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Dec. 19, 2022 - Dinesh D'Souza
49:46
THE CENSORSHIP NETWORK Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep479
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Coming up, I'm going to reveal the true scope of the censorship network that includes government agencies, state governments, nonprofits, at home and abroad, all coordinating with tech platforms.
I'm going to discuss how Rona McDaniel and her cronies have used the Republican National Committee as a kind of personal piggy bank for extravagant spending, in some cases, on themselves.
And a prominent Muslim activist joins me.
We're going to talk about why Muslims should vote Republican.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Show.
♪♪♪ America needs this voice.
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.
The release of the so-called Twitter files has exposed a vast censorship network.
A censorship network that is bigger than we previously thought.
This isn't just the case of, let's say, the FBI or the CDC writing to Twitter and saying, hey guys, or meeting with Twitter and saying, hey guys, you have content moderation policies and we want to urge you to enforce them.
No, nothing like that. We're talking about multiple federal and state agencies.
We're talking about multiple parts of the government, the Department of Homeland Security, in some cases, even intelligence agencies whose focus is international, nevertheless getting involved in domestic content moderation here on the platforms like Twitter.
And of course, when I say Twitter, you can fully assume that the same or more Is going on with YouTube?
Is going on with Google?
Is going on with Facebook?
And perhaps even with Apple?
Perhaps even with Amazon?
We need to know.
Now, as this evidence is coming to light, and by the way, in the earlier episodes of the Twitter Files, it was really more the Biden campaign is driving it, the media is censoring the Hunter Biden story, but you were not talking about agencies in the government.
You weren't talking about the government actively involved in suppressing speech, but now you are.
The latest Twitter File, so-called Twitter File 6, is really all about the documenting the We're good to go.
It's now really clear that the FBI was censoring, was actively involved with Twitter to censor constitutionally protected speech and not misinformation, but true statements.
In some cases, the FBI admits this is true, but we still think that it should be suppressed.
So this is censoring not misinformation, not foreign-driven disinformation, but merely information.
So the FBI, I think we can now agree, is a serious threat to a functioning democracy, our functioning democracy.
Now, another thread, oddly enough, comes from the media, which has not been covering the Twitter files at all.
Now, Twitter's been in the news quite a bit lately, but Twitter's been in the news because of Elon Musk banning, or temporarily banning, or suspending, I guess, more accurately, some journalists who were publishing, who were basically putting out content that located Elon Musk's jet.
In other words, that was sort of doxing him, revealing his location, and in some ways, putting him and his family, as he saw it, in danger.
And the media was all over this.
So, yo, Elon Musk, you're a hypocrite.
You talk about free speech.
Why are you banning journalists?
And the way that they said journalists, the kind of solemnity of it, implied that journalists are superior people.
They should be held to a different standard.
I mean, these are the same people who didn't bat an eyelid.
Not only didn't bat an eyelid, were cheerleaders for the banning of hundreds of thousands, millions of Americans, and they were okay with it.
Now when one or two of their own friends are banned, suddenly the world is coming to an end.
Suddenly it's the apocalypse.
And so the hypocrisy is really on the side of the media.
Here is Dan Rather, who, by the way, is just always trying to be relevant and make himself important.
He goes, before I'm banned on this site, please find me.
And he tells you where you can find him elsewhere.
Here's me responding to Dan Rather.
The case for banning you is the same as the case for removing a mound of dung from the side of the road.
It's really not worth the trouble since no one's paying attention to the dung anyway.
So, I don't think that Dan Rather, anyone is even concerned, least of all Elon Musk.
mask.
Now... The issue at Twitter is it has now revealed this giant censorship web, a censorship network.
And here's what I said.
The mainstream media cannot risk covering the Twitter files.
Why? Because if they admit rampant collusion between government agencies and Twitter, they're going to have to inquire about Facebook.
YouTube, Apple, Google, the whole censorship regime would unravel.
Better to pretend that nothing is happening.
