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Feb. 4, 2015 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:17:54
Joe Rogan Experience #608 - Ali Rizvi
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ali rizvi
01:27:10
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joe rogan
48:42
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Speaker Time Text
joe rogan
The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day Alrighty, Ali Rizvi, you're looking at something, what's going on?
Something wrong with the sound?
Oh, no, this is one Too loud?
unidentified
Too loud?
joe rogan
Yeah, I can't turn it down to me Yeah, we're very obnoxious here We like to be loud Is this it right here?
unidentified
Tell me Check, check, check, check, check Oh, there you go, that's good There we go.
joe rogan
Is that fine?
Yeah.
I know in your country it's frozen solid and you escaped, came down here, did a little drinking last night?
ali rizvi
Um, maybe.
joe rogan
Maybe.
ali rizvi
Oh, no, no, yeah.
joe rogan
Yes, definitely.
ali rizvi
So I've been drinking lots of water, and that's why I was telling you that, you know, these long podcasts.
I was just wondering if I could take a pee break.
joe rogan
You could absolutely take a pee break.
Do not be intimidated by the long form.
We're just trying to have a conversation here.
unidentified
No, no, I'm fine.
joe rogan
I'm good.
You're working on your new book, and your new book is entitled The Atheist Muslim.
That's a working title.
Is that like jumbo shrimp or military intelligence?
Is that one of those oxymorons?
ali rizvi
It was partly a tongue-in-cheek thing, and then there's a serious element to it, too.
The tongue-in-cheek thing is I have a friend who calls herself a feminist Muslim.
I'm not going to name her right now.
So I always have fun conversations with her.
She's sort of nominally religious.
And I was like, how can you be a feminist Muslim?
Isn't that like being a meat-eating vegetarian?
It's a contradiction.
And she's like, well, no, there's parts of it that I like, parts of it I don't like.
So I just...
I mean, she's essentially saying that she cherry-picks.
joe rogan
Right.
ali rizvi
So I figured...
And then, you know, there's other things, like there's LGBT Muslims in Toronto.
There's a big community.
unidentified
Really?
ali rizvi
They're great people.
joe rogan
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Transgender Muslims.
ali rizvi
Transgender Muslims, gay and lesbian Muslims.
joe rogan
That's a small crowd.
It's hard to find your peers.
ali rizvi
Yeah, it's actually quite sizable.
joe rogan
Really?
ali rizvi
Yeah.
joe rogan
Like, wait a minute, 10 people?
How many transgender Muslims are there?
ali rizvi
Oh, I don't know a number.
joe rogan
But they practice.
ali rizvi
Yeah, they practice.
They're religious.
They do Friday prayers and things like that.
They have a lot of events that go on.
joe rogan
But clearly, in the Muslim religion, like homosexuality, there's a lot of areas of that that are looked down upon.
ali rizvi
Right.
joe rogan
So how does one justify that or rationalize that in their head?
ali rizvi
I think what's happening is the Muslim community that's in North America.
In Canada, the United States, they're a little bit more progressive.
They're sort of going through what all of the other religious groups went through when they came here.
The religion part is really more of an identity issue.
They have broad beliefs, like they'll believe in God, they'll stick to some traditions, but a large part of it, they're integrating pretty well.
It's very different in Europe, it seems.
joe rogan
Sort of like American Jews perhaps.
Like a lot of American Jews are not really religious at all.
Like I have a lot of friends that will call themselves Jew.
Like my friend Ari Shaffir.
Clearly an atheist.
But yet, if you talk to him, he'll tell you he's a Jew.
ali rizvi
Yeah, and that was kind of the idea, the title of the book.
It's a jab at the cherry-picking thing.
I was thinking, if you can cherry-pick, you can be a feminist Muslim, an LGBT Muslim.
I can cherry-pick all the way to non-belief.
I'll keep the things I like.
I love the Ramadan feasts.
I grew up with that.
It's just very communal.
Families get together.
It's great.
The Eid holidays are great.
Tax-exempt status.
joe rogan
Why not keep that?
You only have tax-exempt status if you operate a religion, though, right?
ali rizvi
You do, yeah.
I'm kidding about that.
joe rogan
You're going to have to operate your own church.
ali rizvi
Yeah.
I probably won't be doing that anytime soon.
joe rogan
You can do it if you want to.
My friend Alex Gray does that.
Our friend Alex, the painter?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
He's this amazing psychedelic artist, and he has this organization called the Chapel of the Sacred Mirrors.
And what he essentially does, is done, rather, is create his own religion.
And he has tax-exempt status, although his...
I think...
The state recognizes it, but the town doesn't want to recognize it.
They want local taxes.
It's very interesting.
It's because people are cool with religions as long as they're really old.
As soon as you know who made the religion, even Mormonism gets looked down upon because Joseph Smith, although he lived in the 1800s, there's a historical record of Joseph Smith that's pretty easy to track.
ali rizvi
Yeah.
joe rogan
Whereas, you know, Scientology is the most made fun of, and that is by a science fiction writer in the 1950s.
It's the easiest to track.
It's like, it's right there.
ali rizvi
Yeah.
joe rogan
Anything newer than that, you're like, come on, get the fuck out of here.
unidentified
Like, you can't...
ali rizvi
I know, you wouldn't believe it.
Even those older religions, if you brought them back, if they started recently, some of the...
It's just, you know, when religious people make fun of Scientology and modernism, it's always entertaining.
joe rogan
It's hilarious.
ali rizvi
You know, you're talking about, like, well, yeah, angels are real, and...
Virgin births really happen, but this fucking Mormon shit.
It's kind of funny when you look at it.
I saw this comic where there were these two religious groups fighting.
They were running against each other with swords.
And one of them was screaming, 2 plus 2 equals 5. The other one was saying, 2 plus 2 equals 3. And they were about to fight about it.
And that's really what it's like sometimes when you look at it.
joe rogan
Well, did you see the anger from the people that were upset at Neil deGrasse Tyson for tweeting about Isaac Newton who was born on December 25th?
Was it Darwin or Newton that was born on December 25th?
ali rizvi
It was Newton.
joe rogan
Was it Newton?
Yeah.
And he was tweeting about this great man being born on this great day.
And so many fucking religious people got really angry at him, although he said nothing negative whatsoever about religion.
ali rizvi
Yeah.
joe rogan
But they were like, you know, you're shitting on our holiday.
To me sort of highlights what religion is for a lot of people.
It's a group that you belong to.
It's a team.
Like, I'm a Patriots fan.
You know, don't fuck with our team.
I mean, it really does become something like that.
And when you're talking about American Jews or Muslims maybe perhaps that don't really follow all of what's in the Quran, they just decide to cherry pick.
It's kind of a similar thing you're dealing with.
ali rizvi
It is a similar thing.
It's probably a good thing.
I mean that's how people sort of progress forwards, right?
I mean, we're talking about Jews and the Old Testament is, you know, we're talking about killing gay people.
Like Leviticus 20.13 says it.
It says, you know, if there's two men and you find them, you know, together in the way that a man should be with a woman, then they will be put to death.
That's exactly what it says.
But most Jews don't really take that seriously.
They've moved beyond it.
Even, you know, Christians, you know, one of the things I look at is Catholics.
The Pope says you should not use birth control or abortion is a bad thing.
The majority of Catholics are pro-choice.
They have premarital sex.
They're perfectly fine with all these things.
joe rogan
Do you think the majority are pro-choice?
ali rizvi
Over here in the US, they are.
joe rogan
Is there a statistic that proves that?
ali rizvi
Yeah, there is.
I don't know the exact number, but the majority of Catholics in the United States are actually pro-choice.
joe rogan
That's interesting, because I would have not thought that was true.
I would have thought that it would probably be, at the very least, 50-50, but at the very, more likely, skewing towards pro-life.
ali rizvi
No, it's definitely, I mean, they are pro-choice.
Joe Biden's Catholic, he's a practicing Catholic, and he's also pro-choice.
joe rogan
He's also an idiot, though.
You know, when we were comics back in the early days.
ali rizvi
He's a funny idiot, though.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, people forget about this, about Joe Biden, but, you know, not to...
Everybody makes mistakes, and I'm sure it probably wasn't his fault, but in the 1980s, he was running for president, and he plagiarized a huge chunk of John F. Kennedy's speeches.
ali rizvi
Yeah, he did.
joe rogan
And we used to do Joe Biden night at Stitches, and Joe Biden night would be like, we would all go up and try to remember each other's acts.
Like, I would try to do my friend's act, and he would try to do my act.
We'd steal each other's jokes.
It was like an inside thing that we would do on open mic night.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
That this guy...
I forget who came up with the idea, but he was such a known plagiarist that we would call it Joe Biden night.
ali rizvi
Yeah, I think that was one of the major things that killed his campaign, if not the only thing.
joe rogan
Yeah, but now he's the vice president, and it's sort of never brought up.
ali rizvi
Yeah, I think he's done...
There's a lot of stuff he's done that I think kind of redeemed him.
joe rogan
Right, but how did that not come up when he was debating Sarah Palin?
ali rizvi
It did.
It didn't come up during the debate, but during the campaign, there were people who tried to bring it up.
But I think that it had been so long, and he had done so much more since then, like with foreign policy, with the violence against women legislation and so on, that people were willing to...
Let him get past it.
He has a really strong personal story too that he emphasized.
So I think he was able to move past that.
joe rogan
It's interesting because a lot of times things like that are real career killers.
And it was as far as like him being the actual president president.
Like when people talk about Hillary running for president, no one's talking about Joe Biden running for president.
Have you noticed that?
Like no one.
No one.
ali rizvi
Is he running for president?
No, he's not.
He's not, right?
joe rogan
But he's the vice president for eight fucking years and no one hates him.
You know, it's not like he's Dan Quayle, where everybody's like, get that fucking moron out of office.
ali rizvi
He never did, like, even in the other campaigns, whenever he's run, he never really did too well.
I mean, he was running against Obama, too, back in the way, and then Obama chose him as vice president.
I think he's always in, like, the single digits.
joe rogan
Right, but I mean, he is the vice president.
You would think that that would be, like, a prime candidate to keep the Democrats in a position of power.
ali rizvi
Yeah.
joe rogan
But no, they're looking towards a woman instead.
They're like, dude, you're a liability.
ali rizvi
It was like Dick Cheney, right?
unidentified
He was also vice president, but there's no fucking way he was going to...
joe rogan
Well, he's probably the most hated vice president ever.
Dick Cheney, like the most despised.
Like, there's some people that supported him for sure, but the people that hated him really fucking hated him.
ali rizvi
Yeah, they did.
joe rogan
It was just such a money trail.
You know, pointing him directly to Halliburton and all the, you know, the weapons of mass destruction fiasco and all that shit.
ali rizvi
I just think, like, it just seems really dodgy to me.
Like, I always feel like there's something under the surface that's just really explosive and evil.
Like, he comes across that way.
joe rogan
Yeah, he definitely doesn't come across warm and compassionate and interesting.
Yeah, it's hard to understand a guy like that.
Especially a guy that's gone through some serious health issues and it doesn't seem to have softened him at all.
ali rizvi
Like what, four heart attacks?
Something?
joe rogan
Well, he's got a new heart.
He had a heart transplant, which is insane.
And before the heart transplant, he had some sort of a device that eliminated his pulse.
He didn't have a pulse.
There was some artificial method of pumping blood through his body, and if you checked his pulse, it didn't exist, which is probably in the Bible somewhere.
You know, a guy who causes the death of millions.
I mean, he's directly connected to the death of at least a million people, and he doesn't have a pulse.
ali rizvi
Yeah, that's some dark shit.
Yeah, that's a hell of a way to articulate it.
joe rogan
If it's accurate, it's accurate.
I don't know how we got on this, but what we're talking about is people that are in groups.
I mean, there's good things involved in being in a group because it gives you some support and it gives you...
Some feeling of camaraderie and that you belong to a social structure.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
But the real issue, though, is groups against other groups.
You know, diametrically opposed groups.
Like right now, being a Muslim is a very unpopular thing in a lot of parts of the world.
ali rizvi
Yeah.
joe rogan
This Charlie Hebdo thing, this most recent ISIS video where they burn the Jordanian pilot alive.
ali rizvi
Yeah, that was just kind of shaking over hours with...
joe rogan
I didn't watch it.
ali rizvi
I didn't watch it either.
joe rogan
I've seen it all at this point.
I know what it looks like.
I've seen the beheadings and the assassinations and it's just like, okay, I get it.
There's evil people.
I get it.
But it's just like this.
It's almost like if you were a conspiratorially minded person, if you're the type of person that believes black helicopters are circling in your house every day, taking scans of your phone and Yeah, I am.
You would say, okay, it's almost like we're creating this monster that's so unbelievably horrific and so impossible to feel any sympathy towards.
That's like you want them all wiped off the face of the planet.
It's almost like they have become...
They're so evil and their acts are so horrendous that it's the perfect instigating The perfect method of instigation.
If you were an evil dictator or the evil head of some sort of government and you had this desire to go to war with another country, what you would create would be ISIS. You would say, all right, we need some bullshit CIA propped up organization.
It's not real.
And we need them to be just so heinous, so beyond belief, that everyone agrees we should go over there and fuck them up.
ali rizvi
Yeah, I totally see the logic of that.
Obviously, I don't think that's the case.
joe rogan
I don't think that's the case either.
But if it was going to be the case, ISIS is the perfect candidate.
ali rizvi
Yeah, it's a prototype.
That's exactly what you'd want.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's like right out of Hollywood casting, right?
ali rizvi
Yeah, yeah.
And you know what's...
This whole idea that they're a fringe and that they don't have a lot of support.
It is one thing that, yes, they don't represent all Muslims.
They don't even represent the majority of Muslims and everything.
Unfortunately, I think they have a lot more support than we'd like to believe.
Everybody who comes out and says that they're just a friend, just a group of guys who are doing this stuff and nobody really follows them, that's not true.
There's a lot of support.
You see it online.
I've talked to people online in Pakistan who are totally in support of ISIS. It's bizarre.
They won't go out and commit those acts themselves, but they'll definitely cheer it on.
joe rogan
Well, I follow some people online that are in ISIS. I follow their Twitter accounts.
Yeah.
You know, I don't follow them so they know I'm following them.
I follow them so I bookmark their Twitter page and I go back to it.
ali rizvi
Yeah.
joe rogan
I'm sneaky like that.
But...
I mean, I hate to say this, but they do occasionally have good points.
And one of the good points was after they beheaded one of these guys, I forget which guy, I think it was a journalist that got beheaded over there.
It was one of the American guys they beheaded.
This guy wrote...
One guy loses a body part and everyone goes crazy, but thousands of people lose their entire lives and no one blinks an eye.
I think the way he said it is thousands of people's bodies are blown to bits and no one blinks an eye.
ali rizvi
Yeah, that's a tough thing to argue against.
