Nov. 3, 2019 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
01:08:41
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| That's where I think the Iraq war has failed miserably, is that democracy is not just about elections, it's about institutions, it's about civil liberties, it's about all of these good education, good infrastructure. | ||
| That was not, I mean, and that was not built, even though some may argue that was the intention of the war, but as you dig in more and you see the corruption between the contractors and the other contractors, and suddenly just the money disappears for some reason, which was all meant for kind of rebuilding institutions. | ||
| I'm Dave Rubin and this is The Rubin Report. | ||
| Quick note, everybody, we've changed up our publishing schedule. | ||
| So going forward, clips are going up throughout the week and our full interviews will be right here on YouTube on Sundays. | ||
| And of course, click that subscribe button and turn on notifications, blah, blah, blah. | ||
| And more importantly, joining me today is the founder of Ideas Beyond Borders, a brand new American citizen, Faisal Almutar. | ||
| Welcome back to The Rubin Report. | ||
| Hello Dave, how are you? | ||
| Good. | ||
| I'm fine, thank you for asking. | ||
| I dropped the Saeed there. | ||
| I said Faisal Al Moutar. | ||
| Do you go by Faisal Saeed Al Moutar? | ||
| I go, yeah. | ||
| Faisal Al Moutar. | ||
| Actually, I go with Faisal Saeed for a reason. | ||
| I mean, Saeed is my dad's name. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And the reason I kept it is because I have a very strong relationship with my dad, and the reason why he raised me to be the person that I am. | ||
| I mean, some people keep their dad's name away, but I kept my dad's name, and actually my first name, so I can maintain my relationship with him. | ||
| All right, then I feel I should look at you and do that intro again. | ||
| Welcome to the show, Faisal Saeed Al Mutar. | ||
| Thanks, Dave, thank you. | ||
| I am very excited to have you here, my friend, because as of right now, you are now a five-time Rubin Report guest. | ||
| I believe that puts you in the Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro category. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And you? | ||
| A recent immigrant to the United States. | ||
| Can you believe it? | ||
| I think I've made it. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| I'm out of this country. | ||
| Actually, what I just noticed is that you really noticed all my developments since I came to the States. | ||
| Actually, if your audience watched the previous episodes to now, they will see pretty much... I think you interviewed me one year after I got my green card. | ||
| So this was around probably... | ||
|
unidentified
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2014, I think? | |
| 2014, 2015? | ||
| No, it was 2015, probably the fall of 2015. | ||
| And yeah, that was one year after I got my green card, which was in 2014. | ||
| I landed in Los Angeles in 2013, and then, yeah, and then here I am. | ||
| And that was like, it's kind of mind-boggling. | ||
| Yeah, well, we'll have a playlist of just the interviews that I've done with you, and it is an interesting evolution, and we're gonna talk a little bit about your story and all that, but it's funny, because when you were on the way this morning and I was thinking about what I wanted to talk about and ideas beyond borders and everything else that you're doing, you feel to me like an old friend, but it's funny, because we only know each other for four or five years, and a lot of what we know about each other is public, although we've been out to dinner and all that stuff many times, but it shows you how fast things are changing, because it does feel, this feels like an old friendship to me, Which is weird, because it's not like we've known each other for 30 years. | ||
| I mean, five years is one-fifth of my age. | ||
| But yeah, I've known you since I came to the United States, almost. | ||
| And I hope the friendship continues. | ||
| Well, let's just see. | ||
| Let's see how about tonight. | ||
| So, first off, you are a brand new American citizen. | ||
| I want to talk about that. | ||
| You've got the leather jacket to match. | ||
| You are loving America right now. | ||
| But for people who don't know who you are, because obviously the show has grown a lot since way back I know, yeah. | ||
| Can you just talk a little bit about your story in Iraq, growing up in Iraq, and the war and everything else? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Let's do a quick recap on that. | ||
| Well, I mean, I was born in Babylon, Babylon, Iraq, and then my dad... What year? | ||
| That was 1991. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So right after the first Gulf War and under the sanctions. | ||
| God, you're a young kid. | ||
| Well, when you hear the story, you'll see that I'm more mature than average. | ||
| And so, I was born in 1991, and then my parents moved to Baghdad as I was seven or eight years old. | ||
| And my dad is an orthopedic surgeon, my mom is a lawyer, so I come from... My dad studied in the UK, and came back to the country to fix Iraq, but then Saddam Hussein went to the Gulf War, and then the country went downhill. | ||
| So... Were you born during the Gulf War, actually? | ||
| No, after. | ||
| So the Gulf War was 1990? | ||
| 1990, and then... | ||
| After that, from the Iraq side, we declared that the war has won, and it's called the mother of all battles. | ||
| And so, that happened, and then, as I was growing up, I grew up under Saddam Hussein, and one of the main anecdotes that is actually very relevant to what I'm saying is that I didn't know that Iraq invaded Kuwait. | ||
| The way that it was manufactured by both the state and then there was a mosque next to our house called the Mother of All Battles with the minarets designed as a ballistic missile and AK-47. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So Saddam Hussein started building mosques all over the country. | ||
| With missiles basically as the ornament at the top of the mosque. | ||
| And so that was like, and declared Iraq to be kind of an Islamic state, which brings us to the future, but he's the one who put God is great on the flag, so the environment I was growing up in, even though the misconception generally is like Saddam used to be secular and all of that, I grew up in an era called the Faith Campaign, in which Saddam actually, Saddam Hussein moved Iraq to become more a religious state. | ||
| So before you were born though, so when your parents were younger, it was more of a secular, or Saddam was more secular, Yes. | ||
| Relatively, yeah. | ||
| And it was more Arab nationalists. | ||
| So Arab nationalism was kind of the phase that first Saddam moved in. | ||
| It was in a war with Iran, and we had to differentiate ourselves as the Arabs versus the Persians and Iranians, all of that. | ||
| Especially the battles called Qadisiyah, which is also relevant to the battles. | ||
| Anyway, so 2003 happened. | ||
| That's where the Iraq war. | ||
| So the area that I used to live in was an area in which many of Saddam's generals used to live in. | ||
| So, as the war happened and the Iraqi military was defeated, obviously, many of these generals started leaving the district and the houses became all empty. | ||
| So, from suddenly a full residential area with a lot of people, suddenly it was like many of the houses were on the highway, suddenly all empty. | ||
| Meaning they were going to fight or they were fleeing? | ||
| No, they were fleeing the country. | ||
| Many of them either went to Jordan or some other Arab state. | ||
| Some of them went to different provinces. | ||
| We don't know, honestly, but I know that they left. | ||
| And so after these houses became empty, and then now suddenly chaos started erupting in the country, these houses are being taken over by Al-Qaeda. | ||
| So from normal families into now militias walking the streets. | ||
| So what was that really like? | ||
| So now you're in your community where you live, and suddenly, okay, now there's abandoned houses. | ||
| You don't know where these people went. | ||
| They were part of the army. | ||
| And now Al-Qaeda shows up. | ||
| I mean, what is that actually like? | ||
| So what it's like is what I think many people have seen in videos of when these militias take over. | ||
| The usual day was there is an IED. | ||
| So an IED is an explosive device that they put in the streets. | ||
| So when there's a U.S. | ||
| Humvee comes in or eventually Iraqi armies start coming up, blow up and then kill some soldiers and then there's a fight back and all of that. | ||
| So that's the usual day. | ||
| That's what people do on the weekend. | ||
| And if, I mean, from my end, I mean, I've seen, I mean, I've seen it all, from people firing rockets at US tanks, to beheadings, to dead people on the streets. | ||
| So that was my, that's why, that was my high school era. | ||
| So there were times- So you're seeing that at, like, basically like 14 years old, 15 years old, something like that. | ||
| Like, I mean, what does that do to a 14-year-old's mind? | ||
| Like, what did you think was happening? | ||
| I will talk about that, actually, after moving to a safer area and kind of getting that... Actually, maybe I can say it now. | ||
