April 13, 2017 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
47:35
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unidentified
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🎵Outro Music🎵 Cause they are, they're not- | |
| 🎵Outro Music🎵 🎵Outro Music🎵 | ||
| 🎵Outro Music🎵 All right, guys, we are live on the YouTube. | ||
| It is the apostate hour. | ||
| I've brought my two favorite apostates, Faisal Saeed Al Mutar and Yasmin Mohamed. | ||
| And we're going to talk about religion. | ||
| I guess we'll talk about Islam. | ||
| Maybe we'll talk about Islam. | ||
|
unidentified
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Might come up. | |
| We're going to talk about freedom. | ||
| We're going to talk about democracy. | ||
| Maybe Star Wars? | ||
| Would you talk about Star Wars with me? | ||
| I don't know much, but I know Darth Vader. | ||
| You know Darth Vader? | ||
| All right. | ||
| We're going to talk about all kinds of stuff. | ||
| I just did an hour-long interview with Yasmin, which will be up on Monday, and her story's really incredible, and we'll get into all that and a whole bunch of other stuff. | ||
| But I wanted to do this with you guys because I thought we could do a little live Q&A for the people, because people ask me questions. | ||
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unidentified
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Yes. | |
| I don't have all the answers. | ||
| Do you have all the answers? | ||
| My mom thinks I do. | ||
| Do you have all the answers? | ||
| I definitely don't. | ||
| I'll defer to Faisal. | ||
| But you both have fascinating personal stories, you coming from Iraq, your whole situation of being in Canada then sent to Egypt, now back in Western society, and that you guys are consistently fighting for the things that I talk about here every week. | ||
| Liberalism. | ||
| I don't happen to care what your I think we should go to the questions. | ||
| or your color or any of that stuff, but it's about the individual and what you think. | ||
| So, you want to do an opening statement or should I get right to the questions? | ||
| You're a four time Rubin Report guest now, so you're an old pro here. | ||
| I think we should go to the questions. | ||
| Yeah, let's do it. | ||
| All right, so what we're gonna do, by the way, is we are gonna take questions on Patreon, which I see it's already in the feed and people are asking questions already, and we will also take Super Chat questions right here on YouTube, so you can jump on the Super Chat thing so that we can see the question, and we'll ask you. | ||
| All right, so first one on Patreon, and Yasmin and I kinda just got into this, but the crux of the question is, is reformation of Islam even possible? | ||
| It's growing rapidly in North America. | ||
| And it's defended to the death by leftists. | ||
| I know we all have some thoughts on that. | ||
| And that people seem to be unable to separate ideology from people. | ||
| So the idea of a reformation, we talked about this a little bit, that you identify as ex-Muslim. | ||
| So you're not, you don't consider yourself a Muslim that's trying to reform the faith from the inside. | ||
| You felt that you had to leave the faith to reform it. | ||
| So what do you think about just the idea of reformation overall? | ||
| Well, it's kind of like what we touched on in our interview. | ||
| I think that it's You know, as long as I have shared values with the people, regardless of what their personal private belief system is, so I'll support people like Majid Nawaz and Usra Nomani in their goals towards secular liberal values that we share, but I personally would not advocate for a reform to Islam. | ||
| I would advocate for truth. | ||
| And to me, you know, truth is not Islam. | ||
| We think that the problem is just with conservative Islam, but even milder versions of Islam are also problematic, right? | ||
| Moderate Muslims still think that gay people should be killed, or at least that they're immoral. | ||
| Moderate Muslims, you know, when you look at the Pew research, you see that there's a lot of problematic issues that don't necessarily have anything to do with politicizing the religion, but it's just in general, like, you know, all the honor killings and things like that, like, there are a lot of problems with the religion in and of itself. | ||
| Yeah, now Yasmin just quoted Pew Research, you did not yell gross and racist, why is that? | ||
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unidentified
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Because I think she's, I know already that she's gross and racist. | |
| It's just an ongoing thing, she's gross and racist, we get it. | ||
| I don't have to say it all over again, I think people already know that she's gross and racist. | ||
| What do you think about reforming them? | ||
| I'm actually agnostic on the subject knowing many of the people that know them personally like Majid and Ayaan now is advocating in her latest book about Islamic reform and I asked her in her latest event in D.C. | ||
| I told her like what if reformation fails? | ||
| I think, I mean, looking back at history, not even actually modern history, looking at the pictures of Iran used to be 40 years ago, Iraq used to be, Egypt, all these places. | ||
| Many of these people who were kind of like liberal people, they were not atheists. | ||
| They were kind of have a mild version of Islam that is kind of compatible with liberal values and human rights. | ||
| So I think it is possible to have Muslims who are liberal. | ||
| As for going to the actual text of the Qur'an and making it that it has a liberal interpretation, I am kind of agnostic about this. | ||
| I think that generally holy books are very clear about what they believe. | ||
| And when it comes to Islam, I mean, the famous verse, هَذَا الْكِتَابُ الْعَرَابِ فِيهَا هُذَا الْمُتَّقِينَ, which means, this book is infallible. | ||
| So when you have a concept of infallible... Isn't that the first line? | ||
| Yeah, I mean it's kind of like the Bill of Rights of the Qur'an. | ||
| It's like one of the first things. | ||
| And then when the main concept of this book is infallible, then that makes it extremely difficult to say, well there are some good parts about the Qur'an, bad parts of the Qur'an. | ||
| Well it's infallible, you have to take it Literally. | ||
| So that kind of makes it, I think, extremely difficult for reformation to happen. | ||
| And back to data, I mean, I did this kind of survey, which is not the most scientific one, but I kind of looked at the human rights groups around the Middle East and I asked them whether they think Islam is like compatible with human rights. | ||
| And they said no. | ||
