Juno News - Former Muslim explains why she left Islam

00:00:00.000 Hi there, everybody. Welcome to the Rupa Subramanya show. I'm your host, Rupa Subramanya.

00:00:21.420 Today, we have an amazing show for you. We're going to be speaking to a remarkable and courageous

00:00:27.720 person whose life story navigates the intricate intersection of faith, culture, and human

00:00:35.760 rights advocacy. I'm thrilled to have Yasmeen Mohamed on the show. She is a Canadian with

00:00:42.320 Palestinian and Egyptian roots. She's a dedicated human rights campaigner. She stands as a fierce

00:00:49.380 advocate for the rights of women and oppressed minorities in Muslim-majority countries and

00:00:55.740 more generally is seen as a stern critic of religious fundamentalism all over the world.

00:01:01.220 She's also author of an important book, which I urge you all to read. It's called Unveiled,

00:01:07.640 How Western Liberals Empower Radical Islam. And she's also president of the nonprofit organization

00:01:15.120 Free Hearts, Free Minds. I do think that her book Unveiled is especially relevant in the

00:01:21.160 context of the current ongoing crisis between Israel and Hamas. And in her book, she offers

00:01:27.700 a very important perspective of her own life. She was born in the West, but raised in a religious

00:01:34.020 fundamentalist Islamic home. And her experiences paint a vivid picture of straddling these two worlds

00:01:42.700 and how she found herself one day eventually becoming an advocate for the rights of women and oppressed

00:01:48.520 minorities, people oppressed by fundamentalist Islam. She was raised as a Muslim, but Yasmin no longer 0.71

00:01:56.120 identifies herself as being a Muslim. She has left Islam. She considers herself to be an ex-Muslim.

00:02:03.240 And in fact, her name, Yasmin Muhammad itself, is a pseudonym to protect her identity given all of the threats

00:02:11.160 she's received over the years for being a critic of Islam.

00:02:18.920 Yasmin Muhammad has also been a very important voice, in my opinion, in the highly polarized debate

00:02:26.840 over the continuing war between Israel and Hamas. She's been writing some incredibly moving pieces

00:02:34.520 recently about the crisis and her own personal connection to Gaza. So please welcome Yasmin to the show.

00:02:42.120 Yasmin Muhammad I just wanted to, again, reiterate just, just, you know, how big a fan I am of yours. And

00:02:47.960 again, you know, I want to say that, you know, I was so excited to discover your, your Canadian and then

00:02:54.040 and then you're like sharing my stuff. And I'm like, wow, you know, I'm in seventh heaven. And then so this is a real,

00:03:00.360 real honor for me to be speaking to you. And, and so, you know, welcome to my show and, and, you know,

00:03:09.080 and I'm looking forward to our conversation. I want to start Yasmin by asking you about your, you know,

00:03:16.360 your journey, you, you were raised in a super strict Islamic household, you eventually renounced Islam.

00:03:24.280 Could you share us, I know you've, you've, you've talked about this many times, but for the purpose

00:03:30.200 of the show, could you share with us your journey? What was involved in breaking free from the

00:03:35.320 constraints of an intensely religious environment in the context of the religious household you were

00:03:41.400 growing up in? Um, so to be honest, I, when I was growing up, I didn't think that it was intensely

00:03:51.080 religious. I didn't feel like, you know, we were extremists or super, you know, fundamentalists by any

00:03:57.400 means. It was the same as everybody in my community, everybody that I knew at the mosque, everybody that I

00:04:03.480 went to Islamic school with. Um, and now that I'm an ex-Muslim, it's so similar to the stories that I'm

00:04:09.320 hearing from people, you know, I've got a podcast as well called Forgotten Feminists, where I speak

00:04:14.520 to women who mostly the podcast is women who have renounced Islam. And we finish each other's

00:04:21.320 sentences. Like it's, it was really not as extremist as, um, as, as, you know, as it's now popular to say,

00:04:32.840 you know, the, the truth is the mainstream Muslims were more like me and the, the rare ones are the 1.00

00:04:43.000 open-minded, um, you know, freedom loving Muslims who renounce Hamas, who renounce, you know, the

00:04:55.960 anti-Semitism and the homophobia and the violence and all these other aspects of the religion. They are

00:05:01.160 the ones that are the rare gems. Um, so yeah, the way I grew up, I think was, was pretty typical.

00:05:10.440 Um, even though I was in Vancouver, Canada, it was not typical to my peers in Canada,

00:05:16.200 it was pretty typical to a, you know, Muslim upbringing. Um, when my mom was divorced from my

00:05:26.600 dad, she was just her and three kids in Canada on her own. And so she went to the mosque looking for

00:05:36.680 support, looking for comfort, looking for friendship. And that's where she found a

00:05:44.040 man who was already married, already had three children, but he took my mom on as his second 0.73

00:05:51.080 wife. So technically that's illegal in Canada, but it happens all the time. Um, the first wife was his

00:05:57.560 legal wife and my mom was his Islamic wife and his first wife and set of kids lived upstairs and we

00:06:05.880 lived downstairs. And, you know, my sister and I were put in hijab. We went to Islamic schools.

