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Jan. 9, 2025 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
01:00:09
20250109_uk-grooming-scandal-with-mehdi-hasan-gad-saad-matt
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Time Text
Trump Sues Media for Payback 00:08:30
Look at Elon Musk.
He's now posting about Islamophobia being fiction.
This guy who once pretended to be a liberal has gone full hard far right.
How many white men involved in this rape gang?
Hang on.
Hang on, just for the record.
Oh my God.
In 2023 in Glasgow.
What percentage?
Give me a percentage prosecution.
We don't have the percentage.
That's the whole point.
What you're doing is you're massively distorting.
But you're massively distorting the story, aren't you?
Because you are.
You are.
Sometimes Elon might be very blunt in the way he says what he says, but the content of what he's saying really is coming from a good place, right?
The vast majority of Muslims are peaceful.
That's why.
That's not true.
Well, is it not true?
Does Islam contain endless edicts that are profoundly problematic to the kuffar?
The answer is a resounding yes.
Does the Bible do that?
Well, the UK's rape gang scandal has now become a global scandal, which it always ought to have been.
Elon Musk has amplified very grim details of a truly horrifying case and a horrifying cover-up to millions of new people.
And whether you agree with him or not, or his methods or his rhetoric, there's no denying that he's raised some very difficult questions, which are now being properly asked.
And there are questions, too, about Elon Musk.
There are questions about Tommy Robinson.
There are questions about Islam and about Islamophobia.
Does it even exist?
I'm going to tackle these questions with three influential and opinionated people with profoundly different insights.
Mehdi Hassan, the CEO of Zatayo News, Professor Gad Saad, author of The Parasitic Mind, and Matthew Taeed, who's the author of Rebel Ideas and a Times columnist.
So, Matthew, great to have you with me.
I'm going to keep you sitting there listening to both of these, almost like you're going to hear the two views and get your reaction to what Mehdi has to say and then to what Gad has to say.
Because I kind of think that you and I are probably somewhere in the same place in the middle here.
It'll be interesting when you hear a very determined one-side view, what your take is on that.
So if you don't mind being a little patient here, that would be very useful.
But let's go to Meddy first.
Mehdi, happy new year.
Great to see you.
Happy New Year, Piers.
So I was trying to think just how much your head must have been exploding since November the 5th.
I imagine a lot.
And particularly, I've noticed you're getting very exercised about what is happening with Elon Musk and with Trump and with this rape scandal obviously being brought back into the news and so on.
How are you feeling, Jeremy?
Just give me a general take on where you are with everything that's happened since the US election result.
Yeah, I mean, you're right.
I'm not happy about it.
Obviously, why would I be?
I'm not happy as you are, obviously.
The day we're taping the day after Donald Trump did a what, 90-minute press conference where we were back to you itch if you don't have the right heater, windmills, sharks, whales, all the usual nonsense.
Plus, some dangerous lines.
I don't know if you saw Piers yesterday, a reporter asked Donald Trump, do you think Mark Zuckerberg has rolled over for you because You threatened him.
And he said, yeah, probably.
He didn't say, no, I didn't threaten him.
He said, yeah, probably.
So that authoritarian streak is there.
It's coming our way.
We've got a lot of media companies.
You're a big free speech champion, I know.
Should be worried about a lot of media bosses just rolling over for an incoming government.
Not a healthy relationship in a democracy.
Yeah, obviously I'm worried.
And Elon Musk's role is a very interesting and scary role.
We have the world's richest man, owner of the most influential messaging platform on the planet, probably.
Now getting a government job, lots of conflicts of interest, but also got the ear of the president-elect, but writing pieces in German, in the German newspapers in favor of a party aligned with neo-Nazis, pushing Tommy Robinson, a man who you and I know who he really is, maybe Americans don't, pushing for Tommy Robinson's freedom, pushing for the right in Canada.
You know, it's scary stuff, Piers.
Their argument would be that the left behaved so disgracefully towards Trump and indeed towards Elon Musk, that this is deserved payback, that actually the boot's on the other foot now, that when it comes to authoritarian behavior, the woke left really behaved, as you and I have debated how you could categorize it, but behave like a bunch of fascists for a long time.
And that actually come back to bite them.
They've lost power, almost all power in America.
And that you do, and I feel, I'm interested in what you think, but I feel like the whole woke movement, if you like, is now being kicked firmly into touch.
And Zuckerberg converting in the way that he's done so dramatically, pretty much to where Elon Musk is, maybe a recognition that some of the stuff that they got up to in the 2020 election, you know, censoring the New York Post over the Hunter Biden laptop.
So, well, they're legitimate concerns.
You know, you may laugh, but I think the tinderbox for all this was set.
The tinderbox for this was set when big tech, which was liberal dominated, decided to censor a legitimate true story about Hunter Biden's laptop and the run-up to that election, which could have affected the election.
When you do that kind of thing, then eventually it's going to come back and bite you, isn't it?
No, and by the way, Zuckerberg's comments are a reminder that it was never liberal dominated.
People like me on the left never accepted that bullshit premise, the liberal media, the liberal Silicon Valley.
Yeah, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel are not liberals.
And I just think, you know, the whole woke stuff, you and I have debated that many times before.
On the Hunter Biden stuff, that was very exaggerated.
It's funny you should mention the Hunter-Biden New York Post suppression story, because that's what Musk is doing now, Piers.
Surely, I know you like Elon Musk, but surely you've seen that he has been very repressive in his running of Twitter.
Anyone he doesn't like who goes against him, he nukes their accounts, he nuked a report the other day about whether or not he's Adrian Dittman or not.
He has restricted access to pieces.
He suspended journalists.
You know this, right?
There's data showing that Twitter has actually complied more with foreign government takedown requests on Musk's watch than on Jack Dorsey's watch.
As for the comparison, the boots on the other foot, you'd have to point to me where Kamala Harris threatened the media when she was running for president.
You'd have to point to me where Joe Biden was on CBS News as Donald Trump is.
Okay, when it comes to funding the media.
You're a journalist.
You do not support.
Do you support Donald Trump suing CBS?
No, no, no.
Let me answer.
Hold on, you've got a very long question.
I want to finish my answer.
Can I answer on my own show?
No, I'm answering your question first.
I can't answer.
Well, no, because you asked the question, so I'm answering it.
You just asked me questions.
Let me answer, then you could come back.
No, I didn't ask.
Joe Biden is not suing CBS News.
Joe Biden is suing CBS News.
Do you support that?
Who was the, in recent times?
Sorry, Donald Trump.
Hang on.
Donald Trump is suing CBS News.
Let me answer your question.
Which president of modern times was the biggest and most draconian threat in terms of his actions to journalists in America?
