Making Sense - Sam Harris - #81 — Leaving Islam

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

00:00:08.820 This is Sam Harris.

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00:00:46.500 Today on the podcast, I'm bringing you a conversation with Sarah Hader, who is the co-founder of the

00:00:53.260 Ex-Muslims of North America. 1.00

00:00:54.720 Many of you know Sarah from Twitter.

00:00:58.900 There have been many requests to get her on the podcast.

00:01:02.080 Very happy to finally have her on.

00:01:03.680 But we spoke after the Manchester bombing, but as it turns out, just before the London

00:01:12.100 atrocity.

00:01:13.200 And I suppose nothing really changes with each new event, but it is a very strange feeling

00:01:21.400 to more or less expect some new eruption of jihadist insanity sometime soon.

00:01:29.760 So it's just to say it's impossible to keep up with what's happening.

00:01:33.880 But unfortunately, I fear this conversation will seem timely for the rest of our lives.

00:01:39.360 Sarah and I talk about what it means to leave Islam, about the unique issues that surround

00:01:47.640 being an ex-Muslim as opposed to being an ex-Christian or an ex-Mormon or even an ex-Scientologist. 0.65

00:01:53.180 And Sarah shares this experience that very few people spend a lot of time thinking about, which

00:01:59.960 is the experience of being an apostate living in what would otherwise be the safest places 0.76

00:02:07.260 on earth in the safest period human beings have ever enjoyed, but nevertheless being imperiled

00:02:14.700 by the sectarian hatreds of one community.

00:02:20.040 There's a lot of talk about Islamophobia in the news.

00:02:24.160 There's very little talk about the danger and difficulty of being an ex-Muslim in the West.

00:02:31.800 That's why Sarah's organization and her voice are so important.

00:02:36.180 So, without further delay, I bring you Sarah Hader.

00:02:40.300 Enjoy.

00:02:44.700 I am here with Sarah Hader.

00:02:48.300 Sarah, thanks for coming on the podcast.

00:02:50.540 Thank you for having me.

00:02:52.120 I have been a fan of yours for, it has to be at least a year, two years.

00:02:57.340 When did you give that talk at the Secular Conference?

00:03:02.340 It was at the American Humanist Association.

00:03:04.780 It was in 2015.

00:03:06.980 I've started to realize that when I estimate the amount of time that has passed, I always

00:03:12.000 should double it.

00:03:12.780 So, I said a year and then I went to two years because I knew I had to be wrong.

00:03:16.680 This is what happens when you age.

00:03:18.540 That talk was fantastic.

00:03:20.240 And that was, was that the first talk like that that you had given or had you been sort

00:03:25.320 of on the circuit for a while and I just hadn't noticed?

00:03:27.580 I spoke here and there about my organization, Ex-Muslims of North America, and just apostasy issues.

00:03:35.620 That was the first time, however, that I was really talking about the issues with liberals

00:03:41.380 and Islam and how it kind of coincides in this, in this very strange way.

00:03:48.300 Obviously, many people love that talk and you have many fans among my listeners on this

00:03:52.700 podcast and many have requested that you get on.

00:03:56.400 So, I'm very happy to have you here.

00:03:59.240 Speak for a moment about your background and just how you came to be one of the founders

00:04:05.660 of Ex-Muslims of North America. 0.59

00:04:08.180 Sure.

00:04:08.820 So, I grew up in what I would consider to be a pretty liberal Muslim family.

00:04:17.680 I didn't know at the time that this, that my upbringing was so liberal relative to other

00:04:23.540 Muslims.

00:04:23.880 I only found out as I began to meet other ex-Muslims about what their reality was to 1.00

00:04:29.120 know how good I had it.

00:04:31.620 But I grew up in a relatively liberal Muslim family, which means that they allowed me to

00:04:37.160 move away for college.

00:04:38.320 They allowed me to sort of be a little bit more independent than Muslims generally are.

00:04:44.760 Where were you?

00:04:45.420 Where were you growing up?

00:04:46.100 I grew up in Texas.

00:04:48.540 I was born in Pakistan and I moved here, I think I was seven or eight when we immigrated

00:04:54.680 to the United States.

00:04:55.500 I remember the process of coming here.

00:04:57.720 I remember the shock of coming to this country.

00:05:00.280 I actually remember the first time I saw a woman in public whose legs were exposed. 1.00

00:05:08.800 It was a flight attendant when we stopped in Europe on our way to America.

00:05:13.440 And I remember the shock.

00:05:14.620 I remember feeling, not really understanding what I was looking at and not really understanding

00:05:20.200 that this was going to be a norm in America.

00:05:22.920 Interesting.

00:05:23.620 So you came from Pakistan when you were, you said eight?

00:05:28.920 Yes.

00:05:29.760 And why did your family leave?

00:05:32.560 Was there any, because it sounds like you had a family that was more liberal than most.

00:05:38.720 Was that at all part of the reason why they left?

00:05:41.800 Or was it just a job change?

00:05:43.800 Or what was it?

00:05:44.720 Well, I think we would be called economic migrants.

00:05:48.300 And I think it was just this general desire for a better life.

00:05:52.500 However, my father does tell me that he specifically wanted a better life for his daughters.

00:05:57.520 He had two daughters at the time, and he wanted us to have more opportunities, and he knew he would get that here.

00:06:03.100 So when did you realize that you were a bit of an outlier in terms of your family environment with respect to religion?

00:06:11.580 I started, well, I think most atheists would say this, and that's how I do identify as an atheist, that we were always sort of questioning.

00:06:20.820 There were always sort of problems with religion, and I had them from an early age.

00:06:25.980 But there was always ways for me to justify religious traditions that I may have found problematic.

00:06:32.940 Until I got to be a little bit older, I was in my mid-teens when I really started looking at the religion in a really critical way.

00:06:41.200 I started actually reading for myself the Quran and finding that there were problematic verses and things that didn't really make a lot of sense to me.

00:06:53.580 And the more that I looked into it, the less that it made sense.

00:06:57.420 And I actually encountered quite a few militant atheists, and this is why, even to this day, I don't think that militant atheism is such a horrible thing,

00:07:06.980 because it does push people like me to look into their faith, if only for the reasons that we want to defend it.

00:07:15.460 And that is what happened to me, that I knew some atheists, and they were giving me some questions, some probing questions,

00:07:23.380 and I wanted to be able to defend my faith.