| Just a year ago, I was just sitting in my patio, my friend's patio, and it just came into me as like, wow, I've been safe for a while. | ||
| This normal life looks cool. | ||
| This kind of... | ||
| Because the usual day is, I mean, my mom was obviously tortured as well, is that she never know whether her kid is going to come back to house. | ||
| So, I've had this realization actually kind of recently, is like, I've—this normal life, which is like not to worry about bombings and suicide attacks and all of that, at the time was my normal. | ||
| That was actually—and after a while, somebody gets desensitized, honestly. | ||
| I mean, after you constantly start seeing it. | ||
| And the whole environment is like that. | ||
| It's like you talk to a friend, he's like, oh, I just—my brother got killed. | ||
| I'm like, OK. | ||
| You want to grab lunch? | ||
| Seriously, this is actually the mood of the day. | ||
| And so that was, in a way, these were like the first two years were the good years. | ||
| So even though there were IEDs and some suicide bombers, they were the good days. | ||
| And then there was a major day happened in Iraq in which al-Qaeda blew up one of the largest Shia mosques in the country. | ||
| It's called Imam al-Askari, which is an area in northern Baghdad. | ||
| And as a result, now the Shia militias start popping up. | ||
| And my neighborhood, luckily, was just in the middle between these two. | ||
| So they start firing rockets at each other. | ||
| And that rocket can—and most of these people are inexperienced. | ||
| So the rocket can hit a school. | ||
| It can hit a house. | ||
| It can—so, again, the usual days, oh, somebody's house was blown up. | ||
| OK. | ||
| Can you briefly explain the Sunni-Shia split there? | ||
| Because I think somebody might hear, oh, Al-Qaeda blew up a Sunni mosque, and not understand why they would do that. | ||
| Well, I mean, the history is long, but at least in the modern context, as Iraq, so Saddam Hussein used to be Sunni, which is relevant in this conversation. | ||
| So many of the generals and the military used to be from the Sunni, at least the leadership, where most of them were Sunnis. | ||
| So, that created—and they are the minority in Iraq. | ||
| They represent—and, obviously, some of them were dissident against Saddam Hussein. | ||
| But, generally speaking, the perception is that Sunnis were the ones controlling. | ||
| After that, then the Iraqis started getting divided into militias. | ||
| So, the Iraqi civil identity started being destroyed. | ||
| So, most people went back to their religion and their sect, mainly their sect. | ||
| And the Shia militias, I mean, the main funder of that—I mean, funding is very relevant here—funding of the Shia militias come from Iran, and the funding from the Sunni militias come from Qatar and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. | ||
| And they have a different—in a way, it's a power struggle, who actually controls the country and what vision they have. | ||
| Within the Sunni militias is the concept of the caliphate, which is ISIS and al-Qaeda. | ||
| And within the Shias, it's called Walayat al-Faqih, which is that the Shias have a version which is kind of similar to Christianity in a way that there was a twelfth imam who was hidden. | ||
| And Khomeini, and Ayatollah Khamenei now in Iran, is kind of the representative of that human on earth until he comes back. | ||
| So, in a way, they're both theocratic authoritarian, but they have a different vision of what theocratic authoritarianism looks like in practice. | ||
| And where the funding goes, which I want to talk a little bit more later, especially related to Qatar, is really interesting. | ||
| So, I've written an article when I was in Iraq, later on that I translated, which is that it's easier to start a terrorist group in the Middle East than to start a liberal one. | ||
| And many of the reasons is that I mean, I've seen funding going, like, in front of me. | ||
| Like, I've been to a restaurant, and a guy came in with a bag of cash, giving it to somebody. | ||
| And he's like, oh, go fight with the Mujahideen and all of that. | ||
| So, see, like, some of the funding was really public. | ||
| It was not really, like, hidden. | ||
| So, yeah. | ||
| So, that happened. | ||
| And then, suddenly, Iraq erupted to a much more sectarian civil war. | ||
| At the beginning, it was, we used to lose maybe 5,000 a month, | ||
| or now it became, recent months, 25,000 or 30,000. | ||
| And that's where I lost my brother and my cousin. | ||
| That was the peak of 2007. | ||
| That was when things were erupting. | ||
| And my crazy me at the time were like, "Oh, why don't everybody get along?" attitude. | ||
| And I was with my friends who were more on the liberal side. | ||
| So you were like starting atheist groups Not ACS, but mostly, like, secular anti-theocracy. | ||
| I mean, we had, like, some people who were religious with us who were also antagonistic or saw a different version of Islam or necessarily believed in it that much. | ||
| So yes, it was kind of more inclusive than just non-believers. | ||
| What was that like, though, to be starting a group or just be around people that were doing something that's pretty subversive relative to what's happening? | ||
| I mean, first it started online. | ||
| First is—that's really how we find ourselves, is online. | ||
| When Saddam was in power, we didn't have—we hardly all had two-state television and barely no internet. | ||
| It used to be called intranet, which is only local internet. | ||
| And then, when the internet shows up, which is after the war, Then everything was opened up. | ||
| So the Iraq—at the time, the Internet was as open as it is here in the United States. | ||
| You can access every website and everything. | ||
| And at the time, there were—there was a website called Blogspot, which is kind of part of Google, Googlebot. | ||
| And then there were other, like, forums. | ||
| And that's what I started. | ||
| And then after a while, I'm like, OK, where do you live? | ||
| Are you in Baghdad? | ||
| Are you here? | ||
| And then, many times people don't reveal their identity for obvious reasons. | ||
| But I was able to, also from some of my friends there, were able to formulate groups in which we meet up and discuss things. | ||
| Unfortunately, after a while, that started becoming a target. | ||
| So, we went back to hiding. | ||
| And I—after the loss of my brother and my cousin and getting multiple death threats, I left the country. | ||
| So, I left Iraq in 2009. | ||
| I left it to Lebanon. | ||
| So that's the second phase of my life in which post-Iraq, which I left. | ||
| I remember the day I left Iraq. | ||
| It was 9-9, September 2009. | ||
| So September 9, 2009. | ||
| And so Iraq at the time was still in its war zone. | ||
| There was not nothing much happening. | ||
| And I know I've asked you this before, but can you just talk a little bit? | ||
| How did you get over the border and all that? | ||
| So, I didn't have a quarrel with the Iraqi government. | ||
| So, actually, I left through the usual airport, the Iraqi—it used to be called Saddam International Airport. | ||
| It became, eventually, Baghdad International Airport. | ||
| So, I was OK to leave the country from the state, because the state didn't have any—even though the state was sectarian. | ||
| But, I mean, I'm the last of their worries. | ||
| I wasn't really targeted. | ||
| But my neighborhood, the whole Part of West Baghdad, where I come from, there were parts, for example, called Shari' al-Afghan, which means Afghan street. | ||
| So these are all Afghans came from Afghanistan who came and fought in Iraq against either U.S. | ||
| military or the government. | ||
| There were like Chechnyans, and there were a lot of people from all these. | ||
| So we became like the Times Square of terrorism. | ||
| So whatever you think of, whatever nation that had foreign fighters, they all came. | ||
| And some of them actually came before the war. | ||
| I mean, when the war ended, I remember I saw my first American, which was an Abrams tank, coming in front of my house. | ||
| And that was in April 2003. | ||
| And how did you feel then? | ||
| Because this is where you have an interesting perspective, I think, on American foreign policy relative to all this. | ||
| So you see the tank going by. | ||
| Where are you thinking? | ||
| I mean, first, it's obviously scary, but at the same time, it was a feeling of relief. | ||
| I mean, the life of the last years of Saddam Hussein, where Because he knew at the time he was going to lose power of some sort. | ||
| So he was more authoritarian than usual. | ||
| And the sanctions were hitting stronger on Iraq, more and more, to the way that Iraqi economy was destroyed, almost destroyed. | ||
| So it was kind of a relief. | ||
| I mean, what is there to lose, really, kind of attitude, is that Well, maybe these guys are going to make it better. | ||
| And my parents, even though they did not publicly were opposed to Saddam Hussein, but they were not a fan. | ||
| They were not fans. | ||
| Both of them were educated, and they had a lot of skills that they can contribute to make the country a better place. | ||
| And he kept going from a war to a war, destroying the Iraqi economy, slash destroying Iraq in general, killing tens of people, hundreds of thousands of people. | ||
