#608 - Ali Rizvi

[0] The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night All righty You're looking at something What's going on?

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[5] If you want to fuck with it It's that button right there Awesome yeah The one right below the clock There we go Welcome to my country my friend I know in your country It's Frozen Solid And you escaped came down here did a little drinking last night um maybe um maybe oh no no yeah yes kind of did so i've been drinking lots of water and i was that that's why i was telling you that you know this long podcast was just wondering if i you can absolutely take a pee break do not be intimidated by the long form we're just trying to have a conversation here um you're working on your new book and your new book is entitled the atheist Muslim that's a working title is that's like jumbo shrimp or military intelligence is that a one of those oxymorons it was uh partly uh tongue and cheek right thing and then there's a serious element to it too the tongue and cheek thing is i was i have a friend who's uh she calls herself a feminist Muslim so i'm not going to name her right now oh okay um so i always have fun conversations with her you know she's like sort of nominally religious right and uh you know i was like how can you be a feminist Muslim isn't that like being a meat eating vegetarian or right you know it's a contradiction And she's like, well, no, there's parts of it that I like, parts of it I don't like.

[6] So I just, I mean, she's essentially saying that she cherry picks.

[7] Right.

[8] So I figured, and then, you know, there's other things like there's LGBT Muslims in Toronto.

[9] There's a big community.

[10] Really?

[11] Great people.

[12] Yeah.

[13] Yeah, yeah.

[14] Transgender Muslims.

[15] Transgender Muslims.

[16] Gay and lesbian Muslims.

[17] That's a small crowd.

[18] It's hard to find your peers.

[19] Yeah, it's actually quite sizable.

[20] Really?

[21] Yeah.

[22] Like, wait a mean.

[23] Ten people?

[24] How many transgender Muslims are there?

[25] Oh, I don't know a number.

[26] But they practice.

[27] Yeah, they practice.

[28] They're religious.

[29] They do like Friday prayers and, you know, things like they.

[30] I have a lot of events that go on.

[31] But clearly in the Muslim religion, like homosexuality and, you know, there's a lot of areas of that are looked down upon.

[32] Right.

[33] Right.

[34] So how does one justify that or rationalize that in their head?

[35] I think what's happening is, like, the Muslim community that's in North America, in Canada, the United States, they're a little bit more progressive.

[36] They're sort of going through what all of the other religious groups went through when they came here, is they kind of have, like, you know, the religion part is really more of an identity issue.

[37] Right.

[38] And they have broad beliefs, like they'll believe in God, they'll believe, they'll stick to some traditions.

[39] But, you know, large part of it, like they're integrating pretty well.

[40] It's a very different in Europe, it seems.

[41] Sort of like American Jews, perhaps.

[42] Like a lot of American Jews are not really religious at all.

[43] Like I have a lot of friends that will call themselves Jew.

[44] Like my friend Ari Shafir, clearly an atheist.

[45] But yet, if you talk to him, he'll tell you he's a Jew.

[46] Yeah.

[47] And that was kind of the idea, the title of the book, is it's a jab at the cherry -picking thing.

[48] I was thinking if, you know, you can cherry -pick, you can be a feminist Muslim and LGBT Muslim.

[49] You know, I can cherry pick all, you know, I can cherry pick all the way to non -belief.

[50] Yeah.

[51] I'll keep the things I like.

[52] Like, I love the Ramadan feasts.

[53] I grew up with that.

[54] You know, it's just very communal.

[55] Families get together.

[56] It's great.

[57] The Eid holidays are great.

[58] Tax -exempt status, you know, why not keep that?

[59] But what kind, you only have tax -exempt status if you operate a religion, though, right?

[60] You do, yeah.

[61] I mean, I'm kidding about that.

[62] You can have to operate your own church.

[63] Yeah.

[64] I probably won't be doing that any time soon.

[65] You can do it if you want to.

[66] My friend Alex Gray does that.

[67] A friend Alex, the painter.

[68] Yeah.

[69] He's this amazing psychedelic artist, and he has this organization called the Chapel of the Sacred Mirrors.

[70] And what he essentially does, as done rather, is create his own religion.

[71] And he has tax exempt status, although his, I think, like the state, recognizes it but his town doesn't want to recognize that they want like local taxes and it's it's very interesting it's because people are cool with religions as long as they're really old as long as they're like as soon as you know who made the religion whether it's even Mormonism gets looked down upon because Joseph Smith although he lived in the 1800s everybody there's a historical record of Joseph Smith that's pretty easy to to track yeah whereas you know Scientology is the most made fun of and that is by a science fiction writer in the 1950s.

[72] It's the easiest to track.

[73] It's like, it's right there.

[74] Anything newer than that, you're like, come on, get the fuck out of here.

[75] Like, you can't.

[76] I know, you wouldn't believe it.

[77] Even those older religions, if you brought them back, if they started recently, right, some of the, it's just, you know, when religious people make fun of Scientology and Mormonism, it's always entertaining because, you know, you're talking about, like, well, yeah, angels are real, and Virgin births really happen, but like this fucking Mormon shit, you know, so it's, I know it's it's kind of funny when you look at it I think I saw this comic where there were these two religious groups fighting they're running against each other swords and one of them was screaming two plus two equals five the other one was saying two plus two equals three and we're about to fight about it and that's really what it's like sometimes when you look at it well did you see the the anger from the people that were upset at Neil Tyson Neil deGrasse Tyson for tweeting about Isaac Newton yeah Isaac Newton who was born on December 25th and you know there were there was a Darwin or Newton that was born December 25th was Newton was a Newton yeah and he was he was tweeting about you know this great man being born on this great day and so many fucking religious people got really angry at him although he said nothing negative whatsoever about religion yeah but they're like you know you're shitting on our holiday and it to me sort of highlights what religion is for for a lot of people it's it's a group that you belong to it's a team like i'm a patriots fan yeah you know don't fuck with our team i mean it really does become something like that and when you're talking about american jews or muslims maybe perhaps that don't really follow all of what's in the koran they just decide to cherry pick it's kind of a similar thing you're dealing with it is a similar thing it's probably a good thing i mean that's how people sort of progress forwards right i i i mean You're talking about Jews, and the Old Testament is, you know, we're talking about killing gay people.

[78] Like, Leviticus 2013 says it.

[79] It says, you know, if there's two men and you find them, you know, together in the way that a man should be with a woman, then they'll be put to death.

[80] That's exactly what it says.

[81] But most Jews don't really take that seriously.

[82] They've moved beyond it.

[83] Even, you know, Christians, you know, one of the things I look at is Catholics.

[84] You know, the Pope says you should not use birth control or, you know, obey.

[85] abortion is a bad thing.

[86] The majority of Catholics are, they're pro -choice, you know, they have premarital sex.

[87] They are, you know, they're perfectly fine with all these things.

[88] Do you think the majority are pro -choice?

[89] Over here in the U .S. they are.

[90] Is it, does there like a statistic that proves that?

[91] Yeah, there is.

[92] I don't know the exact number, but the majority of Catholics in the United States are actually pro -choice.

