Making Sense - Sam Harris - #55 — Islamism vs Secularism

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

00:00:08.820 This is Sam Harris.

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00:00:46.620 Today I speak with Shadi Hamid.

00:00:50.440 Shadi is a senior fellow at Brookings, and he's a contributing writer for The Atlantic, and

00:00:57.420 he's published widely in other journals.

00:01:00.900 Most recently, he's written a wonderful book entitled Islamic Exceptionalism, How the Struggle

00:01:07.560 Over Islam is Reshaping the World. 1.00

00:01:10.260 And I highly recommend that.

00:01:11.960 And we get into all of these issues.

00:01:15.920 His analysis, as you'll hear, doesn't totally align with mine or with Majid Nawaz's.

00:01:21.080 So it was interesting.

00:01:23.700 And I've been wanting to get Shadi on the podcast for a while, because he really is a novel voice

00:01:27.620 in this area.

00:01:29.040 A real political scientist who doesn't make the usual political science noises on the topic,

00:01:36.180 especially on the role that religion plays in inspiring human violence.

00:01:42.300 So, without further preamble, I give you Shadi Hamid. 0.56

00:01:53.280 So I'm here with Shadi Hamid.

00:01:55.480 Shadi, thanks for coming on the podcast.

00:01:57.680 Hi, Sam.

00:01:58.080 Thanks for having me.

00:01:59.220 Tell our listeners a little bit about your background and the kind of work you've been

00:02:02.960 doing.

00:02:04.020 Yeah, sure.

00:02:04.540 So, currently I'm a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

00:02:08.620 I work on Islamist movements and, more broadly, the role of Islam in politics.

00:02:15.740 And I'm born and raised in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

00:02:20.900 My parents came from Egypt in the 1970s.

00:02:26.340 I mean, there's a lot more to say about how I sort of came to do what I do.

00:02:30.660 But I guess two of the crucial moments for me were 9-11 and then the Iraq War.

00:02:36.080 So, I went, you know, before 9-11, I probably, I think I did actually want to just be an

00:02:42.160 investment banker or something normal like that.

00:02:44.980 9-11 happens and that sort of sets me along the path that has led me really to where I

00:02:50.140 am right now.

00:02:51.880 Nice.

00:02:52.020 And you have this really illuminating book, Islamic Exceptionalism, how the struggle over

00:02:57.620 Islam is reshaping the world, which we will get into. 1.00

00:03:00.940 Is this your first book or you have a book before this?

00:03:03.260 It's my second.

00:03:04.780 My previous book, which came out in 2014, it's called Temptations of Power.

00:03:09.660 And it's more focused on Islamist movements before and after the Arab Spring and their

00:03:15.380 evolution.

00:03:16.300 Before we get into the book, how would you describe yourself politically and religiously

00:03:23.340 at this point?

00:03:23.840 So, I consider myself on the left, on the liberal left.

00:03:31.220 And, you know, I'm, as you can probably guess, I wasn't a Donald Trump supporter and probably

00:03:37.480 won't be anytime soon.

00:03:39.400 I consider myself, I self-define as a Muslim, as an American Muslim.

00:03:44.640 And that's, you know, part of my identity.

00:03:49.680 And although I think I write more as a analyst or a political scientist who happens to be

00:03:57.460 Muslim.

00:03:57.880 But I think as of late, because events in the Middle East and in the U.S. with the rise of

00:04:04.400 someone like Donald Trump, some of my work, I think, has become more personal.

00:04:09.200 And I think I've become more comfortable, you know, speaking as not just an analyst,

00:04:14.400 but as an American Muslim who is directly affected by some of the proposals that are

00:04:20.260 out there on things like, you know, a Muslim registry, for example.

00:04:23.500 So, I think more of that personal side has come out in my work.

00:04:27.520 And there's actually more of that in the new book compared to, say, the previous one.

00:04:32.580 I don't know how familiar you are with my work in general, or what I've said about Islam

00:04:37.880 in particular.

00:04:38.860 You certainly won't find a friend of Donald Trump in me.

00:04:42.600 That's good to hear.

00:04:43.760 Yeah.

00:04:44.160 I know.

00:04:44.860 Yeah.

00:04:45.000 And I know you're aware.

00:04:45.760 I know you noticed my happy meeting with Ben Affleck because you mentioned it in the

00:04:50.720 book.

00:04:51.120 I expect we'll disagree about a few things, but I want to start on a point where we really

00:04:57.080 fully agree.

00:04:58.020 And that's the link between sincere religious belief and behavior.

00:05:03.180 And I actually want to read a passage from your book.

00:05:05.720 Sure.

00:05:06.000 Because it was such a relief to read this.

00:05:09.440 In a September 2014 statement, the Islamic State spokesman Abu Musab al-Adnani expounded

00:05:16.940 on the group's inherent advantages.

00:05:19.000 Quote, being killed is a victory, he said.

00:05:22.800 You fight a people who can never be defeated. 0.82

00:05:24.840 They either gain victory or are killed.

00:05:28.100 End quote.

00:05:28.520 Now this is back to you.

00:05:30.000 In this sense, religion matters, and it matters a great deal.

00:05:33.200 As individuals, most, although not necessarily all, Islamic State fighters on the front line

00:05:38.960 are not only willing to die in a blaze of religious ecstasy, they welcome it.

00:05:43.880 It doesn't particularly matter if this sounds absurd to us.

00:05:46.720 It's what they believe.

00:05:48.060 But this basic point about intention and motivation applies not only to extremist groups, but to

00:05:53.480 mainstream Islamist movements like the Muslim Brotherhood that, in stark contrast to the

00:05:58.520 Islamic State, contest elections and work within the democratic process.

00:06:02.880 As one Brotherhood official would often remind me, many join the movement so they can, quote,

00:06:07.700 get into heaven.

00:06:08.800 Yep.

00:06:08.940 Discussing his own reasons for joining, he told me, quote,

00:06:12.380 I was far from religion and this was unsettling.

00:06:14.980 Islamists resolved it for me.

00:06:16.760 End quote.

00:06:17.700 There's a few more words from you here.

00:06:19.620 We might be tempted to dismiss such pronouncements as irrational bouts of fancy, but if you look

00:06:24.420 at it another way, what could be more rational than wanting eternal salvation?

00:06:29.100 It would be a mistake then to view Islamist groups as traditional political parties.

00:06:33.940 I guess I can stop there.

00:06:34.720 It is such a relief to see someone talking honestly about this.

00:06:40.640 And I want to talk about the reasons why people become obscurantists on this point.

00:06:45.820 But I mean, are you aware of the novelty here of seeing someone like yourself both for two

00:06:51.180 reasons, both having an academic background as a political scientist and being a Muslim?

00:06:57.260 To see people in either of those camps calling a spade a spade here is a deeply novel phenomenon.

00:07:04.000 Well, I think it's sort of sad to me that it's novel.

00:07:07.040 I don't think it should be.

00:07:08.800 But look, there's a lot of discomfort in talking about religion.

00:07:14.400 And I see that especially with my colleagues on the left, who I think are very well-intentioned

00:07:19.920 and well-meaning.

00:07:20.640 And I have to say that when I heard Ben Affleck on that, you know, now famous program with

00:07:26.760 you and Bill Maher, my initial reaction was to cheer him on.

00:07:30.760 I was happy that here's someone, a famous actor and director who's actually defending

00:07:37.280 Muslims on national TV.

00:07:39.500 That doesn't happen so often, right?

00:07:41.320 But then when I thought a little bit more about what he was saying, I could realize that

00:07:47.140 this is actually a pretty vacuous statement.

00:07:49.500 And so he pretty much said, you know, Muslims are just like us.

00:07:54.280 They want to raise their kids.

00:07:55.840 They and the part that sort of amused me, which I mentioned in the book is and they want to

00:08:01.200 eat sandwiches, too.

00:08:02.880 As if you as if, you know, wanting to eat sandwiches and wanting to implement Islamic law are two things

00:08:12.380 that can go together.

00:08:13.500 I know people who do eat sandwiches, but also believe in the implementation of Sharia.

00:08:19.400 So I think but I have to say that I've changed myself over time.

00:08:23.280 So if you had talked to me, I think six or seven years ago, I would have, I think, focused

00:08:29.380 less on religion as a kind of contributing factor.