Whenever this kind of thing happens, you always have the Noam Chomsky kind of I don't think it's as simple as that.
I mean, I'm not saying that everything that the US is doing is great and I'm defending all aspects of American foreign policy.
But if you're going to have that balance, you got to sort of level the competition.
So, you know, the U.S. has this, you know, the biggest, strongest military in the world, got loads of nuclear weapons and so on.
If ISIS had all of that, how bad would they be and what would they do?
That's when you really sort of get an idea of the intentions.
And intentions matter.
joe rogan
Right.
ali rizvi
So, you know, they do what they can and they go all out.
And they, I think that...
You know, like the Yazidis that they killed, right?
Or the Christians that they're killing in Mosul or the poor people, the women and the gay people, they're throwing off buildings and, you know, crucifying and stoning to death.
These are not people who are oil hungry.
They're not people who have been sort of invading their lands or anything like that.
These people have nothing to do with it.
They just have some of their crimes.
They're just Shia.
They have a different belief in a different strain of Islam or they're apostates.
You know, they left Islam.
They changed their mind.
Or they're, you know, they're a Christian, they're non-Muslims, they're infidels who are not going to subscribe to the, you know, the ISIS philosophy.
They're not going to pay that tax, the jizya that they want them to pay.
So, like, you know, I think that the foreign policy thing is an excuse, specifically for people like ISIS. It is, like, it helps them recruit people, for sure.
It doesn't hurt, but I don't think that that's the primary motive.
joe rogan
What do you think the primary motive is?
ali rizvi
I think there's a lot of primary motives.
I think, you know, like the U.S. foreign policy is one thing, too.
But this is actually part of the religious belief.
And you've had Sam Harris here, you know, he's talked about this as well, like beliefs and behavior.
And most of the time, you know, when they're You know, when you have an entire world and you're seeing these guys and they're, you know, accurately quoting the Quran, I mean, there's a couple of verses in the Quran that say, behead disbelievers, you know, 812, you know, you can Google that, like Surah 8, verse 12 and 13. 47-4 is another one that says, you know, behead disbelievers.
So they actually quote this stuff and they say Allahu Akbar when they do it and they call themselves the Islamic State.
And they don't just target, you know, People who are involved in U.S. foreign policy or anything like that.
They actually target poor people, Yazidis, minority groups, Shias, gay people who are in Iraq and Syria.
That's what they do.
So it's a lot more complicated.
I think it is part of their religious belief.
And one thing you're going to see when you go to their Twitter accounts is that they genuinely believe what they're doing is right.
They think it's okay.
joe rogan
When you're supported by the religion that you've sworn allegiance to and sworn your life to, when you're supported by the text, it really...
I mean, that's sometimes all you need to justify horrendous, horrible acts.
You just need to know that you're doing it in the name of God.
ali rizvi
Well, the text is the religion, in this case.
Like, the one thing that's universal...
You know, people say Muslims are not a monolith, and they're not.
I mean, there's 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, so they're obviously not all the same.
The ones in Indonesia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, they're all very different from each other.
But the one thing they all have in common is the Quran and belief in the Prophet Muhammad.
So the Quran, again, you know, has different interpretations, but it's supposed to be an immutable text.
And unlike a lot of Christians and Jews who don't believe that they're, like, You know, like with Christianity, if you say that the Bible is a literal word of God, you're part of, I think, just 30% of the US population.
I think it is 30% that is considered fundamentalists, where they believe that it's a literal word of God.
Islam among Muslims, among the vast majority of Muslims, that is a fundamental requirement to believe that it is the literal word of God, like the idea of scriptural inerrancy, that anything in the Quran, it can't be wrong.
So you'll have the more progressive people who try to justify it, they'll never say, well, you know, that verse in the Quran, I don't believe in it, I don't think it's right.
They'll try to justify it by saying, at that time it was okay, Or it's being mistranslated, or the word kill actually means embrace, you know, whatever it is.
They look at the Arabic roots, you know, just find other justifications for it.
But unfortunately, to the rest of us who can read it now, you can Google it in all kinds of different translations and interpretations and, you know, commentaries.
You just find it online, and when you see the words, the words are what they are.
joe rogan
I want to be real clear here that I'm not justifying what they're doing or not trying to exonerate them from the horrific nature of what their crimes are, but what I was going to get to was that, is that dissimilar?
This belief that you can kill people because of the Quran, because they're not following the word of the Quran.
Is that dissimilar than this belief that you can launch drones into these non-specific areas where, you know, this idea of surgical targets is pretty preposterous at this point.
When you look at the number of people, the overwhelming number of people that are innocent, that are killed by drones, Versus the number of people that are guilty.
If you look at that and you look at this being sanctioned by the United States government, the Constitution, our ideas about law and justice and war, Those are also just things that are written down on paper.
I mean, they might be less ideologically based and more state-based or more based on the idea of protecting our nation as opposed to doing the will of God.
But it is one nation under God, ultimately.
This is what we say when we pledge allegiance now since the 1950s, since they were worried about the big communist scare.
It used to be one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all, right?
Now it's one nation under God.
That was all because of communism.
Most folks don't even realize that wasn't even in there until the 1950s.
ali rizvi
It was a reaction to the atheists.
joe rogan
The Red Scare.
But this is a justification.
The horrific acts that are committed In war, non-specific targets.
I mean, when I say non-specific, obviously they're trying to get someone that's in a place.
But, you know, when you're shooting a fucking missile where you know a guy's cell phone is, that's fairly non-specific.
ali rizvi
Yeah, relatively speaking.
joe rogan
Relatively speaking.
What are the numbers?
I think the numbers versus the amount of casualties that are civilians versus the actual people they're trying to kill with drones.
It's some insane number.
It's like more than 80% civilians.
ali rizvi
So the drone thing is a little...
It's also a complicated issue.
Right.
There's this writer.
Her name is Farhat Taj.
She lives in Norway now, but she's from that area.
She's from North Waziristan, where a lot of the drones were.
And she wrote this article a couple of years ago.
I think it was in the Daily Times, an Asian paper.
And what she talked about was...
It's sort of the different groups that are in that area, in like northwestern Pakistan, the Pak-Afghan border.
And she said that the locals over there, a lot of times, you know, they feel like they're caught between the Taliban that's sort of taken over the whole area and they, you know, they go out and they put, they're shooting young girls in the head for going to school and they're, you know, doing all this other bullshit.
And then on the other hand, there's the Pakistani military, And they're coming in with their planes, and they're trying to bomb, and that's even more nonspecific.
So they feel a lot of them are actually in favor of it.
There's many of them.
That's what she said.
I don't know how true that is, but it's definitely a plausible claim.
joe rogan
It's kind of anecdotal, though.
One person saying a lot of them are in favor of it.
ali rizvi
What happened was, after she said this, there were a lot of other accounts that came out.
That said the same kind of thing.
I mean, they weren't saying that everybody's in favor of it.
They're saying that it's not as clear-cut as people think it is.
So, like, with drones, you know, for instance, if you...
Like, the idea is that when you...
You know, these are decisions that are, you know, you've got to choose between bad and worse.
Like, complicated decisions are never...
You know, clear-cut, good or bad.
joe rogan
Right.
ali rizvi
So I don't like the drone strikes.
I think it sucks that sometimes they're necessary.
But unfortunately, I think sometimes they are necessary.
Like, these are people who are...
If you have a sniper who's going around killing, you know, hundreds of people, and you want to stop him, and, you know, he's around a place, and you have a choice between, you know, targeting this guy and taking him out, and that may kill a few civilians, whereas if you don't do that, it'll go out and, you know, he'll kill hundreds more people, then...
And you're making that call.
That's a really tough call to make.
I don't know if I could do it.
But when you're running countries and when you have a foreign policy, when you have to do something about something that's happening, then it's a call that you have to make and it's a choice between bad and worse.
joe rogan
It seems so intensely archaic, doesn't it?
One of the articles that I pulled up was talking about an attempt to kill 41 men resulting in the deaths of an estimated 1,147 people.
So the drones, in their attempt to kill 41 different people, have killed more than 1,147 people.
ali rizvi
Well, Farhat Taj, she talked about this too.
So in that area...
Nobody's allowed there.
Okay, so you're not...
Like, journalists don't go there because it's too dangerous.
Even...
joe rogan
What area is this?
ali rizvi
This is in northern, south...
Pakistan.
Yeah, in Pakistan.
Now the army's in there because they're fighting against them recently after the Taliban has been, like, really focusing all their attacks within Pakistan.
They've attacked the army school...
And killed all those kids and so on.
So now they're in there.
But before, when a lot of these figures were coming out, she said that there's no UN people, there's no independent sort of watchdogs or agencies that are looking at it.
No journalists can go in there.
No politicians can go in there.
Even the police, the Pakistani police, is scared to go in there because it's just completely ruled by the Taliban, all these sort of militant elements.
So A lot of these numbers, like if you look at the, I think there was a report, detailed report from Stanford, and they talked about how these numbers were arrived at.
And there's a wide range.
Some people report they're very low, other people report they're very high.
That's not to say there haven't been civilian casualties.
There have been, and that's terrible.
But I think during Bush's time, when he just carried out a few drone strikes, they were relatively non-surgical.
I think Obama, one of the reasons that he decided to go ahead and continue the drone strikes is that he found it the most surgical and the most accurate compared to all of the other options that they had.
joe rogan
That's pretty scary when you think about, well, it makes sense.
ali rizvi
It's the bad, choosing bad and worse, right?
joe rogan
But it makes sense when you look at the numbers of innocents that have been killed in the Iraq war.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Like, I mean, it's arguable that it's close to a million humans, rather.
I mean, that's an insane amount of innocent people that have been killed by feet on the ground, missiles, bombing campaigns, all of the above.
And when you compare that to drone strikes, that's the only way, kind of, like, what they're saying, like, it's more surgical than that way.
Then, you know, sending a bunch of tanks and a bunch of troops into an area is less surgical.
It's like, what the fuck is war, man?
ali rizvi
It eventually comes down to this that war sucks, and if we're going to have that debate, I will agree with you.
It's terrible.
When you can avoid it, you can.
But if you're of the view that sometimes it is necessary to prevent even larger atrocities, and sometimes you need to do it to stop it, I think...
Which is the view that I have.
I think that the more surgical your methodology is, and it seems like drone strikes tend to be a better option than the other ones.
I mean, there's elements of it that I know about the debate, like the fact that you're sitting far away.
It's very sort of inhuman.
There's no contact.
You're very detached because it's like a remote control and they're firing off a missile.
That part of it sucks.
There's a lot of things about it that suck, but I just don't know how else.
I don't know what other options there are to handle the situation.
It is affecting them.
The Taliban seem to be more upset about the drone strikes than anybody else.
That means that it is kind of hitting them.
They do know that the world has a lot of sympathy for civilian casualties.
They know that And that itself, just the fact that they know that they can use these civilian casualties to their benefit, that automatically shows you that there is an ethical difference between both sides.
So it's not...
joe rogan
Well, you're saying that meaning that they do it on purpose, that they have areas set up in high civilian population areas, knowing that they'll get hit in those areas and it will cause civilian deaths so that those civilian deaths will be used to sort of promote their cause.
ali rizvi
Yeah.
I mean, they absolutely do that.
I mean, think about it.
Again, you were talking about getting in the mind of...
You know, conspiracy theorists.
I mean, think about if you were one of those people and you knew that, you know, that a lot of people don't agree with you.
Everybody thinks that, you know, you're back in the stone ages and so on.
But the one time you get a lot of sympathy is when there are a lot of innocents killed.
And then, you know, everyone, all these powerful political figures and journalists, everything around the world suddenly start, you know, sort of coming to your side against your enemy.
joe rogan
Right.
ali rizvi
Then why wouldn't you exploit that?
When you have nothing, you have like shitty weapons, you know, you're living in the middle of nowhere.
And if that's the only power you have, that's one of your strongest weapons.
You know, you'd exploit it.
Everybody would.
joe rogan
Well, I can certainly see that, but I can also certainly see the argument that one of the best recruiting methods for the Taliban or Al-Qaeda is having your family blown up by a drone.
You know, and that has happened too.
ali rizvi
Yeah, it works.
That's what I'm saying.
This is really, really complicated.
joe rogan
It's so complicated.
Are we in a state of perpetual war?
ali rizvi
I don't know.
I'm not qualified to answer that question.
joe rogan
What is a weird war in that sense?
Because all the wars throughout history seem to have been about someone trying to take over something.
Whereas this one seems to be, at least a big part of the root of it, seems to be religious ideology.
ali rizvi
It is, yeah.
It takes you back to the Samuel Huntington paper, The Clash of Civilizations.
joe rogan
What is that paper?
ali rizvi
He predicted, he was this political scientist, and in the 90s he wrote this paper and later expanded it into a book, and it was called The Clash of Civilizations.
It was sort of a prophecy about the future and what kind of conflicts people are going to get into, and he said that it wouldn't be ideological.
This is about the post-Cold War.
And he said it won't be ideological, it'll be cultural, and it'll be between religious groups.
And he actually talked about the Islamic world and about seven or eight other civilizations and how they're going to get into cultural conflict.
And he was conservative and a lot of people criticized it.
And at that time I thought it was kind of I wasn't completely, completely in line with it.
But now, as time goes on, every once in a while I go back to To revisit the paper.
And it seems to make more sense, almost like he kind of knew what he was talking about.
joe rogan
Have you ever tried to look objectively, like if you were the engineer of modern society or modern civilization, and you tried to look objectively, like sit in a high chair with a desk above the earth, and go, all right, how do I fix this mess?
How do I stop all these silly monkeys from blowing each other up and shooting rockets from robots that fly above their cities?
Blowing up bombs in their buildings.
How do you stop that?
Have you ever tried to see, like, is there a way, like a long-term, short-term, any-term way, to sort of engineer this away?
ali rizvi
I think the long-term, I think we discount the role of ideology and belief when it comes to this.
And I don't know how to solve it, but I know one way to move closer to solving it, and that's just being honest about what the problem is.
You know, a lot of the problem, like for example, the Islamic State, you know, they're yelling Allahu Akbar, you know, quoting the Quran and everything.
I mean, this is weak, but, you know, cartoons, people making cartoons and then getting shot up for it.
Like, you know, these are all things that, you know, there is an identifiable issue.
There's a root cause here that everybody seems to deny, like including all the prime ministers and like this has nothing to do with religion.
I grew up in Libya, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan.
I didn't come to North America until I was 24. I grew up in pretty much Muslim-majority countries and some very conservative ones all the time.
Whenever I hear people say that this has nothing to do with religion, it just doesn't make any sense to me.
joe rogan
Is that like an American liberal, convenient thing to say because it makes you look super sensitive and very Noam Chomsky-esque?
ali rizvi
Well, yeah, it does.