00:06:13.000 Um, everything became haram. When, when he entered our life, it was like, I could no longer play with

00:06:21.320 my non-Muslim friends. I could no longer celebrate birthdays. I could no longer go swimming, ride my

00:06:27.960 bike, listen to music. Everything was forbidden. Uh, so, you know, my mom started to become,

00:06:38.440 him and my mom together started to become a lot more Islamist. So a lot of political,

00:06:45.160 um, as opposed to the, just the religion, the faith, the belief system, there's also

00:06:50.040 part of the religion is this idea of a caliphate and that Islam needs to dominate the planet that 0.88

00:06:56.680 everybody needs to be Muslims. So that's more of a political ideology that's referred to as

00:07:03.400 Islamist. And that started while the most popular is the Muslim Brotherhood. 0.52

00:07:08.600 So after the Turkish Ottoman fell, the Muslims got together and they're like, okay, what do we do 0.82

00:07:14.440 now? How are we going to spread Islam? Um, we can't do it like the sword and raping and pillaging the 1.00

00:07:19.720 way we did the first time. So let's try and come up with another strategy. Um, and they came up with

00:07:25.640 the strategy that they've been using for the past hundreds or so years, which is,

00:07:31.880 you know, just a multi-pronged approach. One of them being immigration, another one being through

00:07:39.080 the wombs of the Muslim mothers. So basically through, um, marry multiple women and get each one 0.99

00:07:46.920 pregnant multiple times. And then you have a lot of Muslims in that area. And then you can have 1.00

00:07:53.560 political power. And the third one is using secular laws against itself, which is one that we see 0.87

00:08:01.080 happening quite often in Canada. So my mom and the man that she married kind of got swept up in this

00:08:07.240 Islamist boom, which was really indicative of what was happening all across the Middle East and North

00:08:14.680 Africa and the Muslim world, starting with, you know, the Islamic regime in Iran was the big boom.

00:08:22.280 And then it just spread. And so, and it spread everywhere. So that the mosque used, we used to 0.99

00:08:30.360 have this little mosque that was run by an imam from India. And he was very like, love thy neighbor kind

00:08:37.560 of imam. And then when the Saudi money came in, suddenly he was replaced with an imam from Egypt

00:08:45.480 and his wife was wearing naqab, like head to toe in black. We'd never seen that before. You know,

00:08:50.920 the kids are running around going, there's a penguin, there's a ninja, you know, at the Islamic school.

00:08:57.800 We're like, what the heck is this? But we just, everybody got swept up in it. Suddenly you saw,

00:09:02.600 everybody was wearing naqab. It was more popular than hijab even. And yeah, so that was the whole 0.94

00:09:12.600 trajectory up until 9-11, basically. For me, that's when, that was the big boom for me. When 9-11

00:09:20.760 happened, I was, I had already, you know, I'm skipping over, there's so much for Rupa, but basically.

00:09:27.160 Of course, of course. Yeah. Yeah. I was just going to ask you, in terms of time frame, when,

00:09:33.480 when was this? When, you know, your parents, your mother and your stepdad, you know, you saw them

00:09:41.480 getting increasingly radicalized. You were in an Islamic school. I'm, you know, I'm wondering,

00:09:47.800 was this before 9-11? Oh yes, that was in the 80s and 90s. Okay. So then I'm assuming that 9-11 had the,

00:09:55.880 had the effect of making people who are already radicalized, if it's even possible to get them

00:10:02.920 more radicalized. Oh yeah. Super empowered, super excited, super happy, super feeling very powerful,

00:10:10.680 very similar to how they're feeling right now. Yeah, it was, that, that was part of the reason,

00:10:17.480 part of the difficulty that, that I had with calling myself a Muslim at that time was because

00:10:25.880 if you can, you know, even as a Canadian, when 9-11 happened, we were all, we all felt affected.

00:10:37.400 Like we were all impacted through this, you know, ripple effect. And to see my family, friends,

00:10:45.400 community, you know, everybody around me celebrating, joyful, excited over the deaths of all of these

00:10:56.920 innocent people. Yeah. You know, it was just too much. It was, it was emotionally really, really

00:11:07.880 difficult for me to reconcile how I can be a part of a community that can be so jubilant over the deaths of

00:11:18.760 innocent people. At what point did you decide to break free?

00:11:25.240 So when 9-11 happened, I was in a university at that point, I had broken free. So my parent,

00:11:31.640 my mom had forced me into a marriage and the man she married, I don't like to refer to him as anything

00:11:37.080 else. Yeah. The, they had forced me into a marriage with a man who my mom chose because she said he's

00:11:45.240 strong enough to control you. So they chose a terrorist. He was an Al Qaeda terrorist and he had 0.51

00:11:52.040 been in Afghanistan with Bin Laden for, you know, over a decade before coming to Canada. And once I married

00:12:01.560 him, of course, you know, head to toe in black, my life was completely shut down, separated from everybody.

00:12:09.320 It's as horrible as you could possibly imagine when I say I was married to a terrorist.

00:12:13.320 Um, but I had a daughter with him. And when I had my daughter,

00:12:23.480 I knew that I didn't want her to live the same life that I had lived and I knew I had to get out.

00:12:29.720 And, um, so I was able to get away from him, was able to get away from my mom, very difficult,

00:12:37.560 convoluted, complicated process, but you know, I'll just skip past it all. Eventually I was able

00:12:43.080 to get away from them all and start going to university, which I never imagined I would ever

00:12:48.120 be able to do. And in university, I was taking a history of religions course. And that was the first

00:12:54.680 time in my life that I was able to critically examine a slam. I was actually able to ask questions,

00:13:00.840 which was completely forbidden before that questions were like, if you're asking questions,

00:13:05.000 that means the devil is whispering these things in your ear, you know? So I'm taking this course where

00:13:11.160 I'm allowed to critically examine the religion for the first time. And also 9 11 happened at the same 0.97

00:13:16.680 time. So really I was just like from both intellectually and emotionally, I was just bombarded.

