Islam and the West - Ed Husain
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 3 minutes
Words per minute
184.73584
Harmful content
Misogyny
9
sentences flagged
Toxicity
23
sentences flagged
Hate speech
79
sentences flagged
Summary
In this episode of Trigonometry, Professor Ed Hussein joins us to discuss his new book, Among the Mosques, and how he became radicalised by his time working with Tony Blair and the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s and 90s.
Transcript
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You must know, as someone who used to work in politics,
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And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.
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Our brilliant guest today is the author of Among the Mosques, Professor Ed Hussein.
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We've had a bit of a chat before the interview started, and I can already feel this is going
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to be a really interesting and important conversation.
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Before we get into it, though, tell everybody a little bit about who you are, how are you
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that leads you to be sitting here talking to us?
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one from Arabia, another that was then British India.
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I love my country and therefore I come back often
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I then went and studied history and Middle Eastern studies
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During my early years, I got caught up in what's today described as extremism.
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I think an older generation came to political maturity through communism.
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My generation of young Muslims growing up in this country
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came to political maturity through what we call Islamism,
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You know, the politicization, I think, the bastardization of a faith, you know, making it all politicized and making it all confrontational.
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So I was involved with a range of organizations, you know, Hamas, which is now banned, which was then allowed.
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I was involved with those guys as well as Hizb al-Tahriya, the Muslim Brotherhood and others.
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I saw the light very quickly. I saw how shallow they were.
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I left them and I then went and studied Arabic and Sharia in the Middle East, in Syria and Saudi Arabia.
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My sister missed one of the bombs by about four minutes
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I came back to Britain and I wrote a book called Islamist.
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and then I moved to America, the Council on Foreign Relations
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but also some of the mistakes that the Islamist organisations were making,
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and then I came back to Britain because Tony Blair and I had a certain rapport in approaching
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counter-terrorism and approaching the way in which the Middle East ought to be governed
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and then I started reading more of Roger Scruton's works and I did a PhD under Sir Roger Scruton
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God rest his soul and I benefited immensely from his knowledge and the way in which he saw the
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world and then I returned to America and I'm there now but I come here too so that's the
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long and short of it and we're delighted to have you and what what an interesting intellectual
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journey that that that is you know being radicalized somewhat and then not and then
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Tony Blair and Roger Scruton very different people and to be influenced by both I suppose
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look before we get into the book let's just we've talked about this before and I think most of our
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audience understand the difference between Muslims and Islamist and all of that but
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since we're having this conversation with you fresh can you just explain to people because I
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think a lot of ordinary people who don't have the time or the inclination, frankly, to get into all
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of this deeply, sometimes there can be conflation or misunderstanding. So can you just separate this
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out for us so that we start from a good place? I think the best analogy, Constantine, is to look
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at China. The average Chinese person is not evil. They're culturally Chinese. They have
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cultural traits and they're good human beings, as most human beings are. But then you have the
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Chinese Communist Party that is evil, that has a worldview, that's confrontational, that wants to
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dominate the rest of the world. Similarly with most Muslims, they're like every other human being.
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Their faith is cultural, they turn to God, they have a certain worldview. But among the ordinary
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Muslims, you have this politicized beast called Islamism that is set up to derail the West,
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that believes in destroying the state of Israel,
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in order to create a great super-Islamist caliphate.
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And that's Islamism, distinct from Islam, the faith.
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in fact, all Muslims believe in the Jewish prophets,
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the Hebrew prophets and they believe in Jesus the Messiah which distinguishes us from our
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Jewish friends but they also don't think that Jesus was crucified and they think the prophet
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and that we believe the prophet Muhammad was also divinely inspired and the Quran is a
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is a poetic testament to that so that's the ordinary Muslim and I think anyone's who's
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met most Muslims or been to a Muslim country will know that Muslims are like anyone else and
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hospitable and kind and all those traits but islamism much like chinese communism is the
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threat that produces terrorism and that i think is a simple distinction ed the one thing that
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leaves me baffled is uh i i i kind of understand why if you grew up in certain countries in the
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middle east like my grandfather was originally from lebanon why you might be radicalized right
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particularly you know when you see the history of that area what i don't understand are young
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lads growing up in london or manchester growing up in the west and then buying into this philosophy
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yeah great question francis i don't blame the young lad i blame the rest of us for not having
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the confidence to say to the young lad come on board this is britain this is how we live here
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these are our rules you sign up to them and you are now a roman citizen that's how it used to be
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for the ancient romans you signed up to roman values spqr the senate and the people of rome
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and you became a roman citizen and the whole world was your oyster and you had the protection of rome
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and we don't have that confidence we're busy self-flagellating ourselves for historical
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mistakes or otherwise rather than saying britain's one of the greatest countries in the world that i
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mean i could go and live in china by the way for 50 years i've never become chinese but you can
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come here and sign up to british and broader western values of reason individualism gender
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equality and open society and this is unique here and it's racial equality and you're British
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welcome on board but if you then want to support terrorism or organizations that want to undo
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the thousand-year-old settlement we have here from you know 1066 to Magna Carta to where we
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are today then you don't belong here you know you belong somewhere else we don't have the confidence
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to say that so we've left people alone and I think the focus on just oh if you if you speak
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english you're fine well no that's not good enough uh you know that's just uh the bar is too low
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so the the battle of ideas is what's got to be won in other words if you come here
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these are the ideas you sign up for you then get citizenship in exchange for that and you love and
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you're a patriotic person belonging to this country or this part of the world the americans
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do that generally better than we do um but but for as long as we don't do that it's easy i think for
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teenagers and others to get sucked in by whether it's communists, Islamists or others. So if there
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has to be a rethinking and not blame shifting, but recalibrating, it's on the rest of us who
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don't share that extreme ideology to be proud of who we are as a people and as a nation and as an
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island and what we've done for the rest of the world. Which brings us neatly onto your book
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Among the Mosques, in which you went out and you went into mosques around the country and you spoke
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to people and you ask questions. What did you find? I found lots of good things that surprised
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me. And I think those things ought to be mentioned, you know, in a mosque in Edinburgh to see a gay
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couple sat in a mosque kitchen. You know, that really shocked me. To go into Birmingham and see
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a lady working in a clinic for gay people, that surprised me. To meet young kids in a madrasa in
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Dewsbury who are playing with Jewish kids. I mention that because we judge a society and its
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strength by how it treats its minorities and i think the ultimate test is how we treat our
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jewish cousins and forebears and how we treat people who have a different lifestyle to us in
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the private sphere i.e homosexuality by those two tests you know i was surprised and i was it was
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genuinely heartwarming i didn't expect that why not because i thought the perception of people
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who are religiously pious was conservative right as in they would not be open to the other but they
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were and that's positive and that's cause for hope that we can continue to maintain a pluralist
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free open Britain and open society um by open society I don't mean George Soros
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I mean I mean Karl Popper I mean you're hardly a Jewish shill here I mean I mean Karl Popper who
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went to New Zealand who loved England for his openness for standing up against the Nazis yeah
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I don't mean George Soros, sorry, I should clarify.
