Making Sense - Sam Harris - #154 — What Do Jihadists Really Want？ (2019)

00:00:00.000 welcome to the making sense podcast this is Sam Harris okay I have a town hall

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00:02:30.040 and then we'll open a free account for you okay so today I am re-releasing an old

00:02:39.500 episode which unfortunately is highly relevant this week the episode was originally 43 of the

00:02:49.360 podcast titled what do jihadists really want and the original release date was august 17th 2016

00:02:57.780 so a little more than two and a half years ago and in the aftermath of the recent bombings in

00:03:05.740 Sri Lanka I decided to listen to it just to see if there was something more I needed to say to make

00:03:13.540 sense of the current situation and I find that there isn't I did about as good a job as I can

00:03:20.700 in trying to get you the listener to see jihadism the way I do and the way I believe jihadists see

00:03:31.520 themselves I must say I'm also given further motivation having just been at ted and having

00:03:38.700 had the usual collisions with the wokeness there it was a great conference I had a lot of fun but

00:03:46.380 I had one meeting with a muslim apologist I would call her who I won't name it was a private meeting

00:03:55.200 organized by Chris Anderson and he had some hopes that we would have a meeting of the minds I think

00:04:02.420 we didn't have much of one it wasn't a waste of time but it was also an experience where I

00:04:09.660 confronted all of the usual denials and non sequiturs one encounters when one tries to say

00:04:19.520 something rational about Islam at this moment in history so it was a frustrating experience and now

00:04:27.560 punctuated by an enormous atrocity I think the current count is 350 have died in Sri Lanka and the details

00:04:38.380 we have so far prove yet again that the problem is not a matter of economics or politics it's belief

00:04:45.640 these suicide bombers were middle class and mostly well educated they had other opportunities the

00:04:54.120 problem was that they were convinced of the truth of specific religious ideas ideas that are not in

00:05:02.420 the Anglican communion or in Mormonism or in Scientology all I ever argue for on this topic is that we

00:05:11.460 acknowledge the power of ideas and Islam has more than its fair share of bad ones so if you want to

00:05:20.480 confront the problem of jihadism and Islamism as we really all must and as moderate Muslims the world over

00:05:29.960 must you have to be honest about these things and what I encounter among apologists and among all too woke

00:05:38.920 leftists is to some degree self-deception no doubt but it is with disconcerting frequency a commitment to

00:05:47.620 actually lying about the problem and to defaming anyone who won't lie about it so I'm re-upping this

00:05:57.240 podcast because if I had to say this all again I don't think I would change a word and all of these

00:06:03.840 observations are once again relevant so what did jihadists really want

00:06:12.120 well as I said in my last podcast ISIS just released a remarkable document in the latest issue of their

00:06:24.720 magazine Dabiq which is named after a city in Syria where they believe they will wage a final battle

00:06:29.900 against a crusader army and usher in the end times so I promised to discuss that in a separate podcast

00:06:37.380 which I'll do now the whole magazine is fairly astonishing I'll provide a link to a pdf on my blog

00:06:44.620 but I warn you that some of the pictures are disturbing there's a photograph of a man getting his head cut

00:06:50.780 off which leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination but I'm going to read some relevant parts of the

00:06:57.160 magazine on this podcast and one thing that should alarm you is how well written it is the writing in

00:07:04.640 this magazine is actually better than you'll find in your average salon article or on the intercept

00:07:11.240 in fact it's as well written as Fawaz Gurji's new book on ISIS published by Princeton University Press

00:07:18.260 and and the copy editing in this magazine is actually better than in that book I'm not exaggerating

00:07:26.260 I spotted a typo in the Gurji's book in the first few pages I haven't seen any typos in this copy of

00:07:32.640 Dabiq and it may sound like a strange thing to say but good writing and good copy editing is a very bad

00:07:40.580 sign it tells you something about the caliber of people they've managed to recruit the article I'm

00:07:47.240 going to focus on and read in its entirety is entitled why we hate you and why we fight you

00:07:52.880 and I think it will inevitably be said that there's something self-serving about my reading this to you

00:07:58.620 because it confirms more or less everything I've been saying about jihadism for the last 15 years

00:08:03.140 and perhaps there is something a little self-serving about it because as you know I've been pilloried

00:08:08.520 for my views on this topic for about as long but this really isn't a matter of my just saying I told you

00:08:17.700 so I actually think it's important that if you have any lingering doubts about whether or not

00:08:23.440 ISIS and jihadism generally is a religious phenomenon that you clarify those doubts and

00:08:30.780 just listen to what members of ISIS have to say for themselves but before I get into that article in

00:08:37.620 particular here is what I think any honest reader will get from this magazine as a whole

00:08:43.640 the fundamental concerns of these people are theological the claim they want to press and

00:08:50.460 substantiate in nearly every paragraph and which motivates everything they do is a claim about the

00:08:56.840 exclusive legitimacy of their religion every other way of life leads to hell they really believe this

00:09:03.940 now most of you I would wager have no idea what it's like to believe that either paradise

00:09:09.720 or an eternity in fire awaits you after death and because you haven't ever believed this you