00:13:23.960 And by the end of that year, I knew I didn't want to be a Muslim anymore. Um, but I didn't have the, 1.00

00:13:31.560 the courage to come out publicly. And by that, I mean, like I still called myself a Muslim. I just

00:13:38.440 said, well, I'm not really practicing or I'm not very religious and, and things like that. And it took

00:13:44.120 a while before I started, you know, taking off my hijab and being publicly looking outwardly as how I felt

00:13:53.160 inside. Um, it's a, it's a slow, difficult process for many reasons. And one of them being,

00:13:59.480 you can be executed for the crime of renouncing Islam. So, so yeah, and also my daughter, you know,

00:14:10.440 her dad is a terrorist and he, with a very big organization and I didn't know where his friends

00:14:16.760 were and if they would find us, if he sent them after us. And so I stayed quiet for a very long

00:14:25.160 time. So how old were you or in what year was this when you were in university and you took this, uh,

00:14:32.440 course, uh, at university and you, you had this moment of realization, just how, um,

00:14:39.800 incredibly, I must've been, yeah, it was 20. I was in my twenties. I was in my, in my mid twenties. Um,

00:14:49.240 so it was kind of like a process, you know, I would say probably by the time,

00:14:57.480 um, yeah, probably not before I was 30, maybe 29, 30 was when I was finally able to say,

00:15:05.960 I'm not a Muslim anymore. Well, that's so I wanted to ask you about that. A lot of Muslims will,

00:15:11.240 you know, that I've debated with, and I'll just briefly tell you, I partly grew up in Dubai

00:15:17.240 at a time when it was not as liberal, liberal. I even put that in quotes because I don't think

00:15:22.200 they're truly liberal. Um, you know, at a time when it was, uh, again, you can't question Islam there,

00:15:28.760 you know, and it's very similar to your experience in the sense that asking questions would be like

00:15:33.800 the devil is making you do this. And when I came to Canada, I experienced this incredible freedom

00:15:39.320 where I could express my thought. I could criticize anything. And I really, um, grew in, you know,

00:15:46.040 intellectually as a person when I, when I came to Canada, a lot of Muslims that I, uh, that I debate 1.00

00:15:51.640 with, uh, devout Muslims will say, no, that is not a representative of mainstream, uh, Islamic view.

00:15:59.240 You know, what people are doing. Um, that's not Islam, you know, uh, Islam is, you know, 0.95

00:16:05.560 religion of peace. It's a peaceful religion. We don't, uh, intend, or we don't mean any harm to

00:16:12.280 anybody. Uh, so this is all like misinformation or a misunderstanding or a misinterpretation of

00:16:20.360 what Islam really stands for. And so we are devout Muslims, um, you know, and they haven't left the faith.

00:16:29.240 Um, you decided that you just didn't want to be part of Islam anymore because you don't think,

00:16:37.080 because that, because for you, Islam does represent those things. Yeah, because it's not a,

00:16:42.440 it's, uh, you know, I wish that I could be living in a la la land, you know, and say this has nothing

00:16:49.800 to do with Islam and that's not real Islam. But the truth is my mother was, uh, the head of the Islamic

00:16:55.240 studies department at the Islamic school. She's an Al-Azhar scholar. She had a master's degree

00:17:00.200 in Islamic studies from Al-Azhar and we had to learn the religion very, very well in order,

00:17:07.160 you know, to not embarrass her, to not bring shame upon her in the Islamic school. So all of us had to

00:17:12.840 be very versed and knowledgeable in the religion. So for every person that tells you that's not part

00:17:19.080 of Islam, I can point exactly to the hadith or to the ayah in the Quran that specifically

00:17:24.280 talks about exactly what is happening. So, you know, 80% of Muslims don't even speak Arabic. 1.00

00:17:30.360 They can read it as if you're reading, uh, you know, like, um, any other language that you just

00:17:38.200 can't understand. You can phonetically read it. They could phonetically read the Quran,

00:17:42.280 but they don't understand what it is saying. Um, and on top of that, most Muslims don't even 1.00

00:17:49.320 bother reading the Quran. One book, they couldn't even be bothered to read it, let alone all of the 0.91

00:17:55.080 a hadith. So they just take whatever their imam tells them. And if it's a nice imam, like the one

00:18:03.320 that we had from India before the Egyptian one came in, then sure, you can go your whole life 1.00

00:18:10.040 thinking that this is a religion of peace and this is, everything's lovely and there's no problems.

00:18:14.600 Um, but you know, if you go into the actual books yourself, if you do your own research and your

00:18:23.080 own reading, you'll find that the imam has been protecting you from all of that. The imam has

00:18:28.600 chosen to pick and choose the good verses and to share those with you and, you know,

00:18:33.560 good on them for doing that. That's great. There's a lot of imams out there that do do that, 0.99

00:18:37.960 but we can't pretend that that has nothing to do with the religion. And if you just look at the,

00:18:45.240 look at the, you know, like, let's say for example, when they say, oh, homophobia has nothing

00:18:49.720 to do with Islam. Killing the LGBT has nothing to do with Islam. Okay. Well then can you explain 0.97

00:18:55.400 to me why 15 Muslim majority countries that are, their religions were, or sorry, their, 0.71

00:19:02.120 their laws were created by Sharia scholars, PhDs in Islamic studies and in Islamic law. 0.97

00:19:10.760 And those countries have decided to execute gay people. So, you know what I mean? Like, 0.98

00:19:18.040 so if you're just some dude that is in Toronto and you think that you want to be a Muslim and 0.92

00:19:24.440 gay at the same time, that's cool. You're that's fine. You have every right to do that, 0.80

00:19:29.240 but you can't pretend that your religion does not call for your execution. It absolutely does. 0.77

00:19:36.440 Um, but you can, you can choose to renounce that or ignore that or pretend it doesn't exist and then go

00:19:42.840 on living your life. But you know, it, it is a, it is an outright lie to say that the sources for all of

00:19:51.960 the violence that we're seeing, the anti-Semitism that we're seeing, the anti-woman, um, you know,

00:19:59.480 bigotry that we're seeing, the, the, the, all of this supremacist narcissism that we're seeing,

00:20:06.040 all of that, all of it, all of it, all of it has a straight route back into the doctrine.

