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Dec. 22, 2021 - Dinesh D'Souza
56:44
JESUS AND DREAMS Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep243
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Guys, I have an important announcement to make.
This is the second to last podcast for the year 2021.
We are, honey, what are we on episode?
Sona. 243 today.
Tomorrow, the 23rd of December is episode 244.
That's the last one. Then we kind of go on, well, Christmas break and a little bit of vacation for a couple of weeks.
So the podcast is back January 10th.
Monday, January 10th.
I guess we'll start with episode 245 and round two.
I guess they call it season two.
Season two. So, a little bit of a holiday for us and certainly a holiday for you, but mark your calendar or make a mental note.
January 10th, Monday, we'll be back in the saddle for what's going to be a big year, 2022.
Now today, I'll be joined by historian Daniel Pipes.
We're going to pick up on a theme I touched on earlier, this remarkable phenomenon of Muslims in different countries all over the world converting to Christianity by claiming that they're seeing dreams and visions of Jesus.
I'm also going to answer an atheist conundrum, which is if God wanted to show himself to mankind, to reveal himself to us, why did he send his son, Jesus?
Why did he send him into such a remote place, the obscure corner of Bethlehem?
And why did he do it at such an obscure time?
Why not now, when everybody could see for themselves and maybe see on video?
I'll answer that point.
I'm also going to provide updates on the Supreme Court and Biden's vaccine mandate, as well as Governor Abbott's decision to go ahead and build a Texas border wall.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza podcast.
The times are crazy and a time of confusion, division, and lies.
We need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
I want to talk about vaccine mandates.
I don't know if you watched Biden's speech, but it's really difficult to listen to this guy.
I mean, this is like some crotchety, grumpy, angry old man.
And you know, it's so different than the image of Biden.
Before the election, Biden is a He's a moderate.
He's worked with people across the aisle.
He gets along with all, he's a nice guy, whatever you say about him.
He's considerate.
He's a unifier. And then you get this kind of, you know, angry old man and callous.
He's mean. This is a guy who doesn't care about human feelings.
And you can see it.
You know, here's, I brought my phone.
I'm just going to read. This is from the White House.
I just want to read because it gives you a sense.
This is actually captures Biden's tone.
We are intent on not letting Omicron disrupt work and school for the vaccinated.
You've done the right thing and we will get through this.
That's fine. But now, listen.
For the unvaccinated, you're looking at a winter of severe illness and death for yourself, your families, and the hospitals you may soon overwhelm.
I mean, notice there's a little tone of not only vindictiveness, but glee.
And the portrayal of the unvaccinated by the White House, and by the way, by Democrats generally, by progressives in the media, I mean, it's so degrading.
The unvaccinated, they're ignorant, they're dirty, they're irresponsible, they're vile.
And what comes out of that?
Well, people don't even hesitate to go there.
They deserve to be segregated.
They deserve to have their rights taken away.
Some of them even deserve to die.
Now, if you think about it, I mean, isn't this exactly the portrait that the Nazis made about the Jews?
Let me go through it again. They're ignorant.
They're dirty. They're irresponsible.
They're vile. They deserve to be segregated.
They deserve to have their rights taken away.
And you know what? We wouldn't feel too badly if they were killed.
I see a pretty close and almost a chilling analogy.
Now, a little bit of an update on the vaccine mandate, the legal status of the vaccine mandate.
So the Biden administration We're good to go.
And they asked the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to overrule the Fifth Circuit.
A little bit of an unusual move, but the Sixth Circuit Court did that.
And so what that means is that the Biden vaccine mandate is now sort of, at least for the moment, back on.
And that means that the mandate doesn't take effect until early January, but it means that Biden can now start pushing corporations, people with 100 employees or more.
You've got to do this. You've got to enforce this mandate.
So that's very bad news.
Now, the Sixth Circuit Court did not uphold the mandate or say it's constitutional.
They simply said, we're not going to put it on hold while it's being adjudicated.
But right away, a whole group of organizations, mainly business organizations, have appealed to the Supreme Court.
And what they basically said, this includes the National Federation of Independent Businesses, they said, listen, you're threatening the viability of a lot of our businesses because there are people who will not comply.
These businesses will get either confiscatory penalties or they'll be forced to close down.
Quote, this could put us out of business.
So I think the Supreme Court is going to be right all over this and take this case right up.
In fact, Justice Kavanaugh, who's kind of the designated justice for that area, is already on it.
He has ordered the Biden administration to respond to a flood of appeals and file its statement He's given them a few days to do it, and the court is going to make its ruling probably early next year.
So this is not a done deal.
This is going all the way up to the Supreme Court.
And again, the Supreme Court at this point is not considering, are the vaccine mandates constitutional?
I don't think the court will find them constitutional.