00:09:16.660 probably waste a lot of fuel wondering whether anyone actually does I want to recommend that you stop

00:09:22.620 doing that and simply accept that jihadists believe what they say they believe just accept it as a working

00:09:30.180 assumption if you do that you will suddenly find that everything they do including suicide bombing makes

00:09:38.540 perfect sense so I recommend that you simply listen to what these people have to say for themselves

00:09:43.060 as you would any other people who are making extreme sacrifices towards some end the disposition

00:09:49.600 not to do this is really strange let's say you went to a medical school and you ask students why they were

00:09:57.780 pursuing careers in medicine how disposed would you be to second guess their answers I mean what they're

00:10:05.580 doing is fairly difficult they're spending all this time in school they're incurring massive student

00:10:11.060 debt they're spending their days indoors dissecting cadavers when they could be at the beach what on

00:10:17.320 earth are they up to well if you ask them they will tell you and you won't waste any time wondering

00:10:23.200 whether they have some other motive that bears no resemblance to what they say I mean there might be some

00:10:28.360 diversity of reasons but 90 percent of medical students will give you more or less the same

00:10:34.300 story they'll say that they want to help people that they want a meaningful career where they know

00:10:40.660 they're doing good in the world they want a high prestige career they want to be paid well okay and they

00:10:46.800 might have scientific interest in biology and medical research you'll hear answers like this and these

00:10:52.720 answers make sense of their behavior you won't hear someone say I wanted to be a professional football

00:10:59.160 player and found I just wasn't quite good enough to turn pro and so I decided to find the thing that

00:11:04.280 was closest to the thrill of sacking a quarterback and so I became a dermatologist right that wouldn't

00:11:11.400 make sense it wouldn't make sense to imagine that was the underlying motive so why did jihadists do what

00:11:20.500 they do well they are telling us ad nauseum they're telling us even when we don't ask and a magazine like

00:11:28.440 the beak advertises their concerns and aspirations with utter clarity and you might want to say it's just

00:11:36.100 propaganda and it is propaganda but it only works as propaganda because many Muslims share these

00:11:43.380 aspirations and concerns and believe the same doctrines to call it propaganda doesn't mean that it's dishonest for

00:11:52.620 these ideas to successfully recruit people means that they find these ideas compelling so whether Abu Bakr

00:12:00.380 al-Baghdadi believes every word in this magazine isn't the point the point is that this material is a highly

00:12:07.880 successful means of recruiting foreign-born jihadis the point is that many people find these ideas

00:12:16.260 persuasive and that's not an accident now recruiting and inspiring jihadis overseas is obviously different

00:12:24.260 from getting Iraqis and Syrians to fight for ISIS at home and there's no question that many locals have

00:12:30.600 been recruited out of fear fear of Shiites with whom they've been locked in a sectarian civil war and fear of

00:12:36.660 what ISIS will do to them if they don't support the caliphate so who knows what percentage of local

00:12:41.680 Sunnis really support the extreme Salafi jihadism of ISIS it's probably a terrifying percentage but it's

00:12:49.020 not everyone but here we're talking about the spread of Islamism and jihadism globally okay so we're talking

00:12:55.600 about persuasion we're talking about the power of ideas we're talking about a worldview that must be

00:13:01.780 argued for and which some percentage of Muslims in any society will find compelling and when you read

00:13:08.940 this magazine you find that above all jihadis are concerned about religious error they really are

00:13:16.660 concerned about the deviance of Christianity which they consider a form of paganism and about rival

00:13:21.920 interpretations of Islam and needless to say they're horrified by secularism and atheism and homosexuality

00:13:28.300 they're concerned about the worship of anything beyond the single reality of Allah whether it's

00:13:34.500 the worship of Jesus or the Virgin Mary or more metaphorically things like money and pleasure and

00:13:40.600 the arts and science and the writers of this magazine go on at great length about how irrational

00:13:47.120 it is to believe that a world as orderly as ours could have arisen from chaos they give a long argument

00:13:53.760 from design that is at least as lucid or as silly depending on your view as any offered by the

00:13:59.500 Discovery Institute they consider every sign of order in our world including the beauty of nature and the

00:14:05.580 cuteness of babies and the neurobiology of vision and the details of energy metabolism in the body

00:14:11.960 and the functioning of our immune systems as well as the faculty of reason itself to be evidence of a

00:14:18.240 benevolent creator on their account the harmony between man and nature cannot help but attest to

00:14:23.900 the reality of a just God and this is spelled out in great detail in a magazine that prominently

00:14:30.860 celebrates the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent people to read this magazine is to discover that the

00:14:37.380 oft-mocked line that was delivered by George Bush in his Texas drawl they hate us for our freedom is

00:14:44.340 actually true it is especially true if you include freedom of speech and belief and those among you who think

00:14:50.940 that they must have some other motive that they must hate us for our foreign policy as any rational people

00:14:57.020 would in the aftermath of colonialism well you're simply wrong and dangerously so as they make absolutely

00:15:04.600 clear so everything that has been said and written by people like Noam Chomsky and Robert Pape and Glenn

00:15:11.100 Greenwald and the dozens of prominent Muslim apologists about the motivations of jihadists