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The language has become very difficult on every issue, hasn't it?
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I know, you say something, people think you mean something else.
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So you were pleasantly surprised by some of these things.
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Are we going to talk about the Great Reset or not?
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but what surprised me was the following things.
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I often go to synagogues, I also go to churches,
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in the spirit of the Abrahamic faiths that we've all inherited,
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or in the US, for the country, for the president.
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But I don't hear those prayers in mosques in Britain.
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So in some mosques, there's an attempt to impose sharia law
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You have a different legal system for divorce, for inheritance,
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Ed, I'm going to stop you there. How does that work?
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So if somebody's getting divorced or if there's some kind of altercation
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or a perceived injustice has taken place, how does that work?
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with the sharia law well if i was if i was a woman a muslim woman let's say in you know loughborough
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keithley dewsbury bradford i wouldn't be able to just readily get a divorce i would need my husband
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to issue a divorce for me and in the absence of doing that i would need to go to an imam in the
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court who would then arbitrate on the behalf on behalf of both couples and then the imam would
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issue a divorce on behalf of the man or say to me that i'm not deserving of a divorce for example
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if my grounds were that I've been beaten up and I don't want to sustain a relationship in which
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there's physical violence, that the imam would rule that it's prescribed in scripture that the
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man has the right to beat a Muslim woman and therefore the divorce won't be granted. My point
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is why should British women be subject to any imam, foreign or otherwise, telling them their
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legal rights that are theirs by birth? In other words, it's their decision when they get divorced.
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it's a british court that decides whether they get divorced or not and those decisions are not
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made in a mosque or any other place so there are there's a parallel legal system in operation here
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and it's growing and it's a real threat because it plays on the identity of a muslim woman is
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she muslim or is she british she's british her being muslim is is her faith and her relationship
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with God, if we break that contract of having one law for one nation, we are opening up
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conflicts for the future in which, and this is how it started in India and Pakistan,
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this is how it started in parts of Lebanon, this is how it started in parts of Bosnia,
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that you can't maintain one rule for one nation, so then nations start to break away.
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I'm not saying this happens today or tomorrow, we've got to take a long-range view on these
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things and not make the mistake of so the sharia law was one um a third was gender segregation you
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know we talk about apartheid but the gender apartheid is a real factor in many of the mosques
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women were not allowed to enter in many of the mosques these are mosques you know in Dewsbury
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Bradford and many of the mosques in which women were put in these tiny little cupboards at the
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top to pray so the gender segregation factor is real um and I think the fourth factor and perhaps
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the most worrying factor is many of the imams, with all respect to them, are not trained to
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understand a post-enlightenment, post-industrial, modern Britain. You know, they're still rehashing
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scripture from the 1840s in India, the Dilbandi movement. It's the same movement that spurned
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the Taliban on one side, but to be fair, they also have a secular movement in India. So we've
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got the more extreme version. So those three indicators are real problems for, so right now
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we have 2 000 mosques we have about 4 million muslims now amplify that in the coming years
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let's assume the number of muslims increase in and of in and of itself is that's not a problem
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but if we have this kind of politicized separatist form of religious identity then i think it's a
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real problem because you will see the political map changing you will see constituencies and
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and politicians you know trying to garner votes with a certain type of messaging that leads to
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a more separatist, more Islamist, worrying Britain.
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you had a guy from Blackburn getting on a plane
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we're using expletives against them and their mothers.
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with convoys saying rape Jewish women, etc.
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that the political, the merger of politics with religion
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That it is a political and theological ideology.
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And absent a reformation like the Christian faith had,
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It belongs in our past because you can't live 30 million Muslims who live in the West.
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The West is built on secularism, it's built on secular laws, and it's built on nation states.
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You can't live as a citizen in those countries and believe that you're now going to undo secular laws, undo nation states, and bring in some kind of sharia arrangement.
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If that's what you want, then please live in Afghanistan because that's what they're trying to do over there.
