The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 209. Islam and the Possibilities of Peace

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00:02:06.620 Welcome to Season 4, Episode 66 of the Jordan B. Peterson Podcast. In this episode,

00:02:16.120 Dad met with author and philosopher Muhammad Hijab, whose areas of expertise are political philosophy,

00:02:22.320 philosophy of religion, and comparative religion. They had a very engaging conversation and covered

00:02:28.160 a lot. Too much to try and recap here, but some highlights were how Islam is seen in the West,

00:02:34.020 its metanarrative, the life of the prophet Muhammad, and the traditionalist take on the Quran in Islam

00:02:40.300 itself. If you enjoy this episode, please be sure to subscribe.

00:02:45.440 I understand that, and I'm not even saying that there's something exceptional in that regard about

00:02:49.880 Islam, although the rate at which it happened was quite remarkable. But it still, it presents us with

00:02:54.600 a problem, doesn't it? I mean, everyone. It presents everyone with a problem. And the problem is,

00:03:00.020 well, for example, the problem is reconciling the idea of turning the other cheek with the idea of

00:03:04.780 a just war, a defensive war, or an expansive war, for that matter. And of course, that issue is

00:03:09.780 relevant to Islam, because Islam exploded outward and produced the biggest empire the world had ever

00:03:15.220 seen in the space of a few short centuries. So then you ask, well, what's the spirit? What is the

00:03:24.220 spirit that animated that? And is that attributable to the Islamic doctrines themselves? I don't know

00:03:30.740 the answer to that.

00:03:31.540 Now, let me tell you the answer to that, okay? And this is what I want to tell you conclusively,

00:03:35.860 and this will help build bridges, honestly, because we can maintain the warlord thesis,

00:03:39.480 we can maintain the expansionist thesis. But here's what I'll tell you. Islam has a capability to

00:03:45.720 be expansive, and it also has a capability of making peace treaties. And it does, and it should do,

00:03:53.060 wherever it's in its best interest, just like every country should do, wherever it's in its best interest.

00:04:15.740 Hello, everyone. I'm pleased today to have as my guest discussant, Mohamed Hijab.

00:04:22.420 And this discussion has been postponed a number of times because of illness, and I'm very glad that

00:04:28.120 we're able to do it today. And I thank him for his patience in continuing to pursue this and being

00:04:32.800 willing to talk to me, despite, I think, being delayed three times, which is one more time than

00:04:37.420 is unforgivable. But in any case, Mohamed Hijab is an author, a student of comparative religion,

00:04:43.600 and a philosopher of religion. He's the co-founder of Sapiens Institute, and is a researcher and

00:04:48.480 instructor for that organization. He has a BA in politics and a master's degree in history.

00:04:53.540 He's acquired a second master's in Islamic studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies.

00:04:59.140 Hijab has also completed a third master's degree in applied theology from the University of Oxford,

00:05:03.640 where he focused on the philosophy of religion in applied settings. He's now doing his PhD in the

00:05:08.840 philosophy of religion on the contingency argument for God's existence. And many people,

00:05:14.060 I was looking a while back for people to talk about Islam with, and many people recommended

00:05:21.020 that I talk to Mohamed Hijab. And so I talked to Mustafa Akil a couple of weeks ago. He's known

00:05:26.120 more, I would say, on the liberal front. And so I'm very pleased to be able to talk to Mohamed Hijab

00:05:32.680 today. Thank you very much for joining me today. It's very good of you to put up with the delays.

00:05:37.360 No, no, no, no. Thank you for having me, honestly. It's always a pleasure.

00:05:41.900 Well, so I'm going to ask some really basic questions, because it's very difficult to

00:05:47.160 understand another culture from the outside. And you also have, as an outsider, you have no idea

00:05:53.500 how much you don't know about what you don't know, even. You're blind to your own ignorance. And so

00:05:58.440 I'm going to start with basic questions. I wouldn't say that I have a tangible understanding of Islam.

00:06:04.780 I mean, I have some understanding of Christianity. I've been able to get the sense of Christianity

00:06:09.600 at a reasonably deep level, I would say, at least compared to other things I know. And I've kind of

00:06:15.680 felt the same way about certain aspects of Buddhism and Taoism. But as a religious system, a system of

00:06:21.920 thought, Islam has remained relatively opaque to me, despite the fact that I've done a reasonable amount

00:06:26.420 of historical reading. And so what is it in terms of practice and belief that are absolutely core,

00:06:33.780 as far as you're concerned, to practicing the Islamic faith?

00:06:37.920 Well, the first thing is, I think we should start with the bare bones basics. And the bare bones

00:06:42.660 basics is first to say that we believe in God. And the kind of God we believe in is one God,

00:06:48.640 worthy of worship. In fact, the Quran makes a series of arguments, rational arguments for why we

00:06:55.560 believe in the type of God that we believe in. For example, in chapter 52, verse 35 of the Quran,

00:07:00.200 it says,

00:07:01.060 were they created from nothing or by nothing? Or were they themselves the creators of themselves?

00:07:12.580 Did they create the heavens and the earth? They have no certainty. In other words, the Quran is

00:07:17.760 hinting here at the fact that it's impossible for something to come from nothing. And it's impossible

00:07:23.720 also for something to give rise to itself. And so the universe, for example, if we take this as an

00:07:28.820 example, couldn't have come from nothing. And it couldn't have created itself. It couldn't be

00:07:32.700 self-generating and or self-maintaining. And there can't be a world, in fact, the Quran would indicate,

00:07:40.400 there cannot be a world with only dependent things, things that require other things in order to exist

00:07:46.920 at infinitum. And so what is required outside of the series of dependent things is something which

00:07:53.160 is independent, which all things depend upon, and which itself depends upon nothing. And this is

00:07:59.480 what the Quran refers to as as-samad, or the idea of God being self-sufficient and independent.

00:08:06.460 So the idea of God is-

00:08:08.740 So it's a prime mover argument, and you think-

00:08:11.400 It's a kind of prime mover argument.

00:08:13.480 A lot of-

00:08:14.200 Why do you think that the same argument that you put forward in relationship to the generation of

00:08:20.260 the universe can't be put forward as an objection in relationship to God? You know, because you make

00:08:26.660 a logical case that something can't come from nothing and something can't create itself. But you move,

00:08:31.700 from a philosophical perspective, this isn't a religious critique, from a philosophical

00:08:35.420 critical perspective. You just move the problem back one step. What advantages do you think there

00:08:40.640 are to moving the problem back one step? Or am I mischaracterizing it?

00:08:44.200 Well, I'll tell you what, Dr. Jordan Peterson, what you've said is very similar to what Richard

00:08:48.460 Dawkins said in a debate with the Archbishop of the then Archbishop of Canterbury. And he said that,

00:08:54.760 well, if you have, and he said this debate, he made this argument in Oxford. And he said that if you

00:09:00.240 look at the universe, well, if you're saying that God has made the universe in this way,

00:09:06.460 then your God who's more complicated, and he would add this layer of complexity,

00:09:11.240 your God who's more complicated would require an even greater,

00:09:15.640 he would require an even greater explanation.

00:09:17.460 You're a greater God.

00:09:18.900 Yeah, yeah. So really interestingly, Anthony Kenny, who's an agnostic himself, he's a philosopher

00:09:25.240 and agnostic, he came in and he said, well, actually, take a look at this, you've got an

00:09:29.780 electric razor, which is made up of many different component parts. And you have a cutthroat razor,

00:09:35.300 which is made up of one part. And he said, although the electric razor is more complicated,

00:09:41.960 it serves less functions than the cutthroat razor, because the cutthroat razor can cut your throat,

00:09:47.660 and it can also cut an apple, for example. And so it's a fallacy to assume that just because

00:09:53.960 something is complicated, or that something has many features and attributes, that thing itself

00:10:00.280 requires an explanation. And in fact, if we had an infinite regress of such explanations,

00:10:05.520 then obviously, that would lead to a kind of absurdity. So even, you know, well-meaning atheists

00:10:10.660 and agnostics in the field realize the redundancy and the fallacity, and the argument that is put

00:10:16.580 forward by the likes of Richard Dawkins, who said that kind of thing. And I would also add

00:10:21.700 to that one point, the argument from composition, which is usually a corollary to the contingency

00:10:28.760 argument, usually, is made in the following way, that everything that is made of parts

00:10:33.420 is contingent, that the universe, or say, a multiverse is made of parts, therefore,

00:10:39.120 a universe, or the universe, and or the multiverse is contingent. The parts that we are talking

00:10:45.160 about, meteorologically, are things that can be attached and detached. So that doesn't apply to

00:10:50.140 God. Classical theism doesn't say that God is made of parts the same way as human beings are,

00:10:54.960 or as universes are, or multiverses are. And so, and in fact, the Quran hints at this itself.

