Eshaan Akbar on Islam, Tolerance and Identity
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Words per minute
169.45935
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sentences flagged
Toxicity
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Hate speech
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Summary
This week, our brilliant guest is Ishan Akbar, a former banker, policy advisor and turned comedian. In this episode, Ishan talks about growing up in a Muslim family in the 60s and 70s, and how that shaped his views on religion and politics.
Transcript
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Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantin Kissin. And this is a
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show for you if you're bored of people arguing on the internet over subjects they know nothing
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about. At Trigonometry, we don't pretend to be the experts, we ask the experts. Our brilliant
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guest this week is a former banker, policy advisor, turned comedian, Ishan Akbar. Welcome
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to Trigonometry. Hello, nice to be here. It's great to have you, man. Thanks for coming on.
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Listen, the first question we always ask people
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You're not the first person that's done that joke,
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You are the first comedian that's done that joke.
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so it's a consistent mode of behaviour, I guess.
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My mum came from a very wealthy Bangladeshi family.
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My grandad actually helped write the constitution of Bangladesh
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making Bangladesh the only Muslim-majority country
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But my dad came from the other side of the tracks Pakistani immigrant, you know had to make his way through life
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So her parents weren't happy about that. I imagine her parents will help. This is my mom's second marriage
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Whatever man, the first one messed up is fine. You're going to do your thing
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And my mom quite controversial for a Muslim woman to get a divorce at that time
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it was relatively controversial but because my granddad was he was quite
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woke for his time he kind of understood the circumstances behind why would that
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happen to my mum and I'm writing a novel about the whole thing actually so that
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might come up later but as to why that happened but in any case and why that's
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important to know is because that then had a big impact on my upbringing my mum
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was a staunch Thatcherite and my dad was a trade union labourite so I grew up
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Both identified as Muslim and gave me, for all intents and purposes,
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Although my mum went to a Roman Catholic private school in Bangladesh.
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So when I was six and I was beginning to show signs of,
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I wouldn't say radicalisation, but basically I had a few choice words
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Well, we didn't know that when we invited him on.
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But, you know, you were just motivated by the truth.
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But I was just espousing the views I might have heard
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Well, first she beat me up when she heard it.
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it was a lottery of life that meant I was born into a Muslim family
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If I was born in a Jewish family or a Christian family,
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So because of my mom, I had a bit of a liberal attitude
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Then I went to a Church of England private school,
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became the first Muslim choir boy, which is just,
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And then with the other Muslim boys who were there,
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here I am singing hymns about Jesus being Lord.
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And so I was just a constant confusion to everyone.
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While I was at university, I was a part-time Bollywood dance
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It was just waking up every day and just dancing, right?
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And after I graduated, I joined a bank and was a private banker.
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then did a master's in global governance and public policy.
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was getting a Conservative MP to defect to UKIP.
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and she was upset about the number of white people
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and she thought this was some sort of conspiracy
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by ethnic minority people to get rid of white people.
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And also, as well, nobody wants to live in Morden.
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So that, and then during that time, I started running through a few newspapers,
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started some opinion pieces for The Guardian and The Times,
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had my sights set on becoming a broadcast journalist.
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The producer of the show said, you're quite funny, you should try stand-up.
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A year later, I joined HSBC as a speechwriter to the CEO and comms advisor.
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And then a year after that, quit to do comedy full-time.
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It sounds like, I mean, I don't want to stereotype,
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but when I think of Islam, I don't think of the most liberal kind of upbringing.
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What you're talking about, what your mom taught you,
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So I think for me what was difficult growing up was
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I was given a very liberal view of what Islam is,
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but then I was surrounded by people who didn't share the same kind of views so for example one
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of my mom's closest friends growing up was a gay hairdresser who I remember very distinctly in 1988
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first time I met my dad and he he had his sights on my dad basically it was very funny seeing him
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kind of sat next to my dad and my dad kind of edging away going I don't know how to deal with
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But then when I would go to mosque for my Quranic teaching,
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the things they'd say about gay people, the things they'd say
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there was a real shift to the right, as I'd call it,
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within the mosque, which alienated me a bit more.
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And it was curious to me, because even, for example,
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They've got some very choice things to say about what
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And they're quite vocal about their displeasure
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what views are in most places about the existence of Israel.
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So for me growing up, it was very difficult reconciling
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what I believed to be my community when I was outside
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of the house to the stuff my parents were saying to me.
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My parents would pray, and they would identify themselves
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she was buried a Muslim and was given a Muslim burial.