00:08:33.560 But after spending so much time in the Middle East and spending hundreds of hours really talking

00:08:39.480 to Islamist members and leaders and really trying to get to know them on a personal level

00:08:44.600 and immersing myself in their world, I, you know, it started to become more and more clear

00:08:50.960 that religion matters more than I think a lot of us are comfortable admitting.

00:08:57.520 And I think this the statement you just quoted from the Brotherhood official, it's really stuck

00:09:02.500 with me.

00:09:03.040 Um, I think he probably told me that, yeah, that was pre Arab spring.

00:09:08.300 And it stays with me now, because when I think about my own graduate work, um, in political

00:09:14.240 science seminars, we never talked about paradise.

00:09:17.920 And we're and we don't know how to talk about paradise because it's not tangible.

00:09:22.040 We can't measure it.

00:09:23.540 But, um, so that's why I think, you know, we have to sort of bring religion back into the

00:09:29.040 conversation, but in a nuanced way, in a careful way.

00:09:33.420 And I should also kind of offer a disclaimer here.

00:09:36.380 And I think, you know, I mentioned this in the first chapter of the book.

00:09:40.140 I'm, I'm slightly uncomfortable with some of my own conclusions.

00:09:43.660 And that's why I do think a lot about how to present the arguments of the book to a popular

00:09:50.640 audience.

00:09:51.580 Because when I started writing it, it was before the Trump moment.

00:09:56.060 It was before anti-Muslim bigotry got as bad as it currently is.

00:10:01.200 And I'm just, I want to be attuned to the risk that some could misuse my arguments for

00:10:07.400 purposes that I'm not comfortable with.

00:10:10.180 Yeah, yeah.

00:10:10.600 Well, you and, you and I both have that particular liability.

00:10:14.400 So yeah, I want to be sensitive to that as well.

00:10:17.020 I want to linger on this point of why people systematically discount the role of religion here,

00:10:23.520 because it strikes me as the first problem that we need to overcome.

00:10:28.400 Until you can reason honestly about what's going on in our world and what is actually

00:10:33.360 motivating people who are hostile to the most basic values of civil society, there's just

00:10:38.720 no way to even move forward with it with a plan about how to address this problem.

00:10:43.300 We'll just see if we differ in the kinds of remedies we imagine are possible.

00:10:47.740 But the first issue here is that, and that you discuss this a little bit in your book,

00:10:52.560 most secular academics and journalists and, you know, otherwise smart people have no idea

00:10:59.820 what it's like to really believe in God, much less in a paradise that awaits martyrs after death.

00:11:05.460 So it seems to me that they just, this leads to a very basic failure of empathy.

00:11:11.720 I mean, they just doubt that anyone actually believes this stuff.

00:11:15.460 And perversely, no demonstration of sincerity is sufficient.

00:11:20.560 I mean, it is apparently insufficient for there to be an endless supply of suicide bombers,

00:11:27.260 for there to be an endless supply of people who are willing to get on video and talk about

00:11:30.660 their expectation of paradise and then blow themselves up.

00:11:33.460 That, as I've, you know, long lamented, I mean, now it's been 15 years that I've been

00:11:37.580 talking about this, that is somehow rhetorically insufficient to establish somebody's sincere

00:11:43.780 belief in paradise.

00:11:45.100 What you have in the social sciences generally, and just among non-religious people or people

00:11:52.260 who are religious in a very liberal and moderate sense that would be unrecognizable to most people

00:11:58.460 in the Middle East, you have people assuming that everyone is motivated by rational concerns

00:12:04.420 and that all rational concerns are, at bottom, terrestrial concerns.

00:12:09.260 But one thing you point out, which is very important to distinguish, is that if paradise exists, right,

00:12:15.860 or if you really believe that paradise exists, trying to get there is perfectly rational.

00:12:21.440 In fact, one could argue it's the only rational aim, right?

00:12:24.660 Anything that happens in 70 years here can't be of much consequence when put on the balance

00:12:31.000 against what's going to happen for eternity.

00:12:33.420 So the dividing line isn't between reason and unreason necessarily here on this point.

00:12:38.800 It's just if you buy into these beliefs, your rational priorities are, by definition, otherworldly.

00:12:46.700 And that is something that people who think everything at bottom must be economic or political

00:12:52.180 just fundamentally discount or overlook or otherwise deceive themselves about.

00:12:57.900 Exactly.

00:12:58.640 And I think that, you know, so I live in D.C.

00:13:01.820 I grew up outside of Philadelphia.

00:13:04.460 I spent most of my time, at least in the U.S. and in major cities.

00:13:09.140 And it's so striking how few people are in those kinds of liberal elite circles, if you will,

00:13:16.880 can really relate to the kind of, to the, it's not just to the role of religion.

00:13:22.080 It's something almost beyond that.

00:13:23.860 It's the everyday magic of religion for people who believe in it.

00:13:28.540 And it, it, it's so, it's hard to describe.

00:13:32.340 And this is why sometimes I struggle to describe it,

00:13:35.060 because unless you're actually immersed in that world and spend time with people

00:13:39.760 who understand the world in those terms, it can be hard to relate to.

00:13:43.920 And I think that even if you spend time with Christian evangelicals, that will help in some

00:13:50.720 ways, but, and this gets to, you know, one of the main arguments of my book, that Islam

00:13:56.940 is fundamentally different than Christianity.

00:13:59.260 So that will get you maybe halfway there or something, but Christianity isn't quite the 0.95

00:14:06.100 same thing as Islam. 0.69

00:14:07.420 And I almost feel sort of, I almost feel, feel a little bit weird or foolish in saying

00:14:12.920 that because it's kind of self-evident that different religions are different from each

00:14:17.140 other.

00:14:17.560 But even that I think can, can be controversial in some circles.

00:14:21.680 But I think then the real challenge for those of us who come from a secular background, who

00:14:27.140 are born and raised in the West is to kind of go outside of our comfort zone and make an

00:14:33.440 extra effort to understand those who are coming from a different religious vantage point.

00:14:40.680 The other thing that I would say is, even the way we're talking about this, and we can't

00:14:46.780 help it because we have to use words, we have to use a certain vocabulary, even the way we

00:14:51.860 distinguish between quote unquote religion and quote unquote politics is itself problematic

00:14:58.440 in my view, because the two, at least from the standpoint of Muslim believers in say the

00:15:07.440 Middle East, the two are endlessly intertwined.

00:15:10.480 And that's, and that's something that I had to sort of come to understand a little bit more.

00:15:18.000 So if you ask a member of, let's say the Muslim Brotherhood, to give an example, why are you

00:15:24.280 doing what you're doing?

00:15:26.160 Why are you participating in these parliamentary elections?

00:15:29.880 Why are you going to this protest against the Mubarak regime?

00:15:33.720 Is it because of religious motivations or is it because of political motivations?

00:15:39.420 That person will almost certainly struggle to make a clear distinction between the two,

00:15:45.560 because in his or her own mind, the two cannot be separated the way that I think we as products

00:15:52.000 of a post-enlightenment society.

00:15:55.280 We do that.

00:15:56.280 We're comfortable doing that.

00:15:59.200 And it's so implicit or even explicit in the way we talk about these things in the media,

00:16:07.760 in public discourse in the US or Europe, that we don't even realize that we're doing it.

00:16:13.320 Yeah.

00:16:14.320 Well, I want to get into, it's the heart of your thesis, this, what makes Islam exceptional?

00:16:20.400 And it's right in the title of your book.

00:16:22.960 And so we need to differentiate it from other religions and perhaps Christianity in particular 0.98

00:16:28.720 on a few points.

00:16:30.240 But I want to linger with this fundamental lack of empathy or lack of understanding of just

00:16:36.080 how deep and self-consistent and on some level rewarding a religious worldview is in this context.

00:16:48.240 You were almost one of these people who couldn't get a handle on what was going on there.

00:16:53.520 And I want to read another passage in your book, which just struck me as just, again, novel for its

00:16:59.920 insight into what is actually going on and the cognitive and imaginative work people outside of these

00:17:10.160 cultures have to do in order to understand what's going on.

00:17:13.120 So you say here, despite my best efforts, however, the one element I continue to struggle with

00:17:18.720 is what might be called the willingness to die.

00:17:21.440 If I had joined a protest in a not-so-democratic country and the army was moving in with live

00:17:26.800 fire, there would be little debate.

00:17:28.960 I'd run for the hills.