00:10:59.500 It says, that the one who created you and composed you and configured you in any form that he wished,

00:11:09.540 he put you together. And so the fact that you have such configuration in the universe,

00:11:14.760 indicates that the fact that you have an external sorting agent that has particularized the universe

00:11:22.160 in a certain way, and that has composed the universe in a certain way. So the argument really

00:11:27.060 is that things which are made of attachable and detachable parts, that those things are

00:11:32.980 contingent, that doesn't apply to God on any theistic paradigm. Now, what we would say,

00:11:37.620 though, sorry to kind of drag this on a little bit, is that this would disqualify something like

00:11:42.120 the Trinity from being true. And in fact, the Quran, this is the Islamic position, is vehement in its

00:11:48.480 opposition towards a triune God. So for example, in chapter 23, verse 91, it says,

00:11:54.700 That God hasn't taken a son, and he doesn't have any gods with him. If that had been the case,

00:12:06.420 each God would have taken what he has created, and they would have tried to dominate one another.

00:12:11.500 The idea, therefore, that there can be more than one all-powerful entity, is an inconceivable and

00:12:17.420 unintelligible idea from the Islamic paradigm. So it's seen as problematic, to say the least,

00:12:23.780 or conceptually impossible, to say even more, to suggest that something like a Trinity can be

00:12:29.140 true. When it's talking about, for example, Mary and Jesus, it says something very simple,

00:12:35.940 that both of them used to eat food. So in other words, the impossibility of something limited, like

00:12:42.260 Jesus, a man, being God at the same time, being unlimited. Because the definition of God is

00:12:48.620 that he's unlimited, is all-powerful. Do you think that there's a divine spark in human beings?

00:12:54.960 No, we don't think there's any kind of divinity at all. Islam is categorical about this,

00:13:00.500 because the way we define divinity is extremely strict. We say that the divine attributes of God

00:13:06.280 are specific only to God. So what's the characteristic element of the human relationship

00:13:12.900 with God? So what's the central, what's the central, what's the central, you say, structure of value

00:13:20.480 within a human being that makes them worthy of respect, say, in the sight of God, or worthy of

00:13:25.560 value in the sight of God? The Quran states,

00:13:27.840 لَقَدْ كَرَّمْنَا بَنِي أَدَمْ

00:13:29.280 We have, we have dignified the child of Adam. So that we do believe in something called human

00:13:35.300 exceptionalism. We do believe that human being has been specialized or specified, among all other

00:13:41.160 things in creation, to be, to have free will, for example, to have a personal relationship with God,

00:13:47.920 to have a loving relationship with God. People don't realize this, especially in the Christian

00:13:51.120 tradition, but one of the names of God from the Islamic tradition is that he's the loving one,

00:13:55.900 Al-Wadud in Arabic, in the Quran as well. So we believe that the relationship that human being

00:14:00.940 should have with God is a loving relationship, but it's, it's one of submission. This is the

00:14:06.460 main thing. Islam doesn't mean peace. Islam actually means submission. Islam comes from the

00:14:11.340 root Arabic called istislam. And what it means is submission. And really what the picture is in the

00:14:16.660 Islamic cosmology is that everything in the universe is submitting to God. Everything, the laws of nature

00:14:23.280 have been placed there by the lawmaker, which is God. And so we as human beings are volitional.

00:14:30.500 We have free, we do believe in free will, but we also believe in a theological compatibilism.

00:14:34.880 And so that kind of predetermination is actually one of our pillars of faith to believe in that.

00:14:40.340 So in that sense, we have to voluntarily submit to God in the same way that everything else in

00:14:47.440 creation is submitted to God. And what does, what does that submission mean?

00:14:50.120 What that means is that all the prophets and messengers came a full time. So this is the

00:14:55.120 meta-narrative of Islam. Abraham came, Moses came, Jesus came, and all of them came with exactly the

00:15:00.700 same message. And that message is to worship, to believe in one God and to worship in only one God.

00:15:06.580 And to do that, you have to follow a guidance. So each and every single one of those messengers,

00:15:11.180 they came with, we believe in our narrative, they came with two things effectively. They came with a

00:15:16.360 message, which is to worship God, meaning to submit to his laws. And also with, with some kind of

00:15:22.520 evidence base to suggest that they are prophets. So some of these stories would have been known,

00:15:28.000 obviously to you, you've done a biblical series. So I know you're very aware of those stories. We

00:15:31.580 have very similar stories, like in Moses, Abraham, Jesus, but they are slightly different.

00:15:36.360 Those stories are slightly different. In fact, sometimes radically different,

00:15:39.760 especially considering some new Testament kind of narratives. And so what the, the, the thread

00:15:46.280 that joins or the flesh that joins all of these kinds of messengers and prophets is that they all

00:15:53.420 came with one fundamental message, which is to believe in one God, worship one God. We believe

00:15:57.480 that the prophet. Hang on. I'm still not understanding this exactly. Okay. I'm not sure what you mean by

00:16:03.600 believe, like the way you laid that out was in some sense, propositional, right? You made it,

00:16:09.100 you made a logical argument for the existence of God, but you, you, you take the existence of God

00:16:14.540 as, as given in some sense to begin with because of your faith. And then you provide your belief

00:16:20.680 with a rational argument, but it wasn't derived from a rational argument. And so I don't, so does it,

00:16:28.520 when you talk about belief, do you mean belief in a set of propositions about the nature of God? And,

00:16:33.300 and if you do or don't, what, what do you believe and how would you separate out that

00:16:38.960 belief from what you term as worship? Right. So actually there's, there's one thing that

00:16:44.400 ought to be known that in Islamic theology, we believe in something called the fitrah,

00:16:48.900 which is an innate instinct to believing in God. And now I'm not sure if you're aware of the,

00:16:53.860 the work on it. So why bother, why bother with the propositional arguments then?

00:16:57.980 It's, to me, they just seem like a side, a side venture, you know, to argue with scientists.

00:17:02.160 Some scholars have said that in Islam, sorry, I apologize. Yeah. Okay. No, no.

00:17:06.380 Yeah. In fact, some modern day philosophers of religion have that kind of a stance, like

00:17:11.740 Alvin Plantinga, he seems quite, you know, agnostic about the old thing. I mean, we can,

00:17:16.260 the thing is, what we're saying is it would be committing something like the naturalistic fallacy

00:17:20.520 to suggest that just because something is the case, or there is a fallacy, maybe it's just because

00:17:26.100 something is the case that it ought to be the case. So in order to prove the, or it's a demonstrative

00:17:32.580 proof for those who are in what we call shack or doubt. And this, but the truth is, as, as you've

00:17:40.020 mentioned, and as, as in the literature, like for example, Justin Barrett has this in his cognitive

00:17:45.880 psychological or cognitive science literature. I'm not sure if you've come across his stuff,

00:17:51.860 but basically, yeah, basically what he says is that we have an innate,

00:17:56.100 his words exactly, receptivity to believing in God. In 2011, the, the Oxford Anthropological

00:18:02.260 Society, they'd done a huge study of 32,000 children. And what they found is that children

00:18:08.340 innately and intuitively, instinctively have a belief of a higher power of some sorts.

00:18:15.280 Now they're born with that belief. And in fact, in one of the papers in, in Justin Barrett's book,

00:18:22.380 he literally mentions the fitrah or the Islamic theological concept of an instinct in believing

00:18:27.780 in God. What's his last name? Barrett. How do you spell that? I think double R double T, I believe.

00:18:35.820 Justin Barrett. Okay, that's useful. Yeah. Well, it just strikes me that in, you see, the problem with

00:18:41.020 debating people like Richard Dawkins about the existence of God is that he will formulate the

00:18:49.040 argument in propositional terms, and then force the person, so to speak. I don't imply any malice on

00:18:56.400 his part. But as soon as you accept that the, the battle is to be won on propositional grounds,

00:19:02.340 you've already accepted a certain definition of God. And I think you lose the argument instantly.

00:19:07.420 I think the, the argument for instinct, something like that is, is much more powerful. Because one

00:19:14.100 of the things I'm led to, to wonder when you laid out your argument is, well, what, what purpose does

00:19:20.660 belief in God serve? Or your faith in God, let's say. And I think belief, see, it's also really

00:19:25.900 interesting to try to distinguish between belief in something and faith in something. Like if you have,

00:19:30.860 imagine you have faith in the good. And so how do you demonstrate that? Well, you believe that good is

00:19:36.420 more powerful than evil. You believe that you should act in a manner that's, that's, that's appropriate

00:19:43.820 to the good. And so then you act that way. And that's the faith. The faith is demonstrated in the

00:19:50.020 actions. Yes. But it's not exactly, it's not exactly propositional. And, you know, partly because I would

00:19:55.680 say, if you look at good and evil, for example, it's not that easy to make the case that good is more

00:20:02.200 dominant or more powerful than evil, all things considered in human affairs. Now, I think it is.

00:20:07.300 But you know what I mean? You can't make a compelling propositional case that that's absolutely true.

00:20:13.200 But you can reflect your faith in your actions.