I don't know what goes into it.
I know that there's a lot of fear.
People don't want to criticize this.
We saw what happened with Salman Rushdie all the way up to the Paris attacks.
So there is a fear of that.
There's also a fear of being seen as a bigot.
I call it Islamophobia-phobia.
joe rogan
That's a great word.
Islamophobia phobia.
I love it.
ali rizvi
It's something that a lot of people relate to immediately when they hear it.
It is true.
joe rogan
I hate that term, Islamophobia.
Look, what about Christianophobia?
What's hilarious to me is that a lot of quote-unquote progressive, very left-wing people will openly mock Christianity while defending Islam or by labeling people Islamophobic or conservative.
ali rizvi
Yeah, I mean, you gotta stay consistent.
If you're a true liberal, and everybody's saying this, well, unfortunately, not everybody's saying it.
I wish more people were saying it.
But, you know, if you are, for instance, opposed to killing gay people, you should be opposed to killing gay people, whether it's in the KKK manifesto, or in the Bible, or in the Quran, or in the Republican Party, you know, or in Uganda.
It doesn't matter what it is.
If you're opposed to something, you should be opposed to it across the board.
It doesn't suddenly become respectful.
Okay, now, well, it's in the Bible, so we've got to respect that.
Respect for ideas is just such an overrated...
It's considered a virtue, respecting people's ideas and beliefs.
Ideas are not people.
That's the problem with the word Islamophobia, is that it implies criticism of an idea.
And there is genuine anti-Muslim bigotry.
People do commit hate crimes against Muslims.
But Muslims are people.
They're entitled to respect.
They have rights.
Islam itself is not a person.
It's just a book.
joe rogan
It's an ideology.
ali rizvi
It's an ideology.
It's a bunch of ideas in a book.
So it doesn't have rights, and it's not entitled to respect.
joe rogan
So the idea of Islamophobia is a phobia of ideas that are irrational and ancient.
That seems to be pretty smart.
But it's connected somehow or another to racism.
This is where it gets weird because progressive people don't want to criticize anybody with extra melanin.
Anybody that's remotely browner than them gets immediate free pass.
ali rizvi
But see, like the Boston Bombers, right?
They were from...
joe rogan
Dagestan?
ali rizvi
Yeah, they're from...
joe rogan
Were they from...
ali rizvi
Caucasus?
Is that how you pronounce it?
unidentified
Caucasus?
joe rogan
He doesn't know.
ali rizvi
He's the wrong dude.
joe rogan
He knows what Beyonce's weight is.
He knows what her ring size is and shoe size.
He knows when she was born.
He knows who she used to date.
ali rizvi
Oh, we need to talk later.
joe rogan
Don't.
ali rizvi
That's great.
They're actually...
The Boston Bombers are actually from a place where the word Caucasian The Caucasus Mountains.
Yeah, the Caucasus Mountains.
So they're from there.
So, you know, they were white.
The underwear bomber was black.
The Jose Padilla was Hispanic.
So it's not a race.
All these people were Muslim.
And the thing is, if you're saying that criticizing Islam is somehow racist, you're assuming that all of Islam is a race.
What does that make you?
joe rogan
Right.
ali rizvi
That itself, I mean, that's That's exactly what racism is, when you assume that everything, that the entire religion is one race.
joe rogan
Yes, we're completely ignorant.
There's some white, blue-eyed Muslims, you know?
ali rizvi
Oh yeah, there's lots of them.
joe rogan
If you look at Mecca, you see like the people that are in Mecca, you'll see red-headed people, red-haired people that are walking around with the traditional garb on, circling Mecca.
ali rizvi
Yeah, and there's, in Turkey, so, you know, Turkey's a big Muslim country, Egypt's a big Muslim country, there's Indonesia, there's Iran, where everybody's Persian, There's the Arab world, and there's South Asians.
It's just racially incredibly diverse.
It's not really a race.
I think I saw something.
There was this woman wearing a niqab.
And someone wrote a funny comment about it and got the face veil and the full cover, the burqa.
And someone's like, you know, that's what you're doing is racist.
I'm making fun of this.
And I'm like, can you tell me what fucking race she is?
Can you see?
joe rogan
How is that racist?
That's mind-blowing.
ali rizvi
You don't even know if it's a man or a woman.
joe rogan
These are knee-jerk liberal ideas that are promoted in universities.
The hyper-sensitive, hyper-progressive atmosphere that literally eliminates objective thinking and reasoning.
Because you are already automatically expected to behave in a certain way, or think in a certain way, because that is the progressive manifesto.
Your ideas, like you're not supposed to criticize Islamic people, it is Islamophobia.
The idea that we're supposed to be in their land, that this is Islamophobia.
And that word is just so fucking thrown about over the last decade or so.
ali rizvi
It's toxic.
And I was trying to give the example of myself, is that if I went back to Saudi Arabia or any of the countries where I grew up, and if they knew the stuff that I write, then I have reason to be Islamophobic.
Because by their Islamic laws, it's just not something I like thinking about, what could happen to me.
joe rogan
Well, you're an apostate.
ali rizvi
I'm an apostate, yeah.
joe rogan
You should be beheaded, right?
Isn't that the idea?
ali rizvi
Yeah, technically, I should be beheaded.
joe rogan
What the fuck, man?
You should be phobic of those ideas.
ali rizvi
I know, so it's legitimate.
joe rogan
Yeah, as legitimate as it gets.
ali rizvi
Phobia means irrational fear, and it's not irrational by any means.
joe rogan
Well, phobia means a fear, right?
Does it mean irrational?
Does phobia mean irrational?
ali rizvi
I think the medical definition is an irrational fear.
joe rogan
I think any fear of being beheaded, it's super rational.
ali rizvi
Exactly.
So that's why.
That makes it even more of a misnomer.
joe rogan
Yeah, if somebody writes down, I want to cut your fucking head off, and you're a phobic of that person.
Like, what?
ali rizvi
Of course you have.
joe rogan
I want to cut my head off because of a belief.
ali rizvi
So, you know, there's that aspect.
And then there's also the anti-Muslim bigotry, which is a separate thing.
joe rogan
Which is real.
unidentified
Yeah.
ali rizvi
And it's based on people.
It's targeting people.
And, you know, I have been on the receiving end of that as well.
I mean, that has happened.
I mean, people have told me after the, you know, Charlie Hebdo attacks and people said, you know, you guys are scum.
You should get out of here.
joe rogan
Where have you heard this?
ali rizvi
This is like on Twitter, Facebook messages.
Like I'll get emails.
joe rogan
Real people or eggs?
ali rizvi
They sounded pretty real.
joe rogan
You know what I'm saying?
Was it like a person where you could track their account, you could read their...
ali rizvi
Oh, no, no.
Yeah, I knew them.
I know who these people are.
joe rogan
Oh, you know them in person?
In real life?
ali rizvi
No, not in person.
No, not in person.
Over here, fortunately, I haven't really had that.
The only sort of personal thing I've had is the TSA, the airport, the random checks.
I always get selected for the random check and things like that.
joe rogan
Look at you.
ali rizvi
There you go.
So that happens.
And then, you know, my passport has, you know, my record of living in all these different Middle Eastern countries and things like that.
And the name and the skin color.
So that does put me in the same category.
So I share that experience with a lot of people who do look like me and have the same name that I do.
Right.
The problem with the word Islamophobia is that I think it's an injustice and it's actually an insult to the struggles of Muslims who have genuinely been victims of anti-Muslim bigotry to use their pain and their experience and exploit it to stifle criticism of Islam.
joe rogan
Yeah, I would say that that makes sense.
You know, sort of the same way anyone who disagrees with feminist ideology is automatically some sort of a woman hater, a misogynist, someone who's just a bigot in some way against the female gender.
That's just how it is, man.
People love to silence ideas with a real simple categorization of you.
You are a racist.
You are a warmonger.
I saw someone who wrote that about Christopher Hitchens, that he was a sexist and a warmonger.
I'm like, okay, did you read any of what he wrote?
Did you listen to any of what he said?
That's...
That's kind of hilarious.
Like, to categorize someone and dismiss them so openly like that.
ali rizvi
Yeah, with the labels.
And I think a lot of times, you know, you don't even have definitions for these terms.
When you say Islamophobia, if you ask, you know, someone, a Muslim, a liberal Muslim in Boston, you know, what Islam is, they'll give you a very different definition.
Than someone who's in ISIS or the Taliban.
Oh, sure.
So they have different definitions of it.
I think feminism is the same way.
You can talk to 10 different feminists and they'll give you 10 different definitions.
joe rogan
Well, there's a real problem with groups in that sense, ideological groups in that sense, whether it's men's rights advocates or...
I mean, men's rights advocates are some of the most fucking hilarious people online to read their websites and their discussion groups and...
Just a bunch of angry fucking weirdos.
ali rizvi
That's a recent discovery.
I actually didn't know about these guys until like a couple of years ago.
joe rogan
I didn't know about them until I was accused of being one.
Somebody called me an MRA and I go, what the fuck is that?
Some angry woman was barking at me on Twitter, calling me an MRA. I forget what it was about.
So I went and looked at it, and I was like, oh, fucking Christ.
I found the community.
I tapped into this vein of men who need to fucking get over it.
ali rizvi
Yeah, I know.
And what really sucks sometimes is that When you have a certain agenda associated with just a really radical, insane group, then even if they have legitimate viewpoints about something, supposing they have one or two points that are legitimate.
I guess if you're talking about the men's rights.
joe rogan
Custody.
ali rizvi
Child custody.
joe rogan
And alimony.
Those are the two that make sense to me.
unidentified
There you go.
joe rogan
So that's where it ends.
ali rizvi
Yeah, that's like a rational conversation you can have.
The problem is that anytime you start talking about those issues...
You'll automatically get labeled as part of that group.
joe rogan
Sure, yeah.
ali rizvi
So there's this sort of smearing, you know, painting you with the same brush as everybody else.
joe rogan
Well, one of the most hilarious things that I read was that men's rights advocates are unnecessary because feminism addresses equality.
And once women are treated as completely equal then and only then, Should we address men's rights?
And I'm like, that's hilarious.
Like, that is just some weird, angry girl who no one wants to touch, and she just has a lot of bitterness.
And this is what they're spouting out.
ali rizvi
I've always actually...
I was talking to a friend about this yesterday, that I think when you have movements, when you have, like, organized movements, it's something that you want to achieve...
Being in opposition to something just makes a lot more sense and it's more unifying than standing for something.
Can you explain that?
joe rogan
Yeah.
ali rizvi
Like, you know, if you have, say, the feminist movement, right?
When feminism meant...
Equality, you know, economic, social, political equality for men and women, then, you know, we're all feminists.
You know, we all had that.
We opposed gender inequality.
joe rogan
We're humanists.
I mean, to say it feminist, it just identifies you very specifically with one gender, and that's the issue.
ali rizvi
But I'm saying supposing feminism was defined as that, as something that's in, it's a movement that's in, or an ideology that's in opposition to gender inequality or patriarchy or whatever it is.
Then it unifies everybody.
But the moment it starts standing for something, like, okay, you're not a feminist if you're not pro-choice.
You're not a feminist if you believe that Males and females are not exactly the same, you know, psychologically.
Or if you don't subscribe to this, like, sort of gender sociology theory or, you know, whatever it is.
The moment you start excluding people based on that and you start talking about what feminism stands for rather than what it stands against, then you start getting fragmentation.
And I kind of feel the same way with religion and a lot of atheists.
I like the anti-theist position that when you're opposed to You know, the idea of religion and faith and believing things without evidence.
You know, we're doing things for no other reason apart from the fact that it was written in a book, you know, 2000 years ago.
If you're opposed to that, you have a lot of people, you know, who will be part of your movement.
But the moment you start saying, well, atheism stands for being, having this political stance on something, where it means that you have to like what, you have to agree with what Glenn Greenwald says, you have to be in a social justice, then you start excluding people.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
Well, then you get into Atheism Plus.
You know what Atheism Plus is?
ali rizvi
I do.
Someone explained this to me briefly, but I never really follow up on it.
joe rogan
It's a hilarious group of social retards that have decided to make a religion out of atheism.
And so they've connected atheism with a system or a group of social values and ethics.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
And attached this idea, it was just a lack of belief in a deity to, on top of that, all these things that anyone with any ethics ordinarily, automatically believes in.
Sexual discrimination, gender discrimination, racial discrimination, all those things that moral, ethical people already disagree with, they've attached that to atheism and called it atheism plus.
ali rizvi
Yeah.
joe rogan
So, you know, standing against all those other things.
But now it becomes like an ideology.
It's essentially, in a way, like a religion.
Because to ascribe to atheism plus, you have to be someone who, you know, these people that go to these conferences and you listen to their speeches, These fucking droning, boring...
They should call Atheism Plus, duh.
Because anyone who's intelligent already thinks, yeah, of course, if you're a balanced person, you shouldn't believe in racial discrimination.
Of course you wouldn't support sexual discrimination.
Of course you wouldn't support, you know, fill in the blank.
You know, of course you would be pro-women's rights.
Of course you'd be pro, you know, there's a whole group of desires that they have or ideological desires that they've attached.
To this idea of atheism.
It's a hilarious movement.
ali rizvi
I think that's exactly, that was a point I was making, that the moment atheism starts standing for something beyond just not believing in a god, the moment that happens, you start, you know, there's this fragmentation that starts to take place.
And I just think that it's better, like the anti-theist position, just the idea that, okay, It's been many many years and now this whole religion thing like respect for religion and all the stuff that's being done in the name of it this is kind of enough so all of us rational people I'm going to take a position against this.
Find something else to guide your actions apart from these sort of archaic social and legal codes.
And if we had that position, you could have people from all kinds of...
subscribe to all kinds of belief systems.
They can join your cause.
But the moment you start saying, well, if you're an atheist, then...
You have to stand for this, or you have to be pro-choice.
There's a lot of pro-life atheists that are still atheists.
unidentified
Right.
ali rizvi
So you can't...
joe rogan
Well, that's why they call it atheism plus in their ideas.
But if you listen to the talk, it's a lot of these really weak guys who just are looking for social brownie points and trying to get women to love them by standing so powerfully and strong in favor of equality.
It's like there's a certain aspect of feminism that's sort of in...
Sort of engaged themselves with atheism and they've kind of embedded into it and these radical feminist ideas have also like become a part of atheism plus and it's very strange to listen to what they say and completely intolerant of other people's ideas and aggressive in attacking and doxing and going after people who disagree or who they think have you know in some way or another just You know, stood out against what their ideas are.
ali rizvi
That I have seen a lot.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ali rizvi
And it's...
joe rogan
Aggressive.
ali rizvi
I was recently thinking that all these labels, like...
