Bill Maher’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’: 25 Years After 9/11, America Is Still Fighting Over Terrorism, Israel and the Meaning of the West

Bill Maher Marks 25 Years Since 9/11 With a Warning About Terrorism, the West and America’s Political Memory

Twenty five years after the September 11 terrorist attacks transformed the United States and much of the world, Bill Maher used the closing “New Rules” segment of Real Time with Bill Maher to revisit an argument that has followed him for much of his career: Americans should be able to condemn terrorism and religious extremism without euphemism while defending liberal values such as free expression, religious freedom, women’s equality and individual rights without ignoring the failures of Western governments. Maher’s “Clash of Civilizations” monologue was less a retrospective about September 11 than an argument about what he believes America has forgotten since then, moving from journalism’s terminology surrounding terrorism to Osama bin Laden’s unexpected popularity among some younger Americans, the Israeli Palestinian conflict and the bitter debate over whether Israel’s conduct in Gaza constitutes genocide.

Maher’s larger argument was that parts of the political left have become so focused on Western wrongdoing that criticism of American or Israeli policy can sometimes blur into sympathy for movements fundamentally opposed to liberal democratic values. It was a characteristically provocative thesis, but also one requiring considerable factual context. There is evidence supporting some of Maher’s concerns about generational attitudes and the changing language surrounding terrorism, while several of his conclusions about Gaza, particularly his categorical rejection of the genocide allegation, remain subjects of serious international legal and factual dispute rather than settled questions.

Maher Starts With a Fight Over the Word “Terrorist”

Maher began with language, criticizing news organizations and journalism institutions that discourage reporters from independently labeling people or organizations “terrorists.” There is a factual basis for the controversy, although the reasoning behind those policies is more complicated than simply refusing to identify terrorism. The BBC’s editorial guidance, for example, has instructed journalists to use specific descriptions such as attacker, bomber, gunman, kidnapper, insurgent or militant rather than casually applying politically charged labels themselves. The journalistic theory is that describing precisely what someone did can be more informative than adopting terminology favored by governments, combatants or political movements; Maher’s counterargument is that such restraint can become absurd when applied to unmistakable attacks deliberately targeting civilians. Both positions revolve around a legitimate journalistic problem: how to remain neutral without sanitizing political violence.

For Maher, however, the terminology dispute represents something larger. He believes Western institutions have become increasingly reluctant to make moral distinctions when confronting movements that explicitly reject many of the freedoms those institutions depend upon. That concern connects directly to Maher’s own post 9/11 history. Shortly after the attacks, while hosting ABC’s Politically Incorrect, Maher generated enormous controversy after disputing President George W. Bush’s description of the hijackers as cowards. Maher was not defending the attacks; his argument was that deliberately dying while committing an atrocity was not accurately described as physical cowardice. Advertisers and affiliates revolted, and ABC ultimately canceled the program in 2002. Maher eventually resurfaced at HBO with Real Time, and a quarter-century later he sees an almost inverted cultural problem: the establishment that once punished him for challenging approved patriotic language has, in his view, become excessively cautious about directly condemning anti-Western extremism.

The Osama bin Laden Generation

One of Maher’s most striking points involved young Americans’ attitudes toward Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader who orchestrated the September 11 attacks. The statistic underlying his argument came from a 2023 J.L. Partners/Daily Mail survey that reported 20% of respondents ages 18 to 29 held an at least somewhat positive view of bin Laden, including 8% who described their view as completely positive. The broader American population was dramatically more negative toward him. The poll attracted attention during a bizarre social-media episode in which excerpts from bin Laden’s 2002 “Letter to America” circulated online and some young users said reading it had changed their understanding of American foreign policy.

That finding requires careful interpretation. A poll showing one fifth of young respondents expressing some degree of positive sentiment toward bin Laden does not establish that one fifth of young Americans support al-Qaeda or approve of the September 11 attacks. Those are substantially different propositions. But the episode does illustrate the growing generational distance from an attack that occurred before many younger Americans were born and raises legitimate questions about historical literacy, algorithmic radicalization and social media’s ability to detach ideological documents from the atrocities associated with their authors. Maher compared the phenomenon with the online romanticization of figures such as Luigi Mangione, using both cases to argue that political violence can become culturally fashionable when perpetrators are transformed into symbols of resentment against institutions people already distrust.

