TRIGGERnometry - Where Islamist Terrorism Really Comes From - Ed Husain

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00:01:54.940 The best way to approach the Muslim Brotherhood is to see it as an ideology. 1.00

00:02:00.560 If Mecca, the UAE, Egypt and other Muslim countries can reject them and de-radicalize their population, 0.97

00:02:09.080 what stops us from saying we too will reject what came out of Nazism and Marxism here in the West? 0.82

00:02:16.620 You're saying something what I think is quite extraordinary,

00:02:20.420 which is that the government of Britain and the intelligence services of Britain

00:02:25.260 are fostering and allowing this extremism to flourish in Britain

00:02:30.560 because it gives them leverage in their dealings with the Arab country?

00:02:35.000 Yes. Yes.

00:02:36.740 Well, that's extraordinarily irresponsible and dangerous, isn't it?

00:02:39.500 That's a statement of fact.

00:02:41.200 Isn't that suicidal, Ed?

00:02:43.000 That's how the strategy started in the 1980s.

00:02:45.520 It's suicidal because they thought they could contain it.

00:02:48.240 If it admits what you've just asked them, Francis, to admit, it means, A, they're responsible, and B, they must do something about it.

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00:03:09.420 Ed Hussain, welcome back to Trigonometry.

00:03:12.120 Constantine, Francis, thank you for having me.

00:03:14.220 Oh, it's great to have you on.

00:03:15.500 we want to talk to you really about two things, both of which we've covered in previous interviews,

00:03:20.400 but not in the level of detail that we want to go into. One of them is effectively the seed of all

00:03:26.360 extremist Islamist organizations in the world, which is the Muslim Brotherhood. And I was just 0.97

00:03:31.280 confessing to you that it was only when you talked about it on our show last time that we

00:03:36.480 came to the realization that actually this is where all of this stuff springs from. And if we

00:03:43.600 don't know that i would imagine lots of other people don't know that and so we want to talk

00:03:47.600 about that and the second thing we want to talk about it as you probably aware there is a kind of

00:03:52.180 raging debate in countries that have large muslim populations now particularly in europe

00:03:57.440 about is there such a thing as islamism or is all islam potentially something that becomes

00:04:04.600 yeah extreme yeah uh and you are the literally the best placed person in the world to talk to

00:04:10.640 right about that um so let's start with the muslim brotherhood and just tell everybody what it is

00:04:18.800 where it comes from and why it's so important to understand for the modern context great question

00:04:25.200 and thank you to both of you for having such an interesting or an interested approach towards

00:04:30.240 this global issue because it's relevant in almost every country and it's going to become even more

00:04:35.760 relevant in the years ahead. But as you rightly identified, Constantine, we've got to go back and

00:04:40.480 we have to go back to 1928, when the movement started. And it is a movement and not an

00:04:46.080 organization. And I think too often, too many of our political leaders make the mistake of thinking,

00:04:52.800 where is the organization? Where is its postcode? And how do we ban it? It's a wider movement. It

00:04:59.600 plays a certain mood music. And it started in 1928 in Egypt for the following reasons.

00:05:04.080 the founder was a primary school teacher nothing against you francis but he was a primary school

00:05:11.960 teacher in egypt and he had several issues with the wider world the first issue was he

00:05:20.420 opposed the abolishing of the caliphate in turkey in 1924 which has just happened four years

00:05:25.540 previously he wanted a kind of muslim presence and muslim dominance a muslim-led empire that

00:05:31.260 confronted the West and confronted what was then Russia stroke Soviet Union so he had that kind of

00:05:38.220 confrontational bug within him practicing Muslim observant Muslim the second issue that he had was

00:05:44.120 he complained in his letters about the presence of American evangelicals across the country that

00:05:49.840 why are these evangelicals preaching in Egypt which is a majority Muslim country and why do

00:05:55.160 allow this to happen? Where is our Muslim sense of manhood that we let these Americans in?" 0.76

00:06:01.560 And the third point that really offended him was seeing Egyptian men, Egyptian women dancing, 0.93

00:06:07.720 drinking alcohol, spending time on the cruises, and Egypt becoming so westernized to the point 0.70

00:06:13.880 that he, as someone from the Egyptian countryside, felt that this westernization, globalization

00:06:19.800 disturbed him. So those three issues, the destruction of the Turkish Caliphate, the

00:06:26.740 presence of the Americans and the Brits in the evangelical movements, and third, the

00:06:32.020 westernization of Egyptian society in Cairo, led him to then go to various Egyptian religious

00:06:38.460 institutions, the Al-Azhar, which is a prominent university in Egypt, a religious institution.

00:06:44.520 It's been there since the 1950s, so our Oxford, if you like, since before Oxford.

00:06:52.060 Al-Azhar, the greatest prominent Sunni institution, he goes there and says, you're a religious

00:06:56.940 institution.

00:06:57.940 You have thought leadership over every Muslim Sunni country. 1.00

00:07:03.540 You should do something about this problem. 0.98

00:07:05.480 And Al-Azhar says, we're going to approach this in our own wise, nuanced, complicated

00:07:11.760 way.

00:07:12.760 Give us time. 0.98

00:07:13.760 a movement we must confront this problem head on so azhar turning away he goes to a group of muslim

00:07:18.640 mystics egypt has this huge mystical orders sufi turuk we call them and the mystics also turn him

00:07:24.800 away and say you know you're going to be dangerous you're too politicized that is not the way of the

00:07:29.040 prophet muhammad you've got to be calmer you've got to accept reality for what it is and change

00:07:34.400 yourself first and then change follows and it's not our business to confront america and to confront

00:07:40.480 the soviet union so they disagree with him and this is the issue that he's a breakaway

00:07:45.120 from mainstream islamic norms that he decides to take it up on himself he rejects al-azhar

00:07:50.800 the thousand year old muslim institution that's still there he rejects the muslim mystics that

00:07:55.760 are dated from the time of the prophet muhammad old orders and he says i will create my own 0.91

00:08:01.200 movement and i will work towards recreating the caliphate bringing back sharia at state law 0.96

00:08:08.800 and thereby confronting the west correcting the misdemeanors that i see so the bug of the islamic 0.74

00:08:14.080 state whether it's isis or al-qaeda or hezbollah and it's also connected to iran by the way or

00:08:20.240 hamas started there in in egypt in the suez canal area called ismailia in 1928 so you were just

00:08:28.000 saying earlier francis we're going to be facing the hundred year moment um in a couple of years

00:08:33.600 time, but the organization still sticks with us and hasn't left us. But there are other points

00:08:39.520 that he then absorbed. Those were the three kind of starting points that motivated him,

00:08:45.040 but then he developed an entire ideology. And I'll say this, Constantine, that the best way

00:08:50.660 to approach the Muslim Brotherhood is to see it as an ideology. So if we talk about something 0.90

00:08:56.200 called the MBI, Muslim Brotherhood ideology, and then we're onto something, then we're fighting

00:09:00.820 the true battle of ideas. Just saying we're going to shut down their bank accounts, although helpful, 1.00

00:09:06.740 is really putting a band-aid, as they say here in America, or a plaster back home in England, 1.00

00:09:12.180 with the bleeding problems that the Muslim Brotherhood have sought to create across the 1.00

00:09:17.140 world. And just coming back to the ideological inspirations of it, I mean, the issue of the 1.00

00:09:22.100 caliphate, I think, is something that's worth exploring, because the caliphate effectively is,

00:09:27.860 It's kind of been explained to us by four other guests in the past that the central fight within

00:09:33.380 the Muslim world is between the people who believe in nation states and the people who

00:09:36.980 don't want nation states. They want the entire area of the Middle East and perhaps elsewhere

00:09:41.540 to be controlled by one theocratic worldview. And that's essentially the main theme that's

00:09:49.540 driving these people. Is that right? Correct. Correct. And it's correct because

00:09:53.540 if you take away the argument for creating what they call an Islamic state, then you end up in

00:09:58.980 accepting the status quo, modernity, multiple nation states, and working within these sovereign

00:10:05.300 jurisdictions where you have the rule of law, as the late great Roger Scruton used to put it,

00:10:11.380 the rule of law has jurisdiction, and that jurisdiction is the nation state.

00:10:15.620 That's why some of us have reservations about something called international law. Well,

00:10:19.140 who's going to enforce it? So that's the way of the modern world. Now, those who believe in the

00:10:25.300 Islamic State believe ultimately in creating some kind of Islamist empire. And while they call it

00:10:32.740 an Islamic State, what they mean is their state, their interpretation of Sharia, their form of law,

00:10:39.220 and they or their allocated leaders are in charge for this supranational state.

00:10:48.100 and it's a confrontational state. It's an expansionist state. So it's much like, say,

00:10:52.900 I don't know, the Soviet Union or at its heyday, the Ottoman Empire. The Chinese weren't really 0.72

00:11:01.300 expansionist in those days. So the question is, what is a caliphate or what is an Islamic state?

00:11:08.420 The hallmark of their understanding of the Islamic State is that it must have one leader

00:11:13.060 and it must have frontiers and not borders. What's the difference? Frontiers are temporary

00:11:18.820 and they can expand. How convenient. So they don't believe in borders or nation states,

00:11:25.380 so the whole world at some point must come under the control of this caliphate or of this Islamic 0.96

00:11:30.340 state. The whole world or just the areas that have been historically populated and controlled 0.97

00:11:34.900 by Muslims? The first priority is to reconquer Spain, Sicily, India, parts of China that were 1.00

00:11:42.100 once Muslim, but you don't ultimately stop there. You continue to expand to bring the whole domain

00:11:48.100 under what they call the domain of peace or the domain of Islam. Now, here's the problem with

00:11:55.300 this worldview. This is a worldview that was advocated first and foremost by Hassan al-Banna,

00:11:59.700 the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1920s, and it's then spread to Hamas and Al-Qaeda

00:12:06.820 and others. But the problem with that worldview is the problem that Hassan al-Banna found in the

00:12:12.500 1920s, that most Muslims rejected him and reject the Brotherhood. And if you read classical Islamic

00:12:20.180 literature, there is no reference to the Islamic system. This was taken from Hegelian thought,

00:12:27.140 this was taken from later German Nazi thought, that we must create a system, we must create a

00:12:33.540 Reich. We must be against the Jews. We must be against the West. We must reconquer land." 0.91

00:12:39.060 This was the mood music of the 1920s and 30s that the Muslim Brotherhood embraces, 0.98

00:12:43.380 absorbs, and continues to protect. There was a very, very high-level prominent Muslim scholar 0.91

00:12:51.860 called Ali Abd al-Raziq in 1926, wrote a book called, you know, Islam and Governance. And in it,

00:12:58.500 He, in a very detailed fashion, drawing on Muslim jurisprudence for 1400 years, says there is no system of governance within Muslim cultures, plural.

00:13:11.900 And we know that when the Prophet Muhammad passed away, he doesn't allocate a particular caliph.

00:13:17.140 He doesn't say there's going to be a caliphate.

00:13:19.540 He doesn't say you must all be united under this one ruler, because even in his time, there were Muslims living in Abyssinia.

00:13:26.480 There were Muslims who were living in Mecca.

00:13:29.040 And subsequent to him, there was an Umayyad caliphate out of Damascus, and there was another

00:13:34.380 caliphate out of Mecca.

