Tate's Thoughts On Christianity
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
212.5924
Summary
In this episode, I sit down with my friend Andrew to talk about his experience as a Muslim-American living in the United States. We talk about what it means to be a Muslim in the 21st century, what it's like to grow up in a Christian country, and how to navigate our relationship with religion.
Transcript
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Yeah, it's the most feared. But what is respect without fear?
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If there's a man who could do absolutely nothing to you on any level at all,
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you might be nice to him, sure, because we're not bad people,
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If you could take his chick in front of his face and set his car on fire,
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and he wouldn't do a thing. You wouldn't respect them.
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You might be nice to him because we're not bullies, but you wouldn't respect them.
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They're not always the same thing, and you can maybe have fear without respect,
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but it's very hard to have respect without fear.
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But also, I heard someone say once that we see the world as we see ourselves.
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If you're a thief, you think everyone's a thief.
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And I kind of agree with that. I understood that.
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I also like to think we see religion as we see ourselves.
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I like to see myself as a person whose respect you have to earn.
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I like to see myself as a person who has strong, rigid boundaries.
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I like to see myself as a person who will stand up and say, no, that's wrong.
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I like to see myself as a person who's not afraid of being shamed by whatever community
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for saying, I don't agree with that particular ideal.
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So if I'm going to see myself that way, then I'm going to naturally align with a religion
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So when I say Islam is the last religion on earth, I say it because it seems to be the
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only one who will stand up and say, no, we don't care.
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No, I was raised Christian and Muslims as a whole, we have no problems with Christians.
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I don't want anyone to think I'm anti-Christian, like I dislike Christians.
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We put more respect on the name of Jesus than most Christians do.
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I just don't like the idea of people saying they're a Christian and saying, but because
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I'm a Christian, I can do whatever I want and throw all the rules away and none of it matters
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because once you have that level of tolerance, you no longer have a religion.
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Islam seems to be the last religion left with parameters.
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If you don't have parameters, you don't have a religion at all.
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So the closer I found myself to God, the closer I found myself to Islam.
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And Andrew, speaking of fear, one could argue that Islam these days, certainly in the last
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20 years with the war on terror, they've also been the most vilified.
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So, you know, everything that we've seen happen with extremism and everything that's going
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That's such an interesting question because when I was younger, especially when I was
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an atheist, I would sit and I'd sit and think, people are really doing terror attacks and
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doing all this crazy stuff because, you know, they're upset over a cartoon.
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But also part of me is now saying, why would you want to insult the prophet for billions
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I'm not saying you, I'm not even, I don't want to make the argument against free speech.
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I'm not even saying you couldn't be allowed to.
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I'm just saying, what kind of person wakes up and thinks, I want to do that?
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Like when I see these Satanists and they're, especially in America and they're doing,
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These Satanists and they're dressing up Jesus is gay and all this stuff like that's not done
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That's done with genuinely malicious intention.
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And then the answer by extension is, I thought America was a Christian country.
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So how can you have a Christian country where the prophets of the religion are mocked to
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the highest possible levels within the confines of the country and it's promoted?
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I don't think the same thing would happen with Islam in Saudi Arabia.
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So how can you say we're a Christian country, but everyone's mocking our God on the streets?
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Do you think, I have a personal theory that the downfall of America, because it is absolutely
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downfalling, is directly connected to America straying away from Christian values.
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I think that the more you make a country godless, the more they do godless things.
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And it's like when you raise, like we're raising the next generation, you know what's crazy?
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We're raising the next generation of kids to spend 30 minutes with their family a day.
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You go to school, they spend eight hours in indoctrination machines.
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You, then, you know, you might go home and then you might go to a practice, a music, whatever
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So now you're spending time with, again, people that are not your family.
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So it's like the parents aren't even the number one influence on the kids anymore.
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They're friends and whoever the hell's teaching them, which a lot of times is these single
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Like I've heard from so many men, they don't date teachers because they're nuts.
