Imam Mohamed Tawhidi recounts his transformation from a fundamentalist in Iran to a reformer who now challenges ISIS and stoning laws by citing Bukhari and the Quran's lost verses on stoning. He distinguishes between Muslims, Islamists, and jihadists, arguing that Western weakness stems from allowing Islamist political infiltration and exploiting social media algorithms. Tawhidi highlights the unique transnational threat of the "Muslim Ummah," where a single fatwa can trigger global terror, while criticizing the left's misguided tolerance. Ultimately, he envisions a slow, potentially violent alliance of reformist Muslims, Jews, and Christians to secure national safety against extremists. [Automatically generated summary]
I appreciate that as an interviewer, and it's a refreshing thing to hear.
I just thought it was interesting that you even said that to me, because it's like, you know, a lot of times people just want to come in and say what they want, but you want to be challenged.
I've had many interviews, over 400 interviews in the last two years, whether they be on radio or television or YouTube, and I just feel that many people give us special treatment just because I'm Muslim, and even though they know that I do have some conservative views, such as a border on border protection, national security,
but even then, they still want to give me that special treatment,
If the extremists can obtain an image of me beside a wine bottle or in a bar, for example, then they can easily discredit me as a Muslim Imam because Muslims don't drink.
And I don't drink either.
But they can easily stick that accusation when they have a picture of me being close to a wine bottle.
And they want that and I'm not going to allow them to do that.
I didn't know what that life was like, so the life I was living was very normal.
It was, this is how life is to me.
I didn't know there was another life and in fact, when I first moved to a public Australian school, I I was shocked that we actually had people that were not
Muslim because the school I grew up in was a, I was raised in initially, completed my
initial studies in Western Australia, there was a private Muslim school, also a conservative
atmosphere.
So the house was a conservative atmosphere, school was a conservative atmosphere, up until
2007, I go back to Iran, and then you've got Sharia law everywhere.
So I've never actually had time to be open to the rest of the world and just accept everyone,
and that happened after my family was oppressed by ISIS in 2014, when I was still there studying,
and it just hit me, that this can't be the way we were supposed to live.
Yeah, okay, so I'm gonna later in the interview let's define some of those terms because I think people get lost a little bit in the difference between Islamist, Jihadist, fundamentalist, etc.
And the speakers of the sacred shrine of Imam Hussain announced that Mosul, which is Mosul, The Iraqi city close to Baghdad had fallen under the authority of ISIS.
And that's what an hour away from where I was.
So that's when it really hit me.
And then as I tried to leave the country, I found a lot of struggle because airports were now blocked.
These guys were shooting down airplanes.
And the Australian passport that I had saved me.
I was given priority and I returned back to Australia.
But before all of this happened, my uncle was kidnapped, burnt alive, who served in the Iraqi army.
And we had to go receive his body from Baghdad.
So this whole scenario woke me up.
And when I came to Australia, I saw that, hang on, Muslims are killing Muslims.
I've been interrogated in Iran for several times for my views and opinions.
And the Muslims in Australia are playing the victim card, crying Islamophobia.
So then I started to form diplomatic relations and public relations to combat extremists.
So what was it like right when you got onto the scene, right when you started being more public about this?
Because I'll be very honest with you, when I first saw you on Twitter and you were tweeting about some of these things, I thought, I can't, well, so immediately, everybody was like, Ruben, you've got to have Imam Tawidi on.
Everybody was saying it, and I was like, this guy just came out of nowhere.
I can't just magically sit down with him.
I am not perfectly versed in all of these things, obviously, and I don't want to be used as a pawn, basically.
So, what was it like as you started talking about these things from the inside community and the outside community?
Okay, the inside community knew who I was because of my lineage.
Because I descend from the...
The companions of Prophet Muhammad, one of the early converts from Christianity into Islam, and, you know, shared their wealth and their military and their tribes and everything, military power with Prophet Muhammad, and they went throughout Arabia in all the wars, and I've written in my book that they're terrorists.