00:20:11.720 And what's important to note here is the doctrine in Islam is different from other religions in that

00:20:17.400 it is considered the literal word of a law. There's no metaphors. There's no interpreting.

00:20:26.840 There's no, you know, it's just a story. No, they are specific edicts. Do this. Don't do that.

00:20:35.560 Um, and so when it goes back to the Quran and when you see it written there, and if it says,

00:20:42.680 you know, whatever it is that it says, then that's what it is. It's the word of Allah. If it says,

00:20:47.240 beat your wife, it means beat your wife. 1.00

00:20:51.560 Amazing. And, uh, we've come to a point here in Canada that, uh, even questioning the doctrine of 0.98

00:20:56.520 Islam, uh, is seen as Islamophobic, uh, anything that criticizes Islamic practices is seen as

00:21:03.400 Islamophobic and you're censured. You could be censured as a result of that. Um, so basically

00:21:10.280 you're saying that there's no such thing as a secular Muslim. That concept cannot exist.

00:21:15.880 Oh, no, no, no. I, I definitely believe that there are secular Muslims out there. There's no such thing 1.00

00:21:22.200 as a secular Islam. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So when, if there are, if there's a secular Muslim out there 0.88

00:21:29.320 that, you know, and there are lots of them, they are choosing to ignore their cherry picking their

00:21:35.560 religion and that's, you know, I have no problem with that. I think that's great. I would rather have

00:21:40.040 be neighbors with a Muslim who is not following their religion literally versus a Muslim who has 1.00

00:21:45.080 chosen to follow it literally. Um, but even those secular Muslims, um, they either, they don't know 1.00

00:21:56.600 or they are lying when they say that this, that Islam itself is very anti-secular, incredibly 0.93

00:22:05.160 anti-freedom of religion and they'll execute you. That's the, that's the freedom you get. 0.83

00:22:10.040 Yeah. Um, do, do secular Muslims, uh, even if they're selectively, or maybe they're, um,

00:22:17.400 the selective amnesia when it comes to what the Quran, the Hadiths actually say, you think,

00:22:23.400 in a, in a sense, do they present, uh, you know, a path towards reforming, uh, Islam because Islam

00:22:31.720 hasn't, to my knowledge, has not gone the kind of reformation that we've seen in Christianity, for example,

00:22:37.880 or even my religion, Hinduism, which has gone through, uh, various waves of, uh, reform, uh,

00:22:43.640 but Islam hasn't, um, when a secular Muslim goes up, up against someone who is like a mullah who

00:22:51.480 really truly believes in what, uh, or an imam who truly believes in what the Quran is saying,

00:22:57.160 literally taking it at face value. Um, do you, do you see that as a way that the religion could be

00:23:03.880 reformed because it's kind of fostering some kind of a debate, if you will? Yeah. Um,

00:23:12.600 the truth is secular Muslims are, their lives are in just as much danger as mine is, or any other 0.99

00:23:20.600 person who has outwardly and outrightly renounced the religion. They are hated in the Muslim community. 0.99

00:23:27.640 They are considered not Muslims, you know? Um, so, you know, let's take some examples. Like for 0.96

00:23:34.680 example, in Pakistan, there's an Ahmadi community of Muslims that are just different. They have

00:23:42.120 different beliefs, but they still want to consider themselves Muslims or Shia in Afghanistan. What

00:23:47.880 happens to the Shia in Afghanistan? They're killed. What happens to the Ahmadi in Pakistan? They're killed. 0.99

00:23:52.680 These are other Muslims, but because they believe in a, in a slightly different flavor of Islam, 0.98

00:24:01.320 they're killed. They're persecuted or executed. So when you talk about secular Muslims, or even people 1.00

00:24:07.480 like me who are ex-Muslims, we're all, they see us as all the same. Unless you are following exactly

00:24:15.880 the way that they want you to follow it, then you are, you know, at risk of being murdered.

00:24:26.680 Tell me a bit about the hijab, Yasmin. I have been openly critical of the hijab, especially when it 1.00

00:24:32.760 comes to kids wearing them. I think if you're an adult, my, my own view is when it comes to range of

00:24:39.000 different things, you're free to do what you want, as long as you're not breaking the law. But for kids,

00:24:45.400 you know, I, I've seen with my own eyes in places like in India, I've seen six, seven-year-old girls

00:24:53.240 being forced to wear the hijab. And I've asked the parents, why are you doing this? And they've said,

00:24:58.360 well, we need to protect her modesty. And I said, why? She's only six years old. Why are you 0.75

00:25:04.760 basically sexualizing this poor child at that very young age? And, and the reaction I get when

00:25:12.440 I say this kind of thing here in Canada is that I'm accused of being an Islamophobe.