00:13:36.200 And even in the days of the Muslim Brotherhood when they were founded, there were Muslims

00:13:39.480 living in Indonesia, in Morocco, that did not come under Ottoman or Turkish rule.

00:13:46.980 So the argument is nothing other than propaganda. 0.70

00:13:50.740 The argument is nothing other than their theorizing of creating a thousand-year Reich,

00:13:55.460 or in their context, a thousand-year caliphate, to try and control the rest of us. And if I may

00:14:00.660 just say one other thing, their biggest enemies are not the Israelis. The biggest enemies are not 0.92

00:14:08.260 really the Western countries. It's fellow Muslims, because it's other Muslims that opposed them. 1.00

00:14:14.240 And they went, and as we will go through some of the subsequent decades, they killed, they 0.99

00:14:20.020 assassinated Egyptian prime ministers, Egyptian judges, and then they go and assassinate Jordanian

00:14:27.880 politicians, Saudi politicians. And Al-Qaeda, as we've seen, leads that assassination culture 0.53

00:14:35.260 into this great city here in New York, and 9-11 was a result of that. So, you know, their enemies, 0.81

00:14:41.920 yes, ultimately become the West and ultimately what they call the small Satan Israel, but it's 1.00

00:14:46.820 really ordinary Muslims that oppose them and reject them and the best evidence for that is 0.89

00:14:51.780 you know we have two billion Muslims roughly the Muslim Brotherhood's membership maximum if we

00:14:58.520 include this global following is probably no more than five million and I'm being very generous

00:15:03.060 so it's a small I mean I think it was Gramsci who said an organized minority can control a

00:15:10.220 disorganized majority so that's where we are it's a very organized coherent minority and and very

00:15:16.400 very well motivated. I remember reading a book called Milestones. Remind me who it's

00:15:21.400 by. He's very closely connected to it.

00:15:23.400 Said Qutb.

00:15:24.400 Yes.

00:15:25.400 And the thing is, I think part of the problem and why we don't understand these things very

00:15:29.600 well is we've been conditioned. I don't know whether it's Hollywood or whether it's just

00:15:34.900 human brains or whether it's World War II or whatever, but we have this vision that

00:15:38.900 the people who want to fight us or kill us, they do so because they're evil. They're motivated

00:15:44.420 by evil but when you read milestones you go oh this makes a lot of sense because they actually

00:15:51.060 believe that islam is good and it's the light and it must be brought to everybody because 0.51

00:15:58.020 everybody will benefit and therefore you know if you have to kill some people that's and that's

00:16:01.780 basically every evil evil everyone who's done evil in history has been motivated by something

00:16:06.580 like this right yes hannah arend writes writes about this after she observes the eichmann trial

00:16:11.780 in Jerusalem in the 1960s, trying to understand the Nazis. They never saw themselves as bad people

00:16:17.860 or as evil people. Most Nazis just said, we were doing our jobs. And that's the danger when you

00:16:23.460 abandon your own conscience and you think you're just doing a job. And the problem with lots of

00:16:27.060 religious people is they think we're just doing God's command. And there's a real danger there

00:16:32.180 that you can end up following, say, for example, in the case of Iran, the Ayatollah, by abandoning

00:16:37.860 your own sense of what's right, what's wrong, what sits well in your heart. So we have these

00:16:41.620 two dangers that I'm just doing my job in a secular sense, and I'm doing God's command

00:16:46.740 in the religious sense. And again, Voltaire was very critical of that mindset.

00:16:51.460 But between those two extremes, I think there's an important truth that you're referring to,

00:16:57.380 Constantine, is that yes, Sayyid Qutb came out of America, by the way. He spent two years in

00:17:04.420 in Colorado, in Washington, D.C.,

00:17:07.340 he, too, was a schoolteacher.

00:17:11.320 What is it with you boys?

00:17:13.260 This is what children do to you. 1.00

00:17:15.140 It's not Islamism that's the problem. 1.00

00:17:17.220 It's you lot. 1.00

00:17:18.200 It's the kids.

00:17:19.060 That's how they drive you nuts. 1.00

00:17:20.760 It's the next generation. 1.00

00:17:22.200 Right. 0.90

00:17:22.780 Yeah, so, and then the Egyptian government

00:17:24.720 sends him here to get training

00:17:25.960 to become a school inspector.

00:17:28.000 And what's really interesting

00:17:29.200 is that he leaves America

00:17:30.460 worse than he'd arrived.

00:17:32.340 and then he goes obviously and writes this famous book you know milestones as you rightly put it

00:17:39.780 I was going to say when Douglas Murray was a friend he used to talk about the fact that someone

00:17:46.240 wanted to translate milestone as pebbles along the way giving a sense of warmth and

00:17:53.280 journey and who hates pebbles you know but anyhow so milestones is this kind of critical text

00:18:00.220 Sayyid Qutb leaves America, I think, in 1951 with several big problems.

00:18:07.780 We talk about incels now, right?

00:18:09.420 I mean, I think he was the OG incel because he refuses to get married,

00:18:13.060 refuses to have relationships with women.

00:18:16.580 And when he was in hospital here, he writes in his book

00:18:21.380 about what I saw in America, you know,

00:18:23.300 America,

00:18:24.980 he says how women are voluptuous

00:18:27.780 and women, you know, want to dance with him

00:18:30.500 and women are showing his thighs to him. 0.57

00:18:32.640 In other words, he opposes the entire freedom of women

00:18:35.100 to dress however they wish to dress here.

00:18:36.740 That disturbs him deeply.

00:18:38.340 And he goes back and he writes against the strength of women,

00:18:42.500 the presence of women, the charisma of women.

00:18:44.200 So that's the first thing he takes from America,

00:18:46.540 a real hatred for American women.

00:18:48.600 I think we'd call that misogyny in our day and age,

00:18:50.600 but that's the first thing he takes away.

00:18:51.920 The second thing he writes about after leaving America

00:18:54.560 is something called social justice in Islam,

00:18:56.660 Islam, which is really weird for most of us who grew up reading Islamic, classical Islamic

00:19:01.660 literature. 1.00

00:19:02.660 We don't have anything called social justice.

00:19:04.460 In the Aristotelian sense, we have justice.

00:19:07.420 And in the Quranic sense, we have again and again, just justice, because justice is unfair 0.81

00:19:12.880 to people of all backgrounds, is unfair to whether you're women or to men or whether

00:19:16.460 you're black or white.

00:19:17.460 But he comes up with this social justice, which was then a big movement here in America.

00:19:21.320 So he Americanizes Islam and writes about social justice. 0.84

00:19:24.980 And the third thing he takes away from America, and then he takes that into the prisons of 0.69

00:19:28.520 Egypt, which produces milestones, is a deep, deep venom towards African-Americans.

00:19:35.080 And he calls them the N-word, refers to them as having these primal instincts and therefore

00:19:42.300 producing jazz music to which monkeys and others can dance.

00:19:46.920 So he leaves America with this deep hatred towards some of the most important things

00:19:56.140 in America, freedom, the justice system, which he manipulates, and then obviously the racial

00:20:04.940 equality movement that was coming to force under the leadership of Martin Luther King

00:20:09.420 and others.

00:20:10.280 He then goes back to Egypt, and this is the strangeness of the man.

00:20:13.940 He says the Egyptian government is not a Muslim government.

00:20:17.900 He says most Egyptians are not Muslims.

00:20:21.120 He makes what we call takfir, or excommunicates them from Islam.

00:20:25.340 And he says only a small vanguard of him and people around him are true believers,

00:20:30.340 and they're the ones who are in prison being tortured.

00:20:32.860 Now, in an attempt to be fair to the man, he's had a hard time in America.

00:20:36.500 He goes to Egypt, gets put into prison, and the Egyptian government tortures him.

00:20:40.680 and his contention is how can a muslim government torture me for trying to be a better muslim trying

00:20:46.760 to bring about an islamic state it's your point earlier constantine that i'm only being a good

00:20:51.000 muslim why am i being tortured but the egyptian government's point was he and his organization

00:20:56.840 had supported the assassination of the egyptian prime minister several egyptian judges and they

00:21:01.800 had found 150 cases of ammunition contained by the egyptian muslim brotherhood and the question from

00:21:09.880 the authorities is what's this for and they said oh it's to blow up the zionists in neighboring 0.65

00:21:14.680 palestine um but the government was convinced that this was going to be used in egypt so they

00:21:19.000 saw them at the terrorist organization and milestones his author qutub is put into prison

00:21:24.520 and that's when he comes out and he writes you know milestones and commentaries on the quran

00:21:29.560 that justify the assassination of the egyptian president again gamal abd al-nasser and calls 0.81

00:21:36.520 every muslim government in the world non-muslim in other words you are a legitimate target for us 0.88

00:21:42.760 it's not just israelis by then only a three-year-old state and it's not just the americans 0.98

00:21:47.800 which had then supported israel so they now turn against america more viciously and it's not just 0.93

00:21:52.360 the british imperialists or the european colonizers it's every muslim government and you too must go 0.84

00:21:59.560 and your supporters which means ordinary muslims which takes us back to the original point that 1.00

00:22:04.200 you know islam and ordinary muslims are the biggest threat to the the milestones led world 0.99

00:22:09.960 view um you mentioned milestone and i should say something else because in around 1966 uh sayed 0.98

00:22:17.800 qatub was hanged by the egyptian government for writing milestones we should also remember that

00:22:24.120 But his brother, Muhammad Qutub, then begs the Saudis for asylum.

00:22:32.040 And they, being generous Arabians in the Gulf, if you visited, you'll see the hospitality,

00:22:37.140 the warmth, the kindness of the people that take him in. 0.66

00:22:39.500 And his thank you to them is to help create Osama bin Laden. 0.98

00:22:43.580 So as a teacher, sorry, again, now as a professor at a university, I'm guilty of this too. 0.99

00:22:49.300 He radicalizes an entire generation of Saudis. 0.96

00:22:51.900 So from Milestones to his younger brother, Mohammed Qutb, goes to Saudi Arabia and he physically teaches Osama bin Laden in the university in Jeddah and a whole cohort of young Saudis who are mostly Salafis, mostly focused on their own salvation and upkeeping rituals and are politicized from this Egyptian bug that comes out of Said Qutb. 0.85

00:23:14.800 So the book you reference is really important, Konstantin, because it gets exported into Saudi Arabia and through Egypt and Saudi Arabia around the rest of the Muslim world. 0.66

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00:24:48.560 to be a lot of people listening to this who are from the West and they're listening to what you're

00:24:53.160 saying and they're thinking to themselves, well, why do these ideas resonate? There must be

00:24:58.480 something there for it to resonate as much as it does and for it to have a brotherhood of five

00:25:05.580 million people? Excellent question. It resonates because this organized minority of five million,

00:25:12.040 again being generous, are able to message to a disorganized, disparate, decentralized Muslim 0.91

00:25:19.020 world, because we don't have a Pope. We're much more kind of live and let live, much more

00:25:23.560 individualistic, to point to our concerns and say, here's a problem, here's the solution.