Do you know?
Barack Obama.
You're going to say Barack Obama.
Yes.
Because I'm right.
I think Barack Obama was bad.
He was the worst person.
I don't think Donald Trump was worse, but I think Barack Obama was right.
You know why Trump's suing people?
Trump suing people because actually, people like George Stephanopoulos lied about him.
They exaggerated what he'd been found guilty of.
And guess what?
When you lie, you and I both know ABC won.
You and I both know ABC would have won in court.
ABC didn't go to court.
They gave him $15 million.
Now, you might say...
Why do you think that is, Piers?
Because they knew they were going to lose.
Or because they're sucking up to an authoritarian.
Or because they knew they were going to lose.
Bullshit.
No legal expert agrees with you on that.
Piers, legal experts don't agree with you on that, actually.
Most lawyers don't agree with you on that.
You're right.
Mehdi, you'll never agree with me about that.
It's the opposite of that.
It's because everyone's on your agenda to accept that.
There's not my opinion, Piers.
George Stephanopoulos lied about him.
Do you support Donald Trump suing a pollster because he doesn't like a poll risk?
I think Donald Trump.
This is insane, Piers.
Donald Trump can sue who he likes.
Now you're rolling over for Trump as well.
Donald Trump can sue who lives.
Do you support it, is my question?
Do you support a president of the United States suing media organizations he doesn't like?
Do you believe?
Do you believe he has a right to?
So you're rolling over like Mark Zuckerberg.
Do you believe he has a right to sue people?
Donald Trump.
Does he have a right to sue people?
Of course he has a right to be.
That's easy right to his dodging.
Emma agreed.
No.
National Inquiry into Rape Gangs 00:15:29
No, we're not agreed.
Do you support his lawsuit?
Yes or no?
Doesn't matter.
It's a very simple question.
Doesn't matter.
Oh, you're too scared to answer.
No, Donald Trump sues people all the time.
I think he's right to sue the pollster.
And do you agree with it?
You have strong views, Piers, but you're not telling me to.
Let's get to your strong.
Let's get to your view.
Let's get to your strong views, Mehdi.
Oh, yeah, let's change the subject.
No, I don't.
I think you've forgotten who showed him.
Do you support Donald Trump's lawsuit?
It's not your show.
It's not your show.
I'm asking you the questions.
All right.
Well, everyone can see that you don't want to answer the question.
They can.
They can see that I want to ask you questions, not have you pepper me with questions.
Now, let me ask you a question.
This gang rape scandal in the UK is horrific, has always been horrific.
I think it was despicable in terms of the details.
I think it was despicable it took so long for it all to get properly exposed.
I still don't think it has been.
I think it was utterly despicable that the scale of the cover-up, whether it was the police, whether it was council officials, whether it was social workers, everyone whose job it was to protect these young girls failed them spectacularly.
I think on that we're probably completely in agreement.
Yes.
The issue that is raging now is whether there should be a new national inquiry and whether someone like Elon Musk, in his very blunt, often very abusive manner, as we've seen with the rhetoric he's used against Keir Starmer and Jess Phillips and others.
Dishonest.
Which I don't agree with, the way he's phrased himself with some of these, particularly Jess Phillips after the murder of two MPs in the UK.
So I think, again, we'd agree on that.
But I've also taken the sort of backstep and gone, actually, I do think there should be another national inquiry.
I do think the first one, they didn't act on any of the findings anyway, but actually the first one was very wide-ranging.
And actually what it needs, it seems to me, from all I've read and seen this week, it needs a more specific national inquiry that focuses specifically on this northern rape gang scandal in all the 50 towns and villages that was happening.
So we can actually get to the bottom of exactly who got abused and raped, who did it, what happened to them, have the perpetrators properly been brought to account, have the ones who were here on, you know, maybe dual passports been deported, whatever it may be.
In other words, proper accountability right from bottom to the top and potentially people going to prison over this are not just the perpetrators of the rape, but perpetrators of the cover-up.
Now, A, do you agree with that?
And B, Elon Musk pushing this, is that actually a big problem, notwithstanding you and I agree about the rhetoric being wrong?
So, okay, two questions.
Let me deal with both of them.
Number one, I'm glad you asked that question.
It's the first time I've been on your show, and we actually don't have to argue along left-right lines where I'm the lefty and you pretend not to be a right-winger.
This isn't a left-right issue.
It's actually an issue of, it's actually an issue of what do you think is the right way forward, right?
This is a horrific scandal.
What happened to children in the UK is disgusting.
It is one of the great crimes of our time.
No doubt about that.
And I can't even read the details.
It's sick and it's disgusting.
And by the way, you know, a lot of this, it's ongoing, obviously.
It's an ongoing problem in every country.
But, you know, the real...
The real scandals happened 10, 15 years ago, and that's what's tragic that we're talking about it now.
But I would say to you, look, on the national inquiry point, I don't know.
It's not a left-right issue.
So I did sit down this week to kind of get my thoughts together.
What do I think about this?
I'm not an expert on this stuff, nor are you.
So kind of I look to what the experts are saying, and two people I respect very much in this field.
One is Professor Alexis Jay, who ran the independent inquiry on child sexual abuse.
It was a seven-year investigation from 2015 to 2022, cost over £100 million.
I think it's 468 pages long.
I haven't been able to read all of it, but I read the 20 recommendations she made, Piers.
And I think it's a scandal that the Conservative government, people like Liz Truss and Suala Braverman and Robert Jennick, who are jumping on this far-right bandwagon, to quote Keir Starmer, outrageously did nothing, Piers.
Well, he's actually reined back.
To be fair.
He's actually reigned back on that phrase today in Parliament in PMQs.
And he's said he understands that he basically has made it clear you're not necessarily far right if you think there should be a national inquiry, which I'm glad he's done.
No, of course not.
And that wasn't the point.
It's not far right.
That wasn't the point.
It's not.
No, no, no.
No, but that wasn't the point.
His words were misconstrued.
I heard his words.
He was making very clear that conservative politicians who are using this for political gain are jumping on a far-right bank.
That's a separate point.
Obviously, calling for an inquiry is not far right.
As I just said to you, I was about to call for an inquiry till I did some reading and said, here's what Alexis Jay says.
She says I did this report, 460.
So there's a big problem with that report.
But Melik, you mentioned how many...
Okay, but look, you mentioned how many pages are in the report.
Do you know how many times Rotherham got mentioned?
No, but she did a separate report on Rotherham.
No, but do you know how many times it got mentioned in the national report?
But she did a report on Rotherham.
No, no, no.
She did a specific report.
You know, there's an independent report on Rotherham.
Do you know how many times it got mentioned, Rotherham?
No.
Once.
