Making Sense - Sam Harris - #298 — Leaving the Faith (Rebroadcast)

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast.

00:00:24.120 This is Sam Harris.

00:00:25.500 Well, there's a lot going on in Iran at the moment in response to the murder of Masa Amini.

00:00:34.440 Obviously, I completely support the women and men who are protesting there for their secular freedom.

00:00:43.000 It's quite extraordinary to see what's happening there.

00:00:45.720 So perhaps I'll do a podcast on that.

00:00:47.300 But as it turns out, some years ago, I had a conversation that was highly relevant to this moment with the writer and free speech activist Yasmin Mohamed.

00:00:57.640 We just released this on the Best of Making Sense feed.

00:01:00.840 But I wanted to put it here because it really gets at the underlying issue of women's rights in an unusually complete and personal way.

00:01:10.820 Yasmin's story is being lived and now protested by millions and millions of women in the Muslim world.

00:01:19.200 And it's in light of a story like this that the killing of Masa Amini should be understood.

00:01:30.100 Today I'm speaking with Yasmin Mohamed.

00:01:33.080 Yasmin is a human rights activist and a writer.

00:01:36.220 She's a very eloquent advocate for women living in Islamic-majority countries and in the Muslim community generally, worldwide.

00:01:46.320 And a very effective critic of religious fundamentalism.

00:01:50.960 And her new book is Unveiled, How Western Liberals Empower Radical Islam.

00:01:56.860 And I've been in Yasmin's corner for a little while when she was getting ready to write her book.

00:02:03.700 And it was at the proposal stage.

00:02:06.500 I blurbed her.

00:02:08.080 This is the blurb that appears on the book.

00:02:10.780 But this is a blurb really for her as a person before her book was even written.

00:02:17.020 And I'll just read that here to give you some context.

00:02:20.180 Women and free thinkers in traditional Muslim communities inherit a double burden. 1.00

00:02:24.520 If they want to live in the modern world,

00:02:26.440 they must confront not only the theocrats in their homes and schools,

00:02:30.560 but many secular liberals,

00:02:32.420 whose apathy, sanctimony, and hallucinations of, quote, racism,

00:02:36.700 throw yet another veil over their suffering.

00:02:39.380 Yasmin Mohamed accepts this challenge as courageously as anyone I've ever met,

00:02:43.460 putting the lie to the dangerous notion that criticizing the doctrine of Islam is a form of bigotry.

00:02:49.320 Let her wisdom and bravery inspire you.

00:02:51.540 And so you should.

00:02:55.000 And here Yasmin and I talk about her background and indoctrination into conservative Islam 0.98

00:03:00.300 and the double standard that Western liberals use to think about women in the Muslim community. 0.94

00:03:08.380 We talk about feminism generally, 1.00

00:03:11.360 the validity of criticizing other cultures and other related topics.

00:03:15.540 So, now I bring you a very brave woman and one of my heroes, Yasmin Mohamed.

00:03:29.440 I am here with Yasmin Mohamed.

00:03:31.380 Yasmin, thanks for coming on the podcast.

00:03:33.020 Thank you so much for having me, Sam.

00:03:34.920 So, this has been a long time coming.

00:03:36.500 I forget where I discovered you.

00:03:38.780 Was it Twitter or how did we get introduced?

00:03:41.460 I sent you an email.

00:03:43.000 Just a cold email?

00:03:43.920 Well, I was supposed to do a talk in Australia with Majid about the Assam and the Future of Tolerance documentary.

00:03:53.740 And then I had to cancel it because I was going through a lot of, you know,

00:04:00.500 basically I was having consistent panic attacks and I had to take some time off work

00:04:07.060 and then I just had to cancel all of my speaking engagements.

00:04:10.200 So, I sent you a letter to sort of apologize that I wasn't going to be able to make it.

00:04:15.600 And then you wrote back to me and started asking me about the panic attacks and everything that was going on with there.

00:04:20.620 And so, then that's how I got into meditation, actually.

00:04:23.560 Oh, interesting.

00:04:24.260 Yeah.

00:04:24.560 So, yeah, I remember that, but I don't remember that being the first contact.

00:04:28.860 Did you not have a Twitter presence yet?

00:04:30.500 I did have a Twitter presence, but you weren't following me yet.

00:04:32.880 Oh, okay.

00:04:33.580 Well, someone could have been forwarding your stuff.

00:04:36.400 I feel like I saw you there first, but maybe not.

00:04:38.960 Anyway, you go hard on Twitter.

00:04:40.500 Yeah.

00:04:40.640 That's something we're going to talk about.

00:04:42.260 Yeah.

00:04:42.620 It's the Arab in me.

00:04:43.620 So, let's just take it from the top.

00:04:47.680 We're talking about your book, Unveiled, in the end, but let's just start with your story from the beginning.

00:04:54.040 Where did you come from and what were your parents like and what was your upbringing like?

00:04:59.580 This is the beginning of your story that has, for better or worse, made you one of the most courageous voices I can name at the moment.

00:05:06.620 So, to the beginning, I guess, would be my parents meeting each other in university in Egypt.

00:05:12.820 So, my dad's from Palestine and my mom is Egyptian, but Palestinians could go to university in Egypt.

00:05:19.300 It was all covered.

00:05:20.140 Like, they were treated as Egyptians, but they weren't given citizenship.

00:05:23.340 So, they met in university in Egypt, and my mother's family were very angry at her for marrying a Palestinian because they thought he was so beneath her.

00:05:32.700 But they got married, and then they moved to San Francisco together.

00:05:35.300 And they were there during the peace, love, hippie era.

00:05:40.620 And they had my sister, and it was a bit too much peace and love.

00:05:44.600 And so, my mom wanted, like, a quieter place to raise the kids. 0.77

00:05:48.680 And so, then they moved to Vancouver, Canada, and that's where I was born.

00:05:53.860 But then their marriage fell apart in the end anyway.

00:05:56.640 So, when I was about two years old, my dad, you know, left us, went to the other side of the country.

00:06:02.560 So, here my mom is now in a new country, no support system, no community, three children, and she's feeling, you know, depressed, vulnerable, sad, lonely, all that stuff.

00:06:16.080 How religious were they at this point?

00:06:18.220 No religiosity whatsoever.

00:06:19.760 Neither of them.

00:06:20.920 They both grew up very secular.

00:06:23.300 My dad had, like, zero connection to religion.

00:06:27.800 It was just, like, a cultural thing.

00:06:29.660 He was very anti-Israel, just being Palestinian, but there's no religious, like, him personally.

00:06:35.200 He wasn't very, he wasn't practicing.

00:06:38.040 And then my mom's all alone.

00:06:39.800 And so, she goes looking for a support system.

00:06:41.840 And she goes looking at the mosque for a community.

00:06:45.320 And at the mosque, she finds a man who is already married, already has three children, but he offers to take my mom on as his second concurrent wife.

00:06:55.820 Right.

00:06:56.680 So, you know, she is happy to have somebody take care of her and take care of her kids.

00:07:02.880 And so, she's willing to put up with whatever he's dishing out.

00:07:07.540 My dad was abusive towards her.

00:07:09.460 He used to hit her.

00:07:10.920 And this man never hit her.

00:07:12.980 He'd hit us, of course, but he never hit her.

00:07:16.360 So, she felt like this was a better relationship for her.

00:07:20.780 So, she stayed with him as a second concurrent wife.

00:07:24.940 We lived in his basement.

00:07:26.780 And he is very, like, my life changed completely when he entered our lives.

00:07:31.680 So, before him, I used to be able to, you know, play with my neighbor's friends.

00:07:37.360 Like, we'd play Barbies together.

00:07:38.980 I'd go swimming.

00:07:39.840 I'd ride my bike.

00:07:40.580 I'd go to birthday parties, listen to music, just like a normal childhood.

00:07:46.680 And then once he entered our lives, it was just immediate, everything is haram, everything

00:07:53.080 is forbidden.

00:07:54.300 And all of a sudden, my mom started covering her hair.

00:07:57.080 And we had to start reading from this book of this, you know, these words that I didn't

00:08:01.520 understand.

00:08:02.320 And I had to start praying five times a day.

00:08:04.800 And I resisted it from the beginning.

00:08:07.600 Of course, I missed my old life.

00:08:09.280 I was especially upset that I couldn't play with Chelsea and Lindsay anymore.

00:08:12.980 They'd always come knocking on the door wanting to play Barbies.

00:08:15.320 And we never, I was never allowed to go.

00:08:17.640 And they were never allowed in.

00:08:19.700 And...

00:08:19.900 You're going to the same school at this point, or...

00:08:22.300 Yep.

00:08:22.580 But not for long.

00:08:24.280 And then I got, as soon as the Islamic school was, I mean, it wasn't built, it was in the

00:08:29.760 mosque.

00:08:30.180 But as soon as it was established that we would have an Islamic school, and my mom was teaching

00:08:35.400 in it, then I started going there.

00:08:37.540 Was this associated with any religious awakening on your mom's part?

00:08:42.620 Or she just needed a man to take care of her, and it was just practical and romantic?

00:08:49.040 That's the right word.

00:08:49.400 Well, I don't know if romantic is part of it.

00:08:50.900 I think practical for sure.

00:08:52.560 And it was a combination of both of those things.

00:08:56.800 So she needed, I think, she was happy to have somebody to take care of her.

00:09:01.080 But then also, she just became a full-on born-again Muslim. 0.64

00:09:06.180 So she just entered it, like she just jumped all in.

00:09:10.600 It was never, you know, if you see her wedding photos, she looked like a Bond girl, like short

00:09:15.400 wedding dress, big, huge beehive.

00:09:17.900 You know, there was a belly dancer at her wedding. 1.00

00:09:19.940 And to go from that to the woman that raised me that I remember is just a pretty shocking

00:09:25.800 difference.

00:09:26.600 And I used to always, you know, resent that.

