You probably won’t hear me quote atheist Bill Maher favorably too often. This is an exception. He was on the Charlie Rose PBS show earlier this month. You may have even seen the video of their conversation.

Bill Maher was making the point of how dangerous Islam is and Charlie Rose was giving the typical comment that all religions have their dangerous fanatics. Bill Maher would have none of it. He argued that Islam is different.

He said: “Vast numbers of Christians do not believe that if you leave the Christian religion you should be killed for it. Vast numbers of Christians do not treat women as second-class citizens. Vast numbers of Christians do not believe if you draw a picture of Jesus Christ you should be killed for it.”

He went on to quote from a Pew poll in Egypt that found that 80% believe stoning is the appropriate punishment for adultery. Nearly all of them (88%) thought death was an appropriate punishment for leaving the Muslim religion.

He also talked about our outrage when ISIS is beheading people. But he also pointed out that since August 4, there were 19 people beheaded in Saudi Arabia. Most of these were for non-violent crimes.

In Mecca, non-Muslims are not even allowed in the holy parts of the city. You don’t have that in other religions. And they behead people there. Bill Maher asked, “if they were beheading people in Vatican City, which is the equivalent of Mecca, don’t you think there would be a bigger outcry about it?”

He calls it the soft bigotry of low expectations with Muslim people. Few in the media or government speak out about what the “vast numbers” of Muslims believe and do. I applaud Bill Maher for doing so.

But even if you disagree with his comment about “vast numbers,” you still have to deal with this scary statistic. There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. Even if you think only half of one percent are radicals, that means there are at least 8 million radical Muslims. That’s larger than any modern army. This is the challenge we face today.