TRIGGERnometry - The Man Who Predicted Israel Attacking Iran - Ed Hussain

00:00:01.000 It did not start on October 7th, as they say. It's true. 1.00

00:00:03.800 It started long before that because of the planning, plotting, stockpiling of arms,

00:00:08.000 being backed by Iran and being prepared for this day.

00:00:11.000 Explain to me why is it that in Britain, the British government have refused to ban our Nazi party.

00:00:19.000 The Muslim Brotherhood came out of German Nazism.

00:00:22.000 I mean, isn't it all extraordinary that we're here talking about Israel, whether it has a right to exist or not? 1.00

00:00:27.000 Everyone says, Pakistan doesn't have a right to exist, Korea's in the same year, on similar reasons. 1.00

00:00:31.000 So you think they're going to attack Iran?

00:00:34.000 Yes. Yes, it's a question of when, this side of the US election or after the US election,

00:00:39.000 and much depends on who comes into the White House.

00:00:44.000 Ed, welcome back to the show.

00:00:46.000 Thank you for having me.

00:00:47.000 Good to have you back. The thing that I wanted to start with is, we've been here for a few days in America,

00:00:53.000 and literally everyone says to us, is the UK as bad as we think it is?

00:00:59.000 And I think what they're talking about is, you know, the riots,

00:01:03.000 the fact that you've got sectarianism kind of prominent in elections at this point,

00:01:08.000 and all of this stuff that we touched on last time.

00:01:10.000 Do you think the UK is bad as many people now think based on social media and stuff like that?

00:01:15.000 In some ways yes, in some ways no.

00:01:17.000 And before proceeding, congratulations to both of you for reaching more than a million subscribers on YouTube.

00:01:23.000 So, well done. It's a real achievement and it's hard to do in the competition of this sphere.

00:01:29.000 But returning back to England, I think I just want to start by saying,

00:01:32.000 it's just here in America, most people seem to get their news from social media feeds,

00:01:38.000 and a very binary approach either at CNN or Fox and variations thereof.

00:01:44.000 So on the one hand, yes, things are bad in England.

00:01:47.000 And when you look at it from here, there's been an outcome of an election

00:01:53.000 that was based around foreign policy issues, in particular Gaza,

00:01:57.000 and the emergence of politicians who place a foreign issue first and foremost

00:02:04.000 above their own country's national interests, and above the interests of Europe,

00:02:09.000 and the West writ large. So that's a real negative outcome.

00:02:12.000 I think the fact that there's been a break in the political centre-right,

00:02:18.000 there's been more of a steer towards the far-right,

00:02:21.000 is also an area that's genuinely of a negative concern.

00:02:25.000 And then the riots. And I think the riots shocked people here,

00:02:30.000 as they happened at the peak of the summer.

00:02:32.000 But I think fourth, and most importantly, the fact that weekend after weekend after weekend,

00:02:38.000 we've seen people marching in London, upholding Hamas flags,

00:02:44.000 supportive of Hezbollah and other terrorist organisations.

00:02:48.000 And I think that's what's riled people, especially here in New York and beyond.

00:02:53.000 And that, I think, is a genuine concern.

00:02:55.000 You don't expect that kind of culture to emerge from a country that helped defeat Nazism, 0.88

00:03:02.000 you know, was at the forefront of defeating Soviet communism.

00:03:05.000 By here, by Soviet communism, I'm referring to Margaret Thatcher's friendship,

00:03:10.000 alliance and guidance of this country and President Reagan in confronting and combating that ideological threat.

00:03:16.000 So, for those reasons, things genuinely seem negative in Britain.

00:03:22.000 But we should never...

00:03:24.000 I mean, my PhD philosopher was Sir Roger Scruton, and he would always warn us,

00:03:28.000 especially those who had a more smallsy conservative cast of mind,

00:03:32.000 that don't talk yourself into a negative position and forecast the future of any country,

00:03:37.000 any community, any civilisation, to be inherently negative,

00:03:41.000 because there's a risk of A, a self-fulfilling prophecy,

00:03:44.000 and B, just being gloomy people.

00:03:46.000 So, I think we have to be, against the odds, optimistic that there will be a turn in England's fortunes,

00:03:52.000 whether that's under a new conservative leadership or whether it's responding to an American presidency,

00:04:00.000 regardless of who the candidate, that has a different feed.

00:04:03.000 So, yes, there's a lot to be negative about,

00:04:06.000 but we shouldn't beat ourselves up and then put ourselves in a position that this is the end of England,

00:04:11.000 because many people throughout history have forecast that, and they've been wrong,

00:04:14.000 and we shouldn't be part of that.

00:04:16.000 The issue I have with that analysis...

00:04:18.000 Well, I agree with you.

00:04:19.000 I mean, I'm personally someone who's very optimistic,

00:04:21.000 even though publicly people think I'm very doomerish about things,

00:04:24.000 but the issue I have with what you've just said is,

00:04:27.000 when you were talking about the negatives, you were very factual and data-driven,

00:04:30.000 and then when you were talking about the positives, you didn't give any data or facts,

00:04:34.000 you were just like, we've got to be optimistic.

00:04:36.000 And the reason that I think that's...

00:04:39.000 I would challenge you to be more elaborate on why you think there's the opportunity for a positive change

00:04:46.000 is that a lot of people would say the reason that the UK isn't having the issues that it has is a demographic issue.

00:04:54.000 When you have a very large Muslim population, most of whom are perfectly decent people, as you covered in your book, among the most,

00:05:01.000 but a minority of whom are not, the minority of whom are Islamists,

00:05:05.000 and as a society, we don't deal with that.

00:05:08.000 We stick our head in the sand and we don't deal with that, and there's no sign of that changing.

00:05:12.000 Then the things that we have seen over the last year, whether it's the protests, whether it's the riots, whether anything else,

00:05:20.000 will continue to happen.

00:05:21.000 What do you say to that?

00:05:22.000 I say to that that this is at the very heart of the future, not just of Britain, but the future of the West.

00:05:31.000 It really is the issue, and most of our friends in this country here in America aren't prepared to confront that fact,

00:05:37.000 but they will hint at that by saying,

00:05:39.000 the swing state of Michigan might be responsible for the outcome of the election.

00:05:45.000 By swing state of Michigan, they mean it's an area where there's a large number of Arabs and Muslims,

00:05:50.000 and therefore the assumption is that they are, quote unquote, pro-Palestine.

00:05:54.000 I just don't buy the binary, you've got to be pro-Palestine or pro-Israel.

00:05:57.000 I genuinely think you can be pro-both.

00:05:59.000 You can have a two-state solution or at least aspire towards that.

00:06:02.000 Now, that binary is also affecting the demographic challenge that you identified,

00:06:09.000 and I completely agree with you.

00:06:11.000 But a part of me feels, Constantine, that being here in New York, New York, right?

00:06:16.000 It's new because it's out of Yorkshire, and we've got this great, deep, historical, philosophical,

00:06:24.000 demographic, indeed, relationship with England.

00:06:27.000 I always feel bad about beating up on my own country while you're abroad, 0.97

00:06:32.000 but I have to answer your question, and I think the demographic issue,

00:06:38.000 we should not conclude that things will be as they are now.

00:06:46.000 Populations can change, and I think broadly we have several options in front of us.

00:06:52.000 The status quo with demographics, with Islam, with Muslims, and the tensions with the mainstream population. 0.64

00:06:58.000 So that is untenable.

00:07:01.000 The second is a more radical option, which is being thrown around in the underworld of the internet,

00:07:08.000 which is self-deportation or mass deportation, whether it's illegal immigrants or people who've been born and raised in Britain.

00:07:15.000 If they don't aspire towards loyalty towards Britain, British value, British history, farewell.

00:07:21.000 We don't really care where you go, whether it's Afghanistan or Iran, get out. 1.00

00:07:25.000 That sentiment is also growing.

00:07:27.000 The third is that the bad guys in Bradford, in Birmingham, in Leicester, in parts of East London,

00:07:36.000 in Glasgow and elsewhere, Rochdale, Dewsbury, the list is long.

00:07:46.000 The bad guys win, and the bad guys over time have Islamist majority areas. 1.00

00:07:55.000 That's what I fear is that the combination of the first option and the third option leads us to this place where they're separatists.

00:08:04.000 They claim parts of Britain become apartheid states, and they want their own little mini-caliphate.

00:08:12.000 That's the current trajectory based on the first scenario.

00:08:16.000 But I genuinely believe there can be a fourth option here.

00:08:20.000 That is, if there is political leadership to confront this issue, that Muslims in Britain or, say, Germany or France or here in America,

00:08:29.000 they are Americans, Brits, Germans, French first and foremost.

00:08:33.000 Their public loyalty is to their country, their land, the lifestyles that have, and the liberty that has raised them.