00:25:29.820 So the Muslim Brotherhood is renowned for saying, al-Islam huwa al-hal, which is Islam is the

00:25:34.400 solution again in a thousand plus years of muslim history no one said islam was the solution islam 0.78

00:25:40.960 with a small i always means a state of mind it's supposed to you know encourage peace and submission 0.77

00:25:47.200 to god rather than being a solution for a problem um very few problems have solutions um it's 0.96

00:25:53.840 supposed to be healing so they they they've created this new slogan that islam is the solution 0.95

00:25:58.880 and then so you you you pick a problem francis you you find you know muslims being killed say 0.97

00:26:06.240 um in kashmir well they're not being killed because the muslims they're being killed because 0.85

00:26:09.760 they're caught between india and pakistan and a geopolitical conflict over borders the muslim 0.90

00:26:14.800 brotherhood will say no no no they're being killed because they're muslims and the solution is what 1.00

00:26:19.040 we said in the 1920s islam is the solution the quran is our constitution that's their slogan 1.00

00:26:24.880 our greatest desire is jihad and our pathway is martyrdom. And they have this entire slogan 1.00

00:26:31.360 which mobilizes and allows ordinary people to think, oh, right, we actually have a solution

00:26:36.600 that meets violence with violence. So in the West, they will say there's massive Islamophobia,

00:26:42.120 a term that they helped create, by the way. So Islamophobia is their term. And now if there's

00:26:46.800 homophobia and if there's Islamophobia too. So if the Jewish people are complaining about

00:26:51.860 anti-Semitism, well, we're going to complain and become victims of Islamophobia. And the way you 0.67

00:26:56.100 confront that is by making Islam the solution, focusing on your Muslim identity and believing 1.00

00:27:01.160 in jihad and seeing the Quran as a constitution. So that's why they succeed because their messaging 1.00

00:27:06.320 is compelling and it's a negative messaging. We're against all of these governments. Remove all of

00:27:11.800 these 56 Muslim nation states. Remove Israel, remove America and what will have a much better 1.00

00:27:16.840 state because we will give you Islam as a solution and ultimately we'll try and create paradise on 0.99

00:27:21.400 earth. Now again, here's the other problem. For 1400 years, open up any classical Muslim text, 0.79

00:27:27.640 there's no reference to the Qur'an as the constitution, because that denigrates and 0.80

00:27:32.380 demeans holy texts. It's scripture, it's the word of God, it's not a political document.

00:27:37.900 But that's what they've made it to be, and therefore it resonates with ordinary Muslims,

00:27:42.700 most of whom sadly can't distinguish between Islam, the faith, and then this new thing that

00:27:49.760 emerges and calls itself Islam too.

00:27:53.800 So there's this blur between the faith and the political ideology that emerges

00:27:58.540 under Marxist and Nazi influences, and that's why it resonates.

00:28:02.200 It also resonates because it's very modern.

00:28:05.080 If you meet some of the elder Muslims in, say, Bukhara, you were talking about 0.94

00:28:09.560 your visits to Central Asia, you know, they're wispy-bearded, long, cap-wearing,

00:28:15.920 mystical, loving, sure, they're socially conservative.

00:28:19.760 But they're not going to blow you up.

00:28:21.320 Well, they never used to. 0.98

00:28:23.220 But the Muslim Brotherhood types, they wear suits, they wear ties,

00:28:26.960 they're often clean-shaven, they're thoroughly modern, 0.99

00:28:29.980 and they have this cancer of deep hatred for the Western fellow Muslims. 1.00

00:28:35.860 You want to say something else? 1.00

00:28:36.780 No, no, I find it very interesting because when you're talking about this, 0.64

00:28:39.880 it triggered something in me, which is the Muslim Brotherhood.

00:28:45.720 What's the one that Muhammad Ali was a part of?

00:28:48.460 Nation of Islam.

00:28:49.160 Nation of Islam. So when you're talking, it triggered something in me about, is the nation

00:28:54.780 of Islam very similar to the Muslim Brotherhood? Is it based on their texts?

00:28:59.140 That's a great question. It's a great question because the nation of Islam, while not based 0.98

00:29:04.840 on their texts, drew inspiration from this movement in Africa, i.e. Egypt, that is separatist,

00:29:11.860 that is confrontational. And they were obviously focused here in America, but the nation of

00:29:18.580 Islam took other positions. They believed that Elijah Muhammad was a prophet, and therefore

00:29:23.940 the prophet Muhammad was not the final prophet of God. So in creedal terms, they found themselves

00:29:29.620 much further on the outside of global Muslim identity. But they did look at Egypt. But

00:29:35.300 what I would hold up, I think, as a thought for us to all think about is the nation of 0.93

00:29:41.620 Islam produces someone like Malcolm X, you know, a household name in America to this 0.93

00:29:45.620 Day. All of my students look up to him, talk about him. But Malcolm X finds himself not only just in

00:29:52.260 disagreement with the Nation of Islam, but he goes to Mecca, and there is where he finds white people,

00:30:00.280 black people, brown people side by side. And I think it's worth remembering that the radicalization 0.76

00:30:05.280 agenda of both the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as the Nation of Islam, to your question, Francis,

00:30:11.040 doesn't resonate in deepest Islamic old places, such as Mecca, because Malcolm X thinks white 0.97

00:30:17.680 people with blonde eyes and with, sorry, blonde hair and blue eyes are literally the devil. And 0.98

00:30:25.400 he wrote extensively about it, that they represent the devil and demonic impulses.

00:30:29.540 He goes to Mecca and suddenly finds himself praying beside Bosnians, between Russian Muslims,

00:30:34.540 Palestinian Muslims, many of whom are, you know, in his world, white, and he can't make sense of it. 0.58

00:30:39.660 and how is it that the devil is present? 0.89

00:30:42.080 So he goes through this de-radicalization process,

00:30:44.120 and it comes out of Mecca and returns here,

00:30:47.740 and talks in Martin Luther King's terms

00:30:51.120 that forgive your white brothers and sisters

00:30:53.760 and work more closely with them,

00:30:55.680 which is what the woke culture today

00:30:56.920 won't allow us to embrace,

00:30:58.060 because we've all got the original sin 0.91

00:30:59.360 of being born white and straight.

00:31:01.700 So Malcolm X is de-radicalized, 0.81

00:31:03.680 and I think just as the Nation of Islam

00:31:05.620 and the Muslim Brotherhood are rejected in Mecca,

00:31:09.660 and there's a strong message, I think, for all of us in the West. If Mecca, the UAE, Egypt,

00:31:16.460 and other Muslim countries can reject them and de-radicalize their population, what stops us 0.92

00:31:21.980 in the West from saying, we too will reject what came out of Nazism and Marxism here in the West? 0.83

00:31:28.540 Ed, just talk about that part of it. By the way, what you're saying is something I've been banging

00:31:32.700 on about since you informed and since my own travels and experiences with people from those

00:31:37.660 countries, which is like, all I want is for Europe and America to treat this problem the 1.00

00:31:42.540 way Muslim countries do. And I think we'd have a lot fewer problems. And I think it's 1.00

00:31:46.060 an easy sell as well, right? Because so many people are afraid of being bigoted or prejudiced,

00:31:52.460 but all I ever say is, why don't we just act towards this problem the way Muslim

00:31:57.260 countries do? I think it's a reasonable request. Yeah, but that's such a powerful request, 1.00

00:32:02.700 Yeah. And it's a realistic request. And it also shows up the European far left for basically being

00:32:10.620 in bed with the worst elements of the far right and Muslim countries, in this case, the Muslim 0.92

00:32:15.580 Brotherhood. You were talking earlier about the red-green alliance, which helped the Iranian 0.99

00:32:22.300 government today come into power, which helped Hamas come into power. Let me come back to 0.90

00:32:29.580 something else, which is you've repeatedly referenced influence from Nazism and Marxism.

00:32:35.900 And I think this is a good opportunity to go back to the historical storytelling. 1928,

00:32:41.500 it's founded. How do you get from that to then where we've got to today?

00:32:47.260 Because it's a great question because it links to your earlier question. By 1966,

00:32:54.060 the Egyptian government, and you can fault the Egyptian government for a whole range of things,

00:32:58.140 but you can't say they didn't understand the Muslim Brotherhood because Gamal Abdel Nasser,

00:33:03.100 who was then the president, was part of the Muslim Brotherhood. Anwar Sadat, who they killed,

00:33:08.220 was in regular conversations with both Hassan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutub. So they knew the

00:33:12.540 beast they were dealing with. They were part of it. They turned against it and they both took,

00:33:18.220 Sadat especially, literally a bullet from members and affiliates, the wider affiliates of the Muslim

00:33:22.700 Brotherhood. In Sadat's case, we're making peace with Israel. But it is in the 60s when the Egyptians 0.87

00:33:29.580 finally say, we've had enough of this movement in the name of charity, in the name of education,

00:33:34.500 in the name of religion. They basically want to turn Egyptian Muslims against each other and

00:33:40.000 against their own government. We're going to ban them. At that point, large numbers of these 1.00

00:33:44.760 newly urbanized doctors and engineers start to move out of Egypt, some expelled, some welcomed

00:33:53.460 out of hospitality and kindness of the Arabian Peninsula countries. And they go to the UAE,

00:33:59.360 Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and to some extent, small numbers of them also go to Bahrain. 0.77

00:34:04.940 And there they begin to radicalize a new generation of native peoples. But many of these 0.95

00:34:12.100 Egyptians who are rejected from institutions, especially universities in Egypt,

00:34:19.700 surprise, surprise, want to come to universities in the UK and in the US. So they end up, because 0.99

00:34:25.160 they're now political refugees and they're persecuted, some of the best institutions in

00:34:30.140 the US and in the UK welcome the Muslim Brotherhood and say, you know, here's a funding

00:34:36.300 mechanism, you know, please set up whatever institutions you want to set up here, but

00:34:41.760 you're now American citizens and British citizens. Meanwhile, from the Arab countries, both the

00:34:47.700 Egyptians, but more recently, and I think more directly and consistently and strategically,

00:34:53.660 Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the President of the United Arab Emirates, and Deputy Prime

00:34:57.520 Minister and the Foreign Minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, both have been consistently

00:35:03.960 raising this agenda from Barack Obama here as the president in those days,

00:35:12.560 to David Cameron, to Boris Johnson, to Theresa May, to Liz Truss,

00:35:17.180 and now with the current British Prime Minister, whose name escapes me.

00:35:21.980 Keir Starmer.

00:35:22.380 Keir Starmer.

00:35:23.820 So here in New York, it's just so irrelevant.

00:35:25.660 You just don't think about it.

00:35:26.340 I mean, he's very charismatic.

00:35:28.800 Yes.

00:35:29.700 Somehow that has been lost in the rest of the world.

00:35:31.500 But so with Keir Starmer and his cohort, Yvette Cooper and others.

00:35:36.600 And the response is always, you know, twofold.

00:35:40.000 One, that they're not a terrorist organization.

00:35:43.800 And two, we know better.

00:35:47.140 To which the Emiratis and the Saudis and the Egyptians feel offended

00:35:52.080 and refer to this long history that these guys start off,

00:35:56.720 as they did, by the way, in Gaza, which is an excellent example.

00:35:59.960 Ahmed Yaseen goes to Gaza and in 1971 starts a charity.

00:36:05.640 So why would the Israelis oppose a charity?

00:36:07.900 Why would the Brits oppose various charitable organizations

00:36:11.180 functioning in the UK?

00:36:12.820 Similarly in the US, same model, they run charities.