So the absolute report.
So she also did a separate reporting.
So the absolute report.
She also did a separate.
No, my point, though, is that the epicenter of this scandal was Rotherham.
And yet it merited one mention of her national report.
And that's the point that people are making.
Which is actually that national report was so wide-ranging, taking in all sorts of different kinds of abuse, that it couldn't properly focus on this actual specific scandal of predominantly British Pakistani men abusing young white girls.
That's the scandal that needs a proper laser-like focus, I think.
Well, okay, and that's fair enough.
I think that we can debate about the Pakistani men angle.
There's a big debate about the ethnicity factor, as you know.
But just one last point.
Not the ESCJ report.
The vast majority of these separate hundreds of people.
The vast majority were finished.
Can I finish the sentence?
Well, there were.
That's not true.
What do you mean it's not true?
As a national phenomenon, the Home Office...
Can I finish your sentence, Piers?
Are we going to get through this interview?
Every time I start a sentence, you interrupt me.
Go on.
The Home Office, under a Conservative government in 2020, put out a report, not sure if you've seen it, got a lot of coverage, saying that the majority of men in grooming gangs, which is not a great phrase, are men, are white men under the age of 30.
That was the survey data that they found.
They said we need more research.
It's not a hard and fast result.
We don't have enough ethnicity data.
Do you know a lot of police forces, Piers, 30, 40, 50% of victims and perpetrators, they just don't register the ethnicity?
How many white men are not to say specifically?
How many white men gangs?
Okay.
How many white men are they?
That's not to say specifically.
How many white men and Rochdale and Telford were Brown?
We're brown.
Okay.
So let's just focus on that.
But Piers, here's what bothers me.
And you're mute, Elon Musk.
Sorry, no, you're not.
I'm not to get to that because you cut me off.
Hang on, I'm allowed to respond to what you just said.
Because the reality is what you're doing is you're massively distorting.
But you're massively distorting the story, aren't you?
You are.
You are.
How many people are telling you about how you jumped in with your gotcha about Rotherham?
Have you read the 20 recommendations?
Can you tell me if you've gotcha?
How many times is Rotherham mentioned in the report?
Many.
Have you read the 468-page report?
Many, when I went on your show recently, I've read you asked me all sorts of questions because it was your show.
Okay?
I'm asking you.
And I let you answer them.
You ever let me finish a sentence?
I haven't.
You ever let me finish a sentence?
You keep saying things which I want to challenge.
You keep saying things I want to challenge.
Let me say them and then you challenge them.
So let me say you request.
I promise.
I say them and then you challenge me.
Let me ask you a question.
I'll say them really fast.
I speak really fast.
Let me just say them.
Alexis J says no need for a new inquiry because her 20 recommendations.
You don't know what they are haven't been implemented yet.
I know.
That's fine.
I do agree with her.
David Greenwood, who was this lawyer for the victims in Rotherham.
You mentioned Rotherham as a gotcha, I think.
David Greenwood was the lawyer in Rotherham of the girls.
He was a lawyer.
That's my opinion.
I have a right to opinion.
David Greenwood, the lawyer in Rotherham of the dozens of girls, he's the guy who represented the girls in Rotherham.
He says, I don't think we should have another inquiry.
There's too many inquiries.
We need action.
We need to get the recommendations done.
Another inquiry, he says, would be a distraction.
Now, that's not a gotcha on my end either.
Maybe we should have another Ash inquiry.
I don't feel that strongly about it.
I'm just telling you, Piers, for your viewers who are following Elon Musk nonsense, a man who knows nothing about this stuff, that David Greenwood, a lawyer involved in this, and Alexis Jay, who did an inquiry in Rotherham and then did a national inquiry, says we shouldn't have another inquiry.
Yeah, and I'm making the point that in her national inquiry, you and I are not experts.
I'm making the point.
In her national inquiry, she mentioned Rotherham once, and there, to me, is the problem.
But the other problem is that.
In the Rotherham inquiry, she covered the detail.
She also said, She also said, Don't make a link between Brown, between Pakistani men and this problem.
Because they're also involved in grooming.
The rape gang scandal and the 50 towns and villages involved in this rape gang scandal.
Tell me this.
You've just tried to suggest that more white men were doing it than British Pakistani men.
Bit of a surprise.
Bit of a surprise, though, I think, to everyone you've done.
Just the Home Office report.
You've done the report.
Okay, so how many white men involved in this rape gang scandal?
Just the Home Office recently, Piers.
Facts, I care about your family.
Hang on.
How many white men have been taken to court, charged, and/or convicted of raping these white girls in these 50 towns and villages?
Just for the record.
Okay.
I don't have the full numbers, but let me give you some examples.
In 2023, in Glasgow, seven years of child sex.
Seven percent prosecuted.
Piers, Piers, we don't have the percentages.
That's the whole point.
We know that the very, very, very vast majority are actually British Pakistanis.
Hold on, are you trying to do it?
Are you going to deflect it into thinking it's not doing all this?
Oh, my God.
So in Glasgow, there were white men.
11 people abused three children, one of them in a nappy dye.
I'm not talking about that, nor is Elon Musk.
In the West Midlands, in West Midlands, a decade of child sex crimes, 21 white people abused seven children, all of them under the age of 12.
In Cornwall, in 2010, these are the scandals we're talking about when I talk about sex crime.
Six men, well, I'll get to that in a moment.
Six men abused 30 girls, the youngest of whom was five years old.
And you've just made my point for me.
These are the scandals we're not talking about.
Why?
Why are we defining child sex crimes and grooming gangs by race unless you're a racist or trying to make political hay out of this?
I care about the victims of all crimes.
I don't give a damn whether the perpetrator was brown, black, white, blue, or yellow.
I think we should support the victims of those crimes.
And if you're only obsessed with the perpetrators, as Elon Musk is, as Robert Jenry is, then you don't actually care about these girls.
That's what Alexis Jay said about the girl.
But the argument, as you know, victims.
The argument, as you know, from those who do want a big further inquiry, is that actually it was a very specific section of the community, a very specific section of the Muslim community.
And it was British Pakistani men who they believe were operating under some warped cultural thing, which they felt entitled them to work.
Well, hey, that's what.
Well, that's not proven, right?
That's what we need, obviously, more studying on, more research.
And I agree with that, because these guys in places like Rochdale Rotherham were British Pakistani men, overwhelmingly, in those cases.
But it's very interesting that you pick a sample and then say, these are the towns we're talking about.
They're all brown.
Well, why can't we talk about Cornwall or Glasgow or the West Midlands?
I'm saying this is a phenomenon that happens nationwide.
There are multiple, peers surely you'd accept, there are multiple factors.
