discuss, many other unimpeachable liberals such as Salman Rushdie, Sam Harris, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali are calling out those violations, to the horror of others on the left.  Liberal scholar of the psychology of ideology Jonathan Haidt has tweeted that he believes that once the left has adopted some group as victims, they cannot bring themselves to criticize that group.

While I commend Maher for pushing these ideas, I would prefer seeing less snarky and more convincing people such as Dawkins and Harris debate leftists who persist in defending Islam.  Indeed, I wish they could educate Obama, although there’s little chance they could penetrate his serene certitude in time to do any good.  Those who cherish Western values must simply do their best to endure another 465 days of his misguided bungling – and then hope the U.S. has the sense to elect a president who recognizes the illiberality of Islam and has a chance at repairing some the damage that Obama will have allowed Islam to inflict.

But since Obama is both hopeless and becoming irrelevant, I urge Dawkins, Harris, et al. to continue to force their fellow leftists to see and condemn the abuses emanating from literalist Islamic teachings.  Unless and until they do, more members of the leftist elites, following in Obama’s footsteps, will continue to enable Islam to advance and undermine the best of Western values.  Perhaps they should start by talking to Angela Merkel.