00:08:40.000 And their private dedication is to God, and their private dedication is to their faith communities, plural.

00:08:48.000 And that's where the debate should go to.

00:08:51.000 Now, President Macron in France has tried to get to that debate, I think, very briefly.

00:08:56.000 David Cameron tried.

00:08:57.000 Tony Blair, my old boss in his latter days of being a prime minister, tried.

00:09:01.000 My fear is I don't think Keir Starmer is the man to have that debate.

00:09:06.000 And I don't think Boris Johnson took this issue seriously enough.

00:09:09.000 So I don't put the blame entirely on Muslim communities.

00:09:13.000 I think we need genuine political leadership on this issue, that you confront it from first principles.

00:09:19.000 In other words, how can you have an Islam and a Muslim identity in the West, starting with Britain, moving here to America and elsewhere, 0.81

00:09:27.000 that is genuinely at home in and with the West, that their priorities are in the British situation, illegal immigration, the economy, national health service,

00:09:39.000 what's going on with their own children in their schools, and not about what happens several thousand miles away in a nationalist conflict between Palestinians and Israelis.

00:09:49.000 But we're not there yet.

00:09:51.000 Ed, this is a question that a lot of people are talking about, not openly, but behind closed doors.

00:09:59.000 And they're saying, can Islam be compatible with the West and Western values?

00:10:04.000 And as somebody who has Muslim friends, et cetera, I'm saying, of course it can be.

00:10:10.000 But then they will go, well, look, there's roughly 40,000 jihadists living in the UK.

00:10:16.000 We look at the Manchester bombings.

00:10:19.000 We're looking at the murder of Sir David Ames, the London Bridge terror attacks.

00:10:23.000 It's a matter of time before the secrets of the services do a wonderful job.

00:10:29.000 But unfortunately, it's the nature of it that one is going to slip through.

00:10:35.000 Where do you stand on that discussion?

00:10:37.000 I stand against those who think Islam and the West is incompatible.

00:10:43.000 And I here should be naming names.

00:10:46.000 Ayaan Hirsi Ali, I think, has been at the forefront of taking a very personal issue that she's had catastrophic, that was,

00:10:54.000 to now extrapolate from that, that somehow Islam and the West are incompatible.

00:11:00.000 And I think that's wrong for the following reasons.

00:11:03.000 Because yes, the demographic issue in Constantine is absolutely right. 0.75

00:11:06.000 But Francis, the issue with Islam and Muslims is Islam is what Muslims make it. 1.00

00:11:12.000 It's the interpretations we take out of the texts that shape our reality.

00:11:18.000 And to that, I say four things, if I may.

00:11:20.000 First is that, how do we define the West?

00:11:23.000 And the definition of the West, for me, the most convincing definition didn't come from Samuel Huntingdon.

00:11:28.000 It came from Roger Scruton.

00:11:30.000 And that's why I was drawn to Roger as, I think, as his last PhD student.

00:11:35.000 And I saw him just two weeks before he passed away.

00:11:38.000 And we would have these tutorials.

00:11:40.000 And I feel like I'm a political hybrid.

00:11:42.000 I was politically tutored by Tony Blair, but philosophically tutored by Roger Scruton.

00:11:47.000 And he defined the West in four broad terms.

00:11:51.000 One, that the West is reason-oriented, as opposed to emotion or literalist reading of Scripture.

00:11:59.000 It was a reasonable reading of Scripture.

00:12:01.000 Second, that the West was focused on individualism, and the individual was sacred, and the individual's relationship with God was sacred.

00:12:09.000 Not kind of ethnic collectivism or tribalism.

00:12:12.000 Third was, based on the first two, that he believed in secular laws, derived from a scriptural inheritance.

00:12:19.000 But our laws must be secular.

00:12:21.000 We can't have the Ayatollah or an Ayatollah type or a caliput dominating parts of the West or the West writ large.

00:12:28.000 And fourth was the emergence of nation-states, the Westphalian Treaty in 1648, and the creation of the modern international order.

00:12:36.000 Now, if you take all of those four tests, and that's a deeper definition of the West than anyone else has provided thus far.

00:12:46.000 And it takes an English philosopher of that kind of polymathic nature to provide that.

00:12:50.000 On all four tests, you find ample evidence and resources and sources from Muslim history, philosophy, and Scripture to identify, as Leo Strauss did, that individualism and individual culture, based on reason, the Qur'an is flooded with those references.

00:13:12.000 So Muslims, unlike others, have an individual relationship with God. 1.00

00:13:17.000 We don't go via the Pope.

00:13:20.000 Similarly, with secular laws and nation-states, Muslims want more nation-states, not less.

00:13:24.000 Muslims want a Balochistan, a Kurdistan, a Palestine, a Kashmir, and so on. 0.84

00:13:30.000 So it's not that Muslims are against nation-states.

00:13:33.000 And on the question of secular laws, yes, there is genuine tension.

00:13:36.000 And we should not be naive.

00:13:38.000 There are tensions around that.

00:13:39.000 But the vast majority of the world's Muslim nations are secular nations.

00:13:43.000 And there are degrees of secularism.

00:13:46.000 We're not French-style laicity where we're anti-religion.

00:13:49.000 But here in America, you see a kind of secularism that is religion-friendly.

00:13:54.000 And I think Britain falls somewhere in between those two examples.

00:13:58.000 And I think the Western world benefits from the presence of Muslims because it's a reminder of what the West ought to be at its best. 0.81

00:14:08.000 It should have a religious inheritance, and it should have a reason-based inheritance from the ancient Greeks.

00:14:13.000 So I just don't see there's a clash of civilizations or a clash of cultures, but there is a clash of interpretations.

00:14:21.000 And I'll end this, if I may, Francis, by saying that what we're seeing now pan out in parts of the Middle East should give us great hope.

00:14:28.000 Yes, there's the Arab-Israeli conflict.

00:14:29.000 Yes, there's the Arab-Israeli conflict.

00:14:30.000 I get that.

00:14:31.000 But the issues pertaining to the Abrahamic family house, the UAE and Abrahamic accords with Israel shows that there's leadership.

00:14:42.000 The leadership that we lack in the West, that there is this leadership to try to bring greater harmony, if you like, between Islam and Western civilization.

00:14:51.000 Ed, I broadly agree with most of what you say. The one issue that I have is when it comes to things to do with humor.

00:15:00.000 And, for example, I can't imagine many Muslims would be pretty happy if a comedian did a skit on Muhammad, on the Prophet Muhammad, for instance.

00:15:14.000 I think that would be taken incredibly badly. I think that comedian would be in fear for his life.

00:15:21.000 Yeah.

00:15:22.000 So, I guess, what do you say to that? And in particular, what I'm also concerned about is if we're looking five years in the future, I don't see it as being unrealistic that we will have blasphemy laws in the UK.

00:15:35.000 Well, I hope you're wrong. But that's a hope. I fear you're right, especially under a government that...

00:15:42.000 I don't think we're exaggerating when we say the Labour government is looking at at least 30 to 35 of its seats coming from areas where there's a significant Muslim majority population.

00:15:53.000 And it wants to pander to that population because it has the need to keep relations with America and Israel, but it also wants to hold those seats or increase its majority in the next election.

00:16:03.000 And one way to do that is to say, you know, we will prosecute anyone who offends Muslim sensitivities.

00:16:10.000 So, I agree with you, I'm afraid, although I don't want to, but I've got to concede, Francis, that you're onto something.

00:16:17.000 But I'm more interested in Islam than I am with Muslims on this issue. 1.00

00:16:23.000 And I say that because Muslims today, I mean, Roger used to say that a lot Muslims don't have a sense of humor. 1.00

00:16:31.000 So, you know, your mind and his mind echo that similar sentiment.

00:16:36.000 You're like Roger Scroogeman, the great philosopher of your day.

00:16:40.000 He used to say that often. So, yes.

00:16:43.000 But then that doesn't mean that Muslims did not have a culture of humor.

00:16:48.000 I mean, the Prophet Muhammad was known for jokes with his disciples and companions.

00:16:53.000 In Turkish culture, Nasruddin Hoca was famous for being a cartoonist and mocking famous people of his time, caliphs and others.

00:17:07.000 And when you're among Arabs and Turks, there's references to Nasruddin Hoca.

00:17:13.000 But the issue of lacking humor is a modern issue among Muslims who are going through PTSD of losing global power, 0.79

00:17:22.000 of having been an empire that subjugated, you know, hundreds of millions of people from China, Indonesia,

00:17:30.000 all the way coming close to Poitiers in France in 732.

00:17:35.000 It's a collective, you know, how did we lose power to the West?

00:17:38.000 And in that sphere of kind of reflecting and thinking there's been a loss of humor.

00:17:45.000 But that's not to say humor doesn't exist.