And I got an interesting response from one Elon Musk.
One word? Exactly.
Exactly. So this is sort of the Twitter boss weighing in on the true significance of these Twitter files.
Look, we're in a very dysfunctional political environment.
And... One in which the media is not covering the things that it should cover, that are news, that are manifestly important.
I mean, who could deny that evidence and detailed evidence, this is chapter and verse evidence, this is the release of internal communications with the names and the names of all the accounts that need to be banned, the names of the people involved at Twitter.
All of this is out there. It's undeniable.
No one's claiming that it's not genuine.
And yet... Nothing from the New York Times, nothing in the Washington Post, nothing on NBC. So as citizens, we've just got to realize that our media is, if not an officially state-controlled media, acting like one.
And we've just got to get the information directly.
We've got to see the implications.
I hope the appropriate lawsuits are being filed.
Why? Because when you have active government collusion with high-tech platforms, this is a serious violation of the First Amendment and the Supreme Court.
We'll need to, not just want to, look into this.
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The old Twitter we're discovering was really a crazy place.
You had all these leftists and activists.
And how do we know this? Well, we know this because there's now information that shows that the vast, vast majority of Democrats, the vast, vast majority of Twitter employees were activists and were donors to the left and to the Democratic Party.
Massive donations to the Democrats by overwhelming percentages, very tiny percentages.
Well, here, Republicans received from all of Twitter campaign contributions totaling $450.
Wow, what does that tell you?
The other thing about it is Twitter wasn't even being run like a normal company.
No attention to profit, no attention to what the revenue was, no attention to what the bottom line was.
This is almost like a systematic abuse of the Twitter investors.
And instead, these guys were into ideology, but not just ideology.
They were also into, you could almost call it wasteful fashion style.
I know this because Twitter is now announcing, under Elon Musk, a sale of a lot of its paraphernalia.
They're selling all this stuff off from the building and from the cafeteria.
And the stuff is just downright ridiculous.
I mean, giant sculptures of the so-called at sign, meaning at Dinesh D'Souza.
So the at sign is now elevated into some great Twitter icon.
And so all this stuff about, you know, fashion style furniture that they have, all this stuff where they have...
All kinds of sculptures with artificial plants in them.
There were selfie props for visitors to take photos.
There was a giant four-foot tall blue Twitter bird sculpture.
And Elon Musk is like, clean all this stuff out.
This is not really what makes a company successful.
So you have actually genuine entrepreneurship coming in here.
The other point is what Musk has done to Twitter needs to be done to every government agency.
This is kind of how you clean a place up.
And needless to say, the left is panicking.
They're striking out at Twitter.
In fact, Congressman Ted Lieu was like, I'm on the oversight committee.
And of course, the point is you're on the oversight committee.
You know what? Are you the guy who approved these FBI programs to systematically work with high-tech platforms and engage in unconstitutional censorship?
Did you do it? And then Ted Lieu starts kind of maneuvering to try to get out of it.
Adam Schiff has doubled down.
He got into a sort of skirmish with Elon Musk.
And he goes, Elon Musk is turning a blind eye to hatred and bigotry.
But when journalists report unfavorable news, unfavorable news, Elon Musk's actual location, they're banned without warning.
And then Elon Musk, instead of addressing this stupidity, basically goes, thankfully, you lose your chairmanship very soon.
Your brain is too small.
So... This little clash between Elon Musk and someone that can be affectionately called Schiff for brains ends, I think, in favor of Elon Musk.
But of course, Adam Schiff goes running to Jake Tapper on CNN and starts talking about it.
These platforms better engage in censorship.
And Democrats are ramping it up.
They have actually written a letter, a group of influential Democrats.
Well, They're not as influential anymore because they're no longer in the House leadership.
But nevertheless, they're writing Facebook, writing meta, basically saying, don't back down on your censorship.
Well, what does it mean? What this really means is that the Democrats are worried that the Berlin Wall is coming down.
