TRIGGERnometry - Ayaan Hirsi Ali： The Growing Threat of Radical Islam

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00:01:00.000 I think we're in a worse place today than we were in 2001. And so it is for me a bit

00:01:08.540 of a nightmare that Europe is resembling the sorts of streets and places that I left.

00:01:14.560 When you have a scenario where violent, radical white supremacists face off with radical Islamist

00:01:25.180 jihadis, then it's not Europe anymore.

00:01:28.800 And how do you deal with it without becoming the thing you don't want to become?

00:01:34.340 Ayaan Herseli, welcome back to the show. It's so good to have you back. I don't want to waste any

00:01:40.080 time at all. You are someone who's been talking about one issue for a very long time, which was

00:01:46.680 Islamism and Islam. And the other issue about which you're increasingly talking about is Christianity

00:01:52.760 and the role of faith and society as well. I want to start with the first of those two, because

00:01:58.620 since the days after 9-11, which feels like it was a different world, when it was a different world,

00:02:07.460 you've been trying to raise the alarm. You've risked your life. Friends of yours have been murdered

00:02:12.600 because they were talking about the same thing. Where are we in relation to that issue in Western Europe,

00:02:19.760 United States, the West more generally?

00:02:23.500 Well, thank you very much for having me first. It's lovely to be here again, I think for the second time.

00:02:30.300 Where are we on the threat of radical political Islam? I think we're in a worse place today than we were

00:02:38.820 in 2001. We've spent trillions of dollars and a lot of blood. And I think we have come, I'm coming to

00:02:49.000 the conclusion, what is wrong with our Western leaders? Do we have some kind of curse on us that

00:02:58.360 prevents us from seeing the determination of the radical political Islamists who want to spread

00:03:08.640 their message, which ultimately is the establishment of an Islamic state based on Sharia law.

00:03:15.380 So initially with 2001, the news broke with those Islamists who wanted to accomplish the objective

00:03:24.580 of establishing an Islamic state through violence. We took passenger planes, they knocked down the Twin

00:03:30.780 Towers, they were on their way to knocking down the White House, and they managed to knock a wing

00:03:36.000 of the Pentagon. And they didn't want to stop this. They wanted to use jihad as a means of shock and awe.

00:03:45.000 And we, I think, got trapped by, if you remember it, you're probably too young to remember that,

00:03:53.360 but it was quite spectacular. And it was history changing.

00:03:57.740 And the reaction from the United States and the rest of the West was to meet them with force.

00:04:07.740 Because of the military supremacy of the United States of America, the rest of the West,

00:04:14.140 it was relatively easy to subdue and eliminate the structures of Al-Qaeda,

00:04:20.380 to bring down Osama bin Laden as their leader. And when out of that group, a new group, through Al-Zargawi,

00:04:28.080 the Islamic state emerged and hijacked territory, captured territory in Iraq and Syria, we did the

00:04:37.980 same thing again. We were confronted with this determination of these groups to use brutal force,

00:04:44.780 and they were met with military deterrence. They were removed. There is no structure called

00:04:51.360 the Islamic state of Iraq and Syria anymore. But what, over the years, we have failed to see

00:04:57.200 is the other side, the dawah side. So not the jihadists, but within the Islamist

00:05:03.440 political groups, there is the, in my view, much stronger, more insidious, more sinister group,

00:05:14.600 which tries to expand and reach that objective of establishing an Islamic state through dawah.

00:05:23.800 And dawah is basically the plan. It is to bring Muslims, those people who identify as Muslim,

00:05:32.160 to transform them from just religious people, people who identify with the faith, but who are not

00:05:42.260 political, into political tools for the objective. And then take it one step further and convert non-Muslims.

00:05:49.640 And on top of that, to Islamize institutions. It's a long-term plan. It's gradual. There is

00:05:56.520 a hybrid form. There are some people within the Islamist circles who say we should use the gradualist

00:06:03.840 means, and then when the opportunity is right, we should use force. So all of these three flavors,

00:06:12.160 if you will, of Islamizing society, working towards this objective of a Sharia-based society,

00:06:18.460 be it local, regional, or global, they exist, they're expanding. And we are standing by and watching this

00:06:26.920 happen in traditionally non-Muslim territories, in traditionally Christian or Judeo-Christian

00:06:36.860 societies. We've seen them make attempts like this in India. Again, watch the pushback there.

00:06:45.680 In China, the way the Chinese government is dealing with Islamist sedition is absolutely abhorrent.

00:06:55.860 And that is something we in the West can only condemn. We do not want to take our Muslim communities

00:07:01.540 and put them in camps and, you know, enslave them, torture them, rape them, sterilize them.

00:07:11.020 These are against every principle we believe in. And looking at that extreme of what the Chinese

00:07:22.940 Communist Party is doing to the Uyghurs, and then looking at the other side of, you know, when

00:07:30.660 the Islamists use violence, we're going to go after those individuals who use violence and their

00:07:37.320 organizations and put that down, but do nothing else about the spread of the ideology. I think we

00:07:44.600 have opened ourselves up for the establishment of a huge infrastructure of da'wah. And so this,

00:07:55.760 it's like a cancer, these, the Islamist message and the agents of da'wah, the Islamists who are pushing

00:08:02.840 it, are in our education system. They have their own schools and Islamic centers and mosques and

00:08:08.880 madrasas. They've now infiltrated universities. They are in political parties. And so through

00:08:15.180 perfectly peaceful and legal means, they have established themselves. And here we are sitting

00:08:22.360 back and watching this. And I think one of the most shocking things you see today in 2024 on

00:08:28.640 our streets is this chanting of genocidal slogans at Jewish communities in Europe, in the United

00:08:41.900 States, in Britain, in France, in Germany. For the Jewish community today, it feels like it's the 1930s.