You know, when you see what...
Some of the atheist activists that are out there, especially now that it's such a big movement.
There's a lot of really, really angry people.
joe rogan
Yeah.
And for good reason in some ways.
ali rizvi
No, I understand where it comes from.
joe rogan
I mean, look, religious ideology, especially radical religious fundamentalism, has done horrible damage to people, and there's a lot of people that grew up in that, and they have an extreme backlash against it, and so they're angry because of that.
ali rizvi
Yeah, and no, I'm completely...
I'm not saying that they shouldn't be.
I'm totally with that.
I mean, if I... I had the life that Ayaan Hirsi Ali did, where I grew up and underwent genital mutilation and all these things, as a woman.
I would be angry, too, if I was oppressed by it.
Raif Badawi knows about the blogger in Saudi Arabia.
joe rogan
Which one is this?
ali rizvi
There's a blogger that they have jailed in Saudi Arabia, and they've been lashing him.
They last him 50 times.
Okay, so I'll tell you.
joe rogan
Tell me, sir.
ali rizvi
So he...
It's actually someone that I know.
My girlfriend's a really good friend with his wife and his kids and everything.
So we know them personally.
And he started a website called Free Saudi Liberals.
So he wanted to start talking about liberalism and sort of just different innovative non-status quo ideas in Saudi Arabia.
And...
He essentially got a jail sentence for 10 years with a thousand lashes.
So they would take him out into the public outside a mosque after Friday prayers in Al Jafali Mosque in Jeddah.
And they'd just take a cane and they'd lash him 50 times every Friday until the 1,000 lashes are complete.
So they did the first set, I think about four or five weeks ago.
And so we all started writing about it.
All of us really became a huge story.
There was a lot of pressure.
And then the Charlie Hebdo attacks happened.
And the Saudi ambassador was in the free speech rally in Paris.
And I think that was on a Sunday.
And they'd actually lashed Raif on Friday.
And he was in the free speech rally.
So a lot of people wrote it.
I wrote a piece for CNN about it.
You know, just talking about the double standard.
joe rogan
So how many lashes has this guy received so far?
ali rizvi
50. And it was supposed to continue every week, but he had a medical review and the doctors said that he's not fit to be lashed the next week, which is fucking bizarre because basically they said that his wounds haven't healed enough yet.
joe rogan
To create new wounds.
ali rizvi
To create new wounds.
joe rogan
Jesus fucking Christ.
ali rizvi
So let his wounds close up before we rip them open again.
joe rogan
And last, what are they using to beat them with?
ali rizvi
They use a cane.
They use a really sharp cane.
joe rogan
Like a bamboo cane with edges to it, like what they used in Singapore?
ali rizvi
What I know about it is, yeah, it's a cane like that, but apparently it's got a very sharp edge, so it does cut open your skin.
joe rogan
Slice you open 50 times.
ali rizvi
Yeah, 50 times.
joe rogan
Jesus Christ.
ali rizvi
They don't even have to hit you.
They can just hit you lightly, and it will still cause cuts on your body.
joe rogan
But they're beating the shit out of this guy with this.
ali rizvi
Yeah, and there is a distribution.
You have to distribute it between, like, the knees all the way up to the upper back.
joe rogan
Oh, my God.
So he's scarred for life.
ali rizvi
Yeah, he's scarred.
I mean, his wife was just really, really upset.
Her name's Insaf.
And after the first lashing, you know, he was in really bad medical condition.
He wasn't getting any medical help.
And she just said, she's like, you know, I don't think he's going to survive it.
And he's, you know, like when you talk to him, he's just like a very gentle, very nice, you know, thinking kind of guy, just very sort of, you know, introspective.
And he's like really more of an intellectual kind of person.
I mean, he's not very physically robust or anything like that.
joe rogan
What did he write?
ali rizvi
He just wrote sort of like liberal things.
He started talking about how religion and politics should be separate, just the basis of secularism.
There was one post that I liked that he wrote that was about astronomers.
There was some Saudi cleric religious leader with a lot of influence.
You know, who was essentially saying that, you know, I think he said something like traveling to planets is haram or, you know, he was saying something about astronomy.
joe rogan
Haram?
ali rizvi
Yeah.
Haram means sinful.
unidentified
Ah.
ali rizvi
So, and if I remember this correctly.
And he essentially wrote this really sarcastic thing about Sharia astronomers.
He was like, oh...
I didn't know these Sharia astronomers existed, and we should just forget about what all the scientists are saying, what all the telescopes do, and we should just listen to these guys because they have knowledge nobody else has from centuries ago.
So he would write sort of sarcastic things like that.
He never openly challenged religion being wrong or anything, but he was just an advocate for secularism.
So, and that's really all he did.
I mean, I know, you know, people tend to think that like, well, what did he really do?
joe rogan
Right.
ali rizvi
You know, but I can't, you know, I can't say it any other way.
The guy, all he did was he just blogged on this thing called Free Saudi Liberals.
joe rogan
Oh, man.
ali rizvi
And so Saudi Arabia is another, like I grew up there, right?
I was there for about 12 years, so I could talk about that forever.
But King Abdullah just died, right?
And I always tell people this, that the month that James Foley was beheaded in August 2014, that same month, Saudi Arabia beheaded 19 people.
And it wasn't just for murder.
They were beheaded for sorcery, for cannabis smuggling.
It would probably resonate with you a little bit.
All kinds of crimes that are not really crimes.
joe rogan
Both of those resonate.
I'm a sorcerer as well.
I don't like to talk about it, but I do a lot of witchcraft in my spare time.
I have a few cats.
Fucking sorcery?
ali rizvi
What does that mean?
joe rogan
How do you get beheaded for sorcery?
What is sorcery?
ali rizvi
Black magic, doing spells on people.
joe rogan
Oh my god.
ali rizvi
Yeah, promising people that you can, if they can't get pregnant, it's like, okay, I can get you pregnant.
joe rogan
Oh god.
Sorcery, huh?
You can get your head cut off for sorcery in Saudi Arabia.
And that's our allies, right?
ali rizvi
It's happening as we speak.
It's still doing it.
And they beheaded, I think, 10 people in January.
joe rogan
Oh my god.
ali rizvi
And these are public beheadings with a sword.
joe rogan
So you could watch.
ali rizvi
Yeah.
joe rogan
So if I flew over there, I could watch a beheading?
ali rizvi
You know what they would do if you flew over there and you were a foreigner?
It would be in the middle of a marketplace or outside a mosque, and they would push you up to the front because you're a foreigner.
They want to show you.
joe rogan
How they rock it.
ali rizvi
Yeah, you'll see kids running towards the scene when execution is about to happen or lashing is about to happen.
The video of Raif is online when he was lashed.
joe rogan
It's online?
ali rizvi
Yeah, it's online.
Someone actually secretly filmed it.
joe rogan
Oh, no.
ali rizvi
But what you can really see is you can see people running towards where the lashing was about to take place.
joe rogan
How clearly do you see him getting lashed?
ali rizvi
You don't see it very clearly.
Is he naked?
No, no, he's not.
He's clothed, and then he's got his hands in shackles.
He's got his head raised upwards.
joe rogan
So they're beating him through the clothes.
ali rizvi
They're beating him through the clothes.
And from a distance, you can't really appreciate it.
What it's like, because, you know, the cane is really, really sharp, and so you don't know exactly what happens.
You can't see it very clearly, but the thing that is most striking about that video is the people around it.
There's like hundreds of normal, regular Saudis that have gathered around.
They're cheering afterwards, and they all yell Allahu Akbar when the lashes are complete.
joe rogan
Oh, my God.
ali rizvi
And there's little kids, like five-, six-, seven-year-old kids, and they're all excitedly running towards the scene and so on.
So these are things that they see in public.
Not a lot of people here know this.
In Riyadh, the place where they do the public executions, at least when I was there, it was called Chop Chop Square.
What?
joe rogan
Chop Chop Square?
ali rizvi
That was the sort of affectionate term for it.
Yeah, there was a market in the middle of which there was Chop Chop Square.
joe rogan
But if you criticize that, you're Islamophobic.
Did you know that?
ali rizvi
Yeah, because then they'll say, well, this has nothing to do with Islam.
And then you'll show them the verses in the Quran that actually say that you can behead people.
For all kinds of things, and they'll say, well, that's mistranslated, misinterpreted, and it was, you know, at a different time.
joe rogan
Sorcery!
19 people?
ali rizvi
In August, the month that James Foley was beheaded by ISIS, the Saudi government, our ally, the one that Obama just recently went, you know, to pay respects to the king.
And Fareed Zakaria actually asked him, he asked Obama about, he's like, are you going to mention the blogger that they have jailed?
joe rogan
And he didn't.
ali rizvi
He's like, well, you know, right now I'm just going to pay respect to the king, you know, but with human rights abuses, you know, with our allies, it's very tough to have that dialogue.
joe rogan
What kind of fucking allies are there?
That's like having a friend who has a slave.
It's like, I really love the dude.
I don't want to talk to him about his slaves, but he's got this guy shackled up in his basement and the guy's digging holes for him.
He's a good dude, though.
I don't want to talk to him about it.
He's my friend.
We're going to barbecue.
ali rizvi
You know what they did was King Abdullah, he's a little bit like the Pope.
He just says something that's really common sense to the rest of us.
Like, yes, I think women should be allowed to vote.
We'll start doing that in 2015. And everybody praises him.
Like, he said something amazing.
It's like, you know when the Pope says...
Okay, maybe condoms are okay.
He gets this sort of disproportionate praise for saying it, even though...
joe rogan
It's a rational thing that everybody agrees with.
ali rizvi
That everybody should.
So they're getting praised and lauded for pretty much bringing their people...
I'm glad you're not in the 17th century anymore.
I'm glad you're in the 19th century.
It's such a low standard.
It's a really low bar for them.
Abdullah, I'm working on this story right now.
I just talked to these two women.
Well, I saw this story where King Abdullah's own daughters, so he's got like a shitload of wives and a whole bunch of kids.
And he had this one, I think it was a Jordanian wife, and he had four daughters with her.
He didn't have a son, so he wasn't happy about that.
And he's had them under house arrest, imprisoned for 15 years.
joe rogan
Why?
ali rizvi
Because they spoke up about male guardianship.
There's a law in Saudi Arabia that says that women are not allowed to do anything without the permission of a male guardian.
Like travel, work.
joe rogan
Really?
ali rizvi
Yeah, they can't.
Some things they can't even do with the permission.
They're not allowed to drive.
joe rogan
Yeah, I've heard that.
ali rizvi
So they can't do that even with permission of a male guardian.
Pretty much anything else, whether it's working or traveling or any of that stuff, they can't do it without express permission of a male guardian.
So they spoke out about it, because their guardian was their dad, who was a king who they barely even knew, and their mother, she's also female, so it really restricted a lot of things that they could do.
So they started talking about gender discrimination, issues, The situation of women in Saudi Arabia.
And they did an interview in 2013. And it's online.
It's with Russia Today, with RT. I think that's what it stands for, Russia Today.
And they were able to get a Skype connection and do this interview.
And they spoke out.
And after that, nobody really heard from them again.
They didn't do any other interviews.
So I actually got in touch with...
So here's where my connection happened is I went to a school called Manar al-Riyadh, which was like an English medium school for foreigners and Saudis as well in Riyadh.
And she was in the girls' branch.
And I knew these two girls who were in the girls' branch who went to school with her, who were good friends with one of the daughters, the youngest one.
Her name is Jawahar.
And when they found out about this imprisonment, they were just shocked.
I mean, they went to high school with this girl, and she was King Abdullah's daughter.
So I'm actually working on a piece about that.
I just did a whole interview with them for an hour.
It's about a week ago.
And it's just, the whole story is crazy because Abdullah is being, you know, Cameron, Obama, everybody's been praising him as a reformer and all the things that he's done for women.
In Saudi Arabia.
His own four daughters have been imprisoned.
They've been starved.
Their dog died of starvation because they weren't getting enough food.
All these things that have been happening.
The hypocrisy and the double standard is just amazing.
Westminster Abbey in the UK flew their flags at half-mass when Abdullah died.
This is a guy who sanctioned all those beheadings.
I mean, he can stop that shit if he wants to.
The sorcery beheadings and the lashing of bloggers and the imprisonment of his own daughters.
He could stop that.
He could have stopped it.
And he didn't.
He just said that we'll allow women to vote in 2015. Fuck.
joe rogan
And everybody's like, good job.
We'll allow women to vote on things that we agree with only.
unidentified
Exactly.
joe rogan
And you don't really get an option to vote on a lot of things.
Like, do you want a king?
No, I don't want a king.
Do you think that people should have their head cut off for sorcery?
I would say that's not progressive.
ali rizvi
Yeah, that's his own, that's his call.
unidentified
So it's a different world out there.
ali rizvi
Yeah.
That's why it's hard when you're there and you come here, and when you hear the Noam Chomsky thing or the Glenn Greenwald thing, You know, we need to...
joe rogan
Stop all this Islamophobia.
ali rizvi
Yeah, when you see the apologism, it immediately cuts you off.
And it affects people like Rafe Badawi, the blogger.
And it affects people like that.
It actually harms them.
I mean, the people that we should be getting behind and supporting in those parts of the world are the dissidents and the reformers.
And there are a lot of them.
You don't hear from them because they can't speak.
joe rogan
Well, because they're terrified.
Like, the same way people are so terrified of Islam that when this Charlie Hebdo thing came out, no one, no one on the left, like, actively criticized it or published those images or, you know, put it on the front pages of their magazines.
It wasn't something that was done.
It wasn't like something where everyone stood in unity and said, everyone's terrified.
They're terrified that they're going to be next.
They're going to get their heads cut off.
They're going to get shot.
Someone's going to storm their office and gun them down because they also published the cartoon.
And Sam Harris made a really good point.
It was the one chance that journalists had uniformly to stand up against this type of shit and just everyone published it.
Every fucking magazine, every newspaper, everyone across the world published those images.
But everybody was like, fuck that.
Self-preservation took over.
ali rizvi
Did you see that thing on Sky News?
There was this woman who was interviewing, like when they did the reprint and they put the cover of, you know, they put Muhammad on the cover again, you know, crying and so on.
So she was interviewing somebody about that.
And then the woman that she was interviewing started pulling up the paper and showing the cartoon.
And she immediately cut away.
It's like, I'm sorry, we can't show that, and I'm so sorry to anybody who was offended, and so on.
joe rogan
Anybody who was offended at a cartoon.
That's amazing.
ali rizvi
You know the stuff, there's a lot of...
My mom gets upset at me sometimes.
She's like, you know, can you do the criticism, but don't do the mockery.
And...
joe rogan
What does that mean?
ali rizvi
Well, it just means that when you make fun of it, when you draw cartoons, when it's insulting, then it's different.
