In this episode, I speak to my friend, Luay Ahmed, who is a feminist and human rights activist who grew up in a conservative Muslim family in Yemen. She shares her story of growing up as a feminist activist and how she fought for the rights of women in the Muslim religion.
00:03:53.740my mom was able to find out that the word beat is also used in hundreds of numerous ways in the Quran.
00:04:01.260And it's never to use violence, but rather to throw or abandon or so.
00:04:06.200So she used to always find these very progressive interpretations to to kind of like highlight a beautiful version of Islam and the Quran.
00:04:15.320And my mother also believed in disregarding the vast majority of the hadiths,
00:04:20.660because, you know, there are more than three hundred thirty thousand hadiths.
00:04:23.560There are even millions of hadiths, according to some interpretations.
00:04:26.200So my mother always tries to to focus on a progressive and illuminating Islam that respects woman's rights, that respects minorities rights.
00:04:39.200But then 2014, I received an invitation by the Olof Palm Center, which is the Social Democratic Center for Education.
00:04:48.440And my invitation, I was I've always been an activist and loud mouth.
00:04:53.640So I was a part of the Yemeni Revolution, which I regret very deeply, even though I was a part of it as an independent voice who used to go out and carry signs that say equality, human rights and women's rights.
00:05:07.600But looking back at it, the revolution was high.
00:05:30.180But I was, you know, active in these circles, in change squares, calling for human rights, women's rights, just like my mother.
00:05:37.380And in 2013, my mom became a spokesperson for the National Dialogue in Yemen, which was like kind of a transitional parliament between the older government that was dethroned and then the coming parliament.
00:05:54.600And because of her high position being the spokesperson, we received death threats from Al-Qaida.
00:06:00.040My family, like Al-Qaida came out with a list of people that they wanted to kill.
00:06:07.220And one of the reasons that my mom was put in the Al-Qaida list, because she voted in one of the committees to not have the Quran and the Hadith be the main source of all Yemeni laws.
00:06:20.720What they proposed was the Sharia and the Quran would be the source of the laws, but not all the laws.
00:06:27.880They argued, for example, traffic laws.
00:06:30.060In Prophet Muhammad's days, there was no traffic.
00:06:32.920So you can't derive that from the Quran.
00:06:41.260So three months later, I got this invitation from the Ulof Palm Center to come to Sweden and talk about the revolution.
00:06:49.120But when I got the invitation, my mom had advised me and told me, why don't you seek asylum?
00:06:55.760Because, you know, we, Al-Qaida, you have legitimate reasons, a well-founded fear of persecution.
00:07:02.560And I told her, no, I'm not going to do that.
00:07:04.720But then I went back to my room and I started to think about everything that makes me myself and all my identity that I have been forced to shove down under the table and not face and not admit to myself, which is, I'm not your typical Muslim.
00:07:21.680I don't, at that point, I had stopped believing in Allah and stopped believing in all the fables of Islam.
00:07:28.300And I also, I'm not heterosexual, which would also lead to a death penalty.
00:07:33.060So, like, I could write you a list of all of the things that would lead to a death penalty in Yemen.
00:07:37.680So then I decided I'm going to go to Sweden.
00:07:41.320And I, a big part of me regrets that because Sweden turned out to be...
00:07:49.880It is pretty much another Islamic country, but from a liberal point of view.
00:07:53.920And it's, it's, I'm actually very worried and scared because I've seen how Islam has destroyed my country.
00:07:59.860And now I see how the radical socialist, socialist leftism and the hypocrisy of the politicians is destroying Sweden.
00:08:07.720So right now, what the Swedish politicians are saying, the social democratic politicians and the leftist sayings, was deemed as far right and Nazi three years ago, even.
00:08:17.420So this shift where they do not recognize what they have done with their country and they're just trying to move quickly into this fast realization of we have to fix Sweden is just so disgusting to me.
00:08:31.040But anyway, I work as an opinion journalist in Sweden and in the newspaper bulletin.
00:08:37.700It's an independent, liberal, conservative newspaper.
00:08:41.560And I, around two months ago, three months ago, I just decided that I'm so tired of Sweden or I'm tired of the Swedish discourse.
00:08:51.100And I need to voice myself in English because I can't speak and write in English.
00:08:55.160And I wanted to reach out and kind of like have more of a European, Western, because I know that my voice and the things that I have to say are not just only censored to Sweden.
00:09:06.460There are a lot of countries that face the same struggles.
00:09:11.860But other countries also face these problems with Islamic radicalization, with an incessant, constant migration that is not going to lead to any integration.
00:09:23.080And I kind of feel like I should lift Sweden up.
