Making Sense - Sam Harris - January 05, 2017


#59 — Friend & Foe


Episode Stats

Length

48 minutes

Words per Minute

178.14275

Word Count

8,692

Sentence Count

476

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

44


Summary

In this episode of the Making Sense Podcast, I sit down with Majid Nawaz to discuss his book, Islam and the Future of Tolerance, and to discuss the Southern Poverty Law Center debacle. We talk about anti-Muslim extremists, fake news, and the dark side of the internet, and how to deal with people who hate us for collaborating with the other. And we talk about the people who don't understand who we are, or don't want us to be included in their definition of "anti-Islamic extremism." And we discuss how we can work together to make sense of it all. This episode was edited by Alex Blumberg and edited by Annie-Rose Strasser. Our theme music is by my main amigo, Evan Handyside. The show was mixed by Matthew Boll. Additional music was made by Mark Phillips and Mark Phillips, with additional mixing and mastering by Ben Koppel. Sam Harris mixed this episode. If you like what you hear, please consider becoming a supporter of the podcast by becoming a patron patron of Making Sense.org. We don t run ads on the podcast, and therefore will be able to provide you with better listening experiences and access to all kinds of great shows, including the latest in our most listened to episodes. Thanks to our sponsors, including VaynerMedia, which makes great listening experiences, as well as our sponsorships, which helps keep us able to produce high-quality episodes like this podcast available to all of our listeners everywhere. Thanks again and thanks for listening to the podcast. and supporting the podcast! - Sam and I hope you enjoy what we're doing here! - Your support makes a better listening experience, and we're making sense. - Thank you, you'll get a better podcast, better listening to us, more of it, more listening, and more of your feedback helps us make sense, and you'll have a better time listening to our podcast, too, and a better understanding of what we do more of this podcast, which is more of us can help us all can do better of it. -- thank you, we'll make it better listening, you know what we know you'll be more of that? -- Thank you! -- Your support is much more than enough, thanks you're helping us out! -- we'll get it? -- and we'll hear you, more like it helps us more of you, too? -