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because they want to go back to a different world the world has moved on now can islam modernize
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can muslims modernize absolutely they can and the best evidence for that is what we're now seeing
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in several of the arab gulf countries and the best evidence for that is that we now have 52
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muslim nation states then they're not forming a caliphate they want to be secular nation states
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the best evidence for that is those countries want secular laws other than afghanistan not not a single
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51 of the other Muslim countries, you know, want to lash women or want to stone adulterers or want
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to bring any of those hard lines. What about Saudi Arabia? I don't think women are lashed
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anymore or stoned to death. But the point is, even in Saudi Arabia, they're trying to reform
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and modernize and change. No, I see exactly what you're saying. The only question I would put to
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you, I have a friend who actually trained as an imam before moving on with his life. And one of
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the things she always said to me is people like you who are saying we need to move on you are
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blaspheming according to the scripture you are trying to reform a religion that has very precise
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definitions of how you ought to behave and the idea of reforming is blasphemous now i don't agree
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i don't think the the the muslim record over the last 1400 years agrees i mean 1857 the ottoman
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empire the caliphate decriminalized homosexuality you know this is before oscar wilde by 140 years
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you know so it's just worth bearing in mind that there is a long tradition of reform and change
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and modernization within islam um i mean the prophet muhammad was supposed to be a reformer
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that's the whole point he had a problem with the doctrine of the trinity and he was trying to
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reform islam began as a reformation it began as change it began as a renaissance we can't now
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become the people who suddenly are becoming frozen in time. That's not who we are. It's
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not blasphemous to seek for change. Across the Muslim world has changed. My fear is that
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Muslims in this country are stuck in the 1970s imagination of what it means to be Muslim.
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The Middle East is changing. For example, the Abraham Accords. Who would have thought
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that you would have peace in the open, a warm, lively peace with Israel between multiple
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arab nations so my point is this that reform and change is normal you know you can either change
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edmund burke famously famously said that you know in order to conserve you've got to change
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conservation depends on change if you don't change you die so muslims have got to change and adapt
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we saw in the life of the prophet muhammad he changed from being in mecca to medina you know
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we saw his companions changing when they went from place to place you know we saw islam in indonesia
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come to England because there's a certain way of doing
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them as they're supposed to be done rather than
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One of my mates is a Muslim lad, and I was talking to him about this,
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and he said to me, part of the issue with what we're seeing in this country, Francis,
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is that a lot of poorer people came from India and Pakistan and Bangladesh to this country,
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and they have a far more conservative version of Islam
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than the upper and the middle classes in places like India.
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That's partly true, but it's not the whole story
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because we have people who came from India who were Sikhs and Hindus
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Sikhs came from the Punjab, Muslims also came from the Punjab.
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Hindus similarly came from parts of India from which Muslims also came.
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Then it begs the question, why is it that we have Hindus and Sikhs who are very patriotic
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and generally much more integrated than parts of Bradford and Keithley and East London and so on?
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It's the question that we discussed at the outset, Constantine.
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Islamism, the desire to have a political ideology.
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Make Islam your personal faith and love God as much as you want.
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But when you make that your political ideology, which you must impose on others, you must hate Israel, you must dislike and see women as second-class citizens, that non-Muslims are somehow filthy and that public politicization is the problem.
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If we had to identify one thing, it would be that.
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And then I would also ask the question, why is it that Muslims in America are so generally much more integrated?
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you know i i and i don't want to name names but someone who i know from here went to live in
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america a prominent british journalist uh is a british muslim journalist went to washington dc
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went into a mosque to pray and he was shocked to see that many of the members of that congregation
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were muslims who worked for the cia the state department the pentagon the u.s army and he he
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just could his whole thing was i thought we were against all of those institutions but american
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Muslims are American and they proudly serve in the US armed forces. And when we see more and more
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and more British Muslims serving in the British armed forces, there are a good 600 or so at the
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moment, but we need to see that reflected as per, you know, 4 million Muslims, then you know that
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you were making real progress. When Muslims start to pray for Her Majesty the Queen of the Royal
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Family, you know we're making real progress. When Muslims in Britain start to behave like the United
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Arab Emirates and other countries and make peace with Israel and love their fellow Jewish forebears,
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you know we've made progress. Until those things happen, we have a genuine concern for
00:23:17.780
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Ed, how much of this is a problem from rogue imams preaching this kind of hatred, this intolerance?
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You mentioned there was a lot of discipline there.
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He always complains about the lack of discipline.
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But there was only one incident that caused me real calls for alarm
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they had an imam come in to give Islamic studies.
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and I was teaching a year two class at the time.
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So year two, this is about six and seven years old, right?
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And he sat them down, these little kids, sweet little kids.
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And he was telling them stories from the Quran, all good.
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And then he told the story about Jesus and the story of Jesus.
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And he said to them, Jesus was killed because the Jews were jealous of him.
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And then he repeated it several times more than was necessary.
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And I remember watching it and going, what's going on here?
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And then when you see about these other rogue imams,
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you think, is this what's happening up and down the country?
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So it's strange that this imam would be putting out
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yes we have imams that could be better trained
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and yes we could have imams that are much more patriotic
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but the imams are responding to the congregation
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if I had to identify one source where things need to be addressed and you're near there which is
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the education space you know on our university campuses we're afraid to assert you know what
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would be right values versus wrong values we're afraid to say that certain values are yes superior
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to other values if you believe you know in female genital mutilation I'm sorry that belief is not
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just inferior but it's invalid in the eyes of someone who believes in gender equality there's
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a superior and a right value and there's an inferior incorrect value if we're not prepared
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to make that argument then on university campuses we have this moral relativism everything's right
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all values are the same they're not and what that then produces is a media class and a political
00:27:40.240
class that won't challenge the imams when the imams are saying that a woman who is beaten up
00:27:46.220
in her marriage seeking a divorce can't get divorced because somehow it's scripturally valid
00:27:51.020
so it's all connected but the the root of it even for the rogue imams is to do with what we're
0.95
00:27:56.860
teaching our elites if you like those who are going to be forming you know the new cohort of
00:28:02.380
political and media leaders and i think so much of that is to do with with with uh with the
00:28:07.560
university space that needs to you know needs to again you know remember that the university is is
00:28:13.920
an outcome of the academy that Plato started, Socrates' student, that it was about seeking
00:28:21.280
the truth. It was about philosophy and reflecting on the world and not indoctrination. So once that,
00:28:27.080
I think, is addressed, then we'll see the wider education system and the rogue imams and others
1.00
00:28:32.620
are minimized, because it's all connected. It's all interconnected. And for as long as we, the rest
00:28:38.040
of us, don't have confidence in who we are and asserting that, I don't think we can hold migrant
1.00
00:28:43.020
communities hostage and say oh how dare you how dare you believe x y and said well no one told
00:28:47.700
them to think otherwise and no one explained that in britain you know women are equal in the eyes
0.98
00:28:52.900
of the law they have legal status that's equal to that of a man they think they're second-class
00:28:58.880
citizens because no one sat down and said to them no it's different here so i i blame ourselves for
00:29:03.980
not getting all this right before i ask you about how we try to remedy some of this which i think is
00:29:09.080
very important, obviously. The one thing that strikes me is I watch, I used to, not anymore,
00:29:15.140
but I used to watch a lot of TV, news night, question time, all of that stuff. And I fear
00:29:21.680
that I, like many people listening to this and watching this, have never heard a Muslim
00:29:27.600
on television or on the radio or on YouTube, frankly, talk the way you're talking.