00:09:26.320I stopped saying Sweden, stop doing what you're doing.
00:09:29.120But I kind of like lift Sweden up and look at the rest of the world or the rest of the West and say, this is what you shouldn't do.
00:09:36.140This is just a prime example of how liberal, extreme liberal policies could destroy your country in less than 10 years.
00:09:47.300Of course, for those of you who may have not understood my sarcasm when earlier I talked about Islam being a feminist religion, I was joking.
00:09:57.040I'm assuming that Mr. Ahmed understood that.
00:10:01.260I really, one of the things that I find very difficult to get through to people, and that's why I enjoy talking to folks who do speak Arabic.
00:10:10.180I said that I speak Arabic, you speak Arabic, we can speak to each other with Arabic.
00:10:19.020People can't say that we're misunderstanding, mistranslating, misinterpreting.
00:10:24.600We can quote all the things in Arabic.
00:10:27.040People will say, oh, but, you know, like how your mother was trying to do.
00:10:30.120But, you know, no, if you interpret the darab, you know, hitting, it really means hitting with caresses.
00:10:35.460When it says kill the Jew, it really means kill the Jew with kindness.
00:10:39.540So there are all sorts of Olympic level type of mental gymnastics that you could engage in to try to protect the faith.
00:10:46.680Whereas in reality, while, of course, millions and millions of Muslims might be perfectly kind and lovely and peaceful, but they are kind, lovely and peaceful, not because it's Islam that made them that way.
00:10:57.280It's because the random combination of their genes is that, you know, there are good people and bad people of any faith and of no faith.
00:11:03.880But how can we, by we, I mean people like you and me who come from that background, who understand the religion, who speak the language, how could we try to convince the Western mind that there are so many tenets of Islam that are perfectly antithetical to our most foundational Western values?
00:11:25.840You know, I've been, I've been an activist, I've been writing in Swedish for the past four years, and I really have arrived to the conclusion that the most effective way that the West can realize this is with the current situation, a huge demographic change, where a huge part of Europe has to be Muslim and Islamic
00:11:56.340I feel like that is the only way, because right now in Sweden, I'm not saying that that is what should happen, but I'm saying that that's probably the only thing that would lead the West to wake up.
00:12:05.440Because I feel like in the past three years, there's been a different awakening in the Swedish society, because before there was this complete deafening misunderstanding of Islam and Islamic culture.
00:12:17.620But after the Quran burnings, and after what's going on with people running around saying, gas the Jews, kill the Jews, annihilate Israel, Swedes are now waking up and they're seeing what the Islamic culture actually stands for.
00:12:35.080And I do think that when it comes to Islam as a religion, the main problem that the West does not understand is that the main Islamic region has not gone through the Enlightenment era or the industrialization or this conscious awakening of reality.
00:12:51.080Of reality, because most people in the Islamic culture still live in the realm of Islam and in the realm of Muhammad.
00:12:57.920I mean, I grew up in school for 12 years.
00:13:01.080All I heard about, my mom was actually telling me how much I hated school because I had to carry this gigantic backpack that was full of 15 books and huge books.
00:13:12.340And half of them were about Muhammad and Aisha and Asira al-Nabawiyya and Faqq.
00:13:17.740Aisha, whom he married when she was nine, which is similar to the age that your mother was married at.
00:13:26.400And of course, Islam is used to justify these atrocities because you'll have people telling you that Islam has nothing to do with this.
00:13:34.020But you and I know that because we see and we hear how they use Islam to justify these actions.
00:13:40.940And so, like, I think it's just so hard for me, the bigger issue, like trying to wake the West up, I think the West is going to wake up sooner or later.
00:13:51.420I think the bigger issue at hand is how to wake the Islamic communities up.
00:13:56.080Because if we're going to talk numbers, the Islamic community is growing by a lot.
00:14:03.300You know, it's the difference between how many babies Swedes are having and how many Yemenis and Palestinians and Muslims are having is huge.
00:14:11.960And the bigger issue there becomes how do we find a way in order to make the Islamic region go through the same kind of enlightenment?
00:14:21.680But I don't, before you go on, forgive me.
00:14:27.400So I'm going to come out with my pessimistic view.
00:14:30.000And if you have a different view, then please correct me.
00:14:32.700I don't think that the doctrines of Islam could ever allow for a meaningful reformation.
00:14:42.300So it's not as though in the past 1400 years, there haven't been any imams and Islamic scholars who haven't thought about reformation.
00:14:50.800But unlike other religions where the light of reformation can get through, Islam says, right, it is the final inerrant word of God, mefi hadif, that needs to be changed.