00:07:25.480 So that was one of the reasons that I looked into it with such urgency, because I wanted to be able to defend it,

00:07:32.400 and I found that there really wasn't much there for me to defend.

00:07:36.040 And so, you know, I left the faith.

00:07:38.540 Were these ex-Muslims, or were these Westerners?

00:07:41.800 These were Westerners.

00:07:42.840 These were people who came from a Christian background and then left their faith,

00:07:48.360 and then started pointing out the problems within Islam to me.

00:07:53.400 And, of course, I was offended.

00:07:55.040 So this is, you know, something that people talk about a lot, that Muslims are offended when you talk about their faith in a critical way,

00:08:02.280 and that's to be expected.

00:08:03.980 And I was offended.

00:08:05.040 I remember being offended.

00:08:06.720 But that offense, it doesn't really mean anything in the longer arc of what we're talking about, which is truth.

00:08:17.660 And, of course, people will be offended if you talk about something that they hold so dear.

00:08:21.460 But it did push me to look into religion.

00:08:25.740 Well, the offense is really a symptom of not having an argument.

00:08:30.220 You know, I don't get offended if someone claims that my deeply cherished mathematical beliefs or historical beliefs are false,

00:08:41.200 because either they have an argument or they don't.

00:08:44.740 And just offense never enters into it.

00:08:47.540 The fact that we're in the territory where someone only has their offense to wield shows that there's a problem intellectually.

00:08:58.240 That's probably a part of it.

00:08:59.500 At that time, when I was first being confronted with the problematic verse of the Quran, I didn't know it was possible. 0.85

00:09:07.080 That seems ridiculous. 0.97

00:09:09.260 And as I'm saying it, it sounds ridiculous. 0.90

00:09:11.220 But I remember at that time, not knowing.

00:09:14.020 You just didn't know what was in the Quran at that point when you first had these conversations.

00:09:19.380 I didn't know exactly what was in it.

00:09:21.080 And I didn't know that it was even possible to look at it in anything.

00:09:25.640 But as, you know, this extremely virtuous text, I didn't know that there was an interpretation like that out there.

00:09:32.320 So when I first encountered it, it was quite shocking to me.

00:09:36.180 So do you actually ascribe your becoming an atheist to these conversations?

00:09:41.440 Can you point to the conversation that was a tipping point or is the process more amorphous than that?

00:09:49.280 It was death by a thousand cuts.

00:09:52.840 This was definitely the encounter of pushback by what I would consider militant atheists was a part of it.

00:10:00.020 And this is why I defend militant atheism today, because I know that it had something to do with why I left.

00:10:08.320 But it wasn't the only reason.

00:10:09.560 There were a hundred different reasons that the religion was making less and less sense for me.

00:10:14.620 And I was starting to figure that out on my own.

00:10:17.180 And pushback from people that were non-Muslims did, you know, did influence me into looking at it in a deeper way with more urgency than I would have otherwise.

00:10:28.300 But I was finding that there were a lot of problems on my own.

00:10:31.460 There were, you know, historical problems.

00:10:33.380 There were contradictions within the Quran itself.

00:10:37.100 So there were a variety of issues with the faith.

00:10:39.460 So what is the organization you founded, Ex-Muslims of North America?

00:10:45.860 What do you guys do?

00:10:47.760 And it's hard to imagine many people listening to this podcast would be confused about this, but still there must be some.

00:10:53.820 But certainly many people, even most people in a wider society, might not understand why there's a special need for an organization like this.

00:11:05.660 What is so hard about being an ex-Muslim?

00:11:07.700 I think, well, like you said, it's not really well understood the extent to which there is Muslim conservatism and the way that Muslim communities in the West practice their faith and practice their traditions.

00:11:21.420 I know that at the time that I was sort of starting on getting involved in this sort of activism, that I thought that my experience with Islam was normal.

00:11:36.740 I thought that I was a representative of a moderate Muslim.

00:11:39.340 And then when I started to meet other ex-Muslims, I found that this was not the case at all, that I was extremely lucky with my experience with my parents, the fact that I had left the faith and, you know, I hadn't been threatened by them. 0.97

00:11:54.120 I hadn't been abused in any serious way.

00:11:56.400 And I hadn't realized that I was kind of an outlier with that experience.

00:12:03.000 And as I began to meet other ex-Muslims, I started to see that there was a huge need for people to just to meet others like themselves.

00:12:12.780 And for me, it was kind of a curiosity, just wanting to meet other ex-Muslims.

00:12:16.240 But I knew that for others, that was not the case.

00:12:18.360 So myself and Mohammed Sayyid, we were we were holding meetups for for ex-Muslims very covertly.

00:12:26.080 There was a lot of like, you know, security protocols involved.

00:12:30.300 But we were holding these just private gatherings of ex-Muslims.

00:12:33.260 And we started to find that there were people coming from I mean, it was outrageous from from eight hours away. 1.00

00:12:40.180 There would be coming eight hours one way to attend, you know, an hour and a half long meeting just to just to be there and to experience the feeling of of being with people that are like yourself, who don't demonize you for thinking the way that you do.

00:12:56.620 And so when we when we started to see that, how big of a how major of a thing it was for other ex-Muslims, we knew that this was something that needed to be this needed to be a real thing.

00:13:08.480 We needed to organize, we need to create an organization around it.

00:13:11.080 We needed to foster communities like the one that we had started to build in D.C., all across the United States and Canada and teach them what we had learned about community building, about security, about privacy.

00:13:22.080 And I don't think, like you said, many Western, even atheists wouldn't really understand the extent to which ex-Muslims are ostracized and even persecuted with their communities within their communities, even in the West, to the extent to which that there's anyone who can relate to this.

00:13:40.640 I find that people who come from Mormon backgrounds or just extreme Christian sects and Hasidic Jews can can kind of understand what we're coming from and can kind of understand the extremes to which their community can go to defend their faith.

00:14:01.000 So I don't think this is something that is understood by the broader community of even atheists.

00:14:07.280 And so XMNA exists so that we can form these communities.

00:14:10.220 And I think the the thing that we do that is most different than any other kind of atheist community is that we provide ways for them to be anonymous.

00:14:17.900 All of our all of our all of our meets and our events are completely secret and they're only available to people who are already part of the ex-Muslims of North America communities. 1.00

00:14:30.080 And in order to join the community, you you have to go through kind of a screening of sorts.

00:14:35.980 That's what we call it.