00:20:16.200 The thing is, you mentioned Richard Dawkins, I wrote, as part of the Sapiens Institute, we wrote a

00:20:20.520 small booklet called The Scientific Delusions of the New Atheists. And we refuted him on the, on these

00:20:26.360 kind of things. If you read The God Delusion, he literally spends five pages of hundreds talking

00:20:31.840 about the cosmological argument. And I think, too, talking about the teleological argument or the

00:20:36.160 fine-tuning argument. I do think that not much work has been done by new atheists in, new atheists,

00:20:45.000 meaning like, you know, the four horsemen or whatever, in trying to actually tackle these arguments.

00:20:49.120 And sometimes when they're on debates with other philosophers of religion, I don't think they,

00:20:52.760 from my perspective, at least, they don't actually provide a satisfactory defense.

00:20:57.400 Yeah, well, the instinct argument is an interesting one, because it seems to me that part of the,

00:21:03.000 and this is why I was pressing you to some degree on the issue of the definition of worship, is that

00:21:08.200 I don't see much difference between the instinct to worship and the instinct to imitate. And I do

00:21:15.000 believe that there's compelling evidence, psychological and biological, that we human beings have a remarkably

00:21:21.180 strong instinct to imitate. And the question is, well, what is it that we're oriented to imitate?

00:21:28.140 And I think we're, like, if you look at the developmental psychology literature, for example,

00:21:33.700 it seems quite, it seems to be the case that if a child has an intact nervous system, and they have

00:21:39.200 one or two good models around them, that they'll be drawn towards those good models and imitate them,

00:21:44.980 and develop quite healthily, even under rather stressful circumstances. And, you know, that instinct

00:21:52.040 to imitate also underlies phenomena, like the experience of awe, and the experience of charisma.

00:22:01.360 And that charisma, you know, has an effect on attentional function and on the proclivity to behave.

00:22:07.840 And so I think the propositionalized arguments deliver the religious ideas over to the propositional

00:22:14.880 camp. And that's dominated already by scientists in many ways. It's a losing battle. I don't think

00:22:20.600 it's the right one. So worship, you just, so, okay, so one thing the West and Islam agree on,

00:22:27.180 although I think Islam is part of the West, by the way, because we're all people of the book.

00:22:30.660 I mean, the triune God in the Christian sense is still subordinate to a higher order unity. And so

00:22:37.380 there is a powerful movement towards monotheism in Judaism and Christianity and Islam. And that seems

00:22:44.560 to be a point of some agreement. We're also, all three societies are also people who've made a decision

00:22:51.880 collectively in some mysterious manner, that a book should sit at the basis of culture,

00:22:57.540 a specific book that's been aggregated in a strange way, in a mysterious way. And so we also

00:23:03.580 agree on that. And so that's, you know, that's a starting place, at least. And obviously, there's

00:23:08.460 been a lot of interpenetration of ideas between Islam and Judaism and Christianity. I mean, the

00:23:13.720 prophets in Islam are the same prophets that go through the three major Western monotheistic

00:23:19.360 religions. And so that's a fair bit of commonality. And so that's a good place to start building

00:23:25.080 bridges. And so, okay, so Islam is stringently monotheistic. And then the submission idea,

00:23:32.160 what exactly, I mean, God is ineffable in a sense. And so what does submission mean exactly?

00:23:39.960 Right.

00:23:40.400 And how is that related to worship? And how is that related to the good, let's say,

00:23:44.360 on a practical level?

00:23:46.120 Right. So I think what you said before, there was a point you made about defining faith through action.

00:23:50.820 And I think that we would strongly agree with that. And that's, that's what we believe.

00:23:55.640 Our definition of faith is what you, what you basically believe in the heart, say on the tongue

00:24:01.700 and do with your, with your actions. That's, that's like a definition of faith, faith for us or

00:24:06.920 Iman, the idea of Iman. In terms of, in terms of the good, now there are different conceptions in

00:24:12.980 Islam of the good. But the main thing is we believe that God is good, quite similar to what

00:24:17.540 Christians believe. And therefore he wants good for human beings. And that the injunctions of God

00:24:24.540 are also good in terms of submission. And this is extremely important here. Submission can only be

00:24:30.640 done through revelation. That, that is our position. The position is that submission is actually

00:24:36.220 impossible without a guidance. And the guidance we believe obviously is the Quran. But we also

00:24:43.160 acknowledge the, we also acknowledge the Torah, the original Torah that was sent to Moses and the

00:24:50.060 original Injil or the gospel that was sent to Jesus. But what we have is, you can call it a doctrine

00:24:56.400 of Tahrif, which means corruption. So what we believe is that what happens is with these books, you've had

00:25:02.460 basically corruption happen to them. So we don't know what is, what is part of that book and what is not

00:25:08.980 part of that book. We don't know exactly what Jesus said and what isn't. Because there is no clear chain

00:25:14.000 of narration back to Jesus Christ. But going back to the point of submission, submission is to follow

00:25:21.420 the prophets, all of them, because a Muslim cannot be a Muslim unless they believe in, revere, love and

00:25:27.600 respect all of the prophets, including Jesus, Moses, Abraham, and all of them, follow all of them and in

00:25:34.760 their way. And once again, we believe that they were divinely inspired. So, and there is evidence that all of

00:25:40.080 these prophets come with. And I think I was on that point where I was telling you that the differentiating

00:25:46.000 factor between the prophet Muhammad and the rest of the prophets is we believe, whereas all of the other

00:25:50.920 prophets came for their people in their time, we believe that Muhammad came for all people and all times.

00:25:56.360 That's certainly what Christians say about Christ. Yes, but in the Bible, you'll find, you know, some verses

00:26:04.720 that are saying I've only been sent for the lost sheep of Israel. And so there's some tension, you know, you see

00:26:10.560 this, you see something like the rise of a universalism, a spirit of universalism, that surpasses fundamental

00:26:17.280 tribalism, even of a religious sort. But and it seems there seems to be a struggle that takes place in the gospel in some

00:26:23.420 sense conceptually, between this reversion to something that's more tribal and something that's

00:26:28.980 genuinely universal. But I think the universalist spirit wins out quite clearly. In other ways,

00:26:34.300 Christianity wouldn't be an evangelizing religion. It's designed to try to bring everyone under the

00:26:39.660 fold, let's say. It's largely because of the tension between Paul and James. And a lot of, well, modern day

00:26:46.140 Christianity is based on Pauline kind of interpretations, rather than kind of, James was very much a man of

00:26:52.040 the law himself. He was, you know, he didn't believe that the law was abrogated. He didn't

00:26:56.640 believe that. In fact, there's huge tension, obviously, in the Bible between both those two

00:27:01.720 men. And obviously, there's historical reasons for that as well. But what we will say is, we would say

00:27:08.840 that there are clear verses in the Bible, like, for example, we point to Isaiah 42, 11, where that

00:27:15.700 indicates a new prophet that's going to come. And in fact, Isaiah 42, 11, in particular, is extremely

00:27:21.320 important, because it even specifies the region. It says it will be sent to the people of Kedar. And the

00:27:27.480 people of Kedar, as in Genesis, Kedar was the son of Ishmael. And basically, from him is the lineage of

00:27:34.940 Muhammad, or the Arabs, if you like. And so, it is a whole discussion in the whole of Isaiah 42, about a new

00:27:42.120 prophet going to come. And he is going to come to the people of Kedar, and the people will be rejoicing on the

00:27:48.060 mountaintops. And in fact, the name of a mountain in Medina, which is present-day Saudi Arabia, is

00:27:53.740 mentioned, which is the Mount of Selah. And, and so we would say that actually, Muhammad was a

00:27:58.880 continuation of Jesus Christ, and that Jesus Christ, as a prophet, also in the Bible, doesn't

00:28:05.860 say that there's not going to be another prophet after me. And so that there's no reasonable reason

00:28:11.220 for us to think it will end with Jesus. I think Christ actually said that, that believers would

00:28:16.680 be able to do the things he did, and more. So there's actually a prophecy of, of a multitude

00:28:22.320 of prophets, in some sense, which would perhaps be a consequence of taking the fundamental doctrine,

00:28:28.200 the spiritual doctrine of Christianity, seriously. Yes, I mean, as we said, interpretation. In many

00:28:34.040 ways, we are all followers of Christ. And that's another point of commonality. Like, we, we, we see

00:28:39.580 the Messiah, Jesus Christ, as a man who had done wonders and miracles and signs, as the Bible states.

00:28:45.880 We believe that he was immaculately conceived. We believe that he cured the blind. He raised the

00:28:51.360 dead with God's permission. We believe all, like most of the things that you'll find, we actually

00:28:55.760 believe in those things. There's huge commonalities between Islam and Christianity from that

00:28:59.920 perspective. The, the major difference is we would say that it's not intelligible or conceivable

00:29:04.340 or pardonable to believe any human being with a date of birth could never be called God.

00:29:09.840 And, and this is where, where we kind of diverge from the Christian mainstream.