00:08:49.360 And this is Islamist-driven anti-Jewish propaganda. And so I find our, when I first came in here, I said,

00:08:59.360 oh goodness, I'm being mic'd up again to talk about the same things I was talking about, what, in 2001.

00:09:06.340 Don't we ever learn? You know, my first experience on camera was in the Netherlands. It was a program

00:09:12.740 called Rondom Teen, where there was two long benches full of, you know, members of the audience who speak.

00:09:21.780 And there were young jihadi men snarling at me. And back then, my friend Naima Tahir, who I think is still

00:09:31.840 in the Netherlands. And she and I were educated in the Netherlands. We were, our backgrounds were Muslim.

00:09:40.160 And we had come to accept and admire the principles and the values of the country we lived in. And we

00:09:48.580 were there sitting and defending them. And these guys were really snarling at us. And I look back to

00:09:53.660 that moment, what she and I were talking about. And over time, many other ex-Muslims and peaceful

00:09:58.680 Muslims have joined us. And it's the same thing. And the problem is just getting bigger and bigger.

00:10:06.620 Ayaan, let me just, first of all, can I just fact check you? We're not too old to remember 9-11,

00:10:12.540 sadly. But thank you for the compliment. But thank you for the compliment. I remember very well. And I

00:10:17.740 think it was clear that the world changed fundamentally at that moment. I suppose, you know, we've seen in

00:10:23.420 the UK only in recent days, the election of, clearly, I mean, people who stand for the Green

00:10:30.500 Party, a local councillor who, on being elected, give his first speech, which he ends with the words,

00:10:35.760 Allah Akbar, free Palestine, et cetera. Nothing to do about the local council that he's elected to

00:10:41.320 represent. And I just think that there are all sorts of other markers that people can see what you're

00:11:03.840 talking about with their own eyes. And from the people, people are very afraid of talking about

00:11:08.220 this issue. But behind closed doors, everybody knows what's going on. To what extent have our

00:11:18.460 policies on mass immigration contributed to where we are? Or is it more that when people do come,

00:11:24.680 we fail to integrate them, assimilate them? Like, how are we here?

00:11:29.780 So in my experience, again, to go back to those, for me, early days, when I started to participate in

00:11:36.580 this debate and say, look, here's what the threat is and what it looks like. The first obstacle,

00:11:43.200 I think, to a broader insight was the members of the elite, politicians, academics, journalists,

00:11:53.460 who said, you know, oh, you poor thing, you traumatized little girl from Somalia, you don't

00:12:01.420 understand, you know, we are these open societies. We're going to approach this the way we've been

00:12:07.700 doing things for a good long time. We sophisticated a lot. And that was through consensus. And the

00:12:14.560 prevailing philosophy at the time was multiculturalism. And so the idea was if we give a little,

00:12:21.480 they will give a little. And together we will go through this where they adapt and we adapt

00:12:27.860 and we establish this beautiful multicultural societies. Immigration was a part of that debate

00:12:35.980 where, as we were having those conversations all over Europe, it was, well, assuming that this

00:12:45.260 multiculturalist consensus building, bridge building, sophisticated, wonderful way would work,

00:12:52.280 would be just from a rational perspective, just from a numbers perspective, wouldn't it be practical

00:13:00.400 to stop immigration, integrate or assimilate, as the word assimilation wasn't used, it was

00:13:10.620 integrated, assimilation was considered to be an insult to the Muslims and to the immigrants.

00:13:16.200 It had to come from both ways. In any case, why don't we take the lot who are already here,

00:13:23.540 get to that utopia of multiculturalism, and then slowly you could talk about having more immigrants

00:13:30.940 coming. But that's not what in the end happened. What in the end happened was

00:13:36.600 that those who had come and their children who had been radicalized in this da'wah infrastructure,

00:13:48.420 the mosques and the madrasas in Europe, they continued to broaden their parallel society.

00:13:58.820 I don't know how else to describe it. They have sort of Sharia-like ghettos,

00:14:03.860 and those who are allowed to thrive. But at the same time, the borders were also flung open

00:14:09.400 through the asylum and refugee system. So now you have the opposite of what was the desired outcome,

00:14:19.700 which is a group of mainly imams and other radical Islamist elites who have captured the hearts and

00:14:30.040 minds of Muslim immigrants and their children who were saying, do not integrate, do not assimilate,

00:14:36.740 reject the values of the host country. And then everyone who comes in, they're the ones in town,

00:14:44.040 they're the ones who bring them in, bring them into the mosques and radicalize them.

00:14:47.700 So you have this paradox where there are refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan,

00:14:54.040 and Somalia, were not at all Islamist. They're fleeing war-torn countries, war-torn because of Sharia, by the way.

00:15:02.580 And they come into the UK, France, Sweden, Germany, etc. And that is where they are taught to become,

00:15:10.240 through da'wah, to become radical Islamists.

00:15:12.940 Ayaan, and do you think part of the problem here is that Islamism is so different from the way Western

00:15:23.440 people see the world, that we really can't understand it? We really, and as a result of not

00:15:30.360 being able to understand it, we can't comprehend and intellectualize the dangers that it poses?

00:15:35.460 The answer is yes and no. I think we have an experience in Western Europe and in America

00:15:48.720 with the intolerance or the rise of intolerant ideas, talking about National Socialism, for instance,

00:15:57.700 and the ideas in America that were used to defend the institution of slavery and segregation.

00:16:02.600 We've come to see that those were absolutely horrible, abhorrent ideas, and we've rejected

00:16:08.220 them. And part of showing that we are atoning for the past is to, the way we deal with radical

00:16:20.420 political Islam, we recognize it for what it is. There is plenty of scholarship now in every

00:16:26.320 country to show that radical political Islam is totalitarian. It is anti-human.

