00:03:15.080And for those who might not be aware, and I'm sure, I'm sure that many of the people in your audience do know,
00:03:21.460but there's a very extreme apostasy stigma in Islam, and really just a huge stigma against dissent, religious dissent in general.
00:03:33.100It's not really something that's, it's not exactly a tolerant religion when it comes to freedom of speech, freedom of thought, the freedom to leave a faith.
00:03:39.860So, this was, you know, it was a very isolating experience for me to leave the faith.
00:03:48.300And then one day, when I would, after I had, you know, graduated college and everything, I found another ex-Muslim.
00:03:53.960We were, you know, he was very fascinated with the idea of maybe starting something.
00:04:00.740And so, we started an organization called Ex-Muslims of North America that exists to advocate for the rights of ex-Muslims,
00:04:11.040for the right to life in some parts of the world where apostasy is a crime punishable by death,
00:04:17.580but also just the social stigma and ostracism and sometimes pretty severe abuse that ex-Muslims go through.
00:04:23.840So, it's really just an organization founded on secular principles, but also just to normalize religious dissent.
00:04:31.480That's sort of what we're orienting ourselves around and specifically focusing on Islam and the problems within the Muslim community.
00:04:43.180And in my role as a co-founder of this new organization, an activist organization, I started to give talks and panels about the problems that I saw in the faith,
00:04:57.120mostly within an audience that was very friendly to me, other atheists, humanists, seculars, free thinkers, that sort of thing.
00:05:06.080And yet, even in that audience, I felt as if I was saying something nobody wanted to really hear.
00:08:01.080When I, because I was a good, good little progressive liberal.
00:08:04.520But these were values that meant a lot to me.
00:08:08.200And they were a big part of why I left religion and, you know, why I, how I saw myself as a person.
00:08:14.740And to see this, to see myself being rejected, even though in principle I shouldn't have been.
00:08:20.720And it was like being, you know, kicked out again because I had, I left my community of origin, my religious community.
00:08:27.920And then again to feel that way on this, this political, you know, tribe that I felt very close to.
00:08:35.800I have a few questions, but let's start with one.
00:08:38.840You mentioned that in that sort of liberal space or the atheist space or whatever it was, people would say that you shouldn't talk about Islam specifically because Muslims are under a lot of pressure and so on.
00:08:52.760Do you think that's, that is the real reason or do you think there's something underneath all of that?
00:08:57.300Because I often feel, I don't know if it's the same in America, but in the UK where we live, quite often people are, they will use that excuse.
00:09:04.420But what they're actually thinking is, this is a dangerous thing to talk about.
00:09:11.060Well, I think there's multiple motivations that are, you know, running in the background, which is why the whole thing is so confusing.
00:09:20.760You know, why you're not supposed to be behaving this way, so why are you behaving this way?
00:09:24.100I think the fear element is certainly real and I think it is more, it is more important than, than some of the other ideological factors, even just the sense of like, I don't want to, I don't want to get in trouble.
00:09:41.200I don't want to put my kids, you know, in danger.
00:09:44.640I don't want to put my coworkers in danger by, you know, publishing this thing or saying this thing.
00:09:49.440But, you know, I found when I, when I would go to, to give talks that, you know, if I was on a panel or something like that, the other speakers would be very nervous to sort of be around me and to share a space with me.
00:10:04.760And there were times where people, I, I know that they felt very insecure just in being in the same presence as, as someone like me.
00:10:14.740And so they would ask for like lots and lots of security, even more security than perhaps I would have asked for.
00:10:19.440So multiple times I found myself in the position of feeling as if, you know, I was a problem because I was introducing this level of, you know, risk that everybody else had now to take on to.
00:10:33.200And I think that's always running in the background.
00:10:37.580And we don't want to feel like fearful people.
00:10:40.900We don't want to feel like the kind of person that is run by, you know, cowardly motivations.
00:10:48.140So then we have to make up something else to justify why we're behaving in a cowardly way.
00:10:53.960And I think a lot of the sort of woke rhetoric serves that function.
00:10:58.860But to fully answer your question, I think it's also the case that I think I misunderstood what the principles of the progressive left might be.
00:11:20.960Sorry to interrupt you in the middle of answering a question.
00:11:22.840You know, what's funny is Francis and I, when we started trigonometry, we talked about wokeness a lot because it was affecting our industry of comedy.
00:11:29.960And then the more we looked at society, the more we saw there was having an impact.
00:11:33.440I've never said a word to you about wokeness.