00:15:02.840It's not a syllable that it's literal, it's final, it's inerrant.
00:15:06.760So, yes, you can play the games that your mom was trying to play with, no, no, but it is feminist, beating means beating with love.
00:15:14.640But that takes so much mental gymnastics.
00:15:17.240The only reformation I could see, I was going to say Ahmed, but that's your last name, Luwai, is that you would have to have an abrogation.
00:15:29.060And so, let me just mention this for our viewers who may not know this.
00:15:34.060Of course, you would know this, but others may not.
00:15:36.860In Islam, there's, Muhammad had two periods, the Meccan period and the Medina period.
00:15:41.720Meccan period, you have your religion, I have mine, peace and love.
00:15:45.480And in that period, he wasn't able to attract many adherents to come to the religion.
00:15:49.900He moves to Medina, the message becomes a lot less peaceful and hippie and loving, and it becomes unbelievably violent.
00:15:58.580So, now there is a problem within the religion.
00:16:01.560How could God say A and then later say not A?
00:16:05.240That contradiction is resolved by the mechanism of abrogation.
00:16:09.120Whenever there's a contradictory statement, the later statement abrogates the earlier statement.
00:16:13.380Well, what you need to do now is come up with a new abrogation that abrogates every single of the violent things.
00:16:20.860So, it's not sitting there and say, well, in the Hadith, this thing, let's redefine it, let's re-massage it.
00:16:26.440It has to be one wholesale blanket statement.
00:16:29.920Otherwise, you could never have reformation.
00:16:32.300What are your thoughts about what I just said?
00:16:34.660I think, sadly, the sad truth is that you're absolutely right.
00:16:39.280The main issue, and this is something that I've struggled with ever since I was a kid, is that every word in the Quran is God's literal words.
00:16:48.980For my entire, you know, ever since I was like 12 or 13, I've been very comic.
00:16:53.520I make a lot of jokes about that, you know, no holds barred.
00:16:57.440And once I started making jokes about God and Allah and Muhammad, and my cousins and my family, they went feral.
00:17:08.600Even in school, I asked my Islamic teacher, can you make jokes and make fun of God?
00:17:15.520Because God is the one who created humor.
00:17:18.200So, he has to have the sensibility to understand it.
00:17:21.340But that was one of the moments where I realized that people do not really see God in the eyes of the Islamic community.
00:17:29.440It's not this God-all-knowing, intelligent, sentient being, but rather a very aggressive and violent entity that tries to control people's thoughts.
00:18:11.300In my head, I was just picturing future civil wars.
00:18:14.640Because if this is the community that is going to come here and be welcomed and grow, then there will be a huge discrepancy between the beliefs and the ideas that are withheld.
00:18:26.380And I really, I was also naive when I first moved to Sweden because I thought, I really thought this, just like the liberals think, that people who move to the West want to become westernized, want to be a part of the secular openness, open-mindedness.
00:18:41.380But, alas, I moved to Sweden and I realized that actually the majority of the people that I've met and I've engaged with have no intention whatsoever of becoming Swedish and European and adapt to the secular and liberal thought of debate and discussion.
00:18:57.760But it's the same vile and violent mechanism at play.
00:19:03.900Where do you think you, sorry, by the way, I told you offline that I'm super, super sick with a very nasty cold, cold, but I didn't want to reschedule.
00:19:19.420I was very excited for us to hold the chat.
00:19:21.760So for any of you who are watching this and seeing me struggle, my apologies, do you think that you got your courage, your irreverence, your activism, your sense of honesty when you see things as they are, is that coming straight, direct line from your mom?
00:19:38.360Or is this the, I mean, is it all attributed to your mom or is there, was there a particular pivotal moment where you said, wait a second, these stories I'm reading in the Quran or in the Hadith or in the Seerah, I'm not really, what's the catalyst that made you say, no, I can't handle this?
00:19:56.340I think there's definitely a genetic lineup in it.
00:20:01.000Like I definitely, I'm like my mother in many ways.
00:20:03.640She, she grew up in an extremely misogynistic society.
00:20:06.880And then she, she said, no, I will not take this.
00:20:10.420For me, I grew up in a, my, my lens was not just seeing a misogynistic society that wished death on my mother and, and had hundreds of, and maybe more than thousands of comments on her Facebook and her social media.
00:20:24.440She has no social media now, but when she was active on social media, she used to get hundreds and thousands of messages of hate, death threats, and all of that.
00:20:53.260I, I don't want children to go to Muslim schools and learn that if they're homosexual, that they're going to be killed by their societies, and then they're going to burn in hell for eternity.