00:17:30.400 And that's why my time interviewing Brotherhood activists in Rabbah just days before the massacre

00:17:35.440 took place was at once fascinating and frightening.

00:17:38.800 It forced me to at least try to transcend my own limitations as an analyst.

00:17:43.120 And then you go on with a Brotherhood spokesman who told me that he was very much at peace,

00:17:48.480 he was ready to die.

00:17:49.360 And I knew that he and so many others weren't just saying it because many of them, more than 800,

00:17:54.400 did in fact die.

00:17:56.080 And then you go on to wonder about where this willingness to die comes from.

00:18:01.520 This is a passage where, you know, even to my eye, you fall, however subtly, into the trap of one

00:18:08.720 who can't quite believe what he's hearing.

00:18:10.960 And so you write, where does this willingness to die come from?

00:18:14.960 One Brotherhood activist, now unable to return to Egypt, told me the story of an activist who was

00:18:20.000 standing on the front lines when the military began dispersing the Rabbah Sidon.

00:18:24.480 A bullet grazed his shoulder. Behind him, a young man fell to the ground. The man had been shot to

00:18:30.080 death. The activist looked over to see what had happened and began to cry. He could have died a

00:18:35.520 martyr. He knew the man behind him had gone to heaven in God's glory. This is what he longed for.

00:18:41.280 And it had been denied him. Aspects of the story were, I assume, apocryphal.

00:18:46.320 But the basic point is an important one. This wasn't politics in the normal sense of the word.

00:18:51.360 Now, your assumption that the story was apocryphal, I don't know if there were other

00:18:55.920 cues to suggest that, but there's no reason to think it was generically. I'm sure you've read

00:19:02.800 Lawrence Wright's book, The Looming Tower. Those stories of Al-Qaeda essentially doing the same thing, 0.53

00:19:08.400 just weeping tears of envy over their fallen comrades in Afghanistan, and even taking absurd risks

00:19:15.840 in an apparent attempt to get themselves martyred. I mean, those stories are a dime a dozen. It's just

00:19:20.880 a sincere belief in paradise gets you there in so far as you manage to embrace it.

00:19:28.320 So, yeah, you're right. I do struggle with this still. So I guess one distinction I would make is that

00:19:36.080 members of Al-Qaeda, or ISIS for that matter, they are more actively trying to die in a sense.

00:19:45.120 So, and they're not just willing to die, they're also willing to kill, which is a difference as well.

00:19:52.000 So when I'm talking about brotherhood activists in a primarily peaceful protest situation,

00:19:58.720 these are not people who are necessarily going there to die. That's not their primary objective.

00:20:03.840 Their primary objective was to try to get the new military government after the coup of 2013

00:20:13.200 to go back to the barracks and to reinstate Muhammad Morsi, the elected Islamist president,

00:20:20.960 back into office. So for them, there was a very tangible political goal. And I have no doubt that

00:20:27.120 they thought, at least initially, that if they held out for long enough and they had large enough

00:20:32.640 protests and sit-ins in various parts of the country, that this would put enough pressure

00:20:37.920 on the military. So I think understanding how the political goals intertwine with the very real

00:20:44.240 religious goals, which are mentioned in the passage, are still important. And, you know, I also,

00:20:51.440 people want to retroactively make sense of something after the fact.

00:20:56.080 So I can't be 100% sure of what these one or two individuals were thinking in the exact moment.

00:21:03.760 But I know it because I too do this sometimes, that in retrospect, I invest certain acts with

00:21:10.240 more meaning than they actually had at the time, because we all want to make our lives

00:21:16.880 grander in a way. All of us are searching for a kind of epic meaning, for a kind of narrative arc

00:21:24.480 to our own stories. So when this Brotherhood member is telling me this story, either before the fact

00:21:32.080 or after the fact, so I left Egypt two days before the massacre happened, and I talked to people

00:21:37.760 afterwards, right? And they were trying to make sense of what happened. And they're trying to offer

00:21:44.080 a narrative arc, not just to me, but I think also to themselves, if that makes sense.

00:21:49.680 I would certainly grant you that there is a significant distinction between the Brotherhood

00:21:55.360 and the kinds of people who would be likely to join it, and a group like Al-Qaeda or ISIS or any

00:22:00.960 other classical jihadist group. And it's a distinction, as you know, that you put a lot of weight on,

00:22:07.440 because you almost talk about the Brotherhood as the mainstream alternative to jihadism. Some version of

00:22:16.080 this Islamism needs to be embraced, or at least accepted. And I think that's, we will definitely

00:22:22.320 get there, because that is a controversial and interesting point. But again, I just want to linger

00:22:27.520 on the Western secular liberal doubt about this phenomenon, because I'm not even, I'm not sure

00:22:34.960 you understand how delusional this skepticism is among academics and how deep it runs. So for instance,

00:22:42.000 I noticed that you cite the work of the anthropologist Scotta Tran at various points

00:22:47.680 in your book. I can see why you would do that. He's certainly said several useful things in this

00:22:54.160 area. But I mean, he is also, has been a reliable obscurantist on this point. And he and I once got

00:23:00.880 into what almost amounted to a fight on a panel at the Salk Institute. It was about 10 years ago. And I

00:23:07.200 mean, I just couldn't believe the kinds of things he was saying about the irrelevance of religious

00:23:12.400 belief to the phenomenon of jihadist terrorism. And he just was going to the mat for religion being

00:23:19.760 a non-variable, right?

00:23:21.520 Hmm. Yeah.

00:23:22.560 So at one point, we found ourselves in the men's room together. And I just looked at him and I said,

00:23:28.320 Scott, you mean to tell me that nobody has ever blown himself up with the expectation

00:23:35.920 of arriving in paradise? Is that what you actually think? And he said, yes, that's right. Nobody

00:23:41.920 believes in paradise. Full stop.

00:23:44.240 Okay. So Sam, I have to, I have to ask you because I do, I do actually remember very vividly

00:23:50.000 reading that on your blog sometime back. Yeah.

00:23:52.960 And I remember actually tweeting it, I think. And I had to read it several times because I

00:23:58.640 couldn't actually believe that Scott at Tran. It's hard for me to believe that he would actually

00:24:04.560 believe that. And I, I, I can't make sense of it. So if you have any insights into what,

00:24:10.720 what he was trying to tell you, I mean, that would be interesting. 0.99

00:24:13.600 Well, on some level, he was just trying to tell me to fuck off. I mean, 1.00

00:24:16.560 the only exculpatory interpretation or the only interpretation that I can

00:24:22.960 make of what he said, which is compatible with his sanity really, is that he was telling me 0.97

00:24:29.280 to fuck off in terms he knew I would see as provocative and that it was not an honest 0.98

00:24:34.960 statement of what he believes. But in fact, when, when you look at how he's attacked me for things 0.99

00:24:40.800 I've said about Islam, and when you look at the points of debate we've had in public, it is in line

00:24:46.080 with everything else he said. I mean, so he went on at the SAW conference to say that the best predictor

00:24:50.800 of whether someone was going to join a jihadist cell was not their religious beliefs or any,

00:24:57.680 you know, prior indoctrination, but whether they were a member of a soccer team, right?

00:25:01.760 So it's, I mean, his thesis is that it's affiliation among, quote, fictive kin, you know,

00:25:07.200 young men who bond and care about the esteem that with which their co-evils hold them. And that's

00:25:14.640 what gets you to, you know, push the plunger on your suicide vest. Now, I don't need to spend a lot

00:25:21.440 of time on a tran here, but I've pointed out previously all the moves he makes to discount

00:25:27.360 the very obvious emergence of religion as a variable even within his own data. Even when he's

00:25:33.440 got jihadists telling him about God, he manages to ignore all that. But yeah, no, he clearly thinks,

00:25:40.720 and there are other people like this. He's just, I just mentioned him just because I saw him in your

00:25:44.960 book. He clearly thinks that this is a matter of the quasi-terrestrial concern of caring about your

00:25:53.760 reputation among your friends. And I would never discount that as an important variable in conflict

00:25:59.840 or in war. I mean, it obviously is. It's something that could get a totally secular or atheist person

00:26:06.080 to sacrifice his life in combat, you know, in defense of his fellow soldiers. I mean,

00:26:12.480 this is very ordinary psychological motivation that can lead to heroic self-sacrifice. But if you

00:26:18.800 are going to deny that the doctrine of Islam is in any way relevant to the phenomenon of jihadism,

00:26:27.040 then it's just God's own miracle that we're seeing more Muslims than Amish or Anglicans 0.99

00:26:34.080 blow themselves up in these kinds of conflicts, right? It's just, it makes no sense. Or, you know,

00:26:38.640 the cartoon controversy. Why is it, you know, why isn't the Book of Mormon leading to the headings

00:26:44.240 in Times Square after it gets staged, if every religious ideology was equally likely to produce

00:26:50.500 these specific forms of intolerance?