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast.
00:00:08.820 This is Sam Harris.
00:00:10.880 Just a note to say that if you're hearing this, you are not currently on our subscriber
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00:00:46.980 Today's guest is Majid Nawaz.
00:00:49.760 Majid is well known to many of you.
00:00:52.480 We wrote Islam and the Future of Tolerance together.
00:00:55.260 He is a friend and now regular collaborator.
00:01:00.200 There's a film coming out by the same title based on that book, and it's based on a lecture
00:01:05.260 tour we did together in Australia at the beginning of 2016.
00:01:11.280 In any case, Majid is someone who I am proud to call a friend, whose work I deeply support.
00:01:16.660 And once he gets talking, you will understand why.
00:01:20.000 So without further ado, I bring you Majid Nawaz.
00:01:22.980 I am here with Majid Nawaz.
00:01:30.880 Majid, thanks for coming on the podcast.
00:01:33.040 A pleasure.
00:01:33.520 Thanks for having me again.
00:01:34.640 Bringing listeners up to speed.
00:01:36.400 Most will know this, but you and I have collaborated in now a variety of ways.
00:01:41.640 We wrote a book together, Islam and the Future of Tolerance.
00:01:44.020 And there will be a movie based on that book coming out next year.
00:01:49.700 I believe it's also called Islam and the Future of Tolerance.
00:01:52.840 So I hear.
00:01:53.500 We'll see how that goes.
00:01:54.680 But it's really been an immense source of gratification for me to collaborate with you,
00:02:00.420 given how fraught our initial meeting was.
00:02:02.860 And this is something we describe in the book and have described on a previous podcast.
00:02:07.760 But relevant to our conversation today, we'll be talking about some of the people who despise us.
00:02:14.340 We both have people who despise us, but a subset of each of those groups are the people who despise
00:02:19.420 each of us for collaborating with the other.
00:02:22.720 That's a weird thing to keep running into.
00:02:25.100 But in any case, there's a lot to talk about here.
00:02:28.020 And in no particular order, I'll read you the topics I have gathered since I knew we were going to meet in this way.
00:02:35.720 And then we can take it as we see fit.
00:02:38.720 There was a Southern Poverty Law Center debacle where they grouped you and Ayaan,
00:02:43.980 along with others, as anti-Muslim extremists.
00:02:46.540 We will want to hit that.
00:02:48.160 There is Syria and the rather obvious failures of Obama's foreign policy.
00:02:53.360 There's the related migrant crisis and the knock-on effects.
00:02:58.880 Brexit being one, Trump being arguably another.
00:03:03.100 There's Putin.
00:03:04.380 There's the phenomenon of fake news and the hacking of the election.
00:03:08.700 There is ISIS.
00:03:09.980 There's the assassination of the Turkish ambassador.
00:03:12.540 There's the atrocity in Germany at the Christmas market last week.
00:03:16.280 My exchanges with Robert Spencer and Shadi Hamid that I know you'll want to comment on.
00:03:22.300 A bunch of other things.
00:03:23.040 On this list, actually.
00:03:24.280 So let's get into it.
00:03:25.400 I guess the first place to start for me, let's deal with the Southern Poverty Law Center issue.
00:03:31.460 Because that really was just a crime against reason and common decency that we need to get into.
00:03:36.440 Actually, this is a similar problem here.
00:03:38.640 There's this general problem of people not being able to figure out who anyone is, right?
00:03:44.880 Just basic moral confusion about who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.
00:03:50.520 And if they're bad guys, how bad are they?
00:03:53.040 How bad are they compared to the next bad guy?
00:03:55.240 And there's a lot of confusion here that we should try to clear up.
00:03:59.280 Yeah, the Prophet Muhammad would tell you that's a sign of the Day of Judgment.
00:04:02.360 Right.
00:04:03.560 Let's hope not for a variety of reasons.
00:04:05.980 A messy preamble.
00:04:06.880 But once again, welcome, Majid, and say whatever you want.
00:04:10.180 But let's zero in on what the Southern Poverty Law Center did to you first.
00:04:15.520 Yes.
00:04:16.060 Well, you know, that was a debacle is the word you used, I think.
00:04:20.040 But it was certainly deeply, deeply disappointing to receive that news.
00:04:27.860 And look, you know, at the end of the day, it doesn't affect my reputation insofar as my name and work is relatively well known.
00:04:37.760 And so if it did affect my reputation, it's a bit like, you know, it's going to deflect.
00:04:42.800 You have the Wall Street Journal writing an editorial decrying this decision to list myself and Ayaan by name in particular as anti-Muslim extremists.
00:04:51.020 But then you had a whole bunch of other UK-based outlets, internet and online-based outlets, and people at the UN.
00:04:59.600 Karima Badun, who's the head of the UN's cultural rights, special representative for cultural and religious rights at the UN,
00:05:09.480 basically tweeting against the Southern Poverty Law Center and declaring their decision as against my cultural rights to be self-critical of my own culture.
00:05:21.180 And so I don't think in the long run it's going to affect my reputation.
00:05:25.560 Here's what I really worry about with this decision.
00:05:28.160 Two things.
00:05:29.040 First of all, it is a clear and present target on our heads.
00:05:33.700 That's number one.
00:05:34.780 So even if my reputation isn't affected among the middle-of-the-line Muslims who are still, you know,
00:05:41.560 trying to work out where they stand on the question of Islamism versus conservative Islam versus liberal reforming Muslims,
00:05:48.620 you know, even if it doesn't affect my reputation among them, those hardened extremists don't need any excuses but relish opportunities to target those who are critical of them.
00:06:00.620 And here is another opportunity.
00:06:02.380 What I wrote in my immediate response on The Daily Beast to this decision is that lists are for fascists.
00:06:08.960 Lists are—the only people that use lists in this climate are, for example, you and I, I think, have spoken before about this,
00:06:18.060 the lists that were produced to target atheists in Bangladesh, where they were then picked off one by one.
00:06:24.040 That was a list, and so many of them have been killed by extremists since that list was published against atheists.
00:06:32.120 The list that was put into the body of Theo van Gogh naming Ayan as the next person that they were going to target,
00:06:38.340 that's what lists do in this day and age.
00:06:41.080 And the left criticizes McCarthyism, and I just find it astonishing that,
00:06:46.620 as critical as the left rightly is of McCarthyism, that it finds it somehow justifiable for it to adopt the same tactics against what it deems as its enemies.
00:06:57.980 So that's reason number one.
00:06:59.100 I think lists lead to killing people off of the lists once they are compiled.
00:07:05.160 The second reason is a long-term reason, and it's not my reputation.
00:07:10.320 It's the reputation of those who are the next Ayan Hirsi Ali, the next Ali Rizvi,
00:07:18.460 the next people who are coming up who want to be critical of their own culture, their own heritage,
00:07:24.800 and be a bit more introspective about these challenges that we face.
00:07:29.540 And the danger is this puts them off.
00:07:31.480 The danger is that they come to the conclusion that the opportunity cost associated with this work is too high,
00:07:38.260 and so those next voices don't come to the fore.
00:07:42.200 One of the reasons it's so important for me to stay alive, apart from the fact that I want to stay alive,
00:07:46.340 is that by staying alive and by remaining a highly visible figure speaking out in this way,
00:07:52.700 I'm able to show by my mere existence practically to the up-and-coming generation that you can do this,
