Making Sense - Sam Harris - #175 — Leaving the Faith

Yasmin Muhammad is a human rights activist and a writer. She s a very eloquent advocate for women living in Muslim majority countries and in the muslim community generally worldwide, and a very effective critic of religious fundamentalism. Her new book is Uncovered: How Western Liberals Empower Radical Islam. In this episode, Yasmin and I talk about her background and indoctrination into conservative islam, and the double standard that western liberals use to think about women in the Muslim community, as well as the dangers of criticizing other cultures and other related topics. She shares her story of growing up in a strict Islamic family, and how she fought for human rights and secularism in the face of her religious indoctrination. She also shares the story of how she managed to break free of her strict Islamic upbringing, and become a free thinker and human rights advocate in the modern world. She s brave and courageous, and her wisdom and bravery will inspire you to live your best life as a Muslim woman in the 21st century. She is a hero to many, and she is a beacon of hope and inspiration to many who are struggling to find their voice and a voice in a world that is too difficult to listen to them. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Making Sense Podcast. Make sure to check out the excellent podcast, "Making Sense" wherever you get your listening device. Make sure you don t miss out on the making sense icon! (Make sure you're a supporter of the podcast? ) The Making Sense icon will show up in red, not black, rather than black? This is not a black, not a white, it's a red + white, rather a black + black, it'll show up a white + a brown + a blue + a grey + a black rather a brown rather a grey, a kind of thing, a point that you'll be a making sense ... You'll get the Making sense icon that shows up in Red + a white I'm not missing that I'm making sense, I'll show you that you're not missing an icon, I'm going to show you a red or a black more than black, you'll get that I'll be showing up in that you won't be in a place like that, I am not getting that in a black or a white not a place ... you'll have that ... I'm NOT NOT THAT ... I'll say that I am NOT THAT?"

00:00:00.000 welcome to the making sense podcast this is sam harris okay no housekeeping today just a reminder

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00:00:45.480 in red rather than black today i'm speaking with yasmin muhammad yasmin is a human rights activist

00:00:53.460 and a writer she's a very eloquent advocate for women living in islamic majority countries

00:01:00.860 and in the muslim community generally worldwide and a very effective critic of religious fundamentalism

00:01:08.740 and her new book is unveiled how western liberals empower radical islam and i've been in yasmin's

00:01:16.600 corner for a little while when she was getting ready to write her book and it was at the proposal

00:01:23.500 stage i blurbed her this is the blurb that appears on the book but uh this is a blurb really for her

00:01:31.620 as a person before her book was even written and i'll just read that here to give you some context

00:01:37.560 women and free thinkers in traditional muslim communities inherit a double burden 1.00

00:01:42.520 if they want to live in the modern world they must confront not only the theocrats in their homes

00:01:47.780 and schools but many secular liberals whose apathy sanctimony and hallucinations of quote racism

00:01:54.560 throw yet another veil over their suffering yasmin muhammad accepts this challenge as courageously as

00:02:00.460 anyone i've ever met putting the lie to the dangerous notion that criticizing the doctrine of islam

00:02:05.500 is a form of bigotry let her wisdom and bravery inspire you and so you should and here yasmin and i

00:02:14.240 talk about her background and indoctrination into conservative islam and the double standard that

00:02:22.000 western liberals use to think about women in the muslim community we talk about feminism generally 0.73

00:02:29.080 the validity of criticizing other cultures and other related topics so now i bring you a very brave

00:02:38.060 woman and one of my heroes yasmin muhammad i am here with yasmin muhammad yasmin thanks for coming

00:02:48.600 on the podcast thank you so much for having me sam so this has been a long time coming i forget where i

00:02:53.960 discovered you was it twitter or where did how did we get introduced i sent you an email just a cold

00:03:00.000 email well we were i was supposed to do a talk in australia with majid about the islam and the future

00:03:08.020 of tolerance documentary and then i had to cancel it because i was going through a lot of you know

00:03:16.360 basically i was having consistent panic attacks and um i had to take some time off work and then i just