And I understand where she's coming from.
But I think mockery is super important.
If you think about the interview, the Seth Rogen movie, you have all of these journalists and everybody writing all these inquisitive, biting critiques of the North Korean regime.
And all it does is, you know, because Kim Jong-un wants to be taken seriously.
And he gives him, you know, he's like, okay, I'm legitimate.
Everybody's criticizing me and, you know, they don't like what I do.
But when you make a movie with, like, dick jokes and, you know, the kind of thing that the interview was, and you make fun of it, he goes apeshit.
joe rogan
Well, how come they didn't go apeshit over the Team America movie?
ali rizvi
They did, actually.
joe rogan
Yeah?
ali rizvi
Yeah, Kim Jong-il was not happy about it.
joe rogan
Of course he wasn't happy, but nothing happened.
It wasn't like what's going on with this.
ali rizvi
Yeah, it wasn't like what happened here.
And I'm not sure exactly why they didn't.
That was a longer time ago.
joe rogan
Maybe his dad's a little more chill.
ali rizvi
Probably.
joe rogan
Is that possible?
ali rizvi
He might be more sensitive.
joe rogan
The young one.
Yeah, maybe he feels less legitimate because he just kind of got it from his dad.
ali rizvi
He's a little insecure, I think, probably.
joe rogan
Well, he's got a fat face.
Yeah, that's going to do it.
Lazy fuck.
It's going to work out.
ali rizvi
That's the thing.
When you have this kind of mockery, like the dick jokes and the cartoons piss these people off a lot more because they want to be taken seriously.
They can't do it through ideas because their ideas are all bullshit.
Women can't drive or you should be beheaded if you leave the religion or change your mind about what you believe and so on.
Those aren't the kind of things that you're going to get people flocking to you with through rational discourse.
So you have to use other means.
joe rogan
Why is that part of the world so archaic in their beliefs?
Is it because that's the cradle of civilization?
That's the oldest form of symbol?
What we know today, like the oldest civilizations that we're aware of that we can track is like 6,000 plus years ago, which is Mesopotamia, right?
The Middle East, Sumer, Iraq, Babylon.
Those areas, that's like where we believe Civilization sort of began, and those same areas have the most archaic form of religion and social justice.
Their ideas are so barbaric in a way, or so old.
I mean, the idea that women have to cover themselves in veils, and these oppressive ideas, it's the exact opposite of where the world is heading, especially because of the internet.
There's more and more openness, The exchange of information is quicker than it's ever been before.
And it's really hard to hold on to a really stupid idea today.
A stupid, oppressive idea.
But in that part of the world, not so much.
And it's like this momentum.
The momentum of the past is so strong.
ali rizvi
Well, you know, one of the reasons for that...
That's where I think our role comes in a little bit.
Or the role of the West, the U.S., is...
You know, the reason that the Saudis are lashing right for the reason that they're beheading people for sorcery has nothing to do with U.S. foreign policy or Western imperialism or really anything like that.
But the reason they've been able to maintain it, the reason they can actually, you know, keep those archaic legal codes in place and not really have to do anything about it is because, you know, they're very rich.
They have a lot of oil.
They don't really need to progress.
They're making that money.
And the reason that they have that is because we've all propped them up.
We have supported them.
Do you remember when King Abdullah visited Texas, I think it was in 2005, and then George Bush was holding hands with him?
joe rogan
Yeah, they were walking around holding hands.
ali rizvi
Yeah, and they kissed each other on the cheek.
joe rogan
Like a couple of queers.
unidentified
Yeah.
ali rizvi
So you had that, and then a few years later when Obama, his first year of his presidency, he was at the G20 summit in London, and there was a controversy where everybody thought he bowed to the Saudi king, which he sort of did, right?
When he met him, he shook his hand and he bowed.
So that's kind of, that symbolizes where the U.S.-Saudi relationship is.
But they have to do that.
It's not just, you know, we can blame the leaders for being allies in Saudi Arabia, but, you know, it's sort of the same thing that you see when, you know, people driving around their SUVs, filling them up with gas.
And I will say that, you know, Every time we fill our cars up with gas, we're all bowing to the Saudi king.
We're all doing exactly the same thing.
unidentified
Sort of.
joe rogan
With fracking now, it's kind of changed quite a bit.
You know, the United States produces more gas than anyone now.
ali rizvi
Yeah, and that should change.
And I think that it is a positive thing.
I mean, whatever the controversy is about fracking right now, you have to make everything safer, obviously.
But eventually, anything that helps us get off foreign oil.
Because that's what funds it.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, there's these areas like Abu Dhabi and Dubai and the areas that were just 50, 60 years ago barren.
I mean, there was nothing there.
And now there are these thriving, huge cities.
And the economy has just blossomed out of oil.
ali rizvi
Yeah, it's oil and then tourism and things like that.
But it's not really innovation.
It's not like they're providing some sort of service or manufacturing any kind of goods or they've got any even cultural elements that are going around all over the world that is able to monetize.
unidentified
Well, how does that change?
joe rogan
How does that change?
ali rizvi
Well, that's the reason for their success.
You said it yourself.
It's the oil.
You change that and you change things drastically there.
The thing that would put an end to all of them is if they ran out of oil or if we didn't need their oil anymore.
joe rogan
Would that though?
It seems like there's so much momentum on their side.
The culture has been so firmly established.
Their mindset has been so firmly established.
This adherence to radical Islamic philosophy and ideology is so firmly established.
How does one ever change that?
ali rizvi
You change it when you have to, right?
When you have to move on with life, when you can't maintain that.
If the rest of the world is moving on and you are not able to stay in that bubble, when you need to have international trade relationships, when you are dependent on diplomatic relations with other countries and you can't just get away with the shit that you do all the time, then that's how countries evolve.
That's how they progress.
They haven't needed to do that yet because they're fine.
They're in their bubble.
They've got a lot of oil money.
Everyone's happy.
Everyone's well-fed.
I mean, they're obscenely rich.
joe rogan
Like, you know, when I was there?
ali rizvi
Oh, they're fucking crazy rich.
When I was there, like, just going into Riyadh, you can't, as a tourist, you can't go into Riyadh, and this is...
I'm talking about the 90s.
I mean, you know when you see those movies with all the futuristic cities and stuff?
It really looked like that.
The architecture, the buildings, the highways.
It's beautiful to see.
The people that are walking around are all wearing burqas.
joe rogan
Ancient clothes with the most sophisticated modern city.
ali rizvi
It's like such a weird contradiction.
It is really strange.
And there's one royal family that's running it.
There's a whole bunch of brothers.
It's kind of like the people who live there and come stay there for a little while and go away, all the expatriates, it's like they're running a hotel.
It's like a family running a hotel and it's got all its money and sort of American accounts, Swiss accounts, you know, wherever.
And people just check in and check out all the time.
You get paid according to your passport.
joe rogan
I met a dude, I don't want to say his name, who's a prince in one of those places who listens to my podcast.
We had a long conversation about MMA. Well, I hope he's listening now.
He may be.
He's a young guy.
It was weird talking to this young guy who's probably...
We didn't discuss his finances, but I'm assuming he's insanely wealthy.
But he just wanted to sit down with me and talk about the UFC. He's a big fan.
We had this weird conversation about, you know, strategies and tactics and fighters and the trends and where things are moving and changing.
But, you know, I'm talking to, you know, a guy who could one day be the head of one of these gigantic governments.
I mean, I guess you call it a government.
It's not really.
Monarchy?
Would you call it a monarchy?
ali rizvi
Yeah, it's a kind of...
I mean, it's a kind of government.
joe rogan
Yeah, but it was very strange.
Very strange to have this conversation, you know?
ali rizvi
It is, yeah.
It's a really different world.
It's like another planet.
joe rogan
And to be fair, his was less suppressive.
We're not talking about, like, Saudi Arabia, beheading people over sorcery.
It's not that, but...
That part of the world, it's almost impossible, I think, for a lot of people who are apologists for that part of the world to rationalize it or to understand it the way you do.
ali rizvi
You know what?
It's really unbelievable, and I understand that now.
When I was there, Just explaining the way that things happen there to people over here, it's just so removed and so alien that people either shut it out of their mind or they don't believe it.
I've seen that a lot.
I'll tell you stories.
What I'm doing in my book is when I talk about these things, I try to bring personal anecdotes into it before I go into the topic in detail because it helps It helps people to relate to it.
So this is something that happened when I was in fifth grade.
So I went to the American school there, which is kind of why I talk like this.
And when I was in fifth grade, we made snowflakes during the winter.
I got a paper.
Fold up a piece of paper and you cut it and you make snowflakes.
And we decorated them with glue and glitter and our names and so on.
And the teacher put them up on the door, right?
Or the bulletin board.
I can't remember exactly.
unidentified
And, you know...
ali rizvi
You take a lot of pride in that kind of stuff when you're a kid.
I was like 10 or 11 years old.
And there's a Ministry of Education guy who used to come in and he used to check the school to make sure everything is operating correctly.
You know, like you had to say winter holidays, you couldn't speak about Christmas, you couldn't have red during Valentine's.
And so on.
So he saw the snowflakes and started yelling at the teacher in Arabic.
The teacher didn't even know Arabic.
In front of all the kids.
And he just took a pair of scissors and he cut one of the tips off of each of the snowflakes.
So I remember thinking, I was like, wow, I worked really hard on that.
He just amputated one of the tips off the snowflakes.
And then we asked the teacher what happened.
We wanted to know.
That's when I found out about the Star of David.
So the Star of David has six points.
So anything that has like six points is apparently banned there.
So she told us about the Star of David.
She said it's a sign of the Jews.
So this was my introduction to the Jews.
I didn't really know anything about the Jews before.
But I just thought, I was like, wow, these must be scary people, whoever they are.
The guy's cutting tips off his snowflakes.
joe rogan
Cutting fucking snowflakes.
Christ.
ali rizvi
So I went back and asked my dad about it.
My dad was a professor, so he was a fairly rational guy.
And then he told me about the whole Israel-Palestinian history, explained it to me as well as I could understand it.
And then he pulled out a map.
It was one of those inflatable globes.
And he tried to show me Israel on the map.
And it wasn't there.
This map, we bought it in a bookstore in Riyadh.
joe rogan
There's no Israel on those maps.
ali rizvi
There was no Israel.
It wasn't even like they labeled it something else or they made it all Palestine.
I remember this distinctly.
There was a border.
They'd drawn the border and the rest of it was the same color as the Mediterranean.
joe rogan
Same color as a sea?
ali rizvi
Yeah, it was as a sea.
So it was just like a little notch.
I remember we bought the World Book Encyclopedia.
You know, around that time.
That was a big thing.
Encyclopedias are obsolete now.
And they'd taken out the entries on Israel and evolution and everything.
You know, you pay a lot of money for it and they took it out.
So they'll do those things.
Now, what I'm saying is, you know, this was my introduction.
This is what I saw.
And fortunately, my father was rational and, you know, he told me the right story.
But there were a lot of other kids that also went home.
They asked their parents the same questions.
You know, what is the Star of David?
Who are the Jews?
And I don't know what kind of responses they got.
I don't know what they were told.
So you live with that in school.
You live with that as a kid who's, even if you're a foreigner, even if you're going to an American school, you know, you have these ideas around you.
And the kids who are in the Saudi schools, which are separate, like foreigners are not allowed to go to Saudi schools.
Their textbooks are just insane, the kind of stuff they have about Jews, about infidels, and everything.
They actually teach this stuff to kids.
In the UK recently, there was a Saudi school that was in the UK, and they were using some of these textbooks, and there was a big brouhaha about it.
joe rogan
A brouhaha.
ali rizvi
Oh yeah.
joe rogan
Love that term.
ali rizvi
Yeah.
joe rogan
Sorry.
ali rizvi
I always wanted to say that at rehearsing.
I was like, I'm going to fucking say brouhaha.
joe rogan
That's incredible that they had to cut your snowflake.
Your snowflake was symbolic of these evil wizard Jews doing their sorcery.
ali rizvi
Nobody would have made that connection.
But that's what I mean.
It's stuff that's so unimaginable and things that you wouldn't even think of.
joe rogan
I watched a documentary once on these suicide bombers and there was a school that they were running where they had these images in this children's school of these kids that had blown themselves up and they had images of them,
you know, these holy images of them covered with their explosive vests and they had a saying on the wall above them that said, The children of today are tomorrow's holy martyrs.
and there's just like trying to trying to wrap your mind around the idea that you are you're promoting that you are gonna raise these children to be holy martyrs meaning they are gonna blow themselves up and kill a bunch of bad people with them and this is going to be a great thing and then their images are gonna be displayed at this school and everyone's going to praise them and it's It's impossible.
It didn't make any sense.
It didn't fit.
I tried to find a place for it in my head.
I tried to shove it in there somewhere.
I'm like, this has got to be fake.
It can't be real.
ali rizvi
No, it's a tough thing.
I'm realizing more and more as I live here.
With every passing year that people who have been raised here, it's very difficult for them to comprehend that mindset.
I grew up in a Shia Muslim family.
joe rogan
Can you explain the difference for folks who don't know?
What is the difference between Sunni and Shia?
ali rizvi
They're basically two different schools of thought.
After the Prophet Muhammad died, you had his best friend.
His name was Abu Bakr, which is what the current ISIS caliph is named after.
And you had his son-in-law and his cousin, and his name is Ali.
So I'm named after.
I don't know how that ended up, like what we're named after, but anyway.
So what happens is you have these two different lines, and there was a conflict about, you know, people were, they couldn't decide who the successor was going to be.
Some people kind of flocked to the caliphate, which was Abu Bakr and the other caliphs, and others flocked to the imams.
Which was Ali.
So it was a successor.
It was just basically a conflict about who the successor was going to be and different people took different sides.
That's the long story short.
joe rogan
Well, that became incredibly confusing to Americans when the Iraq War went on and we realized that, oh, okay, there's a war going on now that we killed Saddam Hussein between the Sunnis and the Shias.
It's like, what?
Wait a minute.
The Muslims don't like each other?
Like, what kind of crazy shit is this?
ali rizvi
They've been fighting, and it's not just the Sunnis and Shias.
There's a whole bunch of other factions.
What other factions?
joe rogan
What are the other ones?
ali rizvi
Oh, there's too many names.
It's like, you know, if you're talking about all the different Christians.
joe rogan
Rattle off a couple.
Episcopalians, Lutherans.
ali rizvi
So, yeah, there's the Sunnis and the Shias.
They're primary.
Within the Shias, you've got two different groups.
There's the ethnoseries, which is the 12ers, and they believe in 12 imams.
And then there's another group that split off after the 6th imam.
Into a separate sort of like descendancy.
And those are the, they're called the Ismailis.
In the Sunnis, you've got Salafi Sunnis, which is a lot of the ones in Saudi Arabia who are very conservative.