00:26:52.640 Yeah, exactly. But, you know, I think it's, in my effort to empathize, let's say, I agree with you that

00:26:58.880 it's, it seems really absurd to me that anyone could discount religion as an important variable.

00:27:06.400 But I also get where it's coming from in the sense that these are liberal academics,

00:27:12.240 who I think are generally well-intentioned. And I think they want to make Islam into something it's 1.00

00:27:19.360 not. They want, or to put it a little bit differently, they want Muslims to be just like 1.00

00:27:24.320 us, in quotation marks, us. And that's what Ben Affleck was trying to do as well, that we have

00:27:29.840 become so uncomfortable with acknowledging difference, as if the fact that we could be

00:27:36.080 different from each other is itself a problem. And that doesn't just apply to how we view

00:27:42.640 practicing or conservative Muslims, but also how we even view Trump voters, this unwillingness

00:27:49.120 to think that they are motivated by understandable or rational things. And instead, we dismiss them

00:27:56.240 as a bunch of bigots, racists and deplorables. So in that sense, I do see some parallels with this 0.95

00:28:04.160 kind of liberal faith in universal values that are not in fact universally held, and not just in the

00:28:12.480 Middle East, but also increasingly, as we're seeing here in the US or in Europe. And I think one of the

00:28:18.720 main challenges going forward is how do we come to terms with difference?

00:28:25.040 Yeah, well, I'm going to want to defend universal values, but I think we should talk about Islamic

00:28:33.840 exceptionalism and talk about difference first. But before that, I just want to talk about this

00:28:40.320 obscurantism and the role it has played politically of late, because it's in large measure, and I've said

00:28:47.600 this in the podcast, in large measure, this explains the rise of Trump, or at least this is one of

00:28:52.800 several variables for me that, had it been different, wouldn't have given us Trump. The most troubling

00:29:01.280 side of this, and this is the, we have this failure of empathy, we have secular people who just don't

00:29:06.000 get it. But then we also have Muslims who very likely do get it. I mean, I'm not saying they're

00:29:13.680 closet Islamists or jihadists, but these are Muslims who actually understand Islam, who reliably lie about 1.00

00:29:21.840 its tenants. So the fact that in the immediate aftermath of any terrorist atrocity, you will see

00:29:29.440 someone from CARE jump on CNN and then just lie about Islam, talk about how there's no link between

00:29:36.720 any of its doctrines and jihadism. Jihad is just an inner spiritual struggle, for instance. And then to

00:29:43.520 immediately sound the bell of concern about Islamophobia, right? This word that, as far as I can tell,

00:29:51.600 has been consciously engineered very cynically to prevent the very observations of a sort that you have

00:30:00.880 made in your book and that I've been making here, that there is a link between specific ideas, specific

00:30:07.840 doctrines, and specific behaviors that, as we should, as I always remind people, victimize Muslims themselves 1.00

00:30:15.600 more than anybody else. I mean, the most common victim of jihadist terrorism is a fellow Muslim who 0.71

00:30:22.400 was standing close to the bomb when it went off, right? It's not, you know, non-Muslims who are,

00:30:27.280 for the most part, victims of theocracy and oppression and sectarian violence, as we see it in the Muslim

00:30:33.200 world. So it's this dishonesty. And again, this sort of touches close to home because I noticed, you know,

00:30:38.880 Reza Aslan is one of your blurbists. I can't hold you responsible for who blurbs your book. But I mean,

00:30:44.080 Reza, again, is someone who, honestly, I think he has probably never managed to speak five sentences

00:30:52.640 in succession about Islam without shading the truth or lying outright about it. I mean, 0.89

00:30:58.560 I've been in debates with him, I've seen him in interviews on, again, on CNN as a prime offender,

00:31:04.320 and it's just guaranteed obscurantism. Now, it's either, he's either, he's either confused,

00:31:09.200 which seems incredibly unlikely, given that he'll, he also can't go five minutes without

00:31:13.680 emphasizing that he's a scholar of religion. But the list of this rogues gallery is quite long.

00:31:18.880 You have Dalia Mogahed, you have all these people who are reasonably prominent, who will not speak

00:31:25.200 honestly in the way that you have. I would take issue with the word lying. And I, and the idea that

00:31:32.000 people are being dishonest. I don't, I don't, I don't have any sense that, that Reza doesn't believe

00:31:40.640 what he's saying. And the same goes for Dalia. I think, I think the difference, I can only speak

00:31:48.160 for myself, the way that I approach it is perhaps a little bit different than say, someone who's part

00:31:54.960 of a Muslim civil rights organization. So after a terrorist attack, it's understandable to me 1.00

00:32:01.680 that someone whose job, if your job is to make Islam look good and to protect the rights of the

00:32:07.760 community, you want to disassociate between ISIS and Islam. I, however, because, you know, and I,

00:32:15.520 I say this very, very straight up, I am an analyst. I have to be faithful to my findings,

00:32:21.280 even if they make me uncomfortable. And it's not my job to make Islam look good. So I actually get 1.00

00:32:27.680 this criticism from Muslim friends and family. And even sometimes my mom, she'll tell me, Shadi,

00:32:32.960 you know, when you talk about ISIS, you should be a little bit more careful so people don't get the

00:32:38.160 wrong idea. And we have this ongoing debate and I totally get where she's coming from. Because I know

00:32:44.480 that she believes that ISIS is a total 100% distortion perversion of Islam as she knows it.

00:32:53.440 And for her, it's personal. It's her religion. Right. And I would say the same for myself as an

00:32:58.080 American Muslim. I do believe that ISIS is interpretation is a distorted interpretation

00:33:06.160 of Islam as I understand it. Right. So I don't, that's why I think that, and it's sort of my 1.00

00:33:13.920 policy in general, when I get in Twitter debates and any kinds of debate, I want to assume that people

00:33:20.320 are not being dishonest and that there is, there is a real or rational or reasonable motivation for

00:33:29.440 them arguing the way that they do. And we just happen to disagree on this point.

00:33:34.000 Let me just emphasize my agreement here. I think this principle of charity is incredibly

00:33:40.080 important. I mean, it's the basis of any actual civil conversation about, you know, hard topics.

00:33:46.560 So I totally take your point there. When I call out someone like Reza Aslan, I've seen him violate

00:33:53.280 these norms and the expectation of honesty so often, both in public and in private. His capacity for

00:34:01.680 dishonesty is, again, as plain a fact of reality as any other you're going to find in human behavior.

00:34:09.120 So I don't expect you've focused on him as much as I have. But there's a phenomenon of

00:34:14.560 a reliable shading of the truth here. Again, it's not always conscious dishonesty. It could just be

00:34:20.400 confirmation bias or just fear that, as you say, Muslims will be tarred broadly with the same brush.

00:34:28.720 The fear is obviously that if we admit that there's any connection between the behavior of

00:34:35.280 a group like ISIS and actual tenants of the mainstream religion of Islam, well, then there's

00:34:42.560 nothing to stop a slide into, quote, Islamophobia or, you know, more bigotry against Muslims.

00:34:48.160 And we have a president of the United States who's clearly operating under that assumption and who will

00:34:53.200 never say anything honest about the link between religious ideology and jihad. And, you know,

00:35:00.800 Hillary Clinton is, I mean, one of the reasons why I think her candidacy was so flawed was that 0.96

00:35:05.920 she was the sort of candidate who in the immediate aftermath of the Orlando massacre, which was,

00:35:11.440 you know, it took about 15 minutes to figure out that was an instance of jihadist violence.

00:35:16.640 All she could speak about were our gun laws and sanctimoniously warn us about a rise in Islamophobia. 1.00

00:35:23.760 So Donald Trump, as odious a character as he is, I would argue is one of his saving graces.