00:03:23.900 had to cancel all of my my speaking engagements so i sent you a letter to sort of apologize that i

00:03:29.900 wasn't going to be able to make it and then you wrote back to me and started asking me about

00:03:34.360 the panic attacks and everything that was going on with there and so then that's how i got into

00:03:38.440 meditation actually oh interesting yeah okay so yeah i remember that but i don't remember that being

00:03:43.520 the first contact did you not have a twitter presence yet i did have a twitter presence but you

00:03:48.140 weren't following me yet oh okay well uh someone could have been forwarding your stuff i feel like i saw you

00:03:53.600 there first but maybe not anyway you go hard on twitter that's uh something we're going to talk

00:03:58.120 about yeah it's the arab in me so uh let's just take it from the top we're talking about your book

00:04:05.380 unveiled in the end but let's let's just start with your story from the beginning where where did you

00:04:11.100 come from and what were your parents like and what was your upbringing like this is the beginning of

00:04:17.400 of your story that has for better or worse made you one of the most courageous voices i can name at the

00:04:22.840 moment so to the beginning i guess would be my parents meeting each other in university in

00:04:28.560 egypt so my dad's from palestine and my mom is egyptian but palestinians could go to university

00:04:34.940 in egypt it was all covered like they were treated as egyptians but they weren't given citizenship

00:04:39.220 so they met in university in egypt and my mother's family were very angry at her for marrying a

00:04:46.560 palestinian because they thought he was so beneath her but they got married and then they moved to san

00:04:50.920 francisco together and they were there during the peace love hippie era and they had my sister and

00:04:59.060 it was a bit too much peace and love and so my mom wanted like a quieter place to raise the kids and so

00:05:05.620 then they moved to vancouver canada and that's where i was born but then their marriage fell apart in the

00:05:12.280 end anyway so when i was about two years old my dad you know left us went to the other side of the

00:05:18.540 country so here my mom is now in a new country no support system no community three children

00:05:26.580 and she's feeling you know depressed vulnerable sad lonely all that stuff and how religious were

00:05:33.740 they at this point no religiosity whatsoever neither of them they're both grew up very secular

00:05:39.720 my dad had like zero connection to religion it's just like a cultural thing it's very anti-israel

00:05:47.220 just being palestinian but there's no religious like him personally he wasn't very um he wasn't

00:05:53.240 practicing and then my mom's all alone and so she goes looking for a support system and she goes looking

00:05:58.980 at the mosque for community and at the mosque she finds a man who is already married already has three

00:06:06.640 children but he offers to take my mom on as his second concurrent wife right so you know she is happy to

00:06:16.540 have somebody take care of her and take care of her kids and so she's willing to put up with whatever 0.89

00:06:21.920 he's dishing out my dad was abusive towards her he used to hit her and this man never hit her he'd hit

00:06:29.920 us of course but he never hit her so she felt like this was a better relationship for her so she stayed

00:06:38.500 with him as a second concurrent wife we lived in his basement and he is very like my life changed

00:06:45.940 completely when he entered our lives so before him i used to be able to you know play with my

00:06:52.820 neighbor's friends like we play barbies together i'd go swimming i'd ride my bike i'd go to birthday

00:06:58.200 parties listen to music ever just like a normal childhood and then once he entered our lives it was just

00:07:05.880 immediate everything is haram everything is forbidden and all of a sudden my mom started

00:07:12.240 covering her hair and we had to start reading from this book of this you know these words that

00:07:17.700 i didn't understand and i had to start praying five times a day and i resisted it from the beginning

00:07:23.060 of course i missed my old life i was especially upset that i couldn't play with chelsea and lindsey

00:07:28.420 anymore they'd always come knocking on the door wanting to play barbies and we never

00:07:32.180 i was never allowed to go and they were never allowed in and you're going to the same school

00:07:37.200 at this point or yep but not for long then i got as soon as the islamic school was i mean it wasn't