00:14:36.860 And it's not a science, it's kind of an art, but we do the best we can to ensure that the people that are joining are those who understand the rules and regulations that we have and also will keep the privacy and security of others in mind and to screen as best as we can for people who may be malicious actors who are coming in for for other reasons.

00:14:57.500 The emphasis on security issues is a sign of how different the situation is for Muslims and, you know, I have a weird vantage point or a unique vantage point on this, perhaps, because I see so much of what it is to become an atheist from all these different sources, being an ex-Mormon, an ex-Muslim, an ex-member of a cult, an ex-Scientologist.

00:15:24.280 I see the exits and what is unique about Islam is this implicit or very often explicit threat of violence. 1.00

00:15:36.840 And so the security concerns that you're describing strike me as fairly unique to Islam.

00:15:43.080 And that's just still, again, it amazes me that this is an issue that people are unaware of or that obscurantists can successfully cover over when this gets debated in public.

00:15:57.820 But it is a controversial point about which it seems to me that there can be really no debate at this point, that the laws around apostasy, the fact that leaving the faith is considered worthy of death, certainly if you speak against it, you can find that in the Old Testament, too.

00:16:17.020 You're not tending to see Jews or Christians, however extreme, even reference that edict.

00:16:25.220 It's just there are theological reasons why that's the case, there are historical reasons, but I'm not hearing from ultra-Orthodox Jews.

00:16:33.600 I hear from them and I hear just how difficult it is to be exiled from their community and to lose their marriages and lose their kids and all the rest.

00:16:41.300 But I don't hear that they're worried that their members of their family will come and kill them.

00:16:46.740 And I routinely hear that from ex-Muslims.

00:16:50.620 Right. So there's a pretty common thing I hear from ex-Muslims is when they're describing their family, they'll say, well, you know, my parents are pretty liberal.

00:17:05.240 I'm not worried about them killing me.

00:17:07.120 And in any other context, that would be an outrageous thing to say, that they're pretty liberal.

00:17:12.400 And in order to justify this feeling, you know, you feel like they're not going to they're not going to kill you.

00:17:18.500 But that in itself, I think, should be it should be telling that that our organization needs to exist the way that it does,

00:17:26.400 that that we do need to follow all these bizarre security and privacy protocols.

00:17:34.140 We should we really shouldn't have to, but we do. And we do for a reason.

00:17:38.280 And it's interesting to me that that that is I find it to be ignored largely by the mainstream media,

00:17:44.840 that this is something that ex-Muslims feel like they need to do. 0.86

00:17:48.560 They need to hide. Many apostates are not open about their lack of faith.

00:17:52.780 I see, you know, I know many ex-Muslims privately.

00:17:57.080 You know, I would say that myself and maybe, you know, Mohamed Sayed, the president of XMNA,

00:18:02.680 I would I would say that between the two of us, we probably know more ex-Muslims than anybody else in the world. 0.98

00:18:08.140 And I see sometimes, you know, I'll see in the media of various people that are participating in charities or in public service organizations,

00:18:19.980 and they are represented, you know, they're represented as Muslims.

00:18:23.260 You know, this Muslim person is doing, you know, XYZ charitable endeavor, and it's very wonderful.

00:18:28.200 And I will know privately that these are ex-Muslims, but they're not able to be open about their lack of faith 1.00

00:18:35.300 because of the blowback that they will get in their community.

00:18:37.900 So if you're, for example, you're working on a charity serving people in poor women in Pakistan,

00:18:45.940 you're not going to be open about your lack of faith, because if you are open about your lack of faith,

00:18:50.080 you're not going to be able to reach that community at all.

00:18:52.200 You're not going to be able to have any contact with them.

00:18:54.160 So in order for you to continue doing the work that you're doing, you're going to have to lie about your faith.

00:18:58.720 So a lot of ex-Muslims do do exactly this.

00:19:02.380 And to the extent that we're talking about religious freedom, I know we talk quite a bit in the mainstream media,

00:19:08.220 especially liberal media, leftist media, there's a lot of conversation about civil liberties of ex-Muslims

00:19:15.840 and religious freedoms, and we talk about them in context of certain traditions like the hijab.

00:19:21.360 To the extent that the most fundamental freedom within the context of a belief system isn't guaranteed,

00:19:28.960 that is, to say, the freedom to leave, the freedom to not believe at all,

00:19:34.900 to the extent that that isn't guaranteed, in my opinion, we can't have a conversation about freedom within that religion at all.

00:19:44.740 Everything is, to some extent, coerced, because the most basic freedom, the freedom to leave, is never guaranteed.

00:19:50.760 And the security concerns are really pernicious because even if nothing ever happens, right,

00:19:57.820 even if you never become a victim of any kind of violence, the plausible concern about violence is ever-present,

00:20:08.360 and it adds friction to everything you do.

00:20:11.840 Now, I encounter this in my personal life because of the issues I touch,

00:20:15.880 but it has to be considerably worse for you and for anyone who's doing something similar.

00:20:22.040 I'm very close to Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

00:20:24.840 I know what her life is like.

00:20:26.200 I'm close to Majid Nawaz.

00:20:28.540 I'm sure we'll talk about what he's doing and how it may be different from what you're doing,

00:20:33.400 but still, anyone who's working in this space inherits this massive burden of worrying about

00:20:41.700 what will happen when they become too visible.

00:20:45.100 And it's as simple as not being able to hold a conference, right, or not being able to have physical offices.

00:20:52.200 If you're going to have an atheist conference, generic atheist conference, or a meetup for ex-Mormons,

00:20:59.400 you never have to think that someone might want to show up and not only annihilate you, 0.70

00:21:07.980 but annihilate himself just for the pleasure of killing everyone in attendance.

00:21:13.400 And this is an all-too-plausible concern given the world we're living in now.

00:21:18.840 Is there anything more to say about how you handle the security issue that could be useful for ex-Muslims 0.93

00:21:27.880 who may want to join your organization to hear, to put their mind at ease about how you handle this?

00:21:32.400 Or is there any more to say about what it's like to be trying to get a movement off the ground

00:21:38.160 under the burden of these kinds of unique concerns?

00:21:42.620 What I can say generally is that I don't think it's clear from the outside of the day-to-day struggle

00:21:51.180 that this presents with us running an ex-Muslim organization.

00:21:56.300 For example, we get nervous when we do simple things like go to the printer or go to the bank.

00:22:02.420 And we have reason to be nervous.

00:22:04.940 And there's a sort of paranoia that overshadows our basic day-to-day operations.