00:09:31.060 I'd be like, how come you got freedom?

00:09:32.480 How come you got to live like this?

00:09:33.740 Look at your pictures when you were a kid.

00:09:35.640 You know, how come I don't get that life?

00:09:37.380 And she'd say, because my parents didn't know any better.

00:09:40.380 And I'm raising you better.

00:09:42.880 And you're going to be a better person.

00:09:44.000 And you're going to go to heaven.

00:09:44.960 And my parents did the best they could, but they were wrong.

00:09:48.300 And so how old are you when you're expressing these doubts?

00:09:52.080 Well, I was about, you know, about six years old when he entered our life.

00:09:55.380 And I just, I resisted all the way up at probably about nine years old is when I stopped because

00:10:00.640 that's when the hijab was put on me.

00:10:03.260 And I started going to Islamic school and it was just too much. 1.00

00:10:06.220 So you can't really fight anymore when everything in your life is, you know, pushing you in one

00:10:11.860 direction.

00:10:12.240 You just, you know, succumb, especially when you're a kid.

00:10:15.720 But according to my mom, I was never, you know, good enough.

00:10:19.500 I, the devil was always whispering in my ear and making me question.

00:10:22.920 I always asked questions, right?

00:10:24.620 Like if a law created everything, who created a law and stuff like that?

00:10:28.300 Like, how could I even, these are such blasphemous, you know, if Adam and Eve are, you know, the

00:10:33.780 parents of all people, are we all children of incest?

00:10:36.680 So these basic questions of, you know, that a kid would ask, I'd get in trouble for them.

00:10:40.940 So was there any point where you just went hook, line, and sinker and fully adopted the worldview

00:10:48.280 without doubt?

00:10:49.820 Did you, or did you always have some doubt humming in the background?

00:10:54.020 The, the doubt humming in the background finally went quiet once I was forced into the marriage

00:11:00.960 with Haysom.

00:11:02.500 So once I married him and I wore naqab, so that's like full face covering, gloves, everything.

00:11:11.280 I was so diminished that I didn't have anything left.

00:11:17.320 There was, and, and I also kind of made the conscious decision that, I mean, I was desperate

00:11:22.660 for my mom's love and approval.

00:11:24.520 My sister was always the good girl that always listened and never questioned and, and my,

00:11:30.240 I wanted that.

00:11:31.580 I wanted to have, you know, that relationship with my mom.

00:11:36.480 So she kept on pressuring me to marry this man.

00:11:39.480 And I eventually gave in because I thought, you know what, maybe she'll actually love me

00:11:43.680 if I follow what she wants me to do.

00:11:46.420 I'll marry the man she tells me to marry. 0.99

00:11:48.440 I'll do everything the way she says to do it.

00:11:50.540 I've been fighting against this my whole life.

00:11:52.340 What happens if I just let go and see if she's actually right?

00:11:56.800 And how old are you at this point?

00:11:58.460 So I'm a 20 and I did let go and I did follow exactly what she said.

00:12:07.280 And until I had my daughter and held her in my arms and saw that she was about to grow

00:12:17.260 up in the same environment that I grew up in, my mom was talking to her the same way.

00:12:21.280 She had talked to me, her father was talking about FGM and her dying a martyr for a law 0.66

00:12:29.000 and things like that.

00:12:30.180 And I'm like, okay, enough.

00:12:33.320 You know, I'm not, I could maybe accept this world for myself, but I'm not going to accept

00:12:37.160 it for my daughter.

00:12:37.880 There's no way she's going to live this same life.

00:12:40.120 And was he Egyptian?

00:12:41.480 Yeah.

00:12:42.040 Yeah.

00:12:42.280 And I think people aren't generally aware that FGM is practiced in Egypt.

00:12:48.620 Like 98% of Egyptian women.

00:12:50.520 So it's basically like Somalia in terms of the prevalence of that practice.

00:12:54.960 So, and this was just a fully arranged marriage or had been encouraged once you had met him?

00:13:02.420 So it wasn't fully arranged in that I didn't know I was going to marry him my whole life.

00:13:07.300 Sometimes people arrange marriages for their kids like from the get go.

00:13:10.240 But it was definitely a forced marriage, which is a very common thing in the Arab world.

00:13:17.080 So it's like, this is the man we want you to marry.

00:13:19.960 And then you basically just get introduced to him.

00:13:23.520 And the woman doesn't need to consent. 1.00

00:13:27.060 Like in Islam, it says silence is consent. 1.00

00:13:30.480 So if you just sit there and cry, it's like, okay, we're good.

00:13:34.060 Yeah.

00:13:34.820 You're now, you know, that's like saying I do.

00:13:38.140 And so it was, you know, you get pressured into it in the same way you get pressured into everything else.

00:13:47.060 So it's just like wearing the hijab and you, you get, you get given two choices.

00:13:51.640 Like, do you want to go to heaven or do you want to go to hell?

00:13:54.420 Do you want to be a good, pure, clean girl? 1.00

00:13:56.200 Or do you want to be a filthy whore? 1.00

00:13:58.120 Like, these are your choices. 1.00

00:13:59.600 Make the right choice.

00:14:00.520 So forcing you into a marriage is similar kind of coercion.

00:14:06.160 So it would be things like, there's a hadith that says, heaven is at the feet of your mothers.

00:14:11.220 So your mother gets to decide whether you're going to go to heaven or not.

00:14:14.640 So this was the one that was used all the time.

00:14:17.880 And it's a very dangerous weapon for an abusive mother to have. 1.00

00:14:22.020 So she would use that one.

00:14:23.320 And she'd say, you're never going to go to heaven unless I approve you to enter heaven.

00:14:28.640 And if you don't marry this man, you will never go to heaven. 0.98

00:14:32.520 You will burn in hell for eternity. 0.99

00:14:34.680 And you will suffer here on earth because you are no longer my daughter. 1.00

00:14:38.360 I want nothing to do with you.

00:14:40.480 I won't even allow you to come to my funeral because I don't, like, as far as anyone is concerned,

00:14:45.960 you're no longer my family. 1.00

00:14:48.100 And then when you die, you'll burn in hell for eternity. 1.00

00:14:50.160 So go ahead and make the choice. 1.00

00:14:52.040 Yeah.

00:14:52.400 Reading your book, it's a fairly harrowing account of what your childhood and adolescence

00:15:01.980 and young adulthood was like.

00:15:04.780 And I think it's useful to differentiate what is just the sheer bad luck of having an abusive

00:15:11.080 and perhaps mentally ill mom and having married somebody who will get into his story in a moment.

00:15:19.080 But that's bad luck that could happen to anyone in any culture, with or without religion.

00:15:25.840 Then there are the cultural practices, which aren't necessarily mandated by Islam

00:15:31.200 and maybe don't necessarily represent every Muslim's or even most Muslims' experience.

00:15:36.800 And then there's just what is fairly common under Islam because you can just play connect the dots

00:15:44.320 and see that it is mandated or at least encouraged in the texts.

00:15:49.120 So how do you kind of carve out those different strands for me?

00:15:55.180 What is just the sheer bad luck based on the personalities involved and where is the contribution of Islam? 1.00

00:16:01.660 Yeah.

00:16:02.660 So the problem is a lot of these elements are sanctioned in Islam.

00:16:07.820 So Islam says, for example, tells a man, if you fear that your wife is arrogant or disobedient,

00:16:15.700 then go through these steps and then beat her. 0.76

00:16:19.760 So it's like Allah is telling men, if you fear that your wife, you know, is going to give you any trouble, beat her. 0.91

00:16:26.380 Right.

00:16:26.700 So not every single man is going to beat his wife and not every single man is going to, you know, viciously beat his wife.

00:16:35.160 There's going to be, you know, different men are going to react in different ways.

00:16:38.900 But the problem is the fact that it is sanctioned.

00:16:41.820 So if you complain about it, like in my example, when I went to my mom and said,

00:16:47.960 he just punched me in the face when he saw that I wasn't wearing hijab in the house on the 17th floor,

00:16:55.020 because he was afraid people like, I don't know, seagulls, people in helicopters might see me through the window.

00:17:01.260 And her response was, he has every right to be you.

00:17:05.460 You are his.

00:17:06.540 It says so right there, chapter four, verse 34.

00:17:10.400 So that's the problem.

00:17:12.600 The problem is that it's codified, it's in the religion.

00:17:16.500 And so it can be used in different ways.

00:17:20.980 You know, like I said, not every Muslim man is going to beat his wife, but those who do have scriptural support.

00:17:28.200 Yeah.

00:17:28.960 Yeah.

00:17:29.400 And the debate really is not whether or not that support exists, but what is meant by beating.

00:17:35.840 It's like how hard you can beat your wife. 1.00

00:17:37.800 That's very subjective.

00:17:38.880 Yeah.

00:17:39.020 You know, and there's scholars that come forward and they say things like, oh, no, you know, you just, it's like with a toothbrush or whatever.

00:17:47.360 But those are just scholars offering their interpretations.

00:17:52.180 As far as the Quran is concerned, it doesn't say that.

00:17:56.020 It just says, that's it.

00:17:58.400 It offers no, you know, there's no asterisk there.

00:18:02.160 But that's subjective anyway.

00:18:04.880 Like you don't, it depends on the country that you're in, depends on the environment that you're used to.

00:18:09.780 So, yeah, beating is, yeah, beating is, can be pretty bad.

00:18:13.420 And any, obviously, hitting another human being is a bad thing anyway.

00:18:17.860 And the creator of the universe really should not be sanctioning husbands to be beating their wives.

00:18:23.840 But there's a, there's a famous critic of Islam named Hamad Abda Samad, who is an Egyptian German man, who had a really great way of describing this.

00:18:34.340 And he says, it's like Allah's at the bar and he had a bit much to drink. 0.98

00:18:38.100 And he's like, you guys should just like beat your wives, man. 0.87

00:18:41.760 And his friends, right, the scholars are behind him going, no, no, no, he doesn't really mean that. 0.98

00:18:46.260 He doesn't, he doesn't, he doesn't actually mean that.