00:07:45.380 built it was in the mosque but as soon as it was established that we would have an islamic school

00:07:50.800 and my mom was teaching in it then i started going there was this associated with any religious

00:07:56.880 awakening on your mom's part or she just needed a man to take care of her and it was just 1.00

00:08:02.180 practical and romantic well i don't know if romantic is part of it i think you practical

00:08:08.000 for sure and it was a combination of both of those things so she needed i think she was happy to have

00:08:16.200 somebody to take care of her but then also she just became a full-on born-again muslim so she just

00:08:23.600 entered it like she just jumped all in it was never like you know if you see her wedding photos she

00:08:30.120 looked like a bond girl like short wedding dress big huge beehive you know there was a belly dancer 0.99

00:08:35.340 at her wedding and to go from that to the woman that raised me that i remember is just a pretty

00:08:41.700 shocking difference and i used to always you know resent that i'd be like how come you got freedom how

00:08:48.980 come you got to live like this look at your pictures when you were a kid you know how come i don't get

00:08:52.740 that life and she'd say because my parents didn't know any better and i'm raising you better and

00:08:59.360 you're going to be a better person and you're going to go to heaven and my parents did the best they

00:09:02.580 could but they were wrong and so how old are you when you're expressing these doubts or well i was

00:09:09.060 about you know about six years old when he entered our life and i just i resisted all the way up at

00:09:14.080 probably about nine years old is when i stopped because that's when the hijab was put on me and i

00:09:19.840 started going to islamic school and it was just too much so you can't really fight anymore when 1.00

00:09:24.860 everything in your life is you know pushing you in one direction you just you know succumb especially

00:09:30.580 when you're a kid but according to my mom i was never you know good enough i the devil was always

00:09:36.760 whispering in my ear and making me question i always asked questions right like if a law created

00:09:42.200 everything who created a law and stuff like that like how could i even these are such blasphemous

00:09:47.120 you know if adam and eve are you know the parents of all people are we all children of incest so these

00:09:53.620 basic questions of you know that a kid would ask i'd get in trouble for them so was there any point

00:09:58.680 where you just went hook line and sinker and fully adopted the worldview without doubt did you or did

00:10:06.680 you always have some doubt humming in the background the the doubt humming in the background finally went

00:10:13.680 quiet once i was forced into the marriage with hasam so okay once i married him and i wore naqab so that's

00:10:24.280 like full face covering the gloves everything i was so diminished that i didn't have anything left

00:10:32.980 there was and i also kind of made the conscious decision that i mean i was desperate for my mom's love

00:10:39.980 and approval my sister was always the good girl that always listened and never questioned and

00:10:45.120 and my i wanted that i wanted to have you know that relationship with my mom so she kept on pressuring 0.61

00:10:54.820 me to marry this man and i eventually gave in because i thought you know what maybe she'll actually love me 0.90

00:11:00.060 if i follow what she wants me to do i'll marry the man she tells me to marry i'll do everything the way

00:11:05.920 she says to do it i've been fighting against this my whole life what happens if i just let go and see

00:11:10.780 if she's actually right and how old are you at this point so i'm a 20 and i did let go and i did follow

00:11:21.080 exactly what she said and until i had my daughter and held her in my arms and saw that she was about to

00:11:33.100 grow up in the same environment that i grew up in my mom was talking to her the same way she had

00:11:38.160 talked to me her father was talking about fgm and her dying a martyr for a law and things like and i'm

00:11:46.700 like okay enough you know i'm not i could maybe accept this world for myself but i'm not going to

00:11:53.360 accept it for my daughter there's no way she's going to live this same life and was he egyptian yeah 0.82

00:11:58.140 yeah and i think people aren't generally aware that fgm is practiced in egypt like 98 percent

00:12:06.140 so it's basically like somalia in terms of the prevalence of that practice so and this was just

00:12:13.440 a fully arranged marriage or or it had been encouraged once you had met him so it wasn't

00:12:20.100 fully arranged in that i didn't know i was going to marry him my whole life sometimes people arrange