00:25:17.560 And people are not able to understand that it is inherently problematic to impose the hijab on a

00:25:25.800 child. What, what does the Quran say? What do you, what is your own view on the hijab? Women in Iran are 1.00

00:25:33.240 dying, basically dying in the streets of Iran to get the hijab off their heads. And here we're 1.00

00:25:39.240 seeing it as a symbol of women's empowerment. How do you explain that? Absolutely. So it's,

00:25:46.120 women in Iran are obviously superhuman, amazing, standing in front of the IRGC,

00:25:52.760 burning their hijabs. They're at a completely different level of bravery. But there are feminists 1.00

00:25:59.320 all across the Muslim majority world doing the same thing, maybe not as outwardly and as, you know,

00:26:06.280 courageously, but there's, there's, they're doing it. Feminists exist everywhere that are pushing 1.00

00:26:11.880 against this hijab and that are pushing for a women's, a woman's freedom to choose to take it off, 1.00

00:26:18.920 because they like to tell you that it's a choice, but your only choice is to put it on. But you don't

00:26:24.360 get to choose to take it off. Once you choose to take it off, whether you're in Algeria or in Egypt

00:26:29.960 or in Iraq or in Pakistan, there, you will either be, you know, the society will look down on you as 1.00

00:26:37.640 like a filthy, dirty whore on one end of the scale. And at the other end of the scale, you could be 1.00

00:26:43.720 honor killed by, by your family because they're so, um, you know, horrified that you would dishonor the

00:26:51.080 family by showing, you know, hair, hair. So, you know, and then, and then you talk about the,

00:26:57.880 the West, which is, this is the embarrassing part because in the Muslim world, we have like, 1.00

00:27:03.160 if you look at my hashtag free from hijab or the no hijab day hashtag, it's going to be full of women 1.00

00:27:09.560 in Saudi Arabia. They're taking their naqabs off and stepping on them. They're burning their hijabs all 1.00

00:27:15.320 over the world. Women are ripping them off all, all over the world. But in the West, 1.00

00:27:22.440 that's where they believe that the hijab is an empowering symbol. Nobody believes that in the

00:27:27.400 Muslim world, everybody understand all the feminist women all over Middle East and North Africa, 1.00

00:27:33.320 understand that this is an anti woman tool of misogyny. It perpetuates rape culture. It encourages 1.00

00:27:41.800 victim blaming it. It's, it's a gender segregating piece of clothing and we risk our lives to remove 0.96

00:27:51.800 it. You know, people are thrown in prison over it. I don't know how you can pretend that anything with

00:27:57.320 that long list of, of crimes around it can be empowering, but in the West, they have somehow

00:28:05.880 just slurped up the Islamist propaganda. This word Islamophobia was created in Iran. It was created by 0.99

00:28:16.200 the Islamic Republic of Iran to delude these useful idiots in the West into making them think. I mean, 1.00

00:28:28.360 if the truth needs to be said group at the end of the day, like they, they, to, to get them to bleak

00:28:34.760 like sheep, Islamophobia, Islamophobia, Islamophobia, whenever they see anybody criticizing this religion.

00:28:42.760 And it absolutely needs to be criticized and it is criticized. You're talking about,

00:28:48.200 you don't like to see children in the club, either do I, and in Egypt and in Morocco and in so many

00:28:53.480 Muslim majority countries, they don't want to see their children, their little girls in hijab in the 1.00

00:28:58.600 schools either. And in fact, in a lot of those countries, they have banned the niqab as well. 0.96

00:29:04.280 But when it happens in those countries, we don't hear about it, even though it should be something

00:29:10.120 to be celebrated. But instead, when France, for example, says we don't want children to be wearing

00:29:17.240 hijab in public schools, everybody's up in arms, you have all of the Western left, you know, screaming 0.97

00:29:24.440 like, no, let the children be oppressed, sexualize the children in France, you know, like, what are you,

00:29:31.720 what are you celebrating right now? What are you encouraging right now? But the, but the reason

00:29:37.080 why they're such useful idiots is because they don't know anything. They don't understand the context. 1.00

00:29:45.320 They don't understand it. Islam is the second largest religion on the planet. It's an absolute 1.00

00:29:50.760 shame that people are so ignorant about it. But it's that ignorance that allows them to be duped so 0.99

00:29:58.520 easily. And this is why you'll find them in the streets with their supporting Hamas, right? Because 0.83

00:30:04.360 they're like, oh, they're freedom fighters. They're revolutionaries. They don't understand. They don't

00:30:10.200 know anything about what's going. They've never, they couldn't find Palestine. Try to get them to 1.00

00:30:15.720 find Gaza on a map. There's no way. They're chanting from the river to the sea. They don't know what river 0.92

00:30:21.160 and they don't know what sea. They don't know what they're doing. They're just making it so noisy

00:30:27.480 and making it so difficult for reformed Muslims voices or progressive thinking Muslims to get their 1.00

00:30:36.440 voices out because they're being drowned out by these morons. And the reason why these morons all have 1.00

00:30:43.560 microphones is because of Islamist funding coming from Qatar, coming from Iran. They're paying billions of 1.00

00:30:51.320 dollars into Ivy League American universities to push their, their propaganda and it's successful.

00:30:59.400 And then they go and they make their little TikTok videos and whatever. And it just, it's like this,

00:31:04.920 it's like this cancer. It just spreads. And before you know it, people are just repeating these little

00:31:10.920 memes of topics that are actually huge and complicated, but they don't even know the first

00:31:16.920 thing about it. All they know is to just repeat whatever little meme they saw on their seven

00:31:21.720 second clip. Yeah. It's, it's all quite dispiriting. I mean, I've personally experienced this with some

00:31:27.000 people who should know better. Um, and, uh, it's, it's, you know, you're just pulling your hair out

00:31:32.680 because, and I've actually have lived experience to borrow a phrase from, you know, a term from the left,

00:31:39.000 you know, of, of actually having been forced into these things and, you know, and I rebelled and I'm not a

00:31:44.680 Muslim, but I lived in an Islamic country. So I know, know this quite well, but all of this leads to,

00:31:50.440 um, you know, nicely leads to my next question for you, Yasmin. Um, the, and that is the current

00:31:56.680 conflict, uh, the Israel, um, uh, Palestinian conflict that is currently underway right now.