[93] That's interesting, because I would have not thought that was true.

[94] Yeah.

[95] I would have thought that it would probably be, at the very least, 50 -50, but at the very more likely skewing towards pro -life.

[96] No, it's definitely, I mean, they are pro -choice.

[97] And Joe Biden's Catholic, he's practicing Catholic, and he's also pro -choice, big.

[98] He's also an idiot, though.

[99] Yeah.

[100] You know, when we were comics back in the early days.

[101] He's a funny idiot, though.

[102] I mean, it's a...

[103] Yeah.

[104] He is, yeah.

[105] Well, people forget about this about Joe Biden, but, you know, not to...

[106] Everybody makes mistakes, and I'm sure it probably wasn't his fault, but in the 1980s, he was running for president, and he played.

[107] plagiarized a huge chunk of John F. Kennedy's speeches.

[108] Yeah, he did.

[109] And we used to do Joe Biden night at Stitches.

[110] And Joe Biden night would be like we would all go up and try to remember each other's acts.

[111] Like I would try to do my friend's act and he would try to do my act.

[112] We would steal each other's jokes.

[113] It was like an inside thing that we would do on open mic night.

[114] Yeah.

[115] That this guy, I forget who came up with the idea.

[116] But we would call, he was such a known plagiarist that we would call it Joe Biden night.

[117] Yeah, that kind of, I think that was one of the major things that killed his campaign, not the only thing.

[118] Yeah, but now he's the vice president, and it's sort of never brought up.

[119] Yeah, he's, I think he's done, there's a lot of stuff he's done that I think that kind of redeemed him, you know.

[120] Right, but how did that not come up when he was, like, debating Sarah Palin?

[121] It did.

[122] Well, it didn't come up during the debate, but during the campaign, there were people who tried to bring it up.

[123] Yeah.

[124] But I think that just it's been so long, and he had done so much more since then.

[125] like with foreign policy, with the violence against women, legislation, and so on, that people were willing to, you know, let him get passed.

[126] And he has a really strong personal story, too, that he, you know, emphasized.

[127] And so I think he was able to move past that.

[128] It's interesting because a lot of times things like that are real career killers.

[129] And it was as far as, like, him being the actual president president.

[130] Like when people talk about Hillary running for president, no one's talking about Joe Biden running for president.

[131] Have you noticed that?

[132] Like, no one.

[133] No one.

[134] Is he running for president?

[135] No, he's not.

[136] He's not, right?

[137] But he's the vice president for eight fucking years, and no one hates him.

[138] You know, it's not like he's Dan Quail, where everybody's like, get that fucking moron out of office.

[139] He never did, like, even in the other campaigns, whenever he's run, he never really did too well.

[140] I mean, he was running against Obama, too, back in the way.

[141] And then Obama chose him as vice president.

[142] But he, I think he was always in, like, the single digits.

[143] Right, but, I mean, he is the vice president.

[144] He is a vice president.

[145] You would think that that would be like a prime candidate to keep the Democrats in a position of power.

[146] Yeah.

[147] But no, they're looking towards a woman instead.

[148] Yeah.

[149] Like, dude, you're a liability.

[150] It was like Dick Cheney, right?

[151] He was also vice president.

[152] No, nobody.

[153] There's no fucking way he was going to, yeah.

[154] Well, he's probably the most hated vice president ever.

[155] Dick Cheney, like the most despised.

[156] Like, there's some people that supported him for sure, but the people that hated him really fucking hated him.

[157] Yeah.

[158] They did.

[159] There's just such a money trail, you know, pointing him directly to Halliburton and all the, you know, the weapons of mass destruction fiasco and all that shit.

[160] I just think, like, it just seems really dodgy to me. Like, I always feel like there's something under the surface that's just really explosive and evil.

[161] Like, he comes across that way.

[162] Yeah, he definitely doesn't come across warm and compassion and interesting.

[163] Yeah, it's hard to understand a guy like that, especially a guy that's gone through, like, some serious health issues, and it doesn't seem.

[164] to have softened him at all?

[165] Like four heart attacks?

[166] He's got a new heart.

[167] He had a heart transplant, which is insane.

[168] And before the heart transplant, he had some sort of a device that eliminated his pulse.

[169] He didn't have a pulse.

[170] There was some artificial method of pumping blood through his body.

[171] And if you checked his pulse, it didn't exist, which is probably in the Bible somewhere.

[172] You know, a guy who causes the death of millions.

[173] I mean, he's directly connected to the death of it.

[174] least a million people and he doesn't have a pulse yeah that's that's some dark shit yeah that's a hell of a way to articulate it yeah yeah if it's accurate it's accurate i don't know how we got on this but what we're talking about is people that are in groups i mean there's there's good things involved in being a group because it gives you some support and it gives you some feeling of camaraderie and they belong to a social structure right But it's the real issue, though, is groups against other groups, you know, diametrically opposed groups.

[175] Like right now, being a Muslim is a very unpopular thing in a lot of parts of the world.

[176] Yeah.

[177] This Charlie Hebdo thing, this most recent ISIS video where they burn the Jordanian pilot alive.

[178] Yeah, that was just, yeah, that was kind of shaken over hours.

[179] I didn't watch it.

[180] I didn't watch it either.

[181] I've seen it all at this point.

[182] I know what it looks like.

[183] I've seen the beheadings and the assassinations and it's just like, okay, I get it.

[184] There's evil people.

[185] I get it.

[186] But it's just like this is, it's almost like it's, if you were a conspiratorily minded person, if you're the type of person like that believes black helicopters are circling your house every day, taking scans of your phone.

[187] Yeah, I am.

[188] Yeah.

[189] You would say, okay, it's almost like we're creating this monster that's so unbelievable.

[190] horrific and so impossible to feel any sympathy towards that's like you you want them all wiped off the face of the planet it's almost like they have become this so they're so evil and their acts are so horrendous that like it's the perfect instigating weapon like or the perfect method of instigation if you wanted to if you were like an evil dictator or the the evil head of some sort of government and you had this desire to go to war with another country like what you would create would be ISIS you would say all right we need some bullshit CIA propped up organization doesn't it's not real and we need them to be just so heinous so beyond belief that everyone agrees we should go over there and fuck them up yeah I like I totally see the logic of that I don't obviously I don't think that's the case I don't think that's the case either But if it was going to be the case, like, ISIS is, like, the perfect candidate.

[191] Yeah, it's a prototype.

[192] It's, like, that's exactly what you'd want.

[193] Yeah, it's like right out of Hollywood casting, right?

[194] Yeah, yeah.

[195] And, you know, what's, like, this whole idea that they're a fringe and, you know, that they don't have a lot of support.

[196] You know, it is one thing that, yes, they don't represent all Muslims.

[197] Like, they don't even represent, you know, the majority of Muslims and everything.

[198] But, unfortunately, like, I think they have a lot more support than we'd like to believe.

[199] You know, everybody who comes out and says that, you know, they're just like a friend, just a, you know, group of guys who are doing this stuff and nobody really follows them.