00:22:14.200 And it presents a difficulty in that it's difficult to do our work enough as it is.

00:22:21.960 And then on top of that, if you have to worry about being discriminated against

00:22:26.320 or possibly being harmed in a severe kind of way by your banker,

00:22:30.760 it makes the work that much harder to do.

00:22:34.920 But from here on out, I'd rather not go into the details of how we protect us.

00:22:39.720 Yeah, yeah. You did an interview with Jeffrey Taylor, which was a great read.

00:22:45.520 And you said one thing there that I wanted to read into this conversation.

00:22:49.680 You said,

00:22:50.540 If Muslims feel they're being badly treated here in the United States,

00:22:54.140 they can go to Muslim-majority countries.

00:22:56.540 But where can a person like me go?

00:22:58.800 I'm in the safest place I can possibly be,

00:23:01.400 and yet I'm too afraid to tell people where I live.

00:23:03.980 It's tragic for me that there's even a need for our organization.

00:23:06.720 And that really does expose just how unique a position it is to be an ex-Muslim. 0.57

00:23:13.960 You are in the safest place in the world to be if you're a Muslim, even, really. 1.00

00:23:19.620 I mean, we can talk about the problem of anti-Muslim bigotry,

00:23:24.060 but I think it is safe to say that most Muslims are safer in the U.S.

00:23:28.800 than they are in most Muslim-majority countries,

00:23:32.680 given how unstable and sectarian those tend to be.

00:23:35.560 But for an ex-Muslim in the U.S. or in really anywhere in the West, 0.56

00:23:42.580 I guess it gets worse once you go to Western Europe.

00:23:45.200 There is this real concern about not being protected by any community.

00:23:53.020 Right.

00:23:53.240 And just to mirror your language,

00:23:55.620 it's true that,

00:23:56.900 I believe it's true that most Muslims are safer in the West

00:24:01.020 than they would be in a Muslim country.

00:24:02.420 More Muslims are safer in the U.S. than our ex-Muslims. 1.00

00:24:08.440 Ex-Muslims are less safe in the U.S. 1.00

00:24:10.520 Ex-Muslims are less safe in Western countries than your average Muslim. 1.00

00:24:14.320 And I think that's a perfectly fair thing to say,

00:24:17.260 and it should be extremely concerning.

00:24:19.100 Yeah, and obviously you inherit all of the problems of, quote,

00:24:25.140 Islamophobia, insofar as that is a problem.

00:24:28.260 Having your name looking like someone who was born in Pakistan,

00:24:32.140 you encounter the same bias or bigotry

00:24:35.960 that any Muslim could be worried about going to an airport

00:24:39.500 or in any other situation where that would become relevant.

00:24:41.800 And yet you have this added concern,

00:24:45.500 which I would argue is a far more pressing one,

00:24:48.760 which is you have some percentage of the Muslim community

00:24:52.900 that thinks what you're doing warrants a violent response.

00:24:59.140 And you never know how big that percentage is

00:25:01.740 or how much you're on their radar.

00:25:03.340 And it bears repeating,

00:25:07.280 this is unique to Islam. 0.99

00:25:09.620 As badly behaved as Scientologists are 1.00

00:25:12.440 when you take a good swing at that hornet's nest,

00:25:15.440 they don't come and kill you.

00:25:17.800 You know, they can make your life miserable.

00:25:19.680 They can sue you.

00:25:20.640 They can show up at your office with a crazed look in their eyes

00:25:23.860 and video cameras pointed at you 18 hours a day.

00:25:27.380 These are bizarre people who are in an especially bizarre cult.

00:25:33.420 But they don't commit murders

00:25:35.940 and they don't commit suicidal acts of terrorism.

00:25:40.460 And so this is, again,

00:25:41.980 anyone who wants to defend Islam 1.00

00:25:44.120 against the unique scrutiny that it merits at this moment

00:25:49.420 has to deal with this fact that, as I said before,

00:25:53.840 you have a play like the Book of Mormon

00:25:55.660 that becomes a Broadway hit

00:25:57.480 and the Mormons take out an advertisement in Playbill.

00:26:02.500 In reprisal, right?

00:26:04.100 Their reaction is really adorable.

00:26:07.100 There's not the slightest concern

00:26:09.120 that Trey Parker and Matt Stone

00:26:10.560 will spend the rest of their lives 0.98

00:26:12.140 being hunted by religious maniacs. 0.87

00:26:14.960 And yet, no one can even imagine 0.97

00:26:17.260 staging such a play about Islam at this moment.

00:26:19.640 And the reasons for that are patently obvious

00:26:23.840 and yet everywhere denied by people

00:26:26.720 who complain about, quote, Islamophobia.

00:26:30.560 Right.

00:26:31.080 I mean, I think if Islam could get to where Mormonism is today, 1.00

00:26:35.360 that we would be in a much, much better place.

00:26:38.520 And I think that in itself should be telling

00:26:41.260 of how bad things really are.

00:26:44.500 And it's shocking to me that still, you know,

00:26:47.320 still we've been talking about this for a long time.

00:26:48.820 You've been talking about this for a long time.

00:26:50.740 Ayaan Haosiali has been talking about this for a long time.

00:26:53.460 That we now we need to be,

00:26:54.720 we finally need to be honest about what's going on.

00:26:58.100 And I don't see much progress in that direction.

00:27:01.560 Well, let's talk about the progress or lack thereof.

00:27:05.200 So it's a one sign of painful lack of progress of late for me

00:27:10.640 has been the way that Linda Sarsour has been championed

00:27:15.120 by liberals and feminists as some kind of icon of women's rights 0.95

00:27:20.800 when she, to my eye, is just a straight up theocrat and bully. 1.00

00:27:27.200 How are liberals and feminists getting confused about this? 1.00

00:27:31.560 Well, I think the hijab is a good way to illustrate 1.00

00:27:36.280 the extent to which liberals are confused about this issue.

00:27:40.820 Because as you pointed out, it's ridiculous to see the poster,

00:27:46.620 the, I think, Shepard Fairey poster of a woman in a hijab

00:27:50.600 as part of the women's march.

00:27:53.280 And, you know, I understand why people on the left,

00:27:58.380 why progressives have this tendency.

00:27:59.780 I understand what they are trying to do,

00:28:02.600 which is to stand for the freedom of religion for Muslims.

00:28:09.180 And this is, you know, this is a laudable endeavor.

00:28:12.120 This is something that I support.

