Students at the University of California-Berkeley have created a petition for the university to “stop Bill Maher from speaking at UC Berkeley’s December graduation.” The reason: Maher’s criticism of Islam proves that he is “a blatant bigot and racist who has no respect for the values of UC Berkeley students and administration.”

Though the petition condemns Maher for his public statements on “various religions and cultures,” it’s immediately clear that the real problem is his criticism of Islam and by extension, in the students’ logic, Arabs. Every example of his "bigotry" and "racism" provided by the petition is his criticism specifically of Islam. Here are a few of the Maher quotes the petition provides as examples:

“Islam is the only religion that acts like the mafia that will f*cking kill you if you say the wrong thing”

“Dealing w/ Hamas is like dealing w/ a crazy woman who's trying to kill u - u can only hold her wrists so long before you have to slap her”

“Talk to women who’ve ever dated an Arab man. The results are not good.”

“The Muslim world has too much in common with Isis”

"You have to understand, you have to embrace the values of Western civilization. They're not just different, they are better."

"For a lack of a better term I would say the feminine values are now the values of America, sensitivity is more important than truth, feelings are more important that facts"

Maher made headlines recently due to a combative exchange with Ben Affleck, in which Maher argued that radical Islam and mainstream Islam in most Muslim countries share common threads, a claim Affleck called “gross” and “racist.” The debate put the spotlight on Maher's consistent criticism of radical beliefs held by many Muslims. The far-left has clearly now decided that Maher has gone too far. As Noah Rothman points out, the growing trend to ban all critics of Islam has the left eating its own:

With conservative figures effectively banished from America’s most famously leftwing campuses, the left’s Montagnards have turned on the reactionaries and deviationists within their ranks. The focus of the progressive has shifted from fighting for social justice to protecting the practitioners of injustice in the name of inclusivity and open mindedness. With headlines today dominated by tales of gross acts of barbarism and efforts to exterminate ancient minorities groups from the face of the Earth performed in the name of one religion, the far-left has embraced the beleaguered premise that Islam is under siege and needs defending.

The petition to ban Maher has now reached 3,000 signatures.