00:18:47.900 He means like, like with a feather or something.

00:18:50.300 So those are just the scholars trying to soften it up.

00:18:53.780 But at the end of the day, people read the Quran and they, you know, they quote that verse.

00:18:58.000 Right.

00:18:59.280 So, and you're wearing the nakab at this point?

00:19:01.760 At what point did that happen?

00:19:02.980 Hijab was at nine years old.

00:19:04.340 You know, as far as I could remember.

00:19:06.960 And then once I was engaged to him, started wearing the nakab, he got it all delivered from Saudi Arabia.

00:19:15.300 And that really helps in dehumanizing you.

00:19:20.840 That really helps in turning me into a nothing that he can control very easily.

00:19:26.880 It just suppresses your humanity entirely.

00:19:30.260 It's like a portable sensory deprivation chamber.

00:19:34.340 And you are no longer connected to humanity.

00:19:37.960 You can't see properly.

00:19:39.140 You can't hear properly.

00:19:40.180 You can't speak properly.

00:19:41.740 People can't see you.

00:19:43.200 You can only see them.

00:19:44.840 I mean, just little things like passing people in the street and just making eye contact and smiling.

00:19:51.300 Like, that's gone.

00:19:52.180 You're no longer part of this world.

00:19:54.140 And so you very, very quickly just shrivel up into nothing under there.

00:19:59.980 Yeah, well, we're going to get to this, but it is amazing how sanguine Western feminists are around this practice. 1.00

00:20:07.720 Like, this is just another culture's ideal of how to honor feminine beauty and empower women.

00:20:15.700 Who are we to criticize it?

00:20:17.420 We should differentiate the hijab from the nakab. 1.00

00:20:20.860 The hijab is just a straight-up symbol of female empowerment now in the West. 0.99

00:20:25.760 For some reason, people, one, can't see that most of the women on Earth right now who are wearing a hijab are not doing it based on some empowerment they felt at an Ivy League institution where they're just going to take the male gaze off them at their own discretion.

00:20:42.720 So they're forced to do it.

00:20:44.620 The consequences of not doing it, in many cases, are, if not absolutely coercive social pressure.

00:20:51.220 It's actually physical violence.

00:20:53.100 But it is also just a step toward the nakab and the burqa, which are the actual crystallization of the ideal here that's being enshrined.

00:21:04.440 Which is, female modesty is the only thing that safeguards male sexuality from completely running amok. 0.71

00:21:16.900 It's like all men would be gropers and rapists, but for the fact that women hide themselves. 1.00

00:21:23.600 Maybe we should jump into that now. 0.67

00:21:26.020 I want to talk about who your husband revealed himself to be.

00:21:30.320 But what have your encounters with Western feminists been like? 1.00

00:21:35.000 Well, that makes me really sad that they consider Muslim women to be of some other species and that are so completely different from them. 0.94

00:21:45.120 So for themselves, they will recognize all of those things that you talked about are basically victim blaming, you know, slut shaming. 0.92

00:21:54.960 They recognize those elements of rape culture when we're in the Western context.

00:22:00.320 Which are, you know, they're much harder to see in the Western context.

00:22:04.100 But under Sharia, it's very, very easy to clearly see a perfect example of rape culture. 0.98

00:22:14.380 But they somehow, when it's those women over there, it's empowering. 1.00

00:22:22.580 Like, would it be empowering for you if you were told you have to wear this clothing in order to protect yourself from men who might rape you?

00:22:31.160 Or you have to wear this clothing in order to be good and pure and go to heaven? 1.00

00:22:35.780 Because if you don't wear it, then you're a filthy whore. 1.00

00:22:39.160 Like, you wouldn't, no woman would want to hear that. 1.00

00:22:42.260 No seven-year-old child would like to be told, you have to wear this in order to go to school.

00:22:47.980 And your brother doesn't have to.

00:22:49.220 He can wear whatever he wants.

00:22:50.240 But you must wear this or you're not allowed to get educated.

00:22:54.540 It is an atrocity.

00:22:57.420 Like, that's something that every human being should be upset about.

00:23:01.960 And the fact that they think that it's okay for those humans over there, but not for us, is the part that really upsets me.

00:23:12.080 Yeah.

00:23:12.660 And what do you do with the fact that you could go into any one of these cultures and find women who will say, 0.97

00:23:20.280 I want to wear the niqab, I want to wear the burqa, just take your colonial bullshit elsewhere? 1.00

00:23:27.060 Yeah. 0.99

00:23:27.420 Oh, of course there will be.

00:23:28.800 And you can also go to fundamentalist Christian, you know, cults, and they will tell you, I want to be a servant for my husband.

00:23:35.880 You see people like that on Twitter all the time, right?

00:23:38.620 They're like, you know, I quit my job and I cook and clean for my husband and I'm proud of it.

00:23:43.060 Whatever it is, like, women make all sorts of choices and decisions and that's completely up to them and they're free to do that. 1.00

00:23:50.820 But I'm also free to make a judgment on the decisions that they're making.

00:23:55.140 So when I'm talking about the hijab as a symbol of patriarchy and a symbol of misogyny,

00:24:03.020 I'm saying that because, as you mentioned, not only are girls coerced into it because of, you know, family or government or religion,

00:24:13.300 but girls can be killed because of this. 1.00

00:24:16.080 And not just in the Muslim world, but in Canada, in America, in France, in Sweden, there's honor violence and honor killing going on. 0.90

00:24:25.060 A girl, a 16-year-old girl in Canada was strangled to death by her father and her brother with the hijab that she refused to wear.

00:24:33.380 And then her parents refused to bury her because they didn't want anything to do with her.

00:24:37.560 There are so many stories around this.

00:24:39.960 The one that sounds stranger than fiction is the case in Saudi Arabia.

00:24:45.260 The school.

00:24:45.640 Where the school was on fire and the religious police wouldn't let the fire department put it out because the girls weren't appropriately veiled. 0.84

00:24:53.660 And they're literally parents standing at the gates of the school watching their daughters burn alive.

00:24:59.420 It's just, it's absolutely mad.

00:25:01.020 And there are women that are in Iran today that are being imprisoned for 15 years and more for refusing to wear this cloth on their head.

00:25:09.540 So it's not just, you know, it's not just a benign choice.

00:25:13.680 When the prime minister of New Zealand or when Meghan Markle put a hijab on their head, 0.81

00:25:19.140 it's not just a benign support of some benign cultural thing.

00:25:25.500 It is a, not just a symbol, but an actual tool of oppression.

00:25:31.720 There are women being imprisoned and women being killed.

00:25:35.280 There is a fight over this hijab going on right now.

00:25:38.440 Women in Sudan, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, they're burning their hijabs in the streets. 1.00

00:25:43.500 They're fighting against this thing.

00:25:45.600 And then to see free Western women, free Western women leaders take this thing that they are fighting against and voluntarily donning it and supporting it.

00:25:59.060 What those women are doing is they are supporting the oppressors. 1.00

00:26:03.520 They are supporting the oppressors that these women are fighting against.

00:26:07.160 Yeah, the double standard is so clear and it really is sanity straining that it's so hard for people to see.

00:26:17.660 So like the clearest case for me in the media was when, I don't know if you remember this,

00:26:22.800 but Warren Jeffs, the leader of the FLDS, the fundamentalist Mormon cult, his compound was raided.

00:26:30.240 And all these little girls and young women were led out in these little house on the prairie dresses, right?

00:26:37.240 They were made to wear these awful 18th century dresses. 1.00

00:26:40.340 And they had been married to men who were, you know, their grandfather's ages.

00:26:45.640 And these forced marriages were described as rapes.

00:26:49.940 And the men were totally unrepentant.

00:26:52.860 And, you know, Jeff's got, I think it's at least 15 years in prison.

00:26:56.920 I forget, he got a real prison sentence.

00:26:59.400 And this was all talked about on the news as just an unambiguous example of patriarchal exploitation of girls. 1.00

00:27:10.500 The fact that it was associated with religious belief was not even slightly exculpatory.

00:27:16.600 And everyone celebrated the fact that there was a SWAT team raid on the compound.

00:27:21.960 We kicked in the door of this place to free those girls. 1.00

00:27:25.740 To protect those girls.

00:27:26.020 And it didn't matter at all that the girls didn't want to be free. 0.99

00:27:29.840 I mean, we knew they had been brainwashed.

00:27:31.540 So when they're talking about how they loved their husband for to a man or whatever it was,

00:27:36.220 no one had any qualm discounting that for their obvious ignorance and brainwashing, right? 0.51

00:27:42.920 And when you compare that to what is happening routinely in the Muslim world, the mainstream media has the opposite response. 0.87

00:27:52.140 And this is the most benign case of real extremism in the Muslim world. 1.00

00:27:58.960 I mean, it's, you know, in truth, it's not even extreme.

00:28:01.320 But the extremism in the Muslim world, you have to add to that the clitorectomies that would have been performed on these girls. 1.00

00:28:08.360 The fact that they were raising their sons to be suicide bombers, right?

00:28:13.420 And there was an explicit indoctrination of, you know, martyrdom.

00:28:17.000 And they were exporting terrorism to the capitals of Europe and America.

00:28:22.320 That's how the fundamentalist Mormon cult would have to behave to make it an analogous situation.

00:28:27.260 And no one can see it on the left.

00:28:31.960 I guess the other example I should mention, I believe I mentioned this on a previous podcast,

00:28:37.200 but it really belongs here because we were talking about this last night.

00:28:41.020 I just saw Ayaan Hirsi Ali give a talk at a university for the first time in three years,

00:28:46.120 since she was deplatformed at Brandeis.

00:28:49.200 And it's a fairly conservative college, Pepperdine, an explicitly Christian college.