| So, if human rights is the most important thing, then it seems like the people who adhere to the reformed version of Islam are still a minority. | ||
| Yeah, it must drive you guys crazy, and we talked about this a little bit. | ||
| Whether Majid's doing something that's a little bit different than what you would do and what Faisal just explained is slightly different than that even, that there has to be a lot of appealing, like, you know, when you get on Twitter, it's like, ah, there's gonna be a certain amount of people who love what you do and hate what you do and all that, and it's like, you guys are so obviously allies, and I like to include myself in that and many other people. | ||
| Definitely. | ||
| And yet there's so much infighting all the time, it's sort of exhausting, isn't it? | ||
| Yeah, we have bigger fish to fry. | ||
| You know, like, instead of fighting with other allies, we can be fighting with, you know, like the Linda Sarsour's of the world, or the Dalia Mogahed's, or the, you know, the Western Muslim feminists that are muddying the waters and selling a bill of goods, which is just, they're basically lies. | ||
| And they're getting up in the media and getting attention and Spreading misinformation, you know, that's where we can be | ||
| Spreading fake news. | ||
| A lot of fake news. | ||
| So a whole bunch of people here ask, as you mentioned. | ||
| But I just have one comment. | ||
| I mean, you mentioned that leftists are being sold like they believe in reformation, but I'm not sure leftists are the biggest supporters of Islamic reform. | ||
| I think that many leftists believe the Linda Sarsour version of it. | ||
| So they're actually, many of the left are anti-Majid Nawaz and Asra Nomani. | ||
| Oh no, of course I believe that is the overriding theory. | ||
| I think some people are being tricked But of course, I believe that. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I mean, leftists, I don't think majority don't support reformation. | ||
| They think that Islam should be the way it is. | ||
| And they talk about trying to change it as a form of gross and racism. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| I meant that within the people that are ex-Muslim or reformers or whatever, there's some people who will just view, you know what I mean? | ||
| If you say, well, I'm an ex-Muslim, then they're gonna think, all right, now you're working against Majid. | ||
| Or if Majid says that, that sort of infighting that just doesn't help anything. | ||
| No, it does not. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I just wanted to clarify this. | ||
| Because generally, the liberal left in America, not the ex-Muslim left, but the liberal left is, they are very much opposed to many of the Muslim reformers' work. | ||
| And they are opposed to ex-Muslims too, in general, because we're all Uncle Tom's, right? | ||
| We're all- No, they support the conservative Muslims. | ||
|
unidentified
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That's what they support. | |
| So let's just dive into that, because there's gonna be a zillion, I can already see there's a bunch of questions about Sarsour, and this general theme of how the left has betrayed all of you, because when I had Sarah Hader on, she talked about it. | ||
| You've talked about it. | ||
| You've talked about it. | ||
| I mean, Majid talks about it. | ||
| yet they treat Sarsour like a hero. | ||
| Meanwhile, she's literally tweeting about Ayan's vagina. | ||
| Who also went FGM. | ||
| So how perverse is this? | ||
| Not to forget Bernie Sanders hired her to be a campaign manager. | ||
| And tweeted, I stand with Bernie. | ||
| I stand with Bernie. | ||
| Well, he definitely stands with Bernie. | ||
| I stand with Linda. | ||
| And then even though thousands of people tweeted that tweet of Sarsour's at him, of course nobody responds and it doesn't get picked up in mainstream news at all and all that stuff. | ||
| How perverse is this? | ||
| How much do you actually feel betrayed by this? | ||
| Well, I mean, I feel quite... Let Yasmin talk for this. | ||
| I think I'm over it, to be honest. | ||
| Because I've talked about this a lot. | ||
| I did feel betrayed for a long time. | ||
| But I've realized that they're just as crazy as the other far-right side. | ||
| It's not like I'm going to sit down with a white supremacist and try to talk to them about why we have shared values and common goals and we can work together. | ||
| I feel the same thing with the far left at this point. | ||
| I don't even care anymore. | ||
| I don't even want to discuss with them. | ||
| If they want to hear what we have to say and they want to open their mind and they want to get educated, then that's fantastic. | ||
| But it's not going to hurt my feelings anymore because I think that we have enough allies. | ||
| I think we're the biggest group. | ||
| So I'm fine with it. | ||
| Just let the crazies be crazy off on the left wing and the crazies be crazies on the right wing. | ||
| And I'm not gonna be bothered with them. | ||
| Is that the best sell job for this? | ||
| That we actually are the biggest group. | ||
| Those of us, regardless of where we come from and what we look like, that want some sort of decency. | ||
| We are the big group and we just need some voices. | ||
| We just need a couple extra voices to get in on this. | ||
| Someone to represent us. | ||
| Yeah, and I think I'm very sold out on this concept of the new center and getting away from all this political. | ||
| Because I've talked to this about the show before. | ||
| I feel extremely betrayed by many people who I share many values with. | ||
| And the same with the rights. | ||
| So the new center is, I think, going to bring us the... I mean, I don't know about the numbers, though. | ||
| How sure are you that we are the biggest group? | ||
| Well, I don't know that I have any Pew data, but I know that there's something brewing right now. | ||
| Sometimes you just know some things in your bones. | ||
| I know I believe in facts over feelings, but I know there's something brewing right now, and everyone is sick of this nonsense. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it could be like the largest growing minority of these voices, and I think I'm very happy for the success of your show. | ||
| So who do you think is the majority then? | ||
| The far right or the far left? | ||
| I think it's everywhere. | ||
| I think that there is a rise of far right, and the Trump movement, and the Europe, and then there is the backlash of the backlash, right? | ||
| So the regressive left came and existed as a backlash against the right, and now the right is being a backlash against the left. | ||
| So I think that these two make up the majority. | ||
| And then there are people who are kind of leaving these groups, right? | ||