00:08:00.460 and that in doing so you can be successful, you can attract supporters around you,
00:08:04.980 and you can defy these people who would rather torture and behead those who disagree with them merely by existing.
00:08:13.640 But if that next generation comes to the conclusion that the opportunity cost associated with that is too high,
00:08:19.700 then it can be off-putting.
00:08:21.060 And let's keep in mind, this is not hyperbole.
00:08:23.620 I'm talking about a climate in which Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head for speaking in this way.
00:08:28.720 I'm talking about a climate in which those atheist bloggers in Bangladesh have been picked off a list,
00:08:37.800 but 84 atheist bloggers in 2013 were named on a list.
00:08:43.640 By the end of 2016, 10 of them had been assassinated by jihadist terrorists.
00:08:48.820 This is the climate we're talking about.
00:08:50.540 So when Hope Not Hate in the United Kingdom, which preceded the Southern Poverty Law Center,
00:08:55.540 it's their equivalent in the UK, when they compiled a similar list that included a Danish author,
00:09:01.840 journalist, and Islam critic Lars Hedegaard, he was later subjected to an assassination attempt.
00:09:07.720 Yeah, yeah.
00:09:08.560 Right?
00:09:08.900 And so Southern Poverty Law Center and Hope Not Hate, they should be ashamed of themselves.
00:09:13.320 And I hope and I believe that history will judge them as shamefully as it judges Senator McCarthy.
00:09:18.620 Yeah, well, let's remind people what the Southern Poverty Law Center is,
00:09:21.780 because its name really is kind of opaque.
00:09:25.120 It's a civil rights legal firm, essentially, that has specialized since the early 70s in suing
00:09:35.040 white, racist, Aryan nationalist groups in the United States.
00:09:41.020 So they're the ones who sued the KKK and other groups nearly out of existence.
00:09:46.580 And it's quite a painful irony, given the recent rise of white racism and identity politics and nationalism
00:09:56.220 during the most recent presidential election in the States,
00:09:59.640 that the Law Center has just torched its moral compass and reputation here
00:10:05.920 with this judgment on you and Ayan and perhaps others on that list as anti-Muslim extremists.
00:10:12.740 It's completely insane, obviously, with respect to you and Ayan, especially with respect to you,
00:10:18.780 because Ayan, you know, for all her obvious virtues in the world, you could at least argue that
00:10:24.540 she is anti-Islam in some basic sense because she's an apostate and she's spoken out, you know,
00:10:31.020 very clearly against Islam in totality in the way that I have.
00:10:35.700 But you are still a Muslim talking to the Muslim community as a Muslim and to paint you as a anti-Muslim extremist.
00:10:44.520 Someone is guilty of being, at best, utterly confused over there.
00:10:49.400 But what's amazing is that when their attention has been called to this problem, they've just doubled down.
00:10:55.020 That's the spirit of the time now.
00:10:56.520 When someone points out an error that you've made, however grievous,
00:10:59.620 you tell them to go fuck themselves and double down.
00:11:02.680 And that's what this person, Mark Potok, at the Southern Poverty Law Center,
00:11:08.280 the author of this list, has done, apparently, according to an Atlantic article.
00:11:13.180 Yeah, yeah.
00:11:13.800 It's shameful because we need an organization like this to keep watch on the real racists
00:11:20.700 and militia nutcases in the U.S.
00:11:23.360 And they, for decades now, have been a resource for journalists to go to and say,
00:11:28.620 is this person crazy and dangerous?
00:11:30.800 And they say, yes, that person's crazy and dangerous.
00:11:32.780 And the story gets published.
00:11:34.960 And it's really astonishing that they did this in the first place
00:11:39.320 and that they have not issued an appropriate mea culpa at this point.
00:11:42.320 Well, Sam, I'll tell your listeners, I'm very, very tempted to set up a crowdsource funding
00:11:46.920 to sue them, to do exactly to them what they did to the KKK.
00:11:51.060 It is inexcusable to put people on a hit list in this way.
00:11:55.280 We've just recounted the number of people that have been killed through such hit lists
00:11:58.640 because they've been deemed anti-Muslim and they've included atheists.
00:12:02.640 Ayan is no different to those 10 or so, roughly, could be more than 10 by now,
00:12:08.540 atheists who were killed in Bangladesh for exactly the same reason,
00:12:11.740 after being designated in exactly the same way.
00:12:14.680 And so I'm really tempted to sue them and do to them exactly what they did to the KKK.
00:12:19.660 I don't see this tactic as any different to McCarthyism.
00:12:22.700 It is as fascist.
00:12:23.700 It is as disgusting.
00:12:25.120 And I genuinely believe history will look back at these people
00:12:27.740 and see that they became the very monster, the very beast that they sought to defeat
00:12:32.380 in the way that I became an Islamist when I faced neo-Nazi racism growing up.
00:12:36.620 And I don't think they're going to back down.
00:12:38.780 They've had ample time to do it.
00:12:40.460 And the only thing that's stopping me is that, unlike in the UK,
00:12:43.400 where libel laws are a lot stricter,
00:12:44.740 here it's very expensive, very costly, and very difficult.
00:12:48.640 But I'm really seriously tempted to do it just to teach them a lesson.
00:12:51.960 They can't get away with this.
00:12:53.020 But anyway, let's see what happens with that.
00:12:55.620 Yeah.
00:12:56.100 Needless to say, you'll have the support of many people if you decide to do that.
00:12:59.020 But again, that is, you talk about opportunity costs.
00:13:02.460 That's a cost.
00:13:03.380 Forget the money aside.
00:13:05.120 It's a cost in time and attention on your side.
00:13:07.800 And it's all the more galling in that respect.
00:13:10.100 Well, let's move from that list to a person on it, Robert Spencer,
00:13:16.800 not to be confused with Richard Spencer,
00:13:19.320 who is now perhaps the most famous white supremacist in the United States.
00:13:24.200 Robert is quite a valuable critic of Islam.
00:13:28.180 He runs a website called Jihad Watch.
00:13:31.640 And he and I have never met or spoken publicly,
00:13:35.160 but we've managed to figure out how to skirmish a little bit nonetheless.
00:13:40.460 And this speaks to the larger problem of not being able to figure out who anyone is
00:13:46.820 or how sullied anyone should be by association.
00:13:50.980 And this is a problem that you and I both have ourselves.
00:13:54.080 You wound up on that list, as did Robert.
00:13:56.700 And Robert, I'm sure, feels it's no more justified in his case than it is in yours or Ayaan's.
00:14:02.320 And he's associated with people like Pamela Geller.
00:14:05.980 And I don't know how much daylight there is between Robert and Pamela.
00:14:10.040 And I've spoken about this on the podcast before.
00:14:11.700 I don't know how much anyone deserves their reputation for Islamophobia or bigotry or anything else that's unsavory in this area.
00:14:23.160 At one point on my podcast, I spoke about this problem quite transparently.
00:14:27.380 And I spoke about it with respect to Robert.
00:14:29.560 I said, listen, you know, I see that Robert has been stigmatized in this way.
00:14:33.420 I have been stigmatized in this way.
00:14:35.460 I know I don't deserve it.
00:14:36.880 I don't presume to know whether Robert deserves it in his case.
00:14:41.000 But I see the cost in this.
00:14:42.920 I see the reputational cost for someone like Robert because I have to think long and hard whether I want to have anything to do with him.
00:14:49.640 And I know people are doing that to me based on what's happened to my reputation at the hands of people like Glenn Greenwald and all the usual suspects.
00:14:58.260 It is like toxic waste.