The Berlin Wall of censorship has been in place now for a solid at least two years.
Debbie thinks some of this goes back further, closer to 2016.
But we know it's been placed since 2020.
And it is a censorship across platforms and that was going very well for the Democrats.
But now it's starting to totter.
And Democrats are panicking.
They're like, Facebook, you don't back down.
We may have lost Twitter, but let's try to hold on to what we have.
Now, I hope that Elon Musk realizes that we do need him at the helm at Twitter.
Elon Musk is apparently giving some thought, and this doesn't really surprise me that much.
Maybe there should be a different CEO of Twitter, and Elon Musk is even running one of his sort of famous polls.
Should I be the CEO? Should somebody else be the CEO? But the big It's not even so much who's the CEO. It's what is Twitter going to do.
Is Twitter going to actively promote free speech?
And I trust Elon Musk to do that.
And if he doesn't remain as the CEO, he needs to put someone, put a team in place that is committed to do that.
There are people who are saying to Elon Musk, and I think this is a very sly attempt to get him to do other things, is no, Elon Musk, you have a bigger mission with Mars.
Oh, Elon Musk, you have a bigger mission with Tesla.
I want to make the point that Elon Musk's mission at Twitter, the free speech battle that he's waging at Twitter, is no less important.
In many ways, it's more important.
But it's at least no less important than any of his other admirable ventures.
So he needs to recognize that this is not a fight that we want to lose, and we actually need him on the ramparts.
He's one of the few people that sort of gets it.
Here's Elon Musk. The woke mind virus is either defeated...
Or nothing else matters.
And there it is in a nutshell.
He understands this and this is really what this battle is all about.
The wokesters want to control us.
They don't want to debate us because they're not too sure how they'll come out in that.
They want to shut us down.
They want to silence us to deplatform us.
And we need Elon Musk, at least if not on the front lines, we need him on our side, fighting to restore free speech to this beleaguered country.
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The contest for who is going to head the Republican National Committee, the RNC, is now in full swing.
And it looks like Ronna McDaniel is, although in the lead, a lead that she established right at the beginning, losing momentum, which is a very good thing.
Why? Because Ronna McDaniel has been a disastrous failure.
Failure in 2018, failure in 2020, failure in 2022.
So, I mean, three strikes and you're out, Rona.
But nevertheless, early on, Rona was able to corral RNC members.
And let's remember, the RNC is a little bit of a cronyist operation, because if you're in with Rona, Rona can hand out favors your way, consultancies, contracts, we'll have the convention in your city, and we're going to learn in a moment the way in which the RNC wastes your money, wastes the money of donors.
And this alone, I think, is disqualifying for Rona McDaniel.
Well, last count I saw.
Well, at the beginning, it seemed like Rona McDaniel had this locked up.
More than 100 RNC members have announced their support for Rona McDaniel.
Well, that's apparently been slipping.
So right now, at least at the last count I saw, and I'm not doing the counting.
I'm just reporting on the counting that I see from credible sources that Rona has about 80 votes so far.
80 people who say they're going to vote for Rona.
Harmeet Dillon, who's running against Rona, has about 50.
And a couple of the other candidates, I think Mike Lindell is also running, have smaller numbers.
But Harmeet appears to have emerged as the main threat, the main challenge to Rona McDaniel.
And it looks to me like if RNC members want to stay along with the base and recognize what the ordinary person on the street, the ordinary Republican who is always asked to do this and asked to volunteer and asked to give money, if you want to consult those people, I think those people have had enough of Rona McDaniel.
Now, the latest article, which is in Red State, excellent reporting by Jennifer Van Laar.
Why? Because she does something that a lot of conservatives don't do, which is pure punditry.
But Jennifer Van Laar digs into, okay, well, let's look at what the RNC has been doing with its money.
Now, it turns out that the RNC was very frugal in the old days, and you've got to give some credit here, not just to George Bush, but to Karl Rove.