00:11:35.440We didn't talk about it before we started.
00:11:37.240We were interested in talking to you about your concerns about Islam and so on.
00:11:42.060And yet wokeness comes up straight away.
00:11:45.880Well, I think it is part of the, maybe it's not new at all, but I think that there is a difference between what I saw as progressive ideology, liberal ideology.
00:12:00.920I don't know if that makes sense from a UK perspective, liberals and leftists and progressives are a little different.
00:12:06.140But I have always called myself a liberal and I meant as someone on the left who believes in freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of association and equality and all this stuff.
00:12:38.780And I think I made a lot of the same noises for a long time.
00:12:44.660And I think that I've started to reevaluate that and consider that maybe I was not fully understanding the fundamental values and principles of the modern left.
00:12:56.660In that, I don't think the governing principles are enlightenment values.
00:13:04.240And I don't know if they have been that way for a long time.
00:13:08.000I think that there, you know, I think that the political left was changed quite a bit with its encounter with, you know, socialism and socialist thinking.
00:13:18.900And if I had to, if I had to put into words what I think drives a modern left now or what its philosophy might be, I think I would, I think I would call it a kind of new age, like therapeutic, radical egalitarianism.
00:13:40.820And so this, this idea that we are all equal, which is, you know, and we should be equal, economically equal, which would be the socialist thing.
00:13:49.900But the emphasis here is not so much on economics, although they still care about that, but on social equality, on equal moral affirmation and dignity.
00:14:03.860You know, there's quite a bit of therapeutic language wrapped up in all of this, this sense of I have a self and myself deserves to be validated.
00:14:17.540My choices deserve to be validated. They deserve to be affirmed.
00:14:49.900In this, in this new modern left, you might focus on, you know, pushing up others, you know, getting them to, to where you are.
00:14:59.140And I think that that's why we see so much of this signaling from various powerful people, you know, literally sometimes kneeling at the, at the feet of, of sacred people, marginalized people, lifting them up.
00:15:17.880And in that act, also talking is lifting themselves up and, you know, showing how morally superior they are to, in fact, work towards this social egalitarianism.
00:15:29.260It's interesting that you say that because with this progressive culture, you're a woman of color.
00:15:36.900You should have been embraced and celebrated and lifted up.
00:15:42.840That was, I mean, there's so much of this that doesn't make sense.
00:15:47.060So many people who, who, you know, talk about how, you know, wokeness or whatever's going on impacts various communities are people of color, people of various sexual orientations, and it doesn't seem to matter.
00:16:02.840So I think there is a way in which you can cancel out your, your demographic, you know, affiliations.
00:16:10.520If you show yourself as being someone who's not committed to that project of, of radical egalitarianism.
00:16:32.020So I have the general, you know, atheist stance on, you know, logical contradictions and, and all that.
00:16:38.760But, um, when it comes to belief in general and maybe revelation and the problem of evil and all of that, um, I'm very motivated by, by those arguments or, uh, had been when I, when I left the religion.
00:16:51.420Um, but then, uh, you know, lots of things are wrong and, you know, we believe lots of wrong things all the time.
00:17:01.560Some things are wrong and not so quite harmful because they're not really affecting a lot of people.
00:17:05.360Like maybe I believe in like astrology and the way that it impacts me is that I wear my, you know, like Sagittarius, whatever, Virgo, you know, necklace.
00:17:14.880And, you know, maybe I have beads of various rocks.
00:17:18.360What do they, I don't know what they mean or believe, but people tend to have things like that.
00:17:21.860And I, I think it gives me some kind of magical power.
00:17:25.880Uh, that's a wrong belief that doesn't really impact our world in a way that I would consider very serious.
00:17:32.520So from the perspective of prioritizing our, our, our, what we, what we choose to address as a society,
00:17:38.980maybe I think less about, uh, astrology girls on Twitter and more about, uh, what conservative Muslims are saying about what should be true in this world,
00:17:52.040what justice looks like, um, what eventually should be the fate of the world.
00:17:56.900Uh, and they see, they see it themselves as part of a, a political project, uh, to, to see this vision carried out.
00:18:06.060And I think those ideas matter and they affect us in the real world.
00:18:10.180And so we should be talking about it, you know, in the, you guys are from, you know, a place which has a higher percentage of Muslims.
00:18:18.200Americans sometimes struggle with it because we know about the fringes.
00:18:22.080We know about terrorism, um, but the Muslim community here is, um, far more liberal, far more, well, like, uh, well, integrated, well, integrated.