Maher’s Real Target Is What He Calls Western Self Hatred

From there, Maher moved into the philosophical center of the monologue, arguing that parts of the modern Western left have become so accustomed to interpreting international politics through colonialism, racism and American power that Western societies are routinely assigned primary responsibility for conflicts involving actors with their own ideologies, ambitions and capacity for violence. There is no shortage of documented Western wrongdoing to fuel that skepticism: the United States invaded Iraq after intelligence claims about weapons of mass destruction proved catastrophically wrong, American governments supported authoritarian regimes during the Cold War, European colonialism reshaped borders and political systems across much of the world, and the post 9/11 war on terrorism produced torture, indefinite detention, civilian deaths and other documented abuses.

Maher’s contention is not that those histories should disappear but that acknowledging them should not require pretending every movement opposing the United States or another Western democracy is therefore progressive, democratic or morally equivalent. That distinction is particularly relevant to Islamist extremist organizations. Al-Qaeda and ISIS explicitly rejected pluralistic democracy and committed mass violence against Muslims as well as Christians, Jews, Yazidis and other communities. Hamas combines Palestinian nationalism with Islamist ideology and is designated a terrorist organization by the United States and European Union. Maher’s broader argument is that opposing Western power and supporting liberal values are not synonymous political positions, and that criticism of Western governments can coexist with an unequivocal rejection of movements that oppose freedom of expression, religious pluralism, women’s equality or LGBTQ+ rights.

Gaza Is Where Maher’s Argument Becomes Far More Contested

The most controversial section concerned Israel’s war in Gaza. Maher portrayed Hamas as a violent Islamist organization rather than simply a national liberation movement and cited Israel’s 2005 disengagement from Gaza as evidence that the history preceding October 7, 2023, is more complicated than portrayals of Gaza as territory continuously occupied by Israeli settlements. Israel did remove its settlers and permanent military installations from inside Gaza in 2005, while Hamas subsequently defeated Fatah in Palestinian legislative elections in 2006 and seized exclusive control of Gaza after violent fighting with Fatah in 2007. However, Israel continued exercising extensive control over Gaza’s airspace, coastline and most external access after disengagement, while Egypt controlled its own border crossing, facts that have remained central to the longstanding international legal and political dispute over Gaza’s post 2005 status. Describing disengagement solely as a “peace gesture” therefore reflects one interpretation of Ariel Sharon’s policy rather than the complete historical record.

Maher then categorically rejected describing Israel’s conduct in Gaza as genocide, arguing that casualty percentages, humanitarian aid deliveries and medical evacuations are incompatible with an Israeli intention to destroy Palestinians as a group. That is a legitimate position within a deeply contested international debate, but it cannot be presented as settled fact. Genocide is not legally determined by reaching a predetermined percentage of a population killed. Under the 1948 Genocide Convention, the central question is whether specified acts, including killing members of a protected group, causing serious bodily or mental harm or deliberately inflicting destructive conditions of life, were committed with the specific intent to destroy that national, ethnic, racial or religious group in whole or in part.

The dispute has produced dramatically different conclusions. A United Nations Commission of Inquiry concluded in 2025 that Israeli authorities had committed genocide in Gaza, while Amnesty International separately reached a genocide finding. Israel categorically rejects those conclusions, maintains that its military campaign is directed against Hamas rather than Palestinians as a people and disputes allegations that it possesses the specific intent required under the Genocide Convention. Most importantly, the International Court of Justice has not issued a final merits judgment finding that Israel committed genocide. South Africa’s genocide case against Israel remains before the court, meaning neither a final judicial finding of genocide nor a final judicial rejection of the allegation has been issued. The ICJ’s provisional measures in the case should therefore not be confused with a final determination of guilt.