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00:36:25.180 Yeah, so, so, okay, so let me, let me tell you about some things I've been thinking about

00:36:30.320 in relationship to that. Well, you know that Nietzsche announced the death of God in the

00:36:37.340 late 1800s, and you know what the consequences of that have been, at least to some degree, and of

00:36:44.160 course, Dostoevsky was talking about exactly the same things at pretty much exactly the same time, but

00:36:48.560 the philosopher of religion, Mircea Eliad, in his historical investigations, indicated that

00:36:55.980 the death of God is something that has happened to many cultures in many places over many times. It's not

00:37:02.620 a unique event in, let's say, Western history. And his explanation for that, at least in part, was that

00:37:09.740 as there's a movement towards unification under a monotheistic umbrella, let's say, which is perhaps

00:37:17.880 a precondition for the union of diverse people, one of the consequences of that is that that central

00:37:26.340 unifying value becomes so abstracted, because it has to cover such a multiplicity, it becomes so

00:37:32.420 abstracted that it becomes sufficiently, it flies away in something. He called that deus abscondes,

00:37:38.540 if I remember correctly, is that the idea of the spirit just flies away, because it no longer has an

00:37:43.840 attachment to the world. And one of the ways that Christianity solved that, if you think about it

00:37:49.300 from a psychological perspective, was by insisting upon the presence of God in a canonic form, right,

00:37:59.100 in an emptied form, in a partially emptied form, in the person of Christ, in a particular place,

00:38:04.500 in a particular time. And it's a variant of the prophetic idea, although taken to its absolute

00:38:10.640 extreme. The prophetic idea is that there are people who are marked out in history, marked out by God,

00:38:16.600 by their relationship with what's highest, in some spectacular manner. And so, I guess one of the

00:38:23.280 things I would say about the Islamic resistance to the idea of the divinity of Christ is that

00:38:29.620 there is an emphasis on Islam on the special status of prophets, of certain prophets, and their

00:38:36.800 particular special relationship with God, which seems to elevate them above other men, in some important

00:38:43.280 sense. And so, and drawing a line precisely between that claim and the claim of divinity incarnate is

00:38:49.080 not an easy matter. So, well, I would actually disagree with that. I think there's a clear

00:38:54.640 distinction in the Quran between the prophets and ordinary men. This is actually one of the clearest

00:39:00.000 distinctions. Yes, but is there a clear distinction between the prophets and some spark of divinity

00:39:06.180 inside those men? Yeah. So, what do we define as a spark of divinity?

00:39:12.960 Well, I would say it's what, it's partly what gives people charisma, although it's not always that.

00:39:19.840 It's also partly what marked these men out as being prophets. I mean, it's what we look at when we say

00:39:25.200 that man is great. That's a great man. That's a great person. That was a great deed. Well, yes, yes, fair enough.

00:39:32.080 But I would say also embodied virtue. And it's embodied virtue that is, in some sense, reflective

00:39:37.300 of the action of the highest value operating at a local scale.

00:39:42.600 Yeah. So, that's exactly what we believe. We believe in the doctrine of infallibility,

00:39:47.720 or ismah. And so, we believe that all prophets basically did the best thing possible for human

00:39:53.920 beings. And this is narrated about the Prophet Muhammad. In fact,

00:39:57.640 the Quran in chapter 68, verse 2, that, and you have impeccable virtue, basically the highest level

00:40:06.100 virtue. And this is something about all the prophets. And obviously, if that wasn't the case,

00:40:10.940 we wouldn't, there wouldn't be sufficient guides for us in terms of humanity. So, if that's what you

00:40:15.400 mean by a spark of divinity, then I don't think there's a point of resistance.

00:40:18.860 Yeah. Well, these things are hard to sort out, right? The terminology. And that's part of the complexity

00:40:22.460 of these sorts of discussions. Yeah. For us, divinity is basically having the attributes of

00:40:29.240 God. So, once again, since we know God through his attributes, from that perspective, that human

00:40:37.440 beings cannot possess the fullness of the attributes of God. If you want, I can recite.

00:40:42.120 That seems like a perfectly reasonable perspective. I mean, you know, we're all limited, infallible

00:40:46.600 creatures. And we'd be fools not to see that. The attributes of God, how are they knowable?

00:40:55.200 Is that only through relationship with the book? Or does that also have an experiential element as

00:41:02.020 far as you're concerned? So, what I can do, in fact, is I can recite for you a couple of verses

00:41:06.520 from the Quran. Because what we believe is they are known through the revelation. And I can recite for

00:41:12.740 you maybe 10-20 second verses and translate for you and show you what, I think it will

00:41:17.360 give you more of a flavor of what you believe. Sure. Do what you will. So, the Quran states

00:41:22.700 in the end of chapter 59.

00:41:24.240 part in chapter 59.

00:41:36.720 Surah Al-Fatihah

00:42:06.720 Surah Al-Fatihah

00:42:36.720 Surah Al-Fatihah

00:43:06.720 Surah Al-Fatihah

00:43:36.700 Surah Al-Fatihah

00:44:06.680 Surah Al-Fatihah

00:44:36.660 Surah Al-Fatihah

00:45:06.640 Surah Al-Fatihah

00:45:36.620 Surah Al-Fatihah

00:46:06.600 Surah Al-Fatihah

00:46:36.580 Surah Al-Fatihah

00:47:06.560 Surah Al-Fatihah

00:47:36.560 Surah Al-Fatihah

00:48:06.560 Surah Al-Fatihah

00:48:36.540 Surah Al-Fatihah

00:49:06.520 What would you say?

00:49:36.500 Surah Al-Fatihah

00:50:06.480 Surah Al-Fatihah

00:50:36.480 Surah Al-Fatihah

00:51:06.440 Surah Al-Fatihah

00:51:36.420 Surah Al-Fatihah

00:52:06.400 Surah Al-Fatihah

00:52:36.380 Surah Al-Fatihah

00:53:06.360 Surah Al-Fatihah

00:53:36.360 Surah Al-Fatihah

00:54:06.340 I would say

00:54:36.340 In Islam

00:55:06.300 I would say

00:55:36.280 The biggest

00:56:06.260 The war in the war in

00:56:36.240 death that this fracturing took place among the people that were closely allied with him and it

00:56:40.080 was a bloody fracturing and it isn't obvious that it's been how bloody was it how how bloody was it

00:56:45.380 well how bloody does it have to be you know it doesn't take much okay well let's be honest let's

00:56:50.780 be fair yeah yeah okay let's be fair right with with with with the wars that took place 30 to 40

00:56:56.520 years and it wasn't immediately after because you said that in the video the day he died that's

00:56:59.880 wrong he it didn't happen the day he died it happened 30 to 40 years after it happened 30 to

00:57:04.800 40 years after and how long how how many people how many members of muhammad's immediate family

00:57:09.680 survived during that 30 years my understanding was that most of his immediate family died in

00:57:15.320 armed conflict most of his immediate family died in his own lifetime yes well i'm not speaking of them

00:57:21.200 but i'm speaking of what happened after he died facts right because yeah okay look first first fact

00:57:26.940 muhammad uh salasalam we say salasalam meaning peace and blessing be upon him um all of his

00:57:34.020 children died in his life okay except for one so most of the members of his immediate family and

00:57:40.720 his wife died khadijah died his uncle abu talib died his other uncle hamza died they all died within

00:57:46.820 his lifetime either due to illness or due to uh some other some other cause war for example like one of

00:57:53.800 the defensive wars hamza died and by the way muhammad forgave his killer and that's something which

00:57:58.480 which goes against the warlord thesis because when he then conquered mecca when he conquered mecca he

00:58:04.600 was actually no fighting i'm not sure if you know this it's called fatah mecca when he went into and

00:58:09.640 conquered mecca he didn't fight anybody it was no fighting there were a few people that that were

00:58:15.400 exempted but he actually quoted what joseph quoted to his brothers in the quran in the quran which is

00:58:22.120 that no blame is on you today and so and this by the way is a bedrock example of forgiveness in islam

00:58:29.240 because these were people that were persecuting him for 13 years these are people that were that

00:58:34.440 killed his uncle like i said there's one person called washi who um who literally killed his uncle

00:58:39.620 and uh and mutilated his body and he said to washi i forgive you but i can't i can't see your face

00:58:47.200 because of how how he said he said can you keep your face away from me because i can't psychologically

00:58:57.440 i can't believe my face but i do forgive you he said so he forgave people that killed his own family

00:59:01.720 members and this was after he he himself attempted a treaty with the pagans called hudaibiya and so they

00:59:10.040 broke the treaty and that's what initiated the conquest of mecca which was not a conquest that was

00:59:15.460 fighting now if you compare this because i think the comparison if there's any comparison that can

00:59:20.280 be or should be made it's the it's jesus's second coming with muhammad in the medinian period not in

00:59:26.860 the meccan period in the meccan period both were being persecuted jesus in his life and muhammad in his

00:59:32.200 in the meccan period but jesus when he comes back he will then get authority and he will be i uh he will