00:15:17.640 this whole pornography of self-doubt that they've been peddling for more than a decade all of this is

00:15:24.940 pure delusion the people who are attracted to the jihadist cause are actually concerned about the work

00:15:33.160 of Darwin and Marx and Nietzsche and Durkheim and Weber and Freud who they call quote the engineer

00:15:41.080 of western decadence they are revolted by the quote sodomite pride they see on display in the west

00:15:48.980 there's a testimonial from a European convert to Islam that's worth pondering a woman actually and

00:15:56.700 she talks about what it was like to convert in Finland and about how Christianity never made any sense

00:16:01.540 to her because of course it doesn't make any sense Jesus is both a man and the son of God and God

00:16:08.500 himself he's divine and all-powerful and yet he gets crucified and humiliated this is ridiculous

00:16:15.380 Christians haven't been able to make sense of the Trinity for 2,000 years Islam actually is more

00:16:22.260 straightforward than this which is a real advantage there's just God and you are his slave

00:16:28.920 get with the program or burn in hell the magazine actually contains a long article on biblical criticism

00:16:36.400 that does a very good job of dismantling Christian doctrine the level of theological concern these

00:16:43.340 people have the absolute primacy of their claim to being metaphysically correct is really impossible

00:16:49.280 to exaggerate they care about nothing else there's only one question that makes any sense

00:16:55.720 how can you avoid hell and get into paradise after you die that question is the black hole at the center

00:17:04.500 of their worldview that sucks everything into it so this Finnish woman who was born Christian writes

00:17:11.140 what struck me most as I was reading the Quran were the verses about hellfire and the punishment in the

00:17:17.020 hereafter end quote which isn't a surprise obviously because the whole point of the Quran is to admonish

00:17:23.080 you to submit to Allah or else go to hell and she talks about how she converted to Islam and how her parents

00:17:29.500 was disapproved and then she married a Muslim man and had a child and then the happy family

00:17:36.080 decamped to the caliphate and then she writes quote I can't even describe the feeling when you finally

00:17:43.380 cross that border and enter the lands of the caliphate it is such a blessing from Allah to be able to live

00:17:49.140 under the caliphate there are so many people who made several attempts to come but just haven't been

00:17:53.580 able to make it yet of course when you come to the caliphate after sacrificing everything for the

00:17:58.360 sake of Allah you'll continue to be tested you're going to see hardships and trials but every day

00:18:04.380 you're thankful to Allah for allowing you to perform hijrah that's migration and to live under the

00:18:10.780 sharia life in the Islamic state is such a blessing you face difficulties and hardship you're not used to

00:18:17.020 the food or the change of life you may not know the local language you hear bombings and the children

00:18:22.380 may get scared but none of that takes away from the gratitude you have towards Allah for allowing you to be

00:18:28.180 here also unless you're living here you don't realize what kind of life you had before the life here is

00:18:33.760 so much more pure when you're in dar al-kufar the lands of disbelief you're exposing yourself and

00:18:40.340 your children to so much filth and corruption you make it easy for satan to lead you astray here you're

00:18:46.580 living a pure life and your children are being raised with plenty of good influence around them they

00:18:52.160 don't need to be ashamed of their religion they are free to be proud of it and are given the proper

00:18:57.180 creed right from the start after four months of being here my son was martyred and this was yet

00:19:02.720 another blessing every time i think about it i wonder to myself if i stayed in dar al-kufar what

00:19:08.600 kind of end would he have had what would have happened to him alhamdulillah praise be to god he was

00:19:14.420 saved from all that and what could be better than him being killed for the cause of Allah obviously it's

00:19:20.980 not easy but i ask Allah to allow us to join him end quote well that's a fairly chilling passage i'm

00:19:29.860 going to read it again because you weren't ready for it as you listen again assume that this is a

00:19:37.140 psychologically normal person who simply believes in the reality of martyrdom and paradise which is to

00:19:44.920 say she believes that this life is fundamentally unimportant it's merely a test of faith believe

00:19:51.800 the wrong thing and you will go to hell for eternity believe the right thing and you'll go

00:19:56.620 to paradise eternity is all that matters i'll read the relevant part again of course when you come to

00:20:03.800 the caliphate after sacrificing everything for the sake of Allah you'll continue to be tested you're going

00:20:09.720 to see hardships and trials but every day you're thankful to Allah for allowing you to perform hijra

00:20:14.840 and to live under sharia life in the islamic state is such a blessing you face difficulties

00:20:20.820 and hardship you're not used to the food or the change of life you may not know the local language

00:20:26.100 you hear bombings and the children make it scared but none of that takes away from the gratitude you

00:20:31.760 have towards Allah for allowing you to be here also unless you're living here you don't realize what

00:20:36.320 kind of life you had before the life here is so much more pure when you're in dar al-kufar the

00:20:42.460 lands of disbelief you're exposing yourself and your children to so much filth and corruption you make it

00:20:48.080 easy for satan to lead you astray here you're living a pure life and your children are being raised with

00:20:54.840 plenty of good influence around them they don't need to be ashamed of their religion they are free to be