00:21:02.860I'd want people to be silent, that their thoughts become silenced.
00:21:06.700Because I remember one of the, in biology class, I, I used to, but I still love biology.
00:21:11.980And when we sit in class in the first day of school, we, the teacher tells us to open the biology class to chapter 15 or 16 on the first day.
00:21:21.520And he says, cross out these chapters.
00:21:24.420And finally, like I used to cross them, but I never had like that sense of curiosity of reading because I'm like, okay, great.
00:21:32.640But all of the chapters, the chapters that we used to cross out every year were evolution and scientific and scientific, uh, uh, scientific theories that go against the Quran.
00:21:46.540And in one of the classes, the teacher said, actually, like I joked with you on Twitter, but on X, but it is true.
00:21:53.300Our, my teacher told me that it's the Jews are behind the evolution theory.
00:22:01.140Fast forward to when I was 18 and I started reading books.
00:22:04.700It was through evolution that I was able to shatter all of my prior beliefs.
00:22:09.000And like, it was like they, I cut out my beliefs from the roots and I started like searching for knowledge, searching for the truth.
00:22:16.540Do you think, uh, I know that when we were chatting with each other on Twitter, uh, privately, you said that, uh, the, the game that I've put a name to six degrees of Jew, whereby any calamity on earth could be blamed on the Jews in six or fewer causal steps.
00:22:34.600That's a game that you were, you've been, you've known.
00:22:37.440And if you've played your entire life, do you think since you're in Sweden, this, my having put a name on that game could get me.
00:22:53.360No, but we're joking, but I, I truly don't think I, I, you know, I've been, I've been doing this for decades where I'm warning people, trying to explain to them.
00:23:01.600People don't have a sense of how much the definition of a person in the region that you and I come from is completely defined by Jew hatred.
00:23:15.380Jew, you know, there are two sources of energy.
00:23:18.240There is the oil in the ground that in the Gulf countries we can use to fuel things, but there is an even bigger source of energy, more renewable.
00:23:29.060Can you explain to our super liberal Western friends why that is the case, how it is the case so they could finally understand it?
00:23:37.000Um, I just love how the, what, sorry for going off topic, but what I love most about you is that you, you preach so much truth and you have so much knowledge, but you're also very hilarious.
00:23:47.780That's like one of the best things about you.
00:24:15.380My father was, you know, a part of a party where you had the Palestinian flags everywhere and every, you know, in school, we have this assembly in the morning where you have to exercise and we have to, you know, recite the Quran and the national anthem with everybody.
00:24:30.940And we also recite hatred towards Jews and Israel in mosques.
00:24:35.940I learned to hate Jews where, you know, I would be sitting and after the Friday prayer and we're all saying, may the Islamic nation be well.
00:24:45.140I mean, may the Islamic world find peace.
00:24:47.760I mean, may God make every Jew fatherless.
00:24:51.320I mean, and I remember the first time when, when I started realizing this, it was like, I felt this cognitive desonance of like, wait, those are human beings.
00:25:24.560And I tell her like when she, she keeps talking about the genocide that's happening in, in, in Gaza.
00:25:30.520And then I tell her, mom, like, have you ever spoken this passionately about the genocides that are happening in our country or other countries?
00:25:39.860Or no, I've never seen you speak with so much, um, with so much Hamas.
00:25:46.380Because by the way, of course you understand the joke, but for the rest of the people who don't understand, Hamas means with fervor and zeal.
00:25:56.320So, that's a play on words, but go ahead.
00:26:16.300And once he said, I'm from Israel, I felt like my body turned into, you know, when cats see like dogs or any other animals, their hair stands up completely.
00:26:25.180I felt like the same thing happened to me and I'm an Arab, so that's a lot of hair.
00:26:29.880And I, I, I, I really don't make me laugh.
00:27:08.180And, um, so it was, I had to like work with my antisemitism from then where, because I, you know, I believe in human rights.
00:27:16.220It's ever since I was a teenager, I've been like fighting against all of these ideas I've been brainwashed into, but I've had myself really understand the antisemitism from completely different points of view after working in the media.
00:27:30.340But I need to tell this, I need to tell you the story of this Muslim girl who came to Sweden one year after I came to Sweden and my family called me and told me, hey, there's a Yemeni girl who's going to come to Sweden.
00:27:42.280We want you to help her out, you know, find her a place and all of that.
00:27:46.360When I first met her, she was wearing the hijab.
00:27:48.440I pulled out my hand and I was like, hi.
00:30:44.740For the people who don't know the story, I'm going to repeat it only because they may not know what you're referencing.