Aid Trucks, Medical Evacuations and the Genocide Question

Maher also cited the enormous number of humanitarian aid trucks that have entered Gaza and thousands of patients permitted to leave for medical treatment as evidence against genocidal intent. Those facts can be relevant to evaluating Israeli policy and intent, but they cannot independently settle the legal question. A genocide inquiry considers the totality of evidence, including military operations, civilian deaths, humanitarian access, displacement, destruction of infrastructure, conditions of life and statements by officials. Conversely, catastrophic civilian suffering or enormous casualty figures do not automatically establish genocide either, because the Genocide Convention requires proof of the particular intent to destroy a protected group in whole or in part. That demanding intent requirement is one reason the legal debate remains so consequential.

Maher’s comparison between Gaza’s casualty rate and the destruction of Jewish communities during the Holocaust presents a similar problem. The Holocaust represents the systematic murder of approximately six million Jews and the destruction of entire Jewish communities across Europe, but international law does not require an alleged genocide to approach the Holocaust’s percentage of population destruction before the Genocide Convention can apply. Population percentages may provide historical context and can contribute to an analysis of scale and intent, but the convention does not establish a numerical threshold that must be crossed. In that respect, Maher’s comparison works more effectively as political rhetoric than as a legal test.

Maher Turns the Argument Back on Democrats and Republicans

Maher ultimately returned the controversy to American politics, arguing that describing Gaza as genocide has become a political litmus test for some Democrats and comparing that pressure with the expectation among parts of the Republican coalition that politicians embrace Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. The comparison is Maher’s political analogy rather than an empirical equivalence, and the factual status of the underlying issues differs substantially. Trump’s claims that widespread fraud changed the 2020 election outcome were rejected repeatedly by courts, state election officials and officials within his own administration. The Gaza genocide question, by contrast, involves a contested application of international law on which governments, scholars, human-rights organizations and international bodies disagree, with the central interstate case still pending before the ICJ.

The more broadly supportable point beneath Maher’s analogy concerns political conformity. Political coalitions can turn complicated questions into tests of ideological membership, creating pressure on politicians and commentators to adopt particular language rather than explain uncertainty or distinguish factual questions from political judgments. That phenomenon is hardly exclusive to one party or one issue, but the underlying claims should still be evaluated independently rather than treated as equivalent merely because each can become a partisan loyalty test.

Twenty-Five Years Later, America Is Still Fighting About What 9/11 Meant

Ultimately, Maher’s “Clash of Civilizations” works most effectively as an argument about historical memory rather than a definitive analysis of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Twenty five years after September 11, an entire generation of American adults has no personal memory of watching the World Trade Center towers fall, the Pentagon burn or nearly 3,000 people die in a coordinated al-Qaeda attack. Younger Americans encountered September 11 as history, often learning about it alongside the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay, civilian casualties, torture, mass surveillance and the enormous expansion of American national security power that followed. Contemporary reflections on the 25th anniversary have similarly focused on both the devastation of the attacks and the far reaching consequences of the American response.

Maher worries that the historical pendulum has moved too far that justified skepticism toward America’s post 9/11 conduct has evolved in some corners into an inability to recognize the ideology and brutality of the movements that attacked it. Critics of Maher’s framing argue that invoking a “clash of civilizations” risks flattening enormously diverse Muslim societies into a single ideological adversary and can obscure legitimate grievances, civilian suffering and violations committed by Western governments or their allies. Those positions do not have to cancel each other out. It is possible to recognize al-Qaeda’s September 11 attacks as mass terrorism without endorsing everything the United States subsequently did in response; to condemn Hamas’s October 7 attacks while scrutinizing Israel’s conduct in Gaza under international law; and to defend liberal democratic principles while acknowledging profound failures committed by Western democracies themselves.

Twenty five years after September 11, that tension may be the most durable issue raised by Maher’s monologue. The challenge is not choosing between moral clarity and historical complexity. It is maintaining both.

Sources & Further Reading

Real Time with Bill Maher — Official Videos

International Court of Justice — South Africa v. Israel case materials

International Court of Justice — April 2025 Order in South Africa v. Israel

BBC Editorial Guidelines — War, Terror and Emergencies

United Nations — Genocide Convention

Amnesty International — Gaza Genocide Investigation

Bill Maher — Official Site