Jan. 31, 2017 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
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unidentified
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So. | |
| Mm. | ||
| Mm. | ||
| I believe you know that I'm Dave Rubin, and this is a very special episode of the Rubin Report. | ||
| You know, we're doing this live stream thing now. | ||
| We just got all the technology in the new studio here. | ||
| We can now live stream to YouTube and to Facebook and to Periscope and a couple other places, and we've got a few other tricks up our sleeve. | ||
| But today we're going directly to YouTube on this. | ||
| Just a quick A little recap before I bring on my guest today. | ||
| I've done two interviews today that I think sort of get to the heart of everything that I kind of do, that I'm very excited about. | ||
| So I usually don't tease interviews before we release them, but I'll do that today. | ||
| So this morning I had Glenn Beck in here, which was really great. | ||
| You know, he's an interesting guy for a million reasons. | ||
| Even just tweeting about him this morning, half the people immediately hate him, half the people love him, half the people just send me pictures of him snorting Cheetos. | ||
| Weird stuff, but we had a really, really great discussion about liberty and individualism and sort of common ground, and can some of us who don't agree on every little thing politically come together to form this new center? | ||
| Hint, I think the answer is yes. | ||
| And then I just interviewed a really fascinating guy by the name of Fleming Rose, and if you don't know who he is, you at least know his work, because he was the editor of the Danish newspaper that published the Mohammed cartoons, Back in 2005, which caused sort of worldwide mayhem and 200 dead people, and we had a great discussion about free speech and religion and secularism and all that good stuff. | ||
| So, for those of you watching this right now, if you are in the L.A. | ||
| area, I'm actually going to be speaking at UCLA tomorrow, Wednesday night, with Fleming Rose and Steve Simpson from the Ayn Rand Institute, and it's open for students at UCLA and for regular citizens. | ||
| So come and say hi. | ||
| And I spoke at Portland State University this weekend, which was fantastic, with Christina Hoffsommers and Pete Boghossian. | ||
| And it was just great. | ||
| 400 kids that wanted to talk about freedom and free speech. | ||
| And it was wonderful. | ||
| And they even cancelled the protest. | ||
| They said we were fascists, and then the anti-fascists didn't show up. | ||
| I guess they were playing video games or something. | ||
| Anyway, the reason we're doing this live today Is because of this executive order that Trump signed in the last couple days, which everyone is calling a Muslim ban. | ||
| I have the actual text of the whole thing right here. | ||
| I've read it. | ||
| It's a couple pages long. | ||
| I've read the whole thing. | ||
| I shot my direct message for tomorrow, which will be for our episode with Glenn Beck. | ||
| It has the entirety of my thoughts on the executive order and all that. | ||
| But I thought what we could do today, because I wanted to get a little ahead on this, is talk to my friend and now three-time Rubin Report guest, I think he's only the second three-timer, Faisal Saeed Al Mutar in New York. | ||
| How are you, brother? | ||
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unidentified
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Hey, Dave, how are you? | |
| I'm doing well. | ||
| Congratulations on the new studio, by the way. | ||
| What's that? | ||
| Congratulations on the new studio. | ||
| Oh, thank you. | ||
| We gotta do this live. | ||
| I think you're gonna be in LA in a couple weeks, right? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, I will. | ||
| Hopefully. | ||
| Yeah, we're gonna catch up as well. | ||
| It's been a while. | ||
| It has been a while. | ||
| Alright, so here's how I want to start. | ||
| I'm gonna give a brief intro, and then I want you to tell the story of Faisal. | ||
| So, you are a refugee. | ||
| You are an actual Iraqi refugee. | ||
| You came to America about three years ago, I believe. | ||
| You have a green card right now. | ||
| We've become good friends. | ||
| I consider you one of the stalwart fighters for Western secular values, dealing with the difficult issues of Islamism and the difference between criticizing ideas and people, all of the stuff that I know my audience cares about. | ||
| But for the people that don't know who you are, let's put a face on what's going on here before we get to the order itself. | ||
| Tell me a little bit about yourself. | ||
| Well, I've been here four years. | ||
| I arrived in March 2013. | ||
| So where to start? | ||
| I was born right after the first Iraq war, so I'm quite younger than most people expect. | ||
| I lived my childhood under Saddam Hussein and then the U.S. | ||
| intervention and followed by the civil war between the Sunni and Shia factions. | ||
| I started kind of, my kind of motion to activism started around the first Iraqi elections in 2005 and I saw the rise of sectarianism around there and the Sectarian language, especially in the eyes of sectarian parties that eventually ruled the country. | ||
| So I was raised in a liberal Muslim household. | ||
| That may sound an oxymoron for some of the people, but I do believe that that thing actually exists. | ||
| Can you describe what that means, actually, if you live in a liberal Muslim household in Iraq? | ||
| What does that actually mean? | ||
| Yeah, so I consider myself very lucky in that regard. | ||
| So my dad studied, I think my mom as well, they both studied in the United Kingdom, and my dad is a medical doctor and my mom is a lawyer. | ||
| And I was raised mostly, I mean the person I had most relationship with when it comes to intellectual conversations was my dad. | ||
| So his view is that he's a Muslim, to some extent practicing, has his doubts, and he said that faith is not something to be imposed. | ||
| So I want you as my son, my youngest son, Faisal Mutar, to read and to explore. | ||
| And if you want to be a Muslim, be a Muslim. | ||
| If you don't want to be a Muslim, that's fine. | ||
| You are my son. | ||
| I'll always love you. | ||
| So yeah, by the time I I was 12 and I started reading, I think I mentioned that in a previous show, I started reading about different religions and so on, and it didn't make sense at all. | ||
| And I told my dad that this actually does not make sense. | ||
| And even though he's a Muslim himself, I said, okay, that's fine. | ||
| I'm glad as long as you're intellectually honest with yourself. | ||
| So that's kind of what I, that's, I mean, I mean, that actually may sound like liberal even compared to the United States, I assume, is that the idea of being raised in such families. | ||
| So I was raised in this background and then the moment I was kind of a bubble, to say the least. | ||
| So I go outside the house and then there's like a clash of civilizations between the kind of conservative, quite hypocritical society. | ||
| And as a result, I started getting some threats and so on from militias, because at the time in 2005-2006-2007, if people are familiar with, Al-Qaeda kind of took over some parts of West Baghdad. | ||
| They did not take over them, like ISIS now takes over Mosul and stuff, but in terms of like, you see like Al-Qaeda fighters walking around and you see like Some dead bodies that I had to walk on going to school and I saw like people getting killed in front of my eyes and so on so that's I still remember like one of the first weeks in my high school it was when Al-Qaeda attacked the police station in front of my school and like most of the glass were destroyed so fast forward to a bit modern time in 2007 my eldest brother Samer | ||
| I was going to work with three of his friends and he was stopped by a false checkpoint of Al-Qaeda and they kidnapped him and we didn't know what happened. | ||