| And they're moving to our side. | ||
| I think it's probably, I don't know, I want to give percentages, but I think that, I mean, if you take official positions, right? | ||
| You take the Republican Party's official position, the Democratic Party's official position, I mean, Hillary and Bernie were all, like, they're aggressive when it comes to Islam. | ||
| And these are the Democratic Party representatives. | ||
| And then you have the Trump version, which is the refugee ban and stuff. | ||
| There's nobody representing us. | ||
| Yeah, so there's no representative for us. | ||
| That's what I think where the real impact can happen. | ||
| Some of us who believe in our values can actually get into power and be able to make real change. | ||
| We should get Bill Maher to run, or Sam Harris. | ||
| Yeah, well I think, maybe Sam. | ||
| I don't think he wants to do it. | ||
| I'm sure Bill, with all the things he's the weed and everything else, probably not going to do it. | ||
| That's why to me it's sort of what we talked about earlier. | ||
| It's like we could just prime ourselves to just hijack the Libertarian Party. | ||
| At least they're a party. | ||
| Forgetting the politics specifically, but like they exist as a group. | ||
| They've just got a bunch of people that aren't really going anywhere. | ||
| How about we take a party of logic and reason, but we'll just take it from them. | ||
| And rebranded as more centrist. | ||
| I mean, yeah. | ||
| Unfortunately, you weren't born in the United States, right? | ||
| I vote for you. | ||
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unidentified
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Well, I mean, Obama... Oh lord, now we're in trouble. | |
| This is a joke, folks. | ||
| This is a joke. | ||
| This is not... But, I mean, I'm not going to be the second... Well, I'm probably going to be the second Muslim president. | ||
| The second Muslim president. | ||
| Alright, there you go. | ||
| Alright, let's get to... There's a ton on Patreon, but let's get to a super chat here. | ||
| Now, I know neither one of you are religious scholars, per se, but maybe you can give an answer to this. | ||
| Is it true that in Islamic theology, quote, Muslims are allowed to lie if it benefits Islam, unquote? | ||
| I found this hard to verify one way or another. | ||
| So there's something that's being thrown around the internet these days, which is the concept of Taqiyyah. | ||
| And what that is, is when there's a Shia Muslim... Don't point at me! | ||
| Living amongst Sunnis. | ||
| So Faisal used to be Shia and I used to be Sunni. | ||
| Sunnis are the majority and we all know what they do to every other minority, right? | ||
| So Shias were allowed to pretend that they were Sunni so that Sunnis wouldn't kill them, basically. | ||
| So that's what this concept is. | ||
| However, this idea of lying, that's across the board with all religions. | ||
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unidentified
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I mean, I was speaking with It's more like it justifies the means, right? | |
| It's like, I'm going to lie to defend the religion. | ||
| Yes, exactly. | ||
| It's more important. | ||
| You just want to save face, you know? | ||
| So if people start to say like, oh, is it true that you force people to wear hijab? | ||
| They'll be like, no, no, no, no, no. | ||
| They want to wear it. | ||
| Yes, they like it. | ||
| It's empowering, right? | ||
| Obviously, that's not true. | ||
| But it's their way of saving face. | ||
| I used to say that when people would ask me, like, oh, were you forced to wear that? | ||
| I'd be like, no, I want to wear it. | ||
| Of course, I totally didn't want to wear it. | ||
| But I didn't want people looking at me like a victim and feeling sorry for me. | ||
| And also you do feel a responsibility to protect the religion from scrutiny and criticism as well because you're taught that. | ||
| As a Muslim you have to do that. | ||
| There's a tribalism concept in which Muslims go so defensive about their faith just because, even though many of them don't even know what they're talking about. | ||
| Right? | ||
| So they get so defensive when you criticize Islam and they get so defensive and they start making alternative facts. | ||
| But I think it's just kind of instinctual. | ||
| It comes in like, I'm going to defend the faith. | ||
| It may come up to the other person that this person is lying, but in fact what they're trying to do is just defend. | ||
| Like what Raza Aslan is saying that Indonesia is 100%. | ||
| Women in Indonesia are 100% equal to men. | ||
| I mean, I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt that he doesn't actually believe it, but he was like, okay, let me defend Islam the most possible way, and then I'm going to make up an alternative fact, and then, like, push it, because I'm going to defend it. | ||
| That way, people will not think that Islam is oppressive towards women, or so, like, they just get the defensive part comes in first, and the facts come later. | ||
| All right, we're gonna do an old-fashioned radio reset here. | ||
| I am with Faisal Syed Al Mutar and Yasmin Mohammed, my two favorite apostates. | ||
| All right, well, I have some other favorite apostates. | ||
| My two favorite apostates. | ||
| All the five of them. | ||
| Well, I got five apostates. | ||
| Here are two of them right here. | ||
| And, well, if you guys are apostates, what am I? | ||
| We're all cowards. | ||
| We're all in a lot of trouble, that's for sure. | ||
| Anyway, we're taking questions on Super Chat and on Patreon, and they're coming in fast, so here we go. | ||
| Okay. | ||
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unidentified
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All right, there's a lot here. | |
| What's the most effective way to pressure the imams towards moderation? | ||
| So for the people that are believers. | ||
| I think that's a tough question because it requires restrictions on free speech. | ||
| I think that if they advocate for direct violence, they should not be allowed to practice as an imam. | ||
| That's like direct incitement to violence. | ||
| But I think that So if they're directly calling for, like, we see some of this in England, where they're calling for not only direct violence, but when they call for things that are slightly less than that, like basically overthrowing the state. | ||
| As a free speech guy, and we're gonna do this in Austin in a couple days, we're doing a whole thing on free speech, you must feel... | ||
| Kinda sucks, like you're trying to defend your principle, while at the same time, you know there's something really, really rotten happening. | ||
| Well, I mean, I think that the best way to counter bad speech is better speech. | ||