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He doesn't eat bacon or any of that kind of stuff.
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I don't see him pray, but when he does get in the car,
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Yeah, so car and flight, any kind of travelling,
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even when I led the call to prayer in the mosque.
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but actually my version of Islam that I grew up with
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isn't the version of Islam that I think we see in the UK and I have a theory as to why this might
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be the case and I think it's to do with the socioeconomic status of migrants who come to
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the UK and bring a conservative brand of that faith with them because most liberal attitudes
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in almost any faith group particularly in Islam tended to be when the upper echelons of their
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society. So the Ottomans would rule a Muslim empire but actually would drink
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and have concubines and all this kind of stuff.
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Absolutely legends, right? And even there's evidence to suggest that during the Islamic
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Enlightenment, which most people regard as being between the 8th and the 14th
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centuries, it was quite a long time in terms of scientific advances and social
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Well, they led the world in medicine and maths as well.
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Yeah, all that kind of stuff. And when Islam came to be, it did this audacious
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thing of giving women rights to an inheritance and allowing women to, excuse me, divorce their
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husbands and all this kind of stuff. So it was quite progressive, but the people who were able
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to exercise those progressive behaviours tended to be in the upper echelonist society, and the ones
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who couldn't tended to be in the lower end. Most migration, if you see anywhere, tends to come from
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people who are from lower socioeconomic groups. That's why they move. There's loads of my family
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members who just haven't left Bangladesh because they've got 15 servants and they're very happy.
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We should move to Bangladesh, mate. Maybe even you and I can afford a servant in Bangladesh.
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Mate, I'm going to Bangladesh just to be able to afford property.
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Yeah, pretty much. It's interesting when you talk about, actually, what I was going to ask you,
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do you think it's also to do with the fact that if you're a minority, you have to work that much
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harder to kind of preserve your identity? I see it with the Russian community in this country.
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Loads of people who are not religious will go to church because it gives them a place where they can come to and be in a community.
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And as a result of that, they kind of become, you wouldn't say they're religious, but they kind of get into that circle.
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Yeah, I think absolutely that has a big part to play because obviously the mosque is going to be the place where you get advice about stuff, about how to survive in this country and all this.
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and by osmosis you'll pick up some views but also and this is something I found having gone to
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being a brown kid in private school having worked with during my banking days people at the very top
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end of British society to survive you have to sometimes not necessarily agree with but allow
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certain views to be expressed and over time my feeling is that people hear those views you might
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not necessarily believe them but it's much easier to be like yay i i i hate gays too even if you
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might not and a child or a nephew or someone might hear you saying that and they're like okay that's
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what i'm supposed to do and those views just tend to permeate permeate so i think there's absolutely
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some something in the fact that people have to stay close to their communities and how big
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a problem do you think these types of views are within the faith? Do you think they're
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a major problem or is it just a small subset of people or is it widely prevalent? I know
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Yeah, it's a difficult question. I think the first thing to say is, the reason it's
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difficult to say, answer that properly, is because to refer to Islam as one thing is
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actually quite complicated. I don't think calling Islam Islam is helpful because there
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are so many sects within Islam, more so than almost any other, I think, because the formation
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of Islam was in a part of the world where there were so many tribes and the reason why when people
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say Islam means peace is because the word literally does translate to peace and the reason it
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translates to peace is because when the Prophet Muhammad is said to have received his revelation
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his whole intention was to encourage peace in the Arabian Peninsula so there's 12 months in the
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Arabic calendar three of which are just about truce one of them being Ramadan where the idea
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And a central theme of the Prophet Muhammad's ideology
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was something called the Ummah, which means community.
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And the Ummah included Christians, Jews, pagans,
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But now, if you speak to people and ask them what the Ummah is,
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to be able to give one homogenous view of what I think
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Islam or people who identify as Muslim would say.
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However, that said, I am willing to go out on a limb
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and say that, in a generic view across all those tribes
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For me, it's problematic, certainly, because, well.
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What, did you do your own sort of referendum with your body?
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I was just like, how many men does one have to kiss
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I won't tell you the number, but I'm on less than eight
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she was talking to me and directing her attention
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likes me. No, it wasn't. She just thought Constantine
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people in the Muslim community don't like gay people.
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Well, there were surveys of British Muslims, and I think more than 50% of British Muslims say that homosexuality should be illegal.
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Because it's curious to me, because a lot of Muslim friends I have, a big part of their humour growing up that I've seen, erred on the side of faux homosexuality.