| He just disappeared and some of his friends said that he was kidnapped by militia of Al-Qaeda and it took us months and months and months and my mom and my dad always like hearing news that oh we found him over there we found him over there blah blah blah So eventually, the area that my brother was kidnapped, the Iraqi police, I think the U.S. | ||
| military as well, figured out the al-Qaeda people, and then they showed a picture of my brother, and one of the people said that, yes, I killed the guy. | ||
| And then they showed the picture of his three friends. | ||
| Within also that same year, that was at the end of 2007, Al-Qaeda came to my cousin's shop, which is kind of like a deli, like he sells groceries and stuff, and they came and they shot him and killed him. | ||
| So, things were all bubbling up, I've lost some friends, all of that, and the situation kept getting worse and worse. | ||
| I left Iraq in 2009, just trying to escape my life, and one of the easiest countries for me to go to at the time was Lebanon, because Lebanon allows, if you have like a thousand dollars, you show it at the entry, they give you like a visitor visa, and I was supposed to apply to the UK, And they rejected me three times, one after the other. | ||
| They have like also all kinds of regulations. | ||
| They were asking for thousands of dollars in the savings account and stuff. | ||
| And I was just like, Just escaping, like, Al-Qaeda killing me. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Wait, let's just pause there for a second because it almost sounds like there's a certain degree of bribery, I guess is the best way to put it, that you have to pay to get into Lebanon and then you are going to have to pay again to get transit basically to the UK. | ||
| That's why you see many Saudis walking around London and here in Washington, New York and Los Angeles where you live because they have the money, right? | ||
| So then as a result, also Lebanon was bubbling up and there was lots of Sunni-Shiite conflict happening there. | ||
| And I was also afraid for my life because I'm a foreigner to some extent. | ||
| So I said, okay, in Malaysia, they give a kind of British education over there. | ||
| So I went there And I applied for UNFCR, the United Nations Committee for Refugees, and then I applied and then I arrived in the United States in 2013. | ||
| Within that period of struggle, I I've generally been a writer, mostly kind of a small blogger. | ||
| I also started the Global Secular Humanist page, which eventually became one of the largest in the world that advocates for secularism and so on, which is kind of that, that's kind of my claim to fame. | ||
| And yeah, and here I am. | ||
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unidentified
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So that's kind of my, my small, my small biography. | |
| And people probably have seen me in case they watch some of the media and the news and social media and so on. | ||
| Yeah, and you gave us a real truncated version of it there, but you know what, when we post this once it's not live anymore, we'll have the link to our original sit-down where you extrapolate a little bit on some of the specifics. | ||
| So, okay, you get to America, and I know you fairly well right now. | ||
| You stand for what I think are pretty much the right things, whether we agree on every little thing is irrelevant to me, but you stand for secularism and Western values and decency, human decency and liberty and all that stuff. | ||
| When you got here, what was it like being an Iraqi in America? | ||
| Well, I'm going to tell you a bit of a funny story. | ||
| So I landed in Los Angeles when I arrived in the United States. | ||
| And the first thing I went to was down... I thought I landed in Mexico. | ||
| So my first post in America was, what the fuck did I just land in Mexico? | ||
| Because everybody around me was speaking Spanish. | ||
| So I was like, well, did I go to the wrong flight? | ||
| So yeah, I went to downtown Houston, downtown Los Angeles, and it was not really interesting. | ||
| So anyway, but so I moved to Texas where my brothers lived. | ||
| And I am very impressed. | ||
| I mean, I love, I mean, I've been to 40 states since I arrived to this country. | ||
| I mean, I didn't expect the United States to be as big as it is. | ||
| It seems like it's really big. | ||
| And it's beautiful. | ||
| I mean, I have a very beautiful hospitality story that a family in Washington, D.C. | ||
| invited me to celebrate the first Fourth of July In my in the United States that was 2013 that I consider right now to be my American family. | ||
| So they invited me to Washington and then we celebrate the 4th of July and then after I moved to Washington DC I stayed I lived with them for quite a while and they treated me Bigly, right? | ||
| Good word, good word. | ||
| And yeah, I've seen kind of a face of America that is very hospitable, very friendly, very lovely. | ||
| Had some bad interactions here and there, like some freaking Hasidic Jew in New York telling me that I come from a dirty land and I'm responsible for Jewish genocide and so on. | ||
| There like some burger place saying me, go back to Iraq Go back to Iraq and all of that shit. | ||
| But in general, I mean, looking at the big picture, I would say the United States showed me a very friendly face. | ||
| People, at least the bubble I live in, of people who think kind of like us and mostly liberal or center-left, center-right and so on, except me, as you just beautifully said, that you consider me a fighter for liberal values and human rights and so on. | ||
| So yeah, I mean, I mean, I don't, I mean, I consider the United States right now to be my home. | ||
| I am very lucky to be here, very lucky to have been accepted. | ||
| And that is kind of the result why I've kind of, I don't know if you have noticed in the past three days, is that I've been very critical of all the Trump ban because I know, I mean, I don't consider myself a special to some extent. | ||
| I, because I know a lot of the, Liberal amazing people within Iraq and Saudi Arabia and so on and I would love them to have this experience I would love them to see That there is another side of the West then I mean my first experience with the United States probably Thought about this before was seeing a US tank going in front of my house. | ||
| That's the first time I meet an American and Right. | ||
| That's not a great intro. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And I've saw like, and then the war and they're like, all of what I've seen is that U.S. | ||
| people sitting in Humvees and firing bullets at extremists and al-Qaeda coming in and they're fighting rockets. | ||
| So this is kind of my experience with the kind of the, and obviously, I mean, I assume some of them are good people, but, but I mean, generally, I mean, U.S. | ||
| Army is U.S. | ||
| Army and they have to do military stuff, but like, this is, I've met U.S. | ||
| military before in Iraq and they were also friendly and stuff but that's kind of like it was mostly a military but coming here and seeing the civilian life and seeing what Americans are like changed my view about lots of things and considering that someone who grew up in Dar Saddam and all of the U.S. | ||
| propaganda, Iraqi propaganda, Dar Saddam against the U.S. | ||
| being the Satan and so on. | ||
| My experience coming to America and seeing the different cultures and Living now in one of the most diverse cities in the world. | ||
| Kind of opened my eyes and that's kind of motivates me to always constantly defend the United States whether in public forums or private forums or even defend it in any way possible. | ||
| Working counter-extremism. | ||
| How can we defeat ISIS and all of these groups? | ||
| And I would like as much as possible to get this opportunity given to as many people as possible who are escaping danger. | ||
| Probably one in the same situation as I am. | ||
| And yes, I've been very critical of the band, mainly... Okay, so let's pause there for a sec, because I want to just do one other thing before we talk about the band specifically, which is your work, which I know is a little bit in transition right now, but a lot of the work that you do, and by the way, you're in New York, I don't know if we mentioned that earlier, you said one of the most diverse places, but just FYI, you are in New York, a lot of the work that you've done and that you do is directly related to helping people in closed societies. | ||
