US conservative groups target actor after a recent TV appearance in which he described depictions of Islam by TV host Bill Maher and author Sam Harris as ‘gross’ and ‘racist’

Rightwing commentators have lined up to criticise Ben Affleck for his defence of moderate Islam on a US talk show.

Affleck accused TV host Bill Maher and author Sam Harris of “gross” and “racist” depictions of the religion during a televised debate on HBO talk show Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday night. He reacted furiously to claims by Maher that Islam manifested as “the only religion that acts like the mafia” and which would “fucking kill you if you say the wrong thing, draw the wrong picture or write the wrong book”.

The actor’s comments won him praise on Twitter, but a slew of commentators on conservative US radio and television have since made Affleck a target, according to progressive press watchdog Media Matters for America.

Rich Lowry, editor of the conservative National Review magazine, laid into the actor for an alleged refusal to accept “frank truths about the Muslim world” in an article published on 7 October.

“He kept on insisting it is just a few bad apples who think this way,” wrote Lowry. “At one point, he tried to wave Maher and Harris off with a condemnation of the Iraq war, positing an implicit moral equivalence between an overly idealistic war of liberation and the stoning of apostates.”

On Fox News, guest Dr Zuhdi Jasser of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy referred to the actor as “Imam Ben Affleck”. On the Fox & Friends show on 7 Octoberand Jasser said Affleck was “defending the theocrats, the status quo” against necessary moderate reform. On the same day’s America’s Newsroom, contributor David Webb accused Affleck of living in a “unicorn-like world” and suggested Islam was “an intolerable religion”. Meanwhile, presenter Greg Gutfield of Fox show The Five described Affleck as a “Caliphate crusader”, arguing that “the inability to separate identification of evil from platitudes on tolerance is what enables evil to thrive”.

On the 6 October edition of her nationally syndicated radio show, regular Fox guest Laura Ingraham asked what it might take for liberals such as Affleck to “wake up” to Isis atrocities in Iraq and Syria.

Affleck, who was promoting his new film, the David Fincher thriller Gone Girl, had told Harris and Maher: “Hold on – are you the person who officially understands the codified doctrine of Islam? It’s gross and racist. It’s like saying, ‘Oh, you shifty Jew!’ Your argument is, ‘You know, black people, they shoot each other.’”

He added: “How about more than a billion people who aren’t fanatical, who don’t punch women, who just want to go to school, have some sandwiches, pray five times a day, and don’t do any of the things you’re saying of all Muslims. It’s stereotyping.”