00:28:55.800 And she ran through her whole life story on stage. 0.97

00:28:59.440 I mean, starting with female genital mutilation, abuse in school, physical abuse, sexual abuse. 0.96

00:29:05.760 She described it as routine among her friends at the school she was in. 0.85

00:29:10.760 She described all this and how she escaped a forced marriage, became a member of parliament.

00:29:16.060 I mean, she's just a true feminist success story, right? 1.00

00:29:19.520 And as she starts to get into a discussion of contemporary politics, I mean, honestly,

00:29:26.860 the edgiest thing she said was, if I were teaching at a university and someone, and one of my students

00:29:33.340 said that they didn't want to read a certain novel because it triggered them, I would insist

00:29:38.460 that they read that novel because that's what a university is for.

00:29:40.760 And then I think the other thing she said was, when Me Too came up, she expressed blanket support

00:29:47.300 for it, but she said, we have to keep a sense of proportion.

00:29:50.360 There are the Harvey Weinsteins of the world, and then there are people who just put a hand

00:29:55.140 where it's not wanted and you slap it away.

00:29:57.520 She was trying to give some, articulating this spectrum of misbehavior that we need to differentiate.

00:30:04.540 And as she's talking about this, again, she had just spent a half hour describing in a background

00:30:12.360 so replete with abuse, patriarchal abuse, that you would think it would have earned her intersectionality 0.99

00:30:21.540 points of a sort that few people have.

00:30:25.320 And I've got these white women students behind me who are beginning to almost heckle her, right? 1.00

00:30:33.480 It was just hissing and laughter among themselves, and then they walked out.

00:30:39.960 It was like, again, it was another kind of brainwashing.

00:30:44.040 There's a kind of moral panic happening around variables of gender and race on the left that

00:30:49.880 is making it impossible to even parse the statements of a Somali woman, right, who just recapitulated

00:30:58.200 the entire Enlightenment success story of reclaiming secularism and modernity and humanistic values

00:31:05.560 in her own case in a few short years.

00:31:08.720 It's just amazing.

00:31:09.480 So anyway, I win for a while.

00:31:10.600 Yeah, I mean, if Ayaan had white skin and had overcome all of those things in the West,

00:31:16.340 she would be celebrated.

00:31:17.580 She would be hailed as a feminist hero. 0.64

00:31:19.420 So, I mean, when you were talking before about the difference between that Mormon cult and

00:31:26.120 girls in the Muslim world, I started to tear up because it reminded me of your TED Talk, which

00:31:32.800 I'm going to tear up again.

00:31:34.760 That TED Talk to me hit me so hard because it was the first time anybody in media I'd ever

00:31:47.600 heard somebody care about those girls the same way you would care about any other girls.

00:31:56.860 Like, the argument you were making in that TED Talk, like, these girls in Afghanistan, why

00:32:02.500 are they different than the girls from the Mormon cult? 0.71

00:32:10.880 Sorry, Sam.

00:32:11.760 No, that's great.

00:32:12.560 That TED Talk was late.

00:32:13.340 Yeah, yeah.

00:32:14.980 Thank you so much.

00:32:17.020 That's...

00:32:17.600 You don't have to apologize.

00:32:20.720 This is good radio.

00:32:24.640 Yeah, well, a few people notice it, but I actually teared up in that TED Talk.

00:32:30.660 I can't remember if we spoke about this or not, but there was a point where I talk about 0.99

00:32:34.720 honor killing, and I said, imagine your daughter gets raped, and what you want to do is kill her 1.00

00:32:40.620 out of shame. 1.00

00:32:41.120 And, you know, obviously, I had rehearsed that talk a ton.

00:32:46.040 I mean, unlike any other talk you ever give, a TED Talk is like this memorization feat, right,

00:32:50.760 where you have to remember every line because you've got a hard time limit and no notes.

00:32:56.400 And so it's a very odd talk to give because you're basically, it's a performance as yourself.

00:33:02.960 I mean, you're not thinking out loud because you really have a script that you've memorized.

00:33:06.480 At least that's the way most people do it and the way I've done both of my TED Talks.

00:33:10.160 And so I, obviously, I knew exactly what I was going to say, and I had done this, you

00:33:15.640 know, a dozen times at least, but I had just been told a couple of hours before going out

00:33:21.660 on stage that my first daughter had taken her first steps.

00:33:26.020 So when I got to that point in the talk, it totally punctured me, and I actually almost

00:33:30.720 burst into tears.

00:33:31.520 And you can sort of say, people who are just watching it as a TED Talk don't tend to notice,

00:33:35.180 but you can see that I have to, like, I'm almost totally derailed in the talk at that

00:33:41.160 moment.

00:33:42.220 And yeah, it's...

00:33:43.980 You could see that you actually care.

00:33:47.240 That was very evident, and that's why it hit me so hard, is because I'm so used to there

00:33:53.680 being this two-tier system of, like, all, you know, girls that matter and then the girls

00:34:01.600 that don't matter.

00:34:02.520 And that was the first time I had seen in the Western world somebody standing up, like,

00:34:08.360 in a TED Talk, speaking up for us as if we were human beings like every other girl on

00:34:15.540 the planet.

00:34:16.380 And that was very evident in your talk.

00:34:19.100 And then, of course, you know, immediately after your talk, you get questioned about it

00:34:23.020 and, you know, all the predictable things happen.

00:34:26.880 And so, you know, that's a very quick...

00:34:29.360 The wokeness comes to swallow you after that. 0.52

00:34:31.720 Yeah, exactly.

00:34:32.820 Here I am feeling all excited and happy, and there it is, you know.

00:34:37.180 But, you know, I just wish that...

00:34:39.800 This is why the subtitle of the book, How Western Liberals Empower Radicalists Them, like,

00:34:47.060 that's what it's all about.

00:34:48.060 I want my liberal friends and supporters and, you know, my...

00:34:55.760 This is where I see myself.

00:34:57.180 I am in this realm, too.

00:34:59.720 So when I talk about liberals, I'm not saying those people over there.

00:35:03.380 I'm saying us over here.

00:35:05.580 We need to look at what we are doing, and we need to stay consistent.

00:35:10.300 And if we believe that all humans are equal, then why are we having a different set of, you

00:35:22.520 know, why do we use a different yardstick for these people versus these people?

00:35:26.960 So I feel like if they could see that, if they could understand that, then they would get it.

00:35:33.380 Like, I feel like if they could get the lunacy of, would you celebrate a Mormon underwear 1.00

00:35:41.320 on the cover of Sports Illustrated?

00:35:44.800 No, you wouldn't. 0.90

00:35:45.960 You would automatically see that that's ridiculous for many different reasons. 0.81

00:35:50.320 But then having a burkini on the cover of Sports Illustrated, that's something to be celebrated. 1.00

00:35:56.420 Like, I just want them to stay with the thought for four more seconds and just continue on

00:36:01.800 with that and think, okay, why is this celebrated and this is not?

00:36:05.800 Yeah, again, it's very hard to understand how the point doesn't run through and change

00:36:14.760 people's outlook just in real time whenever you have the conversation.

00:36:19.200 So like an example I occasionally use when I'm getting criticized for judging another

00:36:25.200 culture, like, and again, I always go to the most extreme and still that's not extreme enough.

00:36:29.400 So I talk about the Taliban, or I used to talk about the Taliban a lot before ISIS came

00:36:33.260 around.

00:36:34.180 But when I was in this conversation a lot, I would talk about the Taliban and I would

00:36:38.400 say, okay, well, then, you know, actually I'm starting to agree with you.

00:36:42.040 So what I think I'm going to do is I'm going to send my daughters for a year internship to

00:36:47.020 Afghanistan, right?

00:36:48.000 So they'll have to wear the burqa and they'll just learn to recite the Quran and, you know,

00:36:52.460 they'll get beaten if they take the burqa off. 0.80

00:36:54.580 And, you know, they'll broaden their horizons and they'll just get the full cultural experience.

00:36:59.980 So am I, am I a good father?

00:37:01.840 Is that the, is that the right decision?

00:37:03.300 Right.

00:37:03.580 And it's considered, I've never seen the point land.

00:37:09.040 Like it's just like, it's considered on the one hand, a low blow or it just doesn't compute.

00:37:18.620 So like, and you, you find yourself in this conversation a lot, both on social media and

00:37:24.120 in the world, what is it that keeps the double standard ethically in place, even when you

00:37:30.640 point it out?

00:37:31.380 I think it's because we have been taught that you cannot criticize other cultures.

00:37:36.240 We can only criticize Western cultures, the only culture that's safe to criticize. 0.77

00:37:40.500 So my counter argument to that is when you criticize something, that is how progress happens.

00:37:48.720 So Western culture has been criticized a lot and that's why there's LGBT equality here and

00:37:57.660 women's equality here and all of these progressive, you know, we got rid of slavery, you know, all

00:38:03.900 of these things happen because of internal criticism.

00:38:07.360 That is how progress happens.

00:38:09.020 If you do not criticize things that deserve to be criticized, how will progress happen?

00:38:17.240 So these groups of people that are saying, no, no, no, we cannot criticize the Taliban or

00:38:21.460 we cannot criticize the fact that Iranian, you know, what the Iranian regime is doing 1.00

00:38:26.280 or Saudi Arabian or et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

00:38:28.400 What you're doing is you're saying, we don't want those cultures to progress. 0.99

00:38:34.500 They need to stay the way they are, you know, 1400 years ago, the way they, the, the religion 1.00

00:38:43.380 formed, the way Sharia was formed.

00:38:45.600 This kind of thinking needs to just be fossilized.

00:38:50.360 Now that is what, again, we've got that two tier system going on.

00:38:55.080 Like, why don't these people deserve progress as well? 0.97

00:38:57.760 Why don't the gay people in those countries deserve to not be executed? 1.00

00:39:02.340 Why don't the women in those countries also deserve not free the nipple, but like free 1.00

00:39:07.140 the face, you know, like why don't they also deserve freedom?