00:36:16.340 So Ahmed Yaseen throughout the 70s runs charities 0.51

00:36:18.580 and then he expands into running a few mosques

00:36:22.360 and a few schools, a few universities.

00:36:25.300 And he's just like a provider of welfare

00:36:27.620 where the state has failed.

00:36:28.740 Why would you be opposed to him?

00:36:29.960 But within 15 years, he had created an entire network of teachers, doctors, medical practitioners, and dependent families on him, ranging in the hundreds of thousands. 0.78

00:36:42.140 And then boom, in the late 80s, Hamas. 0.67

00:36:45.460 So now you have a paramilitary wing, which is something the Muslim Brotherhood has, a paramilitary wing, much like the Waffen-SS, the Nazis had. 0.75

00:36:53.240 So he now has a paramilitary wing. 0.77

00:36:54.460 That was Hamas. 0.82

00:36:55.220 That's how it was born in the late 80s. 0.88

00:36:57.480 We are seeing the same thing across the West.

00:36:59.340 So this is where the UAE and Bahrain and to some extent now the Jordanians, the Kuwaitis, the Egyptians have been lobbying Western governments, government to government, saying, what you're all saying is a charitable organization. 0.56

00:37:13.400 The model is that in Gaza, they've then become terrorists. In Egypt, they became terrorists. In our countries, they did exactly the same thing. 0.51

00:37:21.080 So Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed and others went to universities with these extreme Muslim Brotherhood people. 0.94

00:37:26.940 And they've said, we've seen this movie before, and we're warning you this is what's going on in the West. 1.00

00:37:31.860 So you've got to shut this operation down, because from here you are giving them platforms, media platforms, 0.99

00:37:38.940 social media platforms with which they're radicalizing our populations against us and the wider Muslim world.

00:37:45.920 And yes, they're anti-Semitic too, and yes, they support Hamas and terrorism too, 0.71

00:37:49.720 To which the intelligence agencies, and I've got to be blunt, and I can do that because we're here in America where we don't have to fear and knock on the door, that our intelligence agencies basically quietly message, and this is MI6 and others, that this is a chatter inside government, that having these guys here, the Muslim Brotherhood and its various supporters, gives us leverage against Arab governments. 0.85

00:38:14.540 because we can say to them, if you do A, B and C, we will unleash these dogs with greater 0.68

00:38:20.300 amplification here against you. So do you want the barking of the brotherhood dogs to increase?

00:38:26.460 Or if you want us to work, you know, on a range of sensitive issues, let's kind of balance it out.

00:38:32.020 So it's very cynical. Well, hold on. Sorry to jump in. You're saying something what I think is

00:38:38.700 quite extraordinary, which is that the government of Britain and the intelligence services of

00:38:43.980 Britain are fostering and allowing this extremism to flourish in Britain because it gives them

00:38:50.800 leverage in their dealings with Arab countries? 0.94

00:38:53.780 Yes.

00:38:54.900 Yes.

00:38:56.160 That's extraordinarily irresponsible and dangerous, isn't it?

00:38:59.320 That's a statement of fact.

00:39:00.520 And the first individual to highlight this was, and she's no friend of mine, but we've

00:39:06.040 got to be honest and highlight her scholarship on this, was Melanie Phillips in her book

00:39:12.020 Londonistan.

00:39:12.540 She highlights this danger. Subsequently, Michael Gove's highlighted it. Subsequently, several

00:39:18.240 recent ministers in the Home Office who left their posts after the last general election

00:39:23.280 have confirmed this in private conversations. But all of this is backed up by our intelligence

00:39:28.580 agencies by basically saying, we don't think the Muslim Brotherhood and the various Arab 0.82

00:39:35.180 opposition parties inside these countries are terrorist, and we can't ban them because they're

00:39:40.140 not terrorist organizations yet. So we don't have the evidence. And nor, by the way, do we have the

00:39:45.680 resources to go and find out what they're really after, because we've got 40,000 plus Al-Qaeda

00:39:50.820 supporting terrorists, real terrorists. We can't go further down and investigate what is basically

00:39:56.940 an intelligence asset for us, having these groups here, the Bahraini opposition, the Emirati

00:40:02.460 opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood from Egypt. They're all Muslim Brotherhood people. They call

00:40:06.640 themselves human rights activists, but they're all Muslim Brotherhood people that are an 0.99

00:40:10.700 intelligence asset for the British government to leverage against our allies in the Arabian 0.52

00:40:16.040 Peninsula. It's a complicated and dirty game, I'm afraid, but that's where we are. 0.99

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00:42:17.020 So basically, the British, our government have allowed an existential threat to be on our soil.

00:42:26.240 so that we can foster and we can have an advantage over our allies in the middle east i mean that's

00:42:32.800 isn't that suicidal it that's how the strategy started in the 1980s it's suicidal because they

00:42:38.800 thought they could contain it our government thought it would be just you know a group of

00:42:42.560 guys sat in north london smoking in uh in edgware road but what what what happened and you're

00:42:48.720 absolutely right it's suicidal because these guys didn't just stick around in edgware road they went

00:42:53.600 out onto campuses and started radicalizing and recruiting a new generation of British

00:42:58.180 born and raised Muslims. And now we're on generation three, whereas the intelligence

00:43:02.540 agencies thought that they would be just nice local assets they could use to bully the Emiratis,

00:43:07.660 bully the Saudis, bully the Jordanians, bully the Kuwaitis, bully the Bahrainis. But now

00:43:12.020 this beast is out of control, exactly as those countries have told us, that they've seen this

00:43:16.800 movie before. You start with charity and schools and mosques, and it becomes a suicide mission. 0.95

00:43:22.180 and that's what's happened. 0.73

00:43:23.720 7-7 was a direct outcome of that,

00:43:26.100 that these guys then think, guess what?

00:43:28.140 We're going to now take hostage

00:43:32.980 to the British government and its foreign policy.

00:43:35.260 We're now going to take hostage Keir Starmer

00:43:37.720 and his foreign policy in relation to Iran

00:43:40.000 and what we're seeing play out in the Middle East.

00:43:42.760 So what the British government

00:43:43.900 and intelligence agencies thought

00:43:45.380 was an asset against Arab governments

00:43:47.560 and disregarded Arab governments' advice

00:43:49.260 has now turned on the British government itself.

00:43:51.520 How can they be so naive? Did they not see the way that this was started, the way it spread through the Muslim world, the chaos and misery that they created, the terrorism? 1.00

00:44:01.240 When was the last time we met the average British civil servant? No disrespect intended. 1.00

00:44:06.820 But these are simple folk. They come out of the shires. They want to have a respectable life. 1.00

00:44:12.100 They pursue what's called lines of least resistance, where there's no controversy.

00:44:16.840 they don't go into government to be accused of being racist, Islamophobic. So what we're

00:44:21.860 discussing, I like to think we're all free people in a free country, freely exploring ideas. They

00:44:27.120 can't have this conversation. They're terrified of saying what you've just said, that this is

00:44:31.100 suicidal, because it would be seen as questioning the policies of their older bosses that brought

00:44:38.660 them into this job, and now potentially appearing Islamophobic to their Muslim

00:44:43.260 colleagues, and worse, having to admit that the government has made mistakes and therefore do

00:44:50.740 something about this problem, which is to start identifying the Muslim Brotherhood's influence

00:44:56.300 on now almost two million plus Muslims, some of whom are Muslim Brotherhood ideologues,

00:45:02.680 are now in the government, are now in the House of Lords, are in the House of Commons, 0.99

00:45:07.280 are in the British media space, and this cancer is spreading. But the government,

00:45:11.520 And if it admits what you've just asked them, Francis, to admit, that this is a disastrous policy, it means, A, they're responsible, and B, they must do something about it.

00:45:20.200 Safer to say, this is complicated.

00:45:23.600 But there must be a point where, look, eventually you've got to address what's actually happening.

00:45:29.300 This is why I disagree with you, and this is the point I was going to make.

00:45:32.500 You say there must come a point, but the point has come the other way.

00:45:35.300 I mean, we saw this in some ways, the Jeffrey Epstein scandal was actually very helpful

00:45:40.480 because one of the things that happened is Peter Mandelson, who was implicated in a weird

00:45:46.180 relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, that caused Wes Streeting, the health secretary, to, for

00:45:53.660 some reason, release his private communications with Peter Mandelson, in which we saw that

00:45:59.400 they talk openly in private about the fact that they can't get elected in certain seats without

00:46:06.600 pandering to the muslim vote so what you have now actually is a set of incentives that actually

00:46:12.600 drive them in the opposite direction as exactly you're saying they've created a problem that now 0.80

00:46:17.400 determines how they behave politically and far from having an incentive to admit what the problem

00:46:22.360 is on the contrary they will pander more uh as this problem gets worse and i just want to put

00:46:29.320 Surely there's not a human element, Ed, where you look at the bombings of the Ariana Grande concert in 2017 and you see the bodies of little girls getting carried out.

00:46:41.240 Is there not a part of you that just goes, no more? Is there not simple human decency?

00:46:48.600 That's where you deploy MI5 and you put greater resources in monitoring the terrorist or the physical violence threat.

00:46:55.840 and that would be their response. We've allocated more resources, we've put the prevent program into

00:47:00.880 place, and that's where the human element comes in. But the bigger strategic piece is that you've

00:47:07.440 intentionally fostered and fed this beast, and now you've radicalized Muslim populations in at least 0.78

00:47:17.200 45 to 50 constituencies in northern parts of England. And I tried to do this in my last book 0.85

00:47:24.400 among the mosques, warn what's going on inside these communities. And the feedback, the negative 0.98

00:47:29.360 media campaigning attacks from major Islamist organizations in the UK, labor MPs very reluctant

00:47:36.240 to have this conversation. And now what we're seeing is that the human response is, you know,

00:47:42.880 again, in the spirit of being free and not censored, the human response seems to be political

00:47:50.000 parties that are breaking away from the Tory party reform and several others that are saying

00:47:55.700 enough is enough, which is a dangerous response because it means maybe on the left we will

00:48:01.420 see what you call the red-green alliance, the far-left greens with the far-right Islamists

00:48:08.520 coming together to combat what's going on on the right of the Tory party, which is not

00:48:13.900 what you want in the country. But all of this comes from that Egyptian moment in the 1920s. 0.70

00:48:18.680 It's the spiraling effect, the snowball effect of the power of ideas and the nature of identity 0.78

00:48:24.960 and the moment in which we find ourselves.

00:48:27.060 And that's, you know, it's not complicated to say we've got to go back to that pluralist

00:48:30.960 space of classical liberalism where we live and let live, but we are loyal to our nation

00:48:35.740 states and a set of ideals that allowed all of us, all three of us, to come together here

00:48:41.700 as free people in a free country.

00:48:44.840 And coming back a little bit to the history, what is the nature of the links between German

00:48:50.420 Nazism and the Muslim Brotherhood? 0.76

00:48:53.380 Yeah, again, see, that's a fantastic question.

00:48:55.960 And most people won't ask that because they don't want to go into their thought space

00:48:59.240 which says, all right, the Muslim Brotherhood has connections to Nazism. 0.96

00:49:02.560 And it does. 0.92

00:49:03.680 The connections are as follows.

00:49:05.300 Hassan al-Banna, the founder, his brother was called Abdurrahman al-Banna.