00:28:13.420 This is a tendency that I really love about the left.

00:28:17.480 I like that they instinctively want to protect the little guy.

00:28:21.460 Having said that, not everything done in the name of good intentions

00:28:24.880 is necessarily good.

00:28:26.340 And not everything, you know, done in the name of good intentions

00:28:29.220 will help the people that you want to help.

00:28:32.120 And in many cases, it might harm the very principles that,

00:28:37.120 the very people that you want to help.

00:28:40.080 And I think this is, especially the hijab in context of women's rights

00:28:44.180 is a case where we can see this in a very clear way.

00:28:50.380 And so I, I, I support, I supported the women's march.

00:28:55.500 You know, I supported, generally speaking, I'm, I'm,

00:28:58.340 women's rights are really close to my heart. 1.00

00:29:00.340 And it's really important to me that,

00:29:02.840 that feminism is something that becomes universal, that becomes global. 1.00

00:29:06.960 So I, I support, I support, generally speaking, these kinds of,

00:29:13.160 these kinds of initiatives.

00:29:14.040 But I was really disheartened to see that Linda Sursour was included

00:29:18.300 and that the hijab was suddenly, it's, it's become this totem, you know,

00:29:23.040 it's become this, this symbol of, of religious freedom.

00:29:27.100 And it's kind of, it's, it's pretty perverse.

00:29:30.860 It's pretty perverse, given the context of what,

00:29:34.100 what the hijab actually is and given the religious justification for the

00:29:39.160 hijab, which is, which is just distinctly anti-freedom. 0.99

00:29:44.660 You know, it's very coercive.

00:29:46.000 It's coercive in large parts of the world.

00:29:47.720 It's coercive in Western communities today.

00:29:50.960 And yes, women, Muslim women should have the right to wear the hijab. 0.99

00:29:55.740 Yes, they should have the freedom to, to, to,

00:29:58.740 to follow their religion as they see fit.

00:30:00.480 But we shouldn't, we shouldn't herald as,

00:30:03.220 as some sort of as some sort of symbol for women's rights as a whole,

00:30:09.320 because that's not what it is.

00:30:10.600 And the symbolism behind the hijab matters.

00:30:13.820 And that's, what's shocking to me is that, yes,

00:30:16.020 we'll talk about the fact that that Muslim women choose to wear it and they

00:30:19.780 should have a choice to, to wear it.

00:30:21.860 And they should have a choice to be as religious as they want to be.

00:30:24.440 But what does it mean to wear a hijab?

00:30:26.800 Why do Muslim women feel that they need to wear a hijab? 1.00

00:30:29.740 And you'll hear, I think it was Dalia Mogahed that was on,

00:30:33.420 that was on The Daily Show a couple of years,

00:30:35.560 maybe just a year back.

00:30:36.620 I'm not sure exactly when,

00:30:37.560 but she was talking about the hijab and she referred to it as a means to,

00:30:41.620 you know, privatize her sexuality, 1.00

00:30:43.400 which is a very interesting way to putting it,

00:30:45.700 particularly because, you know, as I'm listening to it, I can,

00:30:48.000 I remember thinking, oh, wow, that's, that's clever.

00:30:50.900 It's a clever way to phrase the hijab, privatizing my sexuality, 1.00

00:30:55.760 because that's something that she's phrased it in a way where it would be

00:30:59.400 easy to accept by people who are from progressive circles,

00:31:03.100 by educated people.

00:31:04.640 She phrased it in a way that it would just, you know,

00:31:06.700 they would just swallow it whole and accept it.

00:31:08.780 And I think they want to accept it.

00:31:10.880 However,

00:31:11.200 we need to go back to what the religious justification for it is and what,

00:31:15.600 what it implies, even if, even if we want to use her phrasing,

00:31:18.340 let's look at it as a way of privatizing your sexuality.

00:31:22.320 It, if you consider wearing the hijab,

00:31:26.160 covering up as modesty as a way of privatizing sexuality, you,

00:31:30.380 you justify the viewpoint that women who,

00:31:33.180 who don't do this are necessarily people who are publicizing their sexuality.

00:31:37.900 And that if it means something, if you're saying,

00:31:40.580 if you're signaling something by privatizing your sexuality,

00:31:43.080 then you are also signaling something by publicizing it.

00:31:46.820 And I think that,

00:31:48.240 that, that needs to be discussed.

00:31:50.740 That needs to be discussed widely.

00:31:52.480 And it's shocking to me that,

00:31:53.620 that Muslim narratives of what the hijab means are just accepted,

00:31:58.320 you know,

00:31:58.720 wholesale.

00:31:59.200 They're just accepted.

00:32:00.520 Um,

00:32:01.240 and not a lot of criticism is given,

00:32:03.660 uh,

00:32:04.120 some honest consideration.

00:32:05.460 I think it's good to focus on the hijab because I think many people are confused about

00:32:12.120 just what they should think about it.

00:32:14.420 I think I'm pretty clear about the hijab.

00:32:16.760 I'm a little confused,

00:32:17.980 frankly,

00:32:18.320 about the niqab and the burqa,

00:32:21.640 I think.

00:32:22.200 So it's just walk me through this.

00:32:23.960 So what,

00:32:24.660 this is what I think about the hijab.

00:32:25.840 I think that,

00:32:26.920 as you said,

00:32:27.620 that the first thing to be honest about is that most women who wear the hijab, 0.99

00:32:33.960 the world over are not doing it voluntarily.

00:32:38.640 And even if you could stand them up and ask them,

00:32:42.140 and they would say,

00:32:43.040 yes,

00:32:43.280 they want to live this way,

00:32:45.280 it can't be construed as a voluntary choice,

00:32:48.580 given the cultural context in which they're living,

00:32:51.600 given the,

00:32:52.040 the penalties for not wearing it,

00:32:54.220 given how everyone in their life would think about them if they chose not to wear it.

00:32:58.680 This is a choice against a,

00:33:00.880 a background of almost total coercion.

00:33:04.380 And then you have the rare case in the West of someone who,

00:33:09.040 her sophomore year at Brandeis,

00:33:11.720 can decide,

00:33:12.500 well,

00:33:12.760 you know,

00:33:12.960 maybe I want to wear the hijab.

00:33:14.760 And it's a truly free choice.

00:33:18.000 Now,

00:33:18.600 I agree with you that any woman should be free to make that choice.