00:29:38.160
we think of someone who Newsnight would have on
00:29:43.200
Anjum Chowdhury or some rogue preacher or whatever, right?
00:29:46.600
I don't think many people have heard someone who is Muslim
00:29:53.020
well, look, if you don't like it in this country
00:29:56.140
well, there's some people trying to make one over there.
00:30:02.620
So I'm really grateful that you're here and we're having this discussion genuinely.
00:30:07.020
But it does seem to me like what you're describing is a very serious problem.
00:30:12.360
And when you look at, you talked in one of your previous interviews
00:30:18.000
The native population, or not the native, whatever you want to call it,
00:30:22.280
the white British population or the non-Muslim population, let's say,
0.89
00:30:26.460
is declining as a percentage because we're not having enough kids.
00:30:45.340
but let's say 0.1% of all British Muslims are Islamists.
00:30:54.280
but what I can tell you is currently 43,000 people
00:30:56.260
are being monitored by the intelligence agencies.
00:30:59.400
So let's say the Muslim population grows to, I think it's like 15 million by 2050, something like that, some of the estimates from the ONS, versus for now.
00:31:10.140
So then we might expect, absent a significant political change in that area, that it's not going to be 43,000, it's going to be 150,000, right?
00:31:22.900
So if this continues, the scale of the problem is going to get bigger.
00:31:28.000
Yes. And the political repercussions of that you've alluded to are going to get bigger.
00:31:33.480
And the violence will get worse. Yes. Right. So what the hell do we do about it?
00:31:39.080
Well, that's I mean, you know, you've you've made my case perfectly.
00:31:43.820
I think, you know, this is this is the real issue. But thank you for your kind words.
00:31:49.200
We're afraid to talk about it for fear of allegations of, you know, quote unquote, Islamophobia.
00:31:58.640
you know, it's the same thing. Yeah, Russians now got
1.00
00:32:20.540
confidence to be able to say what you just said
00:32:22.380
you know if britain is so despised by you please leave you're not forced to stay here you can always
00:32:29.900
go to afghanistan or you can go to the remnants of isis you know wherever they're still operating
00:32:34.520
in parts of syria or you know go wherever you want but may i interrupt you very briefly i'd
00:32:39.140
love you to expand on this but you must know as someone who used to work in politics how toxic
00:32:44.580
what you've just said is but someone's got to say it someone has got to say it in order to give our
00:32:49.780
politicians and our media class confidence over time i'm not seeking votes i'm not seeking
00:32:54.360
popularity i seek the truth i love this country i have two daughters and i want them to grow up in
00:33:00.780
a country in which they're not discriminated against i want them to grow up as proud muslim
00:33:04.680
women who have the rights as any other woman as british citizens i don't want them to marry a man
1.00
00:33:09.960
who says to them that oh i can beat you because it's say so in scripture nor do i want them not
00:33:14.380
to be able to get a divorce because they're dependent on some imam nor do i want them to
0.93
00:33:18.520
inherit any less than a than a son would so for me this is very personal and i want my children
00:33:24.060
and i want their generation and others to grow up as proud westerners and there must be no conflict
00:33:29.360
between being muslim and being western and if there is a conflict and being westerner comes first
00:33:33.660
because the west is equally islamic in my eyes and i can make that argument based on history and
00:33:38.040
scripture there is no contradiction there is no clash of civilizations we've got to have the
00:33:41.900
confidence to say that that this this part of the world i mean you don't get the saint thomas
00:33:45.800
Aquinas without Avaroes or Maimonides, you know, and then without that, you don't have the
00:33:50.300
reformation and where we ended up now with the Enlightenment. So we've got to stop saying that
00:33:56.340
we're somehow at clash. Once that's done, and we agree that Muslims belong here as Westerners
1.00
00:34:02.060
with equal rights, but sign up to the Western values, you know, stop trying to subvert them,
00:34:07.040
then what we're in a position to do is to tell, give our politicians that confidence,
00:34:12.580
and which is what they don't have we haven't won the argument yet and i think once we've won
00:34:16.880
the this argument that we're having now because ultimately we will and we must for the for the
00:34:22.760
safety security prosperity of this country in this part of the world we must every other option is a
00:34:28.220
non-option for us you know there isn't going to be a harmonious coexistence in parts of blackburn
00:34:32.800
there just isn't you've got to win this argument and people who want to live a separate life have
00:34:36.420
got to decide whether they want to be in this country or somewhere else otherwise it causes
00:34:40.500
genuine long-term clashes and conflicts that are not in the interest of any quote-unquote
00:34:46.880
community you know I hate that term by the way because we're in we're individuals we're citizens
00:34:53.100
and we're we're in this country you know subjects in the another country citizens so that's the
00:34:57.700
first point the second point is the education issue you know whether it's at school level or
00:35:02.380
whether it's at university level this has got to be addressed that what Britain is as a as its own
00:35:08.960
history, what it is in terms of, I mean, I call it rigor, reason, individualism, gender equality,
00:35:15.020
the openness of this country for free speech and free press. It's uniqueness and racial equality.