| When the sanctions were happening before the war, were there people that basically were like, if he would just change his tune, if he would stop doing certain things, then America would ease up on the, or the international community would ease up on the sanctions and things would actually get better? | ||
| Like, he sort of made his bed, is what I'm saying. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it depends who you ask. | ||
| I mean, if you ask the Kurds, they will tell you, like, he gassed us multiple times. | ||
| There's no negotiation here. | ||
| If you ask some people who are having a relatively safer life, and also, we didn't know what the alternative was. | ||
| I mean, now, many people say, oh, we wish Saddam is back, or Saddam used to be safe. | ||
| But at the time, many people didn't know that Iraq would erupt in such chaos. | ||
| So, every thinking happens in comparison. | ||
| Is that I—it was better back then or it was better or worse before? | ||
| So, yeah, it depends who you ask. | ||
| I mean, there are people—if you go to the southern part of Iraq, which there was kind of a semi-Arab Spring happened in 1991, after the first Gulf War. | ||
| The usual house is you see pictures of dead children, dead sons. | ||
| And I think these guys have a different perspective, whether they want Saddam to stay or not. | ||
| And if he stayed and he was old, most likely his son would have been the president, which is today Saddam Hussein, who was far more I mean, if you think Saddam is evil, this guy is evil on steroids. | ||
| So, yeah, it's—I mean, I struggle with these questions. | ||
| I mean, I don't really have the best answer to them, but I think is that it all depends what you value. | ||
| If what you value, for example, what I value is, for example, freedom of information. | ||
| Yes, Iraq is doing much better in terms of, you know, information. | ||
| They have much more accessibility to information. | ||
| So if you want to democratize or move society to become more accepting of enlightenment | ||
| values or any values that you'd like to promote, Iraq is more suitable for it now than it used | ||
| to in 2003, the same way Syria—I mean, Syria now is under Assad, is equivalent to what | ||
| it used to be in terms of authoritarianism and information. | ||
| So, yes, it all depends what you value. | ||
| If you value safety, Saddam Hussein's time were much safer. | ||
| But how did he kept it safe by putting people in the gulag, the equivalent of a gulag? | ||
| I mean, that's—it's authoritarian safety. | ||
| It's not like safety as in everybody getting along, but it's more like if you speak your | ||
| mind you're going to get killed. | ||
| So of course you're going to get safety. | ||
| But you get a lot of pushback when you say that sort of thing, right? | ||
| When you say that Iraq now, even though Iraq is obviously still a mess, and there was that brief moment, and I do wanna focus on it a little bit, that brief moment where there were free and fair elections, basically free and fair elections, and the whole world saw it, but then the U.S. | ||
| under Obama just pulled out just like that, and then things got much worse. | ||
| But at that little moment, When there were the elections, do you think more people were thinking like you just said? | ||
| Because I see you say this sort of thing right now, that America has sort of freed Iraq in a lot of ways. | ||
| And then I see the amount of hate that you get from, usually, unfortunately, from the lefties. | ||
| I mean, again, as I grow older, quote-unquote, is that, I think is that even these federal elections at the time were not necessarily the best idea, because this is a country that was devastated by multiple wars. | ||
| Many of the people are either sectarian or live in less education. | ||
| In a way, the fair elections, or the elections, has enhanced sectarianism more than it reduced it, because many of the people who are Shias, let's say, voted for Shia parties, and Sunnis voted for Sunni parties, and Kurds voted for the Kurds. | ||
| But, and so, as I now think about it, is that democracy, which I think, that's where I think the Iraq war has failed miserably, is that democracy is not just about elections, it's about institutions, it's about civil liberties, it's about All of this good education, good infrastructure, that was not—I mean, and that was not built, even though some might argue that was the intention of the war. | ||
| But as you dig in more and you see the corruption between the contractors and the other contractors, and suddenly just the money disappears for some reason, which was all meant for kind of rebuilding institutions. | ||
| That is, I think, what was really missing. | ||
| But do you think, were we on the path until we left? | ||
| Like, so you had the elections, I get what you're saying, you still could create a sectarian mess, because everyone's just gonna vote for their own home parties, let's say. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, yeah. | |
| But were we sort of on the path and then just magically left and then it got worse? | ||
| I mean, the withdrawal was, I think, even Democrats that I've talked to and who are supportive think it's a disaster, is that, I mean, one of the things that the U.S.—I mean, I was at the time in Iraq as well—is that the U.S. | ||
| was doing with—there's a movement called the Awakening Forces, which are Sunni militias fighting against al-Qaeda. | ||
| It was kind of acting as a neutral force between all of these, because the Shias don't see the Americans as Shias or Sunnis. | ||
| They see them as Americans. | ||
| So—or vice versa. | ||
| So, the tribes, for example, were willing more, the Sunni tribes, were more willing to work with Americans than they were willing to work with the Iraqi Shias, because they think the Iraqi Shias are affiliated with Iran, which is their internal enemy. | ||
| So, in a way, America was acting as a kind of a neutral force that keeps all of these people together. | ||
| And the moment that disappeared, which is from the withdrawal, which was amazingly unplanned, the Iraqi government, which was sectarian at the time, and the way it still is, immediately pulled out the funding from all of the Sunnis who were fighting against al-Qaeda. | ||
| So when that happened, immediately these guys who were fighting against Al-Qaeda started either becoming a target to steal the sleeper cells of the terrorist group, or they were like, OK, what are we going to fight for anymore? | ||
| So then suddenly ISIS comes up. | ||
| What a surprise. | ||
| So for those who actually followed Iraq from all of the beginning to the end, The ISIS evolution makes absolute sense. | ||
| Right, and there's probably a parable here to, in a way, what's happening right now with Turkey and the Kurds, that we were there. | ||
| Maybe we shouldn't have been there. | ||
| You can make all those arguments. | ||
| But we were there, and now we moved these troops, and now Turkey's just slaughtering these Kurds, and it's like, all right, so maybe if we did try to go for good reasons, putting that debate aside, we were there, we know that the Kurds were basically our allies there, and now we've left just like we sort of left there. | ||
| And now the Kurds want America's back to defend them from all of the other factions that are responsibility and all of it. | ||
| Those are deep questions. | ||
| I do think it is, I mean, I think people on, let's call it the liberal world, is that We have to have to support our fellow liberals, or people at least adhere to some... I mean, in Kurdish factions there's communists and there are other factions that are there. | ||
| When you say liberal, just to clean it up, do you mean just basic Western ideas of freedom? | ||
| People who support freedom in general and adhere to women's equality and all of that. | ||
| There's a funny quote that's from a Lebanese poet. | ||
| He said, "Sunnis have Saudi Arabia, Shias have Iran, but secularists have nobody but | ||
| God." | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| So, in a way, is that if we do not support those who adhere to these values, at least | ||
| some of them, in comparison to others. | ||
| I'm not sure that the YPJ adhere to Western values or Enlightenment values, but they are | ||
| much better than some of the other factions. | ||
| I mean, it's all by comparison. | ||
| So, if we're going to let these guys to be slaughtered, then who do we have left to support? | ||
| I mean, that is one of the... is that we need people on the ground, which is... Well, the libertarian, the purely libertarian argument would be just get the hell out, let them do it, and that's that. | ||
| I always say is that the Middle East is the opposite of Las Vegas. | ||
| What happens in the Middle East doesn't stay in the Middle East. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| So, you cannot leave this region alone. | ||
| It's for... I mean, I just came back from Europe and I see a lot of the refugees coming from Syria and other war zones. | ||
| This is an area that is the central—it's called the Middle East. | ||
| It's in the middle of the world. | ||
| And it is the birthplace of all the monotheistic religions. | ||
| And its influence on—I mean, it's also one of the richest parts of the world because of oil and natural gas. | ||