00:21:00.540 proud of it and are given the proper creed right from the start after four months of us being here

00:21:06.160 my son was martyred and this was yet another blessing every time i think about it i wonder

00:21:11.100 to myself if i stayed in dar al-kufar what kind of end would he have had what would have happened to

00:21:16.940 him alhamdulillah praise be to god he was saved from all that and what could be better than him being

00:21:24.060 killed for the cause of Allah obviously it's not easy but i ask Allah to allow us to join him

00:21:30.460 okay so picture what happened here she had a young child who four months after her sojourn in the

00:21:40.380 caliphate got what blown up crushed by falling concrete who knows but she thinks it's the best

00:21:49.560 thing that could have happened to him okay she's from finland right which incidentally has one of the

00:21:54.600 best school systems and social safety nets on earth and rather than raise him there to become

00:22:00.100 a doctor or a novelist or an entrepreneur or to become one of those things herself she moves to

00:22:07.900 the hellhole of iraq as the wife of some religious maniac and decides to live in a cloth bag and now

00:22:17.020 celebrates the fact that her son who could have been anybody is now dead and his death doesn't even

00:22:27.020 rise to the level of some of the other inconveniences she lists you're not used to the food the change of

00:22:33.540 life the local language the sounds of bombs oh and my son got killed after four months but that was

00:22:39.220 actually a good thing this is the world these people are committed to building a fantasy world

00:22:46.980 of gratuitous religious bullshit that strips all the value out of life where the death of a child

00:22:55.700 who was intentionally deprived by his parents of every real opportunity in life is a cause for

00:23:03.420 celebration this is the enemy not some psychopath who would be killing people anyway and who's now

00:23:11.560 merely doing these things quote in the name of islam no the enemy is any ordinary person who becomes

00:23:20.740 infected by these extraordinarily stupid ideas the enemy is someone just like you who simply got

00:23:29.640 convinced that the only things that matter in this life are martyrdom or victory for the one true

00:23:37.820 faith they want to conquer the world for islam or die trying so they can't lose really they can't

00:23:46.820 lose can you imagine how good it must feel to know that you can't lose think of all your concerns in

00:23:55.080 life think of everything you want think of everything you don't want and everything you want to avoid

00:24:02.180 you probably care about your career or your children's education you don't want too many

00:24:08.560 pesticides in your food you want political stability in your society you'd like your favorite museums or

00:24:16.520 movie theaters or restaurants not to close for lack of funds you probably want to get in shape or stay in

00:24:23.700 shape you certainly don't want to get cancer from something that a nearby chemical plant has released into

00:24:29.180 your groundwater think of all the ways you can lose and now imagine that you have a belief system

00:24:37.180 that nullifies all of that oh my son died good what a relief now he's safely in paradise

00:24:46.260 and i hope to be there soon myself if you don't understand the power of that you have no idea what

00:24:55.740 we're dealing with and you lack empathy you haven't been able to get into these people's heads

00:25:02.780 because you are stuck in your own and they have made it so easy for you to get into their heads

00:25:09.780 in fact you have to make every effort to stay out you have to imagine that they are lying endlessly

00:25:17.340 lying for some inexplicable reason when taking their claims at face value makes perfect sense of their

00:25:24.780 behavior and when imputing other motives to them makes their behavior entirely mysterious

00:25:30.900 so just listen do your best for the next few minutes to see the world through their eyes

00:25:40.000 why we hate you and why we fight you

00:25:44.540 shortly following the blessed attack on a sodomite crusader nightclub

00:25:50.260 by the mujahid omar matin american politicians were quick to jump into the spotlight and denounce the

00:25:57.000 shooting declaring it a hate crime an act of terrorism and an act of senseless violence

00:26:03.240 a hate crime yes muslims undoubtedly hate liberalist sodomites as does anyone else with any shred of

00:26:12.120 their fitra fitra is human nature that recognizes good and evil as does anyone else with any shred of

00:26:19.740 their fitra still intact an act of terrorism most definitely muslims have been commanded to

00:26:26.520 terrorize the disbelieving enemies of allah but an act of senseless violence one would think that

00:26:33.240 the average westerner by now would have abandoned the tired claim that the actions of the mujahideen

00:26:39.140 who have repeatedly stated their goals intentions and motivations don't make any sense unless you

00:26:46.440 truly and naively believe that the crimes of the west against islam and the muslims whether insulting the

00:26:53.080 prophet burning the koran or waging war against the caliphate won't prompt brutal retaliation from

00:27:00.120 the mujahideen you know full well that the likes of the attacks carried out by omar matin

00:27:06.040 la rossi abala and many others before and after them in revenge for islam and the muslims

00:27:11.880 make complete sense the only thing senseless would be for there to be no violent fierce retaliation in the

00:27:18.680 first place notice the order of their grievances insulting the prophet burning the koran or waging

00:27:25.880 war against the caliphate these people don't have ordinary political concerns about the palestinians

00:27:32.520 or anyone else this will become even clearer by the end of the article back to the text many westerners

00:27:40.520 however are already aware that claiming the attacks of the mujahideen to be senseless and questioning