00:32:02.600 I've been reading, uh, some of what you've written recently with, um, you know, I've been moved

00:32:07.160 by some of what you've written. Uh, your father was from Gaza and, um, and you wrote this moving

00:32:14.360 piece in tablet magazine called Gaza, my lost home. And you say you're mourning for both, uh,

00:32:20.600 Israeli and Palestinian lives. Um, and, and you also say that Hamas has ensured that there will 1.00

00:32:25.800 be no more Palestine and no more hope for an independent state. Could you tell us what you mean by this?

00:32:35.480 Well, when I wrote that article, it was like the day after October 7th. So, you know,

00:32:42.040 I was feeling incredibly depressed, demoralized and terrified for what the future was going to hold,

00:32:50.280 because there's no doubt that when you send terrorists into a country to murder people in

00:32:58.600 their homes or murder people at a music festival, there's absolutely no doubt that the country is

00:33:05.080 going to retaliate and it's going to be bloody. It's going to be bad. It's going to be ugly.

00:33:11.400 Everybody could see that happening, you know? Um,

00:33:17.000 and so I knew that a lot of Palestinian lives were going to be lost now because of what Hamas had done. 0.55

00:33:24.760 I don't care to be perfectly honest. If Hamas lives are lost, let them, I hope they're all lost. 1.00

00:33:31.880 Um, but the truth is that they hide amongst 0.83

00:33:37.400 innocent Palestinians. They hide in the homes of the Gazan people in the neighborhoods of innocent people. 0.99

00:33:45.400 And as much as we would love to be able to say that we're only going to,

00:33:57.160 that Israel would like to, you know, only kill Hamas terrorists and not hurt any civilians or not hurt any 0.69

00:34:04.920 innocent people. That's simply not possible in war, you know, and it's simply not possible when you're,

00:34:11.960 when you're dropping bombs, you know, it's a,

00:34:17.480 war is really ugly. And, and a lot of people now are playing sort of, uh, you know, this, this game where

00:34:25.800 they can say, you know, it's like a, it's like a, as if it's like a video game where you can go in there

00:34:30.120 and pinpoint specifically who it is that you want to kill. You know, it doesn't work that way. Israel called

00:34:36.360 people literally in their homes, telephoned each family and said, get out because there are Hamas 0.89

00:34:44.760 terrorists in your neighborhood and we are going to bomb it. So they did as much as they could to try

00:34:50.600 and save as many civilian lives. But, you know, like, let's take a look at what America did after Pearl

00:34:56.840 Harbor, right? They dropped nuclear bombs on, you know, Nagasaki and Hiroshima. How many innocent lives

00:35:08.520 were lost were lost because of the few American lives that were lost as well? You know what I mean?

00:35:15.640 Like this, this, this idea now that people talk about, um, proportionality and war and something like

00:35:22.600 that, uh, you know, that that's not, you know, when you have people coming into a country

00:35:28.520 and murdering families in their homes, you have to expect 100% that that country is going to retaliate.

00:35:38.520 That's just a statement, but let's continue with that thought for a moment too, and realize that

00:35:44.440 Israel is one of the strongest militaries on the planet, you know? So you're, you're playing with a

00:35:50.120 very big fire right now when you start doing stupid things like that, horrific things like that. And not 1.00

00:35:56.360 only that, but the Jewish people have a history, which is not even that far back in history. The Holocaust

00:36:02.840 was not that long ago. It's still fresh in all of our memories. Um, and they are, you know, 0.2% of the 0.55

00:36:12.360 planet are Jewish people. So when you kill 1400 people in a day, plus kidnap over 200, 0.97

00:36:26.360 Jewish people, Jewish people are fighting for their lives. They're fighting for the 0.89

00:36:32.440 survival of the Jewish tribe at this point. And so as much as I, um,

00:36:44.840 sad and, and horrified by what is happening in Gaza right now,

00:36:51.880 I don't, I, I put the blame squarely, squarely in Hamas's hands because Israel has reacted in, 0.94

00:37:06.840 in a much even more, um, calmer way than any other country would have even reacted to this,

00:37:19.400 to something like that happening to them. Yeah, no, I absolutely agree. I mean, Israel, uh, is

00:37:24.840 often caught between a rock and a hard place and held to an impossible standard. It's, it's surrounded

00:37:30.920 by countries that would not, do not wish its existence. We would, would, you know, these are

00:37:36.840 very hostile countries, even if they've made peace with Israel, they're still very fundamentally quite 0.78

00:37:42.120 hostile. Um, I think it's possible to feel empathy as you, as you have, uh, written about empathy for

00:37:49.320 the people of Gaza, innocent Gaza, Gaza civilians, the children and the elderly, um, who have been

00:37:56.120 caught in this, you know, been caught, been caught up in this conflict. They're suffering. These Israeli 1.00

00:38:02.440 civilians have suffered. Uh, they're also suffering. They continue to suffer from the barrage of

00:38:07.320 mass rockets that continue to hit Tel Aviv and thank God for the iron dome. Um, and, um, and I

00:38:14.920 think it's, it's possible to feel empathy for Gaza civilians without saying that they're all Hamas

00:38:20.600 supporters. And that was going to be my next question to you, which is something you point out.