I've gone in the past in the podcast into arguments for the unconstitutionality of the mandates.
But that's not really what's up before the court.
It's whether the court will issue an injunction halting the implementation of the mandates while the case kind of winds its way up the courts.
So it's kind of like who gets the advantage while the issue is being sorted out.
And I think what's going to happen is that the court, which, by the way, the Biden people have until December 30th, 4 p.m., to file their response.
And I think by early in the new year, we're going to get a decision by the court.
And I think what it's going to say is, hey, these mandates have got to be put on hold while the case is adjudicated.
And it's the constitutionality of this very controversial measure in which the executive branch through an agency, OSHA, is unilaterally taking essentially upon itself the authority to regulate the entire private economy.
Any business, and you'd have to say not just large, but medium-sized business with 100 employees or more, falls under this.
Biden thinks he has the constitutional authority.
There's not even an act of Congress that gives him this kind of legislative authority.
Let's remember, Biden is the head of the executive and not the legislative branch.
And so I'm glad to see the Supreme Court stepping in.
We wish, of course, the court system would move more swiftly than it does.
But I think this mandate in every way is going down, down, down.
Guys, let's close out the year by really supporting Mike Lindell.
Mike's an amazing guy.
I mean, we just learned that he donated 10,000 pillows to the families devastated by the tornadoes in Kentucky.
He sort of timed it so the pillows would arrive right on Christmas Eve.
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Texas is building its own border wall.
And this is good news. I got to give kudos to Governor Abbott.
Texas has officially started construction on a border wall.
And let's remember, this is the border wall that the Biden administration has refused to carry through on.
The government, by the way, paid for all kinds of construction materials.
They're just sitting there.
And the Biden people have not only said that we're not going to use them, even though we paid for them, but we're not going to let Texas use them.
So think of how malicious these people are.
Even though the funds have been expended, they're trying to block the idea of Texas moving forward.
But Texas is saying, listen, we're going to build a wall.
We're going to...
We're going to fill gaps in the wall that are there now.
And we're going to do it starting now.
Bill Milligan, the reporter from Fox News, who's been Fox News LA, I believe, he's really been on this issue.
And he points out in reporting on this that Texas is going to be using, they're not going to use federal funding, they're going to use Texas funding.
So we, the Texas taxpayers, are going to pay for this.
And apparently, Governor Abbott is using the exact same contractor that the federal government had contracted with to build these walls.
The wall panels are going up starting in Star County in the Rio Grande Valley.
And this is what Abbott calls Operation Lone Star.
And now there's a whole group of Texas left wing groups, the Texas ACLU, the Civil Rights Project, the so-called Texas Defense Project.
All these people are screaming about it.
Here's Liz Castillo of the Detention Watch Network.
The true intent of this program is to punish migrants.
Expand Texas's massive correctional system and deter future migration.
Now, the third part of that is 100% right.
Abbott, by the way, has been farsighted about this.
He got an almost $2 billion, $1.88 billion spending bill through to supplement another $1 billion that the state had already approved earlier in the spring.
So this is a billion-dollar project.
It's not cheap. But Abbott says that it's a lot cheaper than it would have cost the federal government.
You know why? Because Texas doesn't have to buy the land.
Texas already owns the land.
So this is state land.
And he says, look, we are not going to have to devote money to acquire the land.
The state of Texas owns the land on the border.
And he says, second, and this is really cool, there are property owners of massive acreage on the border who are so fed up with Biden's open border policies, they are donating the land to Texas now.
For the wall to be built.
They're saying, listen, we'll give you some of our own land and you can build the wall.
And now, interesting update from the Biden people.
And I don't know if this is partly because of the poll numbers or if it's partly because of court decisions, probably a little bit of both.
But in addition to installing now President Trump's remain in Mexico policy, The DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, has said they are actually now going to patch up unfinished parts of the wall in Arizona and California.
Very interesting. So they're not going to build any new wall.
They're not going to build any additional sections of the barrier.
So it should be clear that the Biden people, it's not like they've said, okay, we're going to build a wall.
But they concede that there are all kinds of problems where there are holes in the wall.
And so they're going to close gaps, add missing gates.
They're going to put up some guardrails.
They're gonna repair some foundations and also repair some power supplies that have been broken.
So the left is saying, well, wait a minute. Are you turning out to be sort of Trump-redux?
Are you doing... is Biden selling us out on immigration?
No, because the Biden administration is still fighting this issue in the courts.
They're flagrantly violating immigration law.
They're refusing to really enforce the immigration laws.
And these are very small and partial steps that they're taking.
As I say, in response, I think in part to court decisions, you must do this.
and second in response to plummeting poll ratings, which are telling them, hey, you better do this or else.
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See site for details. I'm really enjoying the aftermath of Joe Manchin's announcement that he will not, to repeat, not support the so-called Build Back Better boondoggle.