00:17:46.000 Now, on the question of the Prophet Muhammad, here, you know, I disagree with most Muslims in Britain on this.

00:17:53.000 And I think most Muslims in Britain are wrong. 0.99

00:17:55.000 And I think it's a genuine issue that will flare up again and again and again.

00:18:00.000 It started with Salman Rushdie's book where Muslims interpreted Salman Rushdie's book in 1981-82 as being a blasphemous text.

00:18:09.000 And it's sad to see that Salman Rushdie was attacked here in New York, you know, upstate New York in Buffalo,

00:18:15.000 stabbed in one eye because of a fatwa from the Iranian Mullahs and fatwas enacted upon by a Shia American Muslim here. 0.91

00:18:25.000 But I think on the question of Muslims being excessively sensitive around the Prophet, two things.

00:18:33.000 One, I understand that sensitivity.

00:18:35.000 You know, there's a verse in the Quran that says that the Prophet is closer to the believers than their own selves.

00:18:40.000 So I get that.

00:18:41.000 But it doesn't then follow that we become more defensive about the Prophet than the Prophet himself would have been.

00:18:48.000 He saw in his mosque in Medina, a Bedouin man come in and urinate, in other words, defiling the sacred. 1.00

00:18:55.000 He didn't kill the guy.

00:18:56.000 This was from a position of power, because I can hear Douglas Murray saying,

00:18:58.000 Ah, yes, but this was in the nice days of Islam. 1.00

00:19:01.000 And then when he had a position of power, he wasn't so kind.

00:19:03.000 No, he was.

00:19:04.000 It was when he had a mosque in Medina.

00:19:06.000 He cleaned up after the guy and said, This is sacred.

00:19:08.000 We don't defile it in this way.

00:19:10.000 He had three poets attack him.

00:19:12.000 He let them go back to Mecca without killing them. 0.98

00:19:17.000 And his own wives would mock him often.

00:19:20.000 You know, isn't it convenient that your God reveals verses to you that satisfy your needs?

00:19:25.000 You know, and I know Muslims will feel that, Oh my God, what's it saying?

00:19:28.000 It's in the Quran.

00:19:29.000 So I think Muslim sensitivities now towards this issue are just extreme.

00:19:33.000 I mean, relax, take a back seat.

00:19:36.000 Someone drawing a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad is A, nothing new. 1.00

00:19:40.000 B, should not insult us.

00:19:42.000 C, we should have the confidence to take on arguments with arguments.

00:19:45.000 And D, it's much more important to maintain the liberty and freedom

00:19:50.000 on which we are able to be Muslims ourselves.

00:19:53.000 Because you destroy free cultures today in the name of blasphemy.

00:19:57.000 Tomorrow it will be you who will be blasphemous on someone else's account.

00:20:01.000 So I think we're playing with fire on this and we should just relax and say,

00:20:04.000 you know, a cartoon is just that.

00:20:06.000 It's a cartoon.

00:20:07.000 Who cares?

00:20:08.000 Because the Prophet Muhammad and God, we say, is Allahu Akbar,

00:20:10.000 is greater than all of those things.

00:20:12.000 So act like it.

00:20:13.000 Grow up.

00:20:14.000 Well, Ed, you make very good arguments.

00:20:16.000 And I've always thought that the question that Francis asked is very, very low resolution

00:20:21.000 about, not the human one, but the one about, is Islam compatible with the West?

00:20:26.000 Because there's many different types of Islam and there's many different types of Muslims.

00:20:30.000 The issue I do have with your argument, I mean, it's a great argument in that you're

00:20:35.000 saying basically if every Muslim in the West was like me, everything would be great.

00:20:38.000 And I agree with that.

00:20:39.000 Did I say that?

00:20:40.000 No, you didn't.

00:20:41.000 But it's kind of implied in what you're saying, which is that if everyone adopted a Western

00:20:48.000 mindset and was willing to submit themselves to the nation state and that identity first

00:20:56.000 and was Muslim second to that effectively, as we all are, whether we're agnostics or Christian.

00:21:01.000 Why is that a Western mindset constantly?

00:21:03.000 No, no.

00:21:04.000 Hold on.

00:21:05.000 I'm not saying that's the Western mindset.

00:21:08.000 I'm saying that's the way to do it in the West.

00:21:10.000 And the point I was going to make is exactly the point you made earlier, which is there are

00:21:13.000 many countries in the Gulf right now who are also moving in that direction.

00:21:18.000 The issue I have with all of this is, frankly, to be blunt, many Muslims in the West are not like you. 0.50

00:21:26.000 And we have imported.

00:21:29.000 This is something that Ayman Deen, who we had on, explained to us.

00:21:33.000 And maybe you disagree.

00:21:34.000 I don't know.

00:21:35.000 But what he explained to us is that in the West, what we have imported is the civil war that is raging within Islam. 0.95

00:21:42.000 And when you say Muslims are perfectly happy to live within nation states, many are. 1.00

00:21:48.000 But we're not worried about those people.

00:21:50.000 We're worried about the people that don't want a nation state.

00:21:52.000 We're worried about the people that want a caliphate, that want to free the lands of the Muslims from the non-believers or make them pay Jazeera, etc.

00:22:02.000 And they are the ones that are driving the bus.

00:22:04.000 Is that not fair to say?

00:22:06.000 Yeah.

00:22:07.000 But as you said in the outset, they're a vocal, loud, organized minority controlling it, disorganized, quiet, moderate.

00:22:14.000 No, sorry.

00:22:15.000 Sorry.

00:22:16.000 The people with blue hair on university campuses are the woke, loud minority.

00:22:21.000 These people are using violence.

00:22:23.000 And that's why they are...

00:22:24.000 Who's using violence?

00:22:25.000 The people who want a caliphate and the people who have that worldview.

00:22:29.000 They are the ones who are the terrorists and they are the ones who are terrorizing moderate Muslims, right? 1.00

00:22:33.000 I mean, you said that was a low-res question.

00:22:36.000 I mean, I think that's also low-res framing.

00:22:38.000 Please, add some resolution.

00:22:39.000 I just don't think that, you know, there are 1.8 billion Muslims in the world.

00:22:44.000 Yeah.

00:22:45.000 There are in excess of about 6 million Muslims in Britain, 43,000 at MI5's last count.

00:22:52.000 It's a massive number.

00:22:54.000 But put that in contrast with the 6 million Muslims and, you know, put that in the context of 1.8 billion Muslims globally.

00:23:03.000 And more importantly, put all of that in context of the fact that every time there's been an Islamist extremist threat,

00:23:11.000 it's been Muslims and Muslim governments who've A, been the victims of that first, and B, been the first responders. 0.56

00:23:16.000 Yes.

00:23:17.000 But that's my point, right, about the West, is I look at the Gulf countries and I go,

00:23:21.000 you guys are dealing with Islamist extremism way better than we are. 0.68

00:23:25.000 Right.

00:23:26.000 So, same goes for Egypt. 0.89

00:23:28.000 You know, they banned the Muslim Brotherhood.

00:23:30.000 Explain to me why is it that in Britain, the British government, Cameron, and now this gentleman, Keir Starmer,

00:23:38.000 have refused to ban our Nazi party.

00:23:41.000 Right.

00:23:42.000 I mean, the Muslim Brotherhood came out of German Nazism and came out of Italian fascism.

00:23:46.000 Read Gil Kapel and his documentation of that.

00:23:49.000 Tell us more about that.

00:23:50.000 You say the Muslim Brotherhood came out of German Nazism.

00:23:54.000 Can you just explain that story to most people?

00:23:56.000 Yeah.

00:23:57.000 Tell us the story of the Muslim Brotherhood.

00:23:59.000 He was born because an Egyptian school teacher, Hassan al-Banna, had a problem with the following.

00:24:07.000 One, that the Caliphate had just been destroyed in 1924.

00:24:10.000 So, he finds or founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928.

00:24:15.000 He and his organization then mimic what's going on in Italy and Germany throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

00:24:22.000 He literally copies their creation of brown shirts, their creation of mass rallies, their infrastructure,

00:24:29.000 and their slogans of, you know, they want the Aryan race and a thousand-year Reich.

00:24:35.000 He talked about the Muslims of the world coming together to recreate a caliphate that would last a thousand years. 0.97

00:24:42.000 A similar echoing of German Nazism. 0.65

00:24:45.000 They were against Jewish people and, you know, for Aryan racial reasons.

00:24:49.000 He fought Jewish migrants in neighboring Palestine, which then became Israel, on similar grounds, on racial, religious, inferiority grounds. 0.72

00:24:59.000 And they took their, a Bible is the wrong word, but they took their manual of how to mobilize, organize on antisemitism, on mass political parties,

00:25:09.000 have paramilitary organizations, as well as target the state, straight out of the German Nazi playbook. 0.98

00:25:16.000 Now, to this day, they are antisemitic, they are homophobic, and they are sexist.