00:18:33.620Um, and I think some of that is just due to the, the way that America brings in immigrants and how it chooses to, to one, sort the people.
00:18:41.300So the filter is different, but also what, when you get here, you have to survive in different modes, um, in America.
00:18:48.720And so I think that produces a kind of a different population.
00:18:52.440They're not as extreme, but we still, we do have religious pockets in the UK.
00:18:58.340You guys see how, well, um, you have a high percentage of Muslims.
00:19:01.480A lot of them are not well integrated.
00:19:03.260Um, and you see that playing out in schools and communities.
00:19:08.380Um, and I think that that's, we have to be able to talk about this honestly.
00:19:13.060And we have to be able to talk about what's motivating the belief, not just the fact that it's bad that, you know, Muslims are, you know, treating unwelcome to, to gay people or whatever, you know, in a specific locale.
00:19:32.200Like, like what we said, they're not bad people.
00:19:34.200They think that what they're doing is right.
00:19:35.660So we have to be able to meet them at that intellectual level and tell them, you know, convince them, persuade them why it isn't right.
00:19:45.280We've talked about the intolerance of gay people and you've spoken a lot about Islam's relationship with women and how women are treated differently under Islam.
00:19:57.780For people like myself who may not be aware of it or understand it, can you just break it down for us?
00:20:10.480Many of the, you know, older religions are.
00:20:12.680They have this role they see is the right role of man and the right role of women.
00:20:17.420Um, and they are traditional roles of you.
00:20:20.300What, what would you expect would be the role of men and what you would expect to be the role of women.
00:20:25.180Um, and because it is a religious belief and it is not really something you can negotiate, uh, it is really hard to move past, uh, what the religion might prescribe.
00:20:36.000Um, and as a consequence, you see in the Muslim, throughout the Muslim world, you see women's rights are, you know, uh,
00:20:42.300far, some of the worst countries in the world for women are Muslim majority countries.
00:20:52.260Um, and it is also the case, uh, that Islam treats innovation within the faith differently than, than other religions.
00:21:00.300I think it is more intolerant, um, because of specific verses and scriptures and we won't get into all of that.
00:21:06.220But I think it is less, um, accepting of evolution in, in belief.
00:21:12.780Um, and I think you see the consequences of that because Muslims are socially rigid, um, when they are socially conservative, they are rigid in their beliefs.
00:21:20.360Um, and it's very hard to get them to, um, and I think that is a consequence also of the belief itself.
00:21:27.480Uh, there are elements of, uh, I guess the differences between Islam and Christianity that feel foreign to Christians.
00:21:36.220So I have to sort of explain and break it down a little bit, but one of those ways in which I think Islam is different, unique, unique in the main, main religions of the world is that it is very political.
00:21:46.960Um, it is innately political. You can't really separate this. Muhammad was a politician, a statesman, as well as a religious leader.
00:21:56.280You know, that's within the accepted, you know, scriptures and texts.
00:21:59.800Um, and that's why you see such a thing like Islamic states, you know, um, um, and you see a drive and a push towards more, uh, a more unified approach to religion and, and governance and politics.
00:22:15.020So this makes the conversation around democracy, around human rights, around just, like, secularism, the separation of mosque and state, in this case, to be very tricky, to be very difficult.
00:22:26.320Um, and it is harder to convince Muslim-majority populations to shift in that direction.
00:22:30.400So we, we see different challenges in, in Muslim-majority countries, um, when it comes to advancing democracy, advancing, uh, secularism, uh, in, in particular.
00:22:40.720Um, so I think that, you know, those things matter. The differences in the faith matter.
00:22:45.860And in some ways it is, of course, because the faith is different, in some ways it might be better suited for some challenges of the modern world.
00:22:54.640I think some Muslims would say that, um, and they might have a point in, you know, a place or two.
00:23:00.720And then in some ways it is definitely not meeting those challenges.
00:23:04.320I think that the difficulty with us in the West is how do we, how do we maintain tolerance, you know, religious tolerance, our ideals of religious tolerance.
00:23:16.020And also keep in mind that we should be allowed to criticize ideas.
00:23:22.180We should be allowed to, uh, uh, make people feel uncomfortable, you know.
00:23:27.400Um, and then this rubs the modern, you know, liberal left in a very wrong way.
00:23:33.380They, they feel as if, you know, this is a, this is a very self-esteem oriented, uh, ideology now.
00:23:40.520Um, and to, to say that, well, I'm going to criticize Islam.
00:23:45.780I'm going to target its ideology directly.