I just saw on TV Ilhan Omar is accusing him of being a liar.
Democrats really unloading on him, including the White House.
Their statement extremely intemperate.
And I'm actually delighted about this because I think it's only going to antagonize Manchin more, make it more difficult for the Democrats to come back in the new year and say, OK, let's start again.
OK, Joe Manchin, we're going to work it out.
No, they're actually burning their bridges and it's just fine by me.
Now, there's also the usual admixture of inanity and hebitude, which basically means stupidity.
Here's AOC. She says, wait a minute, how come Joe Manchin has all this kind of power?
AOC claims that she, in her district, in New York, represents as many people as Joe Manchin.
So I'm like... Doesn't sound right to me.
Let me check it up. AOC represents 690,000 people.
Joe Manchin, 1.8 million.
Three times as many.
So, I mean, just think about it.
Think how the media would react if someone on our side said something this dumb.
You know, somehow real progressives can get away with their room temperature IQs.
Why? Because all the media...
We didn't hear that.
We didn't hear that. So they just kind of let it pass because...
Because they're giving a pass to their own side.
Now, the logic of the left is just downright crazy because they're acting like democracy itself is imperiled.
And you think about it, wait a minute.
How is democracy imperiled?
So here's their reasoning. I want to kind of go through it.
Democracy is in grave danger.
The Senate is not able to pass a big piece of legislation when there's a whole whopping 48 senators in favor.
Only 51, maybe 52 against.
So, the Democrats are outraged that, in their words, a single Democrat, just one guy, is stopping what the president himself wants.
No, it's not one guy.
It's one guy plus 50 other guys, plus maybe one other guy named Kyrsten Sinema.
So, this is just madness from the left's point of view.
And as Debbie was saying to me the other day, she goes, who do they think Joe Manchin represents?
I mean, does he represent Chuck Schumer?
Pelosi? Biden? No.
He actually represents the state of West Virginia.
He's answerable to West Virginia voters.
And it's pretty obvious.
There have been all kinds of polls to support this.
He's doing exactly what his voters want him to do.
So the whole business from Bernie, he's going to have some explaining to do.
No, he's not. He has no explaining to do.
Now, Manchin himself, you can tell, is getting kind of annoyed.
And he's basically daring the Democrats to kick him out of the party.
Which I kind of hope happens.
Because he was asked, he was on a West Virginia radio show, and they said, you know, is there a place for you in the Democratic Party?
And he goes, well, I would like to hope the Democrats feel like I do.
He goes, but if there are no Democrats like that, they've got to push me where they want me.
In other words, if they want to push me out, sayonara, guys.
And I think this quote is very interesting.
We have been way far apart philosophically.
And then Manchin goes on to say, again, a kind of very prudent statement by Manchin.
He goes, this is a 50-50 Senate.
He goes, you all, meaning the Democrats, are approaching legislation as if you had 55 or 60 senators or Democrats, and you can do whatever you want.
He goes, I'm not a Washington Democrat, meaning he's not going to play by their rules.
Now, the thing about the left, and they're hopping mad about this one, of course, and Biden has always said, That if I can't do the better build-back legislation, I'm going to pivot and do voting rights.
In fact, the Biden administration has been quoted saying, quote, and this is Biden, there's nothing domestically more important than voting rights.
It's the single biggest issue.
So they've got their big HR1, which would federalize elections.
Essentially, it's almost a vote-rigging scheme, but in this case, a legal vote-rigging scheme.
But here's the problem. Cinema is a flat no on this one.
So you've got Manchin on the one side essentially sinking one part of the Titanic, and then you've got Cinema basically saying, no matter what, she is not on board for breaking the 60-vote filibuster.
And of course, there's no way the Biden administration can come close to 60 votes.
They're not even really at 51.
So I think what this means is that the Biden agenda and the You know, Biden's done a lot of bad things since he's come into office, many of them unilateral actions, Afghanistan, the border.
But his legislative achievements are nil.
And so, so far, Republicans have done a pretty good job, of course, with some help from Sinema and Manchin, in taking this radical Biden locomotive and kind of grinding it to an unpleasant halt.
Here's some breaking news, and it's not good news.
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Guys, I'm really happy to welcome to the podcast Daniel Pipes.
Dan is an historian.
He's a former official in the US Departments of State and the Defense Department.
And he's been a professor.
He's taught at the University of Chicago.
He's taught at Harvard, US Naval War College.
And he also runs an organization called the Middle East Forum.
Now, Dan wrote an article, I believe originally in a magazine called The National Interest, about a worldwide movement of Muslims converting to Christianity.
An extremely, I think, fascinating topic.
I wanted to have Dan come on and talk about it.
Dan, welcome to the podcast.