| And we cannot be left alone. | ||
| The terrorists and the extremists are not the ones leaving us alone. | ||
| So the thing is that if you say, I'm going to leave them alone, it is on the premise that there is kind of an agreement and mutually assured destruction here. | ||
| But there is not. | ||
| I mean, when you have a guy who wants to establish a caliphate, And you're like, no, it's my business. | ||
| This is a bad deal. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Because the extremists are expansionists. | ||
| The extremists are not going to be happy. | ||
| I mean, even ISIS, they were not happy with just, even though they get a large territory, but they were not happy with just this territory. | ||
| They were willing to expand. | ||
| They don't get to a border and be like, all right, we're good to go. | ||
| I mean, yeah, they are anti—I mean, them and the Libertarians have a government in which, like, it's a word that is borderless, is that they see that their ideology is borderless, which is true according to their interpretation. | ||
| So, yeah, so I think it's that leave-them-alone policy. | ||
| And also it's like—I mean, on what premise? | ||
| I mean, America has intervened in the region, so it's just like you intervene and then you leave it. | ||
| In a situation that is much-- | ||
| You break it, you fix it. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yes, I do. | ||
| And how to maintain all of that world order with all of, if you're not gonna intervene, | ||
| the Russians will, as has happened in Syria. | ||
| And if you're not gonna intervene, the Turks will. | ||
| And which world order you want to live in. | ||
| Just very quickly on the Kurds. | ||
| I mean, they basically have, the KRG basically has a state in Iraq. | ||
| Yes, in a way, autonomous. | ||
| Would you just, before carving out that piece of Iraq officially and just letting them have that state, I understand that you still have the Syrian Kurds and the Turkish Kurds and the rest, but do you think as an Iraqi, do you think that that basically would just be fine? | ||
| I mean, it sort of is. | ||
| I mean, I think it all depends on what they want. | ||
| I mean, there are arguments—and I'm happily an ally of many Kurds—and there are arguments on—some argue that we have to stay as a part of Iraq, and some of them argue that they have to be autonomous, and there are—because there's a lot of natural resources that exist in Iraq that kind of—that they can rely on and benefit from. | ||
| And also, if you're going to form a state, you also might become vulnerable At least now Iraq is a state of some sort, so that if there is a Turkish invasion, it'll still be a Turkish invasion of Iraq, where it's a state versus a Kurdish state that they will be vulnerable. | ||
| Is that true, though? | ||
| Would the Iraqi army defend, you think, if the KRG, the area, got attacked? | ||
| You think the Iraqi army would step in? | ||
| Yes, and maybe even the U.S. | ||
| Army, right? | ||
| I mean, the U.S. | ||
| Embassy in Iraq is the largest embassy in the world, so it's still— Right, it's still part of the— Yeah, yeah, there's still infrastructure that they can depend on. | ||
| So, I mean, I'm—maybe this is me and extremists agree on it, but I am for unity. | ||
| I mean, I agree that there needs to be nation-states and there needs to be, in a way, states that are based on ethnic groups because of the fact that they're being persecuted, but at the same time, It's, I mean, there are a lot of issues that the world is now being more interconnected than ever. | ||
| And we have to, so what happens in Iraq and what happens in other states all connect to each other. | ||
| So I'm more in favor of more unity than division. | ||
| I mean, we've got to create the division. | ||
| Okay, the Kurds have their state. | ||
| How about the Shias? | ||
| Should they have their state? | ||
| And should they be with Iran or should they be a separate state? | ||
| Or how about the Sudanese? | ||
| Should they be with Saudi Arabia? | ||
| Like there's always going to be... We think we're divided in America. | ||
| That must be hilarious. | ||
| Yeah, so who's gonna be the representative? | ||
| People are arguing about marginal tax rates and you're like, come on, this is not sectarian. | ||
| But real quick, I think we have to bizarrely give Hillary Clinton a shout out here because, I don't know, when did you move to America? | ||
| 2009, right? | ||
| No, 2013. | ||
|
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2013? | |
| So during the campaign, the first Obama campaign, When they were in the primary, Hillary versus Obama, I don't know if you saw this from the outside, but Hillary kept saying, we have to leave Iraq, but we have to do it responsibly with the timeline and this whole thing. | ||
| And Obama kept saying, no, we've gotta go, we've gotta go. | ||
| And that was in the midst of the hope and change thing and just everybody like just drinking the Kool-Aid and everything. | ||
| And that he did do it, and then, as you're saying, it led to a lot of those things. | ||
| So, in a weird way, Hillary actually deserves some credit for being honest, at least, about what should have been done, as opposed to just the rash decision to just get going. | ||
| I mean, at the end of the day, which I hope we're gonna talk about modernization a bit, is that I think that, at the end of the day, people in the Middle East have to fix their own region. | ||
| I mean, I'm not in favor of interventionism forever, or even interventionism in some cases. | ||
| It's that, at the end of the day, The people of the region have to choose their own destiny, and that destiny should not be antagonistic to the world. | ||
| And so, which brings up the need that we cannot rely—I mean, I think now is more than ever, and even previously. | ||
| The United States is not a reliable partner. | ||
| If you're fighting in the region, the United States might switch left or right, and some people might use the interventionism as an argument for getting votes, and some people might get to not get votes. | ||
| At the end of the day, you cannot rely on that. | ||
| And it is, in a way, a weakness of the United States, because, as a democracy, you can have all these shifts. | ||
| Well, for example, with Russia, I was having a call with actually a Syrian—not militia, but he's kind of an observer. | ||
| And it was like, at least with the Russians, I know what's going to happen in the next 10 years. | ||
| With the Chinese, I know it's going to happen in the next 15 years. | ||
| But with the Americans, OK, we can have an interventionist president like Bush, for example, and then you can have Obama after that. | ||
| And now, I don't know what the shitshow is. | ||
| It's an interesting sort of soft spot of democracy. | ||
| I mean, these, the problems in many of these issues, extremism, authoritarianism, these need long-term solutions. | ||
| I mean, even, for example, which is kind of, we rely that as a basic of, when people ask us about theory of change, is that in the Cold War, when the United States pushed for that communism was evil, and we had these values, and we have to spread them or defend them, that was a consistent policy in both Democrats and Republicans. | ||
| Like, you see here, JFK talking about communism, In the same way that Reagan was talking about communism, is that there was not this split about who is the enemy and how can we fix it. | ||
| It was consistent policy that we stand for these values as a state, and this value, which is communism, which is spreading around the world, we have to put a stop into it. | ||
|
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Yes. | |
| And this is a long-term solution, so if the Democrats want it, the Republicans want it, it doesn't matter. | ||
| It doesn't matter. | ||
| And I think that if there is going to be a constant intervention or state solution to this, which I not solely believe in it, but because I'm more on the non-state intervention, because I think that the states have, I mean, New York subway barely works, so forget about fixing the Middle East. | ||
| You just became a citizen and you're already railing. | ||
| Ironically, the best subway system probably in the world. | ||
| As terrible as it is. | ||
| In that it runs 24 hours a day. | ||
| It's great. | ||
| But I think that these issues need long-term solutions. | ||
| This polarization of America, left and right and all of that, is really harming our partners. | ||
| I think at the end of the day, which I'm setting up as my organization and other allies and partners, we have to empower the people there in the region to be self-sufficient. | ||
| At the end of the day, the goal is self-sufficiency for the people who hold our values and for them to fight for themselves and fight for others. | ||
| That's why I brought up the Hillary thing, because it's interesting. | ||
| We just have to think about these things seriously, to whatever extent we're gonna think about them, because just saying, okay, something bad's happening, we're just getting the hell out of there, and just because it makes us feel good isn't necessarily the wise thing. | ||
| It doesn't mean that staying is the right thing, but at least be willing to think about some of these things. | ||
|
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Or at least talk about them honestly. | |