00:16:32.380 It's anti-freedom. It's anti-woman. It's anti-Jewish. It's homophobic. And they show us over and over

00:16:40.440 again. You know, when the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria was established, they proceeded actually

00:16:45.600 to carry out what it would be like to live in an Islamic State. So we know that. We know it not only

00:16:51.100 through scholarship, but also what they readily show us. When Hamas on October 7 went into Israel to

00:16:58.040 attack the people that they hated, the way they treated them, part of that was defended with Islamic

00:17:05.100 scripture or with the Islamist ideology. So it is no secret at all to any of our Western leaders,

00:17:14.560 regardless of where that leader, moral leadership, political leadership, scholarship, any kind,

00:17:18.760 it's absolutely clear to us what radical Islam entails. But somehow we can't get ourselves

00:17:25.740 disconnected from this idea of atoning for our past sins, the sins of slavery, of colonialism,

00:17:34.360 of causing the Holocaust. And now here we are. I remember a conversation I used to have openly

00:17:40.060 with the mayor of Amsterdam, where he plainly said, we should not treat Muslim minorities in Holland

00:17:47.460 the way the Jews were treated in the 1930s. There is this constant reference, and in my view,

00:17:54.620 absolutely wrong reference of the totalitarian, terrible ideologies of Europe and America to say

00:18:04.900 the only way to atone for it is to give a free pass to this new totalitarian ideology. By the way,

00:18:14.040 Islamism is not, it's not like, you know, the Jews who were persecuted in the 30s, there was never a Jewish empire.

00:18:28.600 Jews never held slaves.

00:18:33.560 There were Islamic empires who held slaves and who segregated people and who continued to do that.

00:18:39.520 And yet somehow we find ourselves inhibited, frigid when it comes to seeing this problem and dealing with it appropriately

00:18:52.080 while we still have time and while there are still, you know, we have options that are open to us.

00:18:57.740 Why do you think it is that we're so reticent about talking about this problem and then actually dealing with it

00:19:03.700 and tackling it and tackling it head-on?

00:19:04.820 So what I can report to you is I was a politician actually operating within a proper liberal democracy

00:19:12.820 in our parliament within, in that context. And if I give you an aggregation of all the arguments,

00:19:20.000 every person on either side, we don't have two, one aisle of two sides in Holland.

00:19:26.520 And we had several parties. It's the proportional representation system. So it's a bit more crowded.

00:19:33.920 But all of them were saying, look, we have a constitution and this constitution guarantees the following things.

00:19:41.300 It guarantees the freedom of religion, the freedom of association, the freedom of speech.

00:19:45.680 We have schools, religious schools in the Netherlands paid for by the government.

00:19:53.240 And so if an Islamist wants to open a school to indoctrinate, we know he's going to program children

00:19:58.760 with the totalitarian ideology of Islamism. He gets not only a license to open this school, but he also gets money.

00:20:06.320 So we knew all of these things. And we can't stop it because our laws forbid us from doing anything other than

00:20:15.640 if they cross over to the line of violence, then we will go and pick those individuals up.

00:20:21.760 We'll surveil them. If possible, we'll bring them to court. There's really not much else we can do.

00:20:28.500 In which case, these constitutions, they sort of turn into, you know, what one American scholar right after 9-11 called

00:20:37.500 the constitution is seen as a suicide pact.

00:20:40.960 And we're talking about indoctrination here. And one of the most worrying things is it's not just refugees

00:20:48.700 who are coming from war-torn countries. It's they're indoctrinating our youth as well.

00:20:55.500 A perfect example of this is Shamima Begum, a girl who left the UK at 15 to go and join ISIS.

00:21:05.800 So the case of Shamima Begum is very, very interesting. And I think I followed it a little bit in the UK.

00:21:12.760 And what I see, again, is a very legalistic conversation that is very much beside the point.

00:21:20.600 Should this young woman come back to the UK? Should she, should her citizenship be revoked?

00:21:27.720 It was revoked. Should she get her citizenship back? No, she should not.

00:21:31.920 That's where the conversation is stuck.

00:21:35.080 When actually the conversation should be, what on earth was going on in Bethnal Green?

00:21:44.200 Who are the grown-ups who programmed her and the other young women and the other young people?

00:21:51.780 And why are we not holding those grown-ups who programmed her accountable for the fact that they did this?

00:22:00.040 I remember it was a few years ago, watching her father give interviews where he was sort of throwing his hands up in the air and saying,

00:22:09.860 I don't know, she ran away. And I think the dads of the other young women were doing the same thing.

00:22:16.320 And I remember thinking that his story didn't add up.

00:22:19.160 He surely must have known what was going on with his daughter in his own household.

00:22:24.360 Because really, if you are growing up as a female, as a girl in a Muslim household, everybody knows what you're doing, what your plans are.

00:22:35.020 And so my suspicion was all the grown-ups around these girls encouraged them and helped them and programmed them to go and join the Islamic State.

00:22:45.220 And now here she is, she has gone through all of these horrors, and she's left sitting there holding the ball.

00:22:57.140 And all the grown-ups have gotten away with it.

00:23:01.380 And our society, the British society, the American society, and so on, they're not going after the grown-ups.

00:23:08.040 They're not going after the people who are propagating the ideas and filling these young hearts and minds with these ideas.

00:23:16.060 When I was in the Netherlands, I was in Parliament.

00:23:18.240 I was threatened by, I think he was a 14 or 15-year-old student of a proper, of some Islamic school.

00:23:25.280 He and his mates, they sneaked away to Chechnya to try and fight.

00:23:31.560 And they came back saying it was too cold for them to fight, which at the time everyone thought was hilarious.

00:23:36.500 But they continued on this trajectory of radicalism.

00:23:41.960 And the teenager was demonized.

00:23:45.140 The teenager was held responsible.

00:23:46.860 The teenager is the one who surveilled.

00:23:48.500 It's a teenager who was eventually, I think, sent to prison.

00:23:51.800 But not the grown-ups, not the teachers, the parents, the adults who had groomed these young hearts and minds.