00:12:24.740 marriages for their kids like from the get-go but it was definitely a forced marriage which is a very

00:12:30.040 common thing in the arab world so it's like this is the man we want you to marry and then you 0.95

00:12:37.080 basically just get introduced to him and the the woman doesn't need to consent like in islam it says

00:12:44.900 silence is consent so if you just sit there and cry it's like okay we're good yeah you're you're now

00:12:53.180 you know that's like saying i do and so there it was you know you get pressured into it in the same

00:13:00.840 way you get pressured into everything else so it's just like wearing the hijab and you you get you get

00:13:06.860 given two choices like do you want to go to heaven or do you want to go to hell do you want to be a good 1.00

00:13:11.520 pure clean girl or do you want to be a filthy whore like these are your choices make the right choice 1.00

00:13:16.940 so forcing you into a marriage is similar kind of coercion so it would be things like uh there's a 0.99

00:13:24.620 hadith that says heaven is at the feet of your mothers so your mother gets to decide whether

00:13:29.380 you're going to go to heaven or not so this was the one that was used all the time and it's a very

00:13:35.060 dangerous weapon for an abusive mother to have so she would use that one she'd say you're never going 1.00

00:13:40.740 to go to heaven unless i approve you to enter heaven and if you don't marry this man you will 0.68

00:13:47.780 never go to heaven you will burn in hell for eternity and you will suffer here on earth because 0.98

00:13:53.040 you are no longer my daughter i want nothing to do with you i won't even allow you to come to my 1.00

00:13:58.540 funeral because i don't like as far as anyone is concerned you're no longer my family and then 1.00

00:14:04.980 when you die you'll burn in hell for eternity so go ahead and make the choice yeah yeah 0.96

00:14:10.020 reading your book it's a fairly harrowing account of what your childhood and adolescence

00:14:18.360 and young adulthood was like and i think it's useful to differentiate what is just

00:14:24.840 the sheer bad luck of having an abusive and perhaps mentally ill mom and having married somebody who will 0.95

00:14:32.940 will get into his story in a moment but that's bad luck that could happen to anyone in any culture

00:14:39.700 with or without religion then there are the cultural practices which aren't necessarily

00:14:46.440 mandated by islam and maybe don't necessarily represent every muslims or even most muslims

00:14:52.660 experience and then there's just what is fairly common under islam because you can just play connect

00:15:00.260 the dots and see that it is mandated or at least encouraged in the texts so where how do you kind

00:15:08.040 of carve out those different strands for me what is just the sheer bad luck of the based on the

00:15:14.120 personalities involved and where where is the contribution of islam yeah so the problem is these 0.80

00:15:21.000 a lot of these elements are sanctioned in islam so islam says for example tells a man if you fear that

00:15:27.580 your wife is you know arrogant or disobedient then you know go through these steps and then beat her 1.00

00:15:36.200 so it's not like a law is telling men if you fear that your wife you know is going to give you any

00:15:41.660 trouble beat her right so not every single man is going to beat his wife and not every single man is

00:15:49.000 going to you know viciously beat his wife there's going to be you know different men are going to react

00:15:54.400 in different ways but the problem is the fact that it is sanctioned so if you complain about it like

00:16:01.080 in my example when i went to my mom and said he just punched me in the face when he saw that i wasn't

00:16:08.100 wearing hijab in the house on the 17th floor because he was afraid people like i don't know seagulls

00:16:14.680 people in helicopters might see me through the window and her response was he has every right

00:16:20.420 to be you you are his it says so right there chapter 4 verse 34 so that's the problem the problem is

00:16:29.800 that it's it's it's codified it's in the religion and so it can be used in different ways you know

00:16:37.560 like not like i said not every muslim man is going to beat his wife but those who do have scriptural

00:16:43.420 support yeah yeah and the debate really is not whether or not that support exists but

00:16:50.040 what is meant by beating it's like how hard you can beat your wife that's very subjective yeah you

00:16:55.760 know and there's scholars that come forward and they say things like oh no you know you just it's