So my prominent lineage, my father, my grandfather, and also the fact that I was close to the Grand Ayatollahs and I was ordained publicly as an Imam, So the inside world of Islam knew who I was, and I still had Facebook, I still had Twitter, you know, a very humble following, a basic following, but I was still known.
So they came in wanting a three-minute comment on a certain issue and I gave them a 30-minute talk about the Muslim community and everything.
And so they take that and then the director gets in touch with me and they're like, you know, we can do a lot with what you're saying and you have this we didn't know.
So then I became known in the area nationally and then internationally and I had a few heated exchanges on Australian television, Sunrise.
Because on one hand, I've got politicians calling me, telling me that you are an asset, you speak English, you're young, you present yourself well, you know how to talk, you're against extremists, you love Australia, clean record, we need you, but not publicly.
So that really hurt because what do you mean not publicly?
You want to work with me behind the scene, but you still want to visit the extremists for votes.
I would actually have my My turban on the side and we just, I'll open some buttons and we just, it was a very relaxed gathering with these politicians.
So that almost gets to the heart of exactly why the discussion around Islam is so difficult, because every time someone tries to come in and talk some sense about the difference between an ideology and people, and all of the sort of moderate things that I see you talking about all the time, you guys are the ones that get thrown under the bus.
There's so many examples of this, of almost every minority that tries to fight from within.
They're the ones that get thrown under the bus, and then all that does is strengthen the extremists.
I think what helped me a lot was the fact that I had a political advisor, a man who worked in the Australian Parliament for 40 years, retired now, Australian, so born in Australia, non-Muslim.
So what about the reaction from within the community, though?
I would imagine once you start talking about these things, often the reaction from within the community is going to be even worse, because now you're a traitor and a sellout and the rest of it.
I make that the leaders agree with me because they still come to my house and we have dinners and no problem, but they don't want any photos.
But I do have photos, but I share that with the people in government to know what the progress is with what I'm doing.
I'm not a one-man band walking around with nobody.
No, Muslim leaders come to my house and we have amazing dinners and we talk about Muslim issues, but the community will reject them if they know that they have relations with me.
In a way, does that type of person, although I can sympathize with their position, right?
They don't want their congregation to turn on them or something like that, but that type of person that gives you the quiet support, But won't do it publicly.
Isn't it, in a way, the most frustrating type of support?
I find that.
I have so many people that will come up to me, public people, people more famous with plenty more money and all sorts of things, that come up to me and say, Dave, you know, I really love your show and I'm sorry I can't tweet about it.
I just don't want to get in hot water.
And I think this is a theme amongst a lot of the people that we're sort of connected to.
Okay, so let's just do a little bit of sort of Islam 101 and sort of how to talk about these issues.
So when I first sort of became interested in all of this, most of my audience knows my sort of political evolution, But it was the night, and I suspect you've probably seen this, that Sam Harris, the neuroscientist, was on Real Time with Bill Maher, and they were talking about the difference between Islam, a set of ideas, and Muslims as people, and that you shouldn't be prejudiced, but you should be allowed to criticize ideas.
And the line that sort of caught the internet on fire was Ben Affleck calling Bill Maher and Sam Harris gross and racist.
He said, that's gross and racist.
And for me, and I was a progressive at the time and the whole thing, I thought, whoa, this just captures everything that I've seen wrong with my side.
The inability to deal with a complex issue honestly, and that the immediate charge is you must be racist, you must be a bigot, and the rest of it.
So first off, can you just talk a little bit about that, just how you can talk about a doctrine, any doctrine, but in this case through an Islamic lens, and then how you can do that but then not be racist or prejudiced towards people.
Okay, that's a very dangerous area to fall into, because I'm not a political commentator.
I am trying to change the mentality of a community, at least on a local level, socially.
I might not be able to change Mecca and change the whole religion, but at least where we live We want to have a peaceful community so I'm trying to present a better example for the moderates or the vulnerable ones than the extremist imam in their own mosque.
So it is a very dangerous field because the moment you lose their trust You lose a Muslim man's trust, or any Muslim individual's trust.