00:25:24.000 If I pointed out to any element in Nigel Farage's Reform Party that reflected those strains,

00:25:29.000 the Labour government would be shutting them down tomorrow.

00:25:32.000 And yet, in more than 30 constituencies that vote Labour, there is a significant Muslim Brotherhood ideological presence,

00:25:41.000 as represented by the Muslim Council of Britain and a whole host of others.

00:25:44.000 Now, there are two or three problems in saying and doing this.

00:25:47.000 One, the moment you say this, they threaten you with legal action.

00:25:50.000 So anyone writing about this, I'm probably protected because I'm here in a freer country, but they try to shut you down.

00:25:56.000 Two, your families become targets in schools, colleges, universities.

00:26:00.000 Three, you're not welcome in the mosques anymore, because suddenly Muslim Brotherhood types control major institutions in Britain. 1.00

00:26:07.000 So for those kind of reasons, it's become an embedded problem in Muslim communities that will not talk out against the Muslim Brotherhood. 0.85

00:26:17.000 And Muslim majority countries have banned the Brotherhood for the reasons that I've identified.

00:26:22.000 But here in the West, including in America, by the way, they will move very quickly on the Klan, 0.85

00:26:27.000 the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacist organizations.

00:26:30.000 But Muslim supremacist organizations as represented by Islamists, not Islam, the faith and the lifestyle of 1.8 billion peaceful people.

00:26:38.000 But these guys, the Nazis of Islam, do not get banned, do not get confronted. 0.88

00:26:44.000 And because of that, what you see in Britain is the control of these Nazi types of Muslim communal discourse. 0.97

00:26:52.000 The ordinary Muslim is busy kind of going for his job and paying his mortgage and looking for his or her next holiday. 1.00

00:26:59.000 When Israel was attacked on October 7th, not a single one of those organizations and their influenced entities condemned Hamas to this day.

00:27:11.000 And that shocks me that in Britain, to this day, there has not been a prominent public facing Muslim organization condemning Hamas and condemning terrorism.

00:27:22.000 But out of the UAE, you had one of the ministers, Zudeem al-Hashmin, coming to the United Nations here in New York and condemning Hamas as a terrorist organization.

00:27:31.000 So there is a real problem in Britain and in the wider West that just confronting Hamas isn't enough. 0.97

00:27:40.000 So in response to your question, yes, Muslims are being seduced by this ideology, but the seduction is being allowed by Western government. 0.86

00:27:51.000 Yes, that's what I'm talking about.

00:27:53.000 So we're both to blame, in other words, Western governments as well as Muslim organizations or the Islamists. 0.96

00:28:00.000 And I think it's the responsibility of care to confront this ideology now before it continues to embed itself ever deeper in Western societies.

00:28:09.000 And then it reaches the stage of civil war because over, you see, five years, let's take a 50 year view.

00:28:15.000 If you have large chunks of the North, large parts of Siddiq Khan's London, whoever replaces him, 0.98

00:28:21.000 become much more ideologically aligned with the Hamas worldview.

00:28:25.000 And the rest of us are not there, we're closer to a Gulf Arab allies.

00:28:30.000 What do you do?

00:28:32.000 And that's the fear that it leads to a place of collision.

00:28:35.000 And in order to avert that, I think we ought to take action in the next three to five years.

00:28:40.000 And what does that mean, Ed?

00:28:41.000 What kind of action can remedy the situation of this?

00:28:45.000 What I would argue is a fairly late stage.

00:28:47.000 It's late, yes, but it's still not irreversible.

00:28:50.000 And I mean, as I say this, I fear that unless we have political leadership on this issue,

00:28:55.000 and it is political leadership, we can't reverse this.

00:28:57.000 It's now reached the stage where it has to be gripped from the political center.

00:29:02.000 The actions involve the following. 0.92

00:29:04.000 First, you've got to ban the Muslim Brotherhood. 1.00

00:29:06.000 There's a hesitation in doing that.

00:29:08.000 There's a hesitation in speaking about it, or genuine questions of liberty and individual freedom.

00:29:14.000 But we cannot have entire mosques that have 15-20,000 capacity.

00:29:22.000 And we cannot have an Islamic banking system developing in parallel to the mainstream British legal system.

00:29:28.000 We cannot have schools.

00:29:30.000 We cannot have women not being able to divorce or get married by British laws,

00:29:34.000 but by separate Islamist laws.

00:29:35.000 All of this overlooked by entities involved in the tentacles of the Muslim Brotherhood.

00:29:40.000 So that's the first thing that's got to happen, and that hasn't happened.

00:29:43.000 And I think the second thing that ought to happen is that British imams in British mosques should be British, 0.96

00:29:48.000 and not connected to institutions in Daoband in India and elsewhere.

00:29:53.000 And how do you display your Britishness?

00:29:56.000 I don't think it's too far to ask that mosques in Britain should fly the Union Jack,

00:30:02.000 and mosques in Britain should pray for the royal family.

00:30:05.000 That's not being in any way irreligious.

00:30:10.000 I mean, it happens in every other country of the world.

00:30:13.000 And it happens with Jewish people. 0.55

00:30:15.000 They pray for the royal family.

00:30:17.000 The Church of England prays for the royal family.

00:30:19.000 British mosques are British.

00:30:20.000 Why not?

00:30:21.000 Lead the way, show how it's done.

00:30:22.000 I mean, those are two immediate prescriptions.

00:30:25.000 But I think the third would be, and I think that's the more difficult and important one,

00:30:29.000 is how do you define Britishness that is inclusive, welcoming, warm?

00:30:33.000 Again, to cite Roger, Roger Scruton used to define patriotism as inclusive,

00:30:38.000 that he would bring in people from other backgrounds, faith, racial backgrounds.

00:30:43.000 And patriotism is not exclusive as it is on the continent.

00:30:47.000 And he would say that a true patriot respects the patriotism of his or her enemy.

00:30:53.000 I mean, that's a noble definition of it.

00:30:55.000 But you've got to know who you are before you respect your enemy's patriotism.

00:30:58.000 It's Saladin and Richard, the Lionheart situation.

00:31:02.000 Saladin was convinced and confident in who he was.

00:31:05.000 He sent his physicians and arms to the other side.

00:31:09.000 So we have to have that level of nobility in Britain, and I fear we don't have that.

00:31:12.000 And in the absence of knowing who we are and defining it with its sense of strength,

00:31:16.000 or at least feeling it, you know, you can't confront the beast that looks at us at the moment,

00:31:23.000 which is Islamistic extremism.

00:31:25.000 But why is this ideology, this strain of Islam, so attractive to people who were born and brought up in the West,

00:31:35.000 and enjoyed the fruits of Western civilization?

00:31:38.000 Because in the West, we're not able to answer that.

00:31:41.000 When I say West, I should say in Europe in particular, and Northern Europe to be more precise,

00:31:47.000 we can't answer the human being's craving towards meaning, purpose, soul, life.

00:31:54.000 It's the God-shaped hole that curses large parts of Northern Europe.

00:32:01.000 One reason why there's less of an Islamist extremism problem, say, here in America, in contrast to Northern Europe, or in Southern Europe.

00:32:09.000 Don't forget millions of Muslims in Spain, Italy, Greece.

00:32:14.000 There may be other problems there, but they don't have an extremism problem, because you can openly celebrate divinity, spirituality.

00:32:22.000 And I think it's an excessive secularism in Britain and France and Germany that has led to an excessive expression of faith on the parts of those who are religious, and that's young Muslims. 0.81

00:32:36.000 And that has to be part of the equation.

00:32:39.000 Anyone who's got kind of second thoughts on this one, I'd strongly recommend read Leo Strauss, because he came out of Nazi Germany with this question,

00:32:50.000 how are we to remain loyal to our Abrahamic covenant, Muslims, Jews, Christians, to this ancient covenant with God,

00:32:57.000 in a modern world where Nazism and Communism go to the extremes of reason, devoid of religiosity?

00:33:03.000 And he spent a lifetime trying to answer this question.

00:33:06.000 Interestingly, Leo Strauss's works took him to Maimonides, because he found that the synthesis between reason, secular reason,

00:33:16.000 and philosophical revelation from Mount Sinai into Mecca and Jerusalem through Jesus,

00:33:25.000 this dichotomy, Leo Strauss was hell-bent on proving that Maimonides, or Musa bin Maimon, the great rabbi,

00:33:33.000 Rambam known to our Ashkenazi Jewish friends, helped synthesize, helped harmonize.

00:33:38.000 So he focuses on that.

00:33:40.000 And from there, Leo Strauss is important to young Muslims across the West in particular,

00:33:45.000 because from Maimonides, he identifies that it was the great Arab Muslim philosophers,

00:33:51.000 Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, and Ghazali, but especially the first two who are Arabs, the last is Persian,

00:33:57.000 that helped shape Maimonides' own thinking.

