Due to lack of time, I’ve seen only the first two hours of this three-hour (!) video of Sam Harris talking to Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks show, but it was pretty absorbing. Give it a try and see if you can last the whole three hours.

Cenk, who previously had both Reza Aslan and C. J. Werleman on the show, and was apparently sympathetic to them, gives Sam a remarkably hard time about his views, particularly (in the first hour) about the idea the Islam is inherently worse than other faiths. But Harris gives as good as he gets ,and the often rapid back-and-forth is instructive.  If you have the time to watch it all, do report on the last hour in the comments.

Here you go: three hours of semi-antagonistic palaver:

Sam gives his take on the debate on his website:

I recently sat down with Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks to discuss my most controversial views about Islam, the war on terror, and related topics. It was, of necessity, a defensive performance on my part—more like a deposition than an ordinary conversation. Although it was a friendly exchange, there were times when Cenk appeared to be trying very hard to miss my point. Rather than rebut my actual views (or accept them), he often focused on how a misunderstanding of what I was saying could lead to bad outcomes—as though this were an argument against my views themselves. However, he did provide a forum in which we could have an unusually full discussion about difficult issues. I hope viewers find it useful.

Having now watched the full exchange, I feel the need to expand on a couple of points. . .

Sam then goes into the recent decline of journalistic ethics, as judged by deliberate misreprentation of Harris’s views, but, at the end, extends a note of charity by apologizing for misrepresenting Glenn Greenwald’s views on “collateral damage.” I’ve love to see Reza Aslan or C. J. Werleman tender such an apology.

The problem I have with Uygur in this piece (besides his constant interruption of Harris) is threefold. First, he seems bound to defend Islam as being no worse than any other religion (this may come from his familial roots in Islam, though he’s an atheist).

Second, Ugyar just won’t accept that religion itself can be the main reason for malevolent acts. Though he admits that religion can play a role in acts like suicide bombing, he just can’t bring himself to admit that it could be a major role. In the case of things like the death penalty for apostasy or the acts of ISIS, you’d have to be pretty Robert Pape-ish to deny religion as the overarching cause. After all, the death penalty for apostasy is in the Qur’an, and how can you even have a death penalty for apostasy without a religious dictate?

Finally, as Sam notes above, Uygur seems to hold Harris himself responsible for misrepresentation of his views, as if somehow Harris could predict how his words would be truncated or twisted in the service of Islamophilia or simple Harris-hatred.  That’s just not fair.

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