| You're trying to find the individuals in these societies that are the most vulnerable to extremism. | ||
| The atheists, the gay people, the freethinkers, etc, etc. | ||
| And you're trying to get these ideas to flourish, to untie them from religion. | ||
| Is that all fair to say? | ||
| Well, to some extent. | ||
| I mean, I consider myself, my work is a mix of humanitarianism and also to do damage control. | ||
| I mean, I think that the people, the voices of the support of human rights and secularism and all of the values that we stand for is the best counter narrative to extremism. | ||
| And and extremism for me and and obviously being kind of on the receiving end of extremism of losing my brother and losing obviously I have some emotional reasons why I'm doing what I'm doing but but also rational reasons is that There are people within these regions in the Middle East and Southeast Asia who are living in these places and literally have nobody to help them. | ||
| So, I mean, I wrote this article recently about how it's easier to start a terrorist group in the Middle East and start a liberal one. | ||
| And one of the main reasons for that is not just because of lack of moderates or lack of liberals and so on. | ||
| It's because if you start a terrorist group, let's say in Iraq, and you are a Sunni extremist, you have millions of dollars coming to you from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and so on. | ||
| You are a Shia militia. | ||
| You get millions of dollars coming from Iran. | ||
| But if you are a liberal who stands for the most of the values that we stand for, you hardly you work as a taxi driver and can hardly feed your family. | ||
| And that's right. | ||
| That balance is something is that balance is something that I'm I would say I'm dedicating my life to change is that this is this is unfair that, for example, right, right. | ||
| But are we and as other bloggers are like just having a blogs on the Internet, while like channels like Al Jazeera Arabic That calls for killing of homosexuals and misogyny and all of these things are saving millions of gas money, natural gas and oil. | ||
| And these are the people that we should help. | ||
| And I, being the privileged in that regard, that I was one of the people who escaped That part of the world. | ||
| I'm bilingual. | ||
| Not bisexual, just so I can be clear. | ||
| Whatever! | ||
| This is America, dude! | ||
| Whatever floats your boat! | ||
| So, bilingual, well-connected, educated, and so on. | ||
| I would like to spread that and help spreading these ideas. | ||
| So, yeah, my work. | ||
| I'm starting my new organization, Ideas Beyond Borders. | ||
| That's going to happen in the next few weeks. | ||
| So this is, it's mostly been around this kind of ideas is that get these people the best counter narrative to extremists, get the maximum help as possible to defeat the extremists. | ||
| And that's, that's what I'm concerned mission of my life. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And by the way, you know, some of the work that you do, you know, it's nice that you get some of these public accolades, but some of the work, you know, there's somebody that we can't even really go into the story right now that we've been trying to help facilitate a free thinker that we've been trying to, I don't think they actually read it. | ||
| that could be complicated now because of this whole executive order. | ||
| So let's shift to this thing. | ||
| So as I said, in my direct message that I taped today, and it'll be up tomorrow, I read it. | ||
| I actually read it. | ||
| I know you read it as well. | ||
| Most of the people that are online and on television, I don't think they actually read it. | ||
| They just start screaming about it. | ||
| So we can go through every point in there if you want. | ||
| We can talk about the parts that are more personal to you, because the green card for you is a very important piece. | ||
| The first part that I just want to put out there, and maybe you disagree with me, and feel free, obviously, is that, in my view, this is not a Muslim ban, because if you took the top five countries that Muslim people live in, including Indonesia and Pakistan, there's over 750 million Muslims that are exempt from this, that aren't on the list. | ||
| Now, we could argue whether the list is idiotic, because Saudi Arabia's not on there, and 19 of the 21 hijackers from 9-11 weren't on there. | ||
| Pakistan's not on there, et cetera, et cetera. | ||
| Turkey's not on there. | ||
| But do you think it's fair to say that this is not a Muslim ban? | ||
| No, I think it is. | ||
| I mean, it's more complicated. | ||
| So, for example, I mean, within, for example, Iraq or some other countries, people who are of Israeli citizenship are not allowed to enter Iraq, right? | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| But Iraqi Jews are allowed, sorry, American Jews are allowed to enter Iraq because American. | ||
| But so somebody can say that the banning against Israeli citizens coming to Iraq is a Jewish ban. | ||
| Somebody can interpret that as a Jewish ban, which is partially true, right? | ||
| I mean, Israel is the quote-unquote the Jewish state and to ban the people come from Israel. | ||
| So here is why I do consider it partially to be a Muslim ban is first of all, they put the caveat over there saying that religious minorities are exempt. | ||
| So, when you're talking about Muslim-majority countries and religious minorities are exempt, who are you actually talking about? | ||
| You're talking about Muslims. | ||
| So, it is a partially Muslim ban on these countries. | ||
| It's not an absolute Muslim ban. | ||
| The reason I think where the Muslim ban hashtag came from As I think, as a result of the Trump speech after the San Bernardino attack, when he said that, I am Joel J. Trump, I'm going to make a complete shutdown of Muslims. | ||
| When they saw this thing coming up, they will be like, okay, he said that in his campaign. | ||
| And now he's saying that religious minorities are not part of the list of Muslim-dominated countries. | ||
| Therefore, it's a Muslim ban. | ||
| I think that obviously this The cause has been hijacked by many people that we know, like CARE and their allies, and their useful idiots on the left, who will make it all about | ||
| Open borders, and how Islam is a peaceful religion, and how there is no problem with extremism in Muslim communities, and we should let them all in. | ||
| Obviously, just like everything is now being hijacked. | ||
| I mean, like the Women's March. | ||
| I was there for, like, supporting Black Parenthood, which I consider myself a big supporter of, and I'm very pro-choice myself. | ||
| And I saw people defending the hijab, which is a misogynistic symbol, right? | ||
| I literally saw women wearing a bra and holding the symbol of hijab, the poster of hijab. | ||
| And you're like, you are wearing a bra and you're holding something of modesty culture, like, shoot me in the fucking face, right? | ||
| Like, so there is so there is always obviously there is this hijack that happens and almost unfortunately, every cause I mean, you were talking about like, you and I are very much against the regressive left. | ||
| And at the same time, you have, like, fucking neo-Nazis against the regressive left, right? | ||
| So, like, every cause that may start for the right reasons and so on, unfortunately gets organized or gets hijacked by the people who are the most organized. | ||
| Unfortunately, people like CAIR and ISNA and all of the Muslim organizations, or some of them are Islamists, hijacked the cause and turned it into, oh, this is anti-Islam and there is no problem with Islam and everything is less than Kumbaya and have orgies, right? | ||
| But that doesn't mean that there is no actual criticism of the ban itself. | ||
| I've been a victim of it. | ||
| I was supposed to have multiple international talks. | ||