00:34:01.000 So that's why, going back to your question about Islam in the West being compatible,

00:34:05.000 we have a thousand years of compatibility if we take this approach that Greek philosophy

00:34:11.000 and Abrahamic revelations, Jews, Muslims, Christians, have to have this tension.

00:34:16.000 Part of the reason why today there's an extremism in Muslims in the West is that tension is no longer alive.

00:34:23.000 We've gone to an extreme of secularism, where we can't openly talk about faith because we cringe when we do.

00:34:29.000 Whereas here in America, I see Muslims who are much more integrated.

00:34:33.000 The most extreme voices here come from Europe.

00:34:36.000 A particular gentleman on the far left who wrote a book about Ed Miliband and other matters.

00:34:42.000 He is on the kind of far left here, beating the drums.

00:34:48.000 But American Muslims... 1.00

00:34:49.000 I don't know who you're talking about.

00:34:51.000 I don't want to name names.

00:34:52.000 I don't want to name names.

00:34:53.000 I worked it out tonight.

00:34:54.000 Let's not name names.

00:34:55.000 Let's not name names.

00:34:56.000 What is this British thing?

00:34:57.000 You want to slack someone off, but you don't want to say their name.

00:34:59.000 Everyone's going to know.

00:35:01.000 You're also clever enough to work it out.

00:35:03.000 I didn't name names.

00:35:04.000 But the point is, with American Muslims, because when I'm at Georgetown University with students,

00:35:11.000 I see American Muslim students serving in the White House, in the CIA, in the FBI, in the State Department,

00:35:19.000 parts of the Pentagon, they're fully loyal to being American.

00:35:22.000 And here's the interesting issue.

00:35:24.000 Muslims in the past, and Winston Churchill is in the record in saying that the Second World War would not have been won 0.93

00:35:30.000 had it not been for Indian Muslims and others fighting side by side with Britain.

00:35:35.000 Muslims in the past fought under the British flag against the Caliphate in the First World War.

00:35:41.000 Muslims fought side by side with Britain, Egyptian Muslims, Indian Muslims and others side by side in the Second World War.

00:35:48.000 So, I don't understand why we have a problem in trying to say, yeah, we're fully firmly West.

00:35:54.000 You know, in the Qur'an, there's an entire surah about the West, Surat Rum, about the Romans.

00:35:59.000 The Prophet Muhammad was against the Persian pagans.

00:36:02.000 We are natural allies of the West.

00:36:05.000 So, it's not that I'm kind of trying to be a Westerner.

00:36:07.000 I don't have a choice. I am a Westerner.

00:36:08.000 I was born and raised in this tradition.

00:36:10.000 It's who I am.

00:36:11.000 And the Prophet Muhammad was firmly pro-West. 0.93

00:36:14.000 You know, and there's no doubt in the fact that he abandoned the Persian pagans and sided with the Romans.

00:36:21.000 And the Qur'anic verses applaud him for doing so.

00:36:24.000 So, you know, his Meccan enemies were pro-Persia, pro-Pagan. 0.64

00:36:29.000 So, that's why Muslims should be, as we were allies with the West led by Saudi Arabia in defeating communism and the Soviet Union,

00:36:37.000 we should be now on the forefront of defeating the Chinese threat that we face civilisationally. 1.00

00:36:42.000 And Muslims should be allies with the West in doing so.

00:36:44.000 Not being silent on China as, you know, several countries have been.

00:36:48.000 Do you think it's partly education as well, Ed?

00:36:50.000 In that they get a certain viewpoint of these, you know, what these cultures are actually like,

00:36:57.000 which is an idealised, romanticised notion in much the same way when the Soviets wanted to radicalise young people in the 60s, 70s, even the 80s.

00:37:06.000 They wouldn't tell them about the Gulags or any of that.

00:37:09.000 You know, it's just a land where everyone's free.

00:37:11.000 Yes, there is education, but there's also a utopia that once upon a time Muslims were glorious. 1.00

00:37:17.000 Muslims were the top dogs around the world.

00:37:20.000 Muslims had a great empire.

00:37:22.000 You know, all this kind of decolonisation and, you know, Muslims were the original colonisers. 1.00

00:37:27.000 Muslims went from, you know, Mecca and Medina all the way north to the Black Sea,

00:37:34.000 all the way south as far as central China with the Uighurs, sorry, east, yes, forgive me, and Indonesia and so on. 0.98

00:37:43.000 And all the way west as far as France, knocking on the doors of Vienna on multiple occasions.

00:37:47.000 And all the way down south to Yemen and, you know, further southeast towards India and so on.

00:37:54.000 So please spare us all of this stuff about decolonising from the west.

00:37:57.000 Muslims have a strong colonial tradition because the rule is if you're not colonising, you were colonised.

00:38:04.000 That was the old rule.

00:38:05.000 So yes, education is part of it, but the other part is that, you know, Bernard Lewis used to talk about this,

00:38:10.000 and we haven't addressed this as Muslims around the world, that what does it mean to be citizens of secular nation states

00:38:17.000 that you are now on par in terms of being seen to be equal in the eyes of the law with someone who's an atheist,

00:38:24.000 someone who's gay, someone who's transsexual, someone who's of a different faith background. 0.66

00:38:29.000 Muslims still harbour this kind of strange imperial supremacy, you know, 1.00

00:38:34.000 because we've in India, in Spain, you know, we were a minority who was ruling over a non-Muslim majority,

00:38:41.000 and we haven't made that adjustment in the modern sense.

00:38:45.000 So yes, it is partly education, but part of it is psychology.

00:38:48.000 And I think that's why I'm a big fan of what's going on in the Gulf in relation to Israel,

00:38:54.000 because there's a shock treatment to Muslims.

00:38:56.000 You have a choice.

00:38:57.000 You can either be on the side of, you know, AI and technology and innovation and going to space and coexisting.

00:39:04.000 and prospering with the sovereign wealth funds and everything else that the Gulf countries offer,

00:39:09.000 and peace and harmony and better relations with the West.

00:39:12.000 Or you can go down the Hamas route and Hezbollah route, where you end up, where they ended up. 0.93

00:39:19.000 Can you tell us more about that? Because we've heard people make the point you've just made,

00:39:23.000 which is several Gulf nations are actually, the rulers at least, are on the side of Israel and what's happening.

00:39:30.000 Can you talk a little bit about the realignment that is happening in that area in relation to Israel and more broadly?

00:39:35.000 The realignment comes from where our question was just a moment, Constantine, about the Muslim Brotherhood.

00:39:41.000 They realized after 2011, and so many of us did.

00:39:46.000 I mean, I remember being with several friends in government in the region,

00:39:51.000 and initially the thing was, oh great, people want democracy, isn't this brilliant?

00:39:55.000 And that was our default position.

00:39:56.000 We very quickly realized that democracy should not be the first line of promotion.

00:40:00.000 The first line of promotion should be liberty, should be individual freedoms, should be the rule of law, backing up these things.

00:40:06.000 Once you have those in place, then when you have people going to vote, you have a kind of a democratic government.

00:40:12.000 Without those things, you get Iran, you get Gaza, you get Nazi Germany and so on. 0.77

00:40:18.000 So we've got to defang Arab societies from the presence of the Muslim Brotherhood. 1.00

00:40:23.000 And that's what those governments in the UAE, in Saudi Arabia in particular, and alongside with Bahrain,

00:40:29.000 those three countries made it their priority to ensure that the Muslim Brotherhood and its infrastructure

00:40:34.000 and its activism in banking, in hospitals, in schools, in universities, in the army, in the royal families,

00:40:41.000 all of those were completely cleansed out.

00:40:44.000 The Muslim Brotherhood as an organization was banned.

00:40:47.000 And then it became apparent that you can ban the Muslim Brotherhood, 1.00

00:40:51.000 but its great appeal to ordinary people was, ah yes, but Hamas is our branch in Palestine that is fighting the Zionists.

00:40:58.000 And you've got to be on our side, at least in Palestine. 0.60

00:41:02.000 So even when a cleansing of society happened where the Muslim Brotherhood's cancer was removed, 0.99

00:41:09.000 you're left with the Palestine test.

00:41:11.000 So several governments in the region made it their business, especially the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco,

00:41:17.000 and with tacit approval then and now by Saudi Arabia, by the fact that there are still, you know,

00:41:22.000 airplanes above Saudi airspace going from Tel Aviv to Dubai and Abu Dhabi and Bahrain,

00:41:29.000 to this day when Americans and other airlines are no longer flying in.

00:41:33.000 Their calculation became, we've got to confront this head on.

00:41:36.000 Israel does not threaten Saudi Arabia or 1.8 billion Muslims in the world.

00:41:41.000 It doesn't, it's a fact.