If you then recite the Quran, they'll say you're lying, because they lost your trust.
It's finished.
They don't trust you anymore.
And I find it very difficult to get that point across.
However, what I do is, I use a lot of quotations.
So it's not my words.
I quote certain issues and I refer to certain social events and I comment on them.
So I try my best not to make any statements for myself, because the level of mentality within the Muslim world is that, okay, as long as it has a divine coating, then we'll accept it.
For example, when I speak against stoning, I can refer to the most sacred book outside the Qur'an, the Bukhari, and show that the stoning began when two monkeys were throwing rocks at each other in Bukhari, throwing rocks at each other, and the companion of Muhammad saw them and said, okay, so that monkey must be a female and must have cheated on that male, so he's stoning her, so we must apply that.
And this is the most sacred book after the Qur'an.
And the Qur'an itself does not have a verse on stoning, because a goat ate that verse.
So what I do is I bring these sacred scriptures that speak about stoning, how it began with monkeys, and the verse that was supposedly there was eaten by a goat, and I quickly say, well, this is a monkey teaching.
It sounds funny, and so I'm having a go at them, but the evidence is there.
Well, they definitely do because the extremists only operate as much as they do because they know that they can operate with no criticism.
Or if there is criticism, it's only one or two accounts that are speaking against them.
So by shutting me down, I mean, that's a big win for the jihadists because let's not forget, jihadists use Facebook friend recommendations to build cyber societies The Cyber Caliphate and it's a real study that Facebook's been falling into this trap where it's website recommends jihadists to each other based on the pages they like.
So now they have this community and Twitter is the same.
Okay, well, there's a Muslim who believes in God, believes in the Prophet Muhammad, believes in the Quran.
And just an average person who, and this is me speaking in the West, believes that they should pray five times a day, fast in Ramadan, celebrate the Muslim celebrations, that's about it.
So you would say that, would you say that's ex-Muslim?
So there is a, I wanted to ask you about the ex-Muslim community also, but, so you would say that's just, you would say that's actually not Muslim, that's just sort of?
Right, okay, so we've got sort of just the ones by name only, I gather, the ones who, let's say, aren't practicing, but still are, they were born Muslim, they're Muslim, then... The ones who are not practicing, Yeah.
Right, so that's where I was trying to get with this, to understand what your definition of moderate is.
Islam is Islam and you're either a reformist, a reformer, a reformed person, or you're still a Muslim.
The Muslims who don't chop the hand of the thief and don't stone and don't apply the violence of Sharia law, they've diverted away from the core beliefs of Islam.
So in a weird way, you're an imam who also, you obviously have a great, affinity's not the right word, you have a great respect, I suppose, for the ex-Muslims, in a way.
The ex-Muslims have every right to be where they are, because now is the worst time to be a Muslim.
And when a Muslim has a problem or is facing a problem, whether it be inheritance, financial issues, abuse at home, divorce after being married off, you know, at a very young age, they don't find the person who listens to them.
The majority of imams in mosques have zero qualifications when it comes to counseling, when it comes to solving real life problems.
They only know how to talk when it's against Israel, against the Jews, and to play the victim card and basically spread news about what they're doing in society.
So the ex-Muslims, the majority of them leave the religion because, number one, they really feel it's not for them anymore.
And the people who paved the way for them, right, I do know that some people read Richard Dawkins or read certain books and then change their religion or leave religion completely.
But ISIS makes more ex-Muslims than any intellectual in the West.
So if we want to blame ex-Muslim for being ex-Muslim, it's the fundamentalist Muslims that made them ex-Muslim.
They are the ones who are making them leave the religion.
Right, and that's completely contrary to what the media would portray about this.
They would say that if you talk about any of this, you're driving people to become extremists, which, as many people call it, this is the soft bigotry of low expectations.
If I was to say anything that might offend you, you would automatically become an extremist, which is such a horrific way of viewing another human being.
Is there something that I could say to you that somehow you might end up blowing me up?
An Islamist is an individual that believes in preaching and spreading and expanding Islam and the message of Islam through militant means.