00:23:49.980I'm going to bring up verses and I'm going to challenge Muslims around me to, to, you know, explain or move in their, you know, in their religious beliefs or to abandon them as I did.
00:24:01.840Um, this strikes the, the modern liberal as bigotry, you know, because you're making them feel unwelcome.
00:24:10.520You're making them feel as lesser than, you're making them feel, uh, challenged in this environment.
00:24:37.640Um, but that's the, the work of, um, bringing in a group of people from a very different part of the world with very different ideals and integrating them into our society and making them equal in our society, equal citizens, um, with the same stake as everybody else.
00:24:54.400That's a, who said that was going to be a wonderful process that was going to make everyone feel great.
00:24:58.840Because, well, the thing that I've always found very interesting is you have feminists who obviously that's what, what they do.
00:25:07.040They talk and write about women's rights and how women are being discriminated against.
00:25:11.240And they talk about how women are being discriminated in the West and they pick these tiny little issues that don't make a difference either way.
00:25:19.480And they avoid the topic of Islam when you look at girls.
00:25:23.680So I taught, I've taught in schools as a, when I was a teacher, which were majority Muslim schools.
00:25:29.340And you've seen six-year-old girls wearing a hijab and you think, why do they need to do this?
00:25:44.780It's depressing because there, there are consequences to this lack of action.
00:25:52.420Where I think too many countries in Europe are, and when it comes to this kind of negotiation, that you should, ideally, it should be a negotiation between the incoming immigrants and, and the native populations, is not a negotiation at all.
00:26:11.420It's a situation in which one side has all the moral, you know, and even political weight behind it.
00:26:21.420And the other side feels as if they cannot challenge it, lest they be decried by others around them as right-wing.
00:26:30.040Um, and this fear of being right-wing is so much greater than, I think, what the sense of unease that everybody feels about, um, seeing a lot of conservative, you know, ideals in, in practice around them.
00:26:46.260Well, Sarah, this brings us on to what you said in the wake of the Salman Rushdie thing, because while I, I think you're right that a lot of people fear being smeared or called, you know, Islamophobic or racist or whatever for talking about some of these issues.
00:27:01.340I also think it's very clear now that there's good reason to be fearful, in Europe at least, if you speak up about some of these issues, or if you criticize the faith as you do, that you're likely to find yourself in danger.
00:27:17.120And the point that you made in your brilliant article was that we in the West have become confused about the source of that violence and where it comes from, uh, because we think, well, these people are so offended by something that's been said that they are outraged and that's why they're reacting this way.
00:27:36.540We, we, we tend to, to look at things, um, from this, you know, psychological perspective, um, we're hurting people's self-esteem, we're offending them, we're evoking emotions in them that are unpleasant and thus they are reacting, uh, to our provocation.
00:27:56.900Um, and, and, and, and I find that it is completely missing the point when it comes to what's going on, uh, with at least the more radical fringes of Islam, certainly.
00:28:09.080And I think, in fact, much of it, much of the problems that we're seeing, um, but in the radical fringes, they don't feel offended.
00:28:17.500And even if they do, that's not what's motivating them.
00:28:20.480That's not why they're moving forward.
00:28:22.220That's not why they're going to stab you tomorrow, um, because they're so offended and they just can't control themselves.
00:28:28.120And they're, you know, there's a, that's even a racist idea on some level that, uh, you are so incapable of controlling your emotions, uh, that you, you, you can't help but, you know, have it just burst out of you in, in a fit of violence and, and, and rage.
00:28:46.240Um, it, it, it's a condescension as well as just a point-blank misunderstanding of what's going on.
00:28:52.440So what is the truth? What is it that motivates them?
00:28:54.820What's motivating them is that they are, they understand their faith as, uh, calling on them to defend it when it is attacked.
00:29:02.120Uh, so when somebody is, uh, is taking part in an action that is prohibited by Islam, um, extremely prohibited by Islam in the case of drawing Muhammad, um, then they must, as dutiful Muslims, they must act, uh, and defend this faith, um, act in the way that God would want them to act.
00:29:22.840So it's less of a personal thing and more of this cosmic thing, um, of defending this idea.
00:29:29.560So it's essentially enforcing a blasphemy law on, on the West.
00:29:35.760On everyone. It is a de facto blasphemy law that the, that the entire world is in one, in one form or another, um, going through.