00:41:43.000 Iran does. 0.93

00:41:44.000 Iran threatens its Gulf Arab nations and the Iranian form of Islam, 1.00

00:41:48.000 which is a wilayat al-faqih type Islam, seeks to convert ordinary Muslim Muslims 0.71

00:41:53.000 to their kind of religious fascism.

00:41:56.000 So they made a strategic calculation that Jewish people are the children of Jacob, 0.99

00:42:02.000 of Yaqub, another word for Israel in the Quran and the Hebrew Bible.

00:42:08.000 And Muslims are the children of Ismail, the elder son of Abraham. 0.96

00:42:14.000 And the Abrahamic courts are designed to recognize the Jewish claim,

00:42:19.000 rightful claim to Jerusalem that is endorsed in the Quran, by the way.

00:42:23.000 And this is why when I see young Muslims protesting in London, 0.97

00:42:26.000 I mean, you know, in the Quranic verse,

00:42:28.000 O my people enter the promised land that was written for you or the Holy Land that was written for you.

00:42:36.000 So the Arab governments in the Gulf made that calculation based on geopolitical,

00:42:42.000 as well as their own interests, as well as religious reading that it's far better for a peaceful world

00:42:48.000 to have relationships with a country that is booming economically in the tech sector,

00:42:55.000 but also has a strong defense capability.

00:42:59.000 And let's take the battle to Iran and to the Islamists that where are you on this one? 0.96

00:43:04.000 Are you going to be anti-Jewish and anti-Israel and not recognize reality,

00:43:10.000 and therefore not join the modest, moderate majority?

00:43:14.000 Or are you going to be in the other camp, which is to work with your governments,

00:43:19.000 to be loyal to Mecca and Medina, your own religious headquarters, 0.82

00:43:25.000 rather than fight over a third headquarter, which is shared by Jews, Muslims and Christians?

00:43:30.000 So that was the calculation and the thinking.

00:43:32.000 And it stood, you know, the test of time that we've now gone through a war in Gaza over a year,

00:43:38.000 and the Abraham Accords and the embassies still stand,

00:43:41.000 despite what's been said, you know, out of France, more recently by President Macron,

00:43:46.000 but Islamist activists demanding that those embassies be shut.

00:43:50.000 And by the way, how dare they? How dare they make demands of sovereign nation states

00:43:55.000 that those nation states override their own interests, nullify their own treaties,

00:44:00.000 because half a dozen Muppets are shouting on the streets of London, you know?

00:44:05.000 So, why is the war in Gaza happening?

00:44:11.000 I was in Israel on October 7th. I was on the receiving end of the animosity that you're referring to.

00:44:19.000 So, I speak with this kind of in very personal terms.

00:44:23.000 It's happening because of a fundamental problem, and it's not about injustice.

00:44:28.000 It's about the inability of Israel's immediate neighbors, ordinary people, 0.93

00:44:34.000 what Americans here called gen-pop, you know, the general population in those countries,

00:44:41.000 not being able to recognize that the Jewish people have a legitimate right justified by scripture,

00:44:48.000 archaeology, and history to be in those lands, to be in and around Jerusalem,

00:44:54.000 Tel Aviv, Haifa, Hebron, you know, whatever you wish to call it.

00:44:57.000 There's a legitimate claim backed by the Qur'an, the Old Testament, the New Testament, archaeology,

00:45:03.000 and the Prophet Muhammad's own companion, Umar, inviting Jewish people back in the year 636.

00:45:10.000 Salahuddin Ayyubi in 11 to 87, Saladin, brings Jewish people back.

00:45:14.000 It was the Christians that forced them out. 1.00

00:45:16.000 And Ibn Khaldun, the great Muslim historian, recognizes this.

00:45:21.000 But today's activist Muslims, and those in and around the state of Israel,

00:45:27.000 don't recognize the Jewish claim to be in Israel.

00:45:30.000 And that's why Gaza happened. 0.98

00:45:32.000 Because once the mood music is, Israel has no right to exist, then it becomes, right, how do we remove it? 0.94

00:45:38.000 So that's why I think we should go back to first principles and recognize Israel, Yisrael, Yaqub has every right to exist.

00:45:45.000 Who are we to say Yaqub or Jacob has no right to exist, and Jacob's children have no right to a country?

00:45:51.000 I mean, it's just a bizarre banal claim, but that's where we are.

00:45:54.000 Once we've settled that question, that's why the Abrahamic cause is so important,

00:45:58.000 because it recognizes the Abrahamic claim, the children of Jacob, Yaqub, Israel is the same name, their claim to the land.

00:46:05.000 Once you recognize that from the perspective of God, Scripture, political reality, then you can say Hamas has no legitimacy.

00:46:13.000 But we are, I'm afraid, now in a position of just trying to destroy Hamas without destroying its argument. 0.92

00:46:19.000 So October 7th happened because large 2 million people in Gaza were forced in Hamas concentration camp to believe in the fact that their neighbor Israel has no right to exist.

00:46:31.000 Palestinian identity became not about prospering as Palestinians, but about destroying the state of Israel. 0.92

00:46:37.000 And where we need to get to is a position where Palestinians have justice and they have their state,

00:46:44.000 but Israelis have their security where they feel as though there isn't a region or a neighborhood immediate to them that wants to destroy them.

00:46:52.000 And once we have justice for Palestinians and security for Israelis,

00:46:56.000 we're in a position where we won't have another Gaza and we won't have another October 7th. 0.87

00:47:02.000 Until that battle of ideas is won, I'm afraid no amount of just destroying the leadership of the bad guys will result in long-term success.

00:47:11.000 But how close are we to those groups who, by the way, let's be honest, the people who run these places,

00:47:19.000 they have a very strong incentive to maintain this battle.

00:47:25.000 Because if I'm in charge of Gaza, the idea that we should just live peacefully, it might be beneficial to my people,

00:47:32.000 but it's probably not beneficial to me because I'm not going to be a billionaire in the way that I currently am.

00:47:37.000 Exactly, absolutely right. But it goes beyond that, Constantine.

00:47:41.000 Some of the neighboring countries, it is in the interest of some of the political leaders,

00:47:45.000 who shall remain nameless, who want to maintain a Gaza that is a genuine geopolitical problem.

00:47:52.000 So when they come to the White House, they have relevance to Western political leaders.

00:47:57.000 Here, Gaza is in my neighborhood and this is what I've done. 0.98

00:48:02.000 And I am both the arsonist and the firefighter.

00:48:06.000 Whereas what you're seeing, and there's one particular country in the Gulf that's part of this particular problem,

00:48:12.000 but what you're seeing, and that's why the Abrahamic Accords again.

00:48:14.000 Qatar.

00:48:15.000 I guess you're right again, okay good.

00:48:18.000 Yes, 10 out of 10.

00:48:20.000 Yeah.

00:48:21.000 So, whereas the UAE's point is we will help the people of Gaza, we will help remove Hamas, 0.88

00:48:27.000 and we will supply them with hospitals, medical needs, create a port, let's create a Dubai in Gaza.

00:48:33.000 And that's a different vision, the Saudis are broadly there, and the Israelis will need that help,

00:48:37.000 as will we in the West, we will need that help.

00:48:39.000 But that's the different vision.

00:48:40.000 But all of that falls from being able to recognize the fact that Israel is a reality.

00:48:45.000 And I mean, isn't it all extraordinary that we're here talking about Israel,

00:48:48.000 whether it has a right to exist or not, when no one says Pakistan doesn't have a right to exist,

00:48:52.000 Korea is in the same year on similar reasons, Lebanon, Georgia…

00:48:55.000 I'm sure if we did this podcast in India, we could have that.

00:48:58.000 Fair enough, I haven't heard that.

00:49:01.000 Ed, what about the… sorry, Francis, Karen, I just want to explore this fully.

00:49:07.000 You mentioned justice for the Palestinians.

00:49:11.000 Most of the people who use that terminology, I know that's probably not how you mean it,

00:49:15.000 have demands that are incompatible with the existence of Israel. 0.57

00:49:20.000 So in your conception of you say the Muslims in that area have to recognize Israel has a right to exist,

00:49:27.000 but the Palestinians need justice, what does that look like?

00:49:31.000 What does that look like for Israel?

00:49:33.000 You're saying they need security, which basically means they're not surrounded by people who want to kill them.

00:49:38.000 But what does justice for Palestinians look like?

00:49:41.000 It means… and again, it's not something that people will like hearing,

00:49:46.000 but I'm not in the business of making people like me.

00:49:49.000 I mean, that's not the point.

00:49:50.000 I think I believe in truth.

00:49:51.000 And the truth is that whether it's a two-state solution or whether it's a three-state solution,

00:49:56.000 by three-states I mean whether Gaza is its own state and the West Bank is its own state,

00:50:01.000 because there's a chunk called Israel in between.