[200] That's not true.

[201] Like, there's a lot of support.

[202] I mean, you see it online.

[203] You know, I've talked to people online in Pakistan who are totally in support of ISIS.

[204] It's bizarre.

[205] You know, they are.

[206] Like, they won't go out and commit those acts themselves, but they'll definitely cheer it on.

[207] Well, I'd follow some people online that are in ISIS.

[208] I follow their Twitter accounts.

[209] Yeah.

[210] You know, I don't follow them so, like, they know I'm following them.

[211] I follow them, so I bookmarked their Twitter page and I go back to it.

[212] Yeah.

[213] I'm sneaky like that.

[214] But, I mean, I hate to say this, but they do occasionally have good points.

[215] And one of the good points was after they beheaded one of these guys, I forget which guy was, I think it was a journalist that got beheaded over there.

[216] It was one of the American guys they beheaded.

[217] This guy wrote, one guy losing.

[218] a body part and everyone goes crazy but thousands of people lose their entire lives and no one blinks an eye like thousands I think the way he said it is thousands of people's bodies are blown to bits and and no one blinks an eye yeah that's a tough thing to argue against yeah that's what whenever this kind of thing happens you always have uh you know the sort of the noam chomsky what kind of mindset or you know what what he thinks is that you know You've got us on this side and we're doing all these terrible things and you've got them and they're doing these terrible things.

[219] What's the difference?

[220] Right.

[221] I just, I don't think it's as simple as that.

[222] I mean, I'm not saying that, you know, everything that the U .S. is doing is great and, you know, I'm defending all aspects of American foreign policy.

[223] But if you're going to have that balance, you've got to sort of level the competition.

[224] So, you know, the U .S. has this, you know, the biggest, strongest military in the world, got loads of nuclear weapons and so on.

[225] like if ISIS had all of that how bad would they be and what would they do that's when you really sort of get an idea of the intentions and intentions matter right right so you know they they do what they can and they go all out and they I think that you know like the Yazidis that they killed right or the Christians that they're killing in Mosul or the poor people that the women and the gay people they're throwing off buildings and you know crucifying and stoning to death and these.

[226] are not people who are oil hungry.

[227] They're not people who have been sort of invading their lands or anything like that.

[228] These people have nothing to do with it.

[229] They just have some of their crimes.

[230] They're just Shia.

[231] They have a different belief in a different strain of Islam or their apostates.

[232] You know, they left Islam.

[233] They changed their mind.

[234] Or they're, you know, they're Christian.

[235] They're non -Muslims.

[236] They're infidels who are not going to subscribe to the, you know, the ISIS philosophy.

[237] They're not going to pay that tax, the Jizia that they want them to pay.

[238] So, like, you know, I think that the foreign policy thing is an excuse, specifically for people like ISIS.

[239] It is, like, it helps them recruit people for sure.

[240] It doesn't hurt, but I don't think that that's a primary motive.

[241] What do you think the primary motive is?

[242] I think there's a lot of primary motives.

[243] I think, you know, like the U .S. foreign policy is one thing, too.

[244] But this is actually part of the religious belief.

[245] And you've had Sam Harris here.

[246] You know, he's talked about this as well, like beliefs and behavior.

[247] And most of the time, you know, when they're, you know, when you have an entire world and you're seeing these guys and they're, you know, accurately quoting the Quran.

[248] I mean, there's a couple of verses in the Quran say behead disbelievers, you know, 812, you know, you can Google that, like Surah 8, verse 12 and 13, 474 is another one that says, you know, behead disbelievers.

[249] So they actually quote this stuff and they say Allaha Akbar when they do it.

[250] And they call themselves the Islamic State.

[251] And they don't just target, you know, sort of people who are involved in U .S. foreign policy or, you know, anything like that.

[252] They actually target poor people, you know, Yazidis, minority groups, Shias, you know, gay people who are in Iraq and Syria.

[253] And that's what they do.

[254] And this doesn't believe it.

[255] So it's a lot more complicated.

[256] I think it is part of the religious belief.

[257] And one thing you're going to see when you go to their Twitter accounts is that they genuinely believe.

[258] what they're doing is right.

[259] Well, when you're supported by the religion that you've sworn allegiance to and sworn your life to, when you're supported by the text, yeah.

[260] It really, I mean, that's sometimes all you need to justify horrendous, horrible acts.

[261] You just need to know that you're doing it in the name of God.

[262] Well, that's, the text is the religion in this case.

[263] Like the one thing that's universal, you know, people say Muslims are not a monolith, and they're not.

[264] I mean, there's 1 .6 billion Muslims in the world, so they're obviously not all the same.

[265] The ones in Indonesia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, they're all very different from each other.

[266] But the one thing they all have in common is the Quran and belief in the Prophet Muhammad.

[267] So the Quran, again, you know, has different interpretations, but it's supposed to be an immutable text.

[268] And unlike a lot of Christians and Jews who don't believe that they're, like, you know, like with Christianity, If you say that the Bible is a literal word of God, you're part of, I think, just 30 % of the U .S. population.

[269] I think it is 30 % that is considered fundamentalists where they believe that it's a literal word of God.

[270] In Islam among Muslims, among the vast majority of Muslims, that is a fundamental requirement to believe that it is the literal word of God.

[271] Like the idea of scriptural inerrancy, that anything in the Quran, it can't be wrong.

[272] so you'll have the more progressive people who try to justify it they'll never say well you know that verse in the Quran I don't believe in it I don't think it's right they'll try to justify it by saying at that time it was okay or it's being mistranslated or the word kill actually means embrace you know whatever it is they look at the Arabic roots you know there's find other justifications for it but unfortunately to the rest of us who can read it now you can Google it in all kinds of different translations and interpretations and, you know, commentaries, and you just find it online.

[273] And when you see the words, the words are what they are.

[274] I want to be real clear here that I'm not justifying what they're doing or not trying to exonerate them from the horrific nature of what their crimes are.

[275] But what I was going to get to was that is that dissimilar, this belief that you can kill people because of, of the Quran because they're not following the word of the Quran, is that dissimilar than this belief that you can launch drones into these non -specific areas where this idea of surgical targets is pretty preposterous at this point.

[276] When you look at the number of people, the overwhelming number of people that are innocent, that are killed by drones versus the number of people that are guilty, if you look at that and you look at this being sanctioned by the United States government, the Constitution, our ideas about law and justice and war, those are also just things that are written down on paper.

[277] I mean, they might be less ideologically based and more state -based or more based on the idea of protecting our nation as opposed to doing the will of God.

[278] But it is one nation under God, ultimately.

[279] This is, you know, this is what we say when we pledge allegiance now.

[280] since the 1950s, since they were worried about the big communist scare.

[281] You know, it used to be one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all, right?

[282] Yeah.

[283] Now it's one nation under God.

[284] That was all because of communism.

[285] That's when they didn't, most folks don't even realize.

[286] That wasn't even in there until the 1950s.

[287] Yeah, it was a reaction to like the, the red scare.