So they would spread Islam by the sword and now the tactics are a bit different.
Now it's getting through Congress.
So before it was by the sword, now it's getting themselves into Parliament and then making laws that act as the sword, the Islamophobia law in Canada, M103.
So an Islamist would silence you just to spread his agenda.
That's different from a Muslim.
A Muslim would say, okay, this is the Quran.
I believe Allah is the right God.
I believe Islam is true.
Accept it.
You don't accept it.
You're not gonna be saved.
Good night.
Good night.
That's basically a Muslim.
An Islamist will actually go the extra mile of kidnapping someone because they drank alcohol and whipping them because they believe that is the right thing to do.
We've seen across Europe.
Statues are being destroyed because it's not allowed in Islam.
So that's an Islamist.
An Islamist organization would be Hamas.
Hamas is an Islamist organization that did terrorist doings.
It's responsible for terrorist activities, so then it became a terrorist organization.
But its ideology is an Islamist ideology.
So, a two-state solution is not an option.
They need to be eliminated because our message is the right one.
That's an Islamist mentality.
Now, the other person or the other group of people would be the fundamentalists.
A fundamentalist Muslim wants to preserve the message of Prophet Muhammad and live like Muhammad the same way he lived.
So if the reports say Muhammad had short pants because his pants would stop to his ankle, they'd go to university, Harvard University, with their ankles sticking out.
So if there was no deodorant in Mecca, we're not going to use deodorant.
If Mohammed never trimmed his beard with a blade, then we're not going to use a blade on ours.
That's a fundamentalist.
And these guys will always take the side of the Islamist rather than the moderate.
And also moderate is just a politically created term.
It's a political term to differentiate.
But at the end of the day, I don't believe there's moderate.
You're either Muslim or you're not, and then there are levels in faith.
As to how deep you are and how much into the religion you are.
So when I see these videos, and Memory does a great job of the translations, when I see these videos, but let's say the ones that aren't translated from Canada, for example, they want that message to get out of the mosque.
Like you would think that's contrary to what they would want.
You'd think it's like you'd want to keep it sort of radicalized within so you can put a good face on things.
But you're saying when they're talking about this and that with the Jews and the gays and this and that and the other thing, you think they actually want that to get out there because they're the ones putting it out.
Unless it's an organized organization that targets people and sends hitmen.
But no other religion has this power.
An Imam in Mecca would say that the Jews are the enemy or that the Christians are the enemy, knowing 100% that there will be a Muslim Who would go and commit a terrorist attack.
He doesn't even have to look for him.
He doesn't need to do anything.
He just knows there's a Muslim who will get this and will do the job.
No other religion has this.
And we see it several times where, in Russia, they killed a, I think it was, sorry in Turkey, I think it was.
So I know you're a free speech guy, because I see you tweeting about it all the time, and you're exercising your free speech here.
It's a beautiful thing.
What should be done?
I don't mean just from the inside conversation, say you meeting with a more fundamentalist imam and trying to get him back, let's say, towards the center or something.
They're fighting for democratic rights to be applied for the extremist, for the Islamist,
when the Islamist doesn't believe in democracy.
They will use democracy to destroy democracy and then establish their own belief system.
Now, what can we do?
I think, and I say this all the time when I'm having dinner with a politician or a premier or anyone, and I say, your political party is finished.
You guys are infiltrated.
And if you email me, I'll send you reports about one or two of your candidates and what their backgrounds are like.
They remain speechless, and I'm not speaking liberal, I'm speaking Conservative Party.
I'm speaking parties who, you know, we have hope in.
Okay, these guys will seriously serve the cause of national security, will, you know, tighten the situation at the borders, won't let these jihadists come in.
Refugees who end up being jihadists, we've had them in Australia.
Yes, it's one of the main plans to infiltrate political parties and then make their way into positions where they can change or make the law.
And we've seen this numerous times.
I mean, my book, I speak about a lady, Khatib, I mean, she became, well, she's deceased now, she passed away, but she actually said that her long-term goal is to make all of America Muslim.