You have four major schools of thought within the Sunnis.
There's the Do you want the names?
I mean, it's like Humbly, Shafi, Maliki, and Hanafi.
So these are four different schools of thought.
They practice different things.
Like, for instance, the Shafi sect does, for them, female genital mutilation is mandatory.
joe rogan
Mandatory.
ali rizvi
Mandatory.
So in Indonesia and in a lot of Southeast Asian countries, you know, Indonesia, where Reza Aslan says that women are 100% equal to men, I would say, yeah, when it comes to circumcision rates, they are.
More than 80% of men and women there are circumcised.
joe rogan
Well, circumcision for a man, though, is not nearly as brutal as circumcision for a female.
You're just cutting off skin.
You're not cutting off the clitoris.
ali rizvi
There's four different kinds of...
FGM, according to the WHO. So that ranges from just nicking the clitoris to all the way to removing the clitoris and the labia.
joe rogan
So nicking it is just sort of a scarring?
ali rizvi
A ritual, yeah, a nick.
It's still pretty fucked up.
And they're all banned over here.
So there's different grades to it.
So that's one example, right, of the Shafi sect.
And then the Maliki, they have a different belief.
The Hanafis have different beliefs.
So, and they'd range and, you know, there's really liberal ones within each sect.
There's really conservative ones.
So it's very wide.
Like, you know, you have jihadists who will actually go out and they'll carry out these martyrdom operations.
And you have Islamists who agree with political Islam, but not all of them are necessarily going to carry out these operations.
And then you have Moderate Muslims, and a lot of moderate Muslims are extremely conservative, and they do believe in all those conservative things like, you know, being gay is not a good thing, woman should cover herself.
So a lot of moderates will believe this, but they reject the political ideology of Islam.
And then you have liberal and progressive moderates, and they're different as well.
So it's a very, you know, it's 1.6 billion people.
It's extremely, extremely diverse.
joe rogan
Which is the more conservative faction?
The Sunni or the Shia?
ali rizvi
There's conservative elements in both.
Just to give you an example that may be more recognizable to you is the Iranian theocracy.
joe rogan
If you can keep that closer to your face.
You don't want to vary too much in the sound.
You can just pull it towards you.
It moves around a lot.
ali rizvi
Oh, yeah, cool.
joe rogan
But it's weird.
These things are very directional.
ali rizvi
Sorry.
All right.
joe rogan
There we go.
ali rizvi
Oh, there.
Yeah, that's louder.
So the Iranian theocracy is a Shia theocracy.
So that's extremely conservative Shia Islam.
The Saudis are Sunni.
It's extremely conservative Sunni Islam.
joe rogan
What do they hate about each other, that they're willing to go to war?
ali rizvi
The Bronx successor.
It's a historical difference between Shias and Sunnis.
joe rogan
So it's like Baptists going after Catholics.
ali rizvi
Yeah, sort of in that way.
And yeah, pretty much similar.
They just have different ideas of what the belief should be.
And there is an element of labeling people who don't agree with you non-Muslims.
So a lot of Saudis will say that the Shias are kafir, they're apostates, because they rejected belief in the caliphs.
And then that makes them punishable by death.
And you know, you have to go out and you have to kill them.
And there's also an ethnic...
There's the Arab and Persian ethnic rivalry.
So it's extremely complicated, and that's why Bush I ended up in such a mess when he went into Iraq.
This is a hard thing to understand for a lot of people.
From what I read, I don't think he had any idea.
I don't think he knew the difference between Shias and Sunnis beyond just a superficial level.
joe rogan
He probably had no idea that that was going to go down, that there was going to be some sort of a brutal civil war.
To try to reclaim power.
I mean, no one in this country had any idea that that was going to happen.
There was going to be a civil war between the two competing factions of Islam.
ali rizvi
Yeah.
I have a friend who's...
His name is Faisal Mattar.
He grew up in Iraq, and he started the global secular humanist movement while he was in Iraq.
So he became a target for a lot of people.
And the global secular humanist movement now has, I think, 300,000 followers on Facebook and so on.
So it became huge.
And he was also from a Shia family, and he was targeted by Al-Qaeda.
And they managed to kill his brother.
After that, he was running around over all kinds of different countries until he finally got refugee status in the U.S., and he came here recently.
He's full of stories about Iraq and how complicated it is.
Some of the other people I've talked to, they say that the reason Saddam Hussein was so effective is because he ruled with an iron fist and he kept all of these sort of religious rivalries under control.
And he prevented anybody.
He was fairly pro-secular.
A lot of these dictatorships, they're secular.
And in the moment you took that fist away, everything just went nuts.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's what it seems like from our point of view, from our conception.
Confused point of view when all that was going down.
There was a very strange moment where most Americans were standing back going, wait, wait, wait, what's going on?
Like, they're competing against, they're fighting with each other?
Like, in their two rival sections?
What?
No one knew that there were rival factions of Islam.
This guy Reza Aslan, he is a very interesting sort of polarizing figure.
Some people think that he is an interesting historian, a voice of reason, and other people think he's completely disingenuous and not just incorrect about certain things, but that he's full of shit.
ali rizvi
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's sort of Sam Harris' take on him, is that he's just dishonest.
ali rizvi
I agree with Sam Harris on that.
I think he's very dishonest.
joe rogan
What is his objective?
Like, what is he trying to do?
Because my friend Duncan is enamored by him.
My friend Duncan read his book on Jesus and he's just, he said it's an absolutely fascinating book and just really thinks the guy's very interesting.
But then I talked to Sam about him and Sam said that he had some really dishonest dealings with him, some conversations with him where...
ali rizvi
Yeah.
He's, like, I've only read the stuff he's had.
I've had some exchanges with him on Twitter and so on.
And he's sort of like a very classic apologist.
joe rogan
And he's Muslim.
ali rizvi
Yeah, he's Muslim.
I don't know about his belief.
I'm not sure whether he really is a practicing or believing Muslim or not.
But he's definitely an apologist.
And he's one of these guys who, whenever anything terrible happens, he's like, well, we've got to look for the root cause.
Islam is not the root cause.
And at one point, he...
He's one of those guys who responds with everything with accusations of bigotry and Islamophobia.
He'll just call you a bigot.
And he knows especially that people here, especially liberal white Westerners, that's the last thing they want to be called.
It's just a great way to shut down the conversation.
And people know this.
People in the Muslim world, generally, they know this.
shut you up if you just accuse, they just accuse you of racism.
And so there's just so much guilt involved with that.
joe rogan
- Especially white people.
- Yeah.
ali rizvi
- We're so guilty.
- Yeah, and the white, sort of Western, like, you know, they mean well.
joe rogan
- Right, yeah.
ali rizvi
- But they have this sense that they're like, okay, we don't want to be called racist.
We don't want to be called bigots.
So, and I think he kind of, he uses that a lot.
And one of the things that he said, for instance, is that he actually wrote, he's like, these books, the Quran, the scriptures, they don't mean anything in and of themselves.
These words have no meaning.
It is a people, like a misogynist, violent person will bring their meaning out and they'll see in it what they want.
Like as if the book is full of Rorschach texts.
It's like inkblots that you can interpret and these words don't mean anything.
And I was just thinking about the implication, and I wrote this for the Richard Dawkins website, is, you know, if he's saying that, like, these people, they didn't get their ideas from the book, the book has nothing to do with it, then he's saying that all the people in the Muslim world are disproportionately inherently violent and misogynistic.
joe rogan
Right.
Because if the words don't have any meaning, then they've just chosen to behave this way.
It's got to be something in their DNA. And they're rationalizing it with those words that don't mean anything.
ali rizvi
And that's bigoted.
Essentially, that's actually even more bigoted because you're saying that these people are inherently like that.
It's in their DNA. That's the way the people are.
joe rogan
It's not that they've been misled by some ancient ideology.
ali rizvi
And you can't fix it, right?
It's like because they're just like that.
So to me, that's a much worse position to have.
It's a much more bigoted position to have.
And to neglect obvious causes, like, you know, when we talk about root causes, anytime someone says, Allahu Akbar, if they do something, or they say, Jesus made me do it, we always kind of ignore that.
Like, okay, let's ignore that.
Let's look beyond it.
But when you're looking beyond something, you're never going to see what's in front of you.
joe rogan
Right.
ali rizvi
So if I tell you I did something, a horrific act because it was my political beliefs or because I played a certain video game or I liked a certain band or...
I was pissed off about U.S. foreign policy.
You'll take that at face value.
Everyone will.
The moment anybody says U.S. foreign policy, you know, Reza Aslan, Glenn Greenwald, I'll be like, oh, okay.
They said what the cause was.
We should believe them.
But way more than U.S. foreign policy, they're telling you why they're doing things.
They're doing it for God.
They're doing it for the afterlife.
But when we listen to that, we don't take that at face value.
We're like, no, that's impossible.
It has to be something beyond it.
It's the only thing that we don't believe.
That religion and religious belief can actually do these things.
They can actually trigger people to act on them.
joe rogan
That's almost impossible to fix.
ali rizvi
It's a tough thing to fix.
And I... There's this one after that...
You know about the attack on the school in Pakistan where they killed 140 people and 132 kids.
And they just went and there were like seven suicide bombers that just went in and they just took out all those kids.
And they aged 12 to 14. So that shook up the world.
And...
After that, I was talking online to this Taliban sympathizer.
I don't know if he was a member of the Taliban, but he was definitely a sympathizer.
And he told me something that was actually really chilling.
And he said, it's not that I believe in an afterlife.
I know there's an afterlife.
He's like, we don't think of death as an end.
You know, death is, like, this is just a human concept, something people who believe in materialism believe.
We know that death is not an end.
And then he pointed out the Urdu word, which is the language from Pakistan, for death, which is intikal.
And intikal actually means transition.
It doesn't mean end.
You know, it doesn't mean death as we know it.
So he said even the word for death means transition, means you're moving on to another world.
And then he went into more detail.
He's like, these kids, if kids have had the chance to sin, there's a higher chance of them going to hell.
But if they're young and innocent, Oh, fuck Christ.
And then he said that...
I'm trying to remember all of it, because there were some really important elements of what he said that gives us insight into how they think.
Yeah, and then he said the reason that we blow ourselves up, he's like, you know, we're killing ourselves.
If death was such a bad thing, we wouldn't do it ourselves.
But we know where we're going, and we know where we're taking the kids as well.
So we just don't think of it in the way that you do.
And most Muslims, you know, and he was talking about all the Muslims condemning it.
He's like, most Muslims, their faith isn't as pure.
Really believed that there was a heaven.
They were doing the right thing.
They were going to get there.
They wouldn't be mourning this.
They would be celebrating it.
He's like, but they are of poor faith.
And, you know, we're of the right faith.
And I would say, you know, when you...
So that's the mindset that you're going up against.
And how do you fight it?
joe rogan
You fight it like that scene from Aliens where he says you've got to pull out and nuke it from orbit.
Ever see that scene where Bill Paxton...
ali rizvi
This is different from what you were saying about the drones earlier.
joe rogan
Yeah, it seems like we need to nuke the entire world.
Start fresh with new monkeys.
People are just so fucked.
The fact that a human being in 2015 can literally operate and think that way.
ali rizvi
No, it was absolutely amazing.
But it's important to...
I was watching this movie and I... No, was it a TV show?
And someone said something.
Well, they said that the moment you demonize your enemy or the moment you call your enemy the devil, You're not going to be able to understand them.
The moment you've decided that they're the other and that this is just pure evil, you'll never understand their motivation for why they do what they do.
I think it's important.
That was a very eye-opening conversation for me.
joe rogan
I'm sure.
Please go on.
ali rizvi
No, no.
I was just saying, I've heard that before.
People have told me that since I was a kid.
I was raised religiously.
You know, that, you know, it's not permanent, you know, this life is just temporary and it's the afterlife.
But I don't think anybody really, like, truly, truly believes that that's it and that's why this life is useless.
People still get upset when their loved ones die and, you know, they still fear death.
They don't want to die early.
If they really, really thought that they were going to someplace great afterwards, it wouldn't be that much of a fear for any of us.
I mean, imagine, like, if you thought, okay, my death is a fucking ticket...
Eternal bliss.
Then it's not something that would scare you if you really, really knew that.
And these people really know that.
And they're all too willing to kill themselves and kill others.
joe rogan
The Charlie Hebdo thing confused the shit out of me.
Not that people were willing to kill people over the cartoons, I kind of already had that idea in my head, but the reaction by a lot of left-wing progressive people in the United States condemning the racism of those cartoons.
I was like, what the fuck are you even talking about?
You're talking about a massacre, a horrific, murderous massacre.
And you've chose to condemn the quote unquote racism of these cartoons, which, you know, it's like killing the people that write Mad Magazine.
I mean, it's not much different.
You know, Mad Magazine or, you know, name any sort of controversial South Park, going after the guys from South Park, killing South Park.
Yeah.
Killing Matt Stone and Trey Parker.
I mean, it's not much different.
ali rizvi
Yeah.
No, no.
What is that?
joe rogan
That apologist thinking, that weird sort of thinking that's embodied by a lot of those really progressive left-wing, like really radical left-wing people.
ali rizvi
I think there's a sensitivity to hurting people and hurting their feelings.
joe rogan
Over murder?
ali rizvi
Over murder, yeah.
I think that they think...
They'll always say that I'm not defending the murders.
That was horrific.
I condemn it.
But.
And there's always a but.
And then there's this whole sort of justification for it.
This is a sensitive thing for me because I'm a free speech absolutist.
When I grew up, there's a lot of things I couldn't say.
I have a friend who's in jail for 10 years and he's been sentenced to lashing for doing exactly what I do here.
So when I look at it, him and I both grew up in Saudi Arabia.
We're both writers.
We're both pro-secularism.
But when I say something, I can say it and it's fine.
And when he does it, he gets lashed and tortured.
So free speech is a big thing for me.
So coming here, I just don't think when it comes to the cartoons or the movie, the interview, people are saying, well, it's a shitty movie anyway.
I didn't think so.
I thought it was hilarious.
But when they start talking about the content of what is being criticized or attacked, I just think it's completely irrelevant.
In the context of what's happening, it doesn't matter what was in the Charlie Hebdo paper.
joe rogan
Do you think they're doing that because they're terrified of retribution and they're so terrified that they're willing to side with the murderous Religious fundamentalists because they're almost worried that they're going to get attacked themselves.
They're like, well, you know, I mean, those cartoons were kind of really racist.
And I mean, I'm not saying that the murders were cool, but I'm saying like, hey, why are you promoting like horrible racist cartoons?
I mean, let's look at that.
ali rizvi
That's where the Islamophobia-phobia comes in.
joe rogan
They don't want to be called bigots.
They have a certain way of talking.