[288] But this is a justification, the horrific acts that are committed in, in war, nonspecific targets i mean and when i say non -specific obviously they're trying to get someone that's in a place but you know when you're shooting a fucking missile where you know a guy's cell phone is that's fairly non -specific i mean yeah well yeah relatively speaking relatively speaking well look i think what are the numbers i think the numbers of versus like the amount of casualties that are civilians versus the actual people they're trying to kill with drones it's something insane number it's like more than 80 % civilians here's so the drone thing is a little it's also a complicated issue right um there's this uh this writer her name is farhat dodge i mean she lives in norway now but she's from that area she's from north waziristan where a lot of the drones were and she wrote this article a couple years ago um i think it was in the daily times an asian paper and then what she talked about was sort of the different groups that are in that area in like northwestern Pakistan, the PAC -Afghan border, and she said that the locals over there, a lot of times, you know, they feel like they're caught between the Taliban that's sort of taken over the whole area, and they, you know, they go out and they put, they're shooting young girls in the head for going to school, and they're, you know, doing all this other bullshit.

[289] And then, on the other hand, there's a Pakistani military, and they're coming in with their planes, and they're trying to bomb, and that's even more nonspecific.

[290] So they feel, a lot of them are actually in favor of it.

[291] Like there's many of them.

[292] That's what she said.

[293] So, I mean, I don't know how true that is, right?

[294] But, I mean, it's definitely a plausible claim.

[295] And so, you know.

[296] It's kind of anecdotal, though, you know, like one person saying a lot of them are in favor of it.

[297] Yeah.

[298] Well, I mean, what happened was after she said this, there were a lot of other accounts that came out that said the same kind of thing.

[299] I mean, they weren't saying that everybody's in favor of it.

[300] They're saying that it's not as clear -cut as people think it is.

[301] So, like, with drones, you know, for instance, if you, like, the idea is that when you, like, you know, these are decisions that are, you know, you got to choose between bad and worse.

[302] Like, complicated decisions are never, you know, clear cut, good or bad.

[303] Right.

[304] So I don't like the drone strikes.

[305] I think it sucks that sometimes they're necessary.

[306] But unfortunately, I think sometimes they are necessary.

[307] Like, these are people who are, if you have a sniper, it's going around killing, you know, hundreds of people.

[308] and you want to stop him and he's around a place and you have a choice between targeting this guy and taking him out and that may kill a few civilians whereas if you don't do that it'll go out and he'll kill hundreds more people and you're making that call that's a really tough call to make I don't know if I could do it but when you're running countries and when you have a foreign policy when you have to do something about something that's happening then it's a call that you have to make and it's a choice between bad and worse it seems so intensely archaic doesn't it yeah i mean one of the articles that i pulled up was talking about an attempt to kill 41 men resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1 ,147 people so the drones in their attempt to kill 41 different people have killed more than 1 ,147 people i mean that's just so well well Well, Farhat Taj, she talked about this, too.

[309] So she talked about the, like, so in that area, nobody's allowed there.

[310] Okay, so you're not, like, journalists don't go there because it's too dangerous.

[311] Even what area is this?

[312] This is in northern south.

[313] Pakistan?

[314] Yeah, in Pakistan.

[315] Now the army's in there because they're fighting against them recently after the Taliban has been, like, really focusing all their attacks within Pakistan.

[316] They've attacked the army school and killed all those kids and so on.

[317] So now they're in there, but before when a lot of these figures were coming out, she said that there's no UN people, there's no independent sort of watchdogs or agencies that are looking at it.

[318] No journalists can go in there, no politicians can go in there.

[319] Even the police, the Pakistani police, is scared to go in there because it's just completely ruled by the Taliban and all these sort of militant elements.

[320] So a lot of these numbers, like if you look at the, I think there was a report, detailed report from Stanford.

[321] they talked about how these numbers were arrived at.

[322] And there's a wide range.

[323] Some people report they're very low.

[324] Other people report they're very high.

[325] And that's not to say there haven't been civilian casualties.

[326] There have been, and that's terrible.

[327] But I think during Bush's time when he just carried out a few drone strikes, they were relatively non -surgical.

[328] I think Obama, one of the reason that he decided to go ahead and continue the drone strikes is that he found it the most surgical and the most accurate compared to all of the other options that they had.

[329] That's pretty scary when you think about, well, it makes sense.

[330] It's a bad, to choosing bad and worse, right?

[331] But it makes sense when you look at the numbers of innocents that have been killed in the Iraq war.

[332] Yeah.

[333] Like, I mean, it's arguable that it's close to a million humans, rather.

[334] I mean, that's an insane amount of innocent people that have been killed by feet on the ground, missiles, bombing campaigns, all the above and when you compare that to drone strikes that's the only way kind of like what they're saying like it's more surgical than that way than you know sending a bunch of tanks and a bunch of troops into an area yeah is less surgical it's like what the fuck is war man it's like yeah that's you know eventually come down to this that you know war sucks and you know if we're going to have that debate i will agree with you it's terrible when you can avoid it you can But if you're of the view that sometimes it is necessary to prevent even larger atrocities and sometimes you need to do it to stop it, I think, which is the view that I have, I think that if you, the more surgical your methodology is, and it seems like drone strikes tend to be a better option than the other ones.

[335] I mean, there's elements of it that I know about the debate, like the fact that you're sitting far away.

[336] It's very sort of inhuman.

[337] There's no contact.

[338] You're very detached because you're just, it's like a remote control.

[339] They're firing off a missile.

[340] Like that part of it sucks.

[341] But, and there's a lot of things about it that suck.

[342] But I just don't know, you know, how else, I don't know what other options there are to handle the situation.

[343] And it is affecting them.

[344] Like, it's not like the Taliban seem to be more upset about the drone strikes than anybody else.

[345] You know, that means that it is kind of hitting them.

[346] And they do know that the world has a lot of sympathy for civilian casualties.

[347] They know that, and that itself, just the fact that, you know, they know that they can use these civilian casualties to their benefit.

[348] That automatically shows you that there is a, there's an ethical difference between both sides.

[349] So it's not exactly.

[350] Well, you're saying that meaning that they do it on purpose, that they have.

[351] areas set up in high civilian population areas, knowing that they'll get hit in those areas and it will cause civilian deaths so that those civilian deaths would be used to sort of promote their cause.

[352] Yeah, yeah.

[353] I mean, they absolutely do that.

[354] I mean, think about it, again, you were talking about getting in the mind of conspiracy theories.

[355] And think about if you were one of those people and you knew that, you know, that a lot of people don't agree with you.

[356] Everybody thinks that, you know, you're back in the Stone Ages and so on.

[357] But the one time you get a lot of sympathy is when there a lot of innocence killed and then you know everyone all these powerful political figures and journalists everything around the world suddenly start um you know sort of coming to your side against your enemy right then why wouldn't you exploit that when you have nothing you have like shitty weapons you know you're living in the middle of nowhere and if that's the only power you have that's one of your strongest weapons you know you'd exploit it everybody would well i can certainly see that but i can also certainly see the argument that one of the best recruiting methods for the Taliban or Al -Qaeda is having your family blown up by a drone, you know, and that has happened too.