00:14:59.680 It just spreads around and it's very difficult to clean up and no one has enough time or attention to figure out what the hell is going on.
00:15:07.620 And you just have to pick your battles.
00:15:09.780 And so I said this.
00:15:10.900 This really pissed Robert off.
00:15:13.320 And he's attacked me for, you know, for not having him on the podcast, for not engaging him.
00:15:17.580 He's attacked me for my collaboration with you.
00:15:20.060 He doesn't trust you.
00:15:21.400 No surprise there.
00:15:22.720 So it's a mess.
00:15:23.880 And I'm reasonably convinced that there's a fair amount of confusion operating even here locally with Robert and yourself.
00:15:33.220 So, for instance, before you answer, I would guess that you think there's probably significant daylight between me and Robert.
00:15:40.560 And you think Robert probably is a bigot or at least, you know, deserves some of his reputation for being a bigot.
00:15:47.660 I'm guessing that.
00:15:49.100 And he thinks you're, if not a stealth Islamist, someone who I really shouldn't trust as much as I do.
00:15:58.000 And that's where we are.
00:15:59.840 I am prepared to believe that both of you are significantly confused about the other.
00:16:05.200 I know Robert is confused about you.
00:16:07.300 I suspect you're returning the favor in this case.
00:16:10.360 And I say that just based on what I've heard Robert say publicly and never having engaged him personally.
00:16:16.300 So, in any case, I tee that up for you.
00:16:18.520 What's your view of the Robert Spencer situation?
00:16:21.680 Let me make this absolutely clear from the outset.
00:16:23.780 I don't think Robert, Pam Geller, or anyone belongs on that list because, in principle, I oppose lists.
00:16:29.980 So, to begin with, it's not that I think that Ayan and myself shouldn't be on the list and the others deserve it.
00:16:35.180 I oppose lists in principle.
00:16:36.880 And, in fact, a good few months before the Southern Poverty Law Center's list, I wrote an article in my regular Daily Beast column decrying the hope-not-hate list.
00:16:47.520 And I did so even though I wasn't named on that list.
00:16:50.540 Whereas Zuhdi Jasser, who's an American Republican Muslim reformer, was named on the list, as were a few other Muslims and many non-Muslims.
00:16:58.720 And so, the UK version of the SPLC, the Southern Poverty Law Center, did put out a list.
00:17:04.120 I wasn't on it.
00:17:05.140 And I wrote an entire column against it because I oppose lists in principle.
00:17:09.260 And so, for that reason, I don't think Robert nor Pam Geller deserve to be on the list.
00:17:14.440 I also don't think Robert Spencer is a racist.
00:17:16.900 I want to make that very clear.
00:17:17.900 There is a huge confusion in this conversation around Islam isn't a race and Muslims are not a race.
00:17:25.780 It's easy when your listeners think of Christianity to understand that.
00:17:29.160 Just as Christianity is not a race and Christians aren't a race, to be critical of Christianity isn't racism.
00:17:35.280 Even to be critical of Christians isn't racism.
00:17:38.780 It may verge sometimes onto bigotry if somebody were to, for example, want to create exceptional models of treatment just for Christians.
00:17:47.900 But that certainly isn't racism.
00:17:49.520 It may be anti-Christian bigotry, but it isn't racism.
00:17:52.740 And so, let's park racism out of this conversation because it really doesn't belong here.
00:17:57.400 And it's incredibly unhelpful when racism gets confused with a conversation around Islam and or Muslims.
00:18:04.100 Except the obvious problem, though, is that there are actual racists who say negative things about Islam.
00:18:11.760 And one can at least imagine that they're in part motivated by their racism.
00:18:16.160 If Richard Spencer said something about Muslims, yeah, I would rightly suspect his motivation behind saying it is racism.
00:18:23.820 Even if what he's not saying is racist.
00:18:27.160 And that's the difference between Robert Spencer and Richard Spencer.
00:18:30.860 Right.
00:18:31.560 Richard Spencer being the founder of the Alt-Right blog, who is a white supremacist.
00:18:35.000 Robert Spencer sharing very little with him apart from his name.
00:18:38.640 Yeah.
00:18:38.900 His family name.
00:18:39.840 So, I think if Richard Spencer said something like Islam is the mother load of bad ideas, to quote a famous neuroscientist, right?
00:18:48.260 I would suspect the motivation for why Richard Spencer is saying it is racism.
00:18:54.260 And he's using an argument that doesn't sound racist because he wants to present himself in a form, a sterilized form, when really his motivation is racism.
00:19:04.280 Whereas if the famous neuroscientist said that, I have no doubt in my mind or heart his motivation is not racism.
00:19:10.260 Right.
00:19:10.500 Right.
00:19:10.620 And so, that's the difference.
00:19:12.720 And in fact, Muslims will understand this.
00:19:14.300 Any Muslim listening knows this.
00:19:16.460 It's entrenched within our history that you can say the right thing for the wrong reasons.
00:19:22.160 When the Khawarij, which was the first terrorist sect that emerged in Islam, and they killed some of the companions of the Prophet Muhammad.
00:19:29.080 When they went up to one of the companions, whose name was Ibn Abbas, and they said to him exactly what ISIS says today.
00:19:36.200 They said,
00:19:37.100 There is no law but God's law.
00:19:41.140 You know, it's the ISIS slogan, right?
00:19:42.440 And they were killing the disciples of the Prophet Muhammad using the very same slogan that ISIS uses today.
00:19:48.360 And the companion of the Prophet said to them in response, he said,
00:19:51.760 The word of truth?
00:19:55.660 Obviously, he'd say that because he's a companion of the Prophet.
00:19:57.820 So, I'm not saying here that it is true that God's law must reign, right?
00:20:01.500 I'm just giving you a historical example here.
00:20:04.040 He said,
00:20:04.940 The word of truth used for unjust ends, right?
00:20:10.840 And so, it's very important to be able to isolate people's racist motivations from something they may be saying, which isn't racist.
00:20:18.960 But that isolation isn't done by speculation.
00:20:21.680 And what I'm not saying is, let's open up the doors and let's all speculate on Sam Harris's, you know, in quotation marks, racist motivations for saying Islam is a motherhood of bad ideas.
00:20:31.860 Because actually, it's done by evidence.
00:20:33.600 So, Richard Spencer, we know it because he's on camera giving a Nazi salute.
00:20:37.660 You know, we've got his writings where he tells us he wants a white ethnostate.
00:20:41.880 So, we know the guy is a white supremacist.
00:20:44.380 So, we have every reason, based on evidence, not to trust that his reasons for disliking Muslims are divorced from his reasons for not liking anyone who's not white.
00:20:53.620 And that's clear.
00:20:55.400 With Robert Spencer, not related apart from the last name, likewise, therefore, we mustn't confuse when he says things that sound like what somebody else that is racist may be saying.
00:21:07.320 That doesn't mean Robert Spencer's racist.
00:21:09.620 And as I said at the outset, nor does it mean anyone deserves to be named on hit lists.
00:21:13.920 If we don't like people, either we should name the organization or we should write columns about their opinions, not compile lists.
00:21:20.420 So, those are the two points I wanted to just put out there to start with.
00:21:25.500 As for the man himself, you know, the way I look at these things is, I mean, he and I will, like with many people, probably disagree on lots of things.
00:21:34.440 I mean, I disagree with him when he says that oaths of allegiance in the Congress should be allowed on any book, including any holy book, except for the Quran.
00:21:42.840 You know, I think that's a discriminatory practice and it's actually unconstitutional.
00:21:49.480 And therefore, I wouldn't agree with him on that.