00:33:22.700 They should just be honest about how different a choice that is than the pseudo choice that's being made every day by,

00:33:29.280 by a woman or a girl in Saudi Arabia or any other theocracy.

00:33:34.700 So people should be free to dress in that way.

00:33:38.380 And we should also be honest that this is an,

00:33:41.280 it's an ideological display,

00:33:43.680 right?

00:33:43.960 So when someone wears the hijab, 1.00

00:33:45.940 they're telling me something about what they believe to be true.

00:33:49.000 And there's no burden on me not to pay attention to that.

00:33:54.460 I can notice that their external choice as an indicator of their,

00:34:00.320 their internal worldview,

00:34:02.520 right?

00:34:02.880 And worldviews matter,

00:34:04.340 right?

00:34:04.520 People,

00:34:04.840 what people believe and declare is important to them matters.

00:34:08.420 So it's a conversation.

00:34:10.140 You are starting a conversation with the world when you decide to put on a hijab. 1.00

00:34:14.160 And one of the things you're saying,

00:34:16.940 you know,

00:34:17.120 privatizing your sexuality is,

00:34:18.640 is one way of putting it,

00:34:19.860 but you seem to also be conceding as is explicitly stated within the doctrine of

00:34:26.680 Islam,

00:34:26.920 that the onus is upon the woman to conceal herself as a way of protecting men from

00:34:34.880 their lust.

00:34:36.140 It's not that the onus is not on the men, 0.97

00:34:37.840 not to be boorish monsters who are just groping any woman in sight, 0.56

00:34:42.780 who's not sufficiently covered. 0.58

00:34:44.280 The onus is on,

00:34:45.640 on women to be sufficiently modest.

00:34:49.020 Even if you're making a free choice in the West and Dalia Mogahed is your guru,

00:34:55.780 you're still,

00:34:56.620 this is an anti-feminist concept of where the blame for social awkwardness and lust gets placed. 1.00

00:35:05.180 Every choice,

00:35:07.800 even if it,

00:35:08.480 even if there is a choice that is freely made by a woman, 0.97

00:35:11.060 it doesn't necessarily make it a feminist choice. 1.00

00:35:14.560 And in the context of the hijab,

00:35:16.880 even if Dalia or,

00:35:18.920 or Linda Sersour have freely made the choices that they've made,

00:35:22.780 that doesn't make them feminist choices. 1.00

00:35:24.220 They can be anti-feminist. 0.97

00:35:25.320 They can be anti-women. 1.00

00:35:26.360 They can be anti-women's rights. 0.99

00:35:28.220 And that needs to be discussed.

00:35:29.960 And that needs to be talked about.

00:35:31.520 To add on to what you were saying,

00:35:33.840 when there's this burden of sexual purity that's placed on,

00:35:38.500 placed on women,

00:35:39.720 it's kind of a,

00:35:40.520 you know,

00:35:40.880 it really is something that I would,

00:35:42.480 I would call a rape culture of sorts, 0.97

00:35:44.640 where women that are subject to sexual assaults bear the blame if they are women who, 0.70

00:35:51.660 you know,

00:35:51.920 don't cover themselves in an Islamically prescribed way.

00:35:55.140 And this is something that is pervasive in the Muslim world.

00:35:58.220 The idea that a woman who shows her body, 0.98

00:36:01.960 who is,

00:36:03.120 you know,

00:36:03.440 even walks in a certain way or speaks in a certain way,

00:36:07.540 they are to blame for male assaults against them. 0.54

00:36:11.520 And you can see reflections of this in the ways that Muslim men treat non-Muslim women. 0.93

00:36:18.480 I mean, 0.95

00:36:18.620 I know there's the sexual assaults that happened in Germany on New Year's Eve.

00:36:24.100 It wasn't something that was very surprising to me and to many people from the Muslim world.

00:36:30.220 It's not entirely surprising because there is a dehumanization of women who don't cover themselves

00:36:36.520 in the way that,

00:36:37.940 you know,

00:36:38.400 Islamic women are supposed to cover themselves. 1.00

00:36:40.280 It seems to be a signal, 0.71

00:36:42.080 a free pass to do with those women as, 0.98

00:36:44.840 as you will,

00:36:45.460 because they do not have the same kind of dignities that women who are covered up have. 1.00

00:36:50.820 So let's move on to even more aggressive covering.

00:36:54.540 So the,

00:36:55.220 the niqab, 0.95

00:36:56.340 wherein only the eyes are exposed and less people are familiar with that,

00:37:00.820 I think,

00:37:01.100 than the burqa,

00:37:01.780 which is what you tend to see in Afghanistan,

00:37:03.780 where,

00:37:04.360 where everything is covered.

00:37:05.600 And you just have this kind of mesh for the woman to see out of there. 0.93

00:37:10.420 I feel like my sympathies change a little bit because there's something so in the current climate,

00:37:18.060 it's so provocative,

00:37:19.240 but also I think unsafe and uncommunicative about covering the face.

00:37:25.840 You don't know who anyone is.

00:37:27.760 You don't get any of the social cues that are actually important for understanding whether you're safe around a person.

00:37:35.120 The person who's having this imposed on them is being deprived of almost everything that's good in the world in terms of interacting with other human beings.

00:37:45.720 What's your feeling about whether or not something like take the French approach to banning the niqab in public?

00:37:55.080 How do you feel about that?

00:37:56.220 Because again,

00:37:56.760 following what we just said about the hijab,

00:37:59.400 my bias is certainly to let people dress however they want,

00:38:04.380 but there is something really terrible about covering the face in public.

00:38:11.420 And I don't,

00:38:12.560 I don't actually know what we should do about it.

00:38:15.460 Well,

00:38:15.560 I agree.

00:38:15.960 It's that,

00:38:16.440 that it's unsettling in the way that just a head,

00:38:20.340 that the face veil is unsettling in the way that a head covering is not.

00:38:24.460 But I don't think that we should change our approach to it.

00:38:26.940 I think any time that,

00:38:29.200 any time that a facial covering of any kind,

00:38:32.940 a mask,

00:38:34.080 you know,

00:38:34.340 be that be a party mask or a ski mask,

00:38:36.340 wouldn't be allowed,

00:38:37.440 neither should,

00:38:38.620 you know,

00:38:39.460 a face veil,

00:38:40.060 religious face covering be allowed.

00:38:41.720 But aside from that,

00:38:43.220 yes,

00:38:43.440 it is disturbing.

00:38:44.800 Yes,

00:38:45.020 it is.