[358] Yeah, and it works.

[359] That's what I'm saying.

[360] This is really, really complicated.

[361] It's, it's, uh, are we in a state of perpetual war?

[362] Um, I don't know.

[363] That's a, I'm not qualified to.

[364] What is this is a weird war in that sense?

[365] Because all the wars throughout history seem to have been about, someone trying to take over something whereas this one seems to be at least a big part of the root of it seems to be religious ideology it is yeah it takes you back to that the samuel huntington paper the clash of civilizations what is that paper it's um he predicted he was this political scientist and in the 90s he wrote this paper and later expanded into a book and it was called the clash of civilizations it was like a sort of a prophecy about the future and um what kind of conflicts people are going to get into, and he said that it wouldn't be ideological.

[366] This is about post -Cold War, and he said it won't be ideological.

[367] It'll be cultural, and it'll be between religious groups, and he actually talked about the Islamic world and about seven or eight other civilizations and how they're going to get into cultural conflict.

[368] And he was conservative, and a lot of people criticized it.

[369] And at that time, I thought it was kind of, you know, it wasn't.

[370] completely, completely in line with it.

[371] But now more, you know, as time goes on, every once in a while, I'll go back to, you know, to revisit the paper.

[372] And it seems to make more sense, almost like, you know, he kind of knew what he was talking about.

[373] If you ever tried to look objectively, like if you were the engineer of modern society or modern civilization, and he tried to look objectively, like sit in a high chair with a desk above the earth and go, right, how do I fix this mess?

[374] How do I stop all these silly monkeys from blowing?

[375] each other up and shooting rockets from robots that fly above their cities and blowing up bombs and their buildings like how do you stop that have you ever have you ever tried to see like is there a way like a long term short term any term way to sort of engineer this away i think the long term i think we discount the role of ideology and belief when it comes to this and i don't know how to solve it, but I know one way to move closer to solving it, and that's just being honest about what the problem is.

[376] You know, a lot of the problem, like, for example, the Islamic State, you know, they're yelling Allah al -Hu Akbar, you know, quoting the Quran and everything.

[377] I mean, this is weak, but, you know, cartoons, people making cartoons and then getting shot up for it.

[378] Like, you know, these are all things that, you know, there is an identifiable issue.

[379] There's a root causier that everybody seems to deny like including all the prime ministers and like this has nothing to do with religion but just you know I grew up in Libya Saudi Arabia Pakistan I didn't come to North America until I was 24 and I grew up in pretty much Muslim majority countries and some very conservative ones in the all time and you know I just whenever I hear people say that this has nothing to do with religion just doesn't make any sense to me is that like an American liberal convenient thing to say because it makes you look super sensitive and very Nome Chomsky -esque.

[380] Well, yeah, it does.

[381] And then, you know, there's a, I don't know what goes into it.

[382] I know that there's a lot of fear.

[383] You know, people don't want to criticize this.

[384] You know, we saw what happened with Salman Rusty, you know, all the way up to the Paris attacks.

[385] So there is a fear of that.

[386] And there's also a fear of being seen as a bigot.

[387] Right.

[388] And I call it Islamophobia phobia.

[389] People were like, yeah.

[390] That's a great word.

[391] Islamophobia phobia I love it It's something that a lot of people relate to Immediately It's true It is true I hate that term Islamophobia Like look What about Christianophobia?

[392] What's hilarious to me Is that a lot of like Quote unquote progressive Very left wing people Will openly mock Christianity Yeah While defending Islam Or by labeling People Islamophobic Who are conservative Yeah I mean You gotta stay consistent If you're a true liberal And I'm you know, everybody's saying this, well, unfortunately, not everybody's saying it.

[393] I wish more people were saying it.

[394] But, you know, if you are, for instance, opposed to killing gay people, you should be opposed to killing gay people, whether it's in the KKK manifesto or in the Bible or in the Quran or in the Republican Party, you know, or in Uganda.

[395] It doesn't matter what it is.

[396] If you're opposed to something, you should be opposed to it across the board.

[397] It doesn't suddenly become respectful that, okay, now, well, it's in the Bible, so we got to respect that.

[398] Right.

[399] You know, and respect for ideas is just such an overrated, you know, it's considered a virtue, you know, respecting people's ideas and beliefs, and ideas are not people, you know, like that's, and I was trying to, that's the problem with the word Islamophobia is that it implies criticism of an idea.

[400] And there is genuine anti -Muslim bigotry.

[401] People do commit hate crimes against Muslims, but Muslims are people.

[402] They, they're not, I mean, they're entitled to respect.

[403] have rights.

[404] Islam itself is not a person.

[405] It's just a book.

[406] It's an ideology.

[407] It's an ideology.

[408] It's a bunch of ideas in a book.

[409] So it doesn't have rights and it's not entitled to respect.

[410] So the idea of Islamophobia is a phobia of ideas that are irrational and ancient.

[411] Yeah.

[412] That seems to be pretty smart.

[413] But it's connected somehow or another to racism.

[414] And this is where it gets weird because progressive people don't want to criticize anybody with extra melanin.

[415] Yeah.

[416] Anybody that's remotely browner than them gets immediate free pass.

[417] See, like the Boston bombers, right?

[418] They were from...

[419] Dagestan.

[420] Yeah, they're from...

[421] Were they from...

[422] Caucasus?

[423] Is that how you pronounce it?

[424] Caucasus?

[425] He doesn't know.

[426] He's the wrong dude.

[427] He knows what Beyonce's weight is.

[428] He knows what her ring size is and shoe size.

[429] He knows when she was born.

[430] He knows who she used to date.

[431] Oh, we need to talk later.

[432] Don't.

[433] That's great.

[434] They're actually...

[435] The Boston bombers are actually from a place where the word Caucasian comes from the caucus mountains yeah so they're from there so you know they were white the underwear bomber was black the Jose Padilla was Hispanic you know this so it's not a race all these people were Muslim and the thing is if you're if you're saying that criticizing Islam is somehow racist you're assuming that all of Islam is a race what does that make you right that itself I mean that that that's that's exactly what racism is when you assume everything, the entire religion is one race.

[436] Yes, we're completely ignorant.

[437] Yeah.

[438] So, there's some white, blue -eyed Muslims, you know?

[439] Oh, yeah, there's lots of them.

[440] If you look at Mecca, you see, like, the people that are in Mecca, you'll see red -headed people, red -haired people that are walking around with the traditional garb on circling Mecca.

[441] Yeah, man, I mean, there's, in Turkey, so, you know, Turkey's a big Muslim country, Egypt's a big Muslim country.

[442] There's Indonesia, there's Iran, where everybody's Persian, and there's the Arab world, and there's South Asians.

[443] I mean, it's just racially, incredibly diverse.

[444] So, you know, it's not really a race.

[445] And I was, I think, I saw something there's this woman wearing a NACAB.

[446] And someone wrote a funny comment about it, the face veil and the, you know, the full cover, the burqa.