00:21:52.240 I certainly wouldn't agree with him on his view that Bosnia should not be classified as a genocide.
00:21:58.200 Despite the killings there, the classification, in his view, shouldn't be, it shouldn't be designated as a genocide.
00:22:05.480 I disagree with that.
00:22:06.680 I don't think those disagreements, though they are vehement, I don't think those disagreements mean that I classify him as somehow a racist and certainly wouldn't put him on a list.
00:22:18.260 As for how that would mean I go forward and treat somebody like this, I'm always somebody who leaves open the door for change.
00:22:24.960 I engaged with Tommy Robinson.
00:22:27.920 And though it didn't lead to Tommy necessarily changing his individual views, and I never claimed it did, it did lead to Tommy leaving the EDL, which was Europe's largest populist anti-Muslim or anti-Islam street protest movement.
00:22:40.880 And so that was a, it was a limited success.
00:22:44.080 The EDL is not the same as it used to be, as it once was with Tommy at its head.
00:22:48.440 And so I, you know, engagement is always there as an option, but timing and time and how much someone's force fields are diminished by a previous collaboration are all relevant factors to how and when and who you engage with.
00:23:02.620 At this moment in time, if you were to ask me my opinion as to whether I'd be happy to engage and take on even more than what I've taken on by having this conversation with you, and you know the backlash on both sides that that created, I just don't have the energy or the, you know, the space at the moment.
00:23:17.660 I don't have the bandwidth.
00:23:18.980 I don't have the, let's say my force fields need some time to replenish before I engage on any other form.
00:23:25.000 You know, I did Tommy Robinson, it led to him leaving the EDL, then I spoke with you.
00:23:28.720 I'm not, I'm not averse to speaking to people.
00:23:30.960 And I think perhaps you've assumed that I'm more critical of somebody like Robert than I may well be.
00:23:36.720 I'm perfectly, you know, let's just say my, my understanding of the importance of dialogue outweighs my, my vehement disagreement on exactly, you know, those two areas, for example, that I mentioned.
00:23:48.860 With anyone, I would speak to Islamists who hold views far worse than Robert does, with a view to hoping that the dialogue in that sense leads them to a more centrist liberal ground.
00:23:59.880 I think the purpose of dialogue for me would always be to try and bring people to classical, the classical liberal center.
00:24:07.300 There's one last thing I'd say, I'd like to say here, and that's to my fellow liberals and my fellow Muslims listening to this.
00:24:13.620 And that is that we have to be proportionate in our condemnation.
00:24:17.720 And I vehemently, as I've said, would disagree with Robert on this notion that, that any book can be used as a, for an oath of allegiance, when swearing somebody in on any official capacity in Congress or the Senate or anywhere, except the Quran.
00:24:32.280 I vehemently disagree with that view.
00:24:33.940 But it's not the same as saying that gay people should be executed in an ideal Islamic state.
00:24:39.640 Right.
00:24:39.820 It's not the same as a belief that somehow Jews are like pigs and monkeys.
00:24:44.740 It's not the same as a belief that adulteresses or adulterers should be stoned to death, or that limbs should be chopped off for various crimes, or that apostates should be killed.
00:24:56.400 And, by the way, these beliefs aren't just fairy stories.
00:24:59.840 They are beliefs that are backed up by force in states, not just ISIS.
00:25:03.900 Let's keep that in mind.
00:25:04.840 But Iran and Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, where apostates and blasphemy and homosexuality are punished.
00:25:11.080 So it's not the same as being a fellow traveler for regimes that actually kill people for these things.
00:25:17.720 And so it's really important for my fellow liberals and Muslims to put our disagreements with somebody like Robert Spencer in proportion to the real bad world out there and what's actually going on.
00:25:29.420 The people that are attempting really to destroy our civil liberties are those people that support those sorts of regimes like Iran and Saudi Arabia and other Islamist organizations that are non-governmental and definitely jihadist terrorist organizations that make it their business to hunt people like me down and kill me.
00:25:48.700 I've got no doubt Robert Spencer is engaged in anything similar to that.
00:25:52.920 So I want to seize on this issue of the swearing in on the Bible or the Quran, because it connects to Keith Ellison, I believe, who Robert has been quite exercised about.
00:26:04.640 But first, I want to clean up a mess that I may have made.
00:26:07.920 I now have echoing in my ear my own use of the word Islamophobia from several minutes ago.
00:26:13.220 And I don't know that the scare quotes of derision were conveyed by my tone there, because I don't want to be one of these people who uses this term as though it were a legitimate one.
00:26:23.700 I think this term has been consciously engineered to prevent us from talking honestly about Islam, Islamism, jihadism, etc.
00:26:32.320 I just want our listeners to know that I have not caught the virus, or if I did, I've only had it for about five seconds.
00:26:38.480 And I also don't want to have caricatured Robert in my effort to untangle my previous mentionings of him on the podcast.
00:26:47.960 I have no reason to believe Robert is a bigot and someone I couldn't have a perfectly reasonable conversation with.
00:26:53.600 I simply don't know.
00:26:54.900 And given how much I talk about this issue and how loath I am to keep talking about it,
00:27:01.320 I, like you, feel as a matter of priority, a public engagement with Robert is probably not on the calendar anytime soon.
00:27:08.740 But I don't mean to stigmatize him in the way we're talking about him.
00:27:11.940 But the issue is, again, it comes back to points of confusion about who anyone is.
00:27:16.620 And Robert is impressively confused about you, it seems to me.
00:27:20.940 And one reason why he's confused is your recent endorsement of Keith Ellison to head the DNC.
00:27:26.820 And you might just say who Keith Ellison is and why you endorsed him.
00:27:32.040 The only things I've ever said about Ellison are from five years ago, where I saw an interview he did on Real Time with Bill Maher,
00:27:41.040 where he was obscurantist about the link between Islam and jihadism in a way that I've come to expect of obscurantists.
00:27:49.960 And he said he didn't seem to say anything reasonable in that context, so I criticized him for that.
00:27:54.840 But beyond that, I haven't paid much attention to who Keith Ellison is.
00:27:58.740 But the fact that you endorsed him recently is one reason why Robert and his minions think,
00:28:05.060 I am insane, frankly, for having collaborated with you,
00:28:09.740 because you are now propping up a straight-up Islamist in Ellison.
00:28:15.640 Perfect segue, actually, Sam, to move on to Keith, because I've just said that I don't think Robert's a bigot,
00:28:21.560 but there are things I vehemently disagree with him on, but also that, in principle, there's no boycott.
00:28:27.240 You know, if I had the emotional and intellectual bandwidth and space, and my force fields were strong enough,
00:28:32.900 and as I said, they've taken a bit of a battering recently, what with the SPLC ruling,
00:28:37.120 and then having before that spoken to you and being battered for that,
00:28:40.200 and before that, having dialogue with Tommy Robinson.
00:28:42.460 Spell that out a little bit more. What you mean by force field, I assume,
00:28:46.200 is your reputation as a Muslim among Muslims who you are trying to reach as a reformer.
00:28:51.440 Yeah, yeah, the resilience, right? So the ability to do things that are out of our own echo chamber,