Apparently, Karl Rove ran the RNC kind of as a tight operation.
It's not our money. We're being given this money by donors.
So listen, you want to have a meeting?
Let's bring in food from Chick-fil-A. No extravagant holiday parties.
Holiday parties are going to be basic.
And no wasteful money spent on salons and junkets and expensive hotels and all kinds of stuff.
Well, it turns out, according to the Red State's reporting, when they look at the RNC spending...
This is just 21-22, just this past year.
More than $500,000 in private jet expenses.
Boom. What is the reason for RNC members or senior staff to go by private jet?
Are they too grand to be able to board a plane like the rest of us?
$64,000 at clothing retailers.
Wait, what? Do RNC members appear to meetings in costume?
Do they need clothing reimbursements?
$321,000 in floral arrangements.
What? Floral arrangements?
Why don't you just bring a bouquet from your own house or go to a local grocery store and buy it for $5?
That's if you even need it at all.
So this kind of nonsense.
And then Red State goes, wait, whoa, whoa.
Let's go back and look 2017 to 2022.
And they find not only expenses that are inappropriate.
Look, $5,000 is not a huge amount, but $5,000 at Lululemon, really?
Who's buying clothes at Lululemon using donor money from the RNC? And here's the interesting point.
They know it's sleazy, so what do they do?
They classify this as, quote, office expenses.
You've got to sort of look under the office expenses and realize, office expenses?
Lululemon? And then they have expenses for tickets at Madison Square Garden, money spent on limousines and chauffeurs, money spent on alcohol.
I mean, the RNC, for example, has a private box at the Raiders game.
For who? For donors? No.
For senior staff members of the RNC. They have conferences in Vegas.
They pay money to expensive resorts like the Salamander Resort and Spa in Virginia.
In other words, they've turned the RNC into a racket.
And Rona is basically right in the middle of it.
Now, here's a very interesting response from the RNC to this reporting.
This is coming from Rona McDaniel's spokesman, a woman named Emma Vaughan.
If critics want to misrepresent and push false narratives about the RNC spending, they should do the math before realizing it only adds up to 0.8% of the total amount the chairwoman raised.
This is really not a defense.
And it really shows you how out of touch these people are if they say, hey, listen, we raise millions of dollars.
So if we want to spend money at Lululemon, flower arrangements, alcohol for ourselves, private jets, that's not a large portion of the money that's being donated.
In a sense, what they're doing is they're admitting.
That they are ripping off the donors.
And I think there needs to be, if you have any influence with your local RNC committee person, you need to tell them, don't vote for Rona.
We need a change of leadership at the RNC. Will the absence of a red wave during the midterms lead to a more emboldened Biden, more wasteful government spending, higher taxes?
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This fall, the documentary filmmaker Ken Burns released his new film on the Holocaust.
And the film which is called The US and the Holocaust.
So right there you see this isn't just a film about the Holocaust, but the Holocaust as viewed from and as it had an impact on the United States.
Now, Ken Burns is a very talented filmmaker.
He's actually been at this now for several decades.
Michael Moore and I are probably the most prominent of the political filmmakers.
Now, Ken Burns' films do have a political undertow.
In fact, that's what I'm going to talk about.
But he's made 35 documentaries.
My favorite is his documentary series on the Civil War, which, by the way, goes back to 1990.
Well worth watching even today.
I'm less enthusiastic about the US and the Holocaust for a couple of reasons.
Mainly that although Ken Burns tells you a lot about the Holocaust, he gives you a lot of useful information, he deepens your understanding, but nevertheless, there is a political agenda.
And what's the political agenda?
Basically, Ken Burns is trying to show, well, why does that matter to us today?
And his answer is the conventional liberal or progressive answer.
It matters to us today because we are facing some of the same kinds of issues that were faced in the 1930s and 40s.
And what are those? Immigration.