[447] And someone's like, you know, that's what you're doing is racist.

[448] I'm making fun of this.

[449] And I'm like, can you tell me what fucking race she is?

[450] Yeah.

[451] Can you see?

[452] How is that racist?

[453] That's mind blowing.

[454] You don't even know if it's a. man or a woman, because you can't see.

[455] These are knee -jerk liberal ideas that are promoted in universities, the hyper -sensitive, hyper -progressive atmosphere that literally eliminates objective thinking and reasoning.

[456] Yeah.

[457] Because you are already automatically expected to behave in a certain way or think in a certain way because that is the progressive manifesto.

[458] Like your ideas, like you're not supposed to criticize Islamic people.

[459] It is Islamophobia.

[460] The idea that we're supposed to be in their land, that this is Islamophobic.

[461] And that word is just so fucking thrown about over the last decade or so.

[462] It's toxic.

[463] And I was trying to give the example of myself is that if I went back to Saudi Arabia and any of the countries where I grew up, and if they knew the stuff that I write, then I have reason to be Islamophobic because by their Islamic laws, you know, like it's just not something I like thinking about what could happen to me. Well, you're an apostate.

[464] I'm an apostate.

[465] You should be beheaded, right?

[466] Isn't that the idea?

[467] Yeah, technically.

[468] I should be...

[469] What the fuck, man?

[470] You should be phobic of those ideas.

[471] I don't know.

[472] So it's legitimate.

[473] Yeah, as legitimate as it gets.

[474] And it's not irrational by any means.

[475] Well, phobia means a fear, right?

[476] Does it mean irrational?

[477] Does phobia mean irrational?

[478] I think the medical definition is an irrational fear.

[479] Like an irrational fear of...

[480] I think any fear of being beheaded, you mean...

[481] It's super rational.

[482] Exactly.

[483] So that's why...

[484] That makes it even more of a misnomer.

[485] Yeah, if somebody writes down, I want to cut your fucking head off.

[486] and like you don't you're a phobic of that person like what of course he I want to cut my head off because of a belief so you know there's that aspect and then there's also the anti -Muslim bigotry which is a separate thing which is real yeah and it's based on people it's targeting people and you know I have been on the receiving end of that as well I mean that has happened I mean people have told me after the you know Charlie Hebdo attacks and people said you know you guys are scum you should get out of here where have you heard this this is like on Twitter Facebook message messages, like I'll get emails.

[487] Real people or eggs?

[488] They sounded pretty real.

[489] You know what I'm saying?

[490] Was it like a person where you knew, you could track their account, you could read their or is it like?

[491] Oh, no, no, yeah, I knew them.

[492] Like, I know who these people are.

[493] Oh, you know them in person?

[494] In real life?

[495] No, not in person.

[496] No, not in person.

[497] Over here, fortunately, like, I haven't really had that.

[498] The only sort of personal thing I've had is, you know, the TSA, the airport, you know, the random checks.

[499] I always get selected for the random check and things like that.

[500] Look at you.

[501] There you go.

[502] So that happens.

[503] And then, you know, my passport has, you know, my record of living in all these different Middle Eastern countries and things like that.

[504] So, and the name and the skin color.

[505] So that does put me in the same category.

[506] So I share that experience with a lot of people who do look like me and have the same name that I do.

[507] But the problem with the word Islamphobia is that I think it's an injustice.

[508] And it's actually an insult to the struggles of Muslims who have jailed.

[509] genuinely been victims of anti -Muslims and bigotry to use their pain and their experience and exploit it to stifle criticism of Islam.

[510] Yeah, I would say that that makes sense, you know, sort of the same way anyone who disagrees with feminist ideology is automatically some sort of a woman -hater, misogynist, someone who's just a bigot in some way against the female gender.

[511] That's just how it is, man. People love to silence ideas with a real simple categorization of you.

[512] You know, you are a racist.

[513] You are a warmonger.

[514] You are a, you know, I saw someone who wrote that about Christopher Hitchens, that he was a sexist and a warmonger.

[515] I'm like, okay, did you read any of what he wrote?

[516] Did you listen to any of what he said?

[517] Like, that's kind of hilarious.

[518] Like, they categorize someone and dismiss them.

[519] openly like that.

[520] Yeah, with the labels.

[521] And I I think a lot of times, you know, you don't even have definitions for these terms.

[522] When you say Islamophobia, if you ask someone in a Muslim, a liberal Muslim in Boston, you know, what Islam is, they'll give you a very different definition than someone who's in ISIS or the Taliban.

[523] Oh, sure.

[524] They all claim to be Muslims.

[525] So they have different definitions of it.

[526] I think feminism's the same way.

[527] I can talk to ten different feminists.

[528] You'll be ten different definitions.

[529] Well, there's a real problem with groups in that.

[530] sense ideological groups in that sense whether it's men's rights advocates or I mean men's rights advocates are some of the most fucking hilarious people online to read their their websites and their discussion groups and just a bunch of angry fucking weird that's a recent discovery I actually didn't know about these guys until like a couple of years ago I didn't know about them until I was accused of being one somebody called me an MRA and I go what the fuck is that and I like some some angry woman was barking at me on Twitter calling me an MRI first i forget what it was about so i went and looked at it and i was like oh fucking christ yeah i found the community this i tapped into this vein of of a man who need to fucking get over it yeah i know i just and it's what really sucks sometimes is that you know when when you have a certain agenda associated with just a really radical insane group yeah then even if they have legitimate viewpoints about something if they have like if it's supposed to have like one or two points that are legitimate.

[531] Like, you know, I guess if you're talking about the men's rights.

[532] Custody.

[533] Child custody.

[534] And alimony.

[535] Those are the two that make sense to me. There you go.

[536] So that's where it ends.

[537] Yeah, that's like a rational conversation you can have.

[538] The problem is that any time you start talking about those issues, you'll automatically get labeled as part of that group.

[539] Sure.

[540] Yeah.

[541] So there's this sort of smearing, you know, painting you with the same brush as everybody else.

[542] Well, one of the most hilarious things that I read was that men's rights.

[543] advocates are unnecessary because feminism addresses equality.

[544] And once women are treated as completely equal then and only then should we address men's rights.

[545] And I'm like, that's hilarious.

[546] Like, that is just some weird, angry girl who no one wants to touch.

[547] And she just has a lot of bitterness.

[548] And this is what they're spouting out.

[549] I've always actually, I was talking to a friend about this yesterday that I think when you have movements, when you have like organized.

[550] movements is something that you want to achieve being in opposition to something just makes a lot more sense and it's more unifying than standing for something and we explained that yeah like you know if you have um if you have say the feminist movement right when when you had when feminism meant equality you know economic social political equality for men and women then you know we're all feminists you know we all had that we oppose gender and equality we're humanists i mean I mean, say it feminist, it's just identifies you very specifically with one gender, and that's the issue.

[551] But I'm saying supposing just supposing feminism was defined as that as something that's in, it's a movement that's in, or an ideology that's in opposition to gender inequality or patriarchy, whatever it is.

[552] Right.