| Well, it's all focused on counter-extremism and the same job that I do. | ||
| I have an event with our friend Alireza in Toronto. | ||
| And yes, and then I have a close family member who went to Iraq to visit. | ||
| A dead relative and now we don't know if she's going to be able to make it back or not. | ||
| So it is a blanket ban on anybody who is Muslim or looks Muslim or has a Muslim name and so on. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| And also it sends a signal, a very bad signal. | ||
| So I think there was a Republican senator, the committee services made a very great, he said that There are two people who are wrong in this debate. | ||
| The number one are the ones who say jihadism has nothing to do with Islam. | ||
| These are people are completely wrong. | ||
| The Obama administration and their fellow allies within the left have publicized this idea that our enemy is countering violent extremism. | ||
| And even though that they all invite, like, brown people with name Mohammed and Ali, but the name is countering violent extremism. | ||
| Like, are you kidding me, man? | ||
| Like, who are you joking? | ||
| Okay, so there is this part of that, and I agree that this foreign policy with the Obama administration has been far from great, and I've been critical of it all since I came to America and before I came to America. | ||
| And there's the other side who think, I think they think, And I wish to be wrong. | ||
| I really wish to be wrong, is that they don't really see any differentiation whatsoever between the likes of me and the likes of Osama Bin Laden. | ||
| Because we both have Muslim names or Arabic names, and we're both brown people coming from that part of the world, and it's their people and so on. | ||
| And that sends a signal. | ||
| So within the left, and the regressive left in our administration, is that Islam has nothing to do with jihadism and so on. | ||
| And within the alt-right or the far-right, whatever you want to call it, or the Trumpistan, as I like to call it, is that it is every Middle Eastern and every Muslim coming from there is some source of a potential jihadist or a potential terrorist. | ||
| And I think that within all this craziness, I'm really hoping that there is some kind of a middle ground and some balance that we can have. | ||
| And I don't see that Trump ban is part of that balance. | ||
| Right, okay, so let's pause because you gave me a lot there. | ||
| So first off, I mean, man, you're saying everything I believe. | ||
| I don't think you said one thing there that I don't agree with. | ||
| And it's been my mission now for the last two years to try to show people that there is a difference | ||
| between this regressive ideology and the horrific authoritarian ideology | ||
| and that most of us are in the middle. | ||
| And I think we're making a lot of good headway there, which is why we have so many allies now, | ||
| including Ali Rizvi, who you just mentioned, and Sarah Hader and Sam Harris and Christina Opsomers | ||
| and a whole gajillion other people from all different walks of life. | ||
| So I don't want to get too lost in the Muslim ban word, but I'm glad that we at least made the distinction between We're acknowledging it's not all Muslims. | ||
| There might be some piece of this that is intended to be bigoted, and maybe three months after the 90-day review, they're going to say all Muslims, in which case, of course, I would be against that. | ||
| What do you think about the seven-country part? | ||
| Because Saudi Arabia is not on there. | ||
| How is that possible? | ||
| Well, I mean, as a matter of principle, I don't believe in the concept of collective guilt. | ||
| I don't believe in the concept that we should punish countries or a group of people on the actions of even, whether it was the minority or the majority, because there are, as I said, there are tons of people like, so even in a country like Saudi Arabia, which is, I'm probably gonna be banned from life, right? | ||
| It's one of the most extreme. | ||
| Yeah, I would not go to, we're not vacationing in Saudi Arabia, the two of us. | ||
| Yeah, but I'm also like, if there is a ban on Saudi Arabia, I would be one of the first people protesting for it, because I want Raif Badawi, who is one of my dearest friends, one of the biggest liberal advocates, to still have a chance to come to the United States. | ||
| In Pakistan, which is also a country ravaged by extremism and deplorable Taliban people and so on, but at the same time, there are others who come from Pakistan. | ||
| Saad Haider comes from Pakistan. | ||
| I still want to allow I am all for restrictions. | ||
| I support the idea of extreme vetting, especially from countries that are filled with extremism. | ||
| That should be common sense, that the people coming from Fallujah, Iraq, have a better chance of becoming terrorists than people coming from, I don't know, Norway or like That's just common sense. | ||
| I mean, this should be common sense for even supposedly liberals who should actually adhere to this concept. | ||
| So, I mean, I definitely do not want the next Muslim extremist. | ||
| I mean, just two years ago, I had an event regarding Islamophobia here in New York, and We know in New York we also have the Book of Mormon. | ||
| But we had an event on Islamophobia. | ||
| And literally, there were people, NYPD, escorted me to enter the event and to leave the event. | ||
| And even when I go have a cigarette, there is some security guy going outside with me to help me smoke a cigarette. | ||
| And I was like, If in America, in New York City, of all the places, we are afraid to have an event about Islamic extremism or Islamophobia and so on, then where the hell we should do it, right? | ||
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unidentified
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I mean, if in New York we can't do it, what are we going to do it in, like, Kabul? | |
| So there is definitely the issue of Islamic extremism and Islam is definitely an issue that has to be Extreme measurements and one of the proposals back to seven countries stuff and one of the countries the country that I come from Iraq is that in which the United States came to this country and there were many Iraqis work with the US Army as a translators and intelligence and so on who prove their loyalty to the United States who prove the royalty to many of the US Army. | ||
| Why not hire some of these people? | ||
| And make them do the bedding. | ||
| They understand the language, they understand the culture, they have a bit of understanding of who is who, and then they can ask the right questions. | ||
| And of all the seven countries, by the way, zero of the refugees have committed a terrorist act in the United States. | ||
| Is I think that this seven countries, even though they say it was taken from one administration and so on, it's first of all, it's a place of great concern, obviously, because there's a lot of instability happening in Yemen, a lot of instability happening in Iraq and Syria, because some parts of Iraq are still under the control of ISIS and some parts of Syria still under the control of ISIS. | ||
| Yes, definitely there has to be a special feeling. | ||
| I've been through that feeling. | ||
| I was when I applied to the United States. | ||
| Refugees. | ||
| They asked me lots of questions that have to prove lots of things, and it took me years before I came to the United States, and that was during the quote-unquote apologist Obama administration, right? | ||
| That's what Trump is talking about as them being weak and so on. | ||
| I came under the Obama administration, and it was already so difficult for Iraqis to come from It must be there like an extra layer? | ||
| Why not? | ||
| Should people get asked if they pray five times a day and whatever? | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| That should be something that maybe they should consider. | ||
| But that doesn't even say about anything, because there are people who pray five times a day, who probably support the existence of Israel, and I don't know, they drink on Thursdays. | ||