Ken Burns is going to try to argue that just as the US restricted Jewish immigration to the United States even during the course of World War II, and Ken Burns goes, that goes back to anti-immigration sentiments from the 1920s. And so his view is that anti-immigration is part of what led to the full horror of the Holocaust. And of course, we're dealing with right-wingers today who have,
guess what, the same anti-immigrant principle. Number two, Ken Burns goes on to argue that we have these America First policies.
He points to the march in Charlottesville.
Of course, he invokes January 6th.
And he says we're facing the same kind of attacks on democracy that we saw in the fascist and in the Nazi era.
Now, all of this strikes me as very fast and loose and slippery and unconvincing.
In fact, the one person who made the decision to block Jews from coming to the United States was none other than President Roosevelt.
A Democrat, in fact, the canonical progressive.
So guess what? Ken Burns goes, well, it wasn't really his fault.
He sort of wanted to do more for the Jews, but he was sort of restricted in what he could do.
Excuse me? Restricted in what he could do?
Here you're talking about a president who's elected for four terms.
You're talking about a president who had Huge majorities, both in the House and in the Senate.
You're talking about a president who many times did exactly what he wanted, regardless of public opinion, regardless of congressional support.
And let's remember, the president has almost full control over foreign policy.
FDR doesn't need congressional authorization to make decisions like, OK, I'm going to allow ships containing Jews to be harbored at the United States.
He could easily have done that.
He chose not to do that.
And basically, Ken Burns gives him a pass.
Whoa. Now, Ken Burns tries to put the blame on things like immigration.
Well, here there's a big difference.
I mean, the Jews were political refugees fleeing for their lives due to religious and political affiliation.
I mean, that's why they were being targeted.
And by the way, we have refugee policies today that allow people to be religious and political refugees, but that is not what immigration, the immigration debate is about at all.
The immigrants who want to come here are economic immigrants.
They're immigrants from Mexico, from Central and South America, and some places from other countries.
And they are not in serious danger of their lives.
Nobody has gas chambers waiting for them.
They're not facing a holocaust.
Yeah, they want to come to a country where life is better, but...
That's a whole different matter.
Not to mention the fact that the United States has a very generous legal immigration policy, and you simply have to get in line.
And what the illegals are doing is trying to cut the line.
So what's the relevance of all this?
How does this really relate to what happened in the 1930s?
And the answer is, it doesn't.
It doesn't relate. And so, this is really the problem with Ken Burns' documentary.
I mean, I think Ken Burns knows that he's playing to a progressive audience.
This is the kind of NPR, PBS audience.
And so, what he does, which I think is a historical, diminishes his historical credibility, and also is an ideological spin on history.
He's always looking for, how can I mine this story?
Even the story about baseball Ended up becoming a story about integration and blacks being left out of the so-called Negro Leagues.
And so with Ken Burns, it's always like, how do I butter up the left-wing audience that I'm counting on to proclaim me to be this great filmmaker?
So I think at the end, Ken Burns, although he disclaims a kind of overt politics, he's like, I'm not Michael Moore.
I'm not Dinesh D'Souza.
I'm not trying to sort of score political points.
The simple truth of it is that he is.
He is trying to make political points.
And in some ways, he's doing it disingenuously.
I mean, Michael Moore is at least, listen, I'm a leftist.
I'm going to make films that promote a leftist agenda.
I, of Openly admit I'm a conservative.
I see the world through a conservative lens.
The problem with Ken Burns is that he's a progressive, but he pretends he's not.
These are tough times indeed.
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It's got a lot of people worried about the future.
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Guys, I'm really delighted to welcome a new guest to my podcast.
Her name is Shukri.
She goes by Shu Abdiraman.
She's a Minnesota congressional candidate.
In fact, her Twitter account is at Shu4Congress.
She's a refugee from Somalia.
In fact, she survived the socialist dictatorship there.
She's immigrated to America and served 10 years in the U.S. Army as a combat guard.
I'm a veteran. Shu, I've been following you on social media.
I mean, I love your outspokenness.