| And we have the laws to protect free speech, we just need to counter them. | ||
| And so, I mean, we make extremism not cool. | ||
| That's what we should, just like we made homophobia not cool, then we make Islamic extremism not cool to the people, to the way that people feel a pressure that they have to kind of not make these crazy statements constantly and try | ||
| to moderate because now they're gonna say kill the Jews kill whatever somebody | ||
| gonna tell them no what the hell are you talking about? I think if we create a | ||
| culture that makes Islamic extremism not cool in which we challenge them | ||
| because I think that many of these Imams are not being challenged | ||
| How do you challenge them if you can't challenge them in the mosque? | ||
| I mean, where can it be made not cool? | ||
| It's not cool. | ||
| No one in a Western society really is walking around thinking it's cool. | ||
| That's the Western society is the key because what you guys are talking about is only over here. | ||
| But then we've got like the other 90 something percent that we need to worry about right like it's it's cool over there and they're always going to be saying kill the jews and kill the infidels over there so as much as we can do free speech protects their speech here and we can fight bad ideas with good ideas what's happening over in the muslim world like in the UAE for example is they actually limits what the imams can say so in the khutbas and the friday sermons | ||
| Their imams are told you're not allowed to incite violence. | ||
| You're not allowed to, you know, say this or that or whatever. | ||
| So if more countries over there that don't have free speech laws... That creates a backlash because now people will think that these imams are puppets of the government. | ||
| And now people are going to think of these imams. | ||
| Everything creates a backlash, right? | ||
| But I think that, I don't know, like I'm a free speech absolutist. | ||
| Like I think that The best way to do it is just to make counter their arguments. | ||
| And I think over there, what we need to do is support the people who create counter arguments, right? | ||
| We have to support the Sharif Gabbers of the world, the Ahmad Harqani's bloggers, video bloggers in the Muslim world who do counter messaging to extremist messaging. | ||
| And I think that the more we make them popular, we give them good media, we give them the tools and the media training, we're probably gonna, hopefully we can change the culture. | ||
| But if they're being hacked to death or if they're being imprisoned, then media training isn't gonna help them. | ||
| Well no, I mean I think that there are many people coming out and I mean we can spread the risk by letting many people come. | ||
| I mean, the more people come out, the less extremism gonna be, like, we're gonna face, have more counter narrative to extremism. | ||
| So they cannot kill us all. | ||
| I agree over here. | ||
| It's an extremely depressing view of how to do things in that they quite literally cannot kill us all or cannot kill all of those people. | ||
| But in reality, any movement starts by people saying, I'm part of it, vocally saying it, not just privately or anonymously tweeting about it. | ||
| All right, we got a zillion here, so let's just keep moving. | ||
| This has sort of been a theme, but on Super Chat somebody asked, will feminists ever speak out against Islam? | ||
| So we've already talked a little bit about Sarsour and Bernie, but how bad is that connection right now between modern feminism and Islam? | ||
| Um, are you talking about Muslim feminists? | ||
| Or are you talking about just like... Well, I suspect they meant just sort of general feminists. | ||
| Yeah, just like what's thought of as American feminists. | ||
| Will they ever speak out against Islam? | ||
| I think that a lot of them are speaking out against Islam. | ||
| So I'm happy to see that. | ||
| I've had quite a few contact me directly and be like, why were you so angry about hijab day? | ||
| I thought I was doing a good thing. | ||
| Like, can you talk to me about it? | ||
| So I think it's just the misinformation. | ||
| I don't get to go, I don't get the same platforms that Linda Sarsour gets. | ||
| I don't get to lead marches. | ||
| So they're spreading their misinformation. | ||
| They have larger platforms and they're convincing people that what they're doing is the right thing. | ||
| So I think it's the fighting the bad ideas with the good ideas. | ||
| If we can get out there and... | ||
| Educate more people and let them, you know, just recognize. | ||
| What I did in one of my talks is I brought in a club with me and I passed it around. | ||
| I said, try this on and men and women and let me know, are you happy with it on? | ||
| Do you feel comfortable? | ||
| Does it make you feel empowered? | ||
| You know, like we're talking about Muslim people as if there's some alien race or something like they're different beings that have different feelings than the rest of us. | ||
| Of course they're the same as the rest of us. | ||
| And if a woman here doesn't feel empowered when she's being told what to wear, then a woman over there obviously isn't feeling empowered when she's told what to wear either. | ||
| Like we lose our minds over the Burkini Gate in France. | ||
| Meanwhile, people are being imprisoned and killed for not wearing hijab in Iran. | ||
| So yeah, we need more feminists to speak out not just for the West, the women in the West, but to speak out for the women across the world. | ||
| And I think that Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been talking about that too when she was talking about Linda Sarsour being a fake feminist and only worrying about the feminists here or the women here in the West. | ||
| And the women here in the West are There's always going to be more work to do, but we're doing okay. | ||
| We're doing okay compared to the rest of the planet. | ||
| It's like we've got this great house and we're saying, I just want to touch up the paint or something. | ||
| Meanwhile, our neighbor is living in a cardboard box. | ||
| Yeah, this next one, this is on Patreon. | ||
| This is an extremely complex question, and it's funny. | ||
| People are asking politically complex questions, and you're not experts in immigration specifically or anything like that, but they just want your feelings on these things. | ||
| So I think I know your answer to the first part of this, but so it's, would you support a true Muslim immigration ban? | ||
| If not, what's an acceptable level of Muslim population in an Anglosphere country, given the problems we're seeing at five to 10%, 10%, 25%, 40%, et cetera. | ||
| So that basically, that we have seen that in these Western countries, | ||