| So you're saying you should judge people individually and not as a collective, I think. | ||
| Exactly, yes. | ||
| We should take people case-by-case scenario, yeah. | ||
| And at the same time have an understanding that some countries are more dangerous than others and at the same time have the case-by-case scenario in order for us to defend the real people that we want as allies and not to send a signal that everybody who's coming from there is somehow a potential terrorist or trying to get us or trying to steal their jobs. | ||
| I think there is a balance of compassion at the same time securing national security. | ||
| It doesn't have to be I either have to be I have to be tough and screw everybody or I have to be an ableist or denialist open borders clown. | ||
| There is nuance which is... | ||
| Right. | ||
| Well, that's in my direct message, which we're going to post tomorrow. | ||
| That's what I said. | ||
| It's like we're fighting between people are saying we should have no borders, which is national suicide. | ||
| That's not what a country is. | ||
| And then people are saying we shouldn't have any immigrants, which is the most antiquated antithesis of what America actually is. | ||
| So I'm curious if this ban, which we now know is a 90 day temporary ban while they figure out the vetting process. | ||
| Inshallah. | ||
| Inshallah, right? | ||
| Inshallah. | ||
| I've got to do it. | ||
| Inshallah, we shall see. | ||
| 90 days, yeah. | ||
| But if he had said, we're not putting any specific countries on here, but we're pausing the entire thing, we're not singling out a specific country, but for 90 days, We are pausing this except for the most extreme individual cases where someone might be killed tomorrow or something like that. | ||
| Would you have basically been okay with that idea where we're not singling out the countries, but just so we can figure out what's going on, which obviously a lot of people want. | ||
| And I think you're hinting is a, or I think you said is basically a legitimate argument to figure out what's going on with vetting. | ||
| Would you have basically been okay with that? | ||
| Yeah, well, I mean, uh, Condemns and conditions apply. | ||
| I mean, there are so many people right now who are on the pipeline of coming to the United States as refugees and immigrants. | ||
| And many of these people, I mean, for example, like me, when I came here to the United States and they said I will be accepted in the next, for me, because I'm a single man, they probably make it until the last and they tell you you're going to be accepted. | ||
| So let's say some people are already told them that they were accepted as refugees to come to the United States and that they have houses and they have stuff that they have to sell or whatever, like whatever jobs that they have to quit and so on. | ||
| I think that to say that, OK, we're going to delay you for the next I don't know, 90 days until we figure out what the hell is going on is also like, I mean, within that time period, there are going to be lots of students. | ||
| I mean, I'm listening to lots of stories of students who came to the United States under scholarship and stuff, and they're going to come here. | ||
| They're going to study, and most of them are going to come back, except what the notion is that they're going to stay here and apply for asylum. | ||
| Actually, most of them want to come back, and Develop Iraq and the countries that we want to get extremism from and something like this I think if it's gonna be done within a gradual level | ||
| And it's going to be done intelligently. | ||
| I mean, I think we all acknowledge that there is a problem. | ||
| There is a problem within jihadism. | ||
| There's a problem with Islamism. | ||
| I think that, except that the denialists, that are not called, just like the climate change skeptics, like denialists, there is the Islamist denialists, the people who don't acknowledge there's a problem called Islamism. | ||
| Unless other than these people, most people acknowledge that there is a problem within the Muslim world. | ||
| I mean, Faraz Zakaria, for example, called a cancer of extremism growing in the Muslim world. | ||
| I mean most people acknowledge that. | ||
| The question is how can you deal with it and at the same time you don't antagonize The people that we want as allies, because what I'm afraid of, something like complete ban and so on, is going to turn the conversation as a war between the East and the West, and a clash of civilization. | ||
| And Dave Rubin, the guy who grew up in New York, and Faisal who grew up in Baghdad, are enemies because of the countries they were born into. | ||
| And this kind of concept of clash of civilizations It's going to empower the worst people in the universe. | ||
| It's going to empower the ISIS's of the world, and it's going to empower the neo-Nazis and the white supremacists of the world. | ||
| And also the religious rassouls of the world, right? | ||
| The ones who want to utilize all of this discussion on their advantage. | ||
| For the record, she banned me on Twitter. | ||
| I was going to ask her to come on the show, but she blocked me. | ||
| Well, I've been on a debate with her. | ||
|
unidentified
|
She's one of the most difficult people to have a discussion with. | |
| So anyway, I'm afraid that this kind of language that Trump administration have used and the policies that it's talking about, it's going to disadvantage the best allies that we have in the fight. | ||
| I mean, I remember back in Iraq in 2007, in which the United States created this idea called the surge. | ||
| The United States sent a search, and there was a guy, General David Petraeus, and he was working with people called the Awakening Forces, the Sunni forces, most of them are quote-unquote moderates, more conservative than I want them to be. | ||
| But anyway, they were our best allies, and there were many areas in which Al-Qaeda used to be having safe zones in, which was the United States Army, built alliances with some of the Sunni Muslims, and started defeating Al-Qaeda. | ||
| Al-Qaeda was getting defeated area after area. | ||
| I mean, thanks to President Obama, we threw the forces through all the war. | ||
| That's a whole other topic. | ||
| That's a whole other topic. | ||
| But the concept of building alliances with Muslims and trying to work out with Muslims to defeat extremism, I think is a great idea. | ||
| And not to make it into Muslims are terrorists, white people are civilized, and all of this polarized thinking. | ||
| And eventually, what we're all getting is more polarization and more hates and more divisions. | ||
| And I think that voices like us, and you, thanks so much for your great show, is that you're trying to prevent that. | ||
| And I think that neither Trump, I don't think Trump as one of the guys who are part of the solution. | ||
| Right, so I understand that, that people, there's a certain amount of people that no matter what Trump is gonna do, are gonna say, he's up to no good, he's up to no good. | ||
| Definitely, yeah. | ||
| What I tried to say on Twitter, and maybe I didn't quite get it out perfectly, was that, and it was related to you exactly, because I didn't understand this piece about the green card, that I thought that if They had a full understanding of what it would do to someone like you, someone that's here via a green card, that is doing such good work for the fighting of these terrible ideas, that that wouldn't be intentional. | ||
| Now, it sounds like at first they were gonna ban the people with green cards so that potentially if you left, you wouldn't be allowed to get back in. | ||
| Then it sounded like, yes, you would be allowed to get back in. | ||
| Last I heard, it's a case-by-case basis. | ||
| Is that right? | ||
| Yeah, well they said they're gonna do additional screening, but I have a minor disagreement with you. | ||
| Maybe it's minor, maybe it's major, it depends who's watching. | ||
| I don't think it's well intentioned. | ||
| I mean, I think that... | ||
| I mean, there is also... I don't know that it's well-intentioned. | ||
| My hope is that it was a missing piece. | ||