And I'm particularly intrigued by a theme that you stress, which is Muslims should recognize that their values and their interests incline them to voting Republican.
Stop voting for the Democratic Party.
So I want to get into that.
But before I do, I want people to hear a little bit about your story.
So can you share with people your American story?
And then let's get into why Muslims should vote for the GOP. Well, yeah.
Hi, Danish, and hi to the audience.
I fled Somalia as a result of civil war.
I left when I was about...
When I was eight or nine years old, I came as a result of a collapsed state due to a socialist dictatorship.
And we went into a refugee camp in the slums of Kenya for about three, four years, waiting for the immigration process to take place.
At that time, our immigration system was working, so we had to go through all the background checks, medical and criminal, all of that.
In 1994, we were able to arrive in Virginia, state of Virginia, and be granted a refugee resettlement.
Now, Shukri, you're in America, you're in this new country, and you do something that actually a lot of first-generation immigrants would never consider, which is to say you joined the U.S. military.
So I want you to talk about what it is about you that made you feel, I'm grateful to this country, I belong to this country, I owe a debt to this country, I'm going to serve in the military.
Well, I started learning about while we were fleeing from Somalia, we learned the U.S. coming into Somalia, the U.S. troops.
And then shortly after that, as we were exiting the borders of Somalia and going into Kenya, We learned that the Black Hawk Down took place.
And for me, I couldn't understand, when I came here to the States, I couldn't understand how soldiers, Americans, went to my country And gave up their own lives to save or, you know, bring some sort of stability to my own country.
And here I was walking, alive, breathing in their own original, you know, home country at the time.
I felt some sort of guilt and I felt some sort of appreciation.
So when I graduated high school, I actually enrolled in college and it didn't sit well with me.
So I enlisted right away after my first semester of college because I felt like I needed to pay them back and kind of march on for those soldiers that were no longer with us.
And I felt like I needed to march for them.
But at the same time, I felt a depth of gratitude To America opening their own doors for us and taking us in and giving us a safe haven and plenty of sweets because we didn't have desserts in the refugee camp.
So for me, it was like I had plenty of sweets and I'm in a safe country and people died for me to come here to this safe haven.
Shukri, one of the people that you rightly challenge and criticize, Ilhan Omar, and I'd like you to speculate for a moment about how your paths diverged, because arguably both of you came out of the same environment.
I mean, I realize there's some shady business around her immigration story, but let's leave that to the side.
What makes an Ilhan Omar go her way as opposed to your way?
I really believe that when she first came onto the scene as a political figure, we were hoping that she still embodied some of the values culturally,
religiously, and then some things switched on her that we didn't recognize when she got into And she, all of a sudden, traded, you know, the values that we so embody in our community.
And she developed, you know, left-leaning, you know, far away from the religious beliefs, especially supporting abortion, you know, LGBTQ ideology.
And we really distance ourselves from her.
As far as the difference between her and I is that I remain true to my own religious beliefs.
That's what drives me in my conservative values.
That's where they come from, not necessarily the cultural.
It's the belief of being is Muslim.
Let's take a pause, Shukri.
When we come back, let's explore further the choice for Muslim Americans about whether to vote for the Democrats or whether to vote for the Republicans.
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Feel the difference. I'm back with my guest, Shukri Shoo Abdiraman.
You can actually look up her website, shooforcongress.com.
And we're talking about the Somalian refugee community.
We're talking about Islamic values and the political parties.
You know, Shu, for many years, and this was true particularly in the aftermath of 9-11, many Americans and commentators began to divide the Muslim community into two camps.
sort of radical Muslims on the one hand, and you could say secular Muslims on the other.
So secular Muslims would be, for example, Muslims who are not that interested in Islam.
Let's say they left after the Khomeini regime came to Iran.
These are people who almost define themselves against Islam.
And so you have these two camps, the radicals and you have the secular Muslims.
And one of the points I have made in my earlier writings is look, there's a whole third camp, which is probably the largest camp, and that is traditional Muslims.