| as it's tipped over sort of 10%, then there are bigger problems. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I don't know if there is an exact number of how much we should accept, | ||
| but I do think that the more we bring conservatives into this country or other countries of the West, | ||
| you see bad things happening. | ||
| So unless there is a high integration efforts that try to liberalize these conservative communities, I mean, Belgium have sent more ISIS members than Morocco. | ||
| I mean, that's a kind of a frightening It's a thing to see. | ||
| So I think we have to, I mean that's what I think the liberal is failing is that we have to make sure that these people who come in, even if they come as conservatives, we have to make an effort to secularize these Muslim communities and make it easy for them to integrate into Western societies because Otherwise, what we're seeing is like holes of extremism all over Europe. | ||
| And I went to Toronto and I saw like tons of niqabis and that's, to be honest, I don't see that as a positive sign. | ||
| I mean, you walk in downtown Toronto and you see 2,000 niqabis and that is not a positive sign that there is integration. | ||
| I mean, you mentioned the hijab and the niqab. | ||
| These are symbols. | ||
| I mean, the niqab, when a woman wears a niqab, I can assure you for a fact, she's not a progressive woman. | ||
| She's not. | ||
| So this is like a sign of conservatism that is very hard to integrate, that is a clash with civilization, a clash with the secular, at least the secular West. | ||
| So I think that, I mean, I am a refugee and there is no way I would oppose refugees on principle. | ||
| But at the same time, I think there should be strong integration efforts to make sure that these societies don't get ghettoized and don't turn into extremist recruiting Yeah, but is there any evidence of that happening anywhere? | ||
| Because you could name almost any of these countries in Europe, right? | ||
| And it's pretty much happening everywhere. | ||
| Well, Germany is doing a good job recently in trying to make sure that domestic violence is not okay. | ||
| They teach the women who come from there that this is a land in which there is no domestic violence. | ||
| Immigrant husband is abuser or something. | ||
| These are things that you can contact. | ||
| You have to respect gay rights. | ||
| You cannot beat gay people in public. | ||
| I mean obviously this is still a beginning stage, but I think that an effort like this is completely necessary. | ||
| Because I was brought up here in Canada in a very fundamentalist family, it doesn't matter what kind of effort the host country puts towards integrating people. | ||
| the people themselves hate all of these values and hate the country and do not | ||
| want to integrate. You can't force people to integrate. But I think that like I was | ||
| mentioning to you before like we need to be unapologetic about these are our | ||
| liberal values. If you want to come in you're more than welcome to come in but | ||
| these are the rules that you need to abide by. Here we have free speech. Here | ||
| we do not have domestic violence. | ||
| I don't care what your Quran 434 says. | ||
| You're not hitting your wife when you're on this soil. | ||
| Here we have, you know, gay rights. | ||
| And this is it. | ||
| You have to be okay with these things. | ||
| And if you're not okay with these things, then Then you can't come in. | ||
| Why would you want to come into a country that is against the values that you believe in? | ||
| I think there will be so much controversy if you say that. | ||
| Probably. | ||
| If you say you have to accept gay rights to be in America or to be American, I think you're probably going to kick out half of the people in the South who probably do not adhere to any of the liberal values you're talking about. | ||
| This is the thing that I was going to say about the stop sign. | ||
| When you say these are our liberal values. | ||
| I don't care what you believe in your own home. | ||
| Like you can you can hate on gay people all you want at the privacy of your own dinner table But our laws are gonna prevent you from doing anything about that. | ||
| So when you talk about the niqab, for example I think that's a safety issue and we know it's a safety issue in the Muslim world We know criminals put niqabs on all the time people in Sweden have started to do that too because now there's that religious loophole So when you say these are our rules, these are our laws. | ||
| Sorry, no niqabs are allowed then that's And these laws need to be enforced. | ||
| These laws need to be enforced. | ||
| And making sure that there's no like, oh, FGM is happening but we should not talk about it because that's going to be xenophobic and racist. | ||
| Yeah, and we're not going to prosecute any of these parents because we just need to educate them or whatever. | ||
| No, prosecute them. | ||
| This is the law. | ||
| And they broke the law. | ||
| You broke the law, then you get prosecuted. | ||
| Right, but unfortunately we are seeing non-prosecutions and tolerance of all this stuff across the Western countries. | ||
| That's the problem. | ||
| It's not the amount of Muslim people coming in, it's us allowing those people to push us to change our values. | ||
| That's the problem. | ||
| Because most... | ||
| It's almost like we're so tolerant, we're tolerant of intolerance. | ||
| Somebody smarter than me came up with that. | ||
| All right, let's do a couple just real quick ones. | ||
| They're not quick, but we'll make them kind of quick. | ||
| What are the difference... | ||
| Okay, this is a great one that I think people get really confused on. | ||
| What are the differences between Saudi Arabia's Islam and the Iranian people's Islam? | ||
| Oh, that's Sunni and Shia. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You guys wanna knock it out right now? | ||
| Well, you can answer the Sunni one. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, I mean, Sunni is the majority one, so that's the one that most people are familiar with. | ||
| And then Shia just has a little bit of discrepancies, and then Sunnis kill Shias, basically. | ||
| Thank you, thank you very much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's why we took all the weapons out of the studio before we started. | |
| I mean, the Ayatollah version of Iran, he declares himself to be the representative of Imam Mahdi, who is the 12th Imam in Shia Islam. | ||
| And it's actually closer to Sunni Islam. | ||
| I mean, the Iranian version of Islam is, there are multiple schools of Shia Islam, and the Iranian version takes more the Islamist approach, in which the government and religion should be mixed, while the Najaf school within Shia Islam don't believe that. | ||