| One of the amazing quotes, which I always remember from David Petraeus, who was at the time the head of the multi-coalition forces in Iraq. | ||
| He said, the only time we were actually able to defeat terrorism in Iraq, which actually he did in some parts, in which when we cared about the citizens of Iraq as much as we cared about the citizens of the United States. | ||
| So, any policy that is—I mean, in a way, is that being compassionate is actually a winning policy against—because if you—I mean, as in case of—when I give talks and stuff, if the conversation is always about, OK, how is that going to benefit the United States—not to say that this should not be a policy if you work at the State Department, but I think is that the best policy is a policy that looks at that target audience or the people there, and they're like, OK, We care about your safety as well, not, okay, you guys kill each other and we're going to sit on bases and at least protect ourselves. | ||
| I think there should be, and it has been applied before, which actually, I mean, with the Petraeus situation, he worked with a lot of Sunni allies, it's called the Awakening Forces at the time, in which they actually were able to defeat Al-Qaeda step by step. They formed this when they saw that, okay, | ||
| well, the Americans actually care about us. They're not just opportunists who would throw us | ||
| under the bus, but rather care about our lives as much as they care about their army's | ||
| lives. And when that happened, actually, there was a defeat for al-Qaeda. | ||
| And that's basically like when the surge was happening. | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| So the surge was complementary to these Sunni allies who were fighting. | ||
| So I think that is the best policy. | ||
| It's not, okay, this cost too much for us. | ||
| It should not be looked at in this way. | ||
| It should be that if we're going to defeat terrorism, we have to side with allies there and give them our word and actually stick with it, not flip around. | ||
| So I wanna switch sort of to you coming to America and everything you've done since then. | ||
| But I thought an interesting transition to all this would be, you probably saw just in the last couple weeks, Ellen DeGeneres had to go on her show and basically sort of apologize for sitting in a box at a football game with George W. Bush because everybody was saying George W. Bush is a mass murderer and got us into Iraq and all of those things. | ||
| And I thought that's kind of consistent With a lot of the pushback that, say, I get on some of these things, but really, let's make this about you. | ||
| You are the guest. | ||
| When you come to America and talk about some of these issues, I know for you it's been really bizarre to find out who the people that kind of hate you are and where your allies come from. | ||
|
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Can you talk about that a little bit? | |
| Because you're another kind of apostate. | ||
| You're not just a religious apostate, I suppose. | ||
| It's actually really interesting. | ||
| After I had a work experience, which I think we're sharing, I've decided almost like 52 months ago or 50 days ago that I'm not going to read the news. | ||
| I'm actually, I'm only going to focus on my work and if there's any news that's relevant to my work, I will get it from my staff. | ||
| I've had a policy, which is sometimes inconsistent because I've been following a lot of what happened with the Kurds and everything, but I was like, if that is something I am, number one, not my expertise, number two, incapable of changing, Why am I bothering myself? | ||
| Because all I'm getting is complete agitation. | ||
| You mean you don't want to tweet about it? | ||
| Okay, so putting aside the LN thing, you know what I'm talking about with the general philosophy. | ||
| You come to America, you're a brown-skinned immigrant, you come here, you... | ||
| really start getting success and friends and all of these things, and you're talking about these issues. | ||
| When was the first moment that you realized, whoa, the people that are supposed to be supporting me here in America are not, and the ones that I thought were gonna hate me suddenly support me, if that's a fair way of starting this question? | ||
| It's really interesting. | ||
| I mean, that has been an ongoing discussion internally, not to sound like a crazy person, but Well, you've had it externally, too, because we've been talking about this for years. | ||
| You were actually one of the first people, the first time you were on my show, was one of the first times that I really fully understood it from another perspective. | ||
| I was seeing it from my own perspective, oh, of the lefties kind of abandoning liberalism, but seeing, I mean, truly, just because of your identity, in a way, and where you come from, I was like, oh, this one's just really obvious now. | ||
| And now everyone sees this. | ||
| I mean, the best example, I think, I think it's an article you tweeted about what happened in the University of Rochester. | ||
| And I was talking about the need for Fridays being borders and everything. | ||
| And then there was, I think she had like a Marxist thing on her bag. | ||
| And they were amazingly disruptive. | ||
| And then she, I mean, she was shouting at me and she was insulting and all of that. | ||
| And she was accusing me of... Oh, and there's another one in Portland State University in which I was accused of spreading white supremacy. | ||
| Yeah, well, they called me a homophobe and Christina Hopp-Somers an anti-feminist. | ||
| Yeah, so it is actually one of the... | ||
| Most of the strangest things, I mean, and I've seen it in Europe as well, is this unholy alliance between the far left and the Islamists. | ||
| In a way, it's funny, in Iraqi elections, the last Iraqi elections, the communists and the Islamists were in the same coalition party, which is really interesting, because I think is that there is a correlation of the ideology between those who are far leftists and Islamists. | ||
| They really hate the same people. | ||
| Which is, in a way, the capitalistic, or neo-liberalism, whatever they want to call it. | ||
| But is the real cohesion there just because they both want state power, right? | ||
| Like, they want it for different reasons, but it's almost like, like here the way I would view it is the reason that the Islamists love the progressives is because the progressives are trying to attain state power, and then the progressives will just sort of be the last ones to be beheaded. | ||
| I mean that kind of metaphorically and literally. | ||
| But do you think that's a fair estimation? | ||
| Because it's both about accumulating power, maybe for different reasons. | ||
| I think you're putting too much thinking into it. | ||
| I think it's that the people, at least the ones that I've talked to who sympathize with Islam, really don't have any fucking idea what they're talking about. | ||
| They know what they hate. | ||
| You're talking about the Islamists? | ||
| No, the far leftists. | ||
| Is that they know what they hate, right? | ||
| And they know, as they go with this, more ideologies come in of intersectionality or all of that. | ||
| So they know what the enemy is. | ||
| So in a way— Well, I agree with that. | ||
| I agree that most of them don't know what they're doing. | ||
| They would—so, okay, this fits the identity politics that we want to fulfill. | ||
| And I've talked about this, I think on your show, about the zoo theory, in which they want a rainbow, and, oh, here is a panda, and here is a... So they want this diversity, so they put the hijabi in, because she looks authentic. | ||
| So in a way, they are committing racism itself by putting a religion, or in their ways, connected religion, ethnicity, into like a certain look. | ||
| So, yeah. | ||
| Which is an unprogressive book. | ||
| It's just absurd. | ||
| It's just absurd, honestly. | ||
| I mean, six years and a half in, I just don't know how to make any sense of it. | ||
| We've got to keep going with this, though, because when they see you by their rules, they should be all about you. | ||
| They should. | ||
| And some of them have. | ||
| I think that for me to have, at least from an organizational perspective, You should donate. | ||
| I need allies, but at the same time I need supporters, which I think is a bit different. | ||
| And I've mysteriously, which is something that I would like to try one day, I think that That university world—and actually, I'm cutting a lot of my speaking engagements in universities for that reason, and also the social media—is really—I mean, I think your bio says Twitter is not real world, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Twitter is not real life. | ||
| Many Americans are really nice people. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Look, I mean, I can say that with certainty now, as I've been now to 40 states. | ||
| And I've lived—actually, I was hosted by a family who is gun lovers, who are—she's Mexican-Chinese, married to a Native American and African-American, and they love me. | ||
| And they were like semi-conservative and semi-liberal and hosted me in their house for a year. | ||
| And I still call them my American family. | ||
| And I got to know—and these are not the people you see on college campuses or you see on Twitter, right? | ||