Of course, we know each other going back several years, and you were one of the experts and sources that I interviewed for my first film, 2016, Obama's America.
I find this article extremely fascinating.
So let me start by just asking you, what kind of got you?
I mean, here you are, you're a scholar, historian, a political scientist.
What got you interested in this topic of Muslims, in a sense, leaving their faith and becoming Christians?
Thank you for the kind introduction, Dinesh.
I'd always considered Muslims leaving Islam to be a marginal topic of no larger significance beyond the individuals involved.
And then gradually over the past few years I became aware That it's bigger than that.
There's something going on.
And there are really two aspects to it.
One is Muslims becoming atheists, and the other is Muslims converting to other religions, mostly Christianity.
And I now see this as a significant phenomenon, both for those involved and also a challenge to Islam, such as Islam has never faced.
Let's begin by talking about the historical reluctance that Muslims have had to leave Islam.
You mentioned in your article the obvious factor that Islam is intolerant of defectors, that Islam, in a sense, makes it an apostasy to leave the faith.
And that's because you're not just rejecting the beliefs of Islam, you're leaving the Islamic community, which is seen as a sort of form of treason.
But I would add to that the fact that Islam is a faith that seems that today still has some of the force of its original revelation.
In other words, that you've got Muslims, or at least many of them, appear to be really true believers.
And would you agree that these are the two factors?
The hold of the religion and the intolerance toward people leaving, and second, the devoutness of so many Muslims that makes it a surprise when a Muslim does, you may say, escape the fold.
I'd agree. I think the former, the intolerance, goes back to the origins of Islam, which was a somewhat tribal religion.
And so the Muslims were a tribe unto themselves, and therefore to leave the Muslim tribe as a realistic effect and to become a traitor.
And this sense of betrayal continues 14 centuries later, when it is far from being a tribal religion in any way anymore.
The most notorious example was in 1989, when The Ayatollah Khomeini invoked an edict against the author Salman Rushdie, saying that he was an apostate and had to be killed.
This created a worldwide debate about Islam and apostasy and leaving Islam.
That was dramatic.
In most cases, it's not so dramatic.
You mentioned your movie in 2016 of Barack Obama.
He is clearly the best No, apostate from Islam to Christianity.
In my mind, there is no doubt whatsoever.
He was born and raised a Muslim.
And in his 20s, in a somewhat murky circumstance, he left Islam and became a Christian.
But he's by far not the only one.
Another prominent example would be Menem, the president of Argentina, who likewise left Islam and became a Christian.
And there are plenty of others around the world but there are prominent ones and they tend to do it quietly because it's just difficult You mentioned, Dan, the Muslims who, in a sense, not only leave Islam, but leave all religion and become atheists.
I can think, for example, of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, for example, who wrote the book Infidel, as someone who essentially said, I've had it not just with Islam, but I've had it with religion in general.
And I'm assuming that for those guys, for many of those guys, Rushdie, another good example, It's the push factor that has made them into atheists.
In other words, they see things about Islam that are vicious, that are murderous, they see ISIS, they see Al-Qaeda, and they go, you know what, if this is the face of religion, I want nothing to do with it.
Would you say that that is probably the strongest explanation for why you have Muslims who essentially have had it with religion altogether?
Right. There's a distinction between the Muslims who become atheists who are rejecting religion as such.
It's a completely negative response.
And those who become Christian, or for that matter, Buddhist or Jewish or Hindu, and they are rejecting only Islam, not religion as such.
Most apostates who leave this religion entirely become atheists.
The smaller number become members of another religious community, and in particular Christianity, where it's a mix of push and pull, where the attraction in particular of Jesus figures largely.
It's not just negative, it's also positive.
Let's turn to that subject for a moment and go into it a little bit more.
What struck me about your article is that you are mining a fairly wide range of sources, and you are also mining incidents that are occurring not in one particular place where you could say, well, this is due to Iran or this is due to Iraq.
You've got incidents that are occurring in Indonesia.
They're occurring in the Middle East.
They're occurring in Africa, even in sub-Saharan Africa.
Not to mention Muslims who are in the West.
And you describe the remarkable phenomenon of Muslims who see dreams and visions of Jesus.
Say a word about that.
How did you find out about that?
And what do you make of it?
Well, you're right. There is a large literature.
All I did in my brief articles to skim the tops of it, there's a vast literature.
There are many, many ex-Muslims who describe their...
Many moving ones.
There are books, plenty of books, plenty of books in English on this subject, both in the West and in the Muslim-majority countries.
So it's not hard to find.
It's just a matter of paying attention to it, saying, oh, this is a significant phenomenon.
In terms of the figure of Jesus, it tends to be a somewhat dreamlike.
He often appears to Muslims in dreams.
He's often clad in white.
It's not a specific thing.