00:59:38.600 be ruling with the iron scepter according to the bible he will be crushing his uh he will be crushing his

00:59:44.920 enemies uh as it says in corinthians under his foot humbling his enemies other's foot uh and

00:59:49.900 killing and violent stuff so in fact what the the i will actually argue today that the new testament

00:59:56.480 representation of jesus christ in his second coming is way more violent than muhammad's conquests in uh

01:00:04.520 the medinan okay well look like i said i wasn't i wasn't trying to make the case i wasn't trying to

01:00:09.260 make the case that what happened in mecca or medina was wrong like so let me explain that a little bit

01:00:16.440 so christian europe fought a defensive war against the nazis it isn't obvious that that was wrong i

01:00:24.600 don't think that was i wouldn't say that's defensive well okay fine but but i understand the concept of

01:00:30.720 defensive war and america america when america got involved in world war ii it was not under

01:00:37.820 immediate threat by germany and they colonized it and here's the thing it it overtook western germany

01:00:44.600 you see and well here's the thing the term warlord that you use with the prophet you've never used

01:00:50.300 with harry truman you've never used with uh with uh roosevelt you've never used with winston

01:00:55.880 church here all of which conquered countries literally in wars because i feel like there is

01:01:01.340 there is a bias there and you've actually never used it with anybody else aside from the prophet

01:01:05.880 muhammad in your public output and i think that's unjustifiable i think that you have biblical prophets

01:01:10.200 like moses you have biblical prophets like um joshua you have you have the jesus and his second coming

01:01:17.820 all of which were warrior prophets and and and and you've only used the term uh war uh warlord with

01:01:25.240 the prophet muhammad and i think that is unjustifiable i think if we're what is it that

01:01:29.040 what makes someone a warlord in your in then if if it's if it's conquering lands then harry truman

01:01:35.600 is a warlord then uh you know and so on and so forth in fact the problem well i guess that's a real

01:01:41.320 that's a real tough question isn't it what makes a warlord and what makes a just war it's not like any

01:01:45.860 of us have the precise answers to that i think that's what partly what we're trying to hash out

01:01:49.800 definitions of the word warlords the definition of the word warlord according to collins is that

01:01:53.880 someone who acquires force by aggressivity and violence well okay so you pushed back on me so

01:02:00.560 i'll push back on you to some degree okay well it's certainly the case that the expansion of the

01:02:05.600 islamic empire was accomplished by a tremendous amount of warlike activity and that wasn't defensive

01:02:11.440 now look i understand that monotheism is a difficult state to attain yeah and that monotheistic

01:02:18.320 societies have emerged in the midst of conflict throughout human society i understand that and

01:02:22.940 i'm not even saying that there's something exceptional in that regard about islam although

01:02:27.080 the rate at which it happened was quite remarkable but it still it presents us with a problem doesn't

01:02:32.060 it i mean everyone it presents everyone with a problem and the problem is well for example the

01:02:37.800 problem is reconciling the idea of turning the other cheek with the idea of a just war a defensive

01:02:42.440 war or an expansive war for that matter and of course that issue is relevant to islam because islam

01:02:47.780 exploded outward and produced the biggest empire the world had ever seen in in the in the space of

01:02:53.380 a few short centuries yeah but dr jordan and so that yeah so then well so then you ask well what's

01:02:59.340 the spirit what is the spirit that animated that and is that attributable to the islamic doctrines

01:03:05.660 themselves i don't know the answer to that no let me tell you the answer to that okay and this is

01:03:10.840 what i want to tell you conclusively and this will help build bridges honestly because we can maintain

01:03:15.100 the warlord thesis we can maintain the expansionist thesis but here's what i'll tell you islam has a

01:03:20.780 has a capability to be expansive and it also has a capability of making peace treaties and it does and

01:03:28.880 it should do whatever's in its best interest just like every country should do whatever's in its best

01:03:33.320 interest in the pre-modern world we did not i think this is highly anachronistic in the pre-modern

01:03:39.120 world there was no such thing as the un it was a realist international relations framework whereby

01:03:44.460 everybody was fighting everyone the roman empire didn't care about what it didn't care about you

01:03:51.300 quite frankly it was expanding itself the persian empire was expanding itself and the arabian peninsula

01:03:56.880 was in between both and so it could have either been swallowed by those two other empires or it could

01:04:02.560 decide to in fact we will impose our government on them before they impose it on us and it decided the

01:04:08.060 former rather than the latter it decided to expand and in fact the prophet in his weakest of times

01:04:13.020 he predicted that that would happen you know there was one war in particular where they were

01:04:17.980 they were starving and it's called khandaq and he hit a rock and he said

01:04:22.180 the roman empire has been conquered he hit another a rock again he said

01:04:27.980 that the persian empire has been conquered and then he knocked the rock again he said

01:04:32.580 he said this in his weakest moment he said that the yemen has been conquered

01:04:35.820 i see that the expansion of the islamic empire is a proof of islam and you know it's not just me

01:04:41.000 even historians say this how barnaby rogersson he said the fact that islam spread to the roman

01:04:47.400 empire and the persian empire is equivalent to the the is equivalent to eskimos taken over russia

01:04:53.600 and america i believe it's miraculous if anything that this happened i don't think it's unjustifiable i

01:04:58.580 think actually jordan pearson then why did it stop it why did it stop at europe's borders

01:05:03.360 so to speak if it was a miraculous expansion yeah it stopped because of uh it wasn't successful there

01:05:10.060 it wasn't it stopped where it couldn't go further but the point is is that it's not like the christians

01:05:16.540 at that time in uh rome cared i mean they did the same thing for years they were expanding themselves

01:05:22.020 well that's why i said that's why i said i wasn't making a prima facie case that this was wrong i'm

01:05:26.840 trying to understand it and so and you objected to my use of the term warlord and perhaps rightly so

01:05:32.200 you know perhaps that was an injudicious comment i was rather shocked when i was reading islamic history

01:05:38.100 when i encountered the degree of violence that surrounded these events and so you know maybe i was

01:05:44.680 i appreciate what you said there i think this that shows real sincerity and it's it's it's one step

01:05:50.820 closer to creating real uh meaningful relationships between uh well i think and i think your you know

01:05:57.540 your defense that well the world was a battleground of empires and you know if it's if it's push out

01:06:03.280 from our territory or be encroached upon and dominated then it isn't obvious that being encroached

01:06:08.460 upon and dominated is the right approach the correct approach the most moral approach let's say

01:06:13.860 especially because there'd be no shortage of bloodshed that would also accompany that

01:06:18.120 so sometimes you're in a bad place and but you know it's not an easy thing for any of us to

01:06:23.400 what would you say mediate between doctrines like turn the other cheek and love your enemy

01:06:28.280 and also at the same time discuss the necessity of both defensive and sometimes expansive expansionist

01:06:34.360 wars right we all have to contend with that and and and and it's very difficult to contend with it

01:06:40.100 the arguments are extremely complicated you're absolutely right and i think what's really important

01:06:43.960 here because i think this is a huge misconception is to to outline because i know you're against

01:06:49.060 totalitarianism you're very uh you know vocal about that and i want to tell you that we are

01:06:54.300 this is a point of commonality we are also against totalitarianism if we if we define totalitarianism

01:06:59.620 as um a central government trying to encroach every private and public matter uh of of the citizens

01:07:07.260 lives and this is something we don't believe in in fact this is very important islam does not

01:07:12.140 say you have to force people either to become muslim or that they can or they have to live

01:07:17.500 an islamic lifestyle within an islamic governance and i'm not sure if you know this but at the time

01:07:22.640 of the prophet he made a constitution okay with jewish people with other people who are not muslim at

01:07:28.180 the time protecting their rights protecting their rights to worship whoever they wanted to worship

01:07:31.900 and actually even guaranteeing that if there were intruder forces that they would be protected like

01:07:36.720 that as well is that the is that the arrangement made with like fellow people of the book

01:07:41.520 essentially yes it was arrangement yeah i'm aware of that yes and so not only this but this was

01:07:47.720 implemented at the time of the caliphs so omar or abu bakr saddiq and so on this is we believe in a

01:07:55.620 kind of pluralism in this sense and the fact is i would argue that it was more legally efficacious than

01:08:01.500 what we have in the west do you know why because permission you think that's true now yes even i'm

01:08:07.900 tell you why because christians were given courts that they could rule in and that the law would be

01:08:15.960 efficacious would be a parallel dissenting law system which would have effect so they would so they would

01:08:21.580 effectively be able to go and judge their affairs outside of the the general framework of islam

01:08:27.360 and in fact this is in the quran and they took this even though we believe that the torah

01:08:36.080 has been corrupted to some extent uh the the remnants of they can use the torah whatever

01:08:42.620 corrupted version they have to rule their affairs and this is something that was was was done at the

01:08:48.500 time of the prophet done done at the time of the caliphs and so even now we would say and i'm not saying

01:08:53.280 that the whole of islamic history has presented this convivencia that we saw in spain between