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So, and I guess we're now in a place where faux homosexuality probably isn't that funny anymore.
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Because that, you know, when we were kids, we'd be like, oh, that's gay, this is gay, that's whatever.
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But I certainly remember a time growing up where, can I swear on this podcast?
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So basically, you know, my Muslim friends would be like, oh, you're kind of like that.
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So when I was 12 years old, my Pakistani side of the family,
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there's a few cousins I have who are kind of emcees and rappers.
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And I don't want to shock you, but emceeing rapping
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And they said, Dishan, why don't you rap to the beat?
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So to the beat, I dropped Inpectore Robur.
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They stopped, and they said to me, what, are you gay?
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And I remember at 12, saying, well, what's wrong with being
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Uncles were calling my dad saying, your son's gay.
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But I saw firsthand just how angry that particular idea
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I saw firsthand after 9-11 how angry people are
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about the idea of the West whilst espousing those views
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in the West, and I always found that a bit curious as well,
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being like, hold on, you're telling me all this stuff
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and Western foreign policy, and this, that, and the other.
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I know so many people in the Russian community in this country
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who go on and on about how terrible Britain is.
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And I'm like, well, why didn't you fuck off back to Russia?
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But that's the most British thing in the world, isn't it?
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It's like we had it all great in the Soviet Union.
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Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, a lot of that stuff does happen.
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And look, I'm not saying that you can't criticise.
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But for me, it seems to me that certainly the Muslims that I tend to interact with
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and the Muslims that I know, their criticisms seem to be completely at odds
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with everything it takes to exist in a liberal-minded Western society.
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And that, to me, is where there becomes a problem.
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Because when people say to me, Islam is incompatible with living in the West, I end up sitting there thinking, well, I can see why people would say that.
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By the same token, I don't think, you know, real liberalism, if people want to identify that way, is to accept that people are going to be different.
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It's to accept that there'll be Muslims who won't drink and for them not to be chastised for that.
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well there you go, Ishan's come out as gay, Francis has come out as a Muslim
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One common refrain that's made about Muslims is that they don't integrate.
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They'll say they stick to their own, and they can challenge that and say, well, everyone
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The Chipping Norton people are sticking to their own.
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The Exeter people you're going to see today are sticking to their own.
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They say, well, OK, they don't really come to us.
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And as you probe and you probe and you probe, what that basically means is there are some
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cultural things that we do in the UK that the Muslim community just aren't privy to,
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You know, if you don't want to drink, don't drink.
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I think alcohol is a ridiculous thing to be legal more so than marijuana.
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But nevertheless, it's curious to me that there are so many views within Muslim households
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is it the attitude to women you're alluding to here as well?
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But also, the women thing is an interesting one
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a lot of the applications of what the Quran teaches about women to an Islamic application
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necessarily, because a lot of Muslim households across the world tend to have quite matriarchal
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paradigms, right? So women rule the Rus in the house, women rule the Rus in some communities,
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But it is, I would argue, this historical patriarchal attitude that has meant that women have been subjugated consistently and in a way that to you and I in the West would seem quite regressive in those particular communities.
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communities. Like, you know, Saudi Arabia making the effort to give women the right to
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drive, which is a risk they're willing to take.
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Obviously, never seen my mum, mate. Just upload that to YouTube, mate. Cancel now!
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I'm joking. I'm joking. Women are wonderful drivers. That's why they get cheaper insurance.
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Well, they don't anymore, but they're not allowed to, are they?
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They used to be like, yeah, discrimination, you can't.
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But probably still, the actuaries probably make sure that women, anyway, that's what I
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But, yeah, some attitudes to women, attitudes to the LGBT community, attitudes to certain
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and Western ideologies or Western foreign policy,
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all of that stuff, in sum, sometimes makes me think,
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well, I can see why people want to say you're incompatible.
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Because compatibility, in a sense, in the UK now,
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There are more halal dessert bars and all this kind of stuff.
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When you go to parts of Birmingham or Manchester,
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But if you're in places like Exeter or, as I was yesterday,
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and that's what you see, you're going to think to yourself,
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And they'll probably say, we don't want to be a part with them.
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And if they're here, we might have to be forced to associate with them.
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And that's where these kind of schisms come, I think.
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Now, what I wanted to do is just drill down a little bit.
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Where do you think the intolerance to LGBT people comes from?