| So yeah, I mean, if you look at the laws, they're pretty much very much alike. | ||
| The only thing is that the Shias are minorities, so they try to play minority dynamics, and they try not to piss off as many people as possible, so they appear moderate on the outside, but when it comes to conservatism, they are generally... It's just like, they probably like gays being thrown from the 10th floor, not the 12th floor. | ||
| So like, the Saudis are more like, let's throw them from the 12th floor, and the Shia extremists are from the 10th floor. | ||
| Yeah, so, I mean, they pretty much agree on major things when it comes to Sharia law and stuff. | ||
| They disagree a bit on what hadith should be followed. | ||
| But if you look at the human rights abuses, I think they're pretty much the same. | ||
| Well, Iran has a bigger population, so they commit more crimes. | ||
| But Saudi is still, by far, the most extreme. | ||
| I mean, it's a low standard to have. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I don't know, like, who is the most extreme and who is the least extreme. | |
| This is kind of interesting. | ||
| This is Super Chat. | ||
| Would it not help if Western liberal democracies refused to trade with Muslim-majority countries if they don't allow dissent from their citizens and offer protection for those who do speak out? | ||
| I think you basically agree that's probably a good thing. | ||
| Yeah, what would be even better is to support the secular liberal people. | ||
| Instead of saying we're not going to trade with you or we're not going to work with you, work with the liberals over there. | ||
| I mean, as I mentioned in your previous show, I don't believe in collective punishment. | ||
| If you're going to stop trading and the sanctions in Iraq, I grew up under that shit. | ||
| It's bad for everyone. | ||
| Yes, they were put on Saddam, who was the brutal dictator who killed many people, but then we are the people who are being affected by it. | ||
| And it's not the sanctions that took him down. | ||
| So all the kind of collective punishment that we should punish everyone over there, then the people like us, the liberals and the seculars over there, get harmed by the actions being done by the Assad or Saddam or all the Islamic State and stuff. | ||
| So, I mean, they definitely should be pressured to respect modern human rights, but at the same time, not complete banning on the people who come from there. | ||
| I think that's I mean, I would love that if Saudi Arabia talks more about, sorry, United States tells Saudi Arabia to respect Raif Badawi and all of the atheists are being beheaded. | ||
| But at the same time, if we just stop any form of visa from Saudi, then people like Raif Badawi cannot come here. | ||
| So I think that if we kind of find a balance in which we pressure the government, but at the same time, we don't punish all the citizens of that government, I think that's probably a good balance to have. | ||
| Do you think that the inclusive welfare state of Europe has had an adverse effect on the assimilation of refugees. | ||
| That's sort of interesting that they've gone there, they get a lot. | ||
| I mean, there's a reason that people, forget Islam for a second, there's a reason people want to go to Sweden. | ||
| You get it pretty sweet. | ||
| So is that a net loss, especially when you factor in the assimilation thing? | ||
| I mean, definitely. | ||
| I mean, when you have massive immigration, having a welfare state is generally a bad idea. | ||
| I mean, if you're going to have mass immigration and then you have a welfare state, then these new refugees, the taxes that citizens pay have to go to the new refugees to be taken care of them. | ||
| And it causes animosity. | ||
| Yeah, and they're like, okay, why am I paying for people who are coming from wherever and taking my taxes when they should be going to my social security, for example. | ||
| So I think that If you look at the rise of the far right in Europe, many of them are not actually right wing when it comes to economics. | ||
| They're not like free market globalist people. | ||
| They're actually anti-globalism, anti-free market. | ||
| Many of them want to impose tariffs. | ||
| And they want to make it difficult for new people to come in, so in that way the welfare state will not spread. | ||
| So I think that, I mean, if somebody is willing to accept a lot of immigrants, it's better that they make it loose, the welfare state become loose in that way. | ||
| That's why many people, I mean those who come to America generally, are the ones who try to work hard and stuff, because the welfare state here is not very strong, so Those who come to America are more likely to come because they want to work hard and make a living versus depending on the welfare. | ||
| Because what is the welfare in America? | ||
| 200 on food stamps? | ||
| I mean, the Uber to the airport. | ||
| It's like $100. | ||
| Well, you keep taking those fancy Ubers. | ||
| I keep telling you to take the carpool. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right, let's see here. | |
| Oh, well, a few people have asked something sort of around this about Sam Harris. | ||
| Do you consider him a good person or a good actor in this space? | ||
| 100%. | ||
| Definitely. | ||
| I mean, I think that people, the liberals, I call them the anti-left liberals, have been a great resource for us because to take the polarization away from the far right. | ||
| Anti-left liberals. | ||
| Salman Rushdie called them 9-11 liberals, those who became anti-Islamic extremism coming from a liberal perspective. | ||
| I think that they have been a great resource to avoid the subject of being, if you are anti-Islamic extremism or anti-Islam, you're a far-right bigot like Himela Geller and all these basket of deplorables, right? | ||
| So you have, so when you have the liberals like Sam Harris and Bill Maher and others speaking out against Islamic extremism coming from a liberal standpoint, I think they have been an amazing ally. | ||
| And I told Sam, like I told Sam personally about this, I mean I told him like, and I told you the same, is that you guys have been a great resource for us because in order to avoid this, if you are anti-Islam, you're a bigot, like who wants to like, let's say you're, I don't know, Trumpistan or all these people. | ||
| But now it's coming from a liberal people who are like, oh, I support human rights. | ||
| That's why I'm against. | ||
| Versus, oh, I'm a Christian or Judeo-Christian who believe in a holy war with Muhammad. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I would prefer no holy war. | |
| I mean, holy war is a nice song by Megadeth. | ||
| All right, I get it. | ||
| You're American now. | ||