00:38:45.280 Yes,

00:38:45.800 it does speak to this,

00:38:47.960 this distance that Muslim women are sometimes, 0.98

00:38:52.140 you know,

00:38:53.040 sometimes forced to,

00:38:55.580 to,

00:38:56.500 to have with the world around them.

00:38:57.740 But that doesn't mean that,

00:38:59.400 that taking an action like banning it would be helpful.

00:39:03.400 In my opinion,

00:39:04.120 it isn't.

00:39:04.680 I think what we do need to grapple with is that many,

00:39:09.520 many Muslim women buy into the ideology that is, 1.00

00:39:14.320 that is given to them.

00:39:15.660 Many don't,

00:39:16.560 but many do that.

00:39:17.820 That's why you have Linda Sursua. 1.00

00:39:19.240 That's why you have Dali Moga heads is that there are women who, 1.00

00:39:21.960 who buy it and they actually believe that they are being empowered by,

00:39:26.640 by Islamic traditions.

00:39:29.480 And so there are women who willingly putting on, 1.00

00:39:31.520 put it on or think that they're willingly putting it on.

00:39:33.780 And they feel empowered by it because they are fed a certain kind of

00:39:37.680 worldview and forcing them to take it off would not,

00:39:42.340 you know,

00:39:43.300 would not win us any favors from those women. 0.82

00:39:45.740 And if anything,

00:39:46.720 it might,

00:39:47.420 you know,

00:39:48.120 it might,

00:39:48.680 it might turn them into people that would want to wear the hijab,

00:39:53.840 that would want to wear religious garb as a political protest. 0.82

00:39:56.920 And increasingly I see the hijab and just various kinds of religious

00:40:03.020 garb as a form of political post protest.

00:40:06.160 And I don't think we should encourage it being,

00:40:09.240 it being turned into something like that because it becomes more powerful in

00:40:12.960 that way.

00:40:13.480 And the religious,

00:40:15.220 the,

00:40:16.480 the harm that the religion itself perpetuates because of the, 0.97

00:40:20.280 because of the hijab gets a brush to the side.

00:40:22.900 That's interesting because I think the rationale for the French policy,

00:40:28.500 or at least the,

00:40:29.140 the one rationale that makes sense to me is that if you ban these things in

00:40:34.300 public,

00:40:34.760 what you're doing is you're creating a space where all the people who are being

00:40:39.380 coerced into wearing these religious symbols are free because of the protection

00:40:45.740 of the state,

00:40:46.580 not to wear them.

00:40:47.880 They're no longer obliged to do what their,

00:40:50.240 their family insists that they do because it's illegal to do it.

00:40:54.560 And,

00:40:54.600 and so you've,

00:40:55.100 you've created this context in which girls and women can be free in a way that

00:41:00.180 they,

00:41:00.440 they wouldn't be if you just let everyone decide what they should wear.

00:41:06.160 But it sounds like you think that,

00:41:08.020 that on balance,

00:41:09.760 you'll actually just alienate more people than you will liberate by doing that.

00:41:14.120 So to,

00:41:15.660 to,

00:41:15.960 to follow up on what you said,

00:41:17.120 which was that perhaps it would free the women that are, 1.00

00:41:20.500 that are truly coarse.

00:41:21.580 Let's say a certain percentage of women are coerced to wear a certain kind of 1.00

00:41:24.920 religious garb in public in the context of,

00:41:27.380 for example,

00:41:27.800 that what,

00:41:28.400 what the French were doing. 0.87

00:41:29.560 I spoke out against,

00:41:30.560 I don't know the,

00:41:32.700 the burkini,

00:41:33.560 I think it was called the Islamic swimwear that some French towns were,

00:41:39.420 were,

00:41:39.660 were trying to,

00:41:40.760 were trying to ban.

00:41:41.860 And I spoke out against that ban.

00:41:43.260 That seemed like good sun shielding practices from my point of view.

00:41:47.140 This is the other thing you brought up is that there are other ways to cover

00:41:50.100 your face that we can't make illegal.

00:41:52.660 So you're,

00:41:53.500 if you're going to make Halloween masks and ski masks illegal,

00:41:56.440 because they're so similar to niqab's, 0.98

00:41:59.660 if you have someone who's super sun sensitive,

00:42:01.240 who,

00:42:01.620 who essentially is showing up in the equivalent of a burkini,

00:42:04.520 you can't suddenly make that illegal.

00:42:06.340 So it's,

00:42:06.720 it's a very weird thing to try to legislate.

00:42:09.220 Right.

00:42:09.720 And you don't,

00:42:10.260 you don't really,

00:42:10.900 you don't necessarily protect the women who are being coerced into wearing

00:42:14.380 these things for,

00:42:15.420 in the context of a burkini.

00:42:16.780 So there are certain Muslim women who let's assume are coerced into wearing religious 0.97

00:42:22.160 gear.

00:42:23.020 And because they're able to wear a burkini, 1.00

00:42:26.380 they have a little bit of freedom.

00:42:27.560 They're allowed to go to the beach and they're allowed to experience,

00:42:30.720 you know,

00:42:31.240 you know,

00:42:31.480 feel the sand on their,

00:42:32.640 on their feet and feel the water and,

00:42:34.360 and,

00:42:34.520 and get to participate in this public activity in a way that they probably would not be able

00:42:40.200 to participate in if the burkini was banned.

00:42:42.660 And so in the context of the most coerced women, 1.00

00:42:45.640 I don't know if we're necessarily going to protect them because I don't know if the reaction

00:42:49.860 of the most extreme religious families would be to say,

00:42:53.680 well,

00:42:54.160 if the state has banned a burkini,

00:42:56.380 that means that you're allowed to wear a bikini to,

00:42:59.280 or shorts or whatever it is to the beach.

00:43:01.680 I,

00:43:01.960 I fear that the reaction might be more often than that to say,

00:43:05.820 well,

00:43:05.860 you're not allowed to go to the beach and maybe we're taking you back home.

00:43:09.540 it's a difficult one.

00:43:11.620 And I don't know if the legislation is to blunt a tool for this,

00:43:17.840 but I can imagine,

00:43:18.720 for instance,

00:43:19.020 if I,

00:43:19.160 if I'm sitting on an airplane and somebody gets on with a ski mask or a Halloween mask

00:43:26.360 and refuses to take it off,

00:43:28.760 or I see someone passing through security at the airport with a ski mask or Halloween mask on,

00:43:34.440 I would expect that person to be stopped and to not be able to fly unless they took it off.