00:27:45.960 incessantly as to why we hate the west and why we fight them is nothing more than a political act

00:27:51.960 and a propaganda tool the politicians will say it regardless of how much it stands in opposition to

00:27:57.160 facts and common sense just to garner as many votes as they can for the next election cycle the

00:28:02.760 analysts and journalists will say it in order to keep themselves from becoming a target for saying

00:28:06.840 something that the masses deemed to be quote politically incorrect the apostate imams in the west will adhere to

00:28:13.720 the same tired cliche in order to avoid a backlash from the disbelieving societies in which they've

00:28:19.240 chosen to reside the point is people know that it's foolish but they keep repeating it regardless

00:28:25.400 because they're afraid of the consequences of deviating from the script there are exceptions

00:28:29.960 among the disbelievers no doubt people who will unabashedly declare that jihad and the laws of sharia

00:28:35.640 as well as everything else deemed taboo by the islam as a peaceful religion crowd are in fact completely

00:28:41.640 islamic but they tend to be people with far less credibility who are painted as a social fringe

00:28:47.160 so their voices are dismissed and a large segment of the ignorant masses continues believing the false

00:28:52.680 narrative as such it becomes important for us to clarify to the west in unequivocal terms yet again

00:29:01.160 why we hate you and why we fight you one we hate you first and foremost because you are disbelievers

00:29:11.640 you reject the oneness of allah whether you realize it or not by making partners for him in worship

00:29:19.240 you blaspheme against him claiming that he has a son you fabricate lies against his prophets and

00:29:25.640 messengers and you indulge in all manner of devilish practices it is for this reason that we were

00:29:32.200 commanded to openly declare our hatred for you and our enmity towards you quote there has already been for

00:29:39.160 you an excellent example in abraham and those with him when they said to their people indeed we are

00:29:46.120 disassociated from you and from whatever you worship other than allah we have rejected you and there has

00:29:52.520 arisen between us and you enmity and hatred forever until you believe in allah alone end quote

00:30:00.040 furthermore just as your disbelief is the primary reason we hate you your disbelief is the primary

00:30:07.960 reason we fight you as we have been commanded to fight the disbelievers until they submit to the

00:30:13.240 authority of islam either by becoming muslims or by paying the jizya for those afforded this option and

00:30:20.360 living in humiliation under the rule of the muslims and for those who don't know the jizya is a protection tax

00:30:27.000 that jews and christians the people of the book can pay to live as jews or christians under the boot

00:30:35.080 of their muslim overlords thus even if you were to stop fighting us your best case scenario in a state

00:30:43.640 of war would be that we would suspend our attacks against you if we deemed it necessary in order to

00:30:50.120 focus on the closer and more immediate threats before eventually resuming our campaigns against

00:30:56.280 you apart from the option of a temporary truce this is the only likely scenario that would bring

00:31:03.160 you fleeting respite from our attacks so in the end you cannot bring an indefinite halt to our war

00:31:10.200 against you at most you could only delay it temporarily quote and fight them until there is no fitna

00:31:18.120 paganism and until the religion all of it is for allah end quote two we hate you because your secular

00:31:28.120 liberal societies permit the very things that allah has prohibited while banning many of the things he

00:31:34.520 has permitted a matter that doesn't concern you because you separate religion and state thereby

00:31:40.600 granting supreme authority to your whims and desires via the legislators you vote into power in doing so

00:31:47.960 you desire to rob allah of his right to be obeyed and you wish to usurp that right for yourselves

00:31:55.480 quote legislation is not but for allah end quote your secular liberalism has led you to tolerate and

00:32:02.440 even support quote gay rights to allow alcohol drugs fornication gambling and usury to become widespread

00:32:11.960 and to encourage the people to mock those who denounce these filthy sins and vices as such we wage war

00:32:19.080 against you to stop you from spreading your disbelief and debauchery your secularism and nationalism your

00:32:26.520 perverted liberal values your christianity and atheism and all the depravity and corruption they entail

00:32:33.880 you've made it your mission to quote liberate muslim societies we've made it our mission to fight off

00:32:41.320 your influence and protect mankind from your misguided concepts and your deviant way of life

00:32:48.600 three in the case of the atheist fringe we hate you and wage war against you because you disbelieve in the

00:32:56.920 existence of your lord and creator you witness the extraordinarily complex makeup of created beings

00:33:03.800 and the astonishing and inexplicably precise physical laws that govern the entire universe but insist that

00:33:10.440 they all came about through randomness and that one should be faulted mocked and ostracized for

00:33:16.680 recognizing that the astonishing signs we witness day after day are the creation of the wise and all-knowing

00:33:23.560 creator and not the result of accidental occurrence quote or were they created by nothing or were they

00:33:31.240 creators of themselves end quote your disbelief in your creator further leads you to deny the day of

00:33:38.120 judgment claiming that quote you only live once quote those who disbelieve have claimed that they will never

00:33:44.840 be resurrected say yes by my lord you will surely be resurrected and then you will surely be informed of what

00:33:52.280 you did and that for allah is easy end quote four we hate you for your crimes against islam and wage war

00:34:02.680 against you to punish you for your transgressions against our religion as long as your subjects continue