[553] Then it unifies everybody.

[554] But the moment it starts standing for something, like, okay, you're not a feminist if you're not pro -choice.

[555] You're not a feminist if you believe that males and females are not exactly the same or, you know, psychologically.

[556] or if you don't subscribe to this like sort of gender sociology theory or, you know, whatever it is.

[557] Right.

[558] The moment you start excluding people based on that and you start talking about what feminism stands for rather than what it stands against, then you start getting fragmentation.

[559] And I kind of feel the same way with religion and a lot of atheists.

[560] I like the anti -theist position that when you're opposed to, you know, the idea of religion and faith and believing things without evidence, you know, or doing things for, no other reason apart from the fact that it was written in a book, you know, 2 ,000 years ago.

[561] If you're opposed to that, you have a lot of people, you know, who will be part of your movement.

[562] But the moment you start saying, well, atheism stands for being, having this political stance on something, where it means that you have to like what, you have to agree with what Glenn Greenwald says, or you have to be in social justice, then you start excluding people.

[563] Well, then you get into atheism plus.

[564] You know what atheism plus is?

[565] I do, like someone explained this to me briefly, but I never really follow up on it.

[566] It's a hilarious group of social retards that have decided to make a religion out of atheism.

[567] And so they've connected atheism with a system or a group of social values and ethics.

[568] And attached this idea, it was just a lack of belief in a deity to, on top of that, all these things that anyone with any ethics ordinarily automatically believes in.

[569] like sexual discrimination, gender discrimination, racial discrimination, all those things that, like, moral, ethical people already disagree with, they've attached that to atheism, and called it Atheism Plus.

[570] Yeah.

[571] So, you know, standing against all those other things.

[572] But now, now it becomes a group, like an ideology.

[573] It's essentially in a way like a religion.

[574] Because to ascribe to Atheism Plus, you have to be someone who, you know, these people that, like, go to these conferences and, like, go to these conferences and, like you listen to their speeches, these fucking droning, boring, they should call atheism plus, duh, because anyone who's intelligent already thinks, yeah, of course, if you're a balanced person, you shouldn't believe in racial discrimination.

[575] Of course you wouldn't support sexual discrimination.

[576] Of course you wouldn't support, you know, fill in the blank.

[577] You know, of course you would be pro women's rights.

[578] Of course you would be pro, you know, there's a whole group of desires.

[579] that they have or ideological desires that they've attached to this idea of atheism.

[580] It's a hilarious movement.

[581] I think that's exactly, that was a point I was making, that the moment atheism starts standing for something beyond just not believing in a God.

[582] Right.

[583] The moment that happens, you start, you know, there's this fragmentation that starts to take place.

[584] And I just think that it's better, like the anti -theist position, just the idea that, okay, it's been many, many years, and now this whole religion thing, like respect for religion and all the stuff that's being done in the name of it, this is kind of enough.

[585] So all of us rational people are going to take a position against this.

[586] Right.

[587] You know, find another, find something else to guide your actions apart from these, you know, sort of archaic social and legal codes.

[588] Mm -hmm.

[589] And if we had that position, you could have, you know, people from all kinds of, you know, subscribe to all kinds of belief systems.

[590] you can join your cause but the moment you start saying well if you're an atheist then you have to stand for this or you have to be pro -choice there's a lot of pro -life atheists that are still atheists right yeah so you can't well that's why they call it atheism plus yeah and their ideas but if you listen to them talk it's a lot of these really weak guys who just are looking for social brownie points and trying to get women to love them by like standing so powerfully and strong in favor of equality it's like There's a certain aspect of feminism that's sort of engaged themselves with atheism, and they've kind of embedded into it.

[591] And these radical feminist ideas have also become a part of atheism plus.

[592] And it's very strange to listen to what they say and completely intolerant of other people's ideas and aggressive in attacking and doxing and going after people who disagree or who they think have, you know, in some way or another, just, you know, stood out against what their ideas are.

[593] And that I have seen a lot.

[594] Yeah.

[595] And it's aggressive.

[596] I was recently thinking that, you know, all these labels, like, you know, when you see what, some of the atheist activists that are out there, especially now that's such a big move, there's a lot of really, really angry people.

[597] Yeah.

[598] And for good reason, in some ways.

[599] No, I understand where it comes from.

[600] I mean, look, religious ideology, especially radical.

[601] religious fundamentalism has done horrible damage to people and there's a lot of people that grew up in that and they have an extreme backlash against it and so they're angry because of that yeah and no i i'm completely i'm not saying that they shouldn't be i'm totally with that i mean if i had the life that ion herse le did you know where i grew up and you know i went underwent genital mutilation and you know all these things um as a woman and you know i would be angry too If I was oppressed by the, I mean, I have, Ryif Badawi, you know about the blogger in Saudi Arabia.

[602] Which one is this?

[603] There's a blogger that they have jailed in Saudi Arabia, and they've been, like, lashing him.

[604] They last him 50 times.

[605] Okay, so I'll tell you.

[606] Tell me, sir.

[607] So he, right, it's actually someone that I know.

[608] My girlfriend's a really good friend with his wife and his kids and everything.

[609] So, you know, we know them personally.

[610] And he started a website called Free Saudi.

[611] liberals.

[612] So he wanted to start talking about liberalism and sort of just, you know, different innovative, you know, non -status quo ideas in Saudi Arabia.

[613] And he essentially got a jail sentence for 10 years with a thousand lashes.

[614] So they would take him out into the public outside of mosque after Friday prayers in Al Jafali Mosque and Jeda.

[615] And they just take a cane and they lash him 50 times every Friday until the 1 ,000 lashes are complete.

[616] So they did the first set, I think about four or five weeks ago.

[617] And so, you know, we all started writing about it.

[618] All of us really, you know, it became a huge story.

[619] There's a lot of pressure.

[620] And then the Charlie Abdo attacks happened.

[621] And the Saudi ambassador was in the free speech rally in Paris.

[622] And I think that was on a Sunday.

[623] And they'd actually lashed rife on Friday.

[624] and he was in free speech rally.

[625] So a lot of people wrote it.

[626] I wrote a piece for CNN about it, you know, just talking about the double standard.

[627] So how many lashes is this guy received so far?

[628] 50.

[629] And it was supposed to continue every week.

[630] But he had a medical review and the doctors said that he's not fit to be lashed the next week, which is fucking bizarre.

[631] Because basically they said that his wounds haven't healed enough yet.

[632] To create new wounds.

[633] To create new wounds.

[634] Jesus.

[635] This is fucking crux.

[636] So let his wounds close up before we rip them open again.

[637] And last, with what are they using to beat them with?

[638] They use a cane.

[639] They use a really sharp cane.

[640] Like a bamboo cane with, like, edges to it.

[641] Like what they used in Singapore?

[642] What I know about it is, yeah, it's a cane like that, but it's got, apparently, it's got a very sharp edge.

[643] So it does cut open your skin.

[644] Slice you open 50 times.

[645] Yeah, 50 times.

[646] Jesus Christ.

[647] So, I mean, they don't even have to hit you.