00:28:57.280 that are out of the box, that take a conversation to areas where previously Muslims hadn't been comfortable taking them,
00:29:03.980 and then take the flack for that, absorb it, allow the dialogue to move on,
00:29:07.820 to allow the conversation to enter new territories, and then take it to the next stage.
00:29:11.780 I don't think we're anywhere near where we need to be at the moment.
00:29:15.060 But it does take, it takes, you know, one takes a hit to their reputation for doing things that are unprecedented.
00:29:21.440 And, you know, when I spoke to Tommy Robinson, who, as I said, was the founder and the leader of the English Defence League,
00:29:27.600 which was an anti-Islam populist street protest movement,
00:29:31.180 when I spoke to him to help him leave the EDL, my reputation took a bit of a damage.
00:29:36.200 People like the British version of Reza Aslan, Mehdi Hassan, have never forgiven me since then.
00:29:42.880 And though my objective was very clear, it wasn't to change Tommy Robinson,
00:29:47.160 and we never claimed Tommy's views had changed.
00:29:49.860 It was to have him leave the EDL.
00:29:52.300 And the dismantling, the subsequent dismantling of that organisation,
00:29:56.160 is a good thing that we must bank.
00:29:58.240 Whether Tommy as an individual changes his views is a secondary thing,
00:30:01.280 which would also have been a good thing, but that we didn't even get the chance to do,
00:30:04.820 because the attack was so strong after the first thing was achieved.
00:30:08.780 And then, of course, I spoke to you, and you know I was called your porch monkey,
00:30:12.640 I was called a native informant, and the attacks,
00:30:15.700 your listeners will be very well aware of what happened after my collaboration with you.
00:30:20.000 And then, of course, the Southern Poverty Law Centre listed me as an anti-Muslim extremist.
00:30:24.780 So, when I say force fields, my resilience, my ability to continue having these dialogues
00:30:30.700 is conditional upon my reputation surviving within Muslim communities,
00:30:36.000 and within the left in particular, as an honest interlocutor.
00:30:40.200 If you want to change a community or communities, as I want to do,
00:30:44.300 then your reputation among them needs to at least, you know, on a scale of one to ten,
00:30:49.520 be around four or five.
00:30:52.060 Otherwise, there's no point, right?
00:30:53.620 I'm not interested in winning philosophical or intellectual arguments,
00:30:57.840 as though I am, as much as I am interested in bringing change
00:31:01.400 to where I believe a large part of, not all of,
00:31:04.520 but a large part of the problem resides, and where I think I can be most useful.
00:31:07.980 And so, in that sense, it's just not possible nor plausible at the moment
00:31:11.020 for me to engage in any form of rapprochement with somebody like Robert.
00:31:14.580 And also, sometimes personality gets involved as well.
00:31:18.120 I don't think that Robert's in the state of mind at the moment
00:31:20.600 that you and I were when we spoke.
00:31:22.160 I don't think that he's in the frame of mind where the principle of charity
00:31:26.320 will be employed in a conversation.
00:31:28.960 But I think he's more like where you and I were when we first met.
00:31:32.360 And I don't mean to sound patronizing when I say that.
00:31:34.980 Genuinely, from what I hear and read that he's saying about me,
00:31:37.840 it's going to take him a while to realize that what I'm about to say next
00:31:40.600 about Keith Ellison is meant with the best of intents and the most honest of intentions.
00:31:47.980 And that's going to take him, I think, a while just to see me continue the work I'm doing
00:31:52.080 before he applies such a principle of charity to me.
00:31:56.020 But this allows me to move on to Keith Ellison.
00:31:58.460 So as I said, I'm not averse to actually engaging with anyone.
00:32:01.580 And as I engage with Tommy Robinson, and as I in principle wouldn't be averse to engaging
00:32:07.140 with somebody like Robert Spencer, I likewise am not averse to engaging with somebody like
00:32:11.520 Keith Ellison.
00:32:12.440 And for me, there's no difference.
00:32:13.980 Whether somebody disagrees with me and I disagree with them vehemently on the anti-Islam spectrum
00:32:20.480 of things or on the too much Islam kind of Islamist spectrum of things, I see them as one and the
00:32:26.440 same, that it's a spectrum of engagement.
00:32:28.080 And my aim will be to bring everybody to what I believe is a classically liberal, human
00:32:32.880 rights grounded, critical and skeptical center that is also muscularly liberal, though.
00:32:39.040 The only thing we mustn't be skeptical about is our commitment to pluralism, human rights
00:32:42.940 and liberal values.
00:32:44.940 It's the only thing that we are certain of, and that is that nothing is certain and that
00:32:48.740 people making truth claims are not true.
00:32:52.400 And so my reasons for actually extending an olive branch to somebody like Keith Ellison,
00:32:58.080 are multifaceted.
00:32:59.680 And the first one, I think, is clear.
00:33:01.620 It's what I've just, everything I've just said, that actually because I've engaged with
00:33:05.360 the anti-Islam, well, let's say anti-Islam speakers and activists, now for a while, I think
00:33:14.100 it's probably about time to balance it out and to engage on the Islamist side again and
00:33:18.580 on the Muslim side again.
00:33:19.560 And so that's a pragmatic reason, reason number one.
00:33:22.800 And it's that balance that deters the future SPLC from listing me again.
00:33:27.960 So that's reason number one.
00:33:29.160 I'd say reason number two is a bit more political.
00:33:33.320 I'll give you an analogy with the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan.
00:33:36.340 He, very much like Keith Ellison, was a politician.
00:33:40.380 Now, let's be fair to politicians.
00:33:42.380 And so I'm going to caveat what I'm about to say.
00:33:44.980 It's not that they are bad human beings, but all politicians are opportunistic.
00:33:49.300 It's the nature of the game.
00:33:51.420 And as I say, it's not to say they're bad human beings.
00:33:53.760 The nature of politics is it forces you.
00:33:55.840 That's the job description.
00:33:57.040 You have to seek out an opportunity that you can capitalize and exploit for political
00:34:01.320 gain.
00:34:02.100 And that's how you maneuver, like a chess game.
00:34:04.460 Politicians' lives are like a chess game.
00:34:06.780 And so by definition, whether they want to be or not, they have to be opportunistic.
00:34:10.480 Otherwise, by definition, they wouldn't be politicians.
00:34:12.300 And so like Keith Ellison, the now mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, was an opportunistic politician.
00:34:18.820 Before being mayor, he was a low-ranking local member of parliament in an area called Tooting
00:34:25.540 in London.
00:34:26.480 And most of his support base, because he has a British, Pakistani, Muslim background,
00:34:30.640 opportunistically, much of his support base to get elected came from the Muslim community.
00:34:35.100 But if you're going to get elected from the Muslim community in this day and age,
00:34:38.400 your opportunism is going to reflect where Muslims are when they are surveyed.
00:34:43.700 And you and I have spoken about this in our book, in our collaboration.
00:34:47.820 Where Muslims are when they are surveyed isn't exactly liberal in everything, right?
00:34:53.580 In 100% of things.
00:34:54.680 They may be when it comes to things like whatever, immigration and racism, but they may not be
00:34:59.700 when it comes to things like gay rights.
00:35:01.000 And so that's just the nature of being a politician who's relied up until now on that vote bank
00:35:07.200 to build up a bit of a support base.
00:35:10.020 Now, Sadiq Khan did that, and Keith Ellison did that.
00:35:13.620 And what we're lacking on the Muslim, liberal, and even left side these days around the conversation