00:39:11.340 How are they a different kind of human than you are?

00:39:14.460 Because there are people in those countries that are risking their lives.

00:39:18.560 I mean, America's got, you know, like live free or die.

00:39:21.120 They, they, they embody that live free or die mentality.

00:39:26.640 And they are, I mean, Raif Badawi just blogging about humanism, blogging about liberalism gets

00:39:32.980 him whipped in the streets, gets him 10 years in prison.

00:39:36.740 You know, I mentioned in Iran, removing a hijab off of your head gets you thrown in prison.

00:39:44.320 In Saudi Arabia, a woman was walking without hijab on, got thrown in prison.

00:39:49.860 I could go on and on and on about these cases.

00:39:52.640 And that doesn't even start to talk about the 12 countries, 12 to 15 countries, I can't 0.86

00:39:59.960 remember right now, that will execute people for being gay. 0.93

00:40:06.960 You know, when, if you are, or being an apostate, yes. 0.99

00:40:10.400 If you decide that you don't want to believe in this religion anymore, then you are to be 0.99

00:40:15.620 killed. 0.99

00:40:15.960 You're given three days to repent. 0.99

00:40:18.320 And if you don't repent within those three days, then you're to be killed.

00:40:21.400 So if we're liberals and we believe in liberal values, why do we only care about the LGBT 1.00

00:40:25.960 that are living in close proximity geographically to us?

00:40:31.680 What, what about the ones over there?

00:40:33.600 Don't they matter too?

00:40:34.680 Can we talk about them as well?

00:40:36.140 Well, but no, we excuse it over there, or we ignore it over there.

00:40:40.560 So how will those countries progress?

00:40:43.620 How will those cultures progress?

00:40:45.160 It's unfair.

00:40:46.520 We deserve it too.

00:40:48.340 Feminism is, is universal. 1.00

00:40:50.320 It's not just Western or all of human rights.

00:40:53.900 Yeah.

00:40:55.820 So I guess it's a concern about racism and the imbalance of power and wealth between the

00:41:03.440 West and the rest of the developing world. 0.71

00:41:06.600 The legacy of colonialism, it's, you know, it's white guilt and... 0.51

00:41:10.900 Yes, it puts white people in the, in the center of it all. 0.92

00:41:14.240 They always want to be in the center of it all. 0.87

00:41:16.580 It always has to be as a result of, you know, as if Arabs were just frolicking in the desert, 1.00

00:41:22.140 making sandcastles until the white man came along and taught them how to be baddies to 0.53

00:41:26.340 each other, you know, like, please, these things happened.

00:41:30.720 And these things, you know, regardless of Western intervention, of course, that adds in some

00:41:38.160 cases fuel to the fire, but that's not the be all in the end all, you know, America is

00:41:44.580 not the, the center of the, of the reason for everything that's happening in the Muslim 1.00

00:41:49.500 world.

00:41:49.800 There's a whole other world over there that had existed before the West even existed.

00:41:57.800 So, and then again, there's this idea that, you know, people need to remember that Islam

00:42:04.200 is the second largest religion on the planet.

00:42:07.480 It's not some little minor, like in the, in America, you've got like 1% or so are, are

00:42:12.860 Muslims.

00:42:13.240 So they think that it's just a small group that are not really, not that many people are

00:42:18.420 getting hurt by it.

00:42:19.440 And the concern is it's a beleaguered minority in, in the West generally, but especially in

00:42:25.220 a place like America.

00:42:26.400 So that, I mean, I mean, that's probably true, but it is not a beleaguered minority on a global

00:42:34.400 scale.

00:42:34.900 So if you just, you know, expand on that.

00:42:37.640 And the reason why this matters to us over here is because ideas cross borders.

00:42:43.180 They don't just stay over there.

00:42:45.620 So, you know, all of these, these misogynist ideas and these, you know, all of these things

00:42:51.440 that we're talking about, the honor culture and the honor violence and the honor killing

00:42:55.720 that doesn't just happen over there.

00:42:59.820 When, you know, those ideas all come here too.

00:43:02.800 I was born and raised in a Western country in a secular democracy, but I essentially lived

00:43:09.980 under Sharia in my own home and in my own school because we're separated in a bubble 0.98

00:43:14.740 from, from the rest of society.

00:43:17.100 So for me to get out of that world was, you know, infinitely easier than it is for a woman 1.00

00:43:22.520 in Saudi Arabia or in Sudan or in Somalia or in Pakistan, who's having the same thoughts

00:43:27.960 as I am and the same feelings as I am wanting to get free.

00:43:31.700 She can't because she's, you know, her, she's not supported by her government in the way 0.99

00:43:36.360 I was, right?

00:43:37.600 She couldn't just go get student loans and get on social assistance or whatever.

00:43:42.000 Like there's no, there are no, you know, there are no, there's no support system for that.

00:43:46.660 She'll in fact get imprisoned or she could be killed for defying her family. 0.99

00:43:52.260 And even in your case, it was still fairly hard for you to get out.

00:43:57.240 I mean, you, you told me a story about what it was like, I think when you were 12 to report

00:44:02.240 your desire for freedom to one of your teachers.

00:44:05.700 So perhaps tell that story.

00:44:07.600 Yeah.

00:44:08.060 So that's Mr. Fabro who wrote the foreword to my book.

00:44:10.720 I just met him recently.

00:44:11.800 I was 12 years old.

00:44:13.080 I mean, I didn't meet him.

00:44:13.800 I met him again recently.

00:44:14.820 I was 12 years old and I, or 13 years old.

00:44:19.060 And I went to him and I told him about the abuse that was happening at home.

00:44:23.420 So this was during the time when I was still fighting, trying to, to get out of the home

00:44:30.420 I was in.

00:44:31.160 My mom was married to this abusive man and I showed him the bruises and I told him the

00:44:37.460 stories and he ended up calling the police and child services were involved and it ended

00:44:44.880 up going to court and essentially the judge ruled that because my family are Arab and that

00:44:57.780 is the way they choose to discipline me, then that's their right.

00:45:03.700 And so first of all, I have to explain how difficult it is when you're part of an insular

00:45:11.620 community to go to the outsiders.

00:45:15.940 So to go to the non-believers and ask them for help. 1.00

00:45:20.440 That's, that's really a betrayal. 0.94

00:45:23.740 It's kind of like if you're in the mafia, if you're the rat, you know, I'm going to the 0.96

00:45:27.800 cops and I'm saying I need help.

00:45:30.380 So for me to overcome that as a child and to go and ask for help and then to have the

00:45:39.580 judge basically tell me, sorry, your family happened to have been born in this country,

00:45:46.720 so you're not going to be protected.

00:45:50.520 Had your parents been born in, you know, Sweden or Germany or Scotland, I would protect you.

00:45:56.600 But sorry, you know, that's just luck of the draw.

00:46:01.660 You're, you know, I'm, I'm hearing him tell me you don't matter as much as other kids.

00:46:11.960 And I know that it's coming from a place of trying to be culturally sensitive, but it ends

00:46:20.180 up like this, this whole cultural relativism, moral relativism, you end up hurting the people

00:46:27.940 in those groups and you end up supporting the people that are oppressing them within those

00:46:34.940 groups.

00:46:35.640 Yeah.

00:46:36.260 This is Maja's point about abandoning the minorities within the minorities.

00:46:41.480 If you care about minority communities, also pay attention to the people who are being

00:46:47.400 routinely victimized in those communities, right?

00:46:50.120 So you're, you're taking, in this case, you're taking the side of theocrats who are abusing

00:46:56.400 women and girls over the interests of women and girls and gays and freethinkers and apostates 0.99

00:47:02.780 and anyone else in that community who's being abused.

00:47:05.100 Absolutely.

00:47:05.600 And why, why does it matter if this little girl has blonde hair and blue eyes and her parents 0.98

00:47:13.680 took a razor or her aunt took a razor and chopped out her clitoris. 1.00

00:47:18.400 But then this girl over here has brown skin and her family is from Somalia and they did 1.00

00:47:22.860 the same thing.

00:47:24.280 Now, why would one set of parents be treated differently by law enforcement than another

00:47:30.260 set of parents?

00:47:31.520 Like those two girls are both suffering equally.

00:47:35.620 There, there is no difference between these children and how it's going to affect them for

00:47:40.380 the rest of their lives.

00:47:42.180 Why is one more important than the other?

00:47:44.140 That's what their, their, their well-meaning excusing of cultural norms. 0.59

00:47:50.620 This is what ends up happening.

00:47:52.120 You end up leaving these kids to be victimized, but then you also end up becoming incredibly

00:47:57.500 racist.

00:47:58.980 Yeah.

00:47:59.780 This is the, yet another irony in a, the irony museum.

00:48:04.760 Um, the people who are actually being racist here are the people who ostensibly are most

00:48:11.180 concerned about racism.

00:48:12.620 Yes.

00:48:13.620 That's what I heard from the judge.

00:48:15.540 That's how I felt.

00:48:17.120 And that's what I've been told my whole life.

00:48:19.400 You know, I'd been told these non-believers don't care about you.

00:48:22.680 These non-believers hate you. 0.94

00:48:24.500 These non-believers are your enemy. 1.00

00:48:26.940 And I never believed it, but that judge made me actually believe it.

00:48:32.620 I was like, wow, he really just said that to me.

00:48:35.800 He really just said, you don't matter as much because you're from that culture.

00:48:43.660 If you were from culture X, you would matter, but you're from culture Y, so you don't matter. 1.00

00:48:48.740 So I felt that he was being racist towards me.

00:48:51.620 That was probably the only time in my life because Canadians are, you know, generally not 1.00

00:48:56.320 racist people, but that was the only time in my life.

00:48:59.300 And it was coming, like you said, like, you know, it's coming from a place of good intent,

00:49:02.920 but it ends up being so counterproductive.