Muslims who, by and large, are found all over the world, from Indonesia to Jordan to Somalia.
These are traditional Muslims.
So can you say a word about, first of all, am I right that there is this category of traditional Muslims?
And talk a little bit about what those traditional Muslims believe.
You're absolutely right in the way you defined and understood what's going on, the divide and the different categories of, you know, within the Islamic communities.
I'm going to speak to the divide first.
When 9-11 happened, prior to that, we were the largest naturally constituent conservatives for the Republicans.
And as you remember, we came out strongly for George Bush.
And in fact, we actually made a difference in Florida for his election.
And then 9-11 happened, the misfortune of 9-11 happened, and then all of a sudden was that the entire Muslims were painted as, you know, radicals, extremists.
And it was hard for me because I was serving, and I actually had to get out because some of my, you know, teammates or members within the military started, you know, developing Different reasoning, different thinking.
And it became very hard emotionally for me to be in that environment when my heart was good and I was a different Muslim.
So the divide happened and then the left capitalized on that narrative.
And then within the Republican Party, the radical voices started growing.
Which pushed us further.
And at some point we became political refugees when the Democrats Policies became so unbearable and threatening to our way of life and our religious beliefs.
Many of us are actually political refugees.
So we have that divide, and some of them got used to the liberal welcoming, the fake welcoming.
They got used to it.
And right now, we're at a point where the traditional Muslims are rising up.
And, you know, defending their traditional beliefs And trying to get away from the ideological and indoctrination of the left and the ungodliness of the left.
So you have that traditional Muslims that are rising up right now trying to protect their freedom of religion, protect their children from sexualization, protect their way of life.
So that's what you're seeing right now.
This is very interesting and I think very important, Shu, what you're saying, because I remember just recently seeing a scene, this was out of Dearborn, Michigan, where a lot of Muslim parents showed up, not just moms, but also dads, and they were basically speaking out about the way in which their children's innocence was being threatened,
was being violated, and not violated by accident, violated as part of a systematic ideological push that So if you were to, just in summary, if you were giving a little political speech and someone gave me, give me a couple of reasons or three reasons why Muslims today should vote Republican, what would they be? Well, absolutely.
I will say, first of all, we need to forgive each other.
Whatever happened in the past, we need to forgive each other.
And that's one thing we did in Minnesota.
We actually bridged the gap and brought the GOP party and the Somali community together, and we had a healing period.
Where we hashed out everything and came together with a common goal and a common, you know, future together and we forgave each other.
We talked it out. We had round tables at the round tables.
And I will say that has to happen first.
Whatever community, whatever state that is trying to reunite together, we need to be honest and have a conversation with each other as a party and as voters.
So that's one thing.
The other thing is that Muslims need to realize that at this critical point in our country's state of policies and the ideological beliefs that are being pushed against us, You need to really take God to the ballot box.
Every election season, you need to think about your vote and be willing to be accountable when you face Judgment Day and realize that you're going to be held accountable for giving that vote, giving that candidate who does not support godly values because we are supposed to be witnesses for God here and we are supposed to be defending His Word and living by His Word.
So take God to the ballot box.
Weigh yourself before, you know, God weighs you on Judgment Day and protect those values and defend those values.
So if you're voting for a Democrat, first of all, I believe wholeheartedly that you cannot be Muslim.
And vote Democrat in this day, in this country, with all that that's going on.
So you need to vote with the candidate, with the party that aligns most likely with the godly values.
Shukri, what you're saying is very interesting and very important.
Thank you so much for coming on the podcast to share it.
Thank you so much, Danish.
Thank you, everyone. Drawing on my book, What's So Great About Christianity, I am outlining the transforming effect that Christianity had on the world.
And I've been talking about a big new idea introduced by Christianity, which I call the affirmation of ordinary life.
Another way to put it is respect to ordinary citizens, ordinary persons.