It's an apparition.
And they're drawn to him.
They want to learn more. They want to take the Bible seriously, as you probably know in Islam.
The Bible, Jewish Bible, Christian Bible, are seen as outdated books.
Yes, they have truths in them, but they're outdated.
The Quran came and replaced it.
You don't need to look at the Bible.
It's out of date. It's like looking at last year's catalog.
It just... It has no importance anymore.
But these Muslims who are attracted to Christianity say, oh, maybe there's something in the Bible.
Let me take a look at it. Maybe it's not outdated.
They go and listen, or they read, or they watch these days, and they are impressed.
They see something that they're missing in their own religion.
Let's take a pause, Dan.
When we come back, we're going to pick up on this theme of dreams and visions of Jesus and also the broader message of Christianity that is drawing many Muslims away from Islam and toward Christianity.
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Feel the difference. I'm back with historian Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum.
We're talking about his article about Muslims in many parts of the world converting to Christianity.
Dan, you described figures, and it's hard to come by reliable data, but these are big numbers in the millions.
In one estimate, 10 million.
You quote a guy in Libya basically saying that there are millions annually who make this transition.
Six million.
Yeah, six million away from Islam.
Let's start. You mentioned very provocatively Barack Obama.
And I think when you were talking about his Muslim upbringing, you weren't so much referring to his father, Barack Obama Sr., who I took to be, yes, born a Muslim, but largely an atheist.
I think you were referring to Lolo Satoro, the woman that his mom married in Indonesia, where Obama goes to a kind of, to a school where he's instructed in Islam, there's Islam in the house, he's in an Islamic environment.
And of course, Indonesia is even today the largest Islamic country in the world.
Well, as we're referring to both, in Islamic law, a child of a Muslim father is a Muslim.
So in that sense, he is a Muslim.
And then, as you correctly point out, he went to Indonesia with his mother who married a Muslim man.
And he went to school and was registered as a Muslim and went to mosque and was in a Muslim environment.
He proudly recited the Muslim call to prayer for a journalist some years ago before he became president.
So he grew up in a Muslim environment, and then he decided to switch over and become a Christian.
Now, because he doesn't quite acknowledge this, he has indicated it from time to time, but he doesn't forthrightly acknowledge it.
We don't know why and how it happened, or even when or who, but we do know what happened.
There's no doubt. It's not a topic he covers in Dreams from My Father in any depth at all.
If anything, he passes sort of slyly over it.
He alludes to it a number of times, there and elsewhere, in both his autobiographies and in many, many interviews, he refers to it.
But the striking thing is that he is inconsistent.
And that's what happens when you're not telling the truth.
When you're aligning around the truth, you say different things at different times.
I've actually documented this in some way.
There's no consistent story.
What is clear is he was born and raised Muslim, and that the pro-Obama press hates this fact and hides it to the point that I, who I think I'm the premier documenter of this, this important fact about the would-be and then president, now ex-president of the United States, gets hooted and I can't call it because I mentioned it.
It's an absurdity.
This is craziness.
And yet, it's right there, a fact in front of your face.
Let's talk about this guy, Michael Stolwork, who is some sort of a vicar at the cathedral in Frankfurt.
I'm now quoting him.
He says, I stood at the exit, still vested, bidding the worshippers goodbye when a veiled woman approached me.
He says, I fumbled through the slit in my robe of my wallet, thinking she's a beggar.
No, no, she said.
I only have a question. Are you the imam here?
And he goes, well, I guess in a way I'm the imam.
I'm the pastor. And then she goes on to say, well, you're the right man.
God commanded me in a dream to go to the big church on the market square and ask the imam for the truth.
And this was a Muslim essentially asking to be initiated into Christianity.
And you have a number of episodes that are like this.
Talk a little bit about the larger message of Christianity and why it's appealing to someone who's raised in the maybe more severe precincts of Islam.
Well, the testimony that comes most often is that in Christianity, God is a God of love, and in Islam, He is not.
They're missing that.
They're seeking that, and they find that in Christianity.
You point out that as Islam has radicalized over the past several decades and given rise to groups like ISIS, or even you mentioned Muhammad Morsi.
Muhammad Morsi was the Muslim Brotherhood leader who became, at least for a time, the Prime Minister of Egypt.
And you have the phrase which caused me to chuckle a little bit.
You said that Morsi is, quote, the great evangelist.
And I think what you meant is that this guy turned off so many Muslims by his fanaticism that they were like, I'm out of here.
Yeah, your first point was how Islam doesn't allow anybody to leave, and your second point was how there's so many determined Muslims, and I'd say not just Muslims, but Islamists, that is, say, Muslims who want to return to the medieval era And to make Islam into a modernism, a modern ideology. Take medieval Islam and make it a modern ideology.