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Well, I mean, for me, I get, I catch a lot of flack sometimes because I say when I marry
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I want to be a full time mother and wife because who like, God knows who these people in the
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You're just like, oh, what's this like sunshine daycare.
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Have you seen like that one daycare when they like gave the kids like Hulk hands and they
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had like a, like a fight club going on in the daycare.
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You have no idea what's going on with these people, let alone these teachers teaching
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Well, I can't even think of, it's like weird when you get older and you think back to conversations
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And you're like, why were they talking to me about that?
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Um, like I had one teacher that showed, uh, CNN kids and this was at a Catholic school.
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Why is she, I had another teacher tell her, this is kind of a random thing, but it's like
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It was like, she said that business, like that she sees the price difference.
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She sees the price difference between the, the Walmart and the rich neighborhoods and the
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And she thinks it's so mean that the business owners charge the poor neighborhoods more.
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No, because people steal in the poor neighborhoods.
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That's because I looked into it later, but the point is she's putting her moral, like
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her, her obvious philosophy onto kids where it's like, and I know it seems small, but
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I could think of like, or even adult teachers talking to us about like, like I remember, um,
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I wasn't really invited to many parties in high school, but, but I did throw one, my
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So I would play volleyball and it was really competitive.
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Like all of my teammates went to a division one.
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Like it was a very, we were top like 20 or 30 in the country for club.
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Like we were, it was a really competitive team.
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And so my parents every summer would leave for like a month and I would be home in this
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So my senior year, I finally, like, I was kind of, I played volleyball and basketball.
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So I did two sports, so I would go to school and I would have, I don't know, four, like
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four hours of, I would go to school and then I'd have four hours of practice.
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So I spent like, I've just always been really busy since I was, I was a kid.
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And so what happened was my senior year, I finally had like a friend group because I
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And we would also travel out of state on the weekend.
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The next weekend I'd be like, I'd be traveling.
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So senior year, I finally get a friend group, right?
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And so I'm like, all right, I'm going to throw a party.
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Like she's not going to know one day in the whole month.
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Mom, if you're watching, it was like 20, 25 people.
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I could have, I could have had a huge, you know, and so what happened was we did the
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And what happened was I went to my parents' house in like their other house and I met them.
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And what I didn't know was, um, my, when my dad came back, he found a garbage bag full
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Cause I'm like, they, like my parents must be making this up because I know I did not buy
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And so this was like the first year I ever dread, like the first.
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And, and so what happened was my friends in high, this is why, you know, you can't have
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My friends in high school came back cause they knew I was leaving and threw another party and
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And so then that, that went through my mom going through all of my text messages, my dad.
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Oh, I'm going to tell you, this is the worst part.
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So, you know, I really have never been a big smoker, you know, but I, this was the first
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I tried it and I was like, and so my friends took a picture of me going like, like, cause I
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But my dad now thinks I'm a pothead because he has a picture of me with the weed.
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They took my phone because of the beer thing that they came back and like did.
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I got sent to Wisconsin for a month with, to live with my grandma in the middle of nowhere.
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So I remember I took my grandma to a karaoke bar.
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I took my grandma to a karaoke of like 16 or seven.
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So I, I think I was 16 or 17 and I'm driving my grandma to, um, to a karaoke bar with her friends.
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And it's all these old ladies and they're all, a lot of them, cause my grandma was a widow and a lot of them were widowed.
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And I remember sitting there listening to them talk about boys, that they're dated guys like older.
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And I was thinking like, wow, they sound exactly like me and my friends.
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And the funniest thing, the funniest thing was the, the difference about like older, cause you have to think women outlive men.
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I mean, you kind of hope they don't, but they do, you know?
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So, so the, the issue though is when they date some of their, their dates die.
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So it's like, they're like, oh, I was seeing that guy, but he died.
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Cause when you're dating as like, cause I think my grandpa died, which he early sixties.
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But remember some old people live to be 90 where some, you know, diets, like the average dies at 70, 75, whatever it is.
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So it's kind of like, you're kind of playing roulette at that.
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And all the women are like, like they're dying.