00:24:00.720 And that, I think, in the end is what is wrong with our societies.

00:24:05.220 It is this hatred, deep, deep-seated hatred of who we are.

00:24:12.540 And part of this atonement is pathological because it's really taking us to a place of collective suicide.

00:24:20.160 Ayan, we're going to talk about Christianity later.

00:24:24.160 But when you wrote your article, you identified three key threats to the West, which is something I've been talking about as well.

00:24:33.880 Great power authoritarianism, Islamism, political radical Islam, and woke ideology.

00:24:41.400 What you're talking about with the self-hatred is the woke ideology.

00:24:44.600 We've talked about Islam and the great power stuff is obvious.

00:24:46.940 You mentioned that we've got to do something while we still have time.

00:24:52.180 Do we still have time?

00:24:54.900 I think we have more time in America than we do in Europe.

00:25:00.360 And I say this because, number one, because of demographics.

00:25:04.460 You just mentioned a councillor, someone who won an election peacefully through the normal means and became the councillor.

00:25:12.940 And I think we are seeing this all over Europe because of the birth rate crisis, because of the immigration crisis,

00:25:22.400 that if a Muslim party or Muslim parties were formed, official ones, not the Green Party and the Labour Party,

00:25:29.240 but real official ones that call themselves the Muslim Party.

00:25:32.720 I mean, there are these scenarios where they could easily win elections.

00:25:38.060 There are already stories in Germany of young people, German, white, non-Muslim kids thinking,

00:25:46.320 you know, feeling left out and converting to Islam.

00:25:49.120 The effort, the dawah, to convert non-Muslims into Islam and to Islamize institutions

00:25:57.960 is relentless and it's strong and it's not met with a counter-story or a counter-force.

00:26:04.520 So I think that we have more time in America if we wake up now because of the crisis we're witnessing on universities and schools.

00:26:15.340 We're in New York now and today there is a day of rage.

00:26:20.820 The whole Middle Eastern problems are transported here.

00:26:25.000 And so if Americans were to say through the ballot box, we don't want this, we understand what it is, we don't want this, we can turn this tide.

00:26:36.700 I think America could turn this tide.

00:26:39.420 I worry about Europe.

00:26:41.260 I worry about Europe also because of the rise of radical, the very radical extreme right-wing parties.

00:26:49.620 And when you have a scenario where violent, radical white supremacists face off with radical Islamist jihadis,

00:27:01.900 then it's not Europe anymore.

00:27:06.840 The scene you have, there's a scene of chaos and violence and a splash of Antifa

00:27:15.780 and the radical organized communist organizations and legitimate authority of people in the center who are elected to keep these sorts of things at bay

00:27:31.920 fails to work and you get a balkanization, you get a state of chaos.

00:27:36.820 And in a state of chaos, if you look at other societies where this has happened, somehow the radical Islamists come on top.

00:27:47.900 Hard to disagree with anything you said.

00:27:50.080 I suppose the question is, one of the things that is just incredible is, for example, the UK recently banned Hizb ut-Tahrir.

00:28:00.820 Yeah.

00:28:01.140 A group that was banned, like in every Muslim country in the world.

00:28:05.480 The UAE had, you know, the foreign minister of the UAE, he had this viral clip talking about warning Europe about terrorism and extremism, whatever.

00:28:14.920 And it very much goes to your point, which is, I suppose the question ultimately is, you've identified this problem that we have.

00:28:23.300 But without going full authoritarian and saying, well, some religions are better than others and therefore not allowed or things along that line.

00:28:35.860 Yeah.

00:28:36.300 How do you deal with the problem where, as you say, people may not be committing any crimes by indoctrinating people into a worldview?

00:28:44.180 And then those young people end up committing crimes, but telling them, you know, believe in this or think this isn't a crime.

00:28:50.740 How do we, if we were to try and deal with it, how do you deal with it without becoming the thing you don't want to become?

00:28:58.820 And I think here's where time is so important.

00:29:01.460 The thing you don't want to become is either you fall into this chaos of a cycle of violence where all these extreme groups take over.

00:29:10.480 Main street, that's what you don't want.

00:29:12.420 You don't want them taking over the levers of power.

00:29:15.880 That's the kind of world where I come from.

00:29:20.500 And why also I'm terrified of some of these developments, because if you go to some of these ghettos where informal sharia is applied, that's what it looks like.

00:29:29.520 You have to visit these places to see for yourself some of the transformation that's going on on the streets and neighbourhoods and towns of Europe.

00:29:39.320 Sorry, Aiyan, before you get into that, what do you mean by the transformation of some of the towns and cities of Europe?

00:29:47.640 If you travel around Europe, when I was doing this work, this book, Prey, and this is back in 2020, I think matters are even more serious now.

00:30:00.100 You see things that you can't just get from reading about them or watching them in documentaries.

00:30:12.580 You've got to go to these places, see the sights for yourself, hear the sounds, smell the smells.

00:30:18.800 And what you see is, yeah, streets that look like they could be in Algeria or in Somalia or in Lahore in Pakistan.

00:30:34.140 And not, for instance, one of the salient things was not a woman in sight in parts of Paris.

00:30:40.720 And when I obviously couldn't go and talk to some of these people, but the woman who was working with me would ask, where are all the women?

00:30:52.280 They were chased out of the cafe.

00:30:54.940 And this chasing out of women out of a cafe is very un-European.

00:30:59.380 It is, that's a transformation in my view, because when I came in 1992, the opposite was true.

00:31:05.140 And so it is, for me, a bit of a nightmare that Europe is resembling the sorts of streets and places that I left.

00:31:14.540 And I was telling them, you know, it was 1992, I was 22, I was covered up.

00:31:19.000 And when my Dutch friends asked me, you know, why are you frightened?

00:31:22.660 What's wrong with you?

00:31:23.360 I would say, no, you don't go out, you know, without someone escorting you.