Have you ever noticed?
ali rizvi
Yeah, they do.
joe rogan
These people that are super progressive and super liberal, they have this weird accentuation of certain words.
I'm not saying that it's cool to murder all those people, but let's look at why were they so upset.
ali rizvi
Yeah.
It's, you know, it is what it is.
joe rogan
We live in an easy culture.
ali rizvi
It's easy.
Yeah, people are more upset about, it's not, there's this value, the value of freedom of speech, okay, which I think is extremely important.
joe rogan
Taken for granted very much so by Americans in some cases.
ali rizvi
Oh yeah, very taken for granted.
That's something that I, and Faisal, the guy from Iraq I told you about, he says the same thing, you know, when he came here.
A lot of people are sort of apologists about it because there's a freedom of speech and then there is this sort of political correctness and not to offend anybody.
And people will say, one thing I've been hearing a lot is freedom of speech doesn't mean the freedom to offend.
joe rogan
What does that mean?
ali rizvi
That's exactly what it means.
There's no point of freedom of speech.
joe rogan
And it means you have the freedom to talk about being offended by that freedom of speech that other person expressed.
ali rizvi
Yeah, everybody can say the fact that you can have this conversation about what freedom of speech means is that's what freedom of speech is.
And if the whole reason it's protected so strongly is because it means the right that all of us have to offend other people.
joe rogan
Right, which is why I have a huge issue when people say something that other people deem to be offensive, they automatically go after their employers and try to get them fired.
Like, this isn't just a freedom of...
You're not just speaking about them.
Now you're taking action to try to get them fired, which is very different.
This is a very different kind of activism, and it's mean.
Like, what you're doing is like...
There's a negativity attached to it that's very strange.
It's an aggressive negativity, a rebound from something that they believe is incorrect.
It's very weird.
ali rizvi
They have the right to be offended, but they don't have the right not to be offended.
That's the idea.
Nobody has a right not to be offended.
If you don't like something, you don't have to listen to it.
Or counter speech with speech.
joe rogan
Exactly.
That's a very good way of putting it.
Counter speech with speech.
Counter freedom with freedom.
If you don't like the way someone expresses themselves, talk about the way they express themselves and what specifically you find incorrect about it.
And that's how dialogues get started.
And people become illuminated by those sort of dialogues.
Even people that have opposing ideas.
You can see where a person comes from.
Even if you don't agree with it, you can see where a person comes from.
ali rizvi
We also talked about hate speech because I think one of the biggest problems with France and Europe and a lot of European countries is that they have laws against hate speech.
In the US, you have laws against hate crimes, but hate speech is protected as part of free speech, and I think that's right.
Remember the Westboro Baptist Church ruling, where the Supreme Court voted 8-1 to allow them to picket funerals?
And as much as that idea is abhorrent, or anything the Westboro Baptist Church does is abhorrent, That is their right, and they should be able to do it as long as it's not a crime and it's his speech.
But, you know, they have, in France, they've got Holocaust denial laws.
They have rules against, you know, attacking, you know, like, let me put it this way, the very same things, same rules, that their hate speech laws were actually used by the government at times to warn Charlie Hebdo.
Like, you know, what you're doing is you're engaging in hate speech.
So the same hate speech laws that actually protected the killers, right?
Protected their right to express themselves and to say, okay, do everything from subjugate women to, you know, impinge on gay rights, for instance.
Like, all of those same things, the same hate speech laws were used to warn the Charlie Hebdo people.
I mean, they had that fashion designer...
Who was arrested for anti-Semitic remarks that he made in a bar.
Right.
joe rogan
Amazing.
ali rizvi
Yeah, so if you have hate speech laws, if you have things like that, then that causes a lot of issues.
It doesn't work very well for people who are making the cartoons, like Charlie Hebdo, and actually ends up protecting their attackers and their ideology.
joe rogan
When I look at the apologists, especially in America, I often wonder whether or not It's a case of people, it's like very similar to people almost like winning the lottery and becoming spoiled and not appreciating the earning of that money.
Or someone who inherited millions of dollars and you usually find them all fucked up and drunk and become drug addicts.
They're so spoiled.
They're so spoiled by this freedom that they don't appreciate it.
It's almost like we've had so much freedom and it's gone on for so long with no consequences that until you actually see personally the effects of those consequences of free speech, you don't appreciate free speech for what it really truly is.
You may disagree with someone, but if you disagree with their ability to express themselves, you're a part of the problem.
ali rizvi
Yeah.
Yeah, I agree with all of that.
joe rogan
I think those cartoons are stupid as fuck.
I wouldn't draw them.
I wouldn't waste my time drawing those cartoons.
I think they suck.
It's not my culture.
I don't get it.
Maybe if I spoke French and I understood where they were coming from, I would think it would be funnier.
But to think that there's something wrong with them doing it to the point where you're bringing that up instead of a mass murder on a magazine.
Shooting the cartoonists, and the thing you want to discuss is like, well, those cartoons are really racist.
ali rizvi
Yes, the merit of the content has nothing to do with it.
It shouldn't even be an issue.
I don't even know why it was an issue.
Spoiled.
And there's this idea that supposing we said that the cartoons were hate speech, and they were criticizing an ideology that a lot of people found, a belief that a lot of people were very sensitive about.
Or like a historical public figure who's been dead for a long time and, you know, that people are sensitive about.
So, supposing you had that, you know, again, you know, sort of even the competition there.
You know, pull out, they used to lampoon religions, all the religions, it wasn't just Islam.
So, you know, pull out the Bible, pull out the Quran, open it up to certain things and, you know, there's more hate speech in those books than there could ever be in the Charlie Hebdo cartoons.
If you're talking about incitement to violence, you know, killing infidels, apostates, you know, go to Deuteronomy.
And if you go to Deuteronomy 20 and you read it, it reads like an ISIS rulebook.
It says, you know, go into the land, you know, put the sword to all of the men, you take the women and the children as slaves.
I mean, that's exactly what it says.
And then in the Quran, 47.3, it says the exact same thing.
joe rogan
Well, why is it then?
What is it about radical Islam where they don't just have that written, but take that and use it in a form of practice?
Whereas radical Christian fundamentalists very rarely go out and kill gays.
They very rarely, you know...
ali rizvi
Yeah, they did do it for a long time.
joe rogan
The Inquisition?
ali rizvi
Yeah, so they did.
So it was during that time that they did do it.
And there is a response a lot of times when you talk about Islam, when you criticize Islam.
They say, well, Christianity had its dark ages too, you know, several centuries ago.
I'm like, yeah, and how would you have reacted when that was happening then?
That's the same way you have to approach what's happening now with Islam because, you know, they're going through the same thing.
The books are really not that different.
Like the New Testament's a little nicer.
Like in the New Testament, all the torture begins after you die.
It's like the Old Testament's only during your life.
In the Quran, it's a bit of both.
joe rogan
Well, how did Christianity rise above?
How did they get past that into this lesser retarded stage that they're at right now?
ali rizvi
It's secularism, separating religion and state.
So the good thing about secularism is that it allows freedom of religion.
It's the only system that allows every religion to really openly The complete religious freedom for everybody.
But at the same time, it separates that from politics.
So it allows a system of coexistence.
And I kind of, I always think that there's several steps to enlightenment.
I mean, for me, enlightenment would be if nobody had any religious beliefs at all.
Everybody was just kind of operating rationally.
That would be very nice.
Hasn't happened anywhere yet.
But I would say that, you know, you'd have a reformation.
And after the reformation, that would get you to secularism, where you separate religion and state.
And then you move to a point where, you know, people can actually have that conversation and they can, you know, reject irrational beliefs entirely.
But the step before Reformation, in order to have a Reformation, you have to, especially in the Muslim world, you have to reject the idea of scriptural inerrancy.
You know, you have to stop taking the Koran literally, not just justifying the stuff that's in there, but just saying, okay, you know, there's this in here, we don't believe that anymore.
And stop thinking that it's the literal word of God, which is a very tough thing to do.
The Jews did it and the Christians did it.
joe rogan
What becomes the basis of your ideology then?
It seems like people want an ideology.
They want to have some sort of a very rigid set of rules and patterns of behavior that they're expected to follow And if those aren't coming from God, then they're coming from man If they're coming from man, they're open to dispute and that becomes the issue with a lot of people so much so that they're willing to accept These ideas that were written down that are preposterous if proposed today like the ancient writings and stories from the Bible from the Old Testament especially and
If you tried to say today that you found a book and that this book was written last week by God and he wanted me to read it to you.
And apparently, fuck all these scientists, there was actually just two people.
It was Adam and Eve.
And that's where people came from.
And Eve actually came from Adam's rib.
So that bitch is super lucky.
She fucked up the whole thing because she talked to the snake and she ate an apple.
And the snake told her, eat the apple.
But God said, don't eat the apple.
She ate the snake, and so because of that, we're fucked.
And they realized they were naked.
And people go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Shut the fuck up.
Get out of here.
ali rizvi
Just stop it right there.
joe rogan
Just get out of here, dummy.
Who taught you about life?
ali rizvi
But see, when you say all of that stuff...
And when we were talking about Mormonism and Scientology earlier, I mean, this stuff sounds so much more insane than Mormonism and Scientology.
joe rogan
It's right up there.
Well, the Scientology stuff's pretty fucking insane.
ali rizvi
No, that is pretty insane.
joe rogan
The whole thing about the Thetans and, you know, you're fucking from a volcano or some shit.
They drop your soul in a volcano.
ali rizvi
But this stuff is just as...
joe rogan
It's all nutty.
It's all...
Obviously fiction.
All obviously fiction.
And the more we become illuminated about the actual true nature of matter, of biological life, the process of atoms, and the subatomic particles, and when we get deeper and deeper into the very nature of reality itself, the more we can explain, the less religion becomes valid.
And the more it becomes pretty obvious that someone in a very distant time where there was no science and there was no There was no base of knowledge where it had been accumulated over thousands of years of people slowly but surely measuring things and figuring things out and coming up with newer and better ways to measure things that were based on the discoveries of people before them.
And we're all, all of us, I mean, the reason why we celebrate guys like Isaac Newton or Darwin is because we've all piggybacked on their discoveries and learned more.
And every scientist and every biologist and every anthropologist has dug up bones.
We've added another little piece to this puzzle that's constantly evolving and growing and changing.
And then something like religion comes along that says, stop all this fucking learning.
Cut it out.
I mean, the very idea of it is anti-progress because you're supposed to rely on some old ancient shit.
It's like going back to when Galileo was imprisoned or Copernicus was chastised.
Going back to when these people were thought of as enemies of God because they had these crazy ideas that we today accept as fact, measurable fact, undeniable fact.
They work.
ali rizvi
And it's also the process.
I mean, what's at the heart of religion is infallibility, like the idea that this can't change, that it's immutable.
So you have infallibility.
On the other hand, with science, the heart of scientific inquiry is falsifiability, which means just the whole idea that you start with the assumption that, okay, this could be wrong.
How do I prove that it's right?
And with faith, it's different.
You start with the conclusion.
You're like, this is my conclusion.
I don't need evidence for it.
Now I'm going to work backwards and see what I can do to strengthen my belief.
It's two completely different dynamics.
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean, the idea that the two of them can coincide, it seems less and less viable as time goes on.
ali rizvi
Yeah, just the basics, when you look at the basics, the way that they work.
joe rogan
And it also seems like as time goes on, because of these ideas being less and less compatible, the opposing factions, science and religion, are more vehemently opposed to each other.
They're more aggressive about their denial, or they're more aggressive about their Non-accepting of these fundamentalist ideas.
Scientists today are more aggressive about their ideas that atheism is the way to go and that these religious fundamentalist ideas that are being pushed on people are a form of ideological poison.
They fuck with the mind because they give the mind these very rigid Patterns that you're expected to adhere to and conform to and if you do not I mean the idea of like if you don't believe or you fall out of faith You should you're supposed to have your head removed.
I mean that should tell you right there What is what do you think you think with your fucking head?
Well, you've been thinking too much.
So we're gonna cut your fucking head off Don't think you need to abide by this shit that was written down on parchment Back when they thought the world was flat and the sun was 17 miles away.
Like that's what you need to abide by because otherwise you're gonna fuck up our party.
ali rizvi
Yeah, it kind of brings you back to the whole community thing that I think a lot of people they want that identification and they want that sense of identity and you know group identity that religion gives them.
They need it so much that that's why they take just attacks on Their ideology, personally.
joe rogan
Yeah, and they cheer when there's reprisal for these attacks.
These verbal attacks.
I mean, there's people that cheered when those guys were murdered.
ali rizvi
There's people that cheered all the time.
Where I grew up, people used to celebrate it all the time.
I mean, like educated people.
They wouldn't say it to...
Like, within our own living room, we're sitting there, you know, educated uncles and aunts who had, you know, been overseas and they'd studied overseas, they came back, you know, when...
Something like 9-11 would happen or, you know, any kind of attack against America would happen, even with civilians.
You know, be completely supportive of it.
But, you know, when they'd go out and they'd talk to their white friends, they'd be like, you know, yeah, this is terrible.
We condemn it.
There are root causes for it.
We should understand what their legitimate grievances are and why they did it, but that doesn't justify the murder.
joe rogan
But alone in your house?
ali rizvi
Oh, yeah, a lot of times.
Really?
joe rogan
Like, what would they say?
ali rizvi
Unfortunately, not particularly in my house, but...
Extended family, family friends, I mean, just on a daily basis, we're surrounded by it.
I mean, when the Salman Rushdie Fatwa came down, you know, a lot of my extended family, a lot of my friends, you know, teachers at school and everything, they all supported it.
joe rogan
Whoa!
Killing a guy who wrote a book.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Not even a good book.
ali rizvi
Yeah, I've never been able to read it.
Like, I like Salman Rushdie and I've read some of his stuff, but Satanic Verses just couldn't.
It's just really dense and I can't...
joe rogan
It's not interesting.
ali rizvi
It just, yeah.
It takes a lot of focus, I think, to really get through it.
You need to sit down and really...
joe rogan
Well, you need to be interested in it.
But it's just bizarre because, I mean, it's not even specifically about Muhammad, right?
I mean, the Satanic Verses is...
ali rizvi
It is about Muhammad's life.
joe rogan
Sort of?
ali rizvi
The satanic verses were...
I guess the way the Quran was supposedly revealed was that Muhammad got these revelations from above and at one point he got these revelations that said that certain elements of idolatry are okay.
It was like these three idol gods and you know, okay fine, we can respect that or people that follow them, they're okay.
And then later on he's like, no, no, that was Satan talking to me.
It wasn't God.
So those were the satanic verses.
joe rogan
Right.
ali rizvi
So they didn't end up being part of the Quran.
And that's where Salman Rushdie got the idea.
So it was based on an actual documented piece of sort of Islamic history.