00:49:06.980 And all of these things are.

00:49:08.120 So when you say people of color and color, as a person of color, that is segregation.

00:49:15.860 It's no different than saying colored people because you're saying here's humanity, here's

00:49:20.920 people, and then here's people of color.

00:49:24.300 The other, you're othering us.

00:49:27.040 How is that not racism?

00:49:29.760 Don't separate us.

00:49:31.660 We're all just people.

00:49:33.260 This is a point for which I find very few takers when I'm in these conversations with someone

00:49:39.780 who's more woke than I am.

00:49:41.720 If we acknowledge that the goal is to get to a society where we're all just human beings

00:49:47.160 and the color of a person's skin is one of the least interesting facts about them, totally

00:49:54.700 analogous to the color of their hair, right?

00:49:56.660 So you've got blondes, you've got redheads, you've got people with black hair and brown 0.99

00:49:59.820 hair.

00:50:00.580 Who cares?

00:50:01.720 You know, and anyone who said, well, you know what we really need?

00:50:04.320 We need to take an inventory of how many blondes are doing this sort of job. 1.00

00:50:08.900 They're not enough blonde cardiologists, I've noticed. 1.00

00:50:11.320 And there's clearly something happening there.

00:50:13.920 How do we correct for this?

00:50:15.620 It's like an Onion article, right?

00:50:17.000 And I'm not discounting the fact that racism has been a terrible problem and is still a

00:50:23.420 problem in certain cases, but if the goal is to get to a society that is actually post-racist

00:50:31.000 and post-racial, when can we start acting as though that were the case, right?

00:50:36.460 Is it too soon to start acting as though you actually don't care about the color of a person's

00:50:41.280 skin and you don't want to hear every political argument parsed by that variable?

00:50:46.460 Or any political argument parsed by that variable?

00:50:49.880 And it's amazing when you're in conversation with a white, liberal, intellectual, you can

00:50:58.160 almost guarantee that the door to that consideration is barred.

00:51:04.220 It's too soon, though there's no argument for that.

00:51:07.140 But I've even met people who say, it's just a false ideal.

00:51:11.760 Race is always going to be the most important thing. 1.00

00:51:15.460 So Martin Luther King was wrong when he said that we should judge a person based on the

00:51:18.820 content of their character versus the color of their skin.

00:51:20.940 Exactly.

00:51:21.420 It's an explicit disavowal of that with a clear conscience and no one seems to notice.

00:51:27.220 Which is really inconvenient for those of us who are left of center on basically every

00:51:33.840 issue, right?

00:51:35.040 And this is a great scandal that surrounds people like Ayan, and perhaps you have a direct experience 1.00

00:51:42.780 with this as well, that the allies you find when you tell your story of abuse under Islamist 0.57

00:51:50.740 theocracy are Christian conservatives and neocons, you know, people on the right who...

00:51:58.960 Who are supporting me for reasons that I don't support.

00:52:02.200 But also to take my experience with Christian conservatives, at least these are people who

00:52:08.960 don't doubt the power of religious ideas and religious indoctrination.

00:52:12.540 So when they run their code with a one toggle switch to Islam, they know, okay, I know that 1.00

00:52:21.580 ISIS...

00:52:22.100 When ISIS makes their videos and frames it all in religious language, the Christian fundamentalists 0.96

00:52:28.640 have no problem understanding what's happening there.

00:52:33.100 They understand the power of ideas.

00:52:35.480 And secular liberals reliably don't.

00:52:39.320 They just think that there's got to be another explanation.

00:52:41.680 This is...

00:52:42.280 Something else is going on here.

00:52:43.700 This can't be religion.

00:52:45.200 Because they don't understand the power of religion, the power of indoctrination.

00:52:50.500 Speaking of the power of indoctrination, who did your husband turn out to be?

00:52:55.580 So, my ex-husband was a member of Al-Qaeda.

00:53:02.620 He joined when he was 18 years old.

00:53:04.960 So when he was 14 years old, his father...

00:53:08.180 In Egypt, there's a very clear distinction between classes.

00:53:13.140 So if you're from a lower class or a higher class, it's not, you know, it's not a democracy.

00:53:17.900 So there's very clear...

00:53:19.980 You dress differently, you speak differently, you act differently. 0.83

00:53:22.700 And so when he was growing up, his family, you know, his father, when he was about 14

00:53:30.660 years old, got a better job and they moved to a better part of town and he went to better

00:53:34.640 schools.

00:53:35.620 So he didn't really fit in because he was coming from the other side of the tracks.

00:53:40.720 And it's not that he was being bullied, but he just didn't fit in with his peers.

00:53:44.820 And those are the ones that the jihadis go around trying to catch those boys.

00:53:51.060 So much like gangs or, you know, neo-Nazis, you know, they're catching those boys that are

00:53:57.420 full of aggression.

00:53:58.380 And it's that age of 14 to 16, where they're just, they're not, you know, they're not cognitively

00:54:08.240 mature, but they're physically able to, you know, they're strong and they're full of testosterone

00:54:16.040 and they're full of aggression.

00:54:17.840 And, um, he was encouraged that if he joined this group of men, that he would reach levels

00:54:26.660 of heaven that no other human would ever reach other than like the prophets.

00:54:32.040 So it was, you know, it's intoxicating.

00:54:35.960 So he joined this group and all of us, you know, his friends at school didn't want to be

00:54:40.140 friends with him, didn't matter because he was friends with these men that were amazing

00:54:44.000 and powerful and, you know, and so when he was 18, he told his father that he wanted to

00:54:51.800 go to America to study and his father let him go, but instead he went to Afghanistan and

00:55:00.700 he was with bin Laden in, you know, a member of Al Qaeda for ever since he was a kid.

00:55:09.100 So he was trained by him, raised by him essentially.

00:55:14.700 And eventually he was sent to Canada to be the, the, uh, the center of the cell that were

00:55:28.840 here in support of 9-11 to, to, you know, to that end.

00:55:36.460 And I lived, what year was this?

00:55:39.740 This was 96.

00:55:43.340 So I lived close to the American border.

00:55:48.220 I lived in a city called White Rock.

00:55:51.560 And at the time you could cross the border with just a driver's license.

00:55:57.260 I mean, you could just say, I'm just, I'm just going to Bellingham to get some gas or

00:56:01.760 whatever, like they don't, nobody cared.

00:56:04.820 You could cross the border so easily back then.

00:56:08.220 And so it's easier, it was easier for them to come into Canada and then just cross the

00:56:12.700 border versus going into America.

00:56:18.180 And, um, all of this stuff that I'm telling you now, I learned, of course, after we were

00:56:23.080 divorced, like me just going on his Wikipedia page and finding the New York times articles

00:56:28.380 and stuff like that.

00:56:29.540 So at the time, all I knew was that he had, cause he entered Canada.

00:56:35.980 So he's Egyptian.

00:56:37.380 He's coming from Afghanistan and he's entering Canada with a fake Saudi Arabian passport.

00:56:43.500 So that's a lot of red flags.

00:56:45.980 Yeah.

00:56:46.160 But then all of a sudden he gets this money sent to him that bails him out of prison and

00:56:52.520 pays for a lawyer.

00:56:53.480 And they've traced that money and that came straight from bin Laden.

00:56:59.420 He sent somebody from California up to bail him out of prison and got him one of the best

00:57:04.340 lawyers.

00:57:05.560 And the lawyer argued that he doesn't have Egyptian citizenship because Egypt had taken

00:57:10.940 his citizenship away because they knew he was a terrorist.

00:57:14.180 And so he needed to enter Canada as a refugee.

00:57:16.860 It's pretty crazy now to think post 9-11 that he actually was approved as a refugee with

00:57:23.540 all these red flags.

00:57:24.780 But, you know, who knows what they were thinking.

00:57:27.380 But a part of me suspects that the FBI were already following him.

00:57:32.720 And I'll tell you why I suspect this is because so as I'm married to him, covered head to toe

00:57:38.860 in black, never leave the house unless I'm with him.

00:57:41.440 But then one day my mom starts to bleed simultaneously from her nose and her mouth. 0.69

00:57:47.540 And I call 9-1-1 and I go with her to the hospital.

00:57:51.020 This is the first time in our entire marriage that I'm out of the house with him not next

00:57:58.360 to me.

00:57:59.120 And my mom not next to me either.

00:58:00.740 I'm alone for the very first time.

00:58:02.920 And that is when I'm approached by CSIS, who are the Canadian CIA.

00:58:06.980 That's when they approached me, like immediately in the waiting room.

00:58:10.900 I thought that they were doctors.

00:58:13.520 And so that's why I suspect that FBI were, they kind of like let him in, like along with

00:58:19.460 CSIS, they said, okay, go ahead, let him into the country and let's just follow him and

00:58:22.860 see what he does while he's here.

00:58:25.220 Because I don't know how they could have found me so quickly.

00:58:29.880 And they sat me down and they told me who I was married to.

00:58:33.400 And I had been lied to.

00:58:34.900 I knew he was in Afghanistan, but I've been told he used to drive an ambulance.

00:58:40.180 He was a peacekeeper and a paramedic.

00:58:43.320 And that's what he was doing in Afghanistan.

00:58:45.240 He was supporting the Afghani boys that were fighting against the Russians, training the

00:58:50.300 little kids.

00:58:51.340 And, you know, he was just a do-good humanist.

00:58:54.720 And so I learned from CSIS who he really is and the terrorism that he was really involved

00:59:01.420 in. 0.94

00:59:01.720 And so, of course, that gives me the kick in the butt I needed to get myself and my 0.99

00:59:10.460 daughter away from him. 0.97

00:59:12.140 Did you believe them immediately?

00:59:13.900 I believe them immediately.

00:59:15.120 Yeah.

00:59:15.340 Because everything that, all of the things that were happening that were making me feel

00:59:20.500 suspicious, everything just started to make sense.