| So I think that the liberal anti-left or anti-regressive left are the best resource and best ally we have in the fight against Islamic extremism. | ||
| So a couple of people have asked, this was on super chat, but I got a few of this kind of thing. | ||
| The people that we don't, we don't have to name names here, but for the people that hate, that are sort of in this conversation that really don't like us, some of them don't like me, some of them don't like you and you all for different reasons and all that. | ||
| What's the best way to get through to those? | ||
| Cause there's a certain subs for people that aren't that inside on this. | ||
| There's like a subset of people that are in this discussion that spend a lot more time hating on what we're trying to do than actually fighting against Islamism. | ||
| You know, Asra Normani gave me some really good advice. | ||
| She said, you are valuable and your time is precious. | ||
| Use the block button. | ||
| I don't care about those people. | ||
| I have been using it a little more. | ||
| I don't need everybody to like me. | ||
| A lot of Islamists don't like me either. | ||
| A lot of Muslims don't like me. | ||
| That's fine. | ||
| I don't need everybody to like me. | ||
| I'm just not going to be bothered with them. | ||
| I'm not going to let them Affect my message and affect what I'm trying. | ||
| What do you think is the goal with some of these people? | ||
| Well, I mean, I assume some of them are good people. | ||
| No. | ||
| No. | ||
| Really? | ||
| I mean, you know, I guess. | ||
| Come on. | ||
| No, I mean, I think that some of it is, I mean, there is so much polarization happening | ||
| and they see that like, I don't know. | ||
| If you talk more about Islam, when Trump is president, you are furthering xenophobia. | ||
| No matter what you do, you're furthering something. | ||
| People, I mean, that's kind of the part of the job, is that when you're going to do public anything, some people are going to hate you. | ||
| And I wish people hate me for good reasons, but many of them don't. | ||
| But yeah, some of it is jealousy, some of it is... I mean, I get that from a group that I don't want to mention, is that some ex-Muslims were attacking me. | ||
| It's like, we have been living in America for 20 years and this guy just comes in from Iraq and steals all the media attention from us. | ||
| I'm like, I'm sorry, you're not as good looking. | ||
| There's all this, they start attacking me and somebody wrote a huge blog about all my speaking engagements. | ||
| I'm like, oh thank you very much, I really needed that. | ||
| She saved me so much work. | ||
| By the way, we should pimp out our speak engagement at University of Texas at Austin on April 18th. | ||
| Tuesday. | ||
| And then we have University of Maryland, College Park, that is on the 28th. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| I'm at USC tonight. | ||
| All right, let's just move quick on some of these because there's so many questions here. | ||
| How do we separate the discussion from state or politics and religion with Islam? | ||
| Because a lot of people are confused about that. | ||
| I think that maybe if we frame this more as a political discussion and not a religious discussion, because if you were to say to somebody, well, here's a set of, here's a political ideology that's against gays and against women and blah, blah, blah, they'd be like, oh, that's insane. | ||
| And that's what the left says about Republicans. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But when you throw it in as a religion, people are like, oh, we shouldn't talk about that. | |
| What do you think about that? | ||
| Yeah, I totally agree with that. | ||
| Islam is political, that's its aim. | ||
| And so it's totally fair to talk about it as a political aim. | ||
| I think that this line of Islamism versus Islam is quite helpful in this conversation, so in that way we don't generalize on all interpretations of Islam as being political. | ||
| And for example, I don't consider Sufi Islam to be political, right? | ||
| Yeah, but Sufi Islam aren't real Muslims. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm talking about Sunni Islam, it is political. | |
| But not all Muslims are political, but the religion of Islam most definitely is political. | ||
| So I will concede that you can use the word Islamist when you're talking about a person, but Islamism versus Islam is Those two are both exactly the same thing. | ||
| Islamism is an interpretation of Islam. | ||
| Islamism has something to do with Islam, that's for sure. | ||
| But what I'm saying is that this distinction between political Islam versus Islam I think is very necessary because not all Muslims will believe that Islam is political. | ||
| Yes, hashtag not all. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So they believe it could be spiritual and that's, I mean, But when we're talking about the doctrine itself? | |
| Yeah, I mean, obviously, the core of the doctrine could be half political, but not all Muslims who adhere to Islam could think of it as Islam. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Of course not. | |
| Of course not. | ||
| And every time I talk to anyone out of this walk of life, as I said to you earlier, it's like, we end up spending so much of our time talking about books that none of us believe in, which is so absolutely exhausting at the same time. | ||
| All right, let's just do this. | ||
| Because they do great harm. | ||
| Give me three sentences on Trump's strike in Syria. | ||
| Give me your political... | ||
| You know what? | ||
| It was the best, the only thing that Trump ever did that I kind of felt like... | ||
| Good on ya. | ||
| The other thing that I'm hoping he'll do is to deem the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group. | ||
| That's another thing he was thinking of and I'd like him to do it. | ||
| I'm glad you brought that up because somebody did ask about that, the Muslim Brotherhood. | ||
| We've talked about this a little bit, that they really have, it's a political organization that really has reached its tentacles into parts of our government. | ||
| True or false? | ||
| True. | ||
| And can you give me just one minute on that? | ||
| Because people think it's this completely insane conspiracy that only Pamela Geller is screaming about, but there is some truth. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, there are some people who have affiliations with the Muslim Brotherhood or they're Muslim Brotherhood apologists. | ||
| To give an example, Dalia Mugahid, who President Obama hired as a White House advisor, some people, many people suggested that she has sympathies for the Muslim Brotherhood, the Hezbollah. | ||