00:30:50.240So this is, this story refers to my first semester when I was a doctoral student at Cornell, where I was hanging around with a bunch of Arabic guys.
00:30:59.840Most of them were Lebanese and we'd play soccer together and so on.
00:31:03.740And one day, one of the guys in question invited me out for a coffee.
00:31:21.880He goes, so why aren't you converting to Islam then?
00:31:25.240So he couldn't understand how someone could be intelligent, realize that the one true faith existed and yet still resisted.
00:31:33.600And so once I told him our, our, our, our coffee get together was not going to go well, if he was going to continue with his bullshit, he then turned to me and said, so there comes the juju.
00:31:44.860He goes, you know, God, I really like you.
00:31:48.560In talaziz, I think he said, you're, you're, you know, you're fun.
00:32:11.080And so this, that story, and thank you for bringing it up for those people who don't know it, it perfectly captures the mindset, both of your friend in Sweden and my friend at Cornell, that it can't be possible that I could meet a Jew and actually him being nice and lovely and I like him and so on.
00:32:31.000So the only way in my case, he could reconcile that is that I wasn't really an authentic Jew.
00:32:36.260First of all, I was too good of a soccer player to be a Jew.
00:32:40.100And second of all, I was Arabic and therefore that's not really a juju.
00:32:45.220But that, so then what is the solution then?
00:32:47.800Is it that you have to make all people meet all other people to break down?
00:32:52.600Because that's going to take, I mean, we don't have enough time to have 2 billion Muslims meeting 15 million Jews.
00:33:00.480I think it's such a brilliant story because it also shows how people view Jews in such a light that even, but I think the Selwa story, it's because she actually got to know the Jew, Jew, Jew, Jew, Jew, and fell in love with the Jew, Jew, Jew, Jew.
00:33:16.440And that's why she couldn't separate it.
00:33:19.040Your friend only met you for a coffee.
00:33:20.820So, so like he was still able to see you as a, not a Jew, Jew, right?
00:33:25.720And yeah, but you know, I wanted to actually ask you this question because I was reading a book by Hassan Hanafi, who's an Egyptian professor.
00:33:35.360And the book is called Islam in the Modern World, I think.
00:33:37.740And he proposes, he believes that the main reason why Islam is not reforming and it's not going to reform.
00:33:44.220It's not because of that the Quran is the word of God, because, you know, the Christians 300 years ago, 400 years ago, believed in the Bible just as much as the Muslims believe in them now.
00:33:55.180So, so his premise was that, like, he pretty much says the fact that the West progressed and the West achieved all of its scientific and technological advancements, it made the Arab world and the Muslim world jealous.
00:34:13.700And the exact response that happens at jealousy is resentment, anger, hatred, everything that, you know, you know, as we come from this culture, anything that the West does, we oppose it.
00:34:26.360Anything the West says is good, we say it's bad.
00:34:29.400And that, so he argues that it's not necessarily the religion, but it's the culture, that we have failed as a culture, as a civilization.
00:34:37.980And therefore, we have to act as kind of like a mirror to the West.
00:34:47.900Look, envy, as, as you know, is one of the seven deadly sins, right?
00:34:52.540The seven deadly sins exist and have stood the test of time because they really do capture some of the darker elements of our human nature, right?
00:35:01.180Even, even the, the, the Bible has in one of the 10 commandments, don't covet your neighbor's wife.
00:35:06.920Well, coveting, covet, covetousness is envy.
00:35:10.500You have something I don't, I'm angry.
00:35:13.140Now, there is a positive emotion to envy whereby it compels me to work harder to get what you have.
00:35:20.860You know, my neighbor has the fancy car and, and the, the beautiful house and so on.
00:35:25.780Maybe if I work harder, I could resolve my sense of envy towards him.
00:35:30.960But there is a dark side to envy, exactly to your point, which is, why is it that I've been going to the mosque for my entire life where I'm told I am the, the true believer?
00:35:42.320And those people are the kuffar, they're nejus, they're, they're impure, they're disgusting.
00:35:48.160And yet those people that Muhammad told us repeatedly about how evil they are, we have to get rid of Arabia of the Jews, promise me the hadith that says we will find the Jew hiding behind the tree, all of that stuff.
00:36:00.420And yet those assholes seem to be, you know, winning at everything.
00:36:05.540Just a few days ago, I don't know if you saw, I put up a, a histogram of the, the number of Nobel prizes by Jews and what percentage they constitute, number of, now people didn't take that and say, wow, that's a powerful, I mean, that's just a fact, right?