And she was getting grants from the American government.
Everything you see in the Muslim world when it comes to politics is all studied, is strategic, it's all planned, well-funded, well-organized, and they know exactly what to do and when to do it.
All the media that's going on now against the organizations such as C.A.R.E., they do no harm to C.A.R.E.
whatsoever.
C.A.R.E.
has a clear vision and they are reaching their goals because there are loopholes and there are cracks within the system and they're equivalent in Canada, they're equivalent in Australia.
And these, you know, these loopholes within the government keep getting bigger and bigger as these guys get elected.
And I don't want to scare your viewers, but all I have to say is these people are very smart people.
They're not what the media says, that when they actually attack then they're mentally ill or these people are minorities.
They're very strategic and they're very, very smart.
Which is why intelligence services around the world need hundreds of millions of dollars just to keep up with what these guys are doing.
We need these resources to understand how they operate.
And they keep learning and they're getting better and better.
First, when I was a fundamentalist, Islamist, someone who rejected the West, rejected dialogue with the West, my best friends from the outside world, you know, and I wouldn't say they were friends who I knew personally, but the people who I considered our friends, our allies, were the leftists.
So when I was a fundamentalist imam sitting in Iraq or in Iran, and I'm on social media, there were certain people I liked.
Politicians I liked.
Jeremy Corbyn.
A hero.
People like that.
Hillary Clinton.
Every Muslim, every extremist Muslim in the United States votes for Hillary Clinton.
This is a fact.
I'm not saying all of them vote, but those who do vote Hillary, they would never vote Republican.
So what do you think, okay, so I'll go with you on that, but what do you think then is in the mind of Hillary or Obama or any of these other lower-level politicians that then, I would say again, are useful idiots, basically.
They don't understand the threat that you're laying out here.
Or do they?
Are they in on it?
Like what do you think is actually going on in the mind of Hillary when she's doing these things?
And we don't even have to make it about her so specifically, but any of these people.
So let's talk about immigration a little bit, because it's been sort of a thread through this.
You're for strong border protection.
I mentioned to you right before we started, I was in London a couple months ago, and I hadn't been there for quite some time before that.
I've been there twice this year.
And the first time I was there, one of the things that was shocking to me, it's just viscerally shocking, and it has nothing to do with bigotry or hatred or anything else.
Is that I was in you know the Harrods area right in the sort of center of London and the amount of women that I saw in burqas I mean only eyes that's it now I have no problem with those people individually of course but seeing this amount I mean I'm talking it seemed like at points 20 or 30 percent of the women Now, if I had seen 30% of the women dressed in traditional Mormon clothing or dressed as Orthodox Jews, I would have also thought there's something strange going on here.
Let's put it that way.
That's what I thought.
I was just like, there's something odd going on here.
Can you just talk about that related to Western countries and then how that's related to immigration?
You know, some of the filthiest women to ever exist are ones that wear burkas.
Seriously, hookers, they wear burqas because they don't want their faces to be known.
And now in Baghdad, from the reports that come, because I speak to officials, they tell us that they have a problem with prostitution and the women are wearing burqas.
And they want to stand out from the other women that are wearing burqas, so what they do is they flip their attire inside out.
But it's all black, but all you have to do is focus on that thread.
Do the average lefty that used to be your ally when you were more extreme, so to speak, do you think they realize that this set of ideas is so in direct conflict with the rest of their ideas?
The rest of their ideas about tolerance and we're for gays and minorities and women and all of these things that they've aligned themselves with an ideology.
If you were to look at it in their pyramid, they've put Islam really at the top of their pyramid because they believe it's a brown person's religion.
which of course is a racist notion in itself because a religion is not of a skin color.
But do you think they even realize, like now I'm not talking about say the Islamist,
what they realize their alliance is, the other way around.
Do you think these people have any sense of what's going on here?
Many people say it's not because the Islamic books describe their hair, their eyes, and if one hair band was to fall on planet Earth, the perfume would be smelled by everyone.