| So, yeah, there are some I mean I don't know if the Muslim Brotherhood controls the government but they have had power under democratic administrations in which they became either advisors or their point of view became a respectable mainstream view like what Shadi Hamid in his book Islam Conceptualism in Brookings Institute he said like Muslim Brotherhood is something we have to accept and attacking the Muslim Brotherhood is a bad idea so this view has made its way to democratic circles so yeah I mean there is a merger of | ||
| I mean, that is for me enough of a no-no. | ||
| in which many of these groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and others have been at least consulted | ||
| on what should the US foreign policy be. | ||
| And I mean, that is for me enough of a no-no. | ||
| I mean, these people, in my opinion, should not be consulted at all. | ||
| Because you are helping these people who are killing the people who are part of the solution. | ||
| The seculars and the liberals trying to make the Middle East a better place, and you're helping the people who are damaging that progress. | ||
| Also the simple fact, it seems to me that if it wasn't up to no good, well then there would at least be some reformers like you guys involved in some of this, and unfortunately none of you are. | ||
| Really, none of you are, and you've been sort of shamed out of it. | ||
| But all right, quick, moving on. | ||
| I think this is a great question. | ||
| As a college student, how can I better distinguish between ordinary Muslim organizations and aggressively anti-criticism organizations like CARE? | ||
| So I would agree that that's basically what CARE has become. | ||
| Would you ask the same question if it were Christian organizations? | ||
| Yeah, frame it, frame it for me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why do people feel like I'm assuming that this is an atheist? | |
| Oh, I see your point, that he's going out of his way to sort of be nice here. | ||
| Why do you need to support any Islamic organizations? | ||
| Would you support a Catholic organization? | ||
| Would you support a Mormon organization? | ||
| Why do you feel the need to support an Islamic organization? | ||
| You know what I learned about her today, because we've only known each other on Twitter? | ||
| She cuts through the bullshit like a hot knife going through ice cream. | ||
| What do you think? | ||
| I think that it's a good question. | ||
| Look at the values this organization stands for. | ||
| Quilliam could be considered a Muslim organization, right? | ||
| And they are doing wonderful work and it's led by a Muslim, Majid Nawaz, and Haras, who also happens to be a Muslim. | ||
| So, I mean, I think that the kind of litmus test, do they stand against Islamism? | ||
| Do they stand for human rights and liberal values? | ||
| That's a good point. | ||
| Actually, I'm a Quilliam supporter, and I agree. | ||
| So, if they're a Muslim organization, or they call themselves a Muslim organization, but stand for liberal values and human rights, then sure. | ||
| Interestingly, does Quilliam, without getting too lost in the weeds here, I think they consider themselves more of an anti-extremist organization than a Muslim organization. | ||
| And there is another one, MALA, Muslim American Leadership Alliance, they are also kind of liberal, try to enhance integration efforts of American Muslims to America. | ||
| Muslims for Progressive Values and BV? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| This is muddy waters now. | ||
| I think that I wouldn't encourage anybody to actively support any religious groups. | ||
| If they're not of a religious, they're not even of that religion, I feel like when they're trying to support Muslims or Islamic groups, it's just virtue signaling at that point. | ||
| And so maybe just, you can support individual Muslims that you share their values with, or groups that you share values with, that's fine. | ||
| But I don't think that anybody really needs to go out of their way to feel like, I want to make sure. | ||
| Let me just pause there, because I got to get to USC. | ||
| We could do this for five hours, and we could have continued our thing for another three hours. | ||
| You guys will have to come back to LA so we can do this. | ||
| I would love to. | ||
| Closing statement, go! | ||
| I'm starting a new organization, Ideas Beyond Borders. | ||
| Everything is going to be ready within this month. | ||
| I ask people to email me if they are willing to volunteer and help out or donate. | ||
| I have a podcast. | ||
| And I'm going to do a little something with you guys. | ||
| Am I allowed to say that publicly? | ||
| I just said it, so now we're screwed either way. | ||
| We are doing a podcast, Secular Jihadists from the Middle East, that I'm doing with Yasmin. | ||
| That's how I get to know her more. | ||
| We're probably going to have a show in which we try to highlight anti-Islamism and things with my friend Melissa. | ||
| And yeah, I'm hopefully going to write a book. | ||
| So there are these four things going. | ||
| And yeah, so people follow me and send me an email if you're interested in joining the organization. | ||
| We're setting up all the programs and stuff, and we're gonna have a campus program to support and bring people like Yasmin and others to campuses to actually create a counter-narrative against the backlash that is happening against people like us. | ||
| And yeah, we're gonna make the world a great again. | ||
| Can you beat that? | ||
| I actually don't have anything to plug. | ||
| We're doing it together. | ||
| What I do want to have, I do want to say like this call to action for everybody to just unapologetically, if you're a liberal, be a liberal, stand for liberal values and do not allow people to shut you down. | ||
| I mean, we risk our lives to speak out for liberal values. | ||
| So I understand that sometimes it can be uncomfortable conversations around the dinner table or with your co-workers or whatever, but please do that because the more of us that speak out, the safer we all are. | ||
| And you know what? | ||
| You'll probably find a lot of people agree with you, but they were just too afraid to say so. | ||
| Be the asshole Yasmin wants you to be. | ||
| Please. | ||
| Get that out of the way. | ||
| I'll make you guys a deal. | ||
| I'll do this as long as you do it. | ||
| Yeah, you're awesome. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| That's better than the Iran deal, my friend. | ||
| There are more assurances. | ||
| All right, guys, thank you for watching this. | ||
| We're gonna do more of these live streams and chats with people, and I'll definitely have these two back. | ||
| And that's it. | ||
| I'll be at USC tonight. |
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