00:50:05.000 And we've seen the experiment to create two countries on either side with a third country be difficult in multiple jurisdictions,

00:50:12.000 in the Balkans, in South Asia and elsewhere.

00:50:14.000 So we have to be realistic.

00:50:15.000 It might be that Gaza is its own state with closer ties to Egypt and what we call the West Bank has closer ties to Jordan.

00:50:24.000 Gaza has a more Egyptian stroke, hardline Muslim identity because of being under control by Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood since 2006.

00:50:35.000 And the West Bank has more of a secular Arab nationalist identity because it's been under control of Fatah.

00:50:42.000 So we have to recognize those realities.

00:50:44.000 So I don't think both of those countries will become one single country.

00:50:48.000 And if they did fine, it's up to the local people to decide.

00:50:52.000 If the situation is that one is wrong and people want to create a single Palestinian state, then it's up to them. 0.95

00:50:58.000 But what it involves is that either way, it is not a threat to Israel's existence.

00:51:04.000 And I should say something else at this point.

00:51:08.000 Neither of those areas, especially Gaza, should be a Jew-free state. 1.00

00:51:12.000 Just as there are 20% of the Israeli population who are Arabs of a Palestinian background,

00:51:18.000 we should not in the international community be open to the concept of a Gaza that is Jew-free, Juden-Rain. 0.99

00:51:26.000 Because that is pandering to the Hamas narrative that is saying that you can't have Jewish citizens of Palestine.

00:51:35.000 So when you ask me, what do I mean?

00:51:37.000 I mean having Jewish people who are citizens of Palestine and Arab and Palestinians who are citizens of Israel,

00:51:42.000 upholding the international order as we have it now.

00:51:45.000 And it also means, you know, with Gulf Arab financial and other backing, having an airport in Gaza,

00:51:52.000 if it's an airport that's needed in the West Bank or if it can be facilitated from Tel Aviv,

00:51:56.000 having an airport in Palestinian territory, having a police force, having the kind of infrastructure that they want.

00:52:04.000 But the real issue is, I mean, should the Palestinian populations have a fully-fledged national security infrastructure that involves having armed forces?

00:52:14.000 Well, if the armed forces are people who aren't dedicated to destroying Israel, by all means.

00:52:19.000 But I think we in the wider world, you know, who are allies of Israel both in the Gulf and here in the West,

00:52:28.000 have to be convinced that there isn't the desire and the dedication to destroy a neighbour.

00:52:33.000 Because if there is, then I'm afraid you won't have a fully-fledged Palestinian state. 0.85

00:52:38.000 And I think that's the precursor that focus on Palestine, focus on building a country that helps its own people prosper,

00:52:47.000 travel across the Gulf, across the Middle East, travel across the world,

00:52:50.000 but remove this hatred of Jews and of Israel and the dedication to destroying it.

00:52:56.000 Once those three elements are gone, then I think, you know, there'll be no end of commitment from the Europeans and others 0.99

00:53:02.000 to help create a genuinely viable Palestinian state.

00:53:05.000 But I still believe, sadly, this is all dreaming.

00:53:09.000 You know, the dislike of both Israel, the West, America is deeply, deeply ingrained in large parts of Israel's immediate neighbours.

00:53:21.000 And Ed, why do you think this particular conflict engages people in places like the UK?

00:53:27.000 So I'll give you an example.

00:53:29.000 Well, I've got a mate, he's Bangladeshi-origin Muslim, and we talk about the Middle East,

00:53:33.000 and he gets really passionate about it.

00:53:34.000 And I go to him, my mum's family, a large portion of them come from Lebanon.

00:53:40.000 My mother was in tears last week talking about what was happening to Beirut.

00:53:44.000 And I am not as partisan as you are around this.

00:53:47.000 I try and talk to different people and get what is actually happening before.

00:53:52.000 And in no way am I foaming at the mouth, which you are now.

00:53:55.000 So why is this happening?

00:53:57.000 Well, when you say Middle East, I assume he's not angry about Yemen, Francis.

00:54:01.000 Yeah.

00:54:02.000 I assume he's not angry about Syria, Francis.

00:54:05.000 Yes.

00:54:06.000 I assume he's not angry about Sudan and Egypt.

00:54:08.000 And more pertinently, he's not angry about Iran and the shenanigans that are going on there. 0.98

00:54:13.000 Right.

00:54:14.000 So we're talking here basically about his inability to fathom the fact that the Israelis, the Jews,

00:54:21.000 have an upper hand over a segment of the population in Gaza and in Hezbollah and Iran.

00:54:26.000 It's a problem of Jew hatred, you know, and we've got to call it out for what it is.

00:54:31.000 It's the inability to accept that Jewish people who were considered to be under Muslim land,

00:54:38.000 Muslim control for millennia, one millennium and a half, now have their own country and

00:54:43.000 their own state.

00:54:44.000 And having been bullied throughout history, are now able to fight back.

00:54:48.000 And there is that bug there, you know, and we've got to confront that bug.

00:54:52.000 So it's about this particular issue because I didn't see that outcry when millions of Muslims

00:55:00.000 and Syrian Arabs next to your mom's country in Syria were being insulted and abused.

00:55:07.000 But I didn't see the weekly protests pertaining to Yemen or pertaining to Sudan or pertaining to Egypt.

00:55:14.000 I just didn't.

00:55:15.000 So there is this issue, we've got to confront it.

00:55:19.000 And that's why I think, you know, I've been spending a lot of time in the last kind of year, year and a half,

00:55:24.000 reading the Qur'an.

00:55:25.000 And I find that, you know, as you grow older, you either grow in faith or otherwise.

00:55:30.000 And I find in my recitations of the Qur'an real comfort and consolation that the Qur'an refers to Jewish people as believers.

00:55:40.000 Yes, there were a portion of those believers who are seen to have changed scripture, turned against God.

00:55:47.000 But Musa, Noah or Nuh, I mean, the list is long.

00:55:51.000 And I think, you know, to your friend and others, returning to our source, i.e. our Maker, God, our Creator,

00:56:01.000 and reflecting on those scriptures helps remove that anger that you see in people who are either on the Islamist hard right

00:56:11.000 or on the far left of the political spectrum, more widely in the West.

00:56:17.000 Because you realize that the Prophet Muhammad, when he comes to Medina, you know, as the bearer of the Qur'an,

00:56:22.000 he includes Jewish people in his Ummah.

00:56:25.000 And no one can deny that.

00:56:27.000 Iran can't deny that. 1.00

00:56:28.000 The Hamas Hezbollah people can't deny that. 0.99

00:56:31.000 That his community or his Ummah included Jewish people, several Jewish tribes written in the constitution

00:56:38.000 or the wathika of Medina.

00:56:41.000 You know, one of the rabbis, Mukhayriq, and I got this from a friend, and this is really interesting,

00:56:46.000 a friend who is Saudi, who works in the Muslim World League in Mecca, where there are 62 Muslim countries

00:56:53.000 that are its voluntary members.

00:56:56.000 From Mecca, they're now talking about someone called Mukhayriq, who was a rabbi in Medina

00:57:02.000 who took out 200 members of his congregation to fight side by side with the Prophet

00:57:07.000 in the Battle of Uhud on the Sabbath.

00:57:10.000 I mean, that's our tradition. That's who we are.

00:57:13.000 We're supposed to be in alliance with our Jewish friends who are the children of the Prophets. 0.67

00:57:18.000 We are the children of Ishmael. They are the children of Ishaq. 0.99

00:57:21.000 I mean, it's not complicated. I mean, you've had Jordan Peterson on your show,

00:57:24.000 and Jordan always talks about archetypes, you know, Jungian archetypes. That's who we are.

00:57:28.000 So, you know, your friend and others need to get over the fact that they're now going to fight the Jews 1.00

00:57:34.000 and destroy Israel. Those days are gone. You know, Israel's here to stay. 1.00

00:57:38.000 You know, one of my friends in the Middle East talks about Israel as love handles.

00:57:43.000 Whether you like it or not, you can't get rid of it, it's there. You know, you talked about humor earlier.

00:57:47.000 But that's just a humorous approach, recognizing the fact that it's reality.

00:57:50.000 Just as Jordan is there to stay, so is Israel there to stay. 0.96

00:57:53.000 So, you know, your friend's problem, as I say, isn't with the Yemenis or others 0.50

00:57:57.000 but with Jewish people in the region. Because it's also as well... 0.68

00:58:00.000 I hope you tell them that. Yeah, he wasn't prepared to listen to me.

00:58:04.000 But it's also as well, when I see that side of the argument, look, like I said,

00:58:09.000 seeing my mother in tears over what's happening in Beirut is awful. Obviously it is.

00:58:13.000 Obviously it's heartbreaking. But I get quite annoyed when they go,

00:58:18.000 well, you know, Israel did this and Israel did that. And it's like...