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community because it also specifically talks about
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Bible and the Torah doesn't because when it talks about gays
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That's the fair thing. And I think it comes from the same
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you know, populations have to increase, and for populations to increase, you need heterosexual
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relationships, and homosexual relationships are a barrier to that increase, and particularly when
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you're a religion like Islam, which is born in the middle of warfare, so you're already quite
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isolated, and the only way to expand or protect yourself is to have an expansive population,
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homosexuality is a complete barrier to that. I don't personally think that there is more
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of a dislike for homosexuality from that perspective as opposed to an inherent idea of it just
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being wrong because, and this is perhaps my liberal mindedness, all of us, I think, growing
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up have some sort of challenge with our sexuality. I don't think there's anything as you're
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you don't know anything, you might see a bloke and be like,
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oh, he's good looking, oh, I'm feeling things, whatever.
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that there's nobody in the Muslim community,
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even in the seventh or eighth centuries, who weren't gay.
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And it's because there were enough gay people
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that to be a revelation that God felt was necessary to put to the Prophet Muhammad. There must have
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been enough gay people for that to have happened. Do you see what I mean? So if there are enough gay
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people in the 7th century, there must have been enough potentially gay people within the Muslim
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community. And then for them to be told by Imams, don't be gay, because if you are the big man in
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the sky, you're going to be happy about it. Well, this is what I was going to say. You talk about
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But Orthodox Christianity, the people who really genuinely follow it and believe it, it's the same.
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Everything you've said so far applies equally to them.
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I know a very religious guy in Eastern Europe who I have to see regularly
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who said to me that all gay people are pedophiles.
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So this is what I'm saying, I don't think this is exclusive to Islam at all, but what
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I get the sense of is any religion whose adherents are really, really deeply committed to it
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will typically go much further in those things than a religion that's maybe become more liberalised
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like, you know, Anglicism or something like that, you know what I mean?
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Yeah, and I've been thinking about this, which is, you know, Islam, the year in Islam is what, now 1448, I think, something like that.
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Yeah, it's a younger religion. It's still quite new.
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That said, if you've had six centuries of enlightenment where you've really helped society, global society, move forward, I don't see why they shouldn't be liberal or be slightly softer on particularly these kind of issues.
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Why Christianity has been able to get to a point where gay people can go into church and pray.
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And I mean, that said, I don't think a gay person can necessarily go into church and be like, hi, guys, I'm gay.
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Because I think people do want to hold that part of their identity close to them when they go to a place of religious worship.
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I think Islam is a long way away from accepting openly that gay or transgender people will come into the mosque.
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And this will give you an example of where these attitudes prevail.
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About a month ago, I received a message from a family friend of mine.
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He's a dentist. He's married. He's got a daughter.
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So on the face of it, you know, an intelligent bloke, you know, an intelligent bloke, he sent me a message with a picture of this liberal mosque that opened up in Germany that allows transgendered and gay people to pray.
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And his only quote to it was, a sign of the end of times.
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And I was like, well, why do you think that that's a sign of the end of times?
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Sure, that's a sign of progress, a sign of the beginning of time.
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And I said, OK, what if your daughter decided to be transgender?
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And he goes, well, that's not my daughter, then.
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And this is a guy who was born and raised in England, is my age, is a dentist,
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and so obviously surrounds himself, and will see people who are from different communities,
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And I said to him, well, if that's the case, what you need to be doing is every time a customer,
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a patient comes in find out their sexuality if they're gay don't accept their money because you
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can't yeah you can't do both you can't say i don't think you're allowed to be gay but also i'll take
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150 pounds for a crown that doesn't make any sense to me um and he's a good example and he
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and millions of others like him exist they are born in the 80s in the uk have caught bit been
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here in this wave of liberalism that we've seen and yet are very steadfast in their views about
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things like this. But do you think the reason for that is fundamentally religion is illogical?
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It's faith-based. You are asked to believe in something that there is no proof for.
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So therefore people's belief systems aren't founded in logic because it's illogical.
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You're absolutely right and that's my feeling as well but a lot of Muslims will turn around and say
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Islam is the most logical of all the faiths and their defense for this is to
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say that so Islam beyond the actual revelation doesn't have any miracles
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everything that happens you know the prophet Muhammad is a 40 year old bloke
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he married someone who's you know 15 16 years older than him went through a
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couple of hours he's just a normal guy who had this revelation all the miracles
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that exist in the Quran were in the older books the Bible and the Torah because of
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the Islamic enlightenment, algebra, mathematics, hospitals, all this kind of stuff, they will
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say to you, well, Islam is very logical. Because Islam is such a way of life, the five times
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00:31:59.600
a day, all this stuff, they will find a logical reason for those rules to exist. But I think
00:32:05.040
you're absolutely right that ultimately, you have to have faith that praying five times
00:32:09.820
a day is a logical thing to do when you're living in the UK
00:32:17.640
and you have to work from the hours of 9 till 5,
00:32:29.420
And they'll say to you, OK, it might be hard for us,
00:32:33.160
but they had to do it in the desert in the 6th and 7th
00:32:38.780
And my argument is, well, in the 6th and 7th and 8th centuries,
00:32:47.200
and didn't have Jane's birthday turning up with a cake for,
00:33:03.020
This is going to be a difficult question to ask,
00:33:07.860
Yeah, but I'm going to, because I think it's important.