00:59:25.700 Everything just clicked.

00:59:26.460 It was just like click, click, click.

00:59:27.280 Like, oh, okay, that's why this and that's why that.

00:59:30.300 He was always really secretive.

00:59:32.800 I, I never, like, go for like days at a time.

00:59:36.120 I didn't know where he was.

00:59:37.520 And, you know, he would get, like, I just, I, it all made sense to me.

00:59:44.300 There was one time there was a Time magazine that had Bin Laden in it and he flipped out

00:59:49.000 and he's like, get this out of the house.

00:59:50.700 Why is this in here?

00:59:51.880 Do you want me to get kicked out of the country?

00:59:53.520 And I was like, what?

00:59:55.440 Why are you having such a reaction?

00:59:58.140 Like, and then they're, they showed me a picture of Bin Laden too.

01:00:01.140 And they're like, did, were there any issues, like, has he talked about this man?

01:00:04.840 And I was like, oh my God, that's the same dude in the turban that he flipped out about

01:00:08.700 when he saw him in a magazine and just things like that.

01:00:11.600 And plus, it's not that hard of a leap because I knew that Afghanistan was full of Mujahideen. 0.99

01:00:21.080 And, you know, for them to tell me that he was a terrorist or that he was a jihadi,

01:00:26.340 it was like, okay, well that, that makes sense, right?

01:00:29.020 Like, why else would he have been in, in Afghanistan for all those years?

01:00:33.280 And he was incredibly brutal and violent with me.

01:00:37.900 So the story about him being, you know, a paramedic.

01:00:43.040 Philanthropist.

01:00:43.640 Yeah.

01:00:44.100 Like that was, that was, that was much harder to believe.

01:00:46.700 Yeah.

01:00:47.020 I mean, so I, yeah.

01:00:50.780 And I'd already been wanting to get away from him anyway, because like, as I mentioned to

01:00:54.680 you, I don't know if I mentioned to you on, but he had been talking about getting,

01:00:59.020 my daughter, taking her to Egypt to get FGM performed on her.

01:01:04.800 And I knew that I needed to get her out, but I just didn't have the courage yet to do it.

01:01:14.060 Like I said, I was a high school education, covered head to toe in black.

01:01:18.720 And I was diminished as a human.

01:01:21.880 And so it, this was the catalyst for me because he was always talking about taking us and going

01:01:29.980 back to Afghanistan, living in Peshawar, where it was supposed to be this little paradise. 1.00

01:01:34.020 And so learning about who he was really pushed me to, to get us out of there.

01:01:44.720 And so how did you get out and what's happened to him?

01:01:48.580 So I initially, I detailed this in my book because it's a very long, convoluted, detailed

01:01:55.680 story, but I end up secretly getting to a lawyer and asking, okay, so I guess I have to explain

01:02:06.360 a little bit about how I secretly did it.

01:02:07.940 And so I'm living with him and I find out that I'm pregnant.

01:02:14.980 So I'm going for an ultrasound.

01:02:18.040 And then immediately after the ultrasound, I'm told you have to go to this clinic and

01:02:22.980 meet your doctor.

01:02:23.840 And my doctor tells me that the baby doesn't have a heartbeat.

01:02:26.500 And so I have to go for in for DNC surgery.

01:02:29.500 And then they tell me, you're going to go under a general anesthetic.

01:02:34.180 You have, I had like a nine month old daughter at the time.

01:02:36.760 So you're going to need help with your daughter for like, you know, a day or so, because you're

01:02:40.900 going to be groggy.

01:02:42.080 So I told him, I saw this as my opportunity.

01:02:46.380 So it was a very, very emotional time because I'm dealing with, oh my God, my baby is dead.

01:02:54.160 But also, oh my God, I have to save the baby that's alive.

01:02:57.960 And so I told him, I need to go to my mom's house to recover for a week and so that she

01:03:06.300 can help me with the baby.

01:03:08.680 So he wasn't happy about it, but at the same time, he doesn't want to help me with the baby.

01:03:13.160 So he let me go stay with my mom for a week because I knew that it would be easier to get

01:03:18.220 away from my mom than it was to get away from him.

01:03:22.240 So now I'm at my mom's house.

01:03:24.000 She gets up in the morning.

01:03:25.240 She teaches at the Islamic school.

01:03:26.860 She's the head of the Islamic studies department there.

01:03:29.300 She goes to school and I immediately go through the yellow pages, find a lawyer, get on the

01:03:35.680 bus, go to the lawyer.

01:03:37.960 Here I am like full black, everything carrying my baby with me.

01:03:42.920 And I walk in there and the lawyer was just like, she's just like an angel.

01:03:47.380 She, I went to her and I said, I need full custody.

01:03:50.980 I need a restraining order and I need a divorce and you can't call me.

01:03:55.940 You can't contact me.

01:03:57.180 And she was just like right away.

01:03:58.840 Like, yes, absolutely.

01:03:59.980 Done.

01:04:00.800 Give me all the information you have.

01:04:03.600 We're going to get this done.

01:04:05.680 And she did.

01:04:07.040 And so I, she couldn't contact me, but I contacted her to make sure that, you know, he was, everything

01:04:14.600 was going to be okay and he was going to be served with the divorce papers.

01:04:18.600 How come you didn't contact the police authorities who had first made contact with you?

01:04:23.420 With CSIS?

01:04:24.320 Yeah.

01:04:25.200 I had no way of contacting them.

01:04:27.060 They were contacting me.

01:04:28.340 And so I wanted to, I just, this was like a little window of opportunity that I, I didn't

01:04:35.460 even foresee.

01:04:36.500 Yeah.

01:04:36.980 So I just wanted to grab it when it was, when it was there.

01:04:40.380 It's kind of, yeah, it was survival.

01:04:44.300 It's just like, boom, you got to just go, go, go.

01:04:47.940 And, um, and so then he ended up coming to my mom's building and just screaming in Arabic,

01:04:55.260 you know, all of these threats and give me back my wife and blah, blah, blah.

01:05:01.520 So of course, like a six foot four Egyptian man with long, dark hair, like nobody's going 1.00

01:05:07.320 to open the door for him.

01:05:08.880 And so I called 911 and I'm like, there's somebody screaming at them.

01:05:12.660 They're like, yeah, yeah, we know.

01:05:13.480 We got like 20 calls.

01:05:15.120 We're on our way.

01:05:16.940 And so they came upstairs to talk to me and they explained to me their restraining order

01:05:21.500 only keeps them away from the building.

01:05:23.740 But if I were ever to leave the house and to go somewhere that does, it doesn't protect

01:05:29.600 me from that.

01:05:30.260 Like, cause I don't go to work or school or anything else.

01:05:32.780 So all they can do is say he, he's like 150 meters or whatever it is.

01:05:37.600 Radius cannot come near your mom's building.

01:05:40.300 Is that how a restraining order works?

01:05:42.640 In Canada anyway.

01:05:44.220 Huh?

01:05:45.080 Yeah.

01:05:45.620 That seems to defeat the purpose of a restraining order. 0.74

01:05:49.040 Yeah.

01:05:49.240 So I basically went under like house arrest.

01:05:52.100 I arrested myself and I didn't leave that house until Cesus contacted me again and showed

01:05:58.740 me a picture of him behind bars in Egypt.

01:06:01.360 And then I felt like, okay, he's not going to be lurking around a corner.

01:06:04.940 I can actually leave the house.

01:06:07.280 And that's when I started to, that's when I got out and started to apply to universities

01:06:11.660 and started my life over again.

01:06:13.180 So yeah, he ended up getting imprisoned in Egypt.

01:06:17.680 He was sentenced to 15 years hard labor and that was like almost 20 years ago now.

01:06:23.360 So I don't know if he survived or got out.

01:06:29.360 I sincerely doubt that.

01:06:31.060 I don't really, the problem is he was part of the second largest court case in Egyptian

01:06:37.580 history, like terrorism court case.

01:06:40.080 The first one being Anwar Sadat when he was assassinated for trying to have a peace treaty

01:06:46.440 with Israel.

01:06:48.140 So he was killed for that.

01:06:50.840 That was the largest, of course.

01:06:52.960 And Assam's court case was the second largest.

01:06:55.540 It was very high profile.

01:06:56.840 And that's why whenever I ask a journalist to investigate for me, journalists in Egypt,

01:07:05.620 they get themselves in trouble because they're like, as soon as we start asking questions

01:07:10.060 about him, the secret police come to us and they're like, why are you asking about him?

01:07:14.520 And so I've never been able to get an answer about where he is or if he survived.

01:07:19.860 But Majid Nawaz spent one day in the prison that Assam was supposedly, that had if he lived,

01:07:29.660 spent 15 years in.

01:07:31.820 And that one day that Majid describes in his book Radical makes me suspect that Assam probably

01:07:40.460 didn't last 15 years because it's a very harsh place.

01:07:46.500 Right, right.

01:07:47.360 Yeah, that's not where Majid was for four years in Egypt.

01:07:51.240 No, because he had a British passport.

01:07:53.040 So they moved him out into the other one.

01:07:56.500 Right.

01:07:56.940 So they have two systems, right?

01:07:59.440 There's the regular one that the rest of the world sees.

01:08:04.000 And then there's the secret police and the secret prisons and the government ones.

01:08:09.400 Well, so now you're out and you're free and you're getting educated.

01:08:16.680 Then what caused you to take the additional step of being a vocal proponent of Western values

01:08:25.240 among Westerners who don't want to hear about Western values?

01:08:28.340 And so I, you know, I took a history of religions course about, you know, 15 years ago.

01:08:34.720 And that was the first thread that helped me to unravel everything.

01:08:38.560 And for a long time, I was like, oh, I'm a Muslim, but I'm not practicing.

01:08:45.420 And then it was, oh, I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious.

01:08:48.440 And, you know, I went through all of these different iterations.