00:49:11.200 And Abd al-Rahman was in regular contact with Haj Amin al-Husseini, who was then the Mufti of Jerusalem.

00:49:18.760 And Haj Amin al-Husseini, as the Mufti of Jerusalem, went and met Adolf Hitler, supported the Nazi movement,

00:49:27.560 disseminated Mein Kampf, and made sure that he made several broadcasts through prominent Arab platforms 0.77

00:49:35.840 to ensure that Arabs were supporting the German Nazis

00:49:39.700 and against the Brits and the French for colonial reasons.

00:49:43.760 But it goes worse and it goes further than that.

00:49:45.840 At this point, you could say, you know what, they made the wrong call.

00:49:48.280 There was a war against Britain.

00:49:49.460 They were British imperial or colonized subjects 0.56

00:49:52.080 and they wanted to be against it and they backed the wrong horse, the Germans.

00:49:55.260 But it's actually more sinister and deeper than that.

00:49:59.000 And it's to do with the following that Haj Amin al-Husseini supports the Nazis

00:50:04.980 anti-Jewish platform. And he argues that Jewish people have no right to settle in Jerusalem.

00:50:13.600 So he is behind the Holocaust and supportive of the Holocaust. And I've met his grandfamily, 0.88

00:50:20.360 grandchildren in New York, sorry, in Jerusalem, and we've had this conversation. So what I'm

00:50:25.760 saying isn't just concocted, it's historically proven, and it's known in the family that the 0.74

00:50:30.320 mistake was made to support the Holocaust. So that connection to the Palestinian radical Mufti

00:50:36.820 via the brother of Hassan al-Banna then leads to them inviting him to come and settle in Egypt,

00:50:43.480 but worse, a leading Nazi, Von Ellis, is also then invited, his name became Omar Amin in Arabic,

00:50:53.180 to convert and come and settle in Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood's protection. 0.85

00:50:59.620 Those are two direct connections of the Muslim Brotherhood 0.89

00:51:02.360 to living, physical Nazi supporters and the entire movement 0.60

00:51:06.980 supporting the Nazis.

00:51:08.880 But the real connection is ideological and geographical.

00:51:12.660 In other words, what was going on in neighboring Palestine 0.79

00:51:17.660 at the time, they openly support the expulsion of Jewish people 0.69

00:51:21.840 and Jewish people settling in Palestine.

00:51:24.420 And then the Muslim Brotherhood declared jihad on the state of Israel 0.92

00:51:28.060 and they go and fight in that jihad against the state of Israel because of their earlier Nazi 0.59

00:51:33.600 leanings that we cannot have Jews settling in Israel. We must remove them. We must complete 0.99

00:51:38.300 the job that Adolf Hitler had started. The second point, which is the more ideological point, is 0.96

00:51:43.800 just as the Nazis believed in a supremacy, they believe in a supremacy of just their type of 0.77

00:51:50.940 Muslim Islamist. Just as the Nazis said, we want to create a thousand-year Reich for Germans and 0.86

00:51:55.940 for Europe, led out of Germany. They believe in a thousand-year caliphate, led out of Egypt,

00:52:01.020 led by Egyptians, not the Meccans, the original Muslims, but the Egyptians. And just as the 0.95

00:52:07.420 Nazis believed in using violence and being an expansionist, they believe in the same thing. 0.56

00:52:12.040 And we've already mentioned the Jew hatred, you know, on which they have the supremacist standing.

00:52:16.740 But here is the real issue, I think, that we've got to bear in mind so we don't kind of make 0.74

00:52:20.860 mistakes as we're thinking about this, that just as the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood was

00:52:25.800 sympathizing with the Nazis, aligning with the Nazis, becoming under Nazi influences,

00:52:32.440 and giving protection to Nazis inside Egypt, you had in Mecca, in the Arabian Peninsula,

00:52:39.820 and that's why I'm obsessed with the Arabian Peninsula, because it is the home of Islam,

00:52:44.020 it's where it was born, and I find Muslims there much more interesting than Muslims in other parts

00:52:48.840 of the world for a whole range of reasons. But just there, the Sharif of Mecca, who is a descendant

00:52:53.620 of the Prophet Muhammad, who is governing Mecca, at the same time, the true Arab, the real Arab 0.73

00:53:00.480 in Mecca, in the Arabian Peninsula, is in discussion with Chaim Weizmann, the head of the World Zionist

00:53:05.940 Organization, saying to him, Jewish people are welcome to come back to the region. You are from

00:53:10.940 this region. As Arabs say, you know, you're from us, you're among us, come back, and let's build

00:53:16.260 civilization together and that was going on at the same time as the nazism in egypt but the arabian

00:53:22.260 peninsula which didn't come under occupation and had a kind of freer more authentic expression of

00:53:26.980 islam welcomes the jewish people back you can see the correspondence between weitzman and the

00:53:31.220 sharif of mecca what then happens in 1919 with the peace agreement in france complicates matters

00:53:37.940 and then you know there's a turn against zionism but before we get to that point we have to accept

00:53:44.020 and admit that there are two narratives here. There's the Muslim Brotherhood narrative of being

00:53:49.140 Nazi sympathizers, and there's the Arabian narrative of the Sharif of Mecca that is welcoming

00:53:54.100 Jewish people back to the region. And I think where we're seeing the Abraham Accords and what's

00:53:59.220 going on in the UAE is that narrative being amplified, that these are people, you know, 0.70

00:54:03.780 from us, you know, they're welcome back to the region. And what we have to find is a way how

00:54:07.940 Palestinians and Israelis learn to live side by side together. But that is not what the Muslim 1.00

00:54:12.980 Brotherhood's Nazis wanted. They wanted the German agenda of obliteration, of killings, and therefore 0.92

00:54:19.140 the participating in the 1947 war, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, where they cross borders and 0.60

00:54:26.260 go and fight the Jewish population that's trying to settle in then Palestine, now Israel. 0.63

00:54:32.240 And one of the connections I can see between Nazism and the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology, 0.91

00:54:37.920 it's a victimhood ideology. 1.00

00:54:39.460 Correct. It's going back to a glorious past when things were greater. When there was a great German identity, then the Germans were great. Hitler's project was that. We are victims of the economic crisis. We are victims of the migrants controlling everything. We are victims of Americanization. Muslim Brothers say the same thing. We're victims. We've got to go back to the glorious days as they imagined them to be.

00:55:08.020 and you have the solution and you have the final solution

00:55:10.960 that's a great point, I hadn't thought about that

00:55:12.840 the solution, yeah 0.98

00:55:14.580 that's a great point, the final solution is what the Nazis 0.96

00:55:16.940 called it, the Muslim

00:55:19.120 Brotherhood calls it, al-Islam huwa al-hal 0.96

00:55:21.020 Islam is the solution 0.98

00:55:22.540 al-hal, the solution, the only solution 0.99

00:55:25.160 one of the beauties I find 0.99

00:55:27.100 about the Quran is that it doesn't talk in its total 0.74

00:55:29.080 terms, for example the Quran always

00:55:31.080 says, you know, we guide you to a straight

00:55:35.080 path, again and again

00:55:36.840 you know, it's the indefinite article, a straight path. The Muslim Brotherhood goes for the path, 0.99

00:55:42.460 the solution that's totalitarian, maximalist. It's a great point, the solution and the final 1.00

00:55:48.840 solution. Because there'll be a lot of people who are listening to this, Ed, who in the UK mainly,

00:55:55.000 or in other countries as well, and they'll be like, Ed, you're making great points. But why is

00:56:00.420 a lot of Muslim people in the UK don't come out and openly criticise and condemn this ideology. 0.96

00:56:09.140 Because the moment they do, you will have members of the House of Lords now,

00:56:13.120 at least eight members of Parliament now, large sections of the British media, as well as people

00:56:18.860 in mosques condemn the potential of someone coming up and taking a voice against the Muslim

00:56:25.940 Brotherhood's ideologues in Britain. You'll be attacked as being a sellout. You'll be attacked 0.63

00:56:33.100 as being, you know, all kinds of racial terms are used. And then, and I speak from personal

00:56:39.220 experience, they sue you. They come after your assets. They target your family members. You

00:56:44.180 become a pariah. And, you know, inside mosques, you're lumpooned as being against the community

00:56:52.280 again, the Muslim community, which I just think is total nonsense because why should I be,

00:56:59.480 again from personal experience, why do I feel much more at home now among Muslims here in America 1.00

00:57:05.240 or among Muslims in today's Egypt, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Turkey, Kuwait, countries I visit, 0.90

00:57:14.040 totally at home because of this position against the Muslim Brotherhood. But the moment I'm in the 0.71

00:57:18.280 the UK, and I criticise the Muslim Brotherhood, suddenly online and physically I have fingers 0.95

00:57:23.760 pointing at me saying, you're a sellout. I mean, what am I selling out to? UK is my country,

00:57:29.620 the West is my inheritance, and our Arab friends are both family and allies of us, and Islam is

00:57:37.460 our inheritance. What am I selling out to? Because the political ideology is so deeply ingrained.

00:57:43.300 And it's also the victimhood point you made earlier, Francis, that, you know, we can only

00:57:48.580 vote Labour or Green and, you know, to be totally blunt, it's a racism of low expectations.

00:57:57.080 This is your place, know your place, and stick to it.

00:58:03.120 This is who you vote for, this is your narrative, this is what we expect you to say, this is

00:58:07.180 who you must protest against, these are the riots that you must participate in.

00:58:11.280 If you defy any of that, how dare you?

00:58:13.640 We will call you a sellout and we will call you a government stooge. 1.00

00:58:17.520 And that's the kind of pathetic, ugly, low, shambolic, 0.99

00:58:22.620 flawed language that's thrown around rather than dealing with ideas 1.00

00:58:27.000 and the consequences of the Muslim Brotherhood ideology

00:58:30.060 both in the UK and further afield. 0.65

00:58:31.940 But I'd go further than that and I'd say that the ideologues

00:58:35.300 of the Muslim Brotherhood, many of whom dominate Muslim discourse 0.52

00:58:39.760 in the UK, don't want to see a Britain that is free, don't want to see that a Britain 0.95

00:58:45.440 that upholds this classical liberal inheritance, want to see a Britain that is weak, and, you

00:58:51.700 know, Keir Starmer's Britain.

00:58:52.980 They are happier with a Britain that will not take positions on Iran's nuclear program.

00:58:58.020 They are happier with a Britain that will not condemn Hamas and will not participate 0.52

00:59:02.580 in attempts to obliterate Hamas.

00:59:04.340 they are happier with a britain that is at odds with the united states of america and at odds with

00:59:10.900 other other powers that are taking a different direction so i i just think it's a you know

00:59:15.260 people may not articulate it in such terms but that's the impulse and that's the feeling

00:59:19.660 choosing to spend an hour or two listening to a serious conversation rather than scrolling a feed

00:59:25.700 of hot takes says something about how a person thinks it says they would rather try to understand

00:59:31.160 something properly, then have a quick opinion about it. The same distinction applies to the

00:59:35.920 great books. Hillsdale College runs a free online course called Great Books 101 Ancient to Medieval.