00:35:32.960 And again, perhaps I'm unusually in touch with this because I've spoken so much about Islam that I

00:35:39.200 have a, you know, a fan base that insofar as there was a single issue voter out there who was just

00:35:44.080 concerned about speaking honestly about this problem of jihadism and Islamism, I'm in touch 1.00

00:35:49.760 with those people. And I can tell you, there are a lot of people out there, including some Muslims,

00:35:54.080 including my friend, Azra Nomani, who you may know, the journalist who supported Trump because

00:36:00.000 of this issue alone, because he just stood up and said, listen, I don't understand Islam, you know,

00:36:04.400 any better than you do, but there's clearly something going on here. And we have a president who's lying

00:36:09.920 about it. Now that, as big of a con man as Trump is, that statement taken on its own was, you know, 0.73

00:36:18.240 a true breath of fresh air. Now it, you know, it's connected to a policy prescription that doesn't make

00:36:24.320 a lot of sense and probably would cause immense harm, you know, attempting not to let any Muslims 1.00

00:36:29.120 into the country. But still, this is where political correctness has gotten us on this topic. And it

00:36:37.040 remains a huge problem. My concern now with the rise of Trump is that because of everything that's

00:36:43.920 wrong with, you know, the right-hand side of the political spectrum, we are going to witness a pendulum

00:36:49.520 swing leftward. And there will be more dishonesty on this point from the left rather than more honesty.

00:36:56.880 And you'll have everyone doubling down on, essentially, lies about the motivations of

00:37:03.600 jihadists. And I've been saying this for years and years, that if the only honest talk about jihad is

00:37:09.680 coming from the right, you are going to push increasingly fearful people rightward, no matter

00:37:16.080 how ugly the right is on every other topic. And we're witnessing this with the migrant crisis in 0.99

00:37:21.360 Europe. We're witnessing it with, you know, I would argue with Trump in large measure. So like the

00:37:26.880 Southern Poverty Law Center, right, which if ever we needed the Southern Poverty Law Center to occupy

00:37:33.680 the moral high ground and to be sane and ethical and wise, we need them now with a super empowered

00:37:39.760 white nationalist movement in the U.S. for the first time in a generation. And yet, they just added

00:37:47.200 Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Majid Nawaz to a list of so-called anti-Muslim extremists, right? So,

00:37:52.720 you know, in addition to the KKK, we should worry about Majid Nawaz and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

00:37:57.120 It's complete insanity. And yet, this is what the left has done to us on this topic.

00:38:01.520 Well, that's why I think it's incredibly crucial right now for us to find a middle ground. And that's

00:38:07.600 really what, you know, I'm trying to do with this book is there's got to be something in between the

00:38:13.120 kind of political correctness of the left and what I consider to be the very problematic approach of

00:38:20.560 some on the right who want to make Islam into some kind of Islam is the problem or even Islamism is

00:38:29.520 the problem and to fail to make what I think are important distinctions. So I think there's something

00:38:34.960 in between. And I realize that it's not a very popular place to be, which is why this book has

00:38:45.280 pissed off people on both sides of the spectrum and kind of in between as well. But I feel like

00:38:52.080 I want to do what I can to find that middle ground and encourage other people to search for it. And I'm

00:38:59.280 not under any illusion that people are going to agree with the entirety of my argument. But I hope

00:39:09.040 that we can at least start to have that conversation. And, you know, with I mean, because these issues

00:39:14.240 will be an issue pretty much pretty much for the rest of our lives. We will be facing the scourge of

00:39:20.880 terrorism and extremism for as long as we live. I don't believe terrorism is something you can

00:39:26.720 eliminate. It's something you can reduce to the best of your ability. But we're going to have to

00:39:32.480 deal with a lot of this. And we have and that's why we have to have this conversation, you know,

00:39:39.120 sooner rather than later. Yeah. Well, so I want to talk to you ultimately about this,

00:39:43.840 this very provocative comment that that not only can't Islam be the problem, but perhaps Islamism can't 0.99

00:39:50.640 even be the problem. And that's where you seem to take a slightly different path than than I take,

00:39:56.080 or that, you know, my friend and colleague Majid Nawaz takes. We got to get there. But before we do,

00:40:00.640 I want you to educate us a little bit on a few points. And this goes to really the first principle

00:40:07.200 of your thesis, that Islam is in some way exceptional. And so you say things like, for instance,

00:40:12.560 there's nothing equivalent to Sharia in Christianity. Talk a little bit about that.

00:40:18.240 Yeah, sure. Well, one thing I should just mention, which may be of interest, is that

00:40:24.080 because of the political correctness around this topic, the book's title was actually going to be

00:40:29.680 different until like the very last moment. What was it really? It's, it's kind of a lame title.

00:40:38.720 I mentioned it elsewhere. So I can tell you, but we were going to call it the last caliphate, 0.53

00:40:43.920 which sounds kind of poetic and literary, but what the heck does it mean? I had an idea about what it

00:40:49.840 meant. But ultimately I, I wanted the argument to be right there and I wanted to own it. I thought,

00:40:57.360 look, I'm going, I'm spending a big part of my life writing this book. I can't hide away from my

00:41:04.400 own argument. So let me own it. Even though, even the very notion of exceptionalism is going to anger

00:41:12.560 a lot of people, especially in academia where, oh my God, exceptionalism,

00:41:17.200 Shadi is a neo-Orientalist or an essentialist. And I've gotten those charges. But anyway,

00:41:22.320 the argument that I'm making, um, to put it, I guess, simply is that, um, Islam is in fact

00:41:28.640 exceptional and, but not just in any way, because I think it should go without saying that all religions

00:41:33.520 are different from other religions in some way. But I'm arguing that Islam is exceptional in a

00:41:39.680 specific set of ways that matter 14 centuries after its founding. So specifically in, in its relationship

00:41:48.160 to law, politics, and governance. And what that means in practice, but also in theory is that Islam

00:41:56.000 has proven to be resistant to secularization. And I would argue it will continue to be resistant to

00:42:02.320 secularization for the foreseeable future for reasons that we can't easily dismiss. And we can

00:42:09.360 talk about some of them and the implications of that I think are important because what it does mean

00:42:14.560 is that hopes for some kind of future reformation or some kind of linear trajectory where Islam goes 0.94

00:42:24.640 through what Christianity did. So reformation, then enlightenment, then secularism towards the end 0.90

00:42:31.600 of history of liberal democracy. I don't think that's a helpful way of looking at Islam because why, 1.00

00:42:39.600 why would Islam follow the same trajectory as Christianity if it's a different religion, right?

00:42:46.080 And this goes to your point about there being no equivalent of Sharia and Christianity, which is why 1.00

00:42:51.840 I think it is very hard to talk about Sharia in America or Europe because it's just really different

00:42:58.960 and it's really complicated. And, um, the closest equivalent, at least in Catholicism is canon law,

00:43:05.760 but canon law, first of all, doesn't quite cover nearly as much as Islamic law does. But canon law is

00:43:12.080 fundamentally about the internal organization of the Catholic church and its sort of immediate surroundings.

00:43:18.880 Um, it's about managing a hierarchy. It's about, um, it's about church building more than state

00:43:25.520 building. And that's even the case in the medieval era where there was this clear, maybe at least clear

00:43:32.640 in theory, distinction between civil law and ecclesial law. So there is a kind of inherent dualism,

00:43:39.840 I would argue, in the Christian tradition, not just today, but going back many centuries.

00:43:44.960 Well, it also just falls right out of the line in Matthew, render unto Caesar,

00:43:48.720 those things that are Caesar's unto God, those things that are God's.

00:43:51.440 Exactly. And even if you look at, you know, parts of the New Testament, when, when, um,

00:43:57.680 where Paul says, you know, Christ, um, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law

00:44:03.040 by becoming a curse for us. So even the attitude towards law, there isn't much public law in the New

00:44:10.480 Testament. And the reason for that, I think is actually, you know, I don't want to say it's,

00:44:16.480 it's a hundred percent clear, but one of the main reasons is that Jesus was a dissident against a

00:44:22.080 reigning state. So he had never, he never had to contend with governance. So naturally the New

00:44:29.280 Testament is not going to talk a lot about that because that's not what the early Christians were 1.00

00:44:35.600 dealing with at the founding moment of the religion. And this gets me to another key

00:44:41.520 distinction with Islam is that, Hey, let's be honest about it. I mean, prophet Muhammad was not 1.00

00:44:46.880 just a dissident. He was actually, and he wasn't just a prophet or a religious figure, but he was also

00:44:54.640 a politician and he was specifically, and this is in some ways even more important. He was a head of

00:44:59.920 state. So naturally if you're a believer, right? And if something is coming from God as revelation,

00:45:07.920 then naturally the Quran is going to have to have something to say about law and governance. If

00:45:13.280 that's what the early Muslims are dealing with. Otherwise, how, how would prophet Muhammad be guided?