00:38:25.080 It's a, it's, it's, it's a, I think it's a very important point that is missing in much of the

00:38:29.640 discourse. I feel here in Canada that, you know, you said that many people wrongly conflate Hamas

00:38:36.120 and all Palestinians and that some people have just assumed now that if you're advocating for

00:38:42.760 the Palestinian cause and let's remind ourselves that the Palestinian cause has been a cause that

00:38:48.440 has predated this current crisis. It's been there. Well, why are we talking about a two state solution

00:38:53.880 if there is no Palestinian cause, right? So that these people are supporters of Hamas. I'm sure 0.93

00:38:59.480 there are many supporters of Hamas at these protests. And, uh, but how do you think that

00:39:04.520 this conflation has come about in the, that's something that I'm trying to figure out in the

00:39:08.600 context of this current crisis? Uh, two years ago, I'd see these marches on my street in Ottawa,

00:39:14.920 uh, from the river to the sea. Nobody, nobody paid any attention to it. Um, no one called them Hamas

00:39:20.840 supporters, although I'm sure they were, but now they're seen as Hamas supporters. What do you think

00:39:24.840 is going on? Well, I mean, these rallies started immediately after October 7th, like October 8th,

00:39:33.080 they were in the streets talking about revolution, talking about freedom fighters, talking about like

00:39:40.120 our glory to our martyrs. Like there was no question. So the, the, any marches that would have happened

00:39:47.080 prior to this could have potentially been people who truly were interested in, you know, Palestine,

00:39:55.640 in the Palestinian cause. But after October 7th, the, those people have been, you know, it almost, 0.90

00:40:04.120 I don't want to say hijacked, but they have been, you know, there has been an interjection

00:40:09.320 of many people who also support Hamas, like celebrate Hamas. Um, and so that's the difference.

00:40:20.840 Now we talked before about how my dad was from Gaza. And one of the things that my dad spent a lot

00:40:26.280 of time in his activism, speaking up against Hamas, being, he was disgusted and angry that when people

00:40:35.480 think of the Palestinian cause, they think of Hamas. He's like, you know how horrifying that is?

00:40:40.840 You know how embarrassing it is that people equate your homeland to terrorists? You know, he was,

00:40:49.480 he was so repulsed at that. And, but what's he going to do? You know, what's any freedom,

00:40:55.640 loving, peace, loving Ghazan going to do? They, their voices are not heard. In Ghazza, when they tried to

00:41:03.640 have, um, they had, uh, they had protests, they had a protest called, we want to live.

00:41:11.640 And that was a protest against the Hamas quote unquote government. And people were

00:41:20.360 just like, they disappeared. They were beaten up in the streets. They were arrested. There are videos

00:41:25.800 online of this one man who was being dragged behind a, um, a motorcycle, like his body is just being

00:41:35.240 dragged. There's all sorts of stories. There's a, uh, a very important organization called, um,

00:41:43.240 whispered from Gaza, where they ask people from Gaza to tell us exactly how they're feeling and what

00:41:50.520 they're thinking. And they share those audio clips and then they add like animation to it.

00:41:57.080 Um, and in those audio clips, you can hear people from Gaza telling you about how, when Gaza, when,

00:42:03.640 when the Hamas leadership came in, there was basically a civil war where they murdered the

00:42:11.160 Fatah supporters, who was the, you know, the, the more, um, the non-terrorist.

00:42:17.960 Yeah. Uh, although they were terrorists at one point, uh, they were, yes.

00:42:25.400 I mean, potato, potato.

00:42:30.520 It's, I guess it's all, um, uh, yeah. I mean, history is a spectrum of terrorists.

00:42:38.200 Exactly. History is complicated. There's no question about it. I mean, I do have to remind

00:42:43.000 people that the, the PLO, Yasser Arafat was a terrorist at one point.

00:42:46.520 Yes, exactly. And then, exactly. No doubt.

00:42:50.120 Was, you know, normalized and he wanted to make peace and all of that is good. I think

00:42:55.400 eventually I, you know, everybody wants a peaceful solution to what is going on there and you want

00:43:01.960 long lasting peace and not just something that is under boil. Is it possible to, um, eradicate this

00:43:09.880 ideology? I mean, how it's a bit like what you're telling me about radical Islam or Islam in general,

00:43:15.720 which is why you're an ex Muslim, because you just, you're just like, you've given up on this,

00:43:19.800 you know, it's like, there's no hope there. Uh, and it's in Hamas ideology and this kind of extremist

00:43:26.520 ideology. Can you actually completely eradicate this?

00:43:32.360 Um, so when we talk about the Hamas ideology, like if you look at their manifesto, they're quoting

00:43:42.520 the Hadith. When they talk about Muslims will kill all the Jews until the rocks and the trees will 0.97

00:43:49.320 call out, Oh Muslim, there's a Jew hiding behind me. Come kill him. That's a Sahih Hadith. So if you're 1.00

00:43:55.880 a Sunni Muslim, which is about 90% of Muslims, you believe that to be true. That is a prophecy. That is a, 1.00

00:44:03.240 you know, this is part of your religion. And so the only way, you know, the sad truth is it's,

00:44:14.280 it's really like a, it's like a Hydra. It's like that mythical Hydra, the snake that when you cut off

00:44:19.400 its head, two more are going to grow in its place. Hamas is not, Hamas is just one head of this snake.

00:44:28.680 Even if you chop it off, who cares? Nothing happened. Where's the funding for Hamas coming 0.96

00:44:38.040 from? It's coming from Iran. All they're going to do is pass it. Okay, fine. We'll pay Hezbollah now. 0.98

00:44:44.600 You know what I mean? Like, or what happened when we eradicated Al Qaeda, ISIS group, you know,

00:44:50.920 you can't, you can't eradicate an idea. This will continue to morph. It will continue to grow.