00:34:08.840 to mock our faith insult the prophets of allah including noah abraham moses jesus and muhammad burn the

00:34:17.240 quran and openly vilify the laws of the sharia we will continue to retaliate not with slogans and

00:34:24.600 placards but with bullets and knives five we hate you for your crimes against the muslims your drones and

00:34:33.320 fighter jets bomb kill and maim our people around the world and your puppets in the usurped lands of the

00:34:39.400 muslims oppress torture and wage war against anyone who calls to the truth as such we fight you to stop

00:34:47.000 you from killing our men women and children to liberate those of them who you imprison and

00:34:52.120 torture and to take revenge for the countless muslims who have suffered as a result of your deeds

00:34:59.320 six we hate you for invading our lands and fight you to repel you and drive you out as long as there

00:35:06.200 is an inch of territory left for us to reclaim jihad will continue to be a personal obligation on every

00:35:13.400 single muslim now lest wishful thinking obscurantists and the usual pseudo journalist masochists mistake

00:35:23.160 those last two reasons for rational political objectives the authors of this essay quickly

00:35:29.480 close that door so listen closely to this what's important to understand here is that although some

00:35:36.440 might argue that your foreign policies are the extent of what drives our hatred this particular reason

00:35:42.520 for hating you is secondary hence the reason we addressed it at the end of the above list

00:35:48.280 the fact is even if you were to stop bombing us imprisoning us torturing us vilifying us and usurping

00:35:55.880 our lands we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease

00:36:02.520 to exist until you embrace islam even if you were to pay the jizya and live under the authority of islam

00:36:09.080 in humiliation we would continue to hate you no doubt we would stop fighting you then as we would stop fighting

00:36:15.880 any disbelievers who entered into a covenant with us but we would not stop hating you what's equally if not

00:36:22.680 more important to understand is that we fight you not simply to punish and deter you but to bring you true

00:36:31.160 freedom in this life and salvation in the hereafter freedom from being enslaved to your whims and desires

00:36:38.280 as well as those of your clergy and legislatures and salvation by worshiping your creator alone

00:36:44.920 and following his messenger we fight you in order to bring you out of the darkness of disbelief and into

00:36:51.000 the light of islam and to liberate you from the constraints of living for the sake of worldly life alone

00:36:56.840 so that you may enjoy both the blessings of worldly life and the bliss of the hereafter

00:37:03.240 the gist of the matter is that there is indeed a rhyme to our terrorism warfare ruthlessness and

00:37:09.480 brutality as much as some liberal journalist would like you to believe that we do what we do because

00:37:14.280 we're simply monsters with no logic behind our course of action the fact is that we continue to wage and

00:37:21.720 escalate a calculated war that the west thought it had ended several years ago we continue dragging you

00:37:28.760 further and further into a swamp you thought you'd already escaped only to realize that you're stuck even

00:37:35.320 deeper within its murky waters and we do so while offering you a way out on our terms so you can continue

00:37:42.440 to believe that those quote despicable terrorists hate you because of your lattes and your timberlands and

00:37:49.320 continue spending ridiculous amounts of money to try to prevail in your unwinnable war or you can

00:37:55.320 accept reality and recognize that we will never stop hating you until you embrace islam and we'll never

00:38:02.680 stop fighting you until you're ready to leave the swamp of warfare and terrorism through the exits we

00:38:09.240 provide the very exits put forth by our lord for the people of the scripture islam jizya or as a last means

00:38:18.280 of fleeting respite a temporary truce end quote now i think it really is difficult

00:38:28.200 for many of you to appreciate how attractive this message is for those who are susceptible to it it really

00:38:36.040 is the total package especially for men as we've seen even women can be recruited to this cause but the

00:38:45.000 attraction for men or a certain type of man is much easier to see this world view has everything from

00:38:54.360 the pleasure of contemplating the beauty of the universe to the brotherhood of fighting alongside

00:39:00.200 one's fellow soldiers for a just cause to the illicit thrill of being in the mob and not having to take

00:39:07.560 shit from anyone to the joy of being able to endlessly split hairs with your fellow amateur theologians

00:39:14.920 it's like you're a spiritual james bond it's like you get to be a navy seal and a priest you get to worry

00:39:23.400 really worry about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin and you get to carry an ak-47 and use it to your

00:39:32.920 heart's content fully convinced that the creator of the universe wants you to do it so you get to be a

00:39:40.120 total badass and feel spiritually pure at the same time did you ever know anyone who got really into

00:39:47.160 yoga they just got obsessed with it like it was the answer to all their problems they got into the

00:39:53.720 subtleties of it they got they were really thinking about their chakras opening the energy centers in the

00:39:59.160 body and they spent a lot of time adjusting their diets eating only pure foods because their bodies

00:40:05.480 were now this these instruments of spiritual realization and they just had to be tuned perfectly

00:40:12.360 so picture that level of infatuation imagine a man who's just totally into yoga and he's convinced

00:40:19.160 that he's found this ancient path to wellness and enlightenment but then he discovers another aspect

00:40:25.320 to it just as true in addition to all the purity and subtlety and the refinement of his understanding