00:33:31.400
You know, every time there's a terrorist attack
00:33:36.580
I kind of feel it's a bit like there is a sense in me that you wouldn't constantly be saying it if there wasn't
00:33:42.840
Some kind of issue there. Do you know what I mean?
00:33:44.720
Okay, that's a good question. It's actually a good question. I think
00:33:48.980
Part of the reason why a lot of Muslims in the Muslim community feel the need to do that when a terrorist attack happens
00:33:53.780
Is because the Muslim community is roundly criticized when a terrorist attack happens
00:33:59.920
You know and I like what you did there is you aligned
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islamic i'm so fucked man you're like islam to ukip there can i just say we're definitely
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going to clip this it's going out on the internet and i'm tagging constantly and my name isn't going
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00:34:15.840
on it if i get a fatwa so you're getting one as well uh yeah you and i just love with ukip
00:34:21.640
they're really putting me in the thank you um but you know what i'm saying right like i personally
00:34:27.380
get i i don't think that islam is particularly any different to any other religion maybe it's
00:34:31.540
younger religion maybe people are more devout and because of that maybe because
00:34:35.860
it was born of war as you say there is a more militaristic element to it but
00:34:41.080
it's just that the way we talk about it it's almost like you can't point out
00:34:44.160
that people of a certain religion do keep committing terrorist attacks you
00:34:48.580
know what I mean? Yeah and the thing is it's fair to say and I talk about this in
00:34:53.320
my show. Yeah we should have made that clear because otherwise it just looks
00:34:57.460
It's like we got a brown guy who just started asking him about Islam for no reason.
00:35:09.340
So in my Edinburgh show, Prophet Like It's Hot, which I'm doing at the Soho Theatre.
00:35:15.860
I take the copy of the Koran on the stage and I talk about what the Koran says about certain things.
00:35:21.500
And one of the things I talk about is terrorism.
00:35:22.920
And, you know, there is a very clear, distinct passage in the Koran which says that you must, with the might of the pen or the sword, basically get rid of infidels.
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Now, this is a 7th century text, born of war, that required strength in numbers.
00:35:46.100
and if there are people who you know people who don't um support your ideology when you're in a
00:35:58.060
small village one person is dangerous because they could get the attention of another villager
00:36:04.480
from another tribe and they'll come and kill your whole village okay so for that time
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it actually makes sense to me it makes sense that you'd want to protect your own
00:36:13.820
As barbaric as it seems, we're here in the 21st century, the 7th century, life was completely different.
00:36:21.660
Now, it's fair to say that a lot of the terrorist attacks that we hear about, the majority of them have an Islamic element to them.
00:36:32.360
I get really angry when a terrorist attack happens and people come out and say, this has nothing to do with Islam.
00:36:46.500
they are still extreme right-wing followers of Islam.
00:36:52.360
People then wanting to defend themselves and say,
00:36:57.540
about Islam being so big and the spectrum being so wide
00:37:05.160
and what Al-Shabaab do, Boko Haram, all these people,
00:37:08.520
what they do, of course, you don't want to align yourself with
00:37:14.240
But I will say this, if you were to probe enough Muslims,
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and I did this with the UKIP manifesto, actually,
00:37:23.640
three years ago, I took a copy of the UKIP manifesto
00:37:28.900
read out some of their manifesto pledges and said,
00:37:31.120
give me a cheer if you agree with this, give me a cheer.
00:37:32.720
You'd be amazed at how many things people agreed with.
00:37:35.260
People don't want to pay hospital parking charges.
00:37:37.680
UKIP said, we don't want people to pay hospital parking
00:37:41.080
But if you took certain elements of, say, the Boko Haram
00:37:43.080
Manifesto and took it to Muslims and asked them
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00:37:47.140
some of the questions that you and I might find a bit,
00:37:51.080
ooh, for example, we don't think the state of Israel
00:37:54.520
should exist, or we think homosexuality is a sin,
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I would argue that there would be enough Muslims who would
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I'm by no means suggesting that any Muslim that I certainly
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know or have grown up with would condone any kind
00:38:24.660
is the underlying reasons why that attack may have occurred.