01:08:58.020 muslims christians and jews a good time and and uh or other times in india by all yeah yeah i'm not

01:09:04.220 saying that of course i'm not but what i'm saying is that i think it is disingenuous to to to paint a

01:09:10.340 point at islam as if it's been the most intolerant of all of these religions look at the alhambra

01:09:14.520 look at the spanish inquisition look at the crusades look at look at the colonialism that has happened

01:09:20.020 in the name if not even not in the name of religion there's no disputing with me the fact that in some

01:09:26.460 sense we all have the blood of history on our hands yes i'm firmly aware of that and it's an

01:09:32.880 existential burden for everyone and i'm not i'm not trying to make the case that this is particularly

01:09:38.060 or uniquely true of islam i certainly know that that's not the case what i'm saying instead is that

01:09:43.940 these are things that we have to contend with and we don't exactly know how i still have the

01:09:49.800 problem of these two evangelizing religions right that they're going head to head in some sense

01:09:54.340 yes it's true evangelizing doesn't mean that it's compelling and and this is very clear okay okay now

01:10:00.860 that that's now there's an interesting point not that the points you made before aren't you know

01:10:05.360 because i kind of think well let he who can tell the best story win and then that story also has the

01:10:11.780 best actors so to speak right and so i would say the proper mode to conversion is something like

01:10:17.040 shining example and then if you're governed by a doctrine that is in fact divine and you're managing

01:10:22.960 to embody that in the sense that gives you the glow the charismatic glow of embodied divinity

01:10:29.840 two steps removed let's say and people are willing to abide by your words as a consequence well

01:10:35.700 more power to you and that's a lot more efficient and effective than compulsory war armed conflict or

01:10:41.680 any of those things and i mean this is a constant problem and i would also say that given our

01:10:46.100 technological mastery now we really can't afford this anymore we have to solve this problem of

01:10:51.700 defensive war expansive war evangelical religion you know how to go about you not how to go about

01:10:59.080 uniting us under some umbrella that isn't so vague that it means nothing how to preserve our traditions

01:11:05.280 from the past and i can't see any better way than each of us trying to be shining exemplars of our

01:11:10.580 tradition and then letting that goodness shine forth in a way that people you may you may it may be the

01:11:16.040 case that we'll find that the better we are the more we're like each other i mean wouldn't that be a

01:11:20.360 kind of union under something approximating god that all good men could see in each other a reflection

01:11:25.620 of something that was the highest and that that should be compelling in and of itself absolutely but

01:11:31.580 i think in terms of the jurisprudence in terms of what islam is capable of people in the west must

01:11:39.380 realize that islam is fully capable of peace this is what must be realized how do we how do we know

01:11:45.520 that it's not despite the quran and the sunnah or the sayings of the prophet and actions but it's

01:11:50.940 because of them if you if you look at the quran and you look at for example chapter 4 verse 90 or if

01:11:57.560 you look at for example chapter 1 verse 90 chapter 2 verse 190 you'll see that the the um the islamic

01:12:06.000 commandments are clearly sometimes about defensiveness but sometimes also clearly about

01:12:11.380 um about creating peace treaties and this treaty of hudabia is a bedrock example we are so long as

01:12:19.560 there's peace treaties there is peace and so in terms of muslim countries they can perpetually create

01:12:24.860 peace treaties with other people muslim people uh even more so because we believe we're fully under

01:12:31.260 contract and and therefore you're willing to abide by a contract this is the thing let me tell you

01:12:38.780 something jordan peterson okay the thing one of the clearest for me and i've done a lot of work

01:12:43.840 studying liberalism studying christianity and studying islam okay this the clearest commonality

01:12:50.860 between liberal theory and islam is contractarianism and contracts consent that is a clearest thing because

01:12:57.620 in in liberal theory you have the theory of consent and in islam you have the same thing

01:13:02.840 contracts are binding the quran says yeah even with people outside the faith yes especially with

01:13:09.320 people outside the faith why especially why especially is that part of the tradition of

01:13:13.560 hospitality in some sense because if if you break a contract with a non-muslim then you're driving

01:13:19.380 them away from islam okay so yes that's definitely true that's absolutely and so remember islam is

01:13:25.640 islam is attempts to attract people to its own religion one of the categories of zakat was

01:13:32.380 money that you pay to non-muslims so that they can feel comfortable and they can feel as if

01:13:39.880 you're doing them a favor and there's relationships going on it's a category it is a category of zakat which

01:13:46.160 is one of the five pillars of islam to to give such money so the fact that islam states uh in chapter

01:13:54.080 five verse verse one yeah oh you who believe fulfill your contracts that is generic and that means to

01:14:05.280 abide by your word so you have to stick by your words no matter for us if you don't stick to your words

01:14:11.000 then this shows a lack of character it shows that you in fact one of the signs one of the signs of

01:14:17.460 a hypocrite is that he goes against a religious hypocrite is that he is that if he if he makes

01:14:25.580 a contract he goes against it it seems one of the most despicable things do you think that there are

01:14:30.460 other things that i've said about islam that we could talk about right now that i could clear up and

01:14:37.140 you know because i don't want elephants under the carpet i don't like elephants under the carpet

01:14:41.740 or snakes under the carpet so are there other things that i've said that you that that people

01:14:46.780 on the islamic side who would maybe like to not be my enemy let's say um because who needs enemies

01:14:54.140 after all unless you want them um are there other things that you think places that i've misstepped in

01:15:00.840 a serious manner that should be rectified as far as you're concerned in a serious matter i will confine

01:15:05.780 it to the warlord comment because i think that's the one that most muslims well you know people in

01:15:11.360 the west are afraid of islamic expansionism and they're okay so let's let's go after that again

01:15:15.920 so the other thing that i find upsetting let's say is the civil war in islam yeah well yeah so if it

01:15:25.320 didn't tell people to fight each other i mean that fair enough doesn't say it doesn't say that

01:15:31.260 islam doesn't say there should be a civil war it's in fact it was predicted but it was never

01:15:36.420 encouraged in fact the quran clearly encourages against civil war yeah and i would say the same

01:15:41.940 thing about christianity and it gives us by the way protestant and catholic wars sorry just to

01:15:48.100 interrupt it gives us a remedy in fact the quran is the only religious book i know that tells you how

01:15:53.880 to deal with the civil war it says that if two groups of muslims fight then create peace between

01:16:04.380 them it says that if and if one of the groups rebels against the other group then fight the one

01:16:17.100 that is rebellious until it wakes up to the command of god so islam is categorically against civil war

01:16:24.340 islam is islam is clearly for pluralism it's not for compulsion these misnomers and misconceptions

01:16:32.040 must okay so okay so fair fair enough and as i said i know that the protestants and the catholics were

01:16:38.800 at each other's throats for years and despite the fact that of there being no justification for that

01:16:43.740 let's say or quite the contrary in the gospels so this isn't a problem that's unique to islam but

01:16:49.060 it is an ongoing problem in islam and it's not like there isn't sectarian strife in the west i also

01:16:54.620 understand that and so that that makes people watching the the religious community say wary

01:17:00.720 because well for obvious reasons and so why do you i know you can't answer this question in totality but

01:17:06.520 islam hasn't been able to bring its own house into unified order and so what why why do you think that

01:17:13.000 is and how is that related to islam itself if it is at all there's nothing exceptional about islam in

01:17:19.280 that regard and this once again is you made this point many times i'll tell you something again

01:17:24.120 just because there's multiple interpretations of something it doesn't mean that that thing

01:17:29.320 is false like there may be multiple interpretations of the killing of jfk it doesn't mean that

01:17:33.940 jfk didn't get killed people differ on things which especially if there's a lot of those people

01:17:41.500 which there can be more than one interpretation about now in terms of body count there was actually

01:17:46.100 a book that was written um and with there was a chapter of the book by i think his name is nazir

01:17:52.520 sheikh and he he done a study looking at the numbers of people that have been killed in all the major world

01:17:59.780 religions and he puts christianity firmly at the top i mean this doesn't require too much historical

01:18:04.960 research anyway look at the 30-year war compare that with okay look okay okay so so the point

01:18:12.620 you're making the point you're making is twofold is it's not the necessity for civil war isn't embedded

01:18:20.420 in the doctrine yes there's no reason to throw stones at the muslim world when we could perfectly

01:18:25.360 well look to our own history and i do think what we should do is look to our own history i really

01:18:31.160 believe that and i believe that we all carry historical guilt for the bloodshed that's

01:18:36.400 preceded the the structure of all of our societies but we in the west we look at the muslim world and

01:18:42.120 we see that it's it's it's riven apart and we wonder well i i know i know there's a hypocritical

01:18:49.200 element to that i'm not claiming that there isn't it's not like we have our own house in order but you

01:18:53.900 have to remember something else you have to remember there was a colonial reality that existed

01:18:58.280 where britain france and many of the european countries and uh the western european extensions

01:19:06.040 they dominated the muslim world for the last two three hundred years and so yeah but i i think i