00:29:45.140And the, and unfortunately, I mean, this is, and this is one of the, uh, trickier elements of it that you have to be able to just articulate, even though it's so difficult to articulate, that the higher the percentage of Muslims in your locality, the more, um, the more that this deep, you know, uh, this, this blasphemy prohibition becomes actual de facto law, you know, um, become something that you have to fear, um, when you start talking about it.
00:30:15.120And so I think in, in America, I have less to fear than I do in many other parts of the world.
00:30:21.960I think I have less to fear here than I do in some parts of Europe, um, many parts of Europe, unfortunately.
00:30:28.060Um, and this is also a very, uh, it's a, I even feel bad saying it because you're not supposed to talk about, about these things, but realistically, of course, if there's more people around you to hear what you're saying, to then interpret their belief in this.
00:30:45.120In a very literal way, you're more likely to be in danger.
00:30:48.900And what about, you, you, you've meant, you've mentioned the distinction between the good Muslims and the extremists, let's say.
00:30:56.480And we've had many people on the show, you know, former Al-Qaeda operative Ayman Deen, for example, and, and others who, who've studied this issue a lot,
00:31:04.940who kind of explained to us that really the, the battle isn't between the West and Islam, it's between Islamists and everybody else.
00:31:14.320And that's why, you know, the, the stat that people often say is, well, the biggest victims of terrorism, Islamic terrorism are Muslims.
00:31:21.120So, isn't it the case that the problem is less about, you know, the, however many billion Muslims there are in the world, most of whom aren't doing anything like this.
00:31:30.060And it's really about those extremists who are taking a particular interpretation.
00:31:39.800I mean, I, I hardly ever talk, I mean, we've talked about it just now, um, and in my piece with Salman Rushdie, I talked about it, but in my work on the whole, I hardly ever talk about terrorism or extremism, those radical fringes of it.
00:31:53.340Um, I think that they are very helpful in, um, radicals in general, they're help, they're helpful in getting you to understand where a logic might lead, but that logic is still there.
00:32:04.940Even if it is not present in its very literal extreme form, um, it is always there and it's always still affecting you.
00:32:12.300Um, it's still affecting, you know, the society in which this logic is prevalent.
00:32:17.020Um, and yeah, so I, it's tough because you don't want to paint the average Muslim who really isn't doing anything, just wants to go about their day and, you know, their lives, uh, might not be putting their children in, you know, a burqa.
00:32:33.920So my parents were not extremists, they were quite liberal for Muslims.
00:32:38.440Um, I was not forced to do or wear, um, a burqa.
00:32:43.060I was not, you know, I wasn't forced into a marriage or anything.
00:32:46.040I did have to, uh, dress conservatively, what would be considered very conservatively here.
00:32:52.040I was expected to eventually have an arranged marriage, um, not to date, not to participate in certain social habits, like during, you know, uh, partying or drinking or anything.
00:33:01.640Obviously that was prohibited, uh, but, but my parents didn't, you know, hurt me or harm me or force me into, you know, more extremist elements of the practice.
00:33:11.280So is it fair to then call these, you know, good people who are just, they're immigrants, they're working hard every day, trying to give their children a good life.
00:33:19.280Is it fair to say, to demonize them in any way, to say that there's something deeply wrong with their cherished, most cherished beliefs?
00:33:27.380I get why this is hard to say, why this is hard to talk about.
00:33:30.460Um, but it's simply not true that you can cleave off extremists from what gives them, uh, strength, right?
00:33:42.560Because extremists actually, you know, they, in the case of religious extremists, they're not operating on, in a, in a total vacuum.
00:33:51.060Um, they're not, you know, kidnapped somewhere and brainwashed and now they're, they're coming at it.
00:33:57.320They have grown up their whole lives with a certain kind of beliefs.
00:34:01.040Um, and those beliefs are accepted largely within their community, just not in their extreme form, but the internal logic of it, uh, is accepted.
00:34:10.160So, yes, you give, you give your life to God, uh, you restrict yourself from these and these behaviors, what, the society around you are filled with disbelievers and people who are going to hell and they're burning in hell.
00:34:22.680Um, I mean, there's just these general ways of looking at the world that is, in fact, a view shared by every, everyone, you know, um, with the exception of maybe Muslims who are so extreme that other Muslims would not call them Muslims, like, extremely religious, uh, extremely liberal, I mean.
00:34:38.840Um, I, I don't think it, it doesn't make sense to, to separate it, um, in that way.
00:34:45.480But wouldn't this be the case with almost any belief?
00:34:47.440Like, for example, I believe, by virtue of de facto observation, that there is a difference between men and women.