00:38:33.480
Muslims every single day, which may well be true.
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So those kind of sentiments, you see what I mean?
00:38:49.780
be not entirely uncomfortable to a lot of Muslims who
00:38:53.860
are the ones to say Islam is a religion of peace.
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that suggests that if Islam was a religion of peace,
00:39:03.180
the opposite must be true, that there was enough whatever
00:39:06.780
opposite of peace is, strife, violence, that there was enough of the opposite for you to
00:39:11.560
have to have peace in the first place. Do you see what I mean?
00:39:17.660
And so to your point, I don't think it's because they believe or agree with the idea of terrorism,
00:39:31.520
But I do think that a lot of it is them feeling, one, feeling attacked.
00:39:36.140
Because look, there are millions of Muslims who've got nothing to do with what ISIS and
00:39:42.340
I realised that when I listed out the terrorist organisations, I didn't actually mention ISIS
00:39:56.820
The fact that there are so many Muslim-based terrorist organizations hark to the point
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Because there are Boko Haram people who look at al-Shabaab people and think they're pansies.
00:40:13.620
There was a point that I think a couple of years ago or something, the Taliban had to
00:40:22.220
To say, this is extreme, what ISIS are doing is extreme, and you're like, what?
00:40:26.420
this is insane but also heard that when ISIS were around in Levant and Iraq the
00:40:38.000
bins were always collected ISIS had one it's like the whole Hitler made the
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trains run yeah yeah all that kind of stuff like yeah if you don't put your
00:40:46.880
bins out you don't you'll get killed yeah it's interesting to me just how
00:40:51.200
familiar all this all the sounds to Russians and Russia because Russians say
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It is, absolutely. Look, I've spoken to Muslim comedians and asked them, if, because of my show, where I take the Quran on stage, if someone was to hurt me, nay, kill me, do you think they'd be justified in that attack, in doing that to me?
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Muslim comedians essentially understand why someone would hurt you.
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they by no mean condone the act of killing or me being hurt.
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But what they do understand and sympathise with
00:42:09.820
They see where they're coming from, essentially.
00:42:11.280
And how much of this is to do with the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq
00:42:40.920
that oppression or voicing your sense of oppression
00:43:35.860
too dissimilar from any other kind of extreme group,
00:43:38.640
in the sense that we're constantly under attack,
00:43:45.240
We're justified in feeling this because I can't go through an airport without getting checked.
00:43:49.520
I'm justified in feeling this because I can't get a job because my name is Muhammad Al-Alawgi.
00:44:03.860
I've gone through airports nice and easily, and I've also not gone through airports nice and easily.
00:44:10.020
I've missed connecting flights because I'm being checked out.
00:44:12.620
I've also got to places earlier than I should have done.
00:44:15.240
But the Iraq-Afghanistan thing is terrible, but I'd argue we don't talk about the plight of the Rohingya Muslims in as much veracity as we do about Iraq and Afghanistan.
00:44:34.800
That may be because we are Western British Muslims who are in this country and therefore are able to criticise the actions of our government, more so than the actions of the Burmese government.
00:44:45.240
There are some people who are talking about the plight
00:44:47.920
of the Uyghur Muslims in China who are in internment camps.
00:44:53.020
But again, I don't see or think ISIS are flying off to Beijing.
00:45:09.440
It's a shorter flight to Burma than it is to the UK or America.
00:45:15.240
And that, to me, is curious, that why if those issues, Iraq and Afghanistan, are bigger than any other, first of all, why should they be?
00:45:27.640
All Muslims around the world who are being subjugated should have, there should be equality.
