Maher didn’t do a very good job of arguing it, but he is stumbling and bumbling his way to a valid point. Harris did a better job of it.

His point is not that a huge number of Muslims support ISIS or their ilk (they don’t). It’s also not that a huge number of Muslims support theocratic governance (though a troubling percentage certainly do).

The problem is the vast centre of “conservative” Muslims, who may be appalled by the tactics of ISIS, but see no real problem with condemning converts to death, or engaging in severe repression of women, homosexuals, Christians, atheists, and any other minority that doesn’t strictly conform to Islamic norms. Maher is right, polls do support the notion that this represents a broad swathe of Muslim society, whether liberals in the West care to admit it or not.

If these are in fact the prevailing views of society in many Muslim countries, that makes it EASIER for groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda to persist, and gain new recruits, even if the majority still disapproves of their more brutal methods. And until that changes, jihadism in its current form will not be defeated. And it certainly isn’t impossible for things to change, Islamic society before the 70s and 80s was much more open to Western, liberalizing influences, as we can see in old pictures of Beirut, Baghdad, even Kabul. Ironically, western interventions and military actions played no small part in making things go in the opposite direction. If change is going to come to the Muslim world, I think it will have to come from within, and not from US bombs currently raining on Iraq and Syria.