There are experts on child sex abuse who you should invite on the show.
I'm not one, who will tell you there are multiple factors that cause this stuff.
I mean, this happens in every country in the world.
In these towns, clearly there were a lot of things going on.
We know about police corruption.
We should be talking about police corruption.
In places like Rollins, where the police knew what was going on.
And there are allegations.
Exactly.
And there are allegations of like money and drugs going between the perpetrators.
These girls were treated badly, not just because they were white, not just because they were white peers.
Let's talk about the class issue because they were seen as worthless.
They were seen as poor, working class, not having any value or credibility.
So there's a lot of things to talk about here.
And yes, we can talk about culture, but you know what?
It's interesting you bring religion in.
Religion is the most absurd thing of all.
Do you think Islam sanctions any of this?
These people were plying girls with alcohol and drugs.
Last time I checked, alcohol is forbidden in Islam.
Even the ignorant person knows that.
So any idea that this has anything to do with religion is absolutely absurd and laughable.
And again, we don't define white people crimes by Christianity or Judaism.
We don't talk about Hindu bankers or Jewish carjackers.
I'm not sure why we're bringing religion into this.
It's absolutely absurd.
And last point on the victims, Piers, I just want to say this.
I'm sure you'll appreciate this point.
The victims were overwhelmingly white, right?
But they weren't only white.
There's this new thing going on that these brown men decided to target white girls seen as outside the community and fair game.
Not true.
If you read Alexis Jay's report on Rotherham, then you'll see that she points out that there were a lot of young Asian girls who were also abused by these men, but who didn't come forward because of quote unquote the shame in their community, their parents saying they'll never get married.
So there are actually a lot going on here that we've just glossed over.
And Elon Musk coming in with his disinformation, his racism, his Islamophobia, challenging Tommy Robinson.
Surely you would condemn the championing of an Islamophobic, violent bigot like Robinson.
I have to be lying that he's in prison because he uncovered this.
I have done it.
And Robinson had nothing to do with it.
Literally, I've been doing that.
You know, Piers.
Good.
And Piers, you know that Tommy Robinson almost jeopardized a trial against a bunch of brown guys in Huddersfield with his contempt of court antics.
Twice, he needs erect two trials.
He's not a champion of the victims of gangs.
No, he's not.
What do you say?
I'm generally curious what you think of this.
You know, I said on X yesterday that Tommy Robinson is, to me, is the embodiment of an Islamophobe.
He's Islamophobic.
And there's plenty of examples of where his rhetoric, I think, stacks that up.
To which a lot of people, including Gad Saj, who's coming after you, say there's no such thing as Islamophobia.
That's the argument that they come up with, which is there is no such thing as Islamophobia, that you're allowed to be as critical as you want of Islam.
Without being accused of being an Islamophobe.
What do you say to that?
Can you imagine if I came on your show and said there's no such thing as anti-Semitism?
You should be able to be as critical of Judaism as you want.
That's an absurd position to state.
It's a de facto bigoted position.
People say nonsense stuff.
You've heard it all, Piers.
Oh, it can't be a phobia.
That's an irrational fear.
That's not what Islam.
Well, we have homophobia.
We don't say we don't use it.
Am I a fan of the term Islamophobia?
No, but anti-Semitism, homophobia, Islamophobia.
All these are made-up words to try and describe very real phenomenon, which is anti-Muslim bigotry, hate, discrimination, whatever you want to call it, right?
The idea, look at Elon Musk, for example.
He's now posting about Islamophobia being fiction.
This guy who once pretended to be a liberal has gone full hard far right.
He's backing a party in Germany, Piers, which is aligned with neo-Nazis who've said outrageous things about Muslims and immigrants and minorities.
The German intelligence community believes it's an extremist party.
The German courts believe it's an extremist party.
Musk is writing articles in German backing them.
So this is where we are right now, where the normalization of bigotry and hate against minorities continues apace.
And they think, you know, Donald Trump winning is great to fight the woke.
It's actually very worrying.
We have a global far-right.
We have Orban, we have Trump.
We have in the UK now, I was going to say Farage, but actually it's Tommy Robinson apparently that Elon Musk favors who are being propped up and they take very, very disturbing views of all this.
And Piers, I just want to say this.
People think, oh, Islamophobia blown out of proportion, exaggerated by Muslims.
Let me just tell you this.
In New Zealand, in Christchurch, you remember the two mosque attacks in the last Trump presidency when a far-right attacker in New Zealand went and killed more than 50 Muslims as they prayed.
Normalizing Global Far-Right Hate 00:11:01
Do you know what he had written on his ammunition, on his bullets?
He had four Rotherham written on his bullets.
That is what happens when you politicize scandals, politicize controversies, turn very real problems into pawns in your political game, into weapons to attack minorities.
What happens is extremists then jump on that.
That's what Kier Starmer was talking about.
There is a far-right bandwagon.
In Rotherham, an 81-year-old grandfather, Piers, in 2015, was beaten to death by a gang who shouted groomer at him.
So that's, I'm not saying we shouldn't talk about this stuff.
I'm on your show talking about it.
I'm just saying how we talk about it is so important.
Okay, fair enough.
Listen, fair enough.
Is there also a problem, as the likes of Tommy Robinson have been screaming about now for a long period of time, albeit in my estimation, purely for his own self-gain?
But is there also a genuine problem in the way that Muslims in Britain who've come into the country have assimilated into communities?
You know, we have as many Muslims in Britain, I think, as America has, even though they're five times the size.
Are there legitimate concerns that you might have about the way Muslims have assimilated or not?
Is it fair to even ask the question?
Of course, it's fair to ask the question, and I've asked the question myself.
I've written about multiculturalism and integration and all of these issues for over 20 years, back when I was in the UK for The Guardian, for the New Statesman.
Again, it's how you do it, right?
It's not my problem with the Telegraph and parts of the Times, and of course, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express is they do it in a jingoistic, belligerent, one-sided manner.
I just gave you the example earlier.
We talk about rape gangs.
Let's talk about rape gangs.
Only talk about Pakistani men.
Why aren't you talking about the people in Cornwall or the West Midlands or Glasgow?
That becomes a problem.
I want us to be able to talk about this in a way that is fair and not discriminatory and not tropes about, oh, brown men are coming here to rape our daughters.
That kind of stuff, Piers, I think you would agree, is not helpful.
Are there issues with integration in places like in some northern towns?
Yes, by the way, integration is a two-way street.
There's been a lot of white flight from some of those areas.
There's been a lot of issues with white working class communities, as you know, with those areas, with deindustrialization, with globalization.
There's a lot to get through here.
It's not an easy topic.
And if we're going to make sweeping generalizations about Pakistani men, well, the mayor of London, just elected for a third time, is this child of Pakistani immigrants.