| But you're probably right. | ||
| Yeah, I don't think it is. | ||
| I mean, just like there are people who say that, well, like, I actually start disagreeing with them as well, is that they say, like, all these Democrats who are pandering to the Muslims are just well-intentioned. | ||
| Well, what if they just want to get their votes and they're pandering to them? | ||
| How do you know they're well-intentioned? | ||
| Do you have a PhD in psychoanalysis? | ||
| Nobody knows. | ||
| I mean, I think for the Trumpistan people, they just don't care. | ||
| I think a lot of them just don't care. | ||
| They think like, oh, who cares if there is like Iraqi secularists or whatever doing the fight? | ||
| These people are their culture and they're our enemies. | ||
| And I hope to be wrong. | ||
| I would love to be wrong on this. | ||
| But what I've seen so far is that what I have seen is mostly the kind of like a conversation, a debate between Pamela Gellar on one side and Rendez Rousseau on the other. | ||
| And that is like doomsday scenario. | ||
| And we're seeing kind of a doomsday scenario with Donald Trump. | ||
| I think that he is actually well intentioned. | ||
| I don't think he just, I don't think he has that nuance of knowledge. | ||
| Maybe some people like, for example, General Mattis, someone I actually deeply respect, and I think he's a very intelligent guy, military guy. | ||
| But at the same time, I don't think Trump understands most of the nuances of the conversation. | ||
| And also from his previous conversations about, like, Islam hates us. | ||
| Like, okay. | ||
| That's like a very cliche. | ||
| Talk about the differences here. | ||
| Like, I don't think he really understands. | ||
| He sees Arabs, Muslims, all these bad guys or whatever, and our people, America first, America, we're going to defend the South. | ||
| I don't think he really understands the complexities of the world that we're facing today. | ||
| Yeah, so just to be very clear about your green card situation, as it's understood right now, potentially you could go give your talk with Ali Rizvi in Canada, who's a Muslim reformer, a great, great guy, but potentially you could be stopped, you would be, we know you would get extra screening, and the risk for you is that Something goes wrong with the screening and you can't get back in. | ||
| That is what you could be faced with. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And I mean, as you probably have traveled a lot and you never know what the officer, how bad he is. | ||
| I mean, I've heard the stories. | ||
| I've sent you the article on NPR in which some of the officers were asking the people to sign a form, which is kind of canceling your green card form. | ||
| And which people probably will fold the form and then their green cards will be forfeited and then they will not be able to enter the United States to begin with. | ||
| So, you're gonna be, I mean, I consulted with, I have not consulted with lawyers so far, but I've consulted with some of my friends who pretty much 99% advise me not to leave the country. | ||
| They're like, it's too much high risk. | ||
| And even though, and I told them that, All my speeches are going to be about countering extremism and so on. | ||
| They said, well, you're going to be coming with an immigration officer who doesn't know what the hell who are you. | ||
| You're going to say, like, Faisal Saeed Al-Muttar sees the travel document and sees your birthplace is Iraq. | ||
| And it's under seven countries. | ||
| And you're like, OK, stand in the line. | ||
| We're going to check your cell phone. | ||
| We're going to check whatever. | ||
| And then you're like, oh, you made a joke about ISIS. | ||
| Oh, wow, you're a member of ISIS. | ||
| I don't want them checking your phone. | ||
| I mean, you send me some funny stuff about ISIS, then I'll be in trouble, too. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| So you never know. | ||
| And I made this joke before, not to change the subject. | ||
| I made this joke before. | ||
| I said, if you want to join ISIS, join them, because change comes from within. | ||
| Okay, and I was banned from Facebook for 30 days because of that joke. | ||
| So imagine if someone like a Dubai Alhambra security guy sees a joke like this and you're like, oh, you're saying that we should join ISIS and and you go back to your your country or going to send you to Guantanamo Bay. | ||
| So it's like it's a very high risk. | ||
| To actually go because you're gonna be you don't know who's the officer I mean I I've traveled to Canada back and forth multiple times and I've had many officers who are very friendly and they're like welcome to America and whatever but once I also got like some guy who like I don't know like I think he was like hating me he was like What are you doing here? | ||
| What were you doing there? | ||
| I'm like, what? | ||
| I was having like a birthday party. | ||
| Like, what do you think I was doing? | ||
| And you never know. | ||
| So sometimes you get a bad officer who's gonna be like, you know what? | ||
| You're from Iraq. | ||
| I think that you don't deserve to be here or whatever. | ||
| And makes you sign a form to forfeit your green card. | ||
| And then your green card gets cancelled. | ||
| And you never get back to this country. | ||
| And yeah, so it's a very high risk. | ||
| Yeah, and that's why I wanted to do this with you today, and especially do it live, where I don't have any notes or anything, because you, to me, are the best face that we can put on this, of whether it was well-intentioned or not well-intentioned or whatever, we don't have to split hairs with any of that stuff, it doesn't even matter, but the simple fact is that someone like you, and you are not the only one like you, You're one of a kind, but there are some other people like you that you could potentially, even at our Canadian border, be stopped and then potentially have to go back to Iraq, which would literally, at this point, be a risk to your life. | ||
| Exactly, yeah. | ||
| And so, I mean, that's kind of a major issue that I'm kind of being stuck in, is that And I still, I mean, obviously I still love this country. | ||
| I would love to live here as much as I want. | ||
| But I kind of felt really disappointed that this kind of a blanket discrimination, I don't really, I mean, you know me very well. | ||
|
unidentified
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I don't really blame the victim card my whole life. | |
| Like even though many people like, oh, your story is so horrific and you've been through a lot and stuff. | ||
| And I actually hardly talk about myself. | ||
| I don't even make my story to be the central point of my life. | ||
| But seeing that kind of treatment kind of make me felt really sad, made me really felt like a victim of some sort. | ||
| I mean, what did I do to actually deserve such treatment? | ||
| But at the same time... Of course, again, it's the individual versus the collective. | ||
| So I'm curious, what would you say, you know my audience, I think pretty well. | ||
| And one of the things that I'm most proud of is that my audience is all over the place politically. | ||
| I have alt-right people watching. | ||
| I have far-left progressives watching. | ||
| I got libertarians and classical liberals and everybody and I think it's pretty well mixed across the board on all that. | ||
| So what would you say directly to the people that fall a little more in the alt-right category or in the Trump category That they hear ISIS say, you know what? | ||
| We're gonna take advantage of the refugee situation, right? | ||
| We know ISIS is saying this and they've done it in Europe. | ||
| That we want our fighters to get through these borders. | ||
| And then people see, you know, the truck thing in, was that in France? | ||
| Yeah, Berlin, yeah. | ||
| And the theater shooting and all of the stuff that's happening in Germany and the rapes that are happening in Sweden, all of that stuff. | ||
| And for even all of them, that I'll give them all the benefit of the doubt and they'll say, wait a minute, obviously Faisal's not like this. | ||