00:31:27.680 You don't go out without covering up.

00:31:30.460 And they would think I was an alien.

00:31:32.940 I had come from some other planet.

00:31:34.240 And in 1992, that was true.

00:31:36.980 I had come from a different planet.

00:31:38.860 But now that planet that I had come to in Europe, many neighborhoods resemble where I left.

00:31:45.020 And that just happened within three decades.

00:31:48.340 And so you can see when I talk about transformation, that it doesn't take that long.

00:31:53.260 And so there were really some very serious scholars.

00:31:56.700 One who comes to mind, Walter Locker, Bernard Lewis, Nick Eberstadt, the American demographer.

00:32:04.320 They were all telling us, my husband, Neil Ferguson, back in the day, that if this demographic developments continue and we don't do anything about assimilation or there is going to be this flip in 2040, 2050, that's not too far away.

00:32:23.940 So Europe really has a lot of catching up to the situation in Europe and it is totally possible to have Sharia law established.

00:32:34.560 It's now established soft Sharia in neighborhoods, but established through the ballot box.

00:32:39.920 So come back with me to how to preserve a liberal society, given this threat, without resorting to illiberalism in response.

00:32:51.880 I think one of the things we can do, what's great about open society is open society is always at risk of subversion, all sorts of subversions.

00:33:01.960 But I think one of the strongest characteristics of an open society is its ability to learn from its mistakes and to learn from others.

00:33:13.860 And so part of what we need to do is really to go back to the philosophical table, if you will, and define or figure out a way of defining seditious ideologies.

00:33:32.260 Radical political Islam is an ideology that says as loudly as it possibly can, we want to completely abolish the existing order.

00:33:43.860 And we want to replace it with our own order.

00:33:48.720 That is a political theory. That's a political philosophy.

00:33:52.780 It's not a religion as defined in the American constitution or any of the other European constitutions.

00:33:58.980 And how you deal with that definition, that is, I think, where we ought to go now.

00:34:05.780 And this is not something we civilians can do.

00:34:10.660 It is the people we've elected to govern us, to get together and do this and say, is political Islam really a religion the way we define Christianity or Judaism or Hinduism or Buddhism?

00:34:25.740 Because these other religions are not organized and they're not loudly telling us that they're coming to replace us.

00:34:32.980 That's number one.

00:34:34.080 Number two, and I know this debate is ongoing in the UK, the asylum.

00:34:40.700 It's international treaties in general.

00:34:42.880 International treaties, especially asylum and refugee conventions.

00:34:47.740 The conventions, the convention in 1951 and then European Council of Human Rights.

00:34:53.980 These international laws have to be reviewed and we have to adapt to the reality of today, not the reality of 1951 or even in the 1960s.

00:35:05.300 It's today.

00:35:06.120 And the conclusion, and if you ask me, what is it that we should be doing, that we're not doing, is to review and remove, repeal these international conventions or withdraw from them or come up with something else.

00:35:20.560 People were talking about a national human rights code or law that goes back to the basics of human rights, and that is individual-based human rights.

00:35:36.120 So I think from the perspective of thinking about these things and the scholarship, just the data gathering, we have all of this.

00:35:47.400 We need just to get out of this passive state that we've adopted.

00:35:53.020 Well, I agree with you on that.

00:35:54.320 And you say it's the job of elected politicians.

00:35:56.520 Sadly, and this really is sad, a lot of them watch this show and listen to people like you, and they're actually looking for answers in places like this, believe it or not,

00:36:05.240 which is not necessarily a good thing if you think about it.

00:36:08.120 But nonetheless, and I still don't feel that we've got the answer because you say it's not a religion that we are worried about.

00:36:15.840 It's a political ideology.

00:36:17.220 But in a liberal society, we allow people to express political views.

00:36:23.420 I mean, Americans until recently were very proud that they had Jews who tolerated Nazis marching through particular towns, and this was considered an expression of freedom of assembly and freedom of speech.

00:36:35.960 So do we want to be a society that bans political views that we don't like?

00:36:44.420 That's the question, right?

00:36:45.720 And I don't disagree with your analysis.

00:36:48.460 I'm just trying to think how do we deal with the threat without allowing it to change who we are in a way that means that we're no longer defending a liberal society because we're not liberal anymore.

00:36:59.440 We're not liberal anymore, no.

00:37:02.140 I think what we are seeing is a shrinking of the options we have.

00:37:05.940 So 20 years ago, when we were saying, 30 years ago, 20 years ago, when we were saying, look, we are a liberal society.

00:37:12.460 We have these laws.

00:37:13.960 We should be able to, our society should be able to withstand these kinds of shocks.

00:37:18.860 That was, that was one thing, but the, again, rational thing to do was to say, we're not going to change our laws and our structures and our attitudes, but we are going to help them change.

00:37:36.180 And that hasn't happened.

00:37:37.600 And so now we've pushed ourselves into a corner where we are either going to become, we will have to get used to living under Sharia law, as many, by the way, people, native people in Europe and increasingly in America who haven't asked for it are forced to live with it because of the reckless immigration policies of the people we elected to govern us.

00:38:06.080 The majority is we elected to govern us.

00:38:09.080 And so the options we have are shrinking.

00:38:12.300 And I think we are now in a place where we have to say, it's okay for people to hold whatever views they wish to hold.

00:38:20.820 But the licensing, and we've talked about the license to open schools, the license to open mosques, the license and the charity statuses, the money that these people get, who have is clearly seditious.

00:38:38.660 And now we understand, we know what we're talking about now.

00:38:41.900 I think that could be stopped.

00:38:43.480 I think we could deport, if they're not citizens, we could deport, we could pass laws to stop this.

00:38:51.600 I said the characteristic, the strongest characteristic of an open society is the ability to learn from our mistakes and from others.

00:39:01.160 There are other countries, you mentioned the UAE, you did not mention Saudi Arabia, Singapore is another country.