00:45:20.400 Right. And even, but putting that aside, even if we're just approaching it from a purely analytical

00:45:25.600 or academic perspective as outsiders, we would also say that any book has to address the needs of the

00:45:33.520 time. So if we all can agree that prophet Muhammad and the early Muslims were dealing with these 0.85

00:45:39.760 questions of state building, then the Quran naturally will have more to say about such issues.

00:45:45.280 Yeah. And one of the problems obviously is that once you accept the principle of revelation,

00:45:51.680 once you accept the fact that this is, this book is not merely the product of its time, but the product

00:45:57.120 of God's omniscience, well then its edicts need to stand for all time. So they constrain the politics.

00:46:05.520 If there are political edicts in there, they constrain the politics of this and any future time.

00:46:11.280 And, you know, that, that's certainly perhaps not the only possible reading, but it, it's a natural

00:46:16.720 one. And it's the reading many people, you know, attempt to take in, in every revealed religion.

00:46:22.880 And following kind of directly on that point, what's the significance of the Quran being the

00:46:28.480 actual speech of God? Can you make that? Because obviously many, many Christians believe the measure

00:46:35.360 of being a fundamentalist Christian is if you believe that the Bible is perfect in all its parts and the

00:46:42.240 actual word of God. But that's not, still not quite the same thing as the Quran being the actual

00:46:50.640 speech of God. And many people, I think even most fundamentalist Christians who don't doubt that

00:46:56.240 Salafists or truly traditional Muslims believe every word of their holy book, even our own

00:47:03.040 fundamentalists don't understand that you can go one better and believe that the holy book has a,

00:47:08.960 itself as a kind of magical status. Yeah. So this was actually one of the fascinating aspects of

00:47:16.800 writing this book. And there's, there's nearly an entire chapter on the evolution of Christianity and

00:47:22.480 its attitudes towards politics. So I really had to dive into Christian theology and talk to

00:47:29.280 pastors and scholars and theologians and do my best to relate to a tradition that is in some ways

00:47:35.680 foreign to me. Again, like growing up in the Northeast, you don't, I didn't have a lot of

00:47:42.240 friends who took the Bible that seriously. So, you know, this, and so it really, it really struck me

00:47:50.800 in my research, what an important difference this was. So if you talk to far right evangelicals today,

00:47:57.360 they will say that the Bible is the word of God. Muslims will also tell you that the Quran is the

00:48:04.720 word of God, but they go one step further and they say that the Quran is God's actual speech.

00:48:11.360 And this is not some side thing or some incidental part of the religion, but it's actually a creedal

00:48:17.600 requirement of the religion. So similar to how Christianity loses theological content or meaning

00:48:24.160 if you take Christ out of it. So if you say that Christ is some ordinary guy, then you can find,

00:48:30.320 that's fine. You can be nominally Christian or culturally Christian, but there's not a lot of

00:48:34.880 theological content there because Christ is pretty central to Christianity. So similarly, and the Quran

00:48:43.360 being God's actual speech is central. And what that means is, is that it's not just inspired by God,

00:48:51.280 it's not preserved or protected by God only, but it's, it's every word and letter is directly from

00:48:59.360 God. So it's his speech in the quite literal sense of being his speech. So in other words, there's no

00:49:05.680 human, there's no human role or human authorship. So Muhammad didn't write a certain part of the Quran.

00:49:12.880 Um, on the other hand, even evangelicals will acknowledge because as a factual matter, it's true

00:49:19.760 that various parts of the Bible have been written by different authors, including people like Paul,

00:49:25.280 who I mentioned earlier. Um, but evangelicals would, would say that it's still in a sense,

00:49:31.520 the word of God and it's protected by God. And it's in that sense, free from falsehood,

00:49:36.960 but they would never, they would never pretend that the Bible or the New Testament, let's say,

00:49:43.200 more specifically, is directly from God in the way that Muslims would say the same about the Quran.

00:49:50.480 If I'm not mistaken, the only part of the Bible that God can be said to have written are the, the

00:49:58.480 two variant Ten Commandments. He etched those into stone, apparently, but those have a different status

00:50:05.760 than everything else in the book. Exactly. And in the New Testament, there are, you know,

00:50:10.800 there are obviously places where Jesus is quoted and that, you know, that, so in that sense, those

00:50:17.040 parts of the New Testament, which, which aren't a huge part of it are, are, um, divine speech in a

00:50:23.280 sense, but most of the New Testament is not directly Jesus's words or God's words or whatever. Exactly.

00:50:29.120 Yeah. So this leads to, for among other reasons, to the problem that there hasn't been the same kind of

00:50:38.160 textual analysis of the Quran academically that you have had of the Bible for now, probably at least

00:50:44.640 200 years. Subjecting the Quran to the normal critical treatment that one, one sees in the ivory 1.00

00:50:53.520 tower, has really been either forbidden or anathematized. Traditionally, I remember my

00:51:01.680 foundation in part sponsored a conference in Germany that was, you know, for the first time in, in

00:51:07.760 anyone's memory, subjecting the Quran to very ordinary kinds of hermeneutics and linguistic analysis

00:51:16.640 that the Bible has been subjected to for two centuries. And this was actually obviously a

00:51:23.040 risky thing to do. I mean, most of the scholars publishing this work were working under pseudonyms,

00:51:27.920 and it's just a completely paranoid exercise in very ordinary academic behavior. Can you say anything

00:51:34.480 about that, about what, what, what hasn't been done to the Quran that could or, or should have happened?

00:51:39.840 So I think that what was done with the Bible can't really be done with the Quran in the sense that 0.93

00:51:47.920 there, this is not just an issue of evangelicals today, but, you know, as I, as I say in the book,

00:51:52.800 I mean, there's, there has never been a major sector denomination within Christianity that has argued

00:51:59.600 that the New Testament is God's actual speech, right? So there, there has always been a readiness to

00:52:05.760 have more, more of a critical engagement with the integrity of the text, because most people can

00:52:13.040 agree, even Christians, that most of the Bible was written by men. Now you just will not, so if you 0.89

00:52:25.200 want to bring, if you want to bring Muslims on board and get, you can't, so this is also, we have to be 1.00

00:52:32.640 pragmatic. Um, if, if someone goes to a group of even fairly broad-minded Muslims who are open to 0.64

00:52:40.560 progressive interpretations and you tell this group, well, hey, you know, there has to be

00:52:47.680 a critical engagement with the text that even starts to dismantle some of the things that are dear to

00:52:57.040 the vast majority, if not all believing Muslims, um, then, you know, it's a non-starter, and I, I just don't

00:53:04.080 know. So even if, even if you believe that, or other people believe that, um, how productive is that?

00:53:12.640 There was a time, I should point out, that the Catholic Church attempted to quash this. I mean, there was a

00:53:19.760 movement under the Catholic Church called modernism, where scholars were encouraged to look closely at

00:53:26.880 the Bible using all the modern tools and put it on as firm a scholarly footing as they could, and

00:53:34.640 they quickly found that this had the effect of eroding rather than, than bolstering their faith,

00:53:39.920 because they were finding errors or inconsistencies, or just learning more about the process of

00:53:45.920 inclusion or, or rejection of various texts. You know, it revealed that whole generations of

00:53:51.760 Christians had lived with certain books being canonical, which are no longer thought to be

00:53:57.040 canonical, and, and vice versa. So it was just this carnival of, of errors and, you know, merely, you know,

00:54:04.880 all too human efforts to put together a tradition that they exposed, and so the Catholic Church

00:54:11.120 tried to stop it at a certain point. But I don't know if you remember that story that came as,

00:54:17.040 now again, something like 10, 15 years ago, where this scholar who I believe still goes by,

00:54:22.880 by the pseudonym, I think it's Christopher Luxembourg.

00:54:25.600 Oh, right, yes.