01:08:50.940 And I was just going through my own personal journey of growth and figuring out who I was.

01:08:59.260 And, and it wasn't until the Bill Maher episode with you and Ben Affleck that just brought

01:09:10.300 everything like it just, it was like this little perfect microcosm of, of everything right

01:09:19.360 there. And I was sitting there watching it feeling like Ellen in that episode of Seinfeld when

01:09:28.600 everybody was like eating chocolate bars and donuts with a knife and fork. And she stands up 1.00

01:09:32.520 and she's like, have you all gone mad? Like, that's literally how I felt. Like everybody on,

01:09:37.960 like all my Facebook friends and stuff were like celebrating Ben Affleck. And they're like,

01:09:43.080 oh yeah, that racist guy, Sam Harris. And I was just like, what planet am I living on?

01:09:48.840 What is wrong with you people? And it, it made me feel like I needed to speak out. You know,

01:09:56.300 everybody's criticism of you was mainly that you're American and that you're white skinned

01:10:03.540 and that you were a man. And so I'm like, okay, I am Arab with brown skin and a woman. And I'm

01:10:09.700 saying the exact same thing that he's saying. So maybe you'll now have to respond to the actual

01:10:16.860 message versus stopping, like not even listening to the message because you can't get past the

01:10:25.720 identity of the person that is speaking the message. You know, I'm from that world. So I knew

01:10:32.180 that it was going to be a huge risk and it was going to be, you know, I had changed my name. I had

01:10:36.940 changed my daughter's name. We had moved, like, I was afraid for my life already.

01:10:42.780 But so when I first started out, I was anonymous and I wanted to just write my book just to sort

01:10:50.340 of throw it out there and say, here is a perspective that you're missing. You know,

01:10:56.720 I've got one foot in this culture and one foot in that culture. And I'm able to let you guys know

01:11:03.260 what the miscommunication here is. Please listen to me. Here's my book, read it,

01:11:08.600 and then just kind of keep myself at arm's length. But that didn't last very long. As soon as I started

01:11:14.280 to speak out, I was immediately contacted by so many people all over the world that were relating

01:11:24.720 to my story. And then I started to feel ashamed that here I am in a free Western democracy, afraid to

01:11:32.400 put my face up and afraid to be vocal. When there's people in Pakistan that are, like, being killed,

01:11:39.980 there's people that are being, you know, hacked to death in the streets of Bangladesh. And then here

01:11:46.000 I am in Canada saying, I don't want to put my name and face out there. So basically, they were asking me

01:11:54.180 to be their voice, like, I can, I can say it, they can't, please say it for us. And so then I started to do

01:12:02.980 that. And of course, as soon as I started to do that, I started getting attacked by my own people,

01:12:08.040 the liberals in the West that and that was surprising to me. I mean, I saw it happen to you. And I knew that

01:12:16.280 that was that that was a possibility. But I really wasn't expecting it to be as vicious as it was. I'm

01:12:25.880 expecting and I'm prepared for all of the viciousness coming from the Muslim community. Of course, they're 1.00

01:12:33.440 going to hate me. I'm speaking out against their religion that they hold dear. And so that made sense

01:12:40.340 to me. And they're indoctrinated. And I was that. So I get that. But I didn't, you know, when it comes

01:12:47.220 from the left, when it then I have zero patience for it, I have no, like no tolerance, it just gets me

01:12:55.340 like from zero to 60 right away. Because it makes zero sense to me. And, and it's really hurtful. I think

01:13:04.000 that's the bottom line is it really hurts. Because I, when I was a Muslim, when I was a fundamentalist

01:13:11.920 Muslim, I believed in all of the, or I was taught all of these right wing extremist talking points,

01:13:22.940 right? I was taught about anti-Semitism. I was taught to hate Jews. I was taught to hate gay people. I was taught

01:13:30.380 that women are less than men. I was taught all of these things. And for me to risk my life and risk my

01:13:37.300 daughter's life and fight tooth and nail to get out of that world and come into the light and leave the

01:13:46.060 darkness behind. And then to start to have people in the light attack me was, it's just, it's just a betrayal.

01:13:55.920 It just felt, it's just really painful. I don't know how to reconcile that. Like that still makes me

01:14:02.300 really sad whenever that happens. Yeah. We were talking last night, we had dinner last night with

01:14:09.280 Megan Phelps Roper, who was also just recently on the podcast, has a book out, Unfollow, about her

01:14:17.000 experience in the Westboro Baptist Church and her experience leaving it. And it's fascinating and

01:14:24.040 instructive to see how differently you're responded to. You essentially have the same story. I mean,

01:14:32.260 your story is one of greater abuse and greater danger, but it's still the same story of, you know,

01:14:40.100 two little girls get indoctrinated into cults and manage to get out based on their own courage and

01:14:50.800 insight. And you guys could not be more similar in all of the relevant variables. And yet, in her case,

01:14:59.940 she's repudiating the most extreme form of fundamentalist Christianity. And because that is the

01:15:07.240 orthodoxy she's pushing against, it checks all of the boxes on the left of, this is all good, right? 1.00

01:15:14.060 You just got an angry white man, grandfather, religious maniac, Christian, homophobe. If you're 0.99

01:15:20.420 burning all that down and coming over to the left, there's no problem. And yet, because you're

01:15:28.920 repudiating Islam, again, all the scary details are amplified in your case. You try to port that 1.00

01:15:37.060 over to the left, and the ethical intuitions get all scrambled. There's this scrambling device of

01:15:44.340 leftist politics that manages to make up, down, and down up here. And it's really interesting to see.

01:15:52.140 And, you know, I think you and Megan could have a great conversation about just, you know, together.

01:15:57.580 That would be a very interesting event.

01:15:59.380 I mean, yeah, I would love to have that, like, as a public event with Megan, and to compare,

01:16:07.620 you know, how, like you just said, how the two of us had very similar experiences growing up.

01:16:13.720 But, you know, Megan feels badly about the fact that she is, you know, celebrated and revered

01:16:20.720 that she left, essentially, her family, right? Like, it's just a group of less than 100 people.

01:16:26.700 Whereas I, as she, you know, I've been through similar stuff as her, but of course, it was a

01:16:35.000 much bigger hurdle getting away from a much larger, much more powerful group. So this is not,

01:16:41.980 like, I feel like I am grateful and happy that people are celebrating Megan, and she absolutely

01:16:49.580 deserves to be celebrated for what she has done and what she is doing. But I get that same feeling

01:16:58.300 that I got from that judge when the world on the left is basically saying, we support and love and

01:17:10.300 celebrate Megan because of what she has done, but you are a horrible bigot, and we're going to try and

01:17:16.800 silence you on, you know, whether it's Amazon or Facebook or Twitter or wherever I try to speak, 0.96

01:17:22.880 I'm being mass reported and demonized. And, you know, somebody like Jake Tapper tries to retweet me,

01:17:30.520 and all of a sudden, these people are telling him what a bigot I am and how I'm like a Nazi 0.99

01:17:37.000 supporting KKK member or whatever bullshit they come up with. 0.97

01:17:41.860 Well, this is what's amazing and not appreciated by well-intentioned people. It's just that there's 0.99

01:17:47.320 a systematic nature to this. And part of it is just that you have a very large Muslim community

01:17:53.500 who will kind of spam the world in repudiation of any rational sound of the sort that you're making.

01:18:01.100 So when you get on Twitter, when you get on some, when you're interviewed on somebody else's

01:18:05.060 YouTube show, say, they will get demonetized for talking to you.

01:18:09.860 Immediately.

01:18:10.740 Yeah. And it's part of it. I mean, it may be algorithmic. It may just be the fact that

01:18:15.340 if you get enough people reporting something, Google or Twitter or any platform will just

01:18:21.700 flag it, you know, shut it down just to try to figure out what's happening. But, you know,

01:18:26.920 I've had to get you reinstated on Twitter twice, I think.

01:18:31.120 Yes.

01:18:31.860 Right. Because someone, you know, some white woke millennial over there can't figure out 1.00

01:18:37.560 what's going on. They see, you know, your tweets and someone's reported them and they just, again,

01:18:42.840 they can't do the arithmetic.

01:18:43.780 Yeah. And that same hurt, that same sense of betrayal from when I was a kid and the judge

01:18:52.300 telling me your experience doesn't matter, your pain doesn't matter, is the same feeling I'm getting

01:19:02.440 now. It's just being on a much, much larger scale. And it is so, you know, it's not just hurtful for

01:19:13.600 me on a personal level, but it's hurtful because I am trying to speak up. I'm free. I'm happy. I'm

01:19:21.640 golden. Right. I'm married to a wonderful man. We have another daughter together. I have two great

01:19:27.240 kids. I have a, you know, tenure position as a college professor. I'm good. I could just go on

01:19:34.260 with my life and just live it happily and not care about any of anything. But I feel compelled

01:19:42.060 to speak up because of, like I mentioned, all of these people that have been contacting me from all

01:19:48.100 over the world telling me, you can be our voice. You know, I tried to take a break from Twitter and I

01:19:55.160 have women from Iran writing to me saying, no, don't do it. You know, we need you just, you know, 1.00

01:20:01.280 go meditate or something and get back on. I have a responsibility. And so that's why it hurts so extra

01:20:08.500 much is because I'm not just speaking up for me. I'm speaking up for all of these people. So when you

01:20:14.840 silence me, you're silencing all these people as well. And when you're ignoring me, you're ignoring

01:20:20.560 all those people as well. And so I feel like I'm failing them. And that's why I get so upset about

01:20:29.180 it. Yeah. Well, that's why you're one of my heroes. So great to finally get you on the podcast.

01:20:36.160 It was an absolute honor. Sam, thank you so much for inviting me.

01:20:50.560 Thank you.

01:20:55.180 Thank you.

01:20:59.180 Thank you.

Making Sense - Sam Harris - September 29, 2022

#298 — Leaving the Faith (Rebroadcast)

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