00:39:10.620 There are a number of countries who are confronted, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Muslim countries, who are confronted with this particular flavor of sedition.

00:39:22.220 And they've been warning us for years and years saying, you guys are committing suicide, the way you deal with this problem is wrong.

00:39:32.520 And I think it's time that we now start to heed what we've been told.

00:39:38.920 Now, that is on the elite level, on the mass level.

00:39:42.540 I think you will just have to go back to, you know, what is the, what do we have that can inoculate young hearts and minds against the message that the radical Islamists are spreading?

00:40:03.840 We have a very beautiful old counter message, and it's called Christianity.

00:40:10.780 Christianity and the Christian message for those who are seeking spirituality, who are seeking a meaning and a purpose in life, and who end up in the wrong hands, and they end up with the wrong lots, whether they are Islamists or the woke.

00:40:25.900 I think the churches, the institutionalized, established churches, have a better, more effective, and more homemade.

00:40:40.140 It is very much in sync with their own identities.

00:40:44.660 I think on that level, there is, there's plenty of alternatives.

00:40:52.440 It's just that there is no one pushing it.

00:40:55.240 If you go back to Shamima Begum, the only people who are trying to talk to Shamima Begum fill her head with, and her identity, and, you know, answer maybe her questions.

00:41:12.100 What is it to be a good person?

00:41:13.860 How can I help society?

00:41:15.840 Is there something bigger than myself that I can sacrifice my life to?

00:41:19.300 The people who are giving these answers are the Islamists, it's the woke, it's just the wrong lot.

00:41:27.160 What about, you know, good, old, boring Christianity, if you want to put it that way?

00:41:34.520 Love thy neighbor.

00:41:37.280 You know, kind of, there is an existing story.

00:41:40.720 I know you've spoken to Jordan Peterson and others, but the West has a lovely story to tell.

00:41:46.200 It's a story of life.

00:41:48.460 It's a story that celebrates life.

00:41:50.420 It's a story that celebrates merit, that celebrates art, that celebrates equality, that celebrates and protects women.

00:41:59.140 It's a beautiful story to tell if we want to tell it.

00:42:01.780 Ojan, do you think, looking back, because I was, I think Constantine was as well, we love the whole new atheist movement.

00:42:10.820 We don't need God.

00:42:12.100 We have logic, science, and rationality.

00:42:14.600 What do we need God for?

00:42:15.920 God's something that the peasants used to do in the early 20th and the 19th century and all the other ones.

00:42:21.280 Yeah.

00:42:22.180 Do you think, looking back on it now, that was a grave error of judgment?

00:42:25.400 I've come out to say it was a grave error of judgment.

00:42:29.260 And in fact, I remember feeling just massive rage when the American Association of Atheists took away Richard Dawkins.

00:42:41.880 They had honored him with a prize, and they took away the prize because he wasn't giving in to the woke demands.

00:42:49.260 And so atheism went woke.

00:42:53.880 The American Association, that is the adoption of a new nihilistic religion.

00:43:00.440 And I know we talked a lot about humanism, but again, humanism, number one, is born out of Christianity.

00:43:09.260 It is Christianity saying, I don't need to believe in God and I don't need to read the Bible

00:43:14.100 because every kind of moral good that you've extracted out of those religious teachings,

00:43:20.260 I can now have it in a secular way.

00:43:23.580 That's great, but you haven't established anything close to an institution

00:43:30.080 that is competitive when it comes to what radical Islam and the other organized religions,

00:43:40.780 whether young or old, are doing.

00:43:43.640 And so I think right now the ball is in their courts, the humanists' courts, to say, well, then get up and get going.

00:43:51.140 But as they start going, maybe we should use the existing organizations that we have.

00:44:02.040 I think we touched on Jonathan Haidt.

00:44:05.320 I focus on radical Islam and its spread and the threats that it poses.

00:44:14.440 But another big threat to our society is what is happening to the youth,

00:44:19.380 this explosion in anxiety, depression, mental health, illnesses, addictions,

00:44:26.960 overdose on fentanyl and other drugs.

00:44:29.960 And I think Jonathan Haidt made the remark that he sees this particularly,

00:44:37.320 and he was talking about young girls who are susceptible to suicidal ideation, etc.

00:44:44.460 And he said he sees this problem much stronger within liberal secular households and much less so in religious households.

00:44:56.120 I have seen this with the radical, when you look at radical individuals that are attracted to radical Islam,

00:45:06.080 the solid Muslim household, if you go in a Muslim household and the Koran is already familiar to you,

00:45:12.880 the teachings are already familiar to you, you already know the distinction between, you know,

00:45:17.180 political and non-political Islam, those ones tend not to go with political Islam.

00:45:28.320 And so there is something in general about religion filling the spiritual needs and the need for meaning in human life,

00:45:39.580 whether that religion is Judaism or Christianity or Islam or Buddhism or something else.

00:45:45.020 And so I think it was wrong of the secular West to throw out Christianity as quickly and as completely as we did it.

00:46:01.000 It's also as well, you know, you talk about, you know, of course, spirituality is important and so on and so forth.

00:46:07.340 Science isn't going to keep you warm at night,

00:46:10.060 particularly when you're faced with, you know, things like failing health, you know, failing health of loved ones, etc., etc.

00:46:17.740 But something else that religion gives you is a sense of community.

00:46:21.900 Yes.

00:46:22.340 I don't, you know, I don't find it a coincidence that, you know, Muslims call each other brother and sister and so much,

00:46:29.120 you know, there's a real comfort to that.

00:46:31.200 We need community.

00:46:32.400 And that's something the new atheists, I don't think, factored in, really.

00:46:40.280 I'll, so the good depiction, I think, I would give of the new atheists was a whole number of new atheists I met who had read Infidel

00:46:51.580 and would come to me and say, I come from a household or I come from a community where I was subjected to religious intolerance,

00:46:59.760 almost as extreme or just as extreme as the one that you went through.