| These are—they can be progressive on some others, on some things, and conservative on others. | ||
| And they have been—this type of mix, let's call it, not the ideologues of both sides, this kind of mix have been our biggest allies for the organization—and for me, as an individual, but also as an organization. | ||
| I think there was also a study done on Twitter that those who are actually on Twitter, those crazy maniacs, it's kind of a self-selection. | ||
| I had a lot of prejudices against the right when I moved to the United States. | ||
| And, obviously, hearing the left-wing or that section, the talk show host, and they have made a boogeyman of these people. | ||
| And other than the actual boogeyman and those who are also talk show hosts of the right-wing establishment, but most people who are conservative are also very nice people, you know? | ||
| So, I think is that that is—the problem is that how can we give these guys a platform? | ||
| Which I think you're doing some of. | ||
|
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The thing is that... Wait, who do you mean, these guys? | |
| Those who are actually sane people, who are not fighting with... I'm trying, man. | ||
| Yeah, who are not, like, starting at Dave Rubin, or, like, at Faisal. | ||
| Like, you know, these are... Unfortunately, they are very loudest in most of the... But, I mean, I'm now realizing it after I said I quit the news, and even social media. | ||
| I only post selfies of me eating shawarma. | ||
| But I think is that as I go outside and I now, yeah, many people are actually really nice. | ||
| It's interesting because, you know, I traveled the country and the world, actually, about 20 countries over the course of the last year on tour with Jordan, and that also, my main takeaway was that. | ||
| It is particularly unique here in the United States how great everyone is. | ||
| It's amazing. | ||
| Okay, so now as a citizen here, someone that's been here for six plus years, how often do you face hate and face racism, let's say from the quarters that they would tell you you're supposed to be getting it from? | ||
| Are the Trump supporters hunting you down? | ||
|
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I mean, thank goodness, not that I know of. | |
| But no, I mean, I think, but I mean, we go out all the time in New York and you make all sorts of funny Arabic jokes to waiters and waitresses. | ||
| You're, by the way, the only person I know that when you sit down at a restaurant, you order two drinks at once. | ||
| I get a glass of red wine, you get a beer and a margarita. | ||
|
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Because I know I'm going to order them, so might as well get them together. | |
| But then the margarita just starts melting. | ||
| I know. | ||
| I'm trying to explain this to you. | ||
| My physics knowledge is very limited. | ||
| But yeah, I mean... But really, do you face any racism that you know of in America? | ||
| Any anti-immigrant... | ||
| So, yes and no. | ||
| I mean, you invited me to be on your show when the travel ban happened, and my mom was in Iraq, so that thing affected, actually, me personally. | ||
| Overall, I mean, yes, I think being any public figure of any sort, you get hate as part of the game, but it's much significantly less. | ||
| I mean, there's no way to compare I don't mean hate, though. | ||
| I don't mean hate, like, oh, I don't like his policy, I don't like him, something like that. | ||
| I mean that you are a brown immigrant in the United States. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| No, I mean, overall, I would say, yeah, I mean, by any comparison, like, compared to living in the Middle East to here, there's in no way, I mean, not even, I mean, I think that there Obviously, some people have different definitions, but I think, is it dehabilitating to my life? | ||
| No. | ||
| I'm having, I think, my most account is a good life. | ||
| I love living in America. | ||
| I love my friends here. | ||
| I think that I now have a strong bond to this country as a country who accepted me from the environment that I still live in and really gave me that I think the American Dream. | ||
| I mean, I think I'm a symbol of it in a way. | ||
| Well, that's why I love seeing your posts. | ||
| I love seeing you on Instagram and, you know, when you just posted all the stuff from the party that you had when you got the big American hat on the American Dream. | ||
| And it's like you are the American Dream to me. | ||
| I really believe that. | ||
| And the people who attended that party, by the way, I had a party to be a U.S. | ||
| citizen, and the people who came to the party are from every fraction of either humanity or political views. | ||
| And no, I think it's that those who can always look for fights will find them, as in any | ||
| case. | ||
| But I think it's that—and obviously, everyone's experience is different. | ||
| I mean, I don't live in, I don't know, a small town. | ||
| I don't live in the Bronx. | ||
| I think these people might have different experiences than I do, but I think, I mean, I would be dishonest to play this identity politics. | ||
| I'm a victim here, and I think... But I've done events with you in Texas, and then we've gone to local bars that are redneck bars. | ||
| I mean, remember that? | ||
| I forgot what town we were in, but we went to that. | ||
| The average person would think it's some middle America redneck bar. | ||
| We had a great freakin' time, and nobody cared, and you're loud, right? | ||
| You're always loud and laughing, and nobody cares? | ||
| No, yeah, I think these are a lot of polarizing misconceptions that need to be fought. | ||
| I mean, my parents live in Texas, by the way. | ||
| All my exes live in Texas. | ||
| Actually, they don't. | ||
| They live in California. | ||
| But I... No, I mean, my parents live in Texas. | ||
| I go to Texas quite a lot. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, this misconception that people there are a bunch of racists and... I mean, I've also been to, like, a small town. | ||
| There's an area called Frittersburg, Texas, which has kind of German wineries and beers and stuff. | ||
| And many people there were, like, Texans, and they were not antagonistic whatsoever. | ||
| They were, like, very friendly. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Can you talk a little bit about, because you've been traveling a lot lately and I know you were in Europe just these last couple days actually, how the sort of integration thing or race conversation or the rest of it, how that's different here than it is in Europe, from what you're finding? | ||
| I mean, if there is one word to describe it, it's tense, man. | ||
| It's tense. | ||
|
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So you were in Denmark, you were in the UK... I was in Denmark mostly. | |
| I was in Denmark for like 7-8 days and then I went to Norway and I went to the UK. | ||
| The thing is like... | ||
| And also, I've been to Germany and the UK, and I'm using my American passport. | ||
| Yeah, geez. | ||
| Yeah, actually, when I get the passport, I was like, let me go to Canada to be tested. | ||
| Does this really work? | ||
| And I went to Montreal. | ||
| I was like, oh, this shit actually works. | ||
| And I was like, okay, I can go to Europe now. | ||
| Oh, that's hilarious. | ||
|
unidentified
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You just wanted to test it out in Canada, because that's a little easier. | |
| Because it's the closest country. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| You become an American citizen, you get a sharp leather jacket, and you immediately go to Europe. | ||
| I mean, obviously, I think the main difference between the United States and Europe is that Everybody can be American. | ||
| America is a land of immigrants. | ||
| At the core of it is that the identity is attached to values. | ||
| I mean, when I became a U.S. | ||
| citizen, it was, I mean, the test is easy, but it's like, okay, what does the United States, what are the Bill of Rights, freedom of speech, all of that. | ||
| You mean you didn't have to pledge allegiance to white powers? | ||
|
unidentified
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No, no, not this time. | |
| But they said, come back in five years. | ||
| I think it's that—so, that mixture of, like, that this is a state based upon values, I mean, that's one of the reasons—I mean, I actually had possibilities. | ||
| I mean, I was rejected from entering the United Kingdom, but I had possibilities of entering different states in Europe to emigrate. | ||
| Even though I was in that tough situation, in which I would take it regardless of where I'd come, I—if I had the choice, I would choose America, and I would still choose it again. | ||
| is that this is a land that is based on values. | ||
| And so, as a result, see, you and I are having a conversation. | ||
| We've had a margarita together in multiple states. | ||
| And I think, yes, while this can happen in different European states, which is that Europe has a... Europe, in a way, like Asia, is part of the old world. | ||
| And there is history and there are conflicts there that if you are an immigrant, I mean, when I was in Denmark, it was obvious I was a foreigner. | ||