00:59:42.240 It is taught by actual Hillsdale professors and it takes you through Homer, Sophocles, Virgil,

00:59:46.680 Augustine, Dante and Chaucer. Not as a cultural tourism exercise, but as a genuine introduction

00:59:52.040 to the arguments these works were written to make and why these arguments still hold. You,

00:59:57.480 the trigonometry audience, are not generally the type to accept the summary in place of the real

01:00:02.300 thing. The same logic applies to the books that built the West. If you want to understand what

01:00:06.920 Homer actually argued or why Augustine's thinking still underpins half of Western political

01:00:11.800 philosophy, you should read them, not a listicle about them. This course is the right place to

01:00:17.600 start. Worth knowing is that Hillsdale is releasing a full course on Homer's Odyssey this July.

01:00:23.020 Great Books 101 is a natural place to start before that lands.

01:00:27.380 Go to hillsdale.edu slash trigger to enroll.

01:00:30.960 It's totally free.

01:00:32.440 That's hillsdale.edu slash trigger.

01:00:35.720 And you yourself are obviously an example of something that I think anyone who's paying attention will see,

01:00:41.140 which is, you know, in your book Among the Mosques, you went around mosques around Britain

01:00:45.480 and you reported effectively what you heard and saw there.

01:00:48.400 And many of the things you saw were positive.

01:00:50.180 And you also reported on the things that you saw were negative.

01:00:53.020 And now you live in America and this seems to happen to basically anyone who says anything

01:00:58.660 critical about this issue, they end up moving to another country.

01:01:03.480 Because you feel yourself out of place.

01:01:06.340 You feel yourself that you no longer welcome Constantine.

01:01:09.840 And I remember a journalist from the BBC phoning me saying, you know, that they read Among

01:01:19.380 mosques and they want to discuss it, would I come on?" And I said, sure, anything to amplify

01:01:23.620 where Britain is heading, because I'm genuinely worried about partitions. I'm worried about

01:01:28.340 entire areas saying, oh, this is only a Muslim area. You know, you who are not Muslim can't 1.00

01:01:33.540 enter. And I'm genuinely worried about the prospects of this becoming an armed conflict 0.92

01:01:39.140 in parts. I mean, 15, 20 years from now, that's where we're heading. So that was the conclusion.

01:01:44.420 and yet among the mosques as a book could not be discussed on the BBC because a very prominent

01:01:50.580 Muslim broadcaster vetoed the interview saying I won't interview him because what he's going to

01:01:56.740 be saying brings harm to the Muslim community and so I find that approach to be troubling 0.99

01:02:02.020 you put the community above your country and that's not the way of being Muslim your loyalties 0.81

01:02:08.580 to your nation state and you put the country first and then you put whatever community you belong to

01:02:13.940 and we belong to multiple communities, plural, you know.

01:02:18.420 As a professor here at Georgetown and Columbia,

01:02:21.220 I have my kind of academic community,

01:02:22.740 but I have other book communities.

01:02:24.900 And sure, my faith community is central to that,

01:02:27.220 but it's not my first line of public defense.

01:02:32.020 So that's why I think, you know,

01:02:33.380 what's going on in Britain is really worrying,

01:02:35.060 that you can't take a position on this

01:02:36.740 without being cast as an outsider

01:02:39.300 in your own so-called community,

01:02:41.380 which bolsters the problem.

01:02:42.900 And I think you say it bolsters the problem. I also think it bolsters the response too,

01:02:47.380 because what you end up having is, I think the truth is, nobody wants to say it out loud, but

01:02:52.740 much of the anti-immigration sentiment in Europe is not actually about immigration at all. I mean,

01:02:59.540 no one complains about Ukrainians, no one complains about Hong Kongers, no one really

01:03:04.740 seems to care about that. There is a hardening against Islam in Europe. That's undeniable,

01:03:11.700 I think. And I think it's probably partly because people who articulate the point of view that you

01:03:16.180 articulate can't exist and be heard there. And so what we hear from are the people who have a Muslim 1.00

01:03:23.280 Brotherhood style extremist worldview. Yeah. And therefore, there's a response to that. 0.70

01:03:28.560 The response is, you know, the ordinary people are sick and tired across the UK of being told

01:03:33.420 that your kids in a school full of Muslims can't draw, you know, human images because it's somehow

01:03:41.220 forbidden that in parts of the NHS that you've got to cover your arms. And if you're a nurse, 0.99

01:03:47.540 you can't show parts because it's frowned upon that the postman is a Muslim postman.

01:03:53.700 The bank is dominated by Muslim clerks. The Uber drivers are all Muslims. And parts of Dewsbury

01:04:01.540 and Oldham and Manchester and Keithley and East London and Luton, these are prominent parts of

01:04:08.980 the uk they've changed they've changed beyond recognition you know my ancestors came you know

01:04:15.620 from originally from yemen to india from india my father came to the uk in 1953 and he didn't want

01:04:21.860 to come and see a uk changed he came to the uk for what it was and he wanted to see the uk retain

01:04:28.020 its own identity with its pluralism and its beautiful countryside my friends now you know

01:04:33.620 both family in yemen family in saudi arabia family in the uae are all terrified of coming

01:04:38.260 to those parts of the UK and terrified of going to London because they no longer feel safe. 0.74

01:04:42.260 So this concern about immigration, both legal and illegal, that then consolidates Islamism,

01:04:48.900 isn't just a concern shared by ordinary British folk in pubs and where else. It's just

01:04:55.540 lots of Muslims and others are feeling the same problem, that this is not the country

01:04:59.540 that we want for our children. Someone showed the image of the Prophet Muhammad

01:05:04.820 from Charlie Hebdo magazine as as an illustration as a teaching point and that poor teacher has

01:05:09.860 been in hiding for the last five years and how is that possible that uh showing a news agenda

01:05:17.140 a news item leads to a you know a pupil talking about it in at home in passing and then their

01:05:24.260 parents organize mass demonstrations um the problem now is worse than it is in Pakistan

01:05:30.100 so I was just going to say and one of the interesting things about that the school is

01:05:33.380 called Batley Grammar School, for those people who want to research it, is the education union

01:05:38.340 refused to support him or get involved in any way, which just demonstrates the culture of fear.

01:05:44.100 That's tens of thousands of members represented by this union, and that will just spread further

01:05:49.980 and further in the years to come. But I don't mean to be monocausal, but this is an effect,

01:05:59.660 and the cause here is the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology of separatism, of confrontation, 0.94

01:06:04.860 of supremacism, of not wanting to integrate, of not wanting to be loyal to the nation states,

01:06:10.380 and interpreting the Sharia to be different from, for example, you know, one of the greatest Muslim

01:06:15.180 scholars of our age. Two come to mind, you know, one is Sheikh Abdullah bin Bayyah, who's the

01:06:20.540 Mufti of the United Arab Emirates, who's a prominent French-speaking, philosophically inclined

01:06:25.740 jurist. And then there is, you know, a younger Muslim scholar called Dr. Muhammad bin Abdul

01:06:32.580 Karim Al-Isa, leader of the Muslim World League, heads up 57 Muslim countries out of Mecca.

01:06:38.520 Now, Sheikh Abdul Karim Al-Isa has again and again, you know, talked about the importance 0.61

01:06:42.720 of respecting Auschwitz. He's been to Auschwitz. He's talked about the importance of Muslims

01:06:47.960 recognizing the Holocaust and moving away from the extremism that the Muslim Brotherhood 0.99

01:06:52.220 enforces on us. If more Muslim schools and Muslims were to embrace the worldview of 0.90

01:06:58.520 Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul Karim al-Isa or Sheikh bin Baya, who talks about the Sharia in the

01:07:02.760 following terms, he says that wherever the Sharia, there's basically freedom of conscience,

01:07:07.700 freedom to worship, freedom to own property, that you're physically secure, and you know who your

01:07:12.380 family members are, you know, you have, they call it Nasa bin Arabic, that's Sharia. By that 0.80

01:07:17.840 definition we already have sharia in england we don't need to be wanting to change laws and wanting

01:07:24.480 to change the customs the arabs have a beautiful approach we call it you know the customs of a

01:07:29.200 country you don't change it you maintain the customs and traditions and culture of a country

01:07:33.280 which is earth you don't drink alcohol okay go and have an orange juice in the pub but but however

01:07:40.680 hard it must be for some muslims to accept we have to recognize the you know the flexibility

01:07:46.480 within Islam that there was, you know, a Muslim interpretation that drinking, you know, Ibn

01:07:52.420 Sina famously, a great Muslim medical practitioner and philosopher, used to drink. And some of

01:07:57.720 the Muslims say that is Ibn Sina's position. I'm not saying we should go and drink, but

01:08:01.520 I'm just saying that flexibility exists. The Ottomans were famous on spirits. To this day,

01:08:06.900 you go to Turkey, even at the highest levels of the so-called Islamist government, people

01:08:11.680 are drinking spirits uh so there's a beer drinking culture in mainstream turkey to this day 0.81

01:08:17.760 so why do british muslims have to have to snigger and dismiss either ibn sina or the turks or a more

01:08:24.240 flexible approach to islam from shaykh bin baya or shaykh hamdul karim and other big luminaries in 0.64

01:08:28.960 the muslim world and say we are going to do what's been working in the villages of pakistan 0.97

01:08:33.840 and we're going to impose the villages of pakistan on the rest of the country and with 1.00

01:08:38.640 With that, we're going to bring the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and further radicalise our younger generation. 0.97

01:08:45.060 And that's the worst combination you've got there, you know, the remotest parts of Pakistan combined with the extremism of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. 0.99

01:08:52.460 Well, that's a very interesting point, because as I'm listening to you talk, Ed, the ideology obviously is the main part, but it's also we need to discuss the cultural element of this. 0.98

01:09:02.940 For instance, we saw with grooming gangs, it's predominantly a cultural phenomenon.

01:09:07.600 So how much of this is ideology and how much of this is cultures that we've imported from places like Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc?

01:09:15.660 Yes, the grooming gang thing just beggars belief. I just don't understand it. I really don't. But

01:09:23.100 I'll say two things. When I was in some of those towns in the north in Rotherham and parts of

01:09:29.260 Manchester, and I met well-meaning white working class people that had seen their young daughters, 0.94

01:09:37.500 nieces, taken away and groomed and then used as sex objects, they would raise that with me.

01:09:45.660 And I put it in the book because my job isn't to filter.

01:09:49.500 My job is to actually tell what I saw up there.

01:09:53.380 My publishers said, we can't put this in the book because it's too explosive.

01:09:57.900 It's too dangerous.

01:09:58.900 It'll be interpreted as racist.

01:10:01.420 So that was taken out of among the mosques because the publishing elite in London thought

01:10:08.820 that was just too insensitive, although that's what was discussed by people I met in some of

01:10:16.200 those towns. The second point is, again, I know viewers in London will have, or the UK more widely

01:10:23.400 will have a kind of instinctive bad feeling in saying this, but we have to be true to what's

01:10:28.840 true. When I raised this with imams in mosques, there was one particular imam at a mosque in

01:10:36.500 Bradford who said to me that local police officers had asked him to raise this issue

01:10:44.220 in the congregation and say, taxi drivers or Uber drivers, if you are giving a lift to a young girl

01:10:54.500 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, late at night after she's drunk, don't make a move on her, don't disrespect

01:11:00.560 protect her, take her home, treat her as a child, you know, and asking the imam to say

01:11:07.500 all of that.