That's Islamism. And Morsi is an Islamist, or was, since died.
And they are the ones who are repulsing so many Muslims.
Now, Muslim Brotherhood is bad, but when you get to ISIS and Taliban and Shabab and...
The most extreme versions, then you really have fear and loathing on the part of ordinary Muslims who are basically saying, if that's Islam, I don't want it.
The most dramatic case is perhaps in Iran, where the Islamists have been in power for over four decades, and the mosques are empty.
And surveys and other reliable information suggest that a significant majority of Iranians are rejecting Islam.
Are not wanting to hear about it.
They're saying, I don't like what the government is purveying.
I don't think I'm a Muslim.
Now, a small number, not that small, but maybe 1%, 2% have converted to Christianity, but many more are irreligious.
There's a great, great body of irreligious Iranians as a result of 40 years of Islamism.
You conclude the article by saying that, you know, these Muslims who do become Christian, life isn't all that easy for them, because in many ways, they're cut off from their family, they're cut off from their community, they have to maintain secrecy, in some cases live a double life, or they don't maintain secrecy and they become ostracized.
And then you say, interestingly, that even those who emigrate to non-Muslim majority countries, in other words, to Western countries, for example, They often get harangued even there so that there's sort of no escape from the torment that comes from exiting the Islamic fold.
Exactly. It is a trial no matter where you are.
The only way out in the long term is by strength of numbers.
As the number of ex-Muslims, whether it be atheists or Christians or anything else, grows, especially in the West, there is a certain protection.
There's a certain legitimacy.
There's a certain inevitability.
So I think that's happening.
It's now less difficult.
If you take someone, for example, like the pseudonymous Ibn Warak, who wrote a book 25 years ago called Why I'm Not a Muslim.
He did it under a false name, Ibn Warak.
It's not his real name. He was scared.
This was just a few years after the Rushdie affair.
And it was a very scary circumstance back then.
Right now, 25 years on, he's more relaxed.
It's not so dangerous as it was then.
Dan, this is a fascinating topic, and I really found this article very provocative.
I talked about it on the podcast several weeks ago, and there was a lot of interest in it, so I'm delighted to have you come and discuss it further.
I really appreciate it. Love to have you back, maybe to talk about some of the strategic issues.
Thank you, Dan. I really appreciate it.
I look forward to it. Thank you, Dinesh.
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I've talked before about the Jussie Smollett case and the Jussie Smollett verdict, but what I haven't talked about is the responsibility and the abrogation of duty and the shenanigans that have been pulled by Kim Fox, who was the Cook County State Attorney, the supposed prosecutor of Jussie Smollett.
The good thing is that there's now a report by Dan Webb.
Dan Webb is the special prosecutor who was appointed.
This is the guy who prosecuted Smollett.
But what he does is he goes back and he looks not just at the Smollett case, but he's done a report on the behavior of the office of Kim Foxx, and he finds all kinds of improprieties.
Let's remember, let's refresh your memory, when Smollett was first busted by the cops, and they had the goods on him.
They had all the evidence that was eventually presented in the trial.
But nevertheless, Kim Fox's Office A dismissed the 16-count felony indictment.
In fact, had no requirement that Smollett either plead guilty or accept any responsibility.
They really gave Smollett no real punishment.
They just gave him essentially 15 hours, 15, 1-5.
I had over 1,000 hours, by the way, of community service.
15 hours of community service.
And then they said, listen, you paid a $10,000 bond.
You're going to forfeit that. So Jussie Smollett was going to get off scot-free.
Now, Dan Webb looks into the behavior of Kim Foxx, and he finds all kinds of violations.
First of all, Kim Frox, from the beginning, was conspiring with a couple of other leftists, a woman named Christina Chen.
By the way, this is Michelle Obama's former chief of staff.
And a woman named Sherilyn Ifill, who's president and director, counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
So this is how the left works in concert in this case.
They knew that Jussie Smollett was guilty, but their idea was he's promoting our narrative.
You know, racism everywhere, even if you had to make it up.
So they're like, how do we get this guy off?
So Kim Fox, for example, had said publicly, and you really see the level of public deceit, because she publicly said that I've recused myself from the case.
She said, you know, yes, I did contact Smollett's sister.
I was in contact with the family when I thought he was a victim.
But once I realized he was a suspect, that we were looking into him as the possible perpetrator, I had no contact whatsoever with the family.
And Dan Webb basically says, this is a flat-out lie.
He points out that on multiple occasions, I think he identifies at least three, that Kim Foxx continued to maintain contact with Jussie Smollett's sister.
And this, he says, was an abuse of power.
Now, Dan Webb does conclude in this report, he says, look, I'm not saying that Kim Fox should be prosecuted, but I do think that she's guilty of ethical violations.
And I think that's enough to say, listen, this is a woman who should resign.