| It was obvious I was a foreigner, because Denmark has a king and has a history and has, in a way, a specific tribe that eventually became a state, as in the case of many... So, although they are struggling a little bit less with the immigration issue than the other Scandinavian countries, right? | ||
| At least that was my take when I was in Denmark. | ||
| I mean, it depends who you ask. | ||
| Some people—I mean, now I think the male of the Social Democrats are getting tough on immigration to protect their welfare state and all that. | ||
| So, as a result, it's like—so, you have this kind of I would say the threshold to integrate is more difficult than America. | ||
| I think America is easy to integrate to. | ||
| I think many people, it's a melting pot. | ||
| Some guys are like, oh, you're not American enough. | ||
| I was like, I drink Bud Light. | ||
| Did someone really ever say that? | ||
| Actually, that would get to my question. | ||
| The guy from England. | ||
| He's like, you're not American. | ||
| I was like, like, I don't have time for you. | ||
| But so I think is that the threshold to enter American society or to integrate is different. | ||
| I think so. | ||
| There it's more difficult to integrate. | ||
| By default it's more difficult to integrate. | ||
| Imagine you are from Aleppo and you grew up in a religious Muslim background in which you were taught that the West is an enemy or your values are more superior to their values. | ||
| Clash immediately happens. | ||
| I mean, the Poles are difficult to integrate in Denmark. | ||
| Leave aside somebody from Raqqa or small-town Syria. | ||
| So, as a result, you have this States with, to some extent, a strong identity that is tied to the history and tied to, in some extent, ethnic identity, which I'm not a fan of, but it's a different history, and then it is not easy to | ||
| Even if you are like, let's say, even if you are the secular open-minded, you might also be viewed differently. | ||
| And imagine if you're not secular open-minded. | ||
| So now you're going minus 50 on level of integration. | ||
| And if you want to, not only that, you want to abuse their system, then the clash expands. | ||
| So in a way it's that some of the bad immigrants who move there have Just like in any case of extremism is that they also ignited the far right. | ||
| So now the far right and so now there's like this huge tension between the far right in Europe and then the Islamists who are getting more and more organized. | ||
| And unfortunately, the victims of that are the good immigrants who really have nothing to do with all of that bullshit. | ||
| Which of course is mostly. | ||
| I've talked to some of them who really love living in Europe. | ||
| It's a privilege to live in a society that gives you rights. | ||
| It's a privilege. | ||
| Most people in the world still live in authoritarian states. | ||
| It's a privilege to live in liberal democracies. | ||
| Are you shocked that so many people in the West, or let's just take it from an American perspective, Are you shocked that so many Americans are just afraid to say what you're saying right now? | ||
| Even before, you repeatedly said values. | ||
| But I know pretty much that all 12 of those Democratic candidates would be scared to say something like, I believe in American values, because the implication is somehow that means something racist now. | ||
| Right? | ||
| So the only people you have talking about values are either conservatives or, say, the more fringe, far-right people. | ||
| That's what I was talking about. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| That's what I was talking about, is that they talk about values, but they talk about values only directed to, in a way, conservative Christians, or far-rights, even though these are separate categories. | ||
| But yeah, it's... | ||
| And that's where cultural relativism is very cancerous. | ||
| Which is, again, back to the accusations that I get, is that, oh, I'm trying to westernize the Arabs or something like that. | ||
| And it was like when John Stuart Mill wrote, 'cause we translated a lot of Mill's work. | ||
| Yeah, so we're gonna get to that. | ||
| Is that John Stuart Mill, when he said freedom of speech, he didn't say freedom of speech for white people | ||
| or people in England. | ||
| He said freedom of speech is a universal human right that should be applied everywhere. | ||
| And the fact that people from there were protesting in the streets now in Baghdad and Syria | ||
| and all that are demanding these rights, to deny them these rights in the name of cultural relativism | ||
| is racism and harmful. - Is racism. | ||
| So it's a mix of both. | ||
| It's dangerous and racist. | ||
| What I find also interesting is that cultural relativism, I don't want to go too philosophical, is itself self-destructive. | ||
| Because if cultural relativism is everything is relative, then this is an objective statement. | ||
| So by the way... | ||
| Now you're going Yoda deep. | ||
| Get rid of that pillow. You want that pillow back? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| By the fact that you are saying everything is relative, you are making an objective statement. | ||
|
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In a way, it's a... And it's also, everyone knows it's not true. | |
| Not everything is equal. | ||
| Some countries throw gays off roofs, some don't. | ||
| That's not equal! | ||
| Yeah, not in values, of course. | ||
|
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And the thing is, now we know better. | |
| I mean, that's one of the things that... I mean, you have interviewed Steven Pinker on your show, and Steven Pinker has written this amazing book. | ||
| I mean, I call him the Ayatollah of Ideas Beyond Borders. | ||
| And Steven Pinker wrote this book, Enlightenment Now, which is... There it is, right there. | ||
| And we have happily translated it. | ||
| And the thing is, It talks about that these are the values of how they made the world better everywhere they were applied. | ||
| So, identity politics is irrelevant here. | ||
| It's that when you have societies that have better women's rights, have better equality, have better freedom, they become better. | ||
| That is an objective. | ||
| And he has a full freaking book with data. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, what is the argument? | ||
| So, that's the thing is that They don't have an argument against that. | ||
| They don't have an argument that if you allow women's rights and minority rights and individual rights to flourish in these countries, these countries will become—they don't have an argument against that. | ||
| So what they do is that they shift the argument into, oh, you are white supremacists or westernizing. | ||
| I was like, no, the people from there want it. | ||
| You think that people from there don't want to adhere to these values? | ||
|
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Right. | |
| It would only make sense if you didn't think that Western values and Enlightenment values were good. | ||
|
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Yes. | |
| But they are universally good, as you just said. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And there are Arab states, for example, Tunisia, when they have applied women's rights, they became better states. | ||
| So, that's why I was saying that it's both racist and dangerous, because you're denying people there who you know that their values are good, and you know that they work, but you deny them because you, in the name of whatever ideology you want to justify. | ||
| So I think it's that, that's why I think, I mean those who, there are two sides that actually get access. | ||
| And both of them are racist, in my opinion. | ||
| The first one is the cultural relativist, which is, oh, these are our values, who are we to tell them? | ||
| And then the other one will be like, oh, these values are only attached to the white race, and these other brown people cannot adhere to them. | ||
| So, is that? | ||
| So that voice, though, so I think we all understand, everyone watching this understands the first version, I think, because it's what we talk about all the time. | ||
| That other version, though, who is that? | ||
| I mean, is that just like an online voice? | ||
| Because I don't see that. | ||
| Not necessarily. | ||
| I've had some conversations with a lot of political parties in Europe who, in a way, play on this So that's interesting to me. | ||
| Do you think it's more of a European process? | ||
| Yes, I mean, I need to spend more time talking with American politicians, but I think in America it's probably much less. | ||
| I mean, that's why I'm very worried of not using the term Western values, because when somebody attaches a value system into a region, It gets complicated, right? | ||
| So, when some people say Western values, some of this faction of these people mean that only Westerners adhere to these values, or only Westerners can adhere to these values. | ||
| So, it's sometimes very important to actually differentiate. | ||
| I mean, I don't think people who say Western values are racist, but I think it's that And there are factions within those who will, which is in a way the same as the cultural relativism. | ||
| It's actually no different whatsoever. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It is cultural relativism. | ||