Why are we not talking about the success story that is the UK, which has a Muslim man as the first mayor of a major European city?
Or in Scotland, where they elected a Muslim man to be the first Muslim British Pakistani descent, Hamza Yousuf, who was last year the first Muslim leader of a Western nation, right?
There have been huge success stories that we don't talk about.
Mariusam, good to talk to you.
As always, thank you very much.
Thanks.
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Watching very carefully there, very intently.
What do you make of what he said?
Well, I agree to about 60%.
You started on woke ideology, and Medi seemed to deny that this had overridden and marched through our institutions.
I think that's somebody in complete denial.
Yes, I do.
It seems to me very obvious that in the grooming gang scandal, the child rape scandal, there was a liberal bias about prosecuting mainly Pakistani men out of fear of cultural sensitivity.
That is a catastrophe for us.
You know, I think of academia where 30 years ago, the number of academics, I think this is a poll in American university, who identified as conservatives in relation to those who identified as liberal, it was two to one in favour of liberal.
Now it's gone to 10 to 1.
There are some humanities subjects where it's over 100 to 1.
I mean, I found, I took a sabbatical from the Times and Sunday Times to do some research on cousin marriage.
I think this is a scandal.
There's a very high proportion of people having cousin marriage.
There are problems with cultural integration because when you marry cousins, you stay within a sequestered group and you don't integrate effectively.
Also, congenital difficulties because of genetic recessive disorders.
I would phone scientists who had written papers.
I wouldn't get a call back.
They were worried about talking about because it's predominantly Pakistani community.
And there was a piece of evidence in a paper that I found out off the record that showed very high rates of incest from the UK biobank in the Pakistani community.
Tremendously important information for social services and beyond, but it was not published because the ethics committee thought that it might inflame racial tension.
Unless people on the left, so-called, are willing to accept woke overreach, they're going to continue to inflame the populist right.
And I think that's to the detriment of us all.
Do you feel that Trump's big win and particularly the role that Elon Musk played in helping him get that big win, which I think is indisputable, do you think that has led, as Trump said, he used that phrase, I thought it was very interesting in his victory speech, about he felt that people came from all parts of every community to vote for him.
He won the Latino vote, incredible.
Massively higher numbers in African-American vote and so on.
Jews, Muslims, everyone voted for Trump more than they had done in 2016 or 2020.
Do you think that that was a signal that yes, they were fed up with the cost of living crisis?
Yes, they were fed up with illegal immigration and all the issues off that.
But that also they're fed up with the woke, as Musk calls it, the woke mind virus.
Because I do think that played a big part.
When I read about that advert they did.
That for me.
The they them against.
And Trump's for you.
Right.
And Kamala's for them.
Yeah.
Trump is for you.
And if you look at the ads that were pumped out in the key battleground states in the build-up to the election, that was dominating.
Now, you think of any previous election and people campaign and typically win on economics.
And I think it would be ridiculous for us not to accept that inflation was a very significant factor in how people turned against the Biden administration.
But there is no doubt that on the margins where presidential elections are won and lost, woke ideology repelled and repulsed many people in middle America.
And it seems to me the Democrats and the left, the liberal establishment, have to understand and learn these lessons.
And one of the things about the grooming gang scandal, the child rape scandal, is to the extent that we have a massive hyper-liberal, ultra-progressive bias in some of our leading institutions, including the universities, not just humanities subjects.
There's one that I was talking about.
This was genetics.
We've got to roll that back.
And we have to think very carefully.
I think that's a big strategic issue for us.
And then we can move forward.
The role of Elon Musk in this scandal, you know, he's a blunt instrument.
He said some pretty offensive things, outrageous things about some of these politicians, jailing Keir Starmer, calling Jess Phillips a genocidal rape apologist and so on.
Obviously, that is unacceptable.
I think most people agree with that.
But has he done something powerfully constructive in making this now a national debate that I suspect is more likely than not to lead to another national inquiry into this that is more specific, less wide-ranging, and means you don't end up with a 400-page report with Rotherham mentioned ones?
I think Elon Musk, taking a step back, is going to be regarded as one of the most consequential humans ever to have lived.
I've listened to all of his interviews, read as much of what I can about what he's done and why he's done it.
When I look at SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, his move in AI, I am completely amazed by his creative audacity.
Also, his entrepreneurial will to get these things done.
He actually operationalizes his ideas, a remarkable person.
But because he's a great entrepreneur, he has a huge amount of collateral that he can bring to any political debate.
There's 200 million plus for, that's even more than you on X.
And therefore, when he opines on politics, however, it seems to me he's all over the place.
He doesn't have the intelligence.
Now, there are some issues on politics that I'm completely with him on.
And this is the biggest issue facing the Western world today, in my view, much more important than woke ideology, is the level of public debt.
It's enormous in the United States.
And he knows that America will go bankrupt.
Absolutely.
And that's why he's going to be working with the Trump administration to try and roll off onto the Doge.
This is a very significant movement in the whole evolution of Western civilization because public debt is very high across the Western world.
But when he talks about some political issues, he's all over the place.
So do I commend him for bringing that collateral to the child rape gangs?
Absolutely, even if I disapprove of the way he did it.
But I absolutely condemn him, in particular, for trying to rehabilitate Tommy Robinson.
Yeah.
That I think is a good idea.
I just don't think he knows enough about Robinson.
I agree.
I do think it comes down to.
Tell me this then.
This I think is very interesting psychologically.
Engineers like Musk, scientists, they have to have empirical rigor.
Their ideas have to confront reality in order to work.
You can't land a spaceship, reverse park it on a whatever it was, a gantry, without incredible precision and mathematical rigor.
How is it that this person who can do that in the engineering space is willing to send out tweaks without having done this?
I think what happened is that he watched Robinson on a big interview with Jordan Peterson, who Elon really likes and respects.
And Jordan just let him talk, right, and gave him a very, very fair hearing, Robinson, without too much pushback.
If Elon watched my interview last night with Jordan Peterson about Tommy Robinson, he might come away with a very different view, certainly a much more balanced view of what he's like.
Notwithstanding the fact that as Jordan Peterson said, and I've got a lot of time for Jordan, but he said, whatever we think of Robinson, you may be right about everything you're saying, he can be an undesirable human being, but it doesn't make him wrong about the rape gangs.
And I think that's a fair argument, is that you don't have to be the squeakiest, cleanest of messengers if your message is important enough and you've banged that drum as Robinson has for a long time.
It is complicated.
It's more nuanced than people who take a visceral position either side would take, I think.
Stay with us, Matthew.
Fascinating to get your response to Meddy.
Might be even more fascinating to get your response to Gad Sad, who joins me.