01:19:11.740 don't think that's particularly good argument no it's very good well hang on hang on a second

01:19:16.420 i'm not i don't want it i don't want to knock it away completely the rift that i'm talking about

01:19:21.860 though was was evident far before that now the fact of that colonial complication that that could

01:19:27.040 well be the fact of that colonial complication could could well be a contributor i know the

01:19:31.820 the nation state lines first of all were imposed they were imposed quickly they were imposed

01:19:36.760 arbitrarily and without and partly partly that was a consequence of what would you say having to do a

01:19:43.160 lot of things very quickly in the aftermath of a terrible war i'm not trying to excuse it but it was

01:19:47.900 complicated and i know that that's left the middle east in this you know uh uh group of nation states

01:19:54.960 that now comprise the world in a very complicated situation so it's a reasonable point but the rift

01:20:00.460 was there before and so okay here's what i'll say to that yeah it's you you're right to say that there

01:20:06.820 was arbitrary lines that were drawn but it's not just that there were arbitrary lines that were drawn

01:20:10.540 you mentioned the middle east syria for example which is where most of the problems are happening

01:20:15.100 now in terms of the middle eastern countries it's probably number one maybe maybe libya number two

01:20:18.900 but say syria for example they put three four five ten different factions all of which have

01:20:24.520 differing understandings of of of religion of ideology of whatever it may be together that

01:20:31.560 produced wars you know you had christians in lebanon fighting sunnis shias fighting sunnis

01:20:37.140 and this happened especially after the revolution a lot of it is so it was the imposition of a false

01:20:42.860 unity that's really what happened yeah if you look at how what they're doing now like look at

01:20:47.400 lebanon as an example you could you have to have a christian president and a sunni prime minister

01:20:52.420 and a shia i don't know what it is first minister or something i don't i mean they have systems that

01:20:56.760 try and mitigate these issues but it's a mess because you're putting people that have different

01:21:01.060 visions of how to run a country together and they have their similar demographics it's like 30 40

01:21:07.420 20 and so that creates more wars but they put them together almost on i would argue on purpose to be

01:21:13.140 honest it's divide and conquer if you look at countries like denmark and sweden and norway which

01:21:18.480 are very peaceful and very prosperous they're also very homogenous and so and they're relatively small

01:21:23.760 so the problem of governance over diversity is much reduced in countries like that it's simpler for

01:21:29.600 them to be at peace because the culture is relatively homogenous and so i take your point

01:21:34.180 it's not easy to bring a true diversity into something approximating a unity especially when that unity

01:21:40.460 has been in some sense arbitrarily opposed imposed and also rapidly and arbitrarily imposed so that's

01:21:46.740 a reasonable point yeah um but i think what it is is and i've seen this in your reading list it's

01:21:51.500 like when you when you follow kind of bernard lewis's uh or samuel huntington's kind of clash of

01:21:57.620 civilization narratives sometimes you miss the nuances and these are the nuances yeah well that's for

01:22:02.120 sure there are myriad contributory factors to why and it's i don't i still don't see how islamic

01:22:08.080 countries there's like almost 50 muslim majority countries uh in like in general like you made a

01:22:14.560 point about economic uh potential one time you said yeah yeah i wanted to ask you about that because

01:22:19.120 well that's another thing that's quite a mystery is that the comparatively speaking per capita the

01:22:25.380 muslim countries are not that productive economically there's a there's four muslim majority in what sense

01:22:31.340 there's four muslim there are four out of ten muslim majority countries in the gdp per capita top 10

01:22:38.080 brunei qatar kuwait and saudi arabia well yeah well i'm not sure that i'm willing to grant the fact

01:22:45.200 that most of that wealth is generated by oil as a as a indicator of productivity the point stands is

01:22:50.700 you said per capita gdp yeah but that i'm sorry yes fair enough and you were right to call me on that

01:22:55.460 that isn't what that isn't what i meant i'm sorry because i don't think i well no i do i we got to get

01:23:01.540 the words right here we got to get them exactly right because these things matter um i don't the

01:23:06.720 well all you know that oil wealth is often a curse as well as a blessing

01:23:11.100 so outside of oil wealth you have brunei brunei is another country that's in the top 10

01:23:16.660 okay so let's talk about brunei what have they done right in your estimation i don't know much

01:23:22.160 about brunei but i know they're in the top 10 i have to be honest with you you know but yeah well

01:23:25.520 that's part of this low resolution knowledge that we all have a problem with right i mean it's

01:23:29.600 yes talking about these things is very difficult because you have to know everything to do it right

01:23:33.400 it's not that easy to know everything i know that they were trying to implement sharia to a very high

01:23:37.880 level and uh whatever they're doing is it's not because it's not despite the sharia and but i also

01:23:44.360 know is that the methodology is flawed when you look at uh muslim majority countries and say well

01:23:50.220 they're not doing well as uh non-muslim majority because the ottoman empire 400 years ago was doing

01:23:55.540 better than most countries yes yes yes yes absolutely and i know i know and historical

01:24:01.440 time frame matters you know because it's definitely so so that's a perfectly valid point let me tell you

01:24:06.920 something uh john pearson uh you are an epistemological pragmatist from my understanding

01:24:11.640 you've said before in an interview that anything which serves life is is true that's what you said

01:24:17.100 i think with sam harris if this is the case and you said it's nested in bionism if this is your

01:24:22.740 position then the truth of the matter it's nested complicated it's nested in a very complex manner

01:24:27.960 in darwin yeah but if it's i mean i think that highest truth is something like love and i think

01:24:32.380 it's very much associated with the notions of love that are central to religious traditions and so

01:24:37.560 i'm with you but you still believe that truth is utility and you still believe because that's the

01:24:41.400 pragmatist position and so truth is relative what i'm saying yeah but i also believe that the basis of

01:24:46.860 utility is love that's why i'm not so sure that i'm not so sure that you and i differ so much on

01:24:52.780 that particular no but john pearson what i want to say to you is this right pragm first of all

01:24:58.480 pragmatically islam is doing the best because if you're talking about evolution then we're talking

01:25:02.120 about reproduction and survivability and islam has got the highest birth rates in the world today

01:25:07.160 it's the fastest growing religion by a mile by by 2100 it will be number one so in your definition it

01:25:12.740 should be the most true by the way number one number two is this is that well that's a lot of

01:25:17.220 love all that reproduction they're trying to change the subject now look so number number number two is

01:25:24.860 this look dr john pearson is i'll tell you that i think i've seen your struggle against post-modernism

01:25:30.600 i've seen your struggle against nihilism and i don't think you will be successful and i'm sorry to

01:25:35.220 say it like this and the reason why i don't think you'll be successful is because your framework is

01:25:38.920 self-relativistic if if it's utility and epistemologically pragmatic then truth is

01:25:44.380 relative and if truth is relative what are you going to say to you you actually agree with the

01:25:48.460 post-modernist in that sense you i think you're closer to post-modernist than you think in fact the

01:25:53.100 pragmatist position is not it's a secret love it's not inconsistent jordan pearson with the pragmatic

01:26:00.020 position that you hold what we are offering you well i'm going to detail out that in in much more

01:26:05.240 detail when i go to cambridge and oxford so okay i don't know you should come why don't you come to

01:26:09.820 one of the talks i'll i'll come okay just send me do you want me to get do you want an invitation

01:26:14.240 i'll get you an invitation well let's why don't you come because i'm going to talk about one of the

01:26:18.380 things in islam is to always accept invitations as well and gifts and i'm going to send you some

01:26:22.660 gifts as well my friend yeah all right we need to get you some gifts all right so look i'm going to

01:26:27.120 ask you one more i gotta stop because i'm getting burned out i i want to ask you one more question

01:26:31.100 okay and and we i would like to talk to you again and i do hope you come in and and join me in

01:26:35.800 cambridge or at oxford for one of these talks that would be real good i'll get i'll get the person

01:26:40.040 organizing the the the the trip to to extend you an invitation and so thank you now you described

01:26:47.380 yourself as a traditionalist as opposed to a liberal muzzle and and we were talking a little bit

01:26:53.380 about mustafa akul and so why for you is the traditionalism particularly important and why

01:27:01.140 why should that carry more weight than let's say attempts to hypothetically liberalize islam what is

01:27:07.220 it doing for you look we have and this goes back to the pragmatism point and the post-modernism point

01:27:13.440 islam gives you moral anchorage in and of itself we believe islam itself has an inbuilt

01:27:20.820 flexibility but objectively it's an from a correspondence theory perspective it's an

01:27:25.120 outside truth which is which is hard which is strong and which can oppose and destroy post-modernism

01:27:32.160 and nihilism and and that's what i think a lot of your followers want so you think that a

01:27:36.440 traditionalist grounding is is a more it's a firmer foundation as far as you're concerned when a liberal

01:27:41.700 decides that they want to fuse islamic ideas with uh islamic ideas with liberal ideas

01:27:50.560 they're assumed they're almost um they're almost okay fair enough i can understand that and it's