00:35:21.720
Every one of those facets are opposed by Islamists and communists, by the way. And that's why those
0.90
00:35:28.280
six letters or ideas that form the acronym rigor inform us. And come hell or high water,
00:35:37.160
but we mustn't compromise on a single one of those.
00:35:41.120
where you just compromise and find a third way.
00:35:43.420
We've come to this point through a lot of blood
00:35:54.900
it's been echoed by many of our previous guests
00:36:05.500
which is the conflict isn't between Islam and the West.
00:36:08.280
The conflict is between Islamists who hate the nation state
00:36:13.600
Which is why they're not only blowing up people in this country,
00:36:16.020
they're blowing people all over the Middle East.
0.99
00:36:19.700
Because they want those nation states not to exist either, right?
00:36:31.700
And I see it coming as much as you see it coming.
00:36:34.760
Once you start playing identity politics in this way, the end is obvious, inter-tribal conflict.
00:36:42.180
But you can say this because you're a Muslim and because you're brown.
1.00
00:36:46.080
I can say it because I'm an immigrant and because I have dark skin and I can go, well, as an immigrant, I actually, you know, if Russians in this country said we need to make this the greater Russia and live by Russian standards and adopt the Orthodox Christian religion, I'd be like, why don't you fuck off back to Russia?
1.00
00:37:14.780
That's what bothers me, because we should be able to, as individuals,
00:37:18.100
as patriots, as citizens, take a position that's of relevance
00:37:22.320
to our individuality, our citizenship, and our country.
00:37:24.740
Regardless, Martin Luther King's content of your character,
00:37:28.240
that was his dream, not to be judged by the colour of your skin.
00:37:33.120
We can't, we had two black Roman emperors.
1.00
00:37:37.100
You know, the Romans, they were a hodgepodge of, you know, that's who we are.
1.00
00:37:41.360
That's what makes us unique and different and open and special.
00:37:44.200
So how do we get there? This is what I'm asking.
00:37:45.580
But continue to defend the Enlightenment heritage that we have.
00:37:49.640
You know, those of us who want to conserve liberalism or the Enlightenment tradition,
00:37:54.120
We can't, I think we're doing it now that we're defending our inheritance.
00:37:59.600
I refuse to be seen just as someone who has a certain skin tone
00:38:09.740
Because otherwise we're undoing Martin Luther King.
00:38:13.640
And it's got to be done by us doing what we're doing,
00:38:53.820
who have thrown out the baby of multiculturalism.
0.52
00:38:59.200
They realize that you can't just say we're all the same.
00:39:08.240
The second positive sign is that there are many more Muslims
1.00
00:39:16.460
And the third argument is I think I always judge something
00:39:18.940
historically and now by the way in which we're treating Jewish people
00:39:37.680
and now we're seeing a greater acceptance of Israel
00:39:40.940
which bodes well for the future of the Middle East
00:39:51.080
We were on the cusp of an anti-Semite taking power and the Labour Party, one of our great political parties, taken hostage by the ugly alignment of the far left and Islamists, defeated roundly.
0.81
00:40:05.840
So I think those are signs that we must, and my teacher Roger Scruton used to say that we must always be optimistic, otherwise we run the risk of talking ourselves down and embracing a negative future, and we mustn't and we can't.
00:40:21.080
Ed, it's such a brilliant conversation. I'm really enjoying it.
00:40:25.540
We had Ed West on, the journalist, and he made the point,
00:40:29.720
and it's something that struck me, and I always think about it, actually,
00:40:32.980
that if you don't talk about taboo subjects honestly,
00:40:36.500
then what happens is you're never going to find the solution to the problem
00:40:39.300
because you're not discussing the problem in an honest and frank fashion
00:40:42.840
and you're not dealing with all the facets of the problem.
00:40:45.160
my worry is is that we continue along this route where we have taboos and what always happens in
00:40:52.620
this situation is you get nefarious figures from the far right who will come along and go look
00:40:57.340
they're not talking about it but i'm going to and that can start a movement and what happens at that
00:41:04.420
point is that you're in a really dangerous situation yes because what you're doing is just
00:41:11.260
collecting tinder by not talking about it and eventually something's going to happen there's
00:41:15.800
going to be a spark whether it be a terrorist incident or something else and we're going to
00:41:20.740
we're going to be in a very dangerous place absolutely right and that's not to exaggerate
00:41:26.020
it whatsoever you know it it takes just one or two incidents to create I mean I could you know
00:41:35.060
in my mind you know Serbia comes to mind no one thought that Serbian nationalism would trigger
00:41:39.500
the first world war but it did you know in france now you've got someone from the far right who's a
00:41:45.300
serious political contender again this is the fourth french general election in which there
00:41:49.520
is someone from the far right that's a popular contender and britain's been very blessed over
00:41:54.020
the last millennium that we don't have extremist political forces you know but we shouldn't take
00:41:58.160
that for granted the english-speaking world is genuinely at risk with this issue so we should
00:42:02.600
speak about taboo subjects i mean since when did we stop pursuing truth since when did we stop
00:42:08.740
having a battle of ideas and we got to where we got to by discussing taboo subjects the
00:42:13.600
enlightenment was exactly that you know having a reasoned conversation with religious clerics
00:42:18.360
and others in order to get beyond dogma now we can't having got here after 500 years of people
00:42:24.160
dying and witches being burnt and heretics being killed uh you know civil wars and world wars we
00:42:32.160
can now we can't now say we've got a new set of dogmas and please we're not going there no we
00:42:37.040
We're going everywhere. There's going to be free conversation based on respect,
00:42:40.480
by pursuit of truth, by the use of free reason, without which we're lost.