And he changed the name of Muhammad and he had a lot of similar elements.
It was symbolic of his life.
joe rogan
So because he changed the name, he thought he was going to be okay?
ali rizvi
Yeah, I mean, he knew that it was a satire, like Animal Farm.
He used animals to represent real people.
joe rogan
Right.
ali rizvi
So he did this.
He had fictional characters and, you know, sort of different time settings.
joe rogan
And he thought it would be okay because he had fictional characters because he didn't mention Muhammad by name.
ali rizvi
I don't know if he thought it would be okay.
I mean, I think that he knew that there would be some backlash.
I didn't think at that time.
I'm not sure if he really thought that he would have to go under hiding.
joe rogan
He probably would have never wrote it.
I mean, is he okay now?
Is he allowed to just go anywhere now?
Like, did they ever release or relieve him?
ali rizvi
I don't know if he travels with armed security.
I mean, I don't know him personally, but he does tend to do all the talk shows and everything.
I mean, he was really under hiding in those first, like, ten years.
And this is where the spread the risk comes in.
I think there's so many people talking about this stuff now that we're not in the rusty days anymore.
joe rogan
Right.
ali rizvi
There's a lot of people who are talking about it, writing about it.
It's all online.
So that process has started.
So in that way, I'm a little bit optimistic.
The fact that Salman Ersteen can really show up at talk shows, you see him everywhere.
He does public speeches.
He does debates.
joe rogan
I wonder what it's like if he does the Bill Maher show.
I wonder what kind of security they have.
ali rizvi
Yeah, I don't know.
I'm not sure.
joe rogan
I wouldn't want to be there to see it in person.
ali rizvi
Yeah.
joe rogan
Because, you know, you wouldn't want to be there the day it goes down.
ali rizvi
Well, you know, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, she does travel with armed guards.
joe rogan
Yeah?
Does she?
ali rizvi
Yeah, that's pretty well known.
So she still does.
And it's actually tougher for women who decide to change their mind about Islam.
Because, you know, like with my girlfriend, she's also like a secular activist.
Whenever anybody wants to send me hate mail, hate messages, they'll always, you know, sort of argue with me.
They'll be like, you know, you're bullshit, everything you're saying, it sucks.
You know, are you going to go to hell or, you know, you should get your head chopped off, whatever it is.
You know, they'll say things like that.
But with her...
It's always a sexual thing.
The threats that she gets are...
joe rogan
Rape threats.
ali rizvi
Rape threats.
All kinds of things that they would do.
And she'll get hundreds of them.
joe rogan
Hundreds?
ali rizvi
Yeah, hundreds.
joe rogan
Now, what do you do when you get those?
Do you report those to the FBI? Do you save them?
Do you document them?
ali rizvi
Yeah, we save them and we do...
I mean, the hundreds actually happened in one incident.
There was a politician...
In Pakistan, who she knows personally and who has been sort of very vocal in his opposition to the Taliban.
And she just said that she supports him, right?
And just because of that and because he is under a lot of threat.
And she had some argument with some of the people who opposed him.
And then the rape threats started coming in.
And so at that point, you know, we would report it.
So we will report things like that.
I can't talk too much about what happened.
But most of the time they come from overseas and some kids sitting in villages with a laptop or a cell phone and sending threats.
But there's always a chance that one or two of them are real and this is obviously a real issue.
But generally, it's a lot worse for women than it is for men.
Because there's this idea, especially among conservative cultures and a lot of the Muslim culture, is that if a man decides not to follow religion, that's a separate thing.
But if a woman decides not to follow religion, she's lost all morality.
So she'll do anything.
She'll drink, she'll have sex.
joe rogan
Crazy bitch.
ali rizvi
Yeah, exactly.
joe rogan
How dare she.
ali rizvi
Drink and have sex.
joe rogan
She's trying to be like an American.
ali rizvi
Exactly.
That's how they measure morality.
There is a lot of the people who kill people and they behead people and stuff, they're really upset.
When they talk about morality, like lapsed Western morality, they talk about...
joe rogan
Chicks in miniskirts.
ali rizvi
Drinks, sex, things like that.
joe rogan
Unbelievable.
ali rizvi
But they don't think of the murder and the martyrdom and all that.
Those things are virtuous.
They actually think that those things are good.
joe rogan
It's so backwards.
It's so...
I mean, the word archaic, I keep using it, but that really is the word.
It's such an ancient version of thinking.
It's almost like an operating system that's so outdated, like you're trying to fuck with DOS. You know what I mean?
You're trying to get on Twitter, but you're only using DOS. It's like, god damn.
The operating system of fundamental religion is so fucking broken.
ali rizvi
A lot of times they think that they have the updated software.
We have the most recent religion, you know, like Islam came after Christianity, it came after, and then we had this great civilization, which they did at one point.
And why are we in such bad shape in all over the world?
So that's frustrating.
joe rogan
Sorry, I watched this speech once where this guy was talking about He was asking questions or the audience was asking questions about certain aspects of Islam and how do they know whether, you know, if one religion says one thing but Islam says another.
And his answer was, it's very simple, because Islam is the truth.
And everybody starts clapping.
I'm like, wow!
That's hilarious.
It's hilarious.
ali rizvi
What we should look into is, like, you know, there is precedent for this.
Like, we were talking about the holy books earlier, and the holy books are very similar.
A lot of the stuff is, like, the Old Testament actually mentions stoning non-virtual brides to death.
The Quran doesn't even mention it.
It's in the Hadith, which is a separate sort of like a lesser source of guidance in Islam.
And so there's many things that are in all of the scriptures that are pretty abhorrent.
But how is it that, you know, Jews and Christians were able to move past it?
I mean, they had their dark ages, too.
They did some really fucked up shit at one point.
But they moved past it and they're here now.
joe rogan
What is the answer to that?
ali rizvi
I think that, like, and this is one of the things I'm exploring in my book.
I think, like, with Jews and with Christians, they were able to, like, have a genuine reformation where they're able to bond and come together on a sense of community rather than ideology.
Like, you know, if you're Jewish, you can be an atheist Jew, you can be an agnostic Jew, you can be a secular Jew.
You can be an Orthodox Jew, but nobody's ever going to say, okay, you're not a Jew anymore.
joe rogan
Right.
ali rizvi
Because you did this, you eat bacon or whatever.
With Christians, again, we were talking about the Catholics, right?
A lot of them are pro-choice.
They'll still end up going to church.
joe rogan
But you can't be an atheist Christian.
ali rizvi
Technically, you can't be an atheist Christian.
joe rogan
Not even technically.
If you tell Christians that you're an atheist, they'll look at you like you're just shit on a plate.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
I mean, they are not interested in hearing that.
There's a strong faction of Christianity, fundamentalist faction of Christianity, that they are incredibly upset at the word atheist or atheism.
ali rizvi
No, it's a very bad word.
I mean, they actually think of atheists as worse than rapists.
I think I was reading that.
They had a survey on who you despise most.
People actually think atheists are worse than rapists.
But at the same time, you don't get...
joe rogan
You don't get murders.
ali rizvi
And you don't even get excommunicated from the community just because you use condoms.
No one's going to say, okay, you use birth control, so you're not a Catholic anymore.
But with Islam, a lot of Muslims are still in that.
You can sit 10 people down.
One of them's going to say, music's a sin.
Another one's going to say, you've got to cover your head.
there's going to be fragmentation based on that.
But if they are able to come around, if they're able to focus instead of the ideology, focus on the community, you know, we were saying the identity of, you know, going to church, you know, having your own family and friends and, you know, that sort of communal atmosphere that religious, belonging to a religious group that sort of communal atmosphere that religious, belonging to a religious group Which is a benefit for a lot of people.
joe rogan
That sense of community is so huge for a comfort to people, providing people with this group that they can rely upon and they feel connected to and joined with.
There's a lot of benefit to that.
The idea that it has to be attached to some archaic belief system To some ridiculous old shit that was written down when people had a very poor understanding of reality.
Very poor.
And that's what's really bizarre about the Islamic religion, is that at one point in time, you know, in the early...
You know, just like the 1200s and before, Islam was at the forefront of science and philosophy and writing.
I mean, it was one of the Islamic world, the Muslim world, was one of the more advanced cultures on earth.
Yeah.
ali rizvi
And it wasn't really, again, this is where we make that distinction between Islam, the religion, and the Muslims.
Followed it.
And a lot of this was done by the Mutazilites, which was a very sort of open-minded, very progressive sect of Muslims.
And so a lot of those things happened not because of Islam, but despite it.
joe rogan
Even back then?
ali rizvi
Yeah, even back then.
It's always been like that.
I mean, Newton was a religious Christian.
joe rogan
He was like a virgin, though, too.
Wasn't he really weird?
ali rizvi
Yeah, he was a virgin.
At that time, there was no evolution.
Nobody knew about evolution.
It was pre-Darwin and everything.
So there's a lot of things he didn't know.
If he had known, he may not have been.
We can't speculate on that.
But, I mean, he was a religious Christian, but we don't identify his achievements.
As Christian achievements.
joe rogan
Right, I see what you're saying.
ali rizvi
We don't identify like Albert Einstein's achievements as something, and he wasn't even, Albert Einstein wasn't even religious.
So with this, the fact that there were Muslims in a certain part of the world that were engaging in a lot of scientific inquiry, and they were really moving forward, and they were being progressive, and they're making new discoveries.
This is something that is more of a testament to science and to free thinking than it is to the religion itself.
They just happen to be Muslims.
joe rogan
That's similar to the fact that Darwin, when he was proposing his theories, the predominant scientific community was Christian.
Most of the people that he told his ideas to were in opposition of these ideas initially because It went opposite of their Christian beliefs.
We think of scientists today as being almost universally secular, or at least the ones that we pay attention to and respect, we think of them as having, at the very least, an agnostic religious base.
But back then, they were predominantly Christian.
ali rizvi
Yeah, a lot of them.
They were.
joe rogan
In America and, yeah.
ali rizvi
Everywhere.
I think what we do is we sometimes look at it the other way around.
When you had all that scientific progress happening in sort of the golden age of Muslims, then that was happening again, like it was happening despite the fact that it was Islam.
Now when you have all of these, all the terrorism, all these things happening, there's a direct relationship between words and the scripture and what they're doing.
So what we do is now we say, okay, just because they're Muslims, you know, they just happen to be Muslim.
That's why they're doing it.
But at that time, we actually attribute it to Islam when it's really the other way around.
Right?
joe rogan
That makes sense.
ali rizvi
Like there isn't anything in the Quran that...
I mean, the Quran says strange things just like any other holy scripture.
In Surah 86, verses 5 to 7, it says that man was created from a fluid ejected between the backbone and the ribs.
So essentially it's saying that semen or sperm was created in the chest.
joe rogan
The backbone and the ribs?
ali rizvi
The backbone and the ribs.
joe rogan
It could be like the belly, right?
It could be like this rib.
ali rizvi
Yeah, I mean, you can broaden it and you can try to justify it.
joe rogan
It could be like where your liver, the lower ribs.
ali rizvi
You think so?
joe rogan
Yeah, it could be.
ali rizvi
I think it's just the testes, man.
joe rogan
It could be.
It could be all sorts of...
That seems like a pretty vague...
There's a lot of ribs.
ali rizvi
Yeah, it's like saying Chicago's in the Western Hemisphere.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ali rizvi
But you miss the Western Hemisphere because this is really, you know...
There's absolutely no scientific basis to that whatsoever.
unidentified
Right.
ali rizvi
It's just flat out wrong.
But, you know, they...
So it doesn't have any, the Quran doesn't necessarily, it's not conducive to, you know, robust scientific inquiry.
joe rogan
Right.
ali rizvi
But it is unfortunately linked, like, you know, the words of the Quran, the scripture, it is linked to a lot of the violence that you see, a lot of the subjugation of women that you see.
And that connection It's something that should be acknowledged.
joe rogan
That's Islamophobic.
How dare you?
ali rizvi
There you go.
I'm a racist.
joe rogan
You are.
You're racist against yourself.
ali rizvi
Yeah.
joe rogan
You son of a B. How dare you?
ali rizvi
Gross and racist.
unidentified
Gross and racist.
ali rizvi
Just like...
joe rogan
Gross as well?
unidentified
Yeah.
ali rizvi
Ben Affleck.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
That's right.
He was a silly boy.
Yeah, that Ben Affleck thing was pretty weird, huh?
I think he was just trying to get brownie points, though.
unidentified
I really do.
ali rizvi
But it's just that on that show, like, the fact that that happened, it was such outrage everywhere.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ali rizvi
Like, I've just noticed that when someone says something like that, or if there's a Quran burnt or cartoons drawn, there's just, like, a lot of outrage.
But it's just not the kind of thing you see when people...
Burn people alive.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ali rizvi
Then you get hashtags.
When Boko Haram, like, you know about Boko Haram?
Killing 2,000 people, kidnapping all those schoolgirls.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ali rizvi
You get hashtags and things.
You don't get the kind of outcry that you get over cartoons.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, that was in Africa, too.
And we have a way of just going, ah, it's over there.
ali rizvi
You know, like Darfur.
unidentified
Yeah.
ali rizvi
There's like 500,000 people killed by an Arab, the Janjaweed militia.
joe rogan
We could go on and on and on forever, right?
ali rizvi
Yeah, we could.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Before I get too depressed, let's end this.
ali rizvi
Yeah.
joe rogan
When will your book be available?
ali rizvi
I'm still working on it right now.
We're...
I'm in the middle of negotiating, talking to publishers.
It's still happening.
There's more interest in it than I thought there would be.
It's a good thing.
I'm looking forward to it.
I think the timeline is probably...
I would say about a year.
That's, like, my personal goal.
joe rogan
Well, let me know when it's done and it's out, and let's do this again, man.
This is great.
ali rizvi
Yeah, it'd be awesome.
joe rogan
Give people your Twitter address.
What is your Twitter address?
ali rizvi
Twitter address is Ali Amjad Rizvi.
It's A-L-I-A-M-J-A-D-R-I-Z-V-I. And a website they can go to as well?
A website, you can just Google it, and I've got Huffington Post archives.
It's just huffingtonpost.com slash Ali hyphen A hyphen Rizvi.
joe rogan
Great conversation, man.
I really appreciate it.
It was a lot of fun.
ali rizvi
Yeah.
joe rogan
Thank you.
I don't want to say fun, stimulating, depressing at times, but educational.
ali rizvi
Well, at least it's enlightening.
joe rogan
Yes, very enlightening.
unidentified
Thank you.
ali rizvi
You've got to have a diagnosis before you get into management.
A diagnosis is not the fun part.
joe rogan
Yeah, exactly.
Well, thank you, brother.
Appreciate it.
ali rizvi
Yeah, thank you.
unidentified
Thank you.
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