00:45:33.880
a far east asian or burmese muslim should no be should not be any lesser muslim than an iraqi
00:45:45.120
or an afghanistani muslim but to me there seems to be like there's this hierarchy that exists
00:45:49.620
that we feel more pained about the plight of them they might again the argument might come back well
00:45:55.620
you can't you know be sad about every single thing that goes and you've got to pick on the issues
00:45:59.300
ultimately what happens in Iraq and Afghanistan has galvanized this anti-Muslim attitude that
00:46:06.080
has now prevailed and gone to the Far East. That might be a defense that they'd give me,
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to which I'd say I'd call bullshit on that. Because what the Chinese, the Chinese don't
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give a toss about what the Americans are doing. They just don't want Uyghur Muslims in their
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00:46:22.340
country. And they're going to put them in camps and they're going to try and brainwash them out
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of it. This is happening on our watch. It's a horrible thing. But I don't see the Yasser
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00:46:30.140
Arafat scarf wearer complaining about that nearly as much as he might be about Iraq and
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Afghanistan. And then he'll say, you know, Wasim from Bradford, who wants to do a tube
00:46:39.260
attack, is justified in doing so because he's so sad about what's happening in Iraq and
00:46:42.240
Afghanistan. And to me, I'm like, well, that's 15 years ago. What's the shit that we're dealing
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00:46:51.000
with now and also it's ignoring history because bin laden was funded by the cia to fight my
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ancestors right yeah in afghanistan of course and then he he he did 9-11 yeah basically biting the
00:47:04.560
apparently biting the hand that fed him and actually don't forget as well that he was an
00:47:10.560
arsenal fan yeah was he yeah he was yeah he used to live he used to live um around arsenal yeah
00:47:16.360
not far away. Grew up in Sweden. Well, make of that what you will. So, yeah, I think there's a
00:47:26.520
kind of ignorance of history there as well. There is an ignorance of history, and also,
00:47:31.140
of course, I get that. We can't possibly, as human beings, be expected to contextualise
00:47:37.820
absolutely everything when it comes to things that hurt us and upset us. What we did, what the
00:47:44.120
British did in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Libya for that matter, and continue to do
00:47:48.940
in Syria, is awful. And moronic too. Moronic, stupid, awful, and it pains me
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00:47:55.520
that my tax, which I'm doing, I'm doing the return soon, that my tax money goes
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to that happening. But at the same time, there is so much historical context within Syria,
00:48:15.680
for example, that there is absolutely reason to believe that Bashar al-Assad is killing his own
00:48:22.460
people. There's reason to believe that Colonel Gaddafi, who is one of my top three favourite
00:48:27.120
dictators, by the way, that Gaddafi wasn't the greatest to a large swathe of the Libyan
00:48:33.700
population. And to me, the white man cannot possibly just dominate all the oppression
00:48:43.540
as well. Hitler can't be the worst dictator of all. You know, brown Muslim people can
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also be terrible to their own people. And we should be able to criticise and be angry
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with them in the same kind of way. But I just don't think, I haven't seen evidence to suggest
00:48:57.900
that people that I know are as angry in their need for some sort of punishment for Bashar
00:49:12.240
al-Assad as they are for Tony Blair. Because it's still part of that sexy parlance and
00:49:18.940
sexy rhetoric around being this oppressed Muslim guy who wears a scarf and is constantly,
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I can't even grow a beard anymore because I'm a brown guy and all this stuff,
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which I find it difficult to reconcile. I find it quite difficult anyway.
00:49:36.700
We've got about 10 minutes left. Let's talk about, you brought up the idea of oppression
00:49:41.920
and kind of where, and it's not something that you and I have really discussed too much in the
00:49:46.580
past. But I'm just curious what you make of the modern conversation about the point that we've
00:49:52.820
come to where I certainly feel like essentially we're judging each other by the color of our skin
00:49:56.620
and our gender and our sexuality all the time now. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I think that's fair
00:50:02.600
to say. I think now more than ever, I feel like I've got to get a flagpole and say, well, this is
00:50:12.740
my identity. It's this, it's this, it's this, this, this, this. And it's exhausting. And
00:50:18.380
I just think that because people have, I think part of it is actually to do with the loss
00:50:23.940
of community in the UK, the loss of community over the last 20 years, that people feel the
00:50:31.560
need to align themselves to something. And they're getting more and more convoluted and
00:50:35.940
more and more complicated. To me, it's no bone off my back if you want to identify as
00:50:42.760
a non-binary, Muslim, transgender, whatever. That's your thing. I don't need to be hammered
00:50:51.700
with it all the time. And also, I should be able to say, hey, do you know what? If I'm
00:50:56.920
about to get down and dirty with a woman, and then I found out she used to have a penis,
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suddenly, or I'm about to get down and dirty with a woman and suddenly I see a penis,
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I don't understand what kind of liberalism we live in now because for me liberalism is
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say whatever the fuck you want, do whatever the fuck you want, be whoever the hell you
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want, I'll accept it for it, but acceptance doesn't mean I'm going to embrace everything,
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that's not what acceptance is, that's not how societies are formed and communities are
00:51:55.720
formed, because let's say parents of a gay person.