| But for the people that hear those messages, what would you say to them about their legitimate concerns? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, obviously I don't deny their concerns. | ||
| These concerns are real. | ||
| Islamic extremism is a real concern that I'm not trying to deny. | ||
| What I'm trying to tell them is that By making a blanket statement or making a blanket policy like what we had with the Trump ban and so on. | ||
| You are Obviously there is no rational reason to join ISIS. | ||
| I mean, I get this from my liberals who say, oh, if we're going to ban refugees, these refugees are joining ISIS. | ||
| Well, you're actually, you're not helping by saying this shit because you're saying that, you're saying that these people are actually potential terrorists. | ||
| And if you just trigger them, they're going to join ISIS. | ||
| I saw so many celebrities, this huge Twitter following saying this, if you ban them, they'll become terrorists. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| So my message to the aggressive leftists and all these Hollywood celebrities, you're not helping at all, okay? | ||
| Like, even with all my disappointment, I'm never gonna join ISIS. | ||
| I'm gonna, like, drink margaritas and eat falafels and probably get stuck in New York and, like, I don't know, go to Brooklyn. | ||
| Like, that's pretty much what I would do if I get stuck in America, even with all my disappointment. | ||
| I'm not gonna join ISIS. | ||
| I'm not gonna join a terrorist group. | ||
| Margaritas and falafel. | ||
| Does that mix? | ||
| That kind of mixes. | ||
| Well, I mean, the best way to trigger the alt-right, right? | ||
| Like Mexican food. | ||
| So yeah, Mexican drinks and Arabic food. | ||
| So anyway, when it comes to the alt-right people and the Trump supporters and stuff, is that when you are making the general statement that all of the people over there are somehow a threat, And, uh, we have to have bans and, uh, it's, uh, we have to make nukum or something like all of these comments that I see on the Internet. | ||
| Or somebody like me or Al-Rizvi and stuff are kind of accused of taqiyyah, that we're kind of lying in the defense of Islam. | ||
| And there's, like, I get accusations. | ||
| Oh, by the way, a Twitter egg did tell me you're a double agent. | ||
| If you're a double agent, you're really, really good, by the way. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, my mouth thinks I'm smart, so I'm just proving it right, yeah. | ||
| So, like, someone like this, in which someone like me, just because of my culture of origin and so on, is somehow trying to bring Sharia law to America in the guise of atheism. | ||
| Like, are you fucking kidding me? | ||
| Shoot me. | ||
| Anyway, so this is kind of a mentality that, like, everybody from there is a threat. | ||
| Everybody from there, we have to be worried about them and so on. | ||
| This kind of mentality is also not helping. | ||
| We are talking about the celebrities and the regressive left and all these people, but the other mentality that generalizes, I mean, both of them are based on rationality. | ||
| So What I would ask them is that to look at people like us and to look at people who are standing for the values of the U.S. | ||
| Constitution and human rights and so on, rather than complaining and putting Pepe the Frog as your profile picture, well, try at least maybe donating your skill to help some of us or try to spread the good word and show that there are people who are really fighting for the same values that you're supposedly trying to defend. | ||
| Assuming that they actually believe in liberal values and human rights. | ||
| And so I'm assuming I'm I'm making an assumption here. | ||
| But the so if you want people who if you want more faces, if you want more other is fees will support people like me and make them do the fight to actually do the fighting is extremist. | ||
| And then just like what we had 50 years ago. | ||
| I mean, Iraq, you look at the pictures of Iraq. | ||
| You look at the pictures of Iran. | ||
| You look at The situation was not as bad as ISIS and stuff. | ||
| It's not always been the case. | ||
| There have been cases within the Middle East that now we preserve the states of concern and so on, in which there were beautiful fashion shows in Tehran, and women wearing skirts in Baghdad, and there are cinemas. | ||
| Well, if Baghdad was the case in the 70s, we can make Baghdad great again. | ||
| As we well should. | ||
| I mean, you see those pictures from what Lebanon was like, you know, 30 years ago. | ||
| Lebanon is still basically Westernized compared to a lot of the rest of Middle East. | ||
| I'm upset, yeah. | ||
| But you see pictures, especially of Iran and Iraq and whatever, and it's like, wow, that did exist. | ||
| People, as Bill Maher would say, women don't want to live in beekeeper costumes. | ||
| They would rather be in bikinis. | ||
| But I would argue they should be in whichever one they want. | ||
| They should just have the choice. | ||
| They should have the choice, but at the same time it's fair to say that these trends of And that's also a message for my liberal friends. | ||
| These are symbols of misogyny. | ||
| If you are a feminist and you defend the right for... Because the concept behind these, including the hijab, is modesty culture. | ||
| It's modesty culture. | ||
| It's the idea that men cannot control their lusts and women have to cover up because if they don't cover up, they're going to be raped and they're going to be attacked. | ||
| And that concept is has risen up as a result of so many reasons the cold war and the support of the Saudis and stuff but things can actually I think that with this with the with the power of technology with the power of of connectivity and so on we can actually expedite | ||
| That conversion back to what things were before and maybe make them better. | ||
| I mean, Arab, National Arab Socialism, which kind of what kind of made some of that secular building has failed. | ||
| Maybe we need a new system other than Arab National Socialism. | ||
| I think with the with the power of technology and the power of connectivity and education and And so on, I think that these are the people that we should support, and this is what the Trump supporters and others should be focusing more on, not just to focus on the negative stuff, and generalize it and make it as the whole situation. | ||
| Yeah, well listen, we could go on forever, but I just want to do two more things, and then we'll do this, hopefully in two or three weeks you're gonna be in LA. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| So we'll do a live, but just two quick things. | ||
| First off, you've hinted at this a lot, and it's obviously been a through line of what I've done on this show, but being abandoned by the left. | ||
| Since they abandoned me in sort of an ideological sense, but they've abandoned you as a human being, can you just give me like a two-minute feeling of what happened there? | ||
| And I know we've talked about this a lot, but I just sense, we've texted about this, like just an exhaustion at this point that we tried so hard, and it's not just us. | ||
| There's people that are a lot more influential than both of us, but we tried, and I really feel like we've lost, but I do have hope, which you'll get to my next question. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, so I mean, I've mentioned that I think the show and also my no one's mentioned it called the liberal betrayal, the liberal betrayal. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sorry. | |
| So, I mean, if you take a Western liberal and Hillary Clinton supporter and so on, and you ask them about the questions about do you support same-sex marriage? | ||
| Do you support? | ||
| Are you pro-choice? | ||
| Do you support climate change? | ||
| I agree with almost everything. | ||
| Like, I agree... Do you support safety nets for poor people? | ||
| I agree with almost everything the Democrats support when it comes to the major issues. | ||
| I mean, I'm not... I'm kind of right compared to Bernie Sanders and all the people on the far left, but I consider myself kind of... If you're right of Bernie, you're a Nazi. | ||