And all of this new sensibility creates new political institutions in the West that you don't see either in the rest of the world and you don't see it in ancient Greece and Rome before Christianity.
Let's consider our modern concept of the rule of law.
The rule of law.
Now, here is Harold Berman writing in his book called Law and Revolution.
He goes, Now, this is actually true.
The liturgical and canonical rules of Christianity are secularized, you could say, into modern law.
But I want to make the point at a broader and maybe even a deeper level.
In Plato, we get a startling idea, startling to those of us who are now a product of Christianity.
Plato says that the best form of law is, well, no law at all.
He says the best form of law is discretion.
This may seem a little surprising, but if you think about it, Plato has a point.
What is he saying? Well, imagine if you're a parent and you've got three kids or four kids.
Do you establish a law, a rule, and just apply it blindly to the four of them?
No. You take into account their individual circumstances.
You take into account their ages.
You take into account their levels of maturity.
You take into account how they've behaved before.
And in a sense, you have discretionary law.
Yes, Jack, you're allowed to come home late because you always act responsibly.
And when you say you'll be home at 10, you're home at 10.
So the point being, Plato says that the best laws are not just general rules, but laws tailored to individuals and tailored to particular circumstances.
Now you might ask yourself, why don't we do that in the West now?
Let's take, for example, speeding.
On the highway, we don't ask the cop to just, you know, hide and then just look and see who's driving recklessly, make a discretionary judgment, go pull that person over.
I mean, obviously, there are people who can drive really fast, and yet they're very safe.
And there are other people who are, you know, unsafe at 40.
So why don't you just let the cop decide who's driving safely and who's not?
Well, the answer is... We don't trust the cop.
And put it somewhat differently, Christianity assumes that human beings are fallible.
They are prone to bias, prejudice, even corruption.
The cop might let his friends get off and then go after people he doesn't like.
So the bottom line of it is that the Christian respectful law arises out of a belief that power can be corrupting and power should be distrusted.
So, the notion that great power should be given to fallible human beings is viewed now with suspicion after the introduction of Christianity.
And if you look at the political institutions of the West are moving now beyond simply rule of law to the broader systems of constitutional government.
Think about things like separation of powers, checks and balances.
All of this is a way to hedge the application of power to apply the principle that we are trying to create a government not for angels, as Madison said, but for fallible human beings.
Another very powerful idea introduced in the West, related to this, is the notion of servant leadership.
Now, what is servant leadership?
Well, you hear this phrase in church a lot, servant leaders, but let's think of the idea that politicians are there to serve the people.
In other words, a politician isn't there to line his own pockets, to make a big show of things, to establish his own grandeur.
No, he's there to make life better for his or her constituents.
Similarly, entrepreneurs are there to do what?
Well, to innovate, to come up with new products, essentially to serve their consumers, their customers.
So, you see this notion of service.
Now, no one is saying that the service is divorced.
From self-interest.
In other words, an entrepreneur who's making products does want to benefit himself.
He does want to benefit his family.
He does want to make a profit.
But how does he make a profit?
He makes a profit by spending his day thinking about, listen, I'm delivering this product, but how can I deliver it faster?
How can I make the product even better?
How can I offer incentives to people to want to sign up for my product?
So, right here you have this Christian idea of service.
And we see it, you know, right in the Bible.
Here's Mark 10, 43, quoting Jesus Christ.
Whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant, for the Son of Man did not come to...
And right there, you see this foundational Christian principle of servant leadership.
Think of Jesus and the kind of leader he was.
He didn't give orders.
He didn't demand that people do this or people do that.
By and large, it's a sacrificial leadership.
In which Jesus goes, yeah, I'll take the sins of the world.
I will undergo the purgation and the suffering and the passion and the crucifixion on your behalf.
So these are just ways in which these Christian ideas, which were once strange and alien, that's how the Romans viewed it.
Who are these people? What is this ridiculous stuff that they're talking about?
But now it is built into and part of the fabric of Western civilization.
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