00:52:04.060
Those parents may disagree with the idea of homosexuality
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fundamentally, but they'll accept that their son is gay.
00:52:12.400
Suddenly the dad's not like, well, OK, now my son's
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we've got to this point where just because somebody is
00:52:37.340
second generation immigrant, you've got a parent
00:52:53.540
people would go to me, do you see you as British, Venezuelan, what are you? And you always have
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00:52:58.180
that sort of conflict within you. Do you think maybe that stems from it?
00:53:01.740
Maybe, but I don't know how many second generation immigrants are actually
00:53:04.900
coming out as gay or transgender or whatever. I don't know, and I can't possibly comment on that.
00:53:12.100
I completely hear you. Not only do I have the complication of being a second generation immigrant
00:53:16.080
to South Asian parents, but South Asian parents, one of whom came from Pakistan, one of whom came
00:53:20.080
from Bangladesh, two countries that in 1971 had a massive civil war that resulted in Bangladesh
00:53:25.020
being born. So, and then I was raised in this country the way I was, in quite a middle class
00:53:34.360
way, sound the way I do. So when I go to Bangladesh, albeit speaking Bangladesh fluently, they're
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00:53:40.500
like, well, you're not. You're not one of us, mate. Yeah, when I go to Pakistan, you're
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00:53:45.620
not one of us, you're British. And when I'm here, you know, just last year in Jordan,
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00:53:54.520
And it's just like, well, I don't know where I belong.
00:53:57.460
But actually, I can just choose where I feel like I belong,
00:54:01.960
And I think a lot of people, that's what they're doing,
00:54:03.360
is they're saying, I want to take ownership of my own identity.
00:54:11.860
But me going to an EDL meeting and forcing them to say,
00:54:21.180
They're not going to be like, oh, yeah, OK, you're right,
00:54:27.700
And by the way, I'm not aligning the EDL with whatever.
00:54:35.060
So when I'm on stage, I just don't bother caveating.
00:54:37.220
If you want to make a judgment about the kind of person I am,
00:54:40.940
because so far, I do this show called Hate and Life.
00:54:51.180
is basically audience submit little categories or words,
00:55:07.480
because they're the weakest of all the children I fuck.
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00:55:12.480
Off the cuff, it was quite funny, and people laughed.
00:55:14.480
But of course, people came up to me after being like,
00:55:23.900
that comedians are there to say disgusting things.
00:55:31.380
They made a value judgment on me as a comedian, by the way,
00:55:34.840
saying something that I knew would get a reaction
00:55:47.140
As a comedian, I see it a lot, the moment you voice anything that doesn't fit within
00:55:54.180
what I call this liberal tyranny, within this liberal paradigm, you are chastised and ousted
00:56:07.080
That is Stasi right-wing Nazi thinking at its core.
00:56:12.680
But they would argue otherwise, they'd be like, no, well, no, you're not accepting.
00:56:42.660
Well, we've got to do the last question, haven't we?
00:56:48.900
what's the one thing that we're not talking about
00:56:52.480
Absolutely anything could be something in the context
00:56:56.060
Don't say your show, because we will plug that.
00:57:00.400
What aren't we talking about that we should be talking about?
00:57:06.540
OK, I think the thing that we aren't talking about enough
00:57:11.660
is the impact of tech in shaping societies and democracies around the world because the advent
00:57:26.860
of the internet is what led to the growth I would argue of terrorist organizations like ISIS
00:57:32.960
and al-Qaeda because they're able to galvanize these people from parts around the world and
00:57:39.040
And the fact that online is where communities are formed, the Twitterati, the liberal tyranny,
00:57:47.220
all this stuff, those pockets are going to get stronger and stronger and more acute over
00:57:53.640
And my feeling is that there needs to be some sort of global sort of agreement for how society
00:58:02.040
Because, for example, China having a closed internet, yet being quite possibly the most
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powerful nation on earth is quite a curious situation. And as we become more
00:58:15.260
and more dependent on online and tech, I think there could be some serious
00:58:20.420
ramifications for global society and how they're structured. Excellent. Well, Ishan,
00:58:26.060
you're on Twitter at? I'm on Twitter at Ishan Akbar, but people struggle to spell
00:58:30.260
that, so you have to put in Michael Packintyre to find me. I'm not fucking
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If you could leave us a review, we'd be insanely grateful.
00:59:45.640
it will tell you when we've got new episodes being released.
00:59:49.580
And most importantly, if you could leave a review on iTunes.