00:40:33.400 of the body just the preciousness of that whole enterprise he learns that he gets to kill the bad guys

00:40:41.560 he's not some pussy in a leotard he's a yoga assassin he gets to kick ass he's in the mob

00:40:48.840 there's actually one testimonial in this issue of dabik from a convert from trinidad who said that his

00:40:57.720 family back home when they when they get any hostility from anyone they say you better watch out we have

00:41:03.160 a son in isis right and that gives them street cred so he's a wise guy now right he's a made man

00:41:10.040 and he protects his family from afar merely by the power of his reputation for violence that's part of

00:41:19.800 the attraction and then there's the problem of women right so imagine being a guy who's grown up in

00:41:26.200 isolation from women or never felt confident with them so he's either in a traditional muslim context

00:41:32.840 where contact with the opposite sex is is highly circumscribed or he's just someone who felt isolated

00:41:38.920 socially by a lack of confidence and a fear of rejection picture a young man who has spent his

00:41:45.240 entire life being the least confident guy in the bar but now he's been recruited into a cult that gives

00:41:53.480 him a new understanding okay all those hot chicks who he was worried about rejecting him well now they're

00:41:59.480 his slaves whether they're his wife or wives he actually can have more than one or his actual sex slaves

00:42:09.480 he rules he is to be feared and obeyed so he might have been bored with his life before and he might

00:42:17.000 have seemed destined for a life of boredom but now his life has suddenly become this massive first

00:42:25.320 person shooter game where he's been inducted into a fraternity of tough guys and given absolute

00:42:33.080 dominion over women picture the emotional attraction of that to a certain type of man and then add the

00:42:42.520 intellectual or pseudo-intellectual component to it so so whatever his actual intellectual

00:42:49.480 accomplishments at the level of his mind now he's suddenly a philosopher and a scientist and a priest all rolled into

00:42:57.640 one because god has simply given him the truth about the cosmos in the quran and this is a truth about

00:43:05.880 which every infidel in history including einstein and darwin and richard fineman was ignorant and

00:43:14.200 they will pay for their ignorance in fire for eternity but our hero has escaped their errors and their

00:43:22.040 arrogance okay so he he's better than a genius without doing any real work his humility has made him better than

00:43:30.760 than everyone right this is the biggest humble brag in human history i'm just a lowly worm

00:43:37.000 but i'm better than you and i'm sure as hell better than an infidel like stephen hawking

00:43:43.560 so imagine a person's estimation of himself being exalted by all this that's what we're dealing with

00:43:51.800 now ordinary muslims and their apologists will recoil from these observations they will point out that

00:44:02.040 there are millions of devout men and women even within conservative muslim societies who do no harm to

00:44:08.920 anyone right most muslims don't want sex slaves even though they're sanctioned in the quran and then

00:44:15.400 they'll they'll flip this coin and insist that people in other religions and people at every

00:44:21.880 point on the spectrum of belief and unbelief commit atrocities from time to time now this is all true

00:44:28.760 of course and truly irrelevant as i wrote somewhere the groves of faith are now ringed by a forest of

00:44:36.680 non-sequiturs okay here's the basic picture whatever else may be wrong with our world it remains

00:44:45.240 a fact that many of the most terrifying examples of human conflict and stupidity would be unthinkable

00:44:53.560 without religion and some religions are worse than others this finnish woman's celebration of the

00:45:00.680 quote martyrdom of her child that's religion and it's not every religion that's what a belief in paradise

00:45:09.080 gets you a hindu wouldn't believe that a buddhist wouldn't believe that a jew wouldn't believe that

00:45:18.520 and needless to say an atheist wouldn't believe that and this belief and its horrific implications

00:45:26.840 is not the product of u.s foreign policy or perhaps one of you wants to ask noam chomsky whether we've

00:45:33.400 dropped too many bombs on finland and the other ideologies that inspire people to behave like

00:45:39.960 monsters whether it's stalinism or fascism or the crazy cargo cult that we see in north korea these

00:45:48.680 political movements are dangerous precisely because they so resemble religions the sacrifice for the dear

00:45:55.720 leader however secular he might be is an act of cultic conformity and worship whenever human

00:46:03.160 obsession gets channeled in these ways we see the same ancient framework upon which many religions were

00:46:09.640 built in our ignorance and fear and craving for order we created the gods and ignorance and fear and craving

00:46:19.400 keep them with us now what defenders of religion cannot say is that anyone has ever gone berserk or that

00:46:28.360 any society ever failed because people became too reasonable or too intellectually honest or too

00:46:35.400 unwilling to be duped by dogma and demagoguery this skeptical attitude is all that an atheist like myself

00:46:44.040 recommends and it's typical of nearly every intellectual pursuit apart from theology and bad politics only on the

00:46:52.360 subject of god or when indulging rank political tribalism can smart people still imagine that they

00:46:59.640 reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under now nearly 15 years have passed since a

00:47:08.120 group of mostly educated and middle-class men decided to obliterate themselves along with 3 000 innocents to

00:47:16.680 gain entrance to an imaginary paradise and this problem has always been deeper than the threat of