Terrorism vs Peaceful Muslims 00:06:51
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Now, this visiting professor, Global Ambassador at Northwood University.
Gad, great to have you back on Uncensored.
And you and I have been having a little very friendly ding-dong on X the last few days.
I want to start just by what Mehdi Hassan told me about Islamophobia, because I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I think you're kind of of the view it doesn't really exist and that you shouldn't be silenced from criticizing Islam by people shouting you're Islamophobic.
Now, Mehdi Hassan, and I subscribe to this as well.
I think if you launch the kind of ferocious, relentless attacks that someone like Tommy Robinson has done on Islam and Muslims in the way that he's done so many times, it's eventually pretty painfully obvious to people that you're coming at this from a bigoted position.
And therefore, by the dictionary definition of Islamophobia, if it comes from a place of hate, that actually is Islamophobia, isn't it?
Thank you so much for having me back, Pierce.
The devil is in the details, right?
So if I were to say that Jews are inherently diseased, they are degenerates, they are evil, they're parasites, that would be anti-Semitic.
If I say there are teachings in the Torah that are abhorrent given today's moral codes, that wouldn't be anti-Semitic.
So if you were to make dispositional statements about individual Muslims, that would be Muslim bigotry.
But if you say anything you want about the codified content of Islam, then by definition, that cannot be Islamophobic.
Okay, so let me play you a little mashup of examples I would say where Tommy Robinson has displayed Islamophobia by the criteria in the dictionary.
Let's just take a look.
We will unify every community against the hostility and barbarianism of Islam.
I'm not racist.
I despise racism.
Islam is not a race.
Islam is a fascist, violent ideology which masquerades as a religion.
Every single Muslim watching this video on YouTube on 7-7, you got away with killing and maiming British citizens.
We embrace migrants that come to this country and love it.
The problem is Islamic migrants come to this country and declare war on it.
Now, when you hear all that, and in particular, it felt to me that what he said about 7-7, which was a bunch of extremist terrorists who happened to be Muslim committing terrorism, when you basically had a crowd with a loud hailer in your mouth, embrace every single Muslim in the country and say you're all to blame for killing and maiming Britain, that is Islamophobic, isn't it?
I mean, it has to be.
Otherwise, what is it?
Yes, let me address this in using two examples.
The number one predictor of child abuse is if there is a step parent in the house.
It is 100 times greater predictor than all other predictors.
And yet, most step parents are perfectly lovely and kind and don't commit abuse.
So understanding statistical reasoning and causal inferencing is important.
So let me give a second example.
Since 9-11 alone, there have been 46,000 plus terror attacks committed in roughly 70 countries by Islamic terrorists.
That is an absolute fact, notwithstanding the fact that out of 2 billion Muslims, most did not commit terrorist acts.
So we can point to 7.7 and say that that was driven by Islamic ideology, while also speaking from the other side of our mouths, that most Muslims that we'll ever meet are peaceful.
Both of those two statements are true.
What the peaceful Muslims would say is that actually it's the twisting of the Islam ideology by extremists that is the problem.
It's not a genuine interpretation of Islam because the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful.
So they say that why.
Is that true?
Well, is it not true?
No, it isn't.
If that wasn't true, then if that wasn't true, then wouldn't de facto most Muslims commit acts of terrorism?
Most Jews eat proshutto and also eat shrimps, but they're not practicing a more gentle form of kosher law.
They simply ignore the fact that kosher laws dictate that you don't eat shrimps and that you don't eat prosciutto, right?
I eat prosciutto.
I'm Jewish.
I'm not practicing a more peaceful version of Judaism.
I just ignore that which I don't wish to apply.
Most Muslims don't commit those acts because they are kind and decent people who choose to ignore whichever they don't wish to follow in their texts.
But does Islam contain endless quotes, endless edicts that are profoundly problematic to the kuffar?
The answer is a resounding yes.
Does the Bible do that?
Yeah.
Of course the Bible does that.
But you would have the same view of Christianity, for example, would you?
Well, if Christians were going around right now, quoting passages from the New Testament and committing 46,000 plus terror attacks in nearly 70 countries since 9-11 alone, then I would say we need to worry about those texts.
If there were Talmudic extremists doing that, then we would worry about that.
Look, Deuteronomy has a lot of nasty things.
Find the Alamakites and kill them.
But I don't know many guys called Mordechai Rubinstein looking for Amalekites to kill them.
So, you know, common sense matters, right?
Most Muslims are lovely.
I know more Muslims than most people will ever meet in their lives.
None of them have ever been terrorists.
This doesn't take away from the fact that there is a astounding problem with Islamic terrorism.
Crossing the Line with Language 00:10:50
Both those statements are true.
It is, but I would say that to give you two parallels, very different things.
One, as somebody put to me on X Today, you know, during the years when the IRA were committing appalling acts of terrorism, it would be like saying, well, then all, you know, according to Tommy Robinson, his logic would say all Irish people are to blame for the maiming and killing, right?
Which clearly would have been outrageous thing to say.
Secondly, and I raised this with someone, you know, Masho, who was incensed that I would even draw this parallel, but I said, why not?
If you look at the number of mass shootings in America in the last 30 years, they're almost exclusively perpetrated by deranged young white men.
So does that mean that we should, by the same logic, say, well, there's all these terrible mass shootings going on.
They're all being committed by the same type of profile, a person.
Therefore, all young white men in America have to be treated with deep suspicion, which is what Tommy Robinson would, that's where his logic takes you.
That's why I have a problem with the Tommy Robinsons of this world.
It's not his message and banging the drum about the rape gang scandal.
He's been absolutely right about that.
It's just he's such a flawed messenger for all sorts of other reasons.
And the reason that's problematic is because he gets used by people who are trying to avoid accountability because they say, well, look at this guy, the one who's shouting loudest about us.
Look at him.
He's a convicted football thug.
He beats up policemen and gets convicted for it.
He's a mortgage fraudster.
He's a passport faker.
He's committed contempt of court three times.
He's nearly wrecked trials involving the rape gang scandals.
He's made a Syrian refugee boy's life utter hell with his lies.
That's why he's now in prison and so on.
In other words, by demonizing the messenger, those who should be held to account are able to hide behind Tommy Robinson being the flag bearer for all this.
I think that is a problem.
Look, Tommy Robinson has some issues in his past.
I don't know all of them, although I've had a chance to have long conversations with him.
He's even come to visit me in Montreal.
He never, in my presence, said anything that struck me as bigoted or racist.
So I'm not here to defend Tommy Robinson.
Christopher Hitchens, whom I'm sure you know well, he's a patriot British.
Excuse me.
I employed him when I was editor of the Daily Mirror.