00:42:46.740
And our forefathers, you know, many Muslims and others died in both world wars, you know,
00:42:51.780
didn't fight two world wars for a free world in order for their grandchildren us
00:42:55.880
now to be captured again for a new set of dogmas where, as you say,
00:42:59.840
taboo subjects are off the table. They mustn't be.
1.00
00:43:02.040
But you work in a university, Ed. You must have seen with your own eyes
00:43:09.580
You know, students complaining that they need to feel safe, etc., etc.
00:43:15.900
I work at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.,
00:43:19.420
and I've got to say, in all honesty, I haven't faced any of those difficulties.
00:43:26.520
I teach a course on Western Civilization and Islam and Judaism
00:43:30.420
and how the three forces over time gave us the modern world.
00:43:33.980
and, you know, I defend the West, I explain the West.
00:43:37.600
My students are there, part of the security studies programme
00:43:41.540
Many of them have done active duty in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.
00:43:48.660
Yeah, but you're not dealing with pink-haired 18-year-olds though, are you?
00:43:57.820
They are all welcome because they too deserve to be in these classes
00:44:00.860
in order to have those conversations, you know.
00:44:02.540
And I also cut some slack to the younger generation.
00:44:05.280
I think you're allowed to be blue-headed or pink-headed,
00:44:14.200
and then you start to appreciate the inheritance that we have.
00:44:18.000
I mean, Stephen Pinker's completely right on, by every measure,
00:44:21.800
where we were just 200 years to where we are now.
00:44:23.940
We can only give gratitude to the past, to where we've arrived.
00:44:28.160
And how much of a problem do you think is the narrative?
00:44:31.720
and look the narrative has got a certain merit to it you know that America are the oppressors
00:44:38.680
what they've done in places like Iraq Syria has caused untold suffering they had no business
1.00
00:44:45.900
being there how much of a part has that played in radicalizing young men it's had some I mean
00:44:53.580
they that those are grievances that are used right but 9-11 happened before Syria and before Iraq
00:45:00.060
You know, in 1993, Omar Abdurrahman, the blind shag from Egypt,
1.00
00:45:06.900
This is 1993, after the West had got involved in Bosnia
00:45:13.960
So these are all ideological kind of issues that they use to mobilise people.
00:45:19.240
The real issue at the crux of it is that there is a movement out there,
00:45:23.640
just like the Chinese communist people hide among ordinary Chinese people,
00:45:26.880
Islamists hide among ordinary Muslims and it is that force that's active in 52 Muslim countries
00:45:33.660
that seeks to destabilize as you rightly said Constantine those countries first and foremost
00:45:38.040
you know over 45,000 Pakistanis have been killed by the Pakistani Taliban and to do away with
00:45:44.440
those nation states and that secular settlement and before it comes here so it's that ideology
00:45:50.000
which we've got to defeat and the good news is this we have defeated other ideologies and we
00:45:54.960
have won but the way we've done that yes you know the the radio free europe and so on those are all
00:46:00.340
tactics but we have got to assert and retain and defend and be proud of who we are if we're if we're
00:46:08.120
not going to defend who we are i mean hilal the elder used to say this the great jewish rabbi that
00:46:12.480
you know if a nation doesn't know who it is and defend itself it doesn't it doesn't deserve
00:46:17.740
survival that's a strong warning to who we are if we want to continue to be the world's top dog
00:46:23.560
we've got to know and defend and pass on this heritage to our children.
00:46:27.200
Again, you know, Edmund Burke was brilliant at this, you know,
00:46:30.100
that society is a contract between the past, the present and the yet unborn.
00:46:37.620
We have got to defend it, for if we don't, nobody else will.
00:46:40.760
But the problem is, so you've got this very small sliver of society.
00:46:45.780
Now, you can say to them, look, if you're not happy here, go.
00:46:51.440
I mean, really, because if you put them into prison, they not only become even more radicalised, they radicalise other people.
00:46:58.820
You know, what was interesting, Francis, is the strongest reaction that we've seen from that camp,
00:47:02.800
that small camp you've identified, was when Priti Patel threatened to remove their citizenship.
00:47:07.500
That's the thing that gets to them most, because they realise they're operating under the banner of British protection.
00:47:15.440
The moment you remove that protection, you start seeing them getting edgy.
00:47:18.460
It's the only time I've seen them in the last 15 years
00:47:20.660
mount a serious challenge to that way of thinking,
00:47:24.720
which tells us it hurts them, which tells us that it worries them.
00:47:28.980
So in the meantime, I think that's exactly the way to go.
00:47:38.660
We've had it on the books for more than 600 years.
00:47:43.060
If you commit acts of treason, there will be repercussions.
00:47:45.960
In a free and fair society, of course you can question our direction of travel
00:47:51.540
and of course you can question certain social practices.
00:47:55.020
I think we're all aghast that we have a culture of people getting drunk
00:48:01.960
But let's work on this together rather than saying the entire West is at fault
00:48:08.980
If people are of that persuasion, then we've got to make being in Britain
1.00
00:48:20.820
So, for instance, in the case of Shamima Begum,
0.84
00:48:27.480
because she made a conscious decision and she went...
00:48:30.120
Even though she made it as somebody 15, underage,
00:48:34.940
But I don't think we've seen genuine contrition from her.