So there are descriptions that these are actual women, not raisins.
So the strategy of Islam spreading is very unique in a sense that their unity In their theology, it's unbreakable.
It's impossible.
I mean, a Muslim would unite with a Muslim against a Christian, against an atheist, even if he knows his brother in faith is wrong.
Yeah, which nobody talks about, of course, because we don't know how to frame it properly.
So we just wait for something to happen with Israel, basically, and then it's like, oh, well, now we can, we got good guys and bad guys, it's easy.
So, all right, so two more questions for you.
So one, where do you, what do you think it is about you?
about the guy I'm sitting across from right now that gives you the sort of bravery to talk about this.
I mean, that's why when you first came on the scene and everyone was like, talk to this guy, I was hesitant, because I was like, I just don't know enough that A, I don't want the wool pulled over my eyes, but B, you know, as your critics will say, there's fame to gain out of this, there's all of this other bounty to be had by this.
The future I want to build focuses on the West and the West alone.
The Middle East isn't my area anymore.
Because me having this interview, something like this in the Middle East, would see me killed the same week.
So, the best way to reach the Middle East is through social media.
And I've got my accounts in Arabic, I've got accounts in different languages, where I have translators that do that for me.
But my main vision and my effort and energy goes into the West.
And I would like to see all Islamist, extremist centers shut down.
The people who are fundamentalist and have been sponsored by terrorist organizations such as CAIR to lose their positions in in government.
I would like to see a honorable leader of a country that cracks down on these extremists.
On the other hand, I would like to see the so-called moderates or just the regular Muslims speaking out more, and their imams, being more vocal against extremists, and have this unity as a society.
You could be Jewish, I could be Muslim, our friend could be Christian, and we could just sit down and have a meal together, shake hands, go to, you know, watch a match together, watch a movie.
So after this interview, I go back to Australia and I go back into the Muslim community.
I don't go back to meeting with Jews and Christians.
I do that in my interfaith work.
But I actually live amongst the Muslim community.
So I would like to see that Muslim community embracing the larger community in the West.
That's my vision, because then we can work on establishing peace and building better relations and basically uniting with the rest of the world against the extremists within our own religion.
Well, that also is the ultimate irony of the alliance with the left, because it's like you're taking a group of people who are inherently conservative, who hold conservative religious values, and then you're aligning them with people that hold none of those values, and they're going, please join us, for now.
I think if my vision of the West doesn't end up being successful, Then we need to unite as the revisionists, reformist Muslims, who are completely against what's happening, unite with the Jews.
With the Christians, let's put far left, far right aside and let's just speak as humans who are concerned about national security.
We need to unite on a professional level.
It's not enough to speak on YouTube and to tweet.
This isn't enough for me.
Which is why I go and I sit with politicians because I want to get something done.
So, we need to unite either now or unite in a much more global style in the future.
To end on a positive note, I'll tell you this.
The Islamists are worried now.
Maybe not showing it too much because they're getting people into Congress and people into parliaments, but they are worried.
They've lost a lot of territory.
The caliphate that they dreamed of.
They've lost ISIS.
They've lost a lot.
I mean, the United Arab Emirates is shutting them down.
Austria shut down 60, deported 60 Imams back to Turkey.
I mean, we are doing things that harm them and harm their agenda of death, basically.
And we're doing them in large portions, so in portions they can't accept.
Sixty Imams vanish from the country in one day.
That's a big loss for them.
So we are pushing back, I believe, as a society, or as a global society, against the extremists.
But I think it's a slow way to the finishing point, and we will win at the end of the day.
I do know that eventually people will just get fed up with the extremists, and unite with these reformists, and just get them out of the society.
I don't know how, maybe in a hundred years, I don't know.
But it's going to be really bad.
The way we win will be really bad.
It will not be peaceful.
And I really hope that we can pave the way for a much more peaceful ending.
But I'll just say this.
Every time I came on Australian television, I have a police officer that tells me, you know Imam, I've been sensing this, every time you go out there speaking, we get more applications for firearms, because they believe the invasion is coming.