00:36:23.580It's just, I'm not, and I, of course I put sarcastically, it's Islamophobic, but then many people wrote to me in anger saying how nasty I was for pointing to that.
00:36:34.860So rather than look inward and say, well, wait a second, we're 2 billion people, we have four Nobel prizes, they're 15 million people, and they've got a hell of a lot more Nobel prizes.
00:36:46.700What is it that we can do to resolve the question?
00:36:49.020Now, I tell the story, I don't know if you know the story, I discussed it in the parasitic mind.
00:36:54.720Look, the, the achievement of the, of Jews or, or, or any phenomenon could either come from nature or nurture.
00:37:01.980And the question becomes how much of it is due to what?
00:37:04.840So of course there is some research that shows on average Jews have higher IQs, blah, blah, blah.
00:37:11.100Let's just talk about the culture of learning and excellence, which could be accessible to anyone, right?
00:37:18.540Could be accessible if I'm Mongolian or if I'm from New Zealand or if, so when I finished, I did my undergrad in mathematics and computer science.
00:37:28.320And then I did an MBA and I did a mini thesis in operations research, applied mathematics.
00:37:33.820I'm saying this because it's relevant to the story, not to share my CV.
00:37:37.620After I finished my MBA, my brother, one of my brothers who lived in California, Southern California at the time, was interested in getting me to work with him for a few years.
00:37:47.360And so he wanted me to maybe take a break from pursuing my PhD next.
00:37:51.920And he was trying to convince me, why don't you come work with me, put on the suit, and then you could go back to your studies.
00:37:56.580Well, when my mother heard that my brother was trying to convince me to not pursue my PhD, when I returned to Montreal after visiting him in California, she takes me to a side room, very concerned.
00:38:08.840And she goes, I want to talk to you, Dad.
00:38:12.380She goes, I hear that you're thinking about taking a break.
00:38:15.180Do you know what people are going to talk about us if they know that you're somebody who dropped out of school?
00:38:20.020So from my mother's perspective, having an undergrad in mathematics and computer science, an MBA, and stopping then and not going on for your PhD would bring great shame to the family.
00:38:33.120I mean, people are going to think you're somebody who had no education.
00:38:36.400So that shows you the standard that you see in every single Jewish home, learning, learning, learning, learning.
00:38:43.300Now, of course, there are millions and millions and millions of incredibly accomplished and incredibly educated Muslims, but they certainly, the Hamas guys are certainly not spending their money on building Jam'a, a university in Gaza, but spending it on killing the Jews.
00:39:00.900So could that be a way if we can inculcate this deep reverence and love of learning, we can close the gap between the Islamic and Jewish worlds?
00:39:39.880There was, you know, people are trying to understand why in Sweden, how come?
00:39:45.000And also one of the reasons that Sweden has taken in around 2 million people in the past 25 years, it's not only just because Swedes, you know, are naive and good hearted and they wanted to save the world and be, you know, the Ubermensch.
00:39:57.920What happened is that after the Iranian revolution, the super educated people, Iranians, the elites of the educated Iranians fled to Sweden.
00:40:12.640So Sweden had a taste of Jewish Iranians, if you will.
00:40:17.460So when they received the flood of these very well accomplished Iranians who focus on education, because education and pursuing education is one of the most important steps into actually, you know, succeeding and accomplishing anything.
00:40:32.920And what we are arriving to right now and we're saying, how come the Iranians that came to Sweden in the past 20 years are not like the Iranians who came in the 70s and 80s and 90s?
00:40:45.300And how come the people who are coming from Iraq and other countries around the world are not as accomplished as the Iranians?
00:40:51.180And the main answer that you actually find is educational background.
00:40:56.840If your family has like a master's degree and PhD degree, then you're more likely to succeed.
00:41:03.460And if your family has a PhD and a master's degree, they're more likely to push you just like your mother pushed you to do your PhD.
00:41:11.680And, you know, before my mom sent me off to Sweden, she told me, look, I'm going to send you to like the best and most beautiful country in the world right now.
00:41:22.220But if you don't have a PhD by the time you turn 30, you're not my son.
00:41:29.180I turned 30 without a PhD, so I'm a huge disappointment to my mother.
00:41:36.360But I think education is definitely a huge ground stone for why the Jews and the Jujus are very accomplished.
00:41:45.840And I think I always say this, why can't we look up to the Jews, not from a point of inferiority complex and say, go to hell, we'll kill you.
00:42:35.220Are you thinking of, given how it's starting to look quite bad in Sweden, I mean, certainly for Jews in Malmö, it's uniquely bad, as you probably know.
00:42:46.660But is it bad enough for you in Sweden that you're thinking of making the next hijra move?