00:17:00.720 like as like with a toothbrush or whatever but those are just scholars offering their interpretations

00:17:08.580 as far as the hur'an is concerned it doesn't say that it just says that's it it offers no

00:17:15.960 you know there's no asterisk there but that's subjective anyway like you you don't it depends

00:17:23.080 on the country that you're in depends on the environment that you're used to yeah beating is

00:17:27.760 can be pretty bad and any obviously hitting another human being is a bad thing anyway and the creator

00:17:35.440 of the universe really should not be sanctioning husbands to be beating their wives but there's a

00:17:41.780 there's a famous critic of islam named hamed abd al-samad who is an egyptian german man who had a

00:17:49.280 really great way of describing this and he says it's like allah's at the bar and he had a bit much

00:17:54.040 to drink and he's like you guys should just like beat your wives man and his friends right the scholars 0.86

00:18:00.000 are behind him going no no no he doesn't really mean that he doesn't he doesn't he doesn't actually

00:18:04.000 mean that he means like like with a feather or something so those are just the scholars trying to

00:18:08.860 soften it up but at the end of the day people read the quran and they you know they quote that

00:18:13.660 verse right so and you're wearing the nikab at this point at what point did that happen hijab was at

00:18:19.960 nine years old you know as far as i could remember and then once i was engaged to him started wearing

00:18:27.200 the nikab he got it all delivered from saidi arabia and uh that really helps in dehumanizing you that

00:18:37.300 really helps in turning me into a nothing that he can control very easily it just suppresses your

00:18:45.360 humanity entirely it's like a portable sensory deprivation chamber and you are no longer connected

00:18:52.800 to humanity you can't see properly you can't hear properly you can't speak properly people can't see

00:18:58.980 you you can only see them i mean just little things like passing people in the street and just making

00:19:05.840 eye contact and smiling like that's gone you're no longer part of this world and so you very very

00:19:12.960 quickly just shrivel up into nothing under there yeah well we're going to get to this but it is amazing

00:19:18.520 how sanguine western feminists are around this practice like this is just a another culture's ideal of 1.00

00:19:27.960 how to honor feminine beauty and empower women who are we to criticize it we should differentiate

00:19:34.700 the hijab from the niqab the hijab is just a straight-up symbol of female empowerment now 0.99

00:19:41.320 in the west right i mean despite your best efforts on twitter it is just amazing to see what is being

00:19:47.840 done with this and we have you know in the aftermath of the christ church massacre the prime minister of

00:19:53.900 new zealand puts it on as the only possible show of respect for the community like there's just no

00:20:00.940 other way to express solidarity but to don the symbol and we have got linda sarsour you know organizing the 0.88

00:20:10.160 women's march and there's so many examples of this for some reason people one can't see that

00:20:17.860 most of the women on earth right now who are wearing a hijab are not doing it based on some 0.99

00:20:23.960 empowerment they felt at an ivy league institution where they just they're just going to take the male gaze 0.90

00:20:29.180 off them at their own discretion so they're forced to do it the consequences of not doing it in many

00:20:35.100 cases are if not absolutely coercive social pressure it's actually physical violence but it is also just a

00:20:43.740 step toward the niqab and the burqa which are the actual crystallization of the ideal here that's being 0.98

00:20:51.820 enshrined which is it's all the female modesty is the only thing that safeguards male sexuality from 1.00

00:21:03.400 completely running amok it's like all men would be gropers and rapists but for the fact that women 1.00

00:21:09.980 hide themselves maybe we should jump into that now i want to talk about your who your husband revealed 0.78

00:21:18.000 himself to be but what have your encounters with western feminists been like well that makes me 0.85

00:21:24.180 really sad that they consider muslim women to be of some other species and that are so completely

00:21:32.140 different from them so for themselves they will recognize all of those things that you talked about 0.85

00:21:38.160 are basically victim blaming you know slut shaming they recognize those elements of rape culture