00:54:26.720 Yeah, he found, he found that there was a passage in the Quran relating to the, the virgins that martyrs

00:54:33.840 and other lucky, lucky people are supposedly going to get in paradise, that the word for virgin,

00:54:39.520 excuse my non-existent Arabic here, but I think it's, it's hur or huri, actually meant, at the time,

00:54:47.520 based on textual analysis, white raisins, which were supposedly a delicacy. So rather than getting,

00:54:53.600 there were a lot of jokes, you know, among which I told at the time, rather than getting 72 virgins,

00:55:00.080 you get a fistful of raisins when you get to paradise. But that's, again, this, this is a,

00:55:05.040 a scholar of Middle Eastern languages, forced to live under a pseudonym and publish obscurely,

00:55:12.640 or not publish at all, for analyzing the text. But you make the obvious point that the,

00:55:19.440 what one finds when one analyzes text in these ways is that because these books are almost certainly the

00:55:27.280 product of merely human speech, you find evidence of that fact. And you find that parts of the Quran

00:55:32.960 are actually swiped from preexisting literature and, and all the rest. And that's, there is something

00:55:38.240 in principle seditious and destabilizing about that. But why is it that you, you close the door to

00:55:45.760 the possibility of that project ever working the same magic it worked on Christianity?

00:55:50.960 Well, so I should say that, I mean, most Muslims aren't literalists and how they engage with the

00:55:56.800 text. So I don't really see that as the, I don't think the primary problem within Islam and among

00:56:04.240 Muslims is that the vast majority of Muslims pick up the Quran and subscribe to a very literalist 0.98

00:56:11.840 reading. So one way of putting it is that Muslims take the Quran as God's literal speech,

00:56:20.640 but they don't necessarily interpret that speech literally, if that makes sense.

00:56:25.600 Yeah.

00:56:25.920 And actually, so I was, I was brushing up on my, uh, my copy of your book with Majid,

00:56:31.120 Islam and the Future of Tolerance. And, um, and I was reminded that there are,

00:56:37.520 there were parts where I was like, huh, um, imagine and I, you know, we, we have friendly disagreements,

00:56:43.360 but we definitely do just disagree on a number of issues. But I, as I was kind of going back,

00:56:49.120 I was like, huh, I like how Majid is putting it here. So he has, he has a section where he talks

00:56:55.760 about the method of interpreting the text and the importance of Muslims acknowledging that there's no 1.00

00:57:03.520 one true reading of the text. And I think that's important that none of us is as fallible human

00:57:10.400 beings have access to God's will. We don't know what God really wanted. Um, when he, you know,

00:57:19.920 um, in certain verses of the Quran, right? So we can try our best to divine his intent or will.

00:57:27.120 And there's actually a whole, um, classical and academic literature on how to do that kind of

00:57:34.160 interpretation, which is very rich and diverse and complex, but there's no way to know for sure.

00:57:40.640 So I think there is already quite a bit of room to operate. And just to give one example

00:57:46.000 that comes up a lot for understandable reasons, the Hadud punishments. So the religiously derived

00:57:52.160 criminal punishments, and I should, um, I should offer the disclaimer that this is only a small part

00:57:58.480 of Islamic law. And we should be careful not to say that, Hey, Sharia is just about cutting people's

00:58:04.240 hands off, but they are there, right? You know, and let's not pretend that they aren't. Um, so there,

00:58:12.720 there are progressive interpretations. And I think Majid would probably subscribe to these, um,

00:58:19.280 that, and we have to be honest to, and, and say that this is a minority interpretation.

00:58:25.360 So what I, what I'm about to tell you now, I, the, the majority of scholars would not agree with me,

00:58:31.760 but you know, that the Quran, the Quran was revealed in a particular time and place in seventh

00:58:39.120 century Arabia. So there were different norms and values then. So something like cutting off the hands 0.97

00:58:44.800 of thieves did not offend the sensibilities of, of people at that time. And so the idea there was,

00:58:53.200 so what was God's intent? Some scholars will say that God's intent or the objective of those verses

00:59:00.000 is to have a deterrent effect. So the goal is to stop people from stealing. And that was an effective

00:59:08.000 way of doing that back then. But today we live in a different era. And if we want to achieve a similar

00:59:16.000 deterrent effect, there's other ways to do that besides chopping people's hands off, right?

00:59:21.840 I would argue there's probably no better way. I mean, it still would have, it would have a marvelous

00:59:26.800 deterrent effect still. And if God's goal is to deter theft, well then, you know, why not keep chopping?

00:59:36.720 You can see how what's, what's unstable about that kind of pirouette and why it can easily fall back to

00:59:43.200 the more straightforward and seemingly honest reading of the text, which is,

00:59:49.440 if it was good enough for God in the seventh century, it's good enough for God today. And he would,

00:59:53.520 and God in his wisdom would have put it differently if he meant it differently.

00:59:58.640 What you're basically saying, and again, I mean, you know, obviously, you know, I love Majid and

01:00:02.480 I certainly hope the project of, of reconstruing everything offensive in the tradition succeeds. But

01:00:09.200 the reason why this is an asymmetric battlefield is that the straightforward, literal, and good for

01:00:17.760 all time interpretation is always available to the person who wants to pick up the book and say,

01:00:24.560 well, listen, you know, what I'm hearing from Majid and Shadi and all these other overeducated

01:00:29.920 Muslims is that they know better than what God literally said. They, they know, they know what

01:00:38.080 God meant more than God did. No. Okay. But I don't think that I do. So, so I'll say this. Um,

01:00:44.800 I don't know if I'm right. Um, and that's why I don't. So, you know, sometimes people basically ask me

01:00:52.320 for fatwas. I'm not a theologian. I'm not in any position to tell people what God may have or may not

01:00:59.600 have meant with certain verses. This is just my, this is just me speaking as a citizen, as a person,

01:01:06.320 right? As an individual. And I'm willing to entertain the possibility that I'm wrong. And God

01:01:14.160 does in fact want people in this world to cut off the hands of thieves. I don't, I, I don't like that

01:01:23.600 idea. It makes me uncomfortable. And I also have, I also not to get into them, have somewhat complex

01:01:29.840 views on the nature of justice and something that you and Majid actually get into in, in your book as

01:01:36.560 well, which is this question of the created versus the uncreated Quran. I don't want to get into all of

01:01:43.120 that, but I'm someone who would like to think that God, that God, God is not going to commit

01:01:51.520 injustice. God is incapable of being unjust because he is supposed to be the most just.

01:01:59.520 So I consider certain things like, for example, like, um, husbands, um, I don't know, marital rate

01:02:08.000 to give one example, or husbands beating up their wives over a disagreement. Um, I'm not,

01:02:14.880 I'm not comfortable believing in a God that is okay with domestic abuse because that would undermine

01:02:23.360 one of God's qualities, which is being the bearer of justice.

01:02:29.440 Obviously, I can see the ethical wisdom in, in wanting to parse it that way. But again, it's,

01:02:36.880 it's open to the eternal quibble, which is, you're talking about an omniscient author here. If he

01:02:45.360 wanted to say it more clearly, he could have, right? And he's perfectly clear on, on apostasy

01:02:52.160 being a bad thing. Now he doesn't spell out the penalty for it in the Quran, as you know,

01:02:57.040 we need the hadith for that. But yeah, he's absolutely clear that this is not good and that

01:03:03.360 you should, you should fear and revile and, and in no ways befriend atheists and apostates and 1.00

01:03:11.040 blasphemers and anyone who would doubt the, the perfect veracity of this book. And that's a problem.

01:03:19.440 It's a social problem. It's a, it's a civilizational problem. It's a problem we have to figure out

01:03:24.160 how to overcome. And so, you know, interfaith dialogue and finding some way to moderate

01:03:30.800 that kind of sectarianism, you know, that's all progress in, in the 21st century sense. 0.79

01:03:36.800 But it's just very easy to see how that will keep falling back to the more straightforward

01:03:42.240 interpretation, which is, no, no, it's, it's clear here on virtually every page that God hates infidels,

01:03:50.000 right? And he's prepared a hell for them to go to. It's the whole point. It's the whole point of this

01:03:55.200 universe is to figure out how to get infidels into hell, right? If God had wanted to guide them, 1.00

01:04:00.480 he would have, right? And so he's in any sane ethical view, this is a totally perverse psychological

01:04:07.200 experiment. You know, you, you, you put, imagine putting stupid people into giving them a puzzle they 1.00

01:04:13.120 can't solve, right? Making it just too hard for them to solve, giving them no help at all. In fact, 1.00

01:04:18.480 giving them further reasons to be confused about the right solution and then punishing them with

01:04:24.480 an eternity in fire for failing to solve the puzzle you made that was too hard for them.