00:44:27.180I mean, for many reasons, there is a, you know, being an Islamophobe in Yemen is not just, you don't just have like leftists screaming at you, racist Islamophobe.
00:44:38.040You actually get knives slitting your throat by law.
00:45:03.500But I just, I don't know if you saw earlier today, one of my articles was published in National Post, one of the big Canadian newspapers, where I was talking about, you know, the Jew hatred that I escaped from in Lebanon has now followed me to my university where, you know,
00:45:24.100the dynamics at the dynamics at my university are really, really not pretty for Jewish students and certainly a high profile Jewish professor.
00:45:31.360So, you know, the reality is that people often think that, oh, this problem is over there.
00:45:43.640I don't have time to worry about this until you have to worry about it.
00:45:47.200So, for example, many of my liberal Jewish friends who all along would have said to you, oh, my God, you're such an Islamophobe because my friend Ahmed is a lovely guy and he doesn't want to kill anybody.
00:45:59.660You clearly don't understand Islam, or they would say, I'm an Islamophobe and so on.
00:46:06.540Well, now, because their child is getting harassed and attacked at Columbia and Cornell, they're waking up and writing to me, dear Professor Saad, oh boy, I guess I should have listened to you.
00:46:17.520So, in a sense, the tragedy is people don't wake up until it narcissistically affects them, then they wake up, but then the problem is much too late to intervene, right?
00:46:31.680Yes, and it's like, I have a story that I told my friend about.
00:46:36.640One of my followers and friends who I love very dearly now, I went to university with her at Malmo.
00:46:43.440And at that time, I started writing in Swedish and being vocal about how migration policies are not the best in Sweden.
00:46:50.840And because of that, in 2018, it was so much more taboo back then in Sweden.
00:46:55.360So, she started, she joined an Antifa group in, or like she supported an Antifa group in university who called me a fascist and a far-right extremist for saying that Swedish migration policies are not working.
00:47:08.280And the questions that they asked me were like, oh, well, you're an immigrant, well, you're brown, well, you'll never be accepted by white people, which are just, anyway, so she was completely opposed to me.
00:47:18.680And she, you know, she, they even bullied my friends at university.
00:47:22.140How can you be friends with that immigrant who is, how can you be friends with a self-hating immigrant who doesn't like migration, even though he's a migrant himself?
00:47:32.400Two years later, she was almost killed by her family for dating a Swedish guy.
00:47:38.560And she sent me a message saying, hey, you're actually right.
00:47:42.680And I'm sorry for how I treated you back then, but you're absolutely right.
00:47:46.500So, even in our own communities where we get killed and we get slaughtered by our own families, you really need to be hit in the face for you to realize that this affects human beings.
00:47:58.480And in Sweden specifically, now there's this awakening by politicians and journalists.
00:48:07.340And the reason for that is also because the bombings and shootings stopped happening in the so-called no-go zones and now are happening in the finest areas of Stockholm, where the politicians and the journalists reside.
00:48:40.200Even though people have been talking about the issues of migration for the past 30 years, but they've been labeled as, as you know, racist and far right.
00:48:48.960What do you, so I've put out recently several tweets that have gone, you know, really super viral, 10 million, 20 million, and so on.
00:48:56.500One of which where I listed sort of nine steps that the West would have to follow in order to address the problem.
00:49:04.380All of which revolve around the idea of, you know, you can't tolerate millions of people coming into your shores that don't share any of your foundational values.
00:49:14.580There are really only two, let's speak very, very frankly and openly, there are only two possibilities once those folks are in.
00:49:23.300Number one, through some magical process, like the general abrogation that we talked about earlier, where every single Muslim decides, hey, I'm done with this stuff.
00:49:33.600I'm going to abide by these cultural norms of my host nation.
00:49:38.400Or at some point, countries will have to say, sorry, you're simply inconsistent with what we have here.
00:49:51.080Do you see either of those things happening?
00:49:53.120Or do you see, which frankly, I hate to say it, that's my pessimism speaking now, it's going to be a never-ending, increasing level of strife and conflict for the next 50, 100, 300 years, and then it will be a bloodbath.
00:50:11.100I think, honestly, I think that what's going to happen in Sweden, like Sweden is the extreme, like I said earlier, it's the extreme prime example of the West, because it has taken the most amount of migrants and most amounts of Muslims, and it has also been the least successful country at integrating migrants into the country.
00:50:35.080And I think what's going to happen in the coming 20, 30 years is just there's going to be a slow escalation of whatever the hell has been happening.
00:50:44.200And I think that the Swedish Democrats, who are the right-wing political party, but according to every international media outlet, it's the far-right political party.