00:21:46.200 when we're in the western context which are you know they're much harder to see in the western

00:21:51.300 context but under sharia it's very very easy to clearly see a perfect example of rape culture 0.94

00:22:02.660 but they somehow when it's those women over there it it's empowering like would it be empowering for 1.00

00:22:12.220 you if you were told you have to wear this clothing in order to protect yourself from men who might rape

00:22:18.980 you or you have to wear this clothing in order to be good and pure and go to heaven because if you 1.00

00:22:24.660 don't wear it then you're a filthy whore like you wouldn't no woman would want to hear that no seven 1.00

00:22:31.380 year old child would like to be told you have to wear this in order to go to school and your brother 1.00

00:22:36.720 doesn't have to he can wear whatever he wants but you must wear this or you're not allowed to get

00:22:41.820 educated it it is an atrocity like that that's something that every human being should be upset

00:22:49.920 about and the fact that they think that it's okay for those humans over there but not for us is the

00:22:58.620 part that really upsets me yeah but when what do you do with the fact that you could go into any one of

00:23:05.160 these cultures and find women who will say i want to wear the niqab i want to wear the burqa 1.00

00:23:11.600 just take your colonial bullshit elsewhere yeah oh of course there will be and you can also go to 0.99

00:23:17.900 fundamentalist christian you know cults and they will tell you i want to be a servant for my husband 0.99

00:23:24.040 you see people like that on twitter all the time right they're like you know i quit my job and i cook

00:23:29.480 and clean for my husband and i'm proud of it whatever it is like women make all sorts of choices 1.00

00:23:34.700 and decisions and decisions and that's completely up to them and they're free to do that and but i'm

00:23:39.920 also free to make a judgment on the decisions that they're making so when i'm talking about the the

00:23:46.180 hijab as a symbol of patriarchy and a symbol of misogyny i'm saying that because as you mentioned 0.99

00:23:55.360 not only are girls coerced into it because of you know family or government or religion but girls can 0.95

00:24:02.400 be killed because of this and not just in the muslim world but in canada in america in france 0.95

00:24:09.960 in sweden there's honor violence and honor killing going on a girl a 16 year old girl in canada was

00:24:16.460 strangled to death by her father and her brother with the hijab that she refused to wear and then 1.00

00:24:22.220 her parents refused to bury her because they didn't want anything to do with her there's so many stories

00:24:27.120 around this the one that sounds stranger than fiction is the case in saudi arabia school where

00:24:34.240 the school was on fire and the religious police wouldn't let the fire department put it out because

00:24:40.020 the girls weren't appropriately veiled yeah and they're literally parents standing at the gates of

00:24:44.640 the school watching their daughters burn alive it's just uh and there are women that are in iran today 1.00

00:24:51.940 that are being imprisoned for 15 years and more for refusing to wear this cloth on their head so it's

00:24:58.220 not just you know it's not just a benign choice when the prime minister of new zealand or when megan

00:25:05.560 markle put a hijab on their head it's not just a benign support of some benign cultural thing it is

00:25:14.860 a not just a symbol but an actual tool of oppression there are women being imprisoned and women being 1.00

00:25:22.880 killed there is a fight over this hijab going on right now women in sudan egypt iran saudi arabia

00:25:29.660 they're burning their hijabs in the streets they're fighting against this thing and then to see free 1.00

00:25:35.760 western women free western women leaders take this thing that they are fighting against 0.99

00:25:42.540 and voluntarily donning it and supporting it what those women are doing is they are supporting 0.97

00:25:50.340 the oppressors they are supporting the oppressors that these women are fighting against 0.85

00:25:55.460 yeah the double standard is so clear and it really is sanity straining that it's so hard for people to

00:26:05.280 see so like the clearest case for me in the media was when i don't remember this but warren jeff's

00:26:12.500 the the leader of the flds the fundamentalist mormon cult his compound was raided and all these

00:26:19.700 little girls and young women were led out in these little house on the prairie dresses right they were 0.65

00:26:25.760 made to wear these awful 18th century dresses and they had been married to men who were you know their