00:49:02.000
Shamima is a reminder to millions of Muslims
0.91
00:49:20.240
I doubt I'm the first person to have asked you this
00:49:40.540
any other country other than Britain. Who hates this country? Who's maybe committed violence here
00:49:47.220
to strip them of their citizens? Isn't that un-British? No, it's very British. Very British
00:49:53.920
in the sense that your citizenship is something that's dependent on you having a contract with
00:50:00.140
the rest of society where you don't go around killing them, destroying them, undermining what
00:50:04.380
this country is all about. That's why we have something called the treason laws. Every year
00:50:10.440
we celebrate Guy Fawkes night because he was a catholic terrorist trying to blow up parliament
1.00
00:50:15.820
Guy Fawkes remembering that moment is among the most British things to think to do you know so I
00:50:20.900
don't think it's un-British to say if you want to blow up parliament and we've had four attacks in
00:50:25.020
the last 10 years on parliament from Islamist extremists if you want to remove the British
0.99
00:50:30.240
freedom of women to wear whatever they want whenever they want however they want wherever
00:50:34.020
they want if you want to kill our Jewish citizens who contributed to this country from 1070 with
0.98
00:50:40.340
william the conqueror all the way to disraelia and onwards you're not part of us and the way
00:50:46.240
you're not part of us is that you no longer enjoy the privileges of a british passport and british
00:50:51.040
citizenship now it's it's obviously got to be violent and it's got to be active i mean someone
00:50:55.880
who's questioning all of that it's they're fully within their rights as was jeremy corbyn to want
00:51:00.760
to make friends with the ira and want to make friends with hamas and hezbollah you're fully
00:51:04.140
within your rights you need to be a dissenter but when you take up arms and when you undermine
00:51:09.340
us, our people, our institutions, and then you join forces with our enemies to destroy
00:51:14.780
our soldiers, British soldiers, who are putting their lives at risk so that all of us can
00:51:19.580
sleep at home peacefully at night, that's not British.
1.00
00:51:23.360
And the way you punish that is by removing the very documents and the very privileges
00:51:31.380
Guy Fawkes is the best example that comes to my mind.
00:51:33.480
So I guess what you're saying, we should deal with acts of political terrorism differently
00:51:46.440
But if you are engaging in that for political purposes
00:51:50.400
as an act of intimidation, of terrorism, et cetera,
00:51:55.740
There have been several Islamist terrorist plots
00:51:59.040
against the monarchy, against the prime minister,
00:52:03.240
against the foreign secretary, against parliament.
00:52:05.700
three parliamentarians have been attacked i mean this is in the last 15 years what more do we need
00:52:13.500
before we say when you act against the country its institutions its history its symbols and you
00:52:20.240
attack our most treasured minority communities i.e jewish communities and you know we've had
1.00
00:52:26.740
suicide bombers from here going going and attack israel what at what point do we say enough and i
00:52:34.240
think that point is here and i think this point is now and i think priti patel is right to want
00:52:39.200
to remove citizenship from people who don't want that citizenship who hate that citizenship who
00:52:43.720
speak out against the hate of citizenship and commit acts of violence against our greatest
00:52:47.980
people our armed forces and we've got to be able to make that argument with complete confidence
00:52:53.420
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00:53:24.940
You know a lot of mainstream people watch our show and I hope they're listening because
00:53:30.220
i don't know i haven't thought as deeply as you have about this and instinctively i am quite
00:53:35.300
uncomfortable with the idea of stripping people of national even from my own perspective you know
00:53:39.660
i've made my home here my life here i kind of like to think that even if i make a mistake now
00:53:44.800
this is more than making a mistake to be fair i i can i can stay here and serve my punishment what
0.99
00:53:50.060
if you took up arms and decided to want to you know i should fuck off back to russia there's
0.99
00:53:53.920
no question about that so so that i i think most common sense oriented people would agree with this
0.99
00:53:59.140
line of reasoning right so what i'm saying otherwise we don't have a country left as those
00:54:03.120
numbers agree and institutions are attacked you know i agree so i hope that the mainstream people
00:54:07.260
who watch our show and politicians who watch our show take note of what you're saying and give you
00:54:12.120
a biggest platform i also think you're ahead of the curve i think you know as a year i think we're
00:54:18.060
at least 10 15 years ahead people will come to this argument in time look what's happening in
00:54:22.860
france in belgium in holland across the continent and you know we've always been outlining the
00:54:28.640
continent in more ways than one and we've got to win this issue on our terms rather than be
00:54:32.680
this is my big concern ed is that i hope that the people who hear this and listen to this and who
00:54:41.060
come in the future to addressing this issue because it needs addressing there's no question
00:54:45.020
about it address it from your position because for me the fear of having these conversations
00:54:51.460
has always been the same which is you are emboldening people that you don't want to embolden
00:54:56.840
sometimes you're giving a voice to people who who want conflict this is the problem right there's a
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lot of people you see it with COVID now and I know that you've tried to stay the hell away from it
00:55:08.740
and actually you've made the right decision but there are people now who are pro-restrictions
00:55:12.960
and anti-restrictions who really want COVID to carry on because it gives them meaning it gives
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them purpose it gives them validity it gives them a platform it gives them all of that an identity
00:55:23.600
an identity as well and that's my fear and that's why again i'm so grateful that you're here and
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we're having this conversation because there's ways to have this conversation that are very
00:55:32.380
destructive i think i agree and it's it's a difficult conversation to have because it is
00:55:37.980
about identity heritage faith emotions and that's why we've got to be reasonable about it and i you
00:55:44.340
know the thing i think most people won't understand is the people who stand to gain
00:55:49.920
most out of us getting this right is Muslims and especially Muslim women you know who are currently
00:55:56.560
you know who get married at a mosque and want to go for a divorce and suddenly realize they don't
00:56:02.100
have any rights because they didn't register their marriage you know over a hundred thousand
00:56:05.920
of those marriages are going on now so a Muslim woman coming in say from Pakistan or any other
00:56:10.860
country has rights because under our laws we recognize those marriages but if a Muslim woman
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00:56:16.460
born and raised in this country a british national gets married here at a mosque she doesn't have any
00:56:20.580
rights as a as a married woman because the law doesn't currently recognize uh you know sharia
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00:56:26.520
marriages because we don't recognize sharia law so if we get this right it's muslims who win
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00:56:32.080
it's the very country that our forefathers came to is protected it's a win-win situation
00:56:36.420
we get this wrong it's muslims who suffer most the so-called islamophobia is harmful most to
00:56:41.480
muslims but overall we all benefit because this this you know we all love this country and we
00:56:46.080
We cherish the air and the soil in which we walk
00:56:52.960
Ed, do you not worry that with the stripping of the citizenship
0.94
00:56:58.080
that it potentially creates a two-tier society?