00:50:53.120They want, like, they're the far-right, according to the media, but their policy is, we want to give people an incitement to go back to their countries by giving them $25,000.
00:51:09.120Now they're speaking about, if you, you know, commit major crimes like rape or murder, then it's a foundation for deportation.
00:51:18.180So, what I once spoke to a Swedish, a far-right Nazi political politician, and I told him, okay, you want to deport all of the criminals and all of the people who are, you know, raping and committing crime.
00:51:34.320How many migrants in Sweden are actually committing crime?
00:51:37.360Crime, 10,000, 20,000, 30,000, like, I don't know, but like, let's say that it's 25,000 or 30,000.
00:51:45.020Okay, you deport 30,000, you're still taking in hundreds of thousands every year.
00:51:51.340The demographic change, according to Pew Research, Sweden will be around 30% Muslim by 2050.
00:51:58.9002050, when you think of time and how time is extremely relevant.
00:52:08.000So, I do think that, sadly, is that the demographic change that's happening in Sweden is going to flip the political climate upside down in ways that never happened in Sweden.
00:52:19.940And I do need to tell you about this political party in Sweden that's called Partiet Nijans, which means like the party of nuance.
00:52:30.860And it is a political, they really like coming up with creative political parties.
00:52:35.620But this party in specific, it has an Islamist agenda.
00:52:39.840They want to ban, you know, burning the Quran or insulting Islam, like put you in jail or, you know.
00:52:45.460And this party received around 30% of the public vote in the area in Rinkeby and in the immigrant-dominated areas.
00:52:56.540So, the areas where immigrants are highly populated, in Sweden, 30% voted for this political party.
00:53:06.060And this party is right now the number one Palestine-supporting party in Sweden.
00:53:11.140They have not yet entered the parliament because you need 4% in order to enter the parliament.
00:54:02.340And I do think that what scares me about Sweden, the creepiest thing about Sweden,
00:54:08.020is that even though Sweden has the highest amount of Muslim migrants in all of Europe per capita,
00:54:15.080Sweden has had the least amount of terror attacks.
00:54:19.320And in Swedes usually, like, you know, hit their chest and think that that's a good thing.
00:54:24.820But I think, like, I'm convinced that it is a strategy by the jihadis and the Islamists because they love Sweden.
00:54:33.360Sweden has been kissing Islamists' asses, sorry, for the past 30 years.
00:54:38.640You know, they've been pumping money into Islamic organizations and sending billions more money per capita to Palestine than any other country in the West.
00:54:48.880They've also one of the few countries that actually recognized Palestine.
00:54:54.040Like, Swedes are obsessed with Islamic.
00:54:57.980So they want to pride themselves on, now that they've let go of religion, because, you know, around 90% of Swedes are atheists or don't believe in God.
00:55:06.200So now they have this new religion of actually adapting exotism and feminism and all these things.
00:55:12.740So I do think that the Islamists in Sweden are really creepy because they're silent.
00:55:17.320They're not doing anything because they're just pumping out babies, getting money from the social warfare, and they're actually waging a war against the society, but a cold war.
00:56:35.160And I think until we're able to recognize the distinction between individual people who could be nice or mean or whatever, and the tenets of Islam, which are not necessarily congruent with Western values, we're only going to get into deeper trouble.
00:56:53.140I also think it hangs along with the mass psychosis of believing that white people in the West are the devil, the devil himself, and the atrocities that they've committed in history are unforgivable.
00:57:03.140So even if we take over their countries, even if the West becomes an Islamic khilafah, they deserve it for all the atrocities that they've committed against, you know, by colonizing the bigger part of the world and et cetera.
00:57:18.000But hasn't the Islamic culture colonized the bigger part?
00:57:20.280I was just going to say, so I put up, I don't know if you saw me, I put up, I said, hey, there are 57 Islamic countries and territories, if you include the Palestinian territories, within the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
00:57:32.160Each of those countries, once upon a time, had zero Muslims and then magically one day became 99%, 100% Islamic.
00:57:42.960Not every place we took out the heads of everybody, but certainly in many, many places, it wasn't through giving out candies, and yet people don't get it.
00:58:22.060So, like, if you really want to talk about colonization and a really horrendous view on human rights and humans, and you're trying to flog Westerners because of their history, look at the presence of the Arab world.
00:58:36.100Look at the presence of the Islamic world and how they treat their women and their black people and the LGBTQ community.
00:58:45.220Well, listen, if we can find a way to very quickly clone you so we could have about 5, 10 million of you going around doing those video clips, we might have a chance.