00:26:32.580 grandfather's ages and these forced marriages were described as rapes and the men were totally

00:26:40.220 unrepentant and you know jeff's got i think he's at least 15 years in prison i forget he got a real

00:26:46.900 prison sentence and this was all talked about on the news as just an unambiguous example of patriarchal

00:26:56.820 exploitation of girls the fact that it was associated with it with religious belief was not even slightly

00:27:03.300 exculpatory and everyone celebrated the fact that there was a swat team raid on the compound

00:27:09.800 we kicked in the door of this place to free those girls and it didn't matter at all that the girls 1.00

00:27:17.020 didn't want to be freed but we knew they had been brainwashed so when they're talking about how they

00:27:21.160 loved their husband for to a man or whatever it was no one had any qualm discounting that for their

00:27:29.440 obvious ignorance and brainwashing right and when you compare that to what is happening routinely in

00:27:35.840 the muslim world the mainstream media has the opposite response and this is the most benign case 1.00

00:27:44.100 of real extremism in the muslim world i mean it's it's you know in truth it's not even extreme but

00:27:49.940 the extremism in the muslim world you have to add to that the clitorectomies that would have been 1.00

00:27:55.060 performed on these girls the fact that they were raising their sons to be suicide bombers right and 0.84

00:28:01.860 there was an explicit indoctrination of you know martyrdom and they were exporting terrorism to the 0.52

00:28:08.080 capitals of europe and america that's how the the fundamentalist mormon cult would have to behave to make

00:28:14.280 it an analogous situation and no one can see it on the left i guess the other example i should mention

00:28:22.740 i believe i mentioned this on a previous podcast but it really belongs here because we were talking

00:28:27.900 about this last night i just saw ayan hersey ali give a talk at a university for the first time in

00:28:33.420 three years since she was deplatformed at brandeis and it's a fairly conservative college pepperdine

00:28:41.340 you know an explicitly christian college and she ran through her whole life story on stage i mean

00:28:47.840 starting with female general mutilation abuse in school physical abuse sexual abuse she described

00:28:54.980 it as routine among her friends at the school she was in she described all this and how she escaped a

00:29:01.700 forced marriage became a member of parliament i mean she's just a true feminist success story right 0.99

00:29:07.800 and as she starts to get into a discussion of contemporary politics i mean honestly the edgiest thing she said

00:29:16.580 was if i were teaching at a university and someone and one of my students said that they didn't want

00:29:22.740 to read a certain novel because it triggered them i would insist that they read that novel because

00:29:27.860 that's what a university is for and then i think the other thing she said was when me too came up

00:29:33.180 she expressed blanket support for it but she said we have to keep a sense of proportion there are the

00:29:38.940 the harvey weinsteins of the world and then there are people who just put a hand where it's not wanted

00:29:44.260 and you slap it away she was trying to give some articulating this spectrum of misbehavior that we

00:29:51.320 need to differentiate and as she's talking about this again she had just spent a half hour

00:29:57.580 describing in a background so replete with abuse patriarchal abuse that you would think it would it would

00:30:07.060 have earned her intersectionality points of a sort that you know you few people have and i've got these

00:30:14.720 white women students behind me who are beginning to almost heckle her right it was just you know 1.00

00:30:22.760 hissing and laughter among themselves and then they walked out it was like i mean again it was another

00:30:30.720 kind of brainwashing there's a kind of moral panic happening around variables of gender and race on

00:30:37.620 the left that is making it impossible to even parse the statements of a somali woman right who just

00:30:45.840 recapitulated the entire enlightenment success story of reclaiming secularism and modernity and

00:30:52.600 humanistic values in her own case in a few short years it's just amazing so anyway yeah i mean if iyan

00:31:00.040 had white skin and had overcome all of those things in the west she would be celebrated she'd be hailed

00:31:06.640 as a feminist hero so i mean when you were talking before about the difference between that mormon cult 1.00