And you know when I employed him?
I know what you're about to say to me about what he said about Islamophobia.
Before you say it, and you're right to say it, I would point out I hired him during the Iraq war because he supported that war and the paper opposed it before, during and after.
And I thought it was important to have a voice in the paper up against John Pilger, actually, quite often, who was obviously viscerally against the war.
But I let Hitchens run riot, even though I thought he was completely wrong.
And even though I look back on it now and I'm convinced he was completely wrong.
So Hitchens wasn't always right before you say to me what he said about Islamophobia, which you're about to do.
Well, I mean, yes, I can make the point about what he said about Islamophobia, but the point that I was going to make is that Christopher Hitchens is, and I think you'll probably agree with this, one of the most eloquent speakers that we will have ever seen, right?
He has a beautiful British accent.
He speaks with a beautiful vocabulary, as does Douglas Murray.
So they may say things that are, in terms of their content, absolutely indistinguishable from anything that Tommy Robinson says.
But Tommy Robinson's style, his accent, is one that serves as an aesthetic injury to the people who carry the progressive lisp.
And therefore, people react to Tommy Robinson because of his style of delivery.
Elon Musk, who's, as you know, is a good friend of mine, has a direct way of speaking that is not as eloquent as Christopher Hitchens.
That doesn't in any way imply that what he is saying is not veridical.
So we have to differentiate between the substance and the content.
I've always said that actually about Donald Trump.
Same thing, that the rhetoric often bears little relation to what he actually does.
I also think it's important to focus on what people actually do.
My problem with Elon, who I think is a complete genius, my problem over this week has been the way he's targeted Jess Phillips, a female MP, in my view, wrongly and inaccurately, but that's neither here nor there.
By calling her a genocidal rape apologist, he's put a massive target on her head where people have now been arrested for threatening her life.
And we've had two members of parliament, including a young woman, who've been murdered in the last 10 years in this country.
I just think that kind of language crosses a line.
I mean, would you agree?
Look, I hear you.
I get that.
I've been accused of being the orchestrator of the killing of Gazan children.
I sit as a professor who's 60 years old in Montreal doing evolutionary psychology research.
I have nothing to do with the killing of anyone in Gaza, yet I am the baby genocidal killer.
So of course I empathize with the point that you're making.
And that's why I said that sometimes Elon might be very blunt in the way he says what he says, but the content of what he's saying, the ire that he has, really is coming from a good place, right?
Britain does suffer from an orgiastic form of suicidal empathy, the topic of my forthcoming book, because they're much more desirous of protecting the sensibilities of their Muslim population than to worry about the integrity of the bodily integrity of children.
That's not a good calculus to have.
I think that's what triggered the ire of Elon.
The fact that he went after this person is regrettable.
I share your concern there.
But again, I think the fact that you and I and others are having these important conversations, only good things can come from that.
No, I completely agree.
And actually having Mehdi first, you now, having Matthew here who has his views about it, I mean, it's interesting what you just said.
It's not a million miles away from what Matthew said about the woke ideology getting grip of our country in a way that so many people in officialdom felt incapable or too terrified to do the right thing because they were fearful of retribution and being accused of being anti-Muslim or whatever it may be.
And I completely get that.
That's why I was interested in what you were saying to me and you said it on the Will Kane show.
I love Will.
I listened to that interview.
It just slightly misinterpreted me.
I'm not saying that any criticism of Muslims or Islam is wrong or unacceptable by any means.
I think every group of people, whoever they are, I'm a Catholic.
The Catholic church sex scandal, abuse scandal was utterly horrific.
You know, it's just one of the most unspeakable things imaginable that people purporting to be priests were out there abusing children for decades.
And it's still going on, I'm sure.
And I, as a Catholic, feel totally ashamed about the total lack of accountability, the cover-ups that went on and the abuse.
So I feel exactly the same way about my own church as I do about what's happened here with these British Pakistani Muslims towards predominantly British Pakistani Muslims towards young girls.
But this, this, I think you and I have talked about this before, Gad, the woke ideology was definitely a contributing factor here.
People did not want to put their head over the parapet because they were terrified of getting shot.
Exactly right.
Look, cultural relativism is a pathogenic idea that I discuss in the parasitic mind because it purports that who are we to judge the cultural practices, the religious practices of another culture.
So if another culture wants to cut off the clitorises of five-year-old girls, who are you to judge, you cultural imperialists?
No, I am here to judge.
There are absolutist deontological moral principles that any decent person should abide by.
Cutting off the clitorises of little girls is never okay.
And so you're exactly right that the coupling of these parasitic woke ideas with the reflex of suicidal empathy, put them together, you end up with a cocktail that leads us to the abyss of infinite lunacy.
Do you feel notwithstanding that, the way that I feel, which is I do think the Trump victory and the scale of it and Elon Musk's contributing factor to that, which was, I think, enormous, by going all in with Trump?
I think he had a very persuasive effect, particularly on young men.
But do you feel, as I do, that the woke worm is really turning hard?
That people are sick of it.
They're sick of what they see as a modern form of fascism.
They are sick of what they see as, as Musk calls it, the woke mind virus.
And that the ad we were talking about earlier of Carmel is for they, them, Trump's for you, this whole personal pronoun bullshit, the gender ideology bullshit, which was manifested so spectacularly badly with the trans women in women's sport destroying the integrity of women's sport and so on, that it's all on the retreat.
And the reason I think we could say that with some authority now is the incredible statement from Mark Zuckerberg, which is six minutes long and is one of the most extraordinary U-turns I can ever remember a serious public figure like him coming out with, where he basically has just thrown the towel in on this stuff, even down to saying that the Facebook fact checkers were the problem because they were coming at the fact checking from a sort of woke ideology point of view, which is not fact checking and so on.
But also saying from now on, you will be allowed to have what have been deemed unacceptable views about gender, about all these issues.
And I would say, hurrah.
It doesn't give you an excuse to be a vicious bigot, but it should give you the excuse, in fact, the right and the freedom to express yourself about these issues.
Yeah, so I do think that, of course, thank God that Trump won.
He will serve as a doorstop against the woke insanity.
But I keep trying to remind people not to be complacent in the following sense, Pierce.
It took about 50 to 100 years for many of these parasitic ideas to develop into the big woke monster that we eventually saw, right?
So some of these ideas were spawned on university campuses close to 100 years ago.
For example, cultural relativism.
Postmodernism developed on university campuses, you know, about 50, 60 years ago.
So these ideas have not been completely extinguished.
Yes, Donald Trump coming in, he'll be able to clean house very quickly, but the battle will be much longer.
So we can't be complacent.