| It is cultural relativism. | ||
| So it's not, nothing, I mean, on a personal, also organizational level, I mean, we have not been attacked by any prominent figure within the people who advocate that in our organization. | ||
| So that's good. | ||
| But I think—I mean, I've had some conversations with some parties, some were Swedish and some were—and who are like—and they kept saying that, in a way, again, similar to cultural altruism, is that you are acting Western and you're acting white. | ||
| Because you want people to be free, basically. | ||
| Yes, so in a way, I mean, kind of the horseshoe theory, in a way, is like they are really similar. | ||
| Well, I'm glad you clarified the difference between from an American and European perspective, because from an American perspective, yes, there are little fringe voices on the internet that I see saying things like that, but no real institutional power or anything. | ||
| Yeah, not that I know of. | ||
| I mean, if I find someone, I will tweet at them. | ||
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Please do. | |
| All right. | ||
| So wait, we have to finish up by talking specifically about ideas beyond borders. | ||
| And you mentioned John Stuart Mill. | ||
| You know, I've got a copy of On Liberty on my nightstand. | ||
| You can go sign it later. | ||
| Can you write something in Arabic on it? | ||
| That would actually be pretty cool. | ||
| I can do it, of course. | ||
| I'm going to put, God is great. | ||
| No, talk to me about exactly what Ideas Beyond Borders is doing, because you guys have translated tons. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| How many books? | ||
| 3,100 articles as of now, and 12 books. | ||
| Amazing. | ||
| Where did this idea really come from, and what are you guys doing? | ||
| Actually, it's very relevant to a lot of conversations. | ||
| The first that we depend a lot on our organization about is that From the United Nations Development Report for the Arab World, it says that there are more books translated to Spanish in one year than Arabic in 1,000 years. | ||
| And also, only 0.6% of Internet content is in Arabic, even though it's a language spoken by 400-plus million people. | ||
| As I was growing up in Iraq, thank goodness I was bilingual. | ||
| I was taught English since a very young age. | ||
| And as a result, I was able to access the alternative voice—in that case, the liberal voice. | ||
| If you are an Arab young man growing up in Iraq—not in Iraq, but all over—and if you search about basic stuff, about human rights, freedom of religion, all of that, the two main things you get are either from authoritarian state or extremists. | ||
| Even though many people are hooked to the internet, but really the information that they are getting... Yeah, it just hits a wall. | ||
| It's really from, I mean, the bad guys, right? | ||
| Those who want to advance. | ||
| So, as somebody who grew up there and now having the privilege of being safe, number one, and being able to connect to people like you and be on media and connect, is that IBB is becoming a platform to help People in the region who adhere to our values to translate and distribute the materials that make the world a better place, which are enlightenment values. | ||
| So we started with a small office and then I started pitching the idea around to young Arabs, not to Westerners, but to young Arabs. | ||
| Is that something we want? | ||
| Yes, the answer is yes. | ||
| And then we formed a team, I mean now we're expanding to 120 translators all across the region, demanding and translating this content about enlightenment to be translated and viewed by Arab youth. | ||
| And so, The connect to all of that is that living in the Iraq war and seeing all of these things is that this war on terror or bombing of terrorists only deal with the tip of the iceberg. | ||
| We kill the Billadins and we kill the Isis's, but that doesn't deal with the root of the problem, which is values. | ||
| Extremist values bring destruction and enlightenment values bring hope and prosperity. | ||
| It's clear. | ||
| It's factual. | ||
| And these values need to be—those who adhere to them need to be supported, and these values need to be spread to counter extremist narrative and even replace it in the future. | ||
| So, that is kind of the gist of Ideas Beyond Borders, is to provide—is to prevent extremism. | ||
| The mission of our organization is preventing extremism before it takes root. | ||
| So in that way, if you change the ecosystem of information, which they get, the Steven Pinkers and the John Stewart Mills, and they read them, and then when an extremist guy comes into them, and is like, hey, do you want to establish a caliphate and all of that, the answer will be no. | ||
| And not only to be recruited to a terrorist organization, but to reject all of that, Ideology, which is the Islamist ideology, which is of having an authoritarian state built on religion or other authoritarians like the rest. | ||
| So, we've actually had a tremendous, which actually brings us back to the concept of cultural relativism and stuff. | ||
| Our content has been viewed 12 million times in Arabic. | ||
| This is not, I'm not targeting students in Rochester. | ||
| I'm targeting young Arabs. | ||
| And we have 4.5 million followers. | ||
| So, at the beginning, I was like, oh, maybe people will not read this content. | ||
| The demand is there. | ||
| People want this, at least, I think some of it is relative to time, is that they have seen what Islamists look like. | ||
| They live under them. | ||
| For me, Al-Qaeda is not just something I see on television. | ||
| I lived under Al-Qaeda. | ||
| If you lived under Al-Qaeda, why not try an extremist like Stephen Covey? | ||
| The thing is, many of the young people don't need convincing, honestly, that the values of the extremists suck, but they need an alternative. | ||
| And we are trying to provide that context and knowledge in which these people will be able to access it. | ||
| And now we're in the third phase in which we actually want to build a movement on the ground, which is back to the self-sufficiency argument, is that I want this movement that believes in enlightenment values to be everywhere, to run for mayoral elections, to be on television, to have a video blog. | ||
| So that is the other angle, which is empowerment angle. | ||
| We make the knowledge available, but also we empower those who adhere to these ideas, and let them lead the way. | ||
| And we're on surveys, which I'd love to share one day with—we're on surveys about, OK, what do you guys see to be translated? | ||
| Enlightenment. | ||
| That's what some of these people want to translate. | ||
| They want to know books about freedom of speech, freedom of religion, all of this stuff that we value as... When my book comes out in April, don't burn this book. | ||
| Can we translate it? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Just talk to your agent, because sometimes they're a pain in the ass. | ||
| Don't worry about that. | ||
| Actually, I want to mention that, because I think it is... We've had some difficulty... You're in the book, by the way. | ||
| Oh, yeah? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| As a what? | ||
| As a shawarma... You're my falafel guy. | ||
| I don't want to name and shame, but we've had some issues. | ||
| So, for example, the author will be like, oh, please translate my book. | ||
| I don't want money. | ||
| It's for the youth and all of that. | ||
| I'll do it for free, obviously. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Then the agents will be like, no, I want $10,000. | ||
| And then we're like, we're a small non-profit. | ||
| Where am I gonna get the $10,000 from? | ||
| So sometimes it's that, even because I think some translation rights are not owned by the author, they're owned by the publishing house, and as a result, we've had many authors who are trying to offer us their book, and then the conversation just ended with the agent. | ||
| We're like, oh, if you don't give us $10,000, so. | ||
| We're getting a little insider baseball here. | ||
| No, no, but if my agents won't do it, I'll pay whatever it is. | ||
| Okay, okay, thank you. | ||
| We could do this all day long. | ||
| We'll do this over dinner in a couple days in New York, but you really, like, doing this show, it's like I've met so many people I love and admire and that were heroes of mine and great authors, but we've really become real friends outside of this room, and you are exactly what the American dream is all about, and I'm just so thrilled that later, maybe, when I'm on the plane tonight, I'm gonna go back and look at that first interview that we did, and the fact that you built this thing and you're successful and you're now a citizen, man, I mean, this is the same stuff I would say to you off camera, Really, I love it. | ||
| I'm thrilled for you. | ||
| And for you guys, check out ideasbeyondborders.org. | ||
| If you're looking for more honest and thoughtful conversations about international issues instead of nonstop yelling, check out our international playlist. | ||
| And if you want to watch full interviews on a variety of topics, check out our full episode playlist. | ||
| They're all right over here. |
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