01:11:08.500 The imam said, I can't say that.

01:11:10.840 And then the police's request was, well, why not?

01:11:13.960 Because it's kind of safety and health issue and child protection issues.

01:11:17.620 He said, because, you know, most of my congregation who are drivers and security guards have repeatedly 0.94

01:11:24.620 said to me that these girls are hitting on them, that these girls wear miniskirts, that

01:11:28.380 these girls are drunk, and these girls want the companionship of these men late at night,

01:11:32.860 and therefore, if I'm seen to be siding with the girls against my congregation, my own

01:11:37.820 job is at risk.

01:11:39.500 And I just thought that was, you know, yes, sure it's weak, sure it's flawed, sure it's

01:11:44.340 irrational, sure it's illogical, but the fact that he couldn't say it, nor could the authorities

01:11:48.460 protect him for saying it, and the fear that he had from his drivers, but also the justification

01:11:53.100 from the drivers, oh, they're asking for it.

01:11:57.640 my only two observations. I mean, I just don't understand that culture enough to be able to say

01:12:01.080 how you could, as a father of two daughters, how can you get yourself into that sick position?

01:12:10.760 I have students who are now 18 to 21, 25. You just see them as daughters and children.

01:12:17.240 So I can't get into that head, I'm afraid, to be able to answer that question.

01:12:20.040 Well, what it does raise is the issue we've been tiptoeing around this entire time, 0.77

01:12:25.240 which is the big debate that I outlined at the beginning, and it's raging in the Muslim world

01:12:33.000 as much as in Europe and increasingly in the United States, which is, is there a difference

01:12:39.160 between Islam and Islamism? And you've laid out the case that the difference is vast, actually,

01:12:45.640 and the overwhelming majority of Muslims don't subscribe to this view. There's been huge battles.

01:12:49.880 And, you know, one of the things people always say, kind of from a woke perspective is, well,

01:12:55.540 it's not a Muslim problem because, look, most of the victims of Islamic terrorism are Muslim. 0.80

01:12:59.940 And you explain why, because they're actually resisting this ideology. 0.84

01:13:04.140 There are also other people who will say, well, Gadzai is a good example, for example.

01:13:09.000 He's a former guest of the show and he's a very smart man who will say, well, was...

01:13:14.800 And I think Douglas, who you referred to as a former friend.

01:13:17.880 I hope that relationship isn't entirely severed, but, you know, we won't get into that, who

01:13:23.340 will say, well, was Muhammad an Islamist or was he a moderate Muslim?

01:13:29.680 You know, he was a warlord. 0.97

01:13:31.140 He took slaves.

01:13:32.520 He married the wives of the people that he killed, etc. 0.98

01:13:37.380 And so is someone following his example and some of the verses in the Quran that advocate 0.81

01:13:46.400 for violence that advocate for these things is he a true muslim or is he perverting the the faith of

01:13:53.520 islam and that seems to me the really central part of this discussion because obviously if you take

01:14:01.260 that view then in a country with a large muslim population what do you do likewise if you take

01:14:08.520 the view that you're advocating for then it immediately creates a whole different set of

01:14:14.600 policy prescriptions. So what do you say to people who say, well, someone who follows the example and

01:14:19.980 the words of the Prophet Muhammad is not going to end up in your position. They're going to end up 0.93

01:14:23.320 in the Muslim Brotherhood position. Yeah. That's a great question. And if I may take the liberty 0.99

01:14:28.560 of saying next time we meet, I should have a book out on this very subject. Look forward to it.

01:14:33.080 Because my next book is focused on the life of the Prophet and tackling these very, very important

01:14:39.520 and consequential questions that you put forth. So allow us to leave the details of tackling this

01:14:45.440 head-on. I'm not shying away from it, because I think it's very, very important. And we've got

01:14:49.840 to understand that in its time, in its context, and make our own decisions. But I say this,

01:14:55.360 there's nothing that all of the scholarly references I gave you, whether it's Sheikh

01:15:01.120 Mohammed bin Abdul Karim Al Isa or Sheikh bin Bayya, or Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed of the UAE,

01:15:06.480 or Shah Abdullah bin Zayed of the UAE, who's pioneered in recent years this debate in diplomatic

01:15:14.160 and public intellectual circles, or indeed the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Notice

01:15:20.400 how they're all called Mohammed. And I go by Ed, but that's short for Mohammed too. So I like to

01:15:27.920 think that all of us and most Muslims around the world, our life and my defense of classical

01:15:34.160 liberalism and pluralism is motivated entirely by the life of the prophet muhammad there's nothing

01:15:39.280 i say or i believe or i do takes away from my allegiance to understanding him and his loyalty

01:15:46.000 to understanding moses jesus and so on but again as i say we should discuss this at greater depth

01:15:52.080 and greater detail once the next book comes out which is focused on this crux um and we will but

01:15:58.080 Can you give us a little bit here? Because, I mean, like I say, the Prophet Muhammad

01:16:06.160 was a warlord. Is that fair? I take issue with the term. I think he 1.00

01:16:11.280 was fighting defensive wars. He took the Jesus approach for 10 years of his life in Mecca. 0.72

01:16:22.560 He was persecuted. His followers were killed. He was tortured. His family members were expelled

01:16:27.520 into Abyssinia, and he didn't respond. And then he moved to Medina. Again, he's not violent.

01:16:33.600 And then the tribes in Mecca, and there were 14 major Jewish tribes of which two Jewish tribes

01:16:40.400 turned against him, allied themselves with the pagans of Mecca, and they mount an attack,

01:16:46.000 an attempt to assassinate him, to kill him. And by then, he'd survived 12 different assassination

01:16:50.720 attempts. So forgive me if I justify the fact that he then said, we're going to fight back.

01:16:56.240 you know after years of not fighting back we're not a passive people if we're attacked we fight

01:17:01.280 back and that was his response he said we will fight back and when he fights back he warns his

01:17:05.600 people don't poison a whale don't kill women don't kill children don't take down palm trees

01:17:13.920 fight those who fight you and that's the verse in the quran you know fight them wherever you

01:17:19.120 find them attacking you. Don't attack innocents. So there are rules of engagement. So I just don't

01:17:25.520 think calling him a warlord or Gad Saad's argument are actually, you know, fully reflective of the

01:17:30.640 truth. And for people like Gad Saad, I say that these are people who don't take their Judaism or 0.76

01:17:35.760 their Shabbat seriously. They have a problem with their Judaism. And I think there's some projection

01:17:39.840 going on there that, you know, Judaism, Zionism, you know, Jewishness, Shabbat, it's all the same. 0.92

01:17:45.440 So we'll just apply this mangled, mixed up approach to other faiths and say, 0.93

01:17:50.880 they're just behaving like Moses and they're just wrong. I disagree with that worldview. And it's

01:17:55.200 going to get complicated and we might have a very big disagreement on this issue, but I think

01:17:59.600 we've got to discuss this. So every condition that the Prophet Muhammad gave for whether it's

01:18:05.920 fighting or whether it's marrying, and I also don't think he married Aisha and she wasn't seven,

01:18:12.480 she wasn't nine the evidence suggests that she was much older and i go through all of this and

01:18:17.360 i'm researching this as we as we speak so i just don't think that um those caricatures against the

01:18:23.440 prophet and and therefore by extension saying two billion muslims are somehow supporters of

01:18:30.720 that kind of figure who is described in the quran as mercy unto mankind um he goes i mean his wife

01:18:38.320 is jewish safia one of his wives is jewish so he has a son called ibrahim named after abraham

01:18:45.120 and so there are hundreds of examples to the contrary um so you don't have to agree with me

01:18:50.560 but you can say that there is another interpretation and then there is another way of being and i think

01:18:54.480 that's hard to refute um and for people like god saad and douglas murray if they want to conflate

01:18:59.760 islam and islamism that's their prerogative but and in a free world they're able to do that but

01:19:05.840 But the danger in that is you end up making two billion innocent Muslims, your enemies. 0.62

01:19:10.700 We make the threat much bigger than it actually is. 0.99

01:19:13.800 And we take on 57 Muslim nation states and say, you're all part of the problem. 1.00

01:19:18.380 Whereas, as we discussed during this conversation, it's actually the Emiratis and others who are the spearhead to saying, 0.84

01:19:25.240 the West has a problem with the Muslim Brotherhood. 0.77

01:19:27.620 And we've got to deal with the problem of what it is. 0.92

01:19:30.120 Islamism, Muslim Brotherhood ideology from Al-Qaeda to Hamas and the Brotherhood included,

01:19:35.040 and not ordinary Muslims that include, you know, you take a pick of ordinary Muslims,

01:19:42.260 I don't know, Nadia Hussain, the household baker to prominent football players, Mo Salah, yeah,

01:19:52.260 and others.

01:19:53.020 So I just think, you know, it's up to us to be sensible about this.

01:19:56.080 Yeah, I think it's really important.

01:19:57.320 And I'm only asking this question for the same reason that you articulated earlier,

01:20:01.320 which is we have to be true about what's true, right?

01:20:04.120 And I'm putting to you, I am very much actually on your side.

01:20:07.800 I grew up in Uzbekistan for part of my life.

01:20:10.740 And, you know, Soviet Muslim countries are a little bit different.

01:20:13.120 But, you know, you go there and you see the extremism isn't tolerated there.

01:20:17.720 And so they don't have a problem. 0.95

01:20:19.400 Now, I mean, the advantage a lot of Muslim countries have is they are authoritarian regimes. 0.99

01:20:24.120 So they can be pretty hard line about things like freedom of speech. 1.00

01:20:27.640 For example, they don't have freedom of speech. 0.69

01:20:29.100 If you want to preach extremism in a mosque, you're not going to be allowed to do that. 0.93

01:20:32.740 We've tried democracy in Gaza, in Iran, Tunisia, even in Kuwait. 0.99

01:20:40.680 The result was always the Muslim Brotherhood. 1.00

01:20:42.780 And that's why I think countries such as the UAE and others that, A, I wouldn't classify 0.96

01:20:47.580 as authoritarian, but B, that want to open up their countries more to a classically liberal 0.83

01:20:51.980 place, want to see the Muslim Brotherhood problem gone. 0.51

01:20:54.920 Germany could not hold its elections for as long as there was an active Nazi party.

01:20:58.940 That party had to be banned, and now we have free and fair elections in Germany. 0.81

01:21:03.760 I think the same applies. 1.00

01:21:05.300 We've got to remove the Muslim Brotherhood threat, which is being encouraged in the West, 0.93

01:21:08.960 and they then say to Arab and Muslim countries, 0.83

01:21:10.840 well, why don't you have elections, and why don't you have the centrist?

01:21:13.320 I'm not saying the UAE needs to become a democracy tomorrow.

01:21:16.980 What I'm saying is that this issue is easier to deal with in a non-democratic country. 0.96

01:21:23.900 But the problem for us in the West is we now have a significant population of Islamists. 0.95

01:21:30.260 Yes. 1.00

01:21:30.840 And we are democracies.

01:21:32.460 Yes.

01:21:32.880 And that makes us uniquely vulnerable to this problem because we cannot take, by our standards, fairly drastic measures that seem to be required to deal with this problem.

01:21:45.280 Do you see what I'm saying?

01:21:46.020 I do and I don't.

01:21:47.100 I do in European countries.