00:35:22.120 around Islamism and Islam is strong leadership.
00:35:26.020 Like Keith Ellison, the mayor of London used to be pretty much involved in sectarian Muslim politics
00:35:32.980 before he became mayor.
00:35:34.480 But he transformed, incredibly so by all accounts, both his enemies and his supporters.
00:35:41.740 And by the way, I was somebody who was critical of him, the mayor of London, when he was a Tusing MP.
00:35:48.140 And he was critical of me.
00:35:49.300 He's called me on television.
00:35:50.380 He's called the Quilliam people, quote, Uncle Tom's, for which he had to later apologize
00:35:56.280 while running for office as mayor of London.
00:35:58.880 He had to make a public apology for using that racial slur.
00:36:03.460 And so when I now speak of him in the terms I'm about to, it's as somebody who was on the wrong side
00:36:08.760 of the fence of this man.
00:36:10.040 But by all accounts, including London's Jewish community, the mayor of London now is doing a stellar job.
00:36:14.540 He's performing better than everyone expected as mayor of London.
00:36:20.780 And there are some reasons for that.
00:36:21.900 And what it is, is when you take an opportunistic, pragmatic politician who is not an Islamist
00:36:27.460 but happens to be a Muslim, who happens to be religious, and you and I have spoken in our collaboration
00:36:32.360 about the difference between traditional Muslims who are perhaps conservative in their social values,
00:36:37.460 even if they are liberal politically, and who are not Islamists.
00:36:43.180 When you take a politician like that, a religious Muslim who is politically liberal,
00:36:48.620 but by being religious it means that they are probably socially a bit conservative,
00:36:52.700 and you thrust them into the mainstream, their opportunism remains consistent.
00:36:58.440 What changes is the vote bank they begin appealing to.
00:37:02.860 And so Sadiq Khan had to suddenly appeal to a far broader range of potential electors
00:37:08.480 than just the Muslim sectarian backing he used to enjoy as a member of parliament for tooting.
00:37:14.120 And I predicted that the same would happen with Keith Ellison,
00:37:18.400 that suddenly when he realizes he's got to appeal to a far larger vote bank
00:37:22.940 that is opportunistic Muslim politicking would give way, the opportunism would remain.
00:37:30.580 And again, caveat that this isn't, I'm not using the word opportunistic here as a pejorative.
00:37:35.060 And that he would have to appeal to a far broader vote bank.
00:37:39.420 And I think the same thing that happened to Sadiq Khan would happen to Keith Ellison.
00:37:42.860 Why is that important that that happens?
00:37:45.220 I think that's important because, as I said, what we are severely lacking on the left
00:37:49.020 and among Muslims and among genuine liberals is leadership.
00:37:55.580 And I think that the sorts of people that can lead are the sorts of people
00:37:59.500 that need to be able to carry people with them.
00:38:01.520 So we need to be able to identify somebody who's an opportunist, not in the pejorative sense,
00:38:06.780 who is able to say to people, I came from where you came from,
00:38:11.180 and then drag them to the classically liberal center that I want them to drag them to.
00:38:16.500 Now, like Sadiq Khan, there are a few signs that Keith Ellison is able to do that.
00:38:21.540 One of them is that both Sadiq Khan, who's now the mayor of London,
00:38:25.280 and Keith Ellison, when faced with a choice on gay marriage equality laws,
00:38:31.040 despite their conservative Muslim backgrounds telling them that they should vote against this,
00:38:35.560 both voted for it.
00:38:38.140 And an Islamist can't bring themselves to do that.
00:38:41.660 An Islamist believes that that's the cardinal sin.
00:38:45.800 That's known as shirk.
00:38:47.000 That's changing God's law for man's law.
00:38:48.820 That's the very thing that makes an Islamist is their fight that they're prepared to die for,
00:38:54.160 that God's law takes primacy.
00:38:56.340 And the minute you switch God's law for man's law,
00:38:59.340 that's the difference between an Islamist and effectively the rest of the world.
00:39:05.520 That's the very thing they've defined as gone wrong with the world.
00:39:08.300 An Islamist would never vote for gay marriage equality,
00:39:10.720 because as we elaborated upon in our collaboration,
00:39:13.460 to an Islamist's mind, legislation and religious law are one and the same thing.
00:39:19.500 Whereas to other Muslims, who are the vast majority,
00:39:22.200 legislation can be separated from God's law.
00:39:24.660 So you can at once believe, as a normal conservative Muslim,
00:39:29.200 which I'm not,
00:39:30.720 you can at once believe that homosexuality would be a sin for you,
00:39:34.960 while still voting for others to choose whether they believe it's a sin for them,
00:39:39.160 and therefore giving them the freedom to choose that.
00:39:41.800 And that would be somebody who's religiously conservative, yet politically liberal.
00:39:46.740 That is a consistent stance for non-Islamist Muslims to take.
00:39:51.360 And so voting on gay marriage equality is a kind of litmus test,
00:39:54.820 and as would be things like normal consensual sexual relationships outside of marriage,
00:40:01.760 voting on the legalization of that,
00:40:04.580 would be a litmus test for whether somebody is an Islamist
00:40:09.600 or a Muslim who's engaged in politics.
00:40:11.680 Wouldn't it be rational to worry that a stealth Islamist would be able to pass those litmus tests
00:40:20.240 in the interest of remaining essentially hidden?
00:40:23.840 There's this concern that there are Islamists who are trying to get into power
00:40:28.580 and are willing to sacrifice their apparent Islamism,
00:40:32.620 or that they're willing to make their Islamism so non-apparent to do that,
00:40:36.200 that they might be able to vote for gay marriage, for instance.
00:40:38.940 Let's understand another thing here, that jihadists believe in going deep undercover
00:40:44.500 because they're at war.
00:40:46.140 So what matters for a jihadist isn't the proselytization,
00:40:49.760 isn't convincing somebody of their ideological position.
00:40:53.320 What matters, except obviously where they are in Muslim-majority countries
00:40:56.600 where they're trying to recruit people.
00:40:57.660 In the West, what matters for a jihadist is pretending they are more liberal than me.
00:41:01.780 It's pretending that in fact they're debauched so that nobody suspects them.
00:41:05.600 And yet when the time comes, they engage in an attack and that people are attacked
00:41:09.620 from where they never expected it, from the guy that owns the strip club, for example.
00:41:14.180 And so that's what matters for the jihadist, so that they are completely undetected.
00:41:19.160 For the Islamist, it's the opposite.
00:41:20.580 An Islamist doesn't believe that they are actively engaged in a physical war with the West.
00:41:26.020 They believe they're engaged in an ideological war.
00:41:28.200 Those two things are very different.
00:41:30.280 When you believe you're engaged in an ideological war,
00:41:32.600 there are some principles that are non-negotiable.
00:41:34.960 Otherwise, you've given up in the ideological war.
00:41:38.360 So just to drill down on this, so you believe there is no third alternative,
00:41:42.660 which is an Islamist who, by stealth, will get into a position of power
00:41:47.960 along with obviously a sufficient number of other Islamists
00:41:50.880 and then turn the tables politically, essentially non-violence.
00:41:54.900 So they're not jihadists.
00:41:56.080 They're not just waiting for a moment to strike.
00:41:58.200 They're waiting for a moment to strike politically.
00:42:01.300 An organization like CARE, for instance, strikes me this way, at least some of the time,
00:42:06.660 where they're often tipping their hand.