00:31:13.680 and girls in the muslim world i started to tear up because it reminded me of your ted talk

00:31:19.600 which i'm going to tear up again that ted talk to me hit me so hard because it was the first time

00:31:28.900 anybody in like media i'd ever heard somebody care about those girls the same way you would care

00:31:42.680 about any other girls like the argument you were making in that ted talk like these girls in afghanistan

00:31:49.580 why are they different than the girls from the mormon cult 0.69

00:31:53.120 sorry sam no that's great that ted talk was late yeah yeah thank you so much

00:32:04.540 that's uh you don't have to apologize this is good radio

00:32:09.760 yeah well a few people notice it but i actually teared up in that ted talk i can't remember if we

00:32:19.700 spoke about this or not but there was a point where i talk about honor killing and i said imagine your 0.96

00:32:25.360 daughter gets raped and what you want to do is is kill her out of shame and you know obviously i had 0.98

00:32:32.180 rehearsed that talk a ton i mean unlike any other talk you ever give a ted talk is it's like this 0.99

00:32:37.500 memorization feat right where you have to remember every line because you're you've got a hard time

00:32:42.840 limit and no notes and so it's a very odd talk to give because you're basically it's a performance

00:32:50.420 as yourself i mean you're not thinking out loud because you really have a script that you've

00:32:53.780 memorized at least that's the way most people do it and the way i've done both of my ted talks

00:32:58.360 and so i obviously i knew exactly what i was going to say and i had done this you know a dozen times

00:33:05.460 at least but i had just been told a couple of hours before going out on stage that my first daughter

00:33:11.960 had taken her first steps so when i got to that point in the talk totally punctured me and i actually

00:33:18.640 almost burst into tears and you can sort of say people who are just watching it as a ted talk

00:33:22.260 don't tend to notice but you can see that that i have i have like i'm almost totally derailed in the

00:33:28.920 talk at that moment and uh yeah it's you could see that you actually care that was very evident and

00:33:37.800 that's why it hit me so hard is because i'm so used to there being this two-tier system of like all

00:33:46.220 you know girls that matter and then the girls that don't matter and that was the first time i had

00:33:52.700 seen in the western world somebody standing up like in a ted talk speaking up for us as if we were

00:34:01.520 human beings like every other girl on the planet and that was very evident in your talk and then of

00:34:07.880 course you know immediately after your talk you get questioned about it and you know the the all the

00:34:13.700 predictable things happen and so you know that's a that's a very quick the wokeness comes to swallow

00:34:19.380 you after yeah exactly here i am feeling all excited and happy and there it is you know but

00:34:25.840 you know i just wish that this is why the the subtitle of the book how western liberals empower

00:34:34.220 radicalism like that's what it's all about i want my liberal friends and supporters and you know

00:34:43.440 my this is where i see myself i am in this realm too so when i talk about liberals i'm not saying

00:34:50.220 those people over there i'm saying us over here we need to look at what we are doing and we need to

00:34:57.760 stay consistent and if we believe that all humans are equal then why are we having a different set of

00:35:09.520 you know why do we use a different yardstick for these people versus these people so i feel like if

00:35:16.100 they could see that if they could understand that then they would get it like i feel like if they could

00:35:23.160 get the lunacy of would you celebrate a mormon underwear on the cover of sports illustrated no you

00:35:33.920 wouldn't you would automatically see that that's ridiculous for many different reasons but then 0.68

00:35:39.620 having a burkini on the cover of sports illustrated that's something to be celebrated like i just want 1.00

00:35:45.960 them to stay with the thought for four more seconds and just continue on with that and think okay why is

00:35:51.600 this celebrated and this is not yeah again it's it's very hard to understand how the point doesn't run

00:36:00.120 through and change people's outlook just in real time whenever you have the conversation so like

00:36:07.760 an example i occasionally use when i'm getting criticized for judging another culture like and

00:36:14.380 again i always go to the most extreme and still it's not extreme enough so i talk about the taliban

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - November 11, 2019

#175 — Leaving the Faith

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