01:21:48.620 And I think it's, I agree, it's going to be tough.

01:21:51.020 But if we don't deal with it now, it's going to be tougher.

01:21:53.260 Right.

01:21:54.260 Impossible, some might say.

01:21:55.260 Yeah.

01:21:56.260 If it's impossible, then Europe's finished.

01:21:58.260 Yes.

01:21:59.260 And to save Europe, we've got to deal with this.

01:22:01.260 And I don't agree with you because I see here in the US a greater willingness to address

01:22:06.700 this problem.

01:22:08.080 Whatever misgivings we may have about the Trump administration, it's actively gone out,

01:22:12.260 studied the problems, consulted experts, and identified the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist

01:22:17.120 organization now in multiple jurisdictions in Sudan and elsewhere, but it will also

01:22:22.700 target the Muslim Brotherhood and its operations in Texas and in Florida, and it may move to other

01:22:27.180 parts of the country. So what's the difference between the US and the UK? It's one of political

01:22:34.300 will. No. Go ahead. It's population size, amount of land, the types of Muslims that you have here

01:22:43.580 are different. You have a much more middle class Muslim population. I can agree with all that,

01:22:48.220 Sure. Okay, that's fair.

01:22:50.320 So all these things really, really matter.

01:22:52.380 That's fair.

01:22:52.800 And even so, as we sit here recording this,

01:22:55.820 this episode will go out sometime after we've recorded.

01:22:58.660 In the time that we've been here on this trip,

01:23:00.820 there have been a significant number of Islamist terrorist attacks

01:23:04.880 in the United States.

01:23:06.240 They're not being covered by the national media

01:23:08.140 in the way that I certainly think they should be.

01:23:10.740 But the point I'm trying to make to you is

01:23:12.660 you have a much better environment for dealing with this issue

01:23:15.960 and nonetheless, you have a giant problem, and it will grow.

01:23:20.880 It may, oh, I hope it won't grow.

01:23:23.360 Well, why wouldn't it grow?

01:23:24.640 Because I think, to part of your point, American Muslims are much more integrated.

01:23:29.100 They're much more patriotic.

01:23:30.480 It's easier to be loyal to the Constitution.

01:23:33.320 I mean, in the UK, what are we supposed to be loyal to?

01:23:35.460 Yes, this is a huge problem.

01:23:36.540 The Englishness problem, which you write about in your book, you know, so there is this, you know, how do you become English?

01:23:44.980 What are British, right?

01:23:45.960 anywhere. You've dealt with this, right? The Englishness versus Britishness debate that 0.99

01:23:50.180 keeps coming up. Whereas here, it's actually easier. So that, I think, is a massive bonus

01:23:55.060 on the side of this country. I also think, and I say this as someone who loves England,

01:24:00.760 I just think there's a cynicism in the UK when it comes to liberty or freedom or defense

01:24:06.980 of the realm or the greatness of British history or the potential for what the country can

01:24:12.380 become again. And you see that written all over Keir Starmer's face, right? He's just never quite

01:24:17.380 sure as to what to say and looks like a rabbit caught in the headlines constantly. That doesn't

01:24:22.140 exist here. There's an openness. And so I don't want to give examples of individuals who talked

01:24:30.620 about this, but the point is that there is an optimism and an openness and a willingness to

01:24:34.500 accept others. For those of us who are English speakers by birth, we're at home here. I hope

01:24:40.820 You both feel like that when you're on the streets of New York or further afield.

01:24:43.940 In a way, we just don't in the parts of our own country

01:24:47.080 because of this cynicism and division.

01:24:49.820 So I just think the U.S. isn't, I mean, let's not name him,

01:24:55.760 but a prominent U.K. left-leaning media commentator came to America too,

01:25:01.560 and he went to pray at the Houses of Congress.

01:25:08.240 and while he was on Friday Press he met American Muslims who are in the CIA and who are in the

01:25:14.560 Pentagon and as a leftist person born and raised in the UK he just couldn't make sense of that how

01:25:19.880 how is it you're in the CIA and you're in the Pentagon you serve this country and how could 0.56

01:25:25.680 you be Muslim because for this leftist guy from England being Muslim was a political identity 0.75

01:25:30.460 that I've got to be anti-American and I've got to fight American soldiers and I can't possibly be 0.99

01:25:35.200 the cia because that's my arch enemy but hundreds of muslims are in the cia and thousands serve the 0.99

01:25:41.760 armed forces here and i think that's the success story and you know thousands are in the fbi and

01:25:46.240 elsewhere which which we just don't have in the uk to be able to point to um and i think the

01:25:51.040 americans you know the the non-establishment of religion cause makes it the islamist project

01:25:56.160 just doesn't take off because you're never going to establish your islamism in this country 0.83

01:25:59.920 they just don't want religion at state level, they want it at individual level. 0.98

01:26:05.200 And I also think, to your point, Americans are stronger in dealing with this. 0.95

01:26:10.800 They will kill you, they will take out guns, they will fight you,

01:26:14.640 in a way that I just think in England we're much more reluctant.

01:26:19.360 So here's a question. Let's say Keir Starmer calls you up tomorrow and goes,

01:26:24.880 ed i want you to be the czar to tackle this problem what policies would you implement that

01:26:31.760 would actually help deal with this real world solutions okay firstly kiss armor won't do that

01:26:38.080 but it's a thought experiment we're in the realm of fantasy yeah you're allowed three dragons

01:26:46.800 but to return to the realm of reality where the problem is growing you know if we're looking at

01:26:52.080 three three issues then the first would be to map the mosques because on current trajectories about

01:26:59.680 twenty percent of britain's mosques are controlled by islamists if we're defining islamists as i did

01:27:05.040 now kind of based on the their interpretation of sharia and their definition for a state and

01:27:11.840 their separatism twenty percent of mosques so so you map the mosques and you remove the leadership

01:27:17.120 you confiscate the property you put in place up from other mosques that are much more moderate

01:27:22.080 control of those mosques which sends a serious signal to muslims in the uk as happened in germany 0.96

01:27:27.920 as happened in austria so we have precedent that just because you're a charitable organization 0.95

01:27:32.720 doesn't mean we can't confiscate property because it's advocating nazism jew hatred

01:27:38.800 removal of the british government and supporting terrorism abroad right so that that should not be

01:27:43.280 be complicated. That's the first thing we should be doing, the mosques. Secondly, there are 50% 1.00

01:27:48.300 of the existing mosques that support blasphemy laws. In other words, you can't insult the

01:27:54.940 Prophet Muhammad in the way that you just asked me a question. I might have had an internal reaction

01:27:59.300 that was uncomfortable because that's not how I see my prophet. But you're free and at total

01:28:04.700 liberty to ask that question however you wish to. And I am at liberty to defend it. And that's

01:28:11.020 that's the limit right that you know you can't ask for my killing i can't ask for your killing 0.90

01:28:15.340 um that's the liberal consensus that we have but in 50 of the mosques there is this attitude of 0.85

01:28:21.100 you can't insult the prophet if we do we will kill you and that's why this teacher in battle 0.84

01:28:25.860 is under hiding those mosques whether we impose higher taxes or whether we remove the imams or 0.80

01:28:30.960 whether we prosecute the leaders of those mosques have got to be um uh confronted as though this is 0.60

01:28:36.880 not the attitude in 50% of our mosques in the UK that we will tolerate. And these are not Islamist

01:28:43.140 mosques, but this is a wider creeping problem that also leads to terrorism. And if I said this 0.66

01:28:47.540 in the UK, I would have physical attacks on my well-being for just even highlighting this threat

01:28:51.720 because I'd be betraying community secrets. But my interest is in the country and in the

01:28:55.720 civilizations and not in small... And the third and the final one, which we've been touching on

01:29:02.060 repeatedly, is that Muslim Brotherhood offshoots, banks, there are two banks associated with them,

01:29:08.560 not major banks, but more localized banks, charity organizations, schools, television

01:29:15.400 platforms, individuals have all got to be identified, prosecuted, shut down, banned,

01:29:21.840 their bank accounts suspended, the charitable status removed. Now, make life hard enough so that

01:29:30.000 a younger, and this is going to take 10 to 15 years, the younger Muslims see that is not our 0.99

01:29:35.640 pathway. Now, we don't want to be on the receiving end of being up against our own country, our own

01:29:41.940 civilization, the lands that have given us birth and protected us. Right now, if you're a Muslim 1.00

01:29:46.420 Brotherhood ideologue, and if you're in those categories of the mosque leaders that I mentioned,

01:29:50.260 you're a hero. You're organizing weekly protests. You're part of a global network. You have a

01:29:56.660 message against America, message against Israel, message against your own government.

01:30:00.500 And guess what? You've got the far left with you on the protests every weekend.

01:30:05.980 You're not paying a price. And as long as those sectors are not paying a price,

01:30:10.220 the problem continues to increase. Ed, it's been an absolute pleasure having

01:30:14.560 you on the show. Thank you so much. It's been a really important conversation.

01:30:18.820 Final question is always the same. What's the one thing that we're not talking about

01:30:22.040 we really should be. In my head, I've been thinking about this just because I've been

01:30:29.000 reading lots of Nietzsche, hence that point on willpower, having the political will. Nietzsche

01:30:34.200 touches on this, Hegel's obsessed with this, and the Germans try to identify, but we in the kind of

01:30:41.320 more empirical way of looking at the world don't, which is understanding the spirit,

01:30:45.720 understanding souls? And why is there a spirit-led impulse to this arrogance?

01:30:52.040 Why is there a spirit that says we must be superior, we must be better, we must confront?

01:30:57.080 And why is there a spirit or a temperament that's much more conciliatory, that's much more peaceful,

01:31:02.200 which I think was the prophet spirit, which is much more given to coexistence. So that part,

01:31:08.200 call it psychology, call it the psyche, we don't touch on because we're not comfortable

01:31:13.880 discussing it, and there's no way of us measuring it, so we don't go there. But I think behind

01:31:18.840 everything we're discussing is a certain spirit of how are we to be, is a certain psyche.

01:31:24.600 And I see this in Arabia, you know, with some of the Shu or the leaders of the Arabian countries,

01:31:31.560 you see that they're not just looking at you as an individual, they're actually assessing your

01:31:36.760 psychological state of being, and they're able to x-ray us as individuals and what's going on

01:31:42.840 on in our minds in a way that when we talk to one another, we don't. We're kind of judging

01:31:49.060 each other by what we're saying and what we're doing rather than what we're feeling and what

01:31:52.860 we're being. I think that's something we don't talk about often. How do we elevate our sense

01:31:56.720 of... The closest, I think, is empathy. It's a weak closeness, but it's an attempt at answering

01:32:04.240 your tough question, Francis. Ed, it's been an absolute pleasure. Make sure to join us on

01:32:09.900 substat where we carry on the conversation and you get to ask ed your questions do you think 0.69

01:32:16.040 that the muslim brotherhood has already infiltrated government without doubt two two individuals come

01:32:20.720 to my mind right now and how do you know that ed that they're connected to the muslim brotherhood

01:32:24.280 because the the two individuals i'm referencing i knew them when i was with the muslim brotherhood

01:32:29.360 wow

01:32:39.900 We'll be right back.

TRIGGERnometry - June 17, 2026

Where Islamist Terrorism Really Comes From - Ed Husain

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