00:42:08.680 They're saying semi-Islamist things.
00:42:11.480 And so that's why I see in them a less-than-liberal organization.
00:42:16.140 But I also at least imagine that I detect a fair amount of dissembling there,
00:42:21.480 where they're not actually being candid about what their actual views are.
00:42:24.580 They're not trying to win a war of ideas purely on the merits of their Islamism.
00:42:29.380 They're trying to—they're playing a double game.
00:42:31.800 They have a certain verbiage designed for export on CNN,
00:42:35.940 and then they have the way they presumably talk behind closed doors.
00:42:39.380 That's what worries me, and I'm sure that's what worries Robert Spencer about a person like Keith Ellison,
00:42:44.540 that he's actually more doctrinaire than you might be allowing for based on his,
00:42:50.220 in this case, supporting gay marriage.
00:42:52.440 Well, so there is that third option, and they do exist as well.
00:42:55.520 We have, whether it's CARE or organizations in the UK, like the MAB, the Muslim Association of Britain,
00:43:01.860 there are brotherhood-founded and backed organizations that seek what we call entryism.
00:43:07.920 In fact, my critique of entryism in the British context is one of the reasons the SPLC,
00:43:14.180 when they doubled down, listed me as an anti-Muslim extremist,
00:43:17.400 because we've actually witnessed entire institutions such as schools in Birmingham
00:43:22.360 being taken over by these entryists, and in the end, the national body that monitors education,
00:43:30.040 known as Ofsted, the Office for Standards in Education,
00:43:33.200 had to intervene and sack the entire board of governors of a school
00:43:36.560 and bar them from ever standing as school governors ever again,
00:43:41.460 because this whole entry, it was major front-page news in the UK, carried by the Times.
00:43:45.960 And in that British context, I was talking about it,
00:43:48.600 and the Southern Poverty Law Centre decided that must mean I'm an anti-Muslim extremist,
00:43:52.600 even though by the implication, the Office for Standards in Education in the UK is also anti-Muslim.
00:44:01.360 It doesn't make sense.
00:44:02.500 But there is that category.
00:44:04.100 We have the borough of Tower Hamlets that was taken over,
00:44:07.080 backed by the IFE, Islamic Forum Europe,
00:44:10.840 and other Islamist groups based in Tower Hamlets,
00:44:13.440 and the mayor of that borough had to be struck down by a judge in court
00:44:18.020 and barred from ever standing from office again,
00:44:20.140 using a law that had been originally devised,
00:44:23.580 an ancient law that was devised to resist Catholicism during the times of the Reformation.
00:44:29.220 It was a law called Undue Spiritual Influence,
00:44:32.300 and the judge had to resurrect this law to kick out an elected mayor in the borough of Tower Hamlets
00:44:37.620 so that he didn't, because he said he was coming under the Undue Spiritual Influence of Muslims and Muslim groups.
00:44:43.840 So that's, you know, and I've written about these things in my columns.
00:44:46.340 I do not think Keith Ellison is one of those.
00:44:48.660 And I know the man, and I know an Islamist.
00:44:50.920 I can smell an Islamist from a mile away.
00:44:52.820 I used to be one myself, and I went to prison for being one.
00:44:55.540 I can assure you that Keith Ellison is not an Islamist.
00:44:59.500 There may be, in fact, just as strongly, I can assure you that probably certainly is a blind spot
00:45:05.800 that he has towards people like that.
00:45:08.000 Everyone has cultural blind spots.
00:45:10.040 I'd suggest that somebody like Robert Spencer has a cultural blind spot
00:45:13.040 to people who are convincing him not to classify Bosnia as a genocide.
00:45:17.640 You know, everyone has these blind spots because they're more worried about some things than the other,
00:45:20.840 so they don't dedicate as much thought to those other things.
00:45:23.400 And what I'm hoping is Sadiq Khan had those blind spots.
00:45:27.140 What I'm hoping is that somebody like Keith Ellison can become somebody like Sadiq Khan.
00:45:32.120 When you get somebody like that in position, they become the best line of defense against those entryists
00:45:38.000 because they're able to then see them and spot them coming from a mile away.
00:45:41.860 Keith Ellison knows.
00:45:43.080 He knows that there are Islamists within our community.
00:45:46.480 I've seen him speak about this in the past because they've sometimes called him,
00:45:49.820 they've decried him for being too liberal because of some of the assaults he's taken in Congress.
00:45:55.560 And the fact that he pulled out of the Muslim American Society's annual conference,
00:45:59.140 where he was scheduled to deliver their keynote address,
00:46:01.820 and the Muslim American Society has ties with some Islamist-backed organizations,
00:46:07.700 has hosted some anti-Semitic speakers like Muhammad Ratib al-Nabulsi,
00:46:12.260 who has said, I'm going to quote to you, he said,
00:46:15.640 homosexuality leads to the destruction of the homosexual.
00:46:19.060 That's why, brothers, homosexuality carries the death penalty.
00:46:22.560 Now, this is a speaker that was scheduled to speak at a conference that Keith Ellison was scheduled to speak at,
00:46:27.000 and he pulled out.
00:46:27.740 So he knows the political cost of being associated with these people.
00:46:31.580 And what I'm hoping is that an opportunistic politician that he is,
00:46:37.180 when he sees that his vote base is significantly broadened,
00:46:41.040 that he realizes that there are more votes in the liberal side of this debate
00:46:45.760 than there are in appealing to extremists and their backers,
00:46:49.300 like this sort of speaker that we've just quoted.
00:46:52.500 And then he acts as the front line of defense against these people,
00:46:55.960 as Sadiq Khan now is.
00:46:57.280 Let me just say that Sadiq Khan, who prior to becoming the mayor of London,
00:47:01.560 called Quilliam an Uncle Tom,
00:47:03.720 has now been called an Uncle Tom by the very types of people
00:47:07.440 that were his audience when calling Quilliam Uncle Tom.
00:47:10.900 You know, the tables have turned on him.
00:47:12.860 And when that happens, these people,
00:47:15.500 not just for politically opportunistic reasons,
00:47:18.020 they also, their emotions get invested in realizing,
00:47:20.480 hold on a minute, you know,
00:47:21.740 when you're put on the line like that and called an Uncle Tom or a native informant,
00:47:25.240 you start realizing how ridiculous these sorts of slurs are.
00:47:28.680 And it puts a distance between you and the ignoramuses
00:47:31.520 who are using this type of language.
00:47:33.800 And I think that's what's going to happen to Keith Edison.
00:47:35.680 And listen, if I'm wrong, you know,
00:47:36.900 I'm somebody who follows his conscience and really doesn't care, right?
00:47:41.040 If he starts pandering to homophobes,
00:47:43.780 if Keith starts pandering to Islamists and justifying their views,
00:47:47.060 I'll call him out on it.
00:47:48.200 And it will hurt him a lot more if I call him out on it,
00:47:50.980 because I've just endorsed him.
00:47:52.800 And so that's, you know, that's where I stand on this.
00:47:54.640 I don't think he's an Islamist, but I'm hopeful.
00:47:56.920 And if I'm not engaged in changing members of my own communities
00:48:00.700 and other fellow liberals and those on the left,
00:48:03.580 if I'm not engaged in changing them
00:48:05.540 and bringing them to the classically liberal center,
00:48:08.860 I'm not sure what I should be doing.
00:48:10.880 I mean, that's what I set out to do.
00:48:12.180 This is my job.
00:48:13.100 It's my job to engage people like Keith Edison.
00:48:15.220 Yeah, yeah.
00:48:15.980 And as I said before, I believe on this podcast,
00:48:20.040 one of the most impressive things.
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