This is a woman who should be pushed out because she has been found on multiple counts, by the way, here, unethical conduct.
So she sent five text messages, talked on the phone on three separate occasions.
And this is five days after she insisted publicly that she had cut off communication with the family.
Number two, the office of Kim Foxx said to the media and to the public, we're giving Jussie Smollett the same treatment as we would give any other defendant.
He's meeting the same criteria.
There are some 5,000 similar cases.
And Dan Webb goes, quote, there were not thousands of similar cases.
In fact, he says that the office of Kim Foxx, quote, did not identify or produce a single case.
Similar to the initial Smollett case.
So while the prosecutor's office was giving the idea to the public, you know what, there's multiple cases similar to this where kind of applying an even-handed standard of treatment may seem lenient to you, but in fact, and this reminds me again a little bit of my own case where the government was like, oh yeah, it's very normal for people to do what Dinesh has done, you know.
No previous convictions, a first-time offense, small amount of money, no corruption involved or even alleged.
Yeah, you know, two years in prison, pretty normal.
Flat-out lie. There's no case in the history of the United States where someone got...
So, the same kind of lying is going on here.
They also claim that, listen, the $10,000 fine we imposed on Jussie, they go, this was the maximum allowed by law.
This is all we could do.
And Dan Webb goes, that's a flat-out lie.
That's simply not true.
You just made that up.
There's no reason you couldn't have gone to trial, and if you convicted Jussie, you could have demanded he pay back the full cost that the Chicago Police Department incurred in the investigation, because essentially he was forcing an investigation that didn't even need to happen.
He was himself, the victim in this case, was the perpetrator.
So the Chicago Police Department said we've spent at least, and this is a very small number, compared to what the true, we have actually put out in straight out cash $130,000.
So this could easily have been billed to Jussie Smollett.
The point again being that this notion that we could only have charged him $10,000 is a complete lie.
So, the conclusion of this report is that you've got a corrupt Kim Fox and a corrupt office because she wasn't the only one doing this wheeling dealing.
There are a number of people under her who are acting, you may say, under her malign influence.
I guess this is similar to the FBI, which is you corrupt all the people at the top and then they start corrupting all the people way below them, making it seem like they're merely carrying out orders, but the orders are unethical, they're unlawful, they're not suggested in the law.
Or in the guidelines.
And fortunately, Dan Webb now has a report which a judge has ordered to be released.
It makes fascinating reading.
I just read it earlier this morning.
And it shows that we're dealing in these democratic cities, not just at the criminal level, but also at the prosecutorial level with some mighty dirty individuals.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
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Leading up to Christmas, this is, by the way, just a reminder, the second last of my podcasts this year.
I'll be doing one tomorrow, the 23rd, and then I'm on break until January 10th.
But I want to talk about an atheist argument that relates to Christmas and goes something like this.
Hey, Dinesh, you know, if God really wanted to show himself to mankind, really wanted to make his presence obvious, why doesn't he take obvious steps to do that?
He's, after all, omnipotent.
And, you know, he could do some easy things like tattoo his name on the moon, or just appear before everybody and go, here, I'm God, take a look at me.
Or even if he wants to send his son Jesus, the argument goes, well, you know, why send him at the time and place that God apparently did?
Why send him to some forgotten corner of the Roman Empire, a town called Nazareth that no one's ever heard of, even Bethlehem?
Essentially a remote precinct of Roman rule.
Why send him really at the time when there's no technology, there's no television, people can't sort of have direct access to what's going on over there.
Wouldn't it have been easier for God to do it, say now, with the internet and with television and with kind of global communications?
In other words, if God is actually trying to Say to people, you know, worship me.
I'm God. I'm the guy who made the world.
I'm the guy who made you.
Why didn't he do it that way?
Why did he choose? Now, right away, you can see that I'm in a little bit of a difficult position because I'm sort of being asked to justify the wily ways of providence and explain kind of why God is doing the things that he did.
Now, First of all, even though this argument appears to carry a certain kind of force, it's worth pointing out right at the outset that whatever God did to put Jesus in the world, it's not exactly like God's plan failed, right?
Jesus is in fact the most influential figure in all of history.
Let me take a moment, by the way, to say that the historicity of Jesus is not open to question.
I touched on this in my conversation with Several days ago with Eric Metaxas.
But the historicity of Jesus is not merely attested to by Christian sources.
It's not just, by the way, the four gospel writers and Paul.
No, you have Greek sources, you have Roman sources.
So, for example, we find references to Jesus in Suetonius, the historian, in Pliny, the younger, in the Jewish historian, Josephus.
Tacitus, the historian in his annals, he talks about the detestable superstition of, quote, Christus.
So here you have a hostile witness who doesn't like what Jesus stands for.