01:27:55.940 partly why i have some sympathy for conservative for the conservative perspective just one point

01:28:00.600 okay yes yes so they're they're admitting that there's it's almost an admission that islam is

01:28:06.440 not complete and it's not perfect we believe islam is complete and it's perfect and it's guidance

01:28:10.680 and we believe we have evidence for that whether it's the prophets yeah well okay but there's two

01:28:15.280 there's two problems i have with that i would say i mean look and i i'm taking your point

01:28:19.480 seriously and i understand the utility of firm foundations as a bulwark against chaos okay yes

01:28:24.900 of course so but but here's here's two problems i have with that it's not easy to protect yourself

01:28:30.720 if you're a traditionalist against the temptation towards an authoritarian interpretation

01:28:35.320 and flawed as we all are you know when we approach let's say sacred texts we also have to

01:28:41.440 remember that it's us who are reading them and divine though they may be that doesn't mean we're

01:28:47.280 perfect in our receipt receipt of their message and so it's hard what the the danger on the on the

01:28:52.700 more traditionalist side is the slide into authoritarian authoritarian certainty as opposed

01:28:58.520 to the slide into chaos on the more liberal side so how do you how do you how do you personally defend

01:29:04.760 yourself against that well first of all um authoritarianism on pragmatism is and pragmatism

01:29:12.140 are not uh inconsistent because an authoritarian leader i'm not saying i have the answer to that

01:29:18.080 problem okay fine fine making that that's the first thing number two is i would say do you know

01:29:21.920 you've said one time i think in a lecture that that one of the miracles of christianity is uh render

01:29:26.580 on to caesar first you know render on to caesar what belongs to caesar render on to god what belongs to

01:29:30.340 god what if caesar is hitler then you've got authoritarianism all over again so i think yes

01:29:37.180 definitely yeah so you didn't answer my question though it was a technical question it's a technical

01:29:43.000 question look and maybe i'm wrong in the formulation and you can tell me if you think i am

01:29:47.280 what i see as a danger on the liberal side is the possibility of a descent into something like chaos

01:29:54.560 that's hopelessness and despair but what i see on the more traditionalist side let's say the

01:29:59.840 conservative side is a retreat into a a kind of authoritarian certainty and that's those are

01:30:05.660 twin temptations that might be what would you say specific to given temperaments and i was asking you

01:30:10.740 personally like you're a you're a uh uh traditionalist believer yeah how do you protect yourself

01:30:17.800 you know your soul against the temptations of overweening certainty all right i got you i got you okay

01:30:24.900 yeah okay yeah no no i don't in terms of certainty i i strive for it in fact we we want it we don't

01:30:32.220 we don't want to the the problem is not how do you rectify error like you know you're not perfect

01:30:38.040 obviously no no me personally of course i'm not perfect but we believe we follow a perfect guidance

01:30:43.680 right but you follow it imperfectly yes there's the rub right so so that's my point is that given

01:30:51.040 that you have to follow it imperfectly given that you're imperfect how do you defend yourself against

01:30:56.680 inappropriate certainty because look if you're imperfect it means you think you're right about

01:31:01.340 things you're not right about that's the definition of it's compounded ignorance right yes yeah yeah so

01:31:06.600 there are things that i you know in terms of my own personal you're talking about my own personal

01:31:11.280 face yeah i'm talking you bet you bet okay i got you there are certain things which i'll agree i will

01:31:16.100 believe in 100 and there are certain things i will suspend judgment on so the things which for me

01:31:22.760 constitute the anchor i believe the moment i take the anchor away i plunge into chaos and anarchy

01:31:28.840 and depression and that's not something i'm willing to do for myself so the certainty i have is that

01:31:35.360 there's one god worthy of worship that god's wisdom and guidance is the truth that whatever god says is

01:31:42.180 true that the prophets are true that heaven is true that hell is true all that stuff the things i will

01:31:47.460 suspend judgment on is how to deal with situations because that i do believe by the way in a kind of

01:31:53.060 sharia consequentialism and i do believe that within the islamic framework is something called

01:31:58.860 which is basically the principles of jurisprudence that that rules are not always going to work in all cases

01:32:07.340 we do believe that by the way so so for example i'm not allowed to drink alcohol but in certain

01:32:12.380 cases if it's the last thing uh that one can do if if they're not going to die if they're going to die

01:32:18.140 if they don't do it then you can do it and this is just one like extreme example we're not allowed

01:32:22.500 alcohol in islam obviously uh this is one of the injunctions but there are things we do believe in a

01:32:27.740 consequence and inbuilt flexibility with that we have to communicate we have to discuss we have to speak

01:32:32.840 to muslims and non-muslims alike you're so okay okay so i'm still not getting at what i want i want

01:32:39.180 to hear from you specifically go on you know that well all of us struggle with the desire to have what

01:32:46.680 we believe be right at all costs right because it's it well it is satisfying and and it's difficult to be

01:32:53.780 wrong because it means you have to improve you have to look at your errors i'm asking you personally

01:32:58.200 like when you're dealing with your wife when you're dealing with your kids you know how do you know

01:33:02.880 when how is it that you can protect yourself against being over weaning

01:33:07.640 this is a good question you're gonna get me in trouble with this kind of thing right now you know

01:33:13.040 this is a good question what it is is that you know i've been married for like nine years now

01:33:18.000 you know and i've had to learn that the hard way you know i've had to learn that the hard way that

01:33:22.900 i protect myself by realizing or know my own vulnerability my own fallibility

01:33:27.800 my own weakness the fact that i don't get everything right um the fact that there's

01:33:32.860 another perspective that there's something outside of myself which is greater than me

01:33:36.680 yeah well that's okay so that's that's something like you know because a serious discussion can be

01:33:42.340 had about the relationship between humility and love right i mean i think a certain degree of

01:33:46.820 humility is a precondition for love because otherwise you can't take the perspective of the other person

01:33:51.100 like how can you if you don't if you don't think you're wrong and i like i for me and and it's

01:33:58.000 certainly been the case this was useful in my clinical practice and certainly in my marriage is

01:34:02.020 i'm trying to be as attentive as i can to when i'm wrong and that seems to be a reasonable yeah that

01:34:08.080 comes out and i think that's really good that's a good part of your person i think that's why a lot

01:34:12.440 of people actually love your work and love you as a person because you come across as extremely

01:34:16.760 authentic and sincere that we don't find that kind of thing in kind of a lot it's not like it's it's

01:34:23.280 not like it's obvious to me that the christians have it right and the jews and the muslims have it

01:34:28.100 wrong and so that's certainly not the case at an individual level no it's way more complicated than

01:34:34.680 that way more and so we're just not going to go for answers if we go for answers like that we're

01:34:39.340 going to be at each other's throats and how about we aren't how about we're not how about we make

01:34:44.740 peace hey and so you and i we had a peaceful conversation so good for us and hooray and

01:34:51.400 hopefully we'll have some more and i would be very much like to see you in in cambridge or oxford and

01:34:56.200 you can listen to my arguments in a more detailed manner that way and that might address some of the

01:35:00.820 philosophical concerns that you were raising yeah so so i'll get an invitation out to you well likely

01:35:06.760 today so and hopefully we'll be able to talk again and thank you very much for agreeing to speak

01:35:12.100 with me i appreciate it and for correcting me on my misapprehensions thank you dr jordan and you're

01:35:17.060 most welcome to come and speak on my podcast as well and as i said a lot of traditionalist muslims

01:35:22.860 really look up to you and i think we've actually come quite a long way in being able to build bridges

01:35:28.040 to summarize really from my side so long as today we have realized that okay islam is a religion not

01:35:34.140 too dissimilar okay from the other previous dispensations as we would we would see it and that

01:35:40.100 there are things there's a flesh that joins these religions and also that peace is possible

01:35:47.040 peace is possible well then let's let's see if we can be good enough people to actually want peace

01:35:53.760 let's try and see what we can do all right man we'll see you i hope we see each other in the uk and

01:36:00.280 and i'd like to say hello to all the listeners and watchers of this from the islamic community and

01:36:05.060 like let's see what we can do together man yeah and you're you're invited to anything any mosque i

01:36:11.700 think in the uk will have you because you've already got the presence there just name the mosque and i'll

01:36:18.120 i'll get you an invitation send me a send me a suggestion uh when i can send you this invitation

01:36:23.760 send me a suggestion i don't know if i can do it on this visit but i'm coming back in i think march

01:36:28.620 and i'd certainly i'm certainly willing to do it at not only willing eager and i mean that i mean

01:36:34.460 eager i would love to be welcomed in that manner that would be a tremendous privilege as far as i'm

01:36:39.380 concerned so no i think you will be surprised as to the amount of acceptability that you have in

01:36:46.000 particular the muslim community well hooray for that so let's try not to muck it up with foolish words

01:36:52.060 all right all right man good talking to you thanks again thanks so much man

01:36:57.180 you

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - December 13, 2021

209. Islam and the Possibilities of Peace ｜ Mohammed Hijab

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