| You know that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| So, I mean, I'm Nazi on Wednesdays. | ||
| So, anyway... So, that being said... | ||
| On the issue of Islamic extremism, you change the subject to... So, I mean, I've had this debate before, and I said, what do you call a Republican, white Republican, who gets same-sex marriage? | ||
| He said, I call him a bigot. | ||
| Thank you for calling 99.7% Muslims bigots. | ||
| And he said, no, I never said that. | ||
| So this kind of... I mean, there are two kinds of racism happening. | ||
| There is racism of lower expectations from the left, and there is racism of higher expectations from the far right. | ||
| I feel like I've been betrayed by both sides. | ||
| I've been betrayed by both of the extremes. | ||
| extremists, extremists, not being an Iraqi refugee with like a limited amount of funding. | ||
| So the racism of lower expectations, I feel that I have been betrayed by both sides. I've | ||
| been betrayed by both of the extremes. And obviously I have a lot of following and there | ||
| are many people who support me, which I think you're alluding to in the next point. So yes, | ||
| I feel extremely betrayed by the left because I share so much agreements with them and seeing | ||
| that even within the last years of the Obama administration, I looked at some of the funding, | ||
| the grants that he has given to support countering violent extremism. And I saw it, many of them | ||
| going to. | ||
| Islamist groups who support Sharia law and so on. | ||
| And you would be like, so you're a democrat who supports separation of church and state, who supports same-sex marriage. | ||
| Why don't you support the same people who agree with you? | ||
| Like, why do you support people who think that we should impose the hijab and the modesty culture? | ||
| And why are liberals, secularists in the Middle East not being funded while you're already giving the money? | ||
| At least give it to the right people. | ||
| So, I mean, that betrayal, of continuous betrayal, eight years of the Obama administration, even though I received an award from Obama, by the way, I mean, I like the guy, and I'm happy for many things he's done, but at the same time, I would say, unfortunately, he has been wrong a lot on that issue of Islamist extremism, and considering that I would have, actually, if I was an American citizen, I would have voted for Obama, but at the same time, I feel that will kind of make it, like, You used to love your ex-girlfriend, and she betrays you, and she cheats on you, and you feel like you're being cheated. | ||
| Very different than with the right. | ||
| I don't have that big of dislike of the right, because I've never considered myself part of the right. | ||
| Like, on some issues, maybe, but overall, I don't support Sarah Palin and all this basket of deplorables. | ||
| I support some of the concepts of the rights, people like James Kirchick and some conservatism and capitalism, but overall I don't support this kind of Christian right nonsense that unfortunately dominated the Republican Party. | ||
| So I feel extremely betrayed by the left compared to others. | ||
| Yeah, okay, so then that brings me to the last thing, which I think you know where I'm going with this, which is that I now firmly believe, and I'm gonna devote myself to it for at least the next year, that the new center is here. | ||
| I think it's already here. | ||
| And I think it includes you, and I think it includes Sam Harris, and Majid Nawaz, and Ali Rizvi, and many, many of the, and Sarah Hader, and plenty of the other people I've had on the show. | ||
| And interestingly, I also think it includes people on the right that we wouldn't have thought were allies, For example, somebody, a guy like Ben Shapiro, who you probably would have huge differences with, and maybe this is where me and you wouldn't totally see eye to eye, but I see him as a little more libertarian, who is not bigoted, and I think we can, it doesn't mean we all have to be in the same political party, but I say New Center as people who really want liberty, and people to be looked at as individuals and free. | ||
| So what can we do to push that? | ||
| Whether you agree with me on Ben or not, it's a moot point, I mean, obviously I get lots of hate mail, but at the same time, I get lots of emails of people who say, I love your perspective. | ||
| I'm tired of this polarization of left and right. | ||
| I think you make sense. | ||
| And I get that from people on the right and people on the left. | ||
| And as I said, There are many people on the right that I consider friends. | ||
| People like James Kerchick and Aaron Kessler and others who I also consider are center-right Republicans and probably moderate Republicans. | ||
| Yes, of course, I would say. | ||
| I mean, it depends on what you define as statement of principles. | ||
| And there is a growing movement happening there. | ||
| And there are people who are sick and tired of both of the polar opposites. | ||
| And they feel that subjects like free speech I mean, I consider myself politically homeless and I'm always looking for a home. | ||
| who are at least now with other people of power, they don't represent them. | ||
| But at the same time, I mean, I consider myself politically homeless | ||
| and I'm always looking for a home. | ||
| And I think that something like the new center would definitely be my home. | ||
| People who believe in and we can disagree on how much we should tax the rich and we should have universal health care or not. | ||
| I mean, yes, we can have disagreements on that. | ||
| But on the basic principles, we all support free speech and we all support secularism. | ||
| Um, probably women's rights is something I would include there and same-sex marriage and so on. | ||
| So, I mean, if people would agree on these principles, definitely. | ||
| I mean, I, I do consider, I mean, you mentioned people like Ben Shapiro, I do consider them to be kind of very more socially conservative than, than Jumai. | ||
| Uh, so I don't think that he is, uh, okay with many of their values. | ||
| I think he still believes in the The reason I can include a guy like him, by the way, is because when I've had him here in my house just a few weeks ago, he said, even though he personally is for traditional marriage, he said he doesn't want the government to be involved. | ||
| So even that I can take as a little win. | ||
| So I don't mean we... I'm with you. | ||
| We don't all have to agree on everything. | ||
| I mean, it can be layers. | ||
| I mean, it can be... I mean, I generally, as long as people agree on the concept of intellectual conversation, honest conversation, civil conversation, the concept of civil disagreements, it's something I actually started to devalue so much. | ||
| Because right now, there's hardly a concept of civil disagreement. | ||
| It's either you're a racist, neo-Nazi evil, or you're like a far-leftist, communist evil. | ||
| Like, there's hardly like... | ||
| Okay, I agree with you on some things, I disagree with you on some things, and we can still be friends and we can still probably form a political party together. | ||
| I really would value that regardless of our, maybe I would say, minor disagreements. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Faisal, we agree on too much. | ||
| This is not fun. | ||
| Actually, that should be an episode. | ||
|
unidentified
|
An Arab and a Jew agree so much. | |
| This is how you change the world, brother. | ||
| Listen, it's always a pleasure. | ||
| Next time we're going to do this over beers or wine or something else. | ||
| You shouldn't be smoking cigarettes anymore, by the way. | ||
| Let's get you off of cigarettes. | ||
| Let's have kosher wine and hookah. | ||
| How about that? | ||
| Kosher wine ain't great. | ||
| I'll get you something good from Sonoma. | ||
| All right, brother. | ||
| It's been a pleasure talking to you, and I'll see you in a couple weeks. | ||
|
unidentified
|
See you in a couple weeks. | |
| Take care. |
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