He's sort of attacking Jesus for, quote, founding a new sect called Christianity.
This is Tacitus. And so you get from these sources, and we're again talking about sources outside of Christianity, that you have this guy named Jesus, he lived, he had a big following, he alienated the Jewish and the Roman authorities, and that he died by crucifixion.
Historians don't doubt any of this, even though there are some atheists like Christopher Hitchens who have implied that Jesus is somehow mythical.
Now, let's start with the influence of Jesus.
I mean, it's clearly greater than anyone else that you can think of.
It's greater than Moses.
It's greater than Buddha.
It's greater than Muhammad. And...
And Jesus is also not only an influential figure, he's an unmistakable figure.
Now, it was the writer C.S. Lewis who once made a very, I think, telling observation.
He said that there are very few figures, either in reality or even in literature, who if they walked into the room right now, you and I would recognize them.
He said, C.S. Lewis said, I can think of really only a handful.
And he named Socrates.
He named Samuel Johnson.
And he named Jesus.
So if Jesus walked into the room, we would know it.
And what makes Jesus this so surprising is to think about it.
Like Socrates, Jesus never wrote a single word.
I mean, at one point in the Gospels, Jesus is described as sort of writing with his finger on the ground.
But we don't know what he wrote.
And yet, here's Jesus.
I'm just going to read a couple of his sayings, which are, they exceed anything in Shakespeare by their eloquence, their brevity, and their kind of moral insight.
By their fruits, ye shall know them.
Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Turn the other cheek.
Man does not live by bread alone.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Whoever finds his life will lose it.
Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
This is the pungent insight, if you will, of Jesus.
But now turning to the atheist question, why did God do it that way?
Now, I think one interesting fact to remember is that if we think back to recorded history, when did history sort of begin?
I mean, mankind, Homo sapiens, our species has been on the planet for a long time.
I mean, tens of thousands of years.
Now, recorded history, which I would say is the time where God, in a sense, breathed the soul into man.
And man began to actually do things.
And we actually have a record of man doing things.
This begins about 2,000 years B.C. So if you think of history, it's fascinating, isn't it?
You've got Jesus right in the middle.
There were kind of 2,000 years of history before him.
And by the way, before that, what?
Nothing. Nothing.
No achievements that we know of, anyway.
Not even down through the oral tradition.
So history stretches back before Jesus, 2,000 years, and forward after Jesus, 2,000 years.
And there is Christ right in the middle.
So, interestingly, God, at least if we look at history from the beginning to the present, locates the birth, the nativity, right at the center of history.
Now, number two. Jesus is, in fact, born in an obscure corner of the Roman Empire.
I guess God could have had him born to a noble Roman family, but let's remember that it was part of God's plan for Jesus to be, if you will, a member of the lowly class, a member of the persecuted.
Christ's kingdom, as he said, is not of this world.
So it was not God's plan to make Jesus a king or the son of a king, even though that's sort of what the Jews expected that the Messiah would be.
So what God does is he has Jesus be born to a poor family.
His father, his earthly father Joseph, is a carpenter.
And yet, and yet, Isn't it true that God, if God is operating through providence, as obviously we Christians believe He is, God knew that even though Jesus was born on the receiving end of the Roman Empire, nevertheless by a strange irony, and for Christians this isn't irony, this is simply providence, The message of Christianity would be carried on the backs of the Roman legions.
In other words, how did Christianity become a religion spread through the far corners, not just of Europe, but even the northern part of Africa, stretch into Asia?
And the answer is, it was the power of the Roman Empire.
It was the conversion of Constantine to Christianity around 325 AD. That then ultimately brought about this change by which you may say the dominated class, the Jews and Jesus, now become part of the ruling class.
Christianity becomes the religion of the Roman state and it becomes carried far and wide.
So, what appears at first glance to be, why did God do it that way?
Upon closer scrutiny, it doesn't appear like that bad of a plan after all.
And we don't have to explain God's plan.
In fact, we don't as human beings have full access to the omniscience in which God's plan operates.
But all we have to do is refute the atheist argument by saying that your kind of...
Claim on the face of it that somehow God's plan is absurd.
How are people even going to find out about Jesus?
The simple truth of it is they have and they did.
And so God's plan turns out to be a pretty good plan.
And if God didn't make himself manifest, if there's a certain element of, you can call it, the hiddenness of God, it may be for the reason given by the writer Pascal.
He says God hides a little part of himself.
Why? Because that way only those who truly seek him We'll find him.
And those who don't want God, want nothing to do with God, will not have God forced upon them.
There'll be enough absence of God in the world for them to say, there's no God.
I don't have to believe in God.
I'm not going to believe in God.
I don't want to believe in God.
And by saying that you don't want to believe in God, God, in a sense, reluctantly, through free will, grants you your wish.
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