00:57:00.360
Because there's some people who will engage in acts of terrorism,
00:57:04.680
but because they're English for five generations
00:57:09.440
or whatever it may be, they won't face the same punishment.
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I don't think it only becomes a two-tier society
00:57:25.940
worst case scenario, I think we're looking at a couple of hundred,
00:57:38.160
We should address this now before it gets out of control.
00:57:48.040
but I put it to you that every other alternative is far worse.
00:57:55.460
is people don't deal with problems until they become far worse.
00:58:03.920
It looks, I mean, it looks in parts of the North in particular,
00:58:09.640
I'd encourage people in the South to go up to Blackburn,
00:58:12.640
go up to Dewsbury, and come and tell me that's England.
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Didsbury's fine other than a mosque that produced the guys who,
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one guy in particular who used to pray at Didsbury mosque
00:58:37.320
in the Ariana Grande concert, attacked by a guy who prayed at a particular mosque.
00:58:40.820
I go to that mosque and I still see some of the extremist literature
00:58:43.120
that was used then, used now, and it has a Sharia court too.
00:58:48.420
So that's what the future looks like if we don't get it right.
00:58:52.440
But I think in parts of Dewsbury what people will see is areas
00:58:56.820
that look more like Afghanistan, and they should be rightly worried about that.
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you know uh why should i why should i go to a mosque in blackburn or keithley and see
00:59:09.240
um the palestinian slogans and support for hamas how does that work you know you've got peter
00:59:16.100
by with much bigger issues why why are you focused on a conflict about which you have
00:59:20.320
zero involvement why should i go into a uh a bookshop in um walsall and read literature
00:59:31.060
that's being sold that denigrates gay people and women and Jewish people.
00:59:39.580
I haven't plugged the book in the way that Americans plug books all the time,
00:59:42.060
saying, read my book, read my book, read my book.
00:59:43.440
But I mean, I've documented it all, and it's in the book.
00:59:46.440
And I think, you know, those who care about the future of this country
00:59:50.720
should read it and defend it with every fiber of their being.
00:59:55.000
Muslims and others are welcome to this country.
00:59:59.640
but as the ancient romans did you know become roman don't try and undermine and subvert a
01:00:05.900
beautiful country and a civilization that's welcoming you giving you shelter comfort
01:00:09.980
and and your children prosperity that's a beautiful note to finish on and i really
01:00:15.400
admire your spirit of optimism as well and i agree with you temperamentally if not intellectually
01:00:20.980
anyway i share your optimism but we'll see whether either of us is right and it's been a pleasure
01:00:26.920
the book is called Among the Mosques and I do genuinely of course recommend that people get it
01:00:30.760
and read it because I think they'll get a deeper insight into many of the things you're talking
01:00:34.020
about but as ever we've got one more question for you which is always what's the one thing we're not
01:00:38.440
talking about but we really should be Christianity Christianity it's it's the heritage that has made
01:00:46.060
this part of the world different from other countries and other parts of the world because
01:00:49.780
it's with Christianity you get individualism because it breaks from you know inherited
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01:00:54.940
religiosity and there's I mean one of the things that Roger said when I last met him Roger Scruton
01:01:01.440
I remember seeing sitting beside him in his country farm and he said that you know the teaching that
01:01:09.020
Jesus gave in terms of render unto unto God what is God and unto Caesar what is Caesar's made this
01:01:15.540
part of the world different the bedrock of secularism now love each other as I've loved you
01:01:19.980
you know the bedrock of forgiveness and inclusivity and um you know the
01:01:25.500
those two teachings in particular but i mean i could go on but i don't want to kind of upset
01:01:31.560
people uh with with the whole kind of crucifixion and people get upset because there's and the
01:01:38.200
trinity but but the point is we don't have to talk about jesus constantly in those terms he was
01:01:43.040
and remains probably the greatest teacher that humanity has ever had and i think here in the
01:01:48.660
west our distance from christianity is creating some of the dissonance that we're seeing now
01:01:55.060
because we've forgotten notions of forgiveness so part of the identity politics and cancel
01:01:59.400
culture is that you know when someone's committed a blunder well what's their way back
01:02:02.760
we don't have redemption left anymore um hence i think that the talk and remembrance of the
01:02:09.080
heritage that this country and other countries indeed have from christianity is important because
01:02:14.380
without that spiritual energy giving force we will continue to stray away from the the great
01:02:22.860
heritage that has been passed on to us by christians and others of the past ed thank you so
01:02:29.420
much if people want to find you online where's the best place to do that twitter i think it's
01:02:33.040
probably where i'm most active from time to time okay thank you guys for having ed and uh at what
01:02:52.380
We're going to ask you a couple of exclusive questions
01:03:00.180
We will be back very soon with another brilliant episode
01:03:07.020
And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go, it's also available as a podcast.
01:03:15.760
How much do Muslim community leaders, in inverted commas,
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actually reflect the opinions and values of British Muslims?
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The story of a kid from Brooklyn destined for something more, featuring all the songs you love, including America, Forever in Blue Jeans, and Sweet Caroline.
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Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the next musical mega hit is here, the Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise.
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April 28th through June 7th, 2026, the Princess of Wales Theatre.