00:58:21.000 You seem disinterested in what Hezbollah have done to Lebanon and ordinary Lebanese people.

00:58:28.000 Yeah. And the atrocities that they have committed.

00:58:30.000 And the misery that the Lebanese people live under. 1.00

00:58:33.000 Because these, let's call them what they are, these nut job psychopaths, 0.99

00:58:37.000 run the country in the way that they see fit. 0.96

00:58:41.000 And if you criticize them, you're not going to last very long.

00:58:44.000 As the Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafiq Al-Haridi, found out, you know, in 2004-05,

00:58:50.000 he was assassinated. So you're absolutely right.

00:58:53.000 But just to back you up further, another problem we have among young activists,

00:58:59.000 especially Islam, is there's a complete loss of cause and effect.

00:59:03.000 Israel has been living with Hezbollah armed to the teeth on its northern border now for almost 20 years.

00:59:11.000 And Israel held back because there was Western and other pressure on Israel not to commence a war.

00:59:16.000 To date, in this last year, Israel has been receiving almost 15,000 Hezbollah projectiles,

00:59:24.000 otherwise known as rockets, coming into sovereign space.

00:59:27.000 You know, you don't have the right to remain a sovereign state if in your territory you foster a terrorist organization.

00:59:35.000 And that's why Britain went into Northern Ireland.

00:59:37.000 And that's why America went into Pakistan and Afghanistan against Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and Abadabad.

00:59:43.000 And Israel, under international law, has every right to be in those countries to remove a terrorist threat.

00:59:48.000 I mean, it's not difficult to understand that Israel has a right to do that. 0.82

00:59:53.000 But I think our friends in Lebanon and in Palestine and elsewhere ought to accept the fact

00:59:58.000 that as long as there's a terrorist threat in those lands, Israel is forced to respond.

01:00:04.000 So yes, it did not start on October 7th, as they say. It's true. 0.66

01:00:08.000 It started long before that because of the planning, plotting, stockpiling of arms, being backed by Iran, 0.91

01:00:14.000 and being prepared for this day. And Israel is nothing other than a response to that. 0.87

01:00:19.000 Now, it's a valid debate to say it's an excessive response. I understand that many of my Saudi friends say the response is excessive.

01:00:26.000 In their words, you get to go crazy for two weeks. You don't get to go crazy for a year.

01:00:31.000 But I point out the cognitive dissonance that if Israel had listened to those arguments, we would not have Yahya Sinwar dead.

01:00:40.000 If Israel did not go into Rafah as it did, we would not have Hamas dismantled to the point it is. 0.96

01:00:45.000 You can't, on the one hand, call for a ceasefire and then say, ah, isn't it great that Hezbollah's leadership is no longer alive,

01:00:53.000 that Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas was eliminated inside Iran.

01:00:57.000 So there's a cognitive dissonance in that response. But at the same time, I understand that the response can be understood to be too harsh.

01:01:07.000 Every life lost is a tragedy. And it's also a cognitive dissonance to say, oh, we should have a ceasefire with people who want you wiped off the face of the earth.

01:01:17.000 Well, there was a ceasefire on October 6th.

01:01:19.000 Exactly.

01:01:20.000 The Israelis didn't break that ceasefire. Hamas intentionally broke that ceasefire. 0.76

01:01:24.000 Hamas wanted this war. So Hamas got the war.

01:01:27.000 But what Hamas did not expect is that Israel would react to the point of taking out Hamas leadership at home and abroad

01:01:36.000 and destroy Hamas infrastructure at the point that it did, nor that Bibi Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, would react by taking out Ismail Haniyeh in the presidential compound in Iran.

01:01:49.000 And Iran would be involved in the war directly. Those were unexpected responses.

01:01:54.000 And before we wrap up, just on Iran, it's obviously the force that's driving all of this. 1.00

01:02:02.000 When you talk about, you know, destroying Hamas, great. Destroying Hezbollah, great. 1.00

01:02:07.000 But if the force that's doing all of this is Iran, I mean, I don't think Israel is going to destroy Iran or its capability, right? 0.51

01:02:16.000 So how does this end?

01:02:18.000 Yeah. I mean, you often talk about Thomas Sowell and trade-offs.

01:02:22.000 So I think that's where we are. We go from this set of trade-offs to a different set of trade-offs.

01:02:28.000 Thus far, the trade-off was Israel remains more or less silent and focused on its internal issues

01:02:36.000 while Gaza and Hezbollah and Iran and others get stronger. That was the previous trade-off. 0.81

01:02:43.000 Now Israel has broken out of that mold. 0.63

01:02:46.000 The next set of trade-offs is a weaker Gaza and Hamas, a weaker Hezbollah-led Iran, and an Iranian military capacity that's weakened.

01:02:58.000 And the trade-off then becomes that Israel's under greater public opinion pressure, but at least the kinetic threat, the threat of having hard missiles pointing out at you has been minimized.

01:03:10.000 And Iranian nuclear and other capacities have been thoroughly infiltrated to the point that Israel is capable of pinpointing attacks in Damascus as well as in Tehran.

01:03:24.000 So in terms of trade-offs, our trade-offs are now less heightened on a kinetic front, but more heightened on the public opinion front.

01:03:32.000 But Israel's tried both, and it has to do what is right for its own long-term existential strength. 0.52

01:03:39.000 So you think they're going to attack Iran?

01:03:41.000 Yes. Yes, it's a question of when this side of the US election or after the US election, and much depends on who comes into the White House.

01:03:51.000 The Israelis will not accept several hundred bombs landing on them from Iran, and they don't respond because the international community states don't respond.

01:04:00.000 It sets the wrong precedent. And you can't fight, as per your question, Iranian tentacles while leaving the head of the octopus unharmed. 0.99

01:04:11.000 And I think, you know, the Iranian president was taken out in Azerbaijan. So it's a question of when the Israelis will respond.

01:04:19.000 I mean, if you're sat in Jerusalem, you want to minimize the threat surrounding you right now. 0.96

01:04:24.000 You've done that broadly in Gaza with the end of Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh.

01:04:28.000 You've now got the north of the Israeli borders with Hezbollah. 0.93

01:04:33.000 You don't want to attack Iran while you've got Hezbollah stronger on your north. 0.98

01:04:37.000 You want to minimize what faces you and then go after the source of the threat.

01:04:43.000 But Israel has pressure on it from its own Arab allies as well as us here in the West.

01:04:48.000 But I think time will tell as to when it decides to strike.

01:04:52.000 Ed, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

01:04:55.000 The final question we always ask is the same.

01:04:58.000 What's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should be?

01:05:01.000 Before Ed answers the final question at the end of the interview, make sure you click the link in the description.

01:05:07.000 Go to our sub stack to see this.

01:05:09.000 Do you think more critical voices who understand their religious and cultural impact are needed to combat the push of Islamic groups and politics?

01:05:17.000 Is Ed worried about the number of MPs elected for apparently just being Muslim, but also being elected for their stance on Gaza?

01:05:25.000 Now is the time to sign up to our sub stack because you could win an all expenses paid trip to our Christmas party this winter.

01:05:33.000 Meet some of your favorite trigonometry guests, chat to the two of us, get to know our team and a lot more.

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01:05:44.000 We touched on that already, didn't we? The philosophy and the faith point.

01:05:50.000 I think the other point that we should be talking about more and we're not is the issue of, at least, did you say wider society or just for this interview purpose?

01:06:02.000 Why the society?

01:06:03.000 What we should focus more on is the meaning of life. He said that philosophy for 2000 years had been talking about the wrong issue.

01:06:17.000 All kinds of details, Kantian focus on the reason and its limits, but what we should be talking about is why we're here.

01:06:27.000 And where we're heading, where we came from, you know, the whole purpose of being our own existence.

01:06:34.000 And I think that's something we shy away from. And I worry about this excessive focus on technology.

01:06:40.000 And again, Heidegger talked about technology. I only cite Heidegger because he was the last philosopher to kind of highlight that.

01:06:49.000 But I think Roger Scruton also alluded to that. And Edmund Burke and others thought about this.

01:06:53.000 And I don't think we think about it or talk about it often enough that why are we here?

01:06:57.000 What is the purpose of existence? And being able to think about that, talk about that, I think, helps alleviate many of the world's many problems that we're currently focused on.

01:07:10.000 Ed Hussein, thank you so much for coming on.

01:07:12.000 Thank you, gentlemen. Great to have you.

01:07:13.000 Head on over to Substack where we ask Ed your questions.

01:07:17.000 Why do hardcore Islamists prefer to stay in Britain rather than leave, even though they seem to despise living in the West?

01:07:25.000 Is it just for the money or is there something else?

TRIGGERnometry - October 27, 2024

The Man Who Predicted Israel Attacking Iran - Ed Hussain

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