01:04:29.600 That's essentially the universe we live in if you're a Muslim or, you know, arguably if you're 1.00

01:04:34.960 a Christian as well. And so that's from a, the point of view of a non-believer, the whole thing is

01:04:41.360 absurd. But more consequentially and more relevantly to this discussion, it seems that the fundamentalist,

01:04:47.600 for lack of a better word, always has the advantage of saying, listen, just read the book and honestly

01:04:55.120 grapple with what it says here and absorb the fact that God had infinite freedom to put it any way he

01:05:02.400 wanted. If he wanted to tell you the universe was billions of years old, he could have told you that.

01:05:07.600 If he wanted to tell you about the importance of learning mathematics, he could have told you that.

01:05:12.800 But no, he's told you to treat women like property, right? Or continue the practice of slavery under

01:05:21.280 these, you know, more refined conditions or whatever it is. That's a problem. That's why

01:05:27.120 the Islamic State really is the crystalline version of the retort to any kind of modernizing efforts. 0.92

01:05:35.200 Sorry guys, we're going to, we're going to show you what the project actually looks like

01:05:39.120 and just tell us where we're mistaken.

01:05:40.880 But, but if the fundum, if the fundamentalist or literal literalist reading of scripture was the

01:05:47.600 default setting, then the majority of Muslims today would be fundamentalists and that they aren't. 0.96

01:05:53.760 I think that's a false conclusion. It's understandable. But the truth is, is that most Muslims happily

01:06:01.200 are human beings first. Insofar as they may believe in paradise, they're not sure of it,

01:06:08.240 say. They're not committed to just seeing this world as a loathsome moment of temptation on the way to

01:06:16.720 a sublime eternity. They want a nice life in this world for understandable reasons. And so their

01:06:22.720 commitment, either they're just not especially educated about what Islam is, and, but this,

01:06:27.840 this is not just Muslims we're talking about. We're talking about religious people in general.

01:06:31.280 This is true of Christians and Buddhists and Hindus and everyone else who's in thrall to some

01:06:36.560 otherworldly belief system. To the degree that they find life in this world captivating, beautiful,

01:06:43.600 worth maintaining, worth improving, they are captivated and they have, they have another

01:06:49.680 commitment. And when they read God saying something that seems inimical to maximizing human flourishing,

01:06:57.360 whether it's political or economic or intellectual or artistic or any other way, they decide to

01:07:03.840 disregard God's crazy edict there because it is incompatible with what they want out of life. And that's a

01:07:10.240 good thing. And most, even Muslims, for the most part, have been captured by that modern, secular, 1.00

01:07:19.040 humanist project. And that's the lever we have to keep pulling on some level.

01:07:23.520 Well, I mean, in a sense that I agree with you that Islam, well, maybe, so certainly Muslims are pragmatic,

01:07:32.080 because they have to be. But I think I would argue that Islam is also pragmatic and flexible, that it can

01:07:39.440 incorporate ideas from outside of scripture and then sort of retroactively Islamize them. And I know 0.97

01:07:49.600 that you argue, you know, if I recall in parts of the moral landscape, or maybe it was at the end of

01:07:58.000 faith, one of them that, that the, and some of the argument that you're making now that to the extent

01:08:05.920 that Muslims are pragmatic, it's because of things that are foreign to their faith. And it's because 1.00

01:08:12.400 of the sort of indelible pull of secularization that they cannot avoid because they live in the real

01:08:19.280 world. But I don't know why we have to see those things as outside of Islam or not falling within

01:08:26.720 the realm of religion. And that's, and that's why I think Islam has been quite flexible and resonant

01:08:36.080 to this very day, despite a lot of challenges to it, is that it is able to bring those other things

01:08:43.360 in. So someone can be fully modern, and fully Muslim and not have to choose where I think,

01:08:49.760 if you look at Christianity at a crucial moment in the 19th century in particular,

01:08:57.280 where people were essentially making a choice between being Christian and being modern, because

01:09:03.680 the church was so avowedly against popular modern concepts like universal suffrage or democracy or

01:09:12.400 socialism, where Islam has actually been quite nimble in this regard in being somewhat comfortable. 0.93

01:09:20.480 So that's why you have phrases that people use quite often, like Islamic democracy, Islamic socialism,

01:09:27.920 Islamic finance. And I think that's, that's key to understanding why Islam has been resistant 1.00

01:09:38.800 to this kind of more aggressive secularization that would privatize Islam, or to kind of put it in a

01:09:46.720 box. Muslims have realized, I think, by and large, that they don't have to put Islam in a box to live

01:09:54.480 in the modern world.

01:09:55.520 Let's get to this, because this is drawing to the heart of your claim, which most people find provocative,

01:10:02.080 which differentiates what you're doing or saying from what I certainly hear Majid saying. And this is

01:10:08.880 that, for all practical purposes, Islamism is here to stay, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. 0.99

01:10:16.880 I have a quote here from you, where you say, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing

01:10:20.160 for Islam to play an outsized role in public life. And you also say, quote, I see very little reason 0.63

01:10:27.520 to think that secularism is going to win out in a war of ideas. This is a kind of skepticism about

01:10:34.560 secularism. And that's coupled to something that you do seem to view as a kind of intrinsic good,

01:10:42.960 which is democracy, or the respect for democracy, or the outcome of a democratic process. So that as

01:10:50.000 long as the people tell you what they want, and their wants are made effective at the level of

01:10:55.760 government through the democratic process, it's not for us to say what they should want, or to

01:11:01.600 deny them what they want. And you seem to think that there's not really a deep argument for secularism,

01:11:09.600 but there is a deep argument for democracy. I want to talk about that a little bit, because I see that

01:11:15.680 the other way around. I don't see democracy to be an intrinsic good. If the people are imbeciles

01:11:21.040 or religious maniacs, well, then you could argue they're not ready for democracy. 1.00

01:11:25.840 Yeah. 0.97

01:11:26.080 Or democracy is suicidal. It could be suicidal. When I say that religion shouldn't play a 0.68

01:11:31.600 role in public policy or government, what I mean is that dogmatism shouldn't play a role, and

01:11:38.720 unreason shouldn't play a role, and the denial of science shouldn't play a role, and superstition

01:11:44.960 or a belief in magic shouldn't play a role. And the reason why secularism, let's just take a core

01:11:51.040 principle of secularism, which is at odds with much of what Muslims believe, and certainly much of what

01:11:58.480 Islamists believe, just a commitment to free speech and a commitment to freedom of thought, which is

01:12:04.400 really at the core. This is an intrinsic good for this reason. It is the only real error-correcting

01:12:13.360 mechanism we've got intellectually and ethically moving forward. The moment you say that unpopular

01:12:21.760 opinions, or new opinions, or startling opinions are not only unpopular, startling, new, and worthy

01:12:30.000 of criticism, perhaps, but illegal, we're going to punish you for having them, right? We will kill you 0.99

01:12:36.080 for your apostasy. We will kill you for the cartoon we didn't like, or the novel we didn't like, or the 1.00

01:12:42.480 play you shouldn't have staged. The moment you make that move, you put a brick wall at the horizon 1.00

01:12:48.400 of human conversation, and there's really no telling how bad that could be in The Limit. And the only

01:12:55.680 way we can move forward, morally and scientifically, and culturally, really, is to have conversation be

01:13:01.680 open. And that is fundamental in a way that democracy merely isn't.

01:13:06.480 Yeah, so let's see, a couple things there. So I guess one thing that's worth mentioning that,

01:13:13.920 so my own progressive views on certain issues, so I support gay marriage, I support decriminalization

01:13:20.720 of marijuana, things that are associated with classical liberalism, let's say, and the left as well in the

01:13:27.680 US. I guess I've sort of come to the conclusion that my arguments about those things would be

01:13:36.320 compelling to me and people like me. I'm under no illusion that they'll be compelling to a majority

01:13:44.160 of Egyptians or Pakistanis or whatever. So I actually am willing to acknowledge that my views are not going

01:13:51.840 to win out when it comes to Islam. And I have to be realistic about that. And so that's one thing I 0.99

01:14:00.080 would say.

01:14:01.120 Let me just get you to refine that or unpack that a little bit, because half the time I hear you say it's just that.

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - December 06, 2016

#55 — Islamism vs Secularism

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