00:47:03.460 And so in reacting against that, it was out with religion and in with now this new community of atheists.

00:47:12.940 But as a new community of atheists, I think we assumed quite a lot.

00:47:19.140 I think we assumed that simply by leaving behind religious intolerance, you will come out and you will shed superstition,

00:47:28.360 you will appreciate reason and humanism and, you know, you'll flourish.

00:47:34.840 There's really no need for, there's no need for the establishment of a community or an institution or it is all there.

00:47:45.880 You will know to find it because you're now guided by reason.

00:47:50.540 And I think we failed to see that that's not how, how things work.

00:47:54.220 And for a lot of those people who had left their intolerant religious backgrounds, they fell into a void, into loneliness, into, yeah, the lack of community.

00:48:10.900 And the people who came from agnostic, atheist or non-religious backgrounds are also finding themselves in modern times falling into the same, you know, lack of a sense of community, lack of a sense of purpose and seeking and getting lost.

00:48:30.940 And so I think that with my friends who are still atheists and who still think that atheism is reason, reason can't protect us from all of these threats.

00:48:49.860 Because I think we simply, I underestimated, and maybe even that's the wrong way of saying it.

00:49:00.980 I simply didn't see it.

00:49:02.140 I just, I only saw the negative, bad side of religion.

00:49:09.620 And I also made the mistake of going along with the declaration that all religions are the same.

00:49:16.000 And in fact, it is, that's absolutely untrue.

00:49:18.800 It is, all religions are not the same.

00:49:22.100 There are different religions that have gone through different developments.

00:49:25.940 And some religions are quite superior to others.

00:49:29.240 A religion that tells you that it's all about death.

00:49:32.720 All you have to do is sacrifice yourself for the sake of Allah.

00:49:36.140 And in the end, what awaits you is paradise.

00:49:39.140 In its extreme form, that religion is a cult of death.

00:49:43.600 Because you just have to look forward to dying because the reward is going to come after you die.

00:49:48.060 That's a very, very different religion that has in its foundations that the founder of the religion died so that you can live and that your sins are forgiven.

00:49:58.700 And so the story of rebirth and the story of forgiveness and the story of love and the story of love thy neighbor, it's a very radically different story from the story of Islam.

00:50:10.640 And so it is, I think it was a bit juvenile to promote the idea that, you know, all religions are bad, all religions are stupid.

00:50:21.240 And also to negate perhaps the good side.

00:50:24.140 Religion has some good things, some good functions, if you will.

00:50:28.980 And that's what we're now witnessing in the West more than anywhere else when you throw that out.

00:50:38.240 I just spent about three weeks on tour with Jordan Peterson, as you mentioned, hashing out some of these issues.

00:50:46.120 And he brought me over to disagree with him.

00:50:48.540 And one of the things that I kept asking him, and you know, Jordan, he answers in 20-minute paragraphs that don't necessarily address the central core of your question.

00:50:56.760 But one of the things I kept asking him in different ways at different points is, do you believe in God?

00:51:01.660 And we had long back and forth about it.

00:51:04.520 Reading your article about becoming a Christian, I found it very interesting because you said many of the things you've said today.

00:51:11.400 I think your analysis is spot on in terms of a vacuum of belief creates alternative religions like wokeness,

00:51:19.800 but also creates the space for other more forceful religions that have a clear idea of what they're about to come in.

00:51:29.960 What you didn't say in your article is that you believe in God.

00:51:32.680 Do you?

00:51:33.640 I do believe in God, yes.

00:51:34.880 And I said this to Richard Dawkins the other night in the Discipline Dialogues, I choose to believe in God.

00:51:45.520 I found myself in that place of complete disconnection and despair and struggled with years and years of depression

00:51:54.480 and tried to do it, you know, the way a good old atheist would do it by going to science and seeing psychiatrists and psychologists.

00:52:02.640 And I learned a lot from them.

00:52:04.960 I learned a lot about the human brain, the human mind.

00:52:07.340 I learned a lot about addiction and all the rest of it.

00:52:10.420 But if you ask me now that I've come out of this depression, what exactly happened?

00:52:17.560 I think it was when I surrendered to the idea that, yes, this is I am undergoing or going through a spiritual,

00:52:26.260 as one of the therapists put it, spiritual bankruptcy.

00:52:29.520 And so I fell to my knees and prayed.

00:52:33.160 And it is only then I felt this sense that something was lifting.

00:52:38.840 And something was lifting because I was feeling connected to something much more powerful than myself.

00:52:43.560 And I don't know how to describe that.

00:52:45.380 And I followed that up with wanting more and the choice of becoming a Christian, choosing Christianity.

00:52:59.500 Of course, I grew up with Islam, so I know what that holds.

00:53:02.780 And looking at the other, you know, far Eastern religions, I see some of the wisdoms there,

00:53:08.720 perhaps too far away from me, but feel very much at home with Christianity and with the legacy of Christianity.

00:53:20.280 And so I'm not ashamed or embarrassed about it, but I do want to emphasize that's a personal and very intimate, if you will, decision.

00:53:34.060 And it's not something that I want to impose on others.

00:53:39.480 But I'll say, if I see, let me rephrase it.

00:53:49.920 In the past, I would have discussions with people who would talk about the advantages of religion,

00:53:55.080 and I would just laugh at them and go along with people who are saying,

00:53:59.000 ah, they're too weak, too frightened in the dark, too non-spent, that kind of thing.

00:54:03.140 And now I think from my experience, I think there's a great deal of wisdom in there,

00:54:08.620 and that brings us back to a sense of, that brings me back to a sense of humility.

00:54:13.620 But I am not standing on the streets with the Bible, proclaiming the gospel.

00:54:23.260 I think you would look great in one of those sandwich boards with a megaphone.

00:54:28.060 And a bell.