00:43:41.980 You know,

00:43:42.500 and then you could imagine that there's an obvious exception if they have a reason,

00:43:45.460 if they have some medical reason why they have to wear a mask or,

00:43:48.540 you know,

00:43:48.680 they have,

00:43:49.160 they have a burn on their face or something that explains it.

00:43:53.040 Well then fine.

00:43:53.620 But I think there are many public spaces where someone is in charge of legislating certain norms,

00:44:02.540 even if there are not laws against these things.

00:44:06.000 And yes,

00:44:07.220 it's like you can't show up to a restaurant,

00:44:09.140 you know,

00:44:09.320 without wearing pants,

00:44:10.740 right?

00:44:11.860 Probably there is some kind of law against it,

00:44:13.840 but it's at the discretion of,

00:44:15.120 of anyone who has control of a,

00:44:17.520 of a public space to deny access to people who are violating certain norms.

00:44:22.340 And I think we just have to be honest about what it means to be wearing a niqab or a burqa at this moment in human history in the West,

00:44:35.360 you know,

00:44:35.580 in an airport.

00:44:36.480 You are advertising a worldview,

00:44:38.760 which is the worldview we care about from the point of view of,

00:44:43.100 of being people who want to prevent suicide bombings on airplanes to take the narrow case.

00:44:48.140 So obviously you're going to draw more scrutiny.

00:44:50.920 Obviously we can't see what's underneath this covering unless,

00:44:55.140 unless we put you in a,

00:44:57.160 an x-ray scanner rather than a,

00:44:59.300 than a metal detector.

00:45:00.920 It poses a security concern both physically and ideologically.

00:45:05.660 I mean,

00:45:05.860 again,

00:45:06.260 you've announced your,

00:45:07.600 your worldview in a way that you otherwise wouldn't if you weren't wearing this thing.

00:45:11.840 It is analogous to,

00:45:13.720 you know,

00:45:13.880 if we had problems with a cult of,

00:45:17.360 of neo-Nazis that was killing people or threatening to kill people in,

00:45:22.100 in virtually every city on earth,

00:45:24.520 it wouldn't matter if someone showed up at the airport with swastikas tattooed on his face or,

00:45:31.040 you know,

00:45:31.180 wearing,

00:45:31.680 proudly wearing,

00:45:32.760 you know,

00:45:33.680 symbols of the SS on his jacket.

00:45:35.840 I mean,

00:45:35.980 that's,

00:45:36.440 this person is saying,

00:45:37.580 pay attention to me.

00:45:38.660 I'm a security problem,

00:45:39.920 or at least a potential one.

00:45:41.840 It never strikes me as trivial that someone is wearing a niqab or that,

00:45:47.780 or that in particular,

00:45:49.480 the man who is chaperoning her is the sort of man who wants his wife or sister to wear a niqab. 0.82

00:45:58.380 Right.

00:45:58.560 But I don't know if it's,

00:46:00.800 I think we can make certain,

00:46:02.260 I think,

00:46:02.620 I think you're right to say that we can assume certain things.

00:46:07.180 But I don't know if we can assume them universally.

00:46:09.660 In the context specifically of a woman in a niqab, 0.99

00:46:13.640 we can't assume that she's being coerced.

00:46:16.400 We can't assume that she's not being coerced.

00:46:18.920 We can't,

00:46:19.380 we don't actually know where her true beliefs lie because of the specific context of this religion.

00:46:25.400 And I don't know if it's helpful to make those,

00:46:27.520 make those assumptions.

00:46:28.900 I agree,

00:46:30.860 you can't.

00:46:31.420 But the balance has to swing one way or the other.

00:46:34.360 And I think the French assumption that you'll be helping people,

00:46:38.600 I mean,

00:46:38.700 the beach is an interesting case because I can easily see it going the way you fear,

00:46:44.140 that these are women who just will not be let out of the house, 0.98

00:46:47.500 given that there's no option for them to be fully covered at the beach.

00:46:51.240 But when you think of something like a school,

00:46:54.380 right,

00:46:54.680 or a place of employment,

00:46:57.120 it just feels like a ban on covering the face in those contexts.

00:47:04.240 Again,

00:47:04.780 it's like whether this is the law or whether it's just every place of business is free to have their own policy,

00:47:11.460 I don't know.

00:47:12.040 But it's just,

00:47:12.940 I can't imagine hiring someone for some kind of public facing job where they insist on their right to wear a niqab, 1.00

00:47:21.280 right?

00:47:21.600 Like a bank teller,

00:47:22.880 you're a bank teller and you're wearing a niqab, 1.00

00:47:25.420 or you're a nurse in a hospital,

00:47:28.820 but you're going to wear a niqab as you visit patients.

00:47:32.240 I think you have to be free not to hire those people who insist that they wear a niqab in those contexts.

00:47:39.120 Well,

00:47:39.920 I think to the extent that it gets in the way of your job duties,

00:47:44.740 and you can make an argument that it would do that in the context of a nurse.

00:47:49.320 I remember reading something about,

00:47:51.680 it's tangentially related,

00:47:53.140 but I remember reading something about a female eye doctor in ISIS-controlled territory

00:48:00.080 who was no longer allowed to practice unless she had on a covering.

00:48:04.980 And she complained that she wasn't able to see,

00:48:09.180 and she needed to do these complex procedures with other people's eyes, women's eyes. 1.00

00:48:14.180 And she wasn't able to see herself properly enough to be able to operate in the way that she needed to operate.

00:48:19.820 So obviously it gets in the way of job duties.

00:48:23.380 Even you can make the argument,

00:48:25.640 I think that there are certain social obligations,

00:48:28.660 sort of social aspects of a job that require someone to show their face.

00:48:34.440 But it's different because different jobs would require that,

00:48:38.580 and some jobs would require that, and some jobs would not.

00:48:41.740 And on the whole,

00:48:43.420 I know that from a perspective of an activist,

00:48:47.040 the more constraints we place on religious freedom,

00:48:52.560 in Muslim religious freedom,

00:48:53.640 the harder it gets for someone like me to argue in favor of Western values and for Enlightenment values.

00:49:01.400 It's difficult for me to say that, you know,

00:49:03.300 in the West they allow freedom,

00:49:04.940 in the West women can dress according to their conscience.

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Making Sense - Sam Harris - June 09, 2017

#81 — Leaving Islam

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