00:47:23.560 terrorism and our waging an interminable quote war on terror is no answer to it yes we must destroy al-qaeda

00:47:33.320 and isis and similar groups and given the significance that jihadists throughout the world now place on the

00:47:39.640 caliphate i think smashing isis decisively would be a very good thing to do as things currently stand

00:47:46.280 jihadists still imagine that they're in the process of conquering the world we should make that impossible

00:47:52.520 to imagine but humanity has a larger project to become sane if september 11th should have taught us

00:48:00.760 anything it's that we must outgrow our attachment to divisive mythology we must find our consolation in our

00:48:09.000 capacity for love and creativity and a real understanding of ourselves in the world this is possible it's

00:48:18.760 also necessary and the alternatives are bleak but in the meantime we have to admit that we are at war

00:48:27.320 with jihadism and islamist theocracy in a way that we're not at war with any other strand of religion

00:48:33.960 and muslim moderates wherever they are are at war with jihadism and islamist theocracy and if they're

00:48:43.320 not they're not moderates finally i'm going to give you the closing passage from this issue of dabik just to

00:48:52.040 give you a final sense of how clear these people have been about the kind of world they want to build

00:49:00.440 when you listen to statements of this kind and hear them you will understand that seemingly crass

00:49:09.480 statements like you're either with us or with the terrorists are true okay there is no middle ground

00:49:16.920 here just listen this is not only what they say they want this is what they say so as to successfully

00:49:27.080 recruit others to their cause and it works if ever you hear someone say this is just propaganda

00:49:36.440 you have to recognize what a meaningless rejoinder that is it's propaganda that works it's propaganda

00:49:45.560 that is believed these are honest confessions of a world view and they are attractive

00:49:52.280 quote the clear difference between muslims and the corrupt and deviant jews and christians is that

00:49:59.720 muslims are not ashamed of abiding by the rules set down from their lord regarding war and enforcement

00:50:05.880 of divine law so if it were the muslims instead of the crusaders who fought the japanese and vietnamese

00:50:12.760 or invaded the lands of the native americans there would have been no regrets in killing and enslaving those

00:50:18.200 therein and since those mujahideen would have done so bound by the law they would have been thorough

00:50:23.960 and without some politically correct need to apologize years later the japanese for example

00:50:30.600 would have been forcefully converted to islam from their pagan ways and if they stubbornly declined

00:50:36.840 perhaps another nuke would have changed their mind the vietnamese would likewise be offered islam

00:50:42.680 or beds of napalm as for the native americans after the slaughter of their men those who would favor

00:50:49.640 smallpox to surrendering to the lord then the muslims would have taken their surviving women and

00:50:54.920 children as slaves raising the children as model muslims and impregnating their women to produce a new

00:51:00.840 generation of mujahideen as for the treacherous jews of europe and elsewhere those who would betray their

00:51:07.880 covenant then their post pubescent males would face a slaughter that would make the holocaust sound like

00:51:13.000 a bedtime story as their women would be made to serve their husbands and fathers killers furthermore

00:51:20.200 the lucrative african slave trade would have continued supporting a strong economy the islamic

00:51:26.280 leadership would not have bypassed allah's permission to sell captured pagan humans to teach them and to

00:51:32.120 convert them as they worked hard for their masters in building a beautiful country notably of

00:51:37.800 course those of them who converted practiced their religion well and were freed would be

00:51:42.760 treated no differently than any other free muslim this is unlike when the christian slaves were

00:51:47.720 emancipated in america as they were not afforded supposedly government recognized equal rights for

00:51:53.640 more than a century and their descendants still live in a nation divided over those days all of this would

00:51:59.560 be done not for racism nationalism or political lies but to make the word of allah supreme jihad

00:52:07.640 is the ultimate show of one's love for his creator facing the clashing of swords and buzzing of bullets

00:52:13.080 on the battlefield seeking to slaughter his enemies whom he hates for allah's hatred of them

00:52:19.720 a religion without these fundamentals is one that does not call its adherents to fully manifest and

00:52:25.160 uphold the love of the lord end quote this is followed by a picture of a man getting his head cut off

00:52:35.720 well i hope it's clear that these are not people we will ever be able to negotiate with

00:52:43.160 and they have already told us that they would view any truth as an opportunity merely to just gather

00:52:51.400 strength for further attacks against us so there really are some circumstances where war is the answer

00:53:02.760 now the question of how to wage this war is a genuinely difficult one and it would be much much better

00:53:13.240 if muslim armies who did not share this ideology were turning their guns on this death cult

00:53:24.520 but in the absence of that effort non-muslim armies are clearly going to have to do this

00:53:32.840 and until that's done until the caliphate is no more until the jihadists have suffered a defeat

00:53:43.720 so resounding that no one can even pretend their cause is still viable we are going to continue to see

00:53:53.240 the violent machinations of religious lunatics directed at us they've told us as much

00:54:00.200 as much and we should take them at their word and on that happy note i will see you next time

00:54:17.240 for next one

00:54:29.800 and

Making Sense - Sam Harris - April 25, 2019

#154 — What Do Jihadists Really Want？ (2019)

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