00:54:28.540 And I think for public figures to come out and admit doubts, admit the things that they struggle with,

00:54:45.840 I think there's a form of moral leadership that we were, perhaps some of us were too embarrassed to come out and share.

00:54:55.080 And so there is something in, I didn't, you know, I didn't need any persuasion to say,

00:55:05.100 if you're a young person and you're struggling with the same things, you feel it's all meaningless.

00:55:12.060 It's okay for you to have these feelings, and it's okay for you, there is a way out.

00:55:16.300 There is a light somewhere there.

00:55:18.140 This is what worked for me.

00:55:19.620 I don't know if it will work for you, but this is what worked for me.

00:55:22.020 I think that is, again, a very Western civilization thing.

00:55:27.460 Instead of punishing people for their suffering, because it's a deviant.

00:55:36.200 I think the compassionate thing to do is to say, how can we, what can we help, what can we do together to help you get better?

00:55:46.040 Well, one of the things that I'm really grateful for is, I think, in the, one of the benefits of new technology is the ability to have discussions like this.

00:55:55.840 And I think older media, like television, was much more about sharing certainties.

00:56:03.360 You have two people, five minutes each, or three minutes each, or 20 seconds each, and you deliver your certainty about this.

00:56:10.420 You know, there is no, there is, in these conversations, we have the ability, as you say, to actually talk about what it is that you're thinking, why you're thinking it, where you're unsure, what journey you're on.

00:56:24.280 Because that's actually, I think, where most people are.

00:56:26.660 I don't think most people live their lives through the prism of 20-second soundbites about their certainty about something.

00:56:32.880 Most people are in the place of inquiry and openness to ideas, I think.

00:56:39.440 And so it's interesting to me.

00:56:41.280 I suppose the question is, and again, this is something I ask Jordan repeatedly, is, can you put the toothpaste back in the tube?

00:56:49.100 You know, I call my generation the children of Dawkins.

00:56:52.020 How do, you know, but I also sense that a lot of people our age and younger, too, are in the inquiry of what is meaning, what is purpose, how do we connect to others?

00:57:05.760 And, like you say, it's unavoidably obvious and painfully obvious that that vacuum that new atheists were so looking forward to opens up the space for new things to come in that are not even going to be as good as what we had before.

00:57:21.500 I mean, wokeness, to me, is an awful religion.

00:57:23.740 I mean, one of the worst in many ways.

00:57:25.240 And then also, in the geopolitical environment that we operate in and the global environment culturally, we have challenges, we have competitors, and we have to rediscover a strength and confidence in the values of our civilization, or we will go the way of every civilization that has lost its way in the past.

00:57:45.820 Yeah.

00:57:47.260 So I'll say, if you're a young person and you want to know a great deal about biology, read Dawkins and listen to Richard.

00:57:56.920 He has a great deal of knowledge and wisdom to impart there.

00:58:02.680 If you want to understand the roots of our civilization and how we got here and the meaning, you know, putting the toothpaste back in the...

00:58:15.820 putting the toothpaste back in the tube, listen to Tom Holland.

00:58:24.140 And you see, both men, very much Western, in fact, both of them British, have this background in scholarship and taking their scholarships very, very, very seriously.

00:58:42.200 And these are the two individuals, but I think they represent a whole world of a whole civilization that managed to dominate the world and to lead the world because it allows for that.

00:59:09.760 It allows for these different inquiries and perspectives and these conversations.

00:59:16.480 And I think what you were talking about earlier, about the little bit of certainty, you come in and you say you're a piece of certainty, and then you turn it into a contest with winners and losers.

00:59:27.220 I think that created a sort of polarization of ideas.

00:59:34.720 If you're poor Dawkins, you can't be poor Tom Holland, which is, of course, nonsense.

00:59:39.600 And so I think part of it is to bring young people back into the realm of, for me, actually, the realm of reason and spirituality, where they can coexist faith and reason, where you say,

00:59:54.360 if you're seeking development and evolution and growth on this plane, you go to this end of the library.

01:00:05.480 And if you're seeking it on this end, you go to that end of the library.

01:00:08.780 But the library is full of, that Western library is full of all of this knowledge and wisdom.

01:00:14.180 And I think we've lost a bit of that.

01:00:16.700 Ayaan, thank you so much for coming on the show.

01:00:18.920 It's always a pleasure.

01:00:20.480 Before we head over to our locals, where our supporters get to ask their questions to you, our final question is always the same.

01:00:27.700 What's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should be?

01:00:32.820 Restoration.

01:00:34.820 Which is the title of your sub-stag, by the way.

01:00:37.240 So I'm glad you slipped that in.

01:00:38.480 Tell us more about what people can find out there.

01:00:41.320 I think for many years, we've talked about what our problems are, and it's good.

01:00:46.000 And we should continue to talk about what the problems are and diagnose them.

01:00:49.480 But perhaps now that we've come to understand most of them, we should restore our institutions.

01:00:56.840 We should restore, again, the story, the foundational stories, these principles, and celebrate them.

01:01:04.760 And I want to be a part of that.

01:01:08.300 Restore the relationship between men and women.

01:01:11.480 Restore the relationship between parents and children.

01:01:14.220 Restore the relationship between the generations.

01:01:16.840 There's a great deal of restoration work to be carried out.

01:01:20.720 I mean, that is a great mission, and I think we're very lucky to have people of your caliber participating.

01:01:25.340 And we certainly aspire to doing the same.

01:01:27.540 So thank you for coming on, Ayaan.

01:01:29.240 It's a great honor to have you back on the show.

01:01:31.480 And of course, head on over to Locals, where we ask Ayaan your questions right now.

01:01:34.900 I'd like to ask Ayaan if she expects a general return to Christianity as Islam grows in political influence in the West.

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TRIGGERnometry - May 26, 2024

Ayaan Hirsi Ali： The Growing Threat of Radical Islam

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