00:44:59.640 As long as people are still believing this doctrine to be the word of Allah, 0.97

00:45:08.040 and to be something, you know, immutable. When we start to empower and support reform minded Muslims,

00:45:19.240 Muslims and their voices and their work, then maybe they can start to become the dominant voices.

00:45:28.920 They can start to become the mainstream Muslims. But right now, the money coming from Iran and the 0.86

00:45:34.200 money coming from Qatar and the, you know, all of these Islamist organizations that are paying for 1.00

00:45:39.080 Ilhan Omar's campaign and Kamala Harris's campaign and, you know, Rashida Tlaib's campaign.

00:45:46.840 I mean, we're up against that, you know, like who, who, who did the progressive Muslims have 1.00

00:45:55.080 to support them? You know, they have petrodollars behind them. What do we have?

00:46:01.080 You know, we have a few hashtags. We have our voices every now and then. And this is what you're

00:46:05.160 talking about with the, with the Palestinians, with the Muslims against Hamas. It's the exact same 0.90

00:46:10.520 thing. Why don't you hear the voices of all the Muslims that hate Hamas and that don't want anything

00:46:16.200 to do with Hamas? Well, because they're not the ones with power. They're not the ones with money.

00:46:21.080 They're not the ones with influence. They're not the ones with guns. And so this is just where this

00:46:26.680 is what it is. It's, it's David versus Goliath right now. And if the progressive minded Muslims 0.99

00:46:34.360 can get the support of the West versus the way the West is supporting the actual fundamentalists,

00:46:42.760 the conservatives, the extremists, if they started putting their time and energy and effort and money

00:46:49.880 behind supporting liberal minded Muslims, then we might have a chance because it has to come from 1.00

00:46:56.440 within. It's not going to come externally. Then maybe they'll start to become the mainstream voice.

00:47:04.520 Who knows? I won't be alive to see it, but I hope it happens.

00:47:08.600 Final question for you. What is, what do you think is the future for Gaza? Do you think a two-state

00:47:15.400 solution is possible? What will be the future of the Palestinian people by the end of this?

00:47:22.920 I mean, that's a really great question. I personally do not think that history will repeat itself. I do not

00:47:34.200 think that this teeny tiny country of Israel that will ever allow itself again to 1.00

00:47:45.400 be in this position. So before October 7th, there was like tens of thousands of people from Gaza

00:47:54.520 were coming into Israel every day to work their nine to five and then crossing the border and going back

00:48:01.800 home to Gaza again. That's never going to happen. That's never going to happen again. 0.66

00:48:06.360 You know, there's not going to be, I mean, I don't even know if there's going to even be a Gaza,

00:48:10.680 to be perfectly honest. I can't even imagine them allowing the risk of this to happen again.

00:48:23.720 But who knows? I might be, I might be surprised. I don't know, but I can't imagine, you know, it's,

00:48:29.960 I think it's really too soon to even ask that question. It's like if, if it was immediately after

00:48:35.960 World War II, would we ask Jewish people if they want to be neighbors, you know, with Germany?

00:48:45.080 That's a, you know, what kind of, how can you even ask that question right now? So of course,

00:48:53.000 it's not all Palestinians. Of course, it's not all husbands, but that's, it's a risk, you know, 0.50

00:48:59.720 and if they are not only looking after protecting their citizens, but like I said, protecting

00:49:06.760 the actual Jewish people that are left on the planet, 0.2%, is that they're already such a tiny 1.00

00:49:12.280 minority. And they want to have one tiny sliver of the planet where they can live in peace and 0.94

00:49:19.560 comfortably, then they're going to make sure that the people that are living there are completely 0.90

00:49:25.800 protected. So I don't know. And this is why in that tablet article that I wrote right after this

00:49:31.720 happened, my feeling was, this is it, we're done. There's never gonna, this two state solution that we

00:49:39.000 tried, you know, for over 70 years for it to happen was constantly, constantly, constantly

00:49:48.040 being rejected because the other side simply did not want an Israel to exist from the river to the sea.

00:49:59.480 Palestine will be free. They do not want to see the whole thing needs to be Palestine. And so it was 1.00

00:50:05.560 an all or nothing attitude. And unfortunately, it looks like now it's nothing.

00:50:11.080 Well, on that very grim note, Yasmeen, it's been a real honor to have you speak to us and, you know,

00:50:22.440 and I've gained so much knowledge from you. And I'm sure, as of our viewers and our listeners,

00:50:29.400 and I really wish you all the best in your ongoing fight against radical Islam and all of those other 1.00

00:50:38.920 unsavory things in the world. Thank you so much. And all the power to you as well. I'm also a huge

00:50:45.160 fan and, and I love how incredibly fierce you are. You know, there's, I, I, as they say, you know,

00:50:53.080 the divine in me sees the divine in you. So, you know, you are, you are my soul sister with that

00:51:00.200 same fierce attitude. You have no idea how much that means to me. And, and I hope that one day we

00:51:08.120 actually get a chance to meet each other in person and, and, you know, and maybe we could have,

00:51:14.200 yeah, we, and I'm sure we, we'd have a, we'd have a ball. So, but thank you so much for making the

00:51:21.480 time, Yasmeen. I know you're so busy and I really hope to look forward to reading more of your stuff

00:51:27.160 and, uh, and, uh, and your commentary and, uh, you'll always have my support.

00:51:32.920 Thank you so much. Lovely. Take care. Take care. Bye.

Juno News - November 10, 2023

Former Muslim explains why she left Islam

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