Criticizing Islam Undermines Democracy 00:04:36
Hopefully it won't take 50 to 100 years to eradicate all those bad ideas, but it doesn't start and end with Trump.
It's a good first step, but let's keep fighting for truth.
Yeah.
Gadsen, great to have you back on our senses.
Let's not leave it so long next time.
It's been very civilized.
Very civil.
A template in civilized, reasonable debate.
Great to see you.
Thank you.
You too.
Matthew, what did you make of that?
Well, I agreed with most of it.
Yes, I thought.
I agree with those bits.
I mean, I think it is right to point out that Islamic terrorism is a problem, but it is ridiculous to try and insinuate that this is something that a majority of Muslims endorse or would be involved in.
And why I think Tommy Robinson is clearly a bigot and a racist is he tries to tarnish all people who are Muslim.
And I think by implication is many people with brown skin like me.
I'm an atheist.
I come from a Pakistani heritage.
My dad was born as a Shia Muslim, converted to Christianity when he came to London to study law.
He had a vision in a bedsit, a student bedsit of Christ with his late father.
And he turned on a sixpence and became a born-again Christian for the rest of his life.
So I grew up with my siblings in a born-again Christian church, but then became an atheist having gone to university.
But I hate these people who try and tarnish all people.
I lived at Pierce in the 1970s.
I'd walk home from school and the back door of the bakery was kick FNPs out of this country, vote NF, the precursor to the British National Party.
The story of my life is one of greater racial tolerance in this country.
I am hardly conscious of my skin colour anymore.
And I worry desperately about the rehabilitation of Tommy Robinson.
You know, that column I wrote, you mentioned in the Sunday Times.
That's very good.
I noticed online the number of people who are pushing back and saying Tommy Robinson is a working class hero.
I would hate to see this.
My ex-feed, since I've been taking him on in the last week in particular, has been actually shocking.
Yeah.
The brazen Islamophobia.
That's why when they say there's no such thing, actually this is exactly what I'm talking about, where a blind hatred for Muslim people.
It's not just about Islam.
It's about, in fact, what they do is the same thing as the extremists in the Islamist world, where they take texts from the Quran and they say that's what this is all about, in the same way that you could take bits of the Bible and say, well, that's what it all is.
Christianity is an excuse to kill everyone.
I had to read the Bible growing up at this church, so I know Deuteronomy back in front, and there is some genocidal text in the Bible.
But I think it is worth saying, you know, I talked about terrorism, but even making a criticism or mockery of Islam has a different consequence in this country than if you criticize Catholicism or mainstream Christianity.
There was a gymnast called Lewis Smith, and I ride a sports column as well as my politics one.
And they're kind of giggling on a makeshift prayer mat at home with a friend.
They videoed themselves making a cry to Allah and it leaked.
And the way people turn on, this is woke overreach.
There's a criticism of Islam.
It's completely unacceptable.
And he was condemned.
I thought Monty Python, Life of Brian, they mocked Christianity.
What's wrong with that?
We need to be able to take this.
Listen, I've had it.
In a society like this.
If you try and cover the Israel-Hamas war in any way, actually both sides, but particularly from the pro-Palestinian side, the stuff you get is mind-boggling.
Think of Book of Mormon.
I don't know if you've gone to see that.
Fantastic.
It is.
And this is an incredibly popular musical where they ridicule and satirize Mormonism.
And you know what?
In the program, there's an advert taken out by the Mormons saying, if you disagree with this, come along to one of our churches.
Can you imagine if that was done about Islam?
I think we're oversensitive to criticism of Islam because of the minority of Muslims who are willing to escalate to violence.
I think to be aware, so in other words, not just about, if I may say so, about terrorism.
It's the sensitivity that attaches to our public discourse.
And I think we need to be much more robust in criticizing some aspects of it.
Do we have, is that question I asked Mehdi Hassan, do we have a multicultural problem in this country?
Having been perceived as one of the most tolerant places in the world, has this sort of broken border situation now for 25 years, has it created a problem for this country?
There's a complex answer to that, but let me give it as simply as I can.
I think there are two things to look at.
Sensitivity in Public Discourse 00:02:47
One, for people like my father, as I said, born in India, moved to Pakistan after partition, came to England to study law, he had a fantastic life here.
And he came to love this country because it's far less racist than almost any other country on earth.
You want to see racism?
Go to look at the caste system in India.
Look at inter-ethnic violence in sub-Saharan Africa.
Look at Syria.
I mean, this is endemic around the world.
We don't have that here.
He had a fantastic life.
I've had a fantastic life.
But there are some pockets within this country.
Some of them held together by cousin marriage, inward marriage, where you marry within the clan.
And that means that they are divided from the wider society.
And they block vote.
It's undermining our democracy.
That is a problem.
So there are two parallel stories happening.
What do we do about it?
Well, I have called for a ban.
I mean, this is a big step, but a ban on cousin marriage.
There was actually a ban on cousin marriage.
This country was tribal.
I didn't even know it was legal in this country.
It became legal at the time of Henry VIII.
But we were just...
It's never been dealt with.
Well, it will.
In the fifth century, we were a tribal country.
We weren't really a nation.
We had the Iceni, remember, Odyssey, and then the Angles and the Saxons and the Normans and the Vikings, and they were fighting with each other.
And then there was a ban on cousin marriage introduced by the Catholic Church.
Somebody called Augustine of Canterbury came to Anglo-Saxon Kent.
He converted Ethelbert and they banned cousin marriage.
And so it actually went up to six cousins by the 10th century.
Now, what that meant is you had to marry outside your clan, outside your tribe, because you're not allowed to marry any of your cousins.
And so it dissolved the tribal allegiance.
Where did the tribes go, Piers?
Where did they go?
They were dissolved.
They didn't fight.
It wasn't like the Qin unification in China where they duked it out before the Han ethnicity won.
They dissolved.
We didn't make love.
Forgive me.
We didn't make war.
We made love.
And it's wonderful.
But then it lapsed, the ban on cousin marriage because of King Henry VIII wanted to get married to a divorce.
And then it started to come back with some of the immigrant communities, particularly from the Kashmir.
I'd like to see it banned.
Yeah, fascinating.
Matthew, great.
I'm glad you didn't nod off with that detailed historical.
I was so impressed by your historical knowledge.
Actually, I was mesmerizing.
Great to see you.
And I think you've been banging on this stuff, but it is interesting to hear people from the different perspectives.
I mean, that's why I like having people on from different perspectives.
Because I feel like if you're a viewer listening to it all, you start to reach a better informed view of where everyone's coming from.
If you have knowledgeable people, even if you disagree with them, you learn something new.
That's fantastic.
Yeah, I agree.
Great to see you.
And Happy New Year.
That's it.
Okay.
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