[648] They can just hit you, like, lightly, and it will still cause cuts on your body.

[649] But they're beating the shit out of this guy.

[650] this.

[651] Yeah, and there is a, there is a distribution.

[652] You have to distribute it between, like, the knees all the way up to the upper back.

[653] Oh, my God.

[654] So he's scarred for life.

[655] Yeah, he's scarred.

[656] I mean, he's, uh, it was, his, his wife was just really, really upset.

[657] Her name's Insoff.

[658] And after the first lashing, you know, she, he was in really bad medical condition.

[659] He wasn't getting any medical help.

[660] And she just said, she's like, you know, I don't think he's going to survive it.

[661] And he's, you know, like, when you talk him, he's just like a very gentle, very, very nice, you know, thinking kind of guy, just very sort of, you know, introspective.

[662] And he's, like, really more of an intellectual kind of person.

[663] I mean, he's not very physically robust or anything like that.

[664] So it's...

[665] What did he write?

[666] He wrote, oh, man, he just wrote sort of like liberal things.

[667] He started talking about how religion and politics should be separate, just the basis of secularism.

[668] There was one post that I liked that he wrote that was about, um, astronomers like there were these there was some Saudi cleric religious leader with a lot of influence you know who was essentially saying that you know I think he said something like traveling to planets is Haram or you know he was saying something about astronomy Haram?

[669] Yeah Haram means sinful so and I if I remember this correctly and he essentially wrote this really sarcastic thing about Sharia astronomers he was like oh I didn't know these Sharia astronomers existed and we should just forget about what all the scientists are saying, what all the telescopes do, and we should just listen to these guys because they have knowledge that nobody else has from centuries ago.

[670] So he would write sort of sarcastic things like that.

[671] He never openly challenged religion, you know, being wrong or anything, but he was just an advocate for secularism.

[672] So, and that's really all he did.

[673] I mean, I know, you know, people tend to think that, like, well, what did he really do?

[674] Right.

[675] You know, but I can't, you know, any other way.

[676] The guy, all he did was he just blogged on this thing called Free Saudi Liberals.

[677] Oh, man. And so Saudi Arabia is another, like I grew up there, right?

[678] I was there for about 12 years, so I could talk about that forever.

[679] But King Abdullah just died, right?

[680] And I always tell people of this, that the month that James Foley was beheaded in August 2014, that same month, Saudi Arabia beheaded 19 people and it wasn't just for murder they were they were beheaded for sorcery for cannabis smuggling probably resonate with you a little bit all kinds of like just crimes that are not really crimes both of those resonate I'm a sorcerer as well I don't like to talk about it but I do a lot of witchcraft my spare time I have a few cats fucking Sorcery?

[681] What does that mean?

[682] How do you get beheaded for sorcery?

[683] What is sorcery?

[684] Black magic doing spells on people.

[685] Oh my God.

[686] Yeah, promising people that you can sort of, they can't get pregnant.

[687] It's like, okay, I can get you.

[688] Oh, God.

[689] Sorcery, huh?

[690] You can get your head cut off for sorcery in Saudi Arabia.

[691] And that's our allies, right?

[692] It's happening as we speak.

[693] It's still doing it.

[694] And they beheaded, I think, 10 people in January.

[695] Oh, my God.

[696] And these are public beheadings with a sword.

[697] So you could watch?

[698] Yeah.

[699] So if I flew over there, I could watch a beheading.

[700] You know what they would do if you flew over there and you were a foreigner?

[701] It would be in the middle of a marketplace or outside a mosque.

[702] And they would push you up to the front because you're a foreigner.

[703] They want to show you.

[704] How they rock it.

[705] Yeah, you'll see kids running towards a scene when execution is about to happen or lashing's about to happen.

[706] The video of Rife is online when he was lashed.

[707] then it's online yeah it's online someone actually secretly filmed it oh no what you can really see is you can see people running towards uh where the lashing was about take place how clearly do you see him getting lashed you don't see it very clearly and you know so what happens is he naked no no he's not he's he's clothed and then he's got his hands in shackles he's got his like head raised up so they're beating him through the clothes they're beating him through the clothes and uh from a distance you can't really appreciate what it's like because, you know, again, the cane is really, really sharp and so you don't know exactly what happens.

[708] It's, it's, you can't see it very clearly, but the thing that is most striking about that video is the people around it.

[709] There's like hundreds of normal, regular Saudis that are, they've gathered around, they're cheering afterwards, and they all yell, Allah, Akbar, when the lashes are complete.

[710] Oh, my God.

[711] And there's little kids, like five, six, seven -year -old kids.

[712] And they're all excitedly running towards.

[713] words, a scene, and so on.

[714] So these are things that they see in public.

[715] I mean, not a lot of people here know this.

[716] There's, in Riyadh, the place where they do the public executions, at least when I was there, it was called Chop Chop Square.

[717] That's what we used to call.

[718] What?

[719] Chop Chop, square?

[720] That was the sort of affectionate term for it.

[721] Yeah, there was a market in the middle of which there was Chop Chop Square.

[722] But if you criticize that, you're Islamophobic.

[723] Did you know that?

[724] Yeah, because then they'll say, you know, Well, this has nothing to do with Islam.

[725] And then you'll show them the verses in the Quran that actually say that you can behead people for all kinds of things.

[726] And they'll say, well, that's mistranslated, misinterpreted.

[727] And it was, you know, at a different time.

[728] Sorcererate.

[729] It's out of context.

[730] 19 people?

[731] In August, the month that James Foley was beheaded by ISIS, the Saudi government.

[732] Oh, my God.

[733] Our ally, the one that Obama just recently went, you know, to pay respects to the king.

[734] And Farid Zakaria actually asked him, he asked Obama about.

[735] he's like are you going to mention the blogger that they have jailed and he didn't he's like well you know right now I'm just going to pay respect to the king you know but with human rights abuses you know with our allies it's very tough to have that dialogue what kind of fucking allies are there that's like having a friend who has a slave it's like I really love the dude I don't want to talk to him about his slaves but he's got this guy shackled up in his basement and yeah guys digging holes for him he's a good dude though I don't want to talk to him he's my friend we're going to barbecue You know what they did was King Abdullah is he's a little bit like the Pope.

[736] He's, he just says something that's really common sense to the rest of us.

[737] Like, yes, I think women should be allowed to vote.

[738] We'll start doing that in 2015.

[739] And everybody praises him like he said something amazing.

[740] It's like, you know, the Pope says, okay, maybe condoms are okay.

[741] Right.

[742] He gets this sort of disproportionate praise for saying it even though.

[743] It's a rational thing that everybody already agrees with.

[744] So they're getting praised and lauded for pretty much bringing their people, you know, forward into the 19th century.

[745] So there was like, well, I'm glad you're not in the 17th century anymore.

[746] I'm glad you're in the 19th century.

[747] Yeah, it's so crazy.

[748] It's such a low standard.

[749] It's like a really low bar for them.

[750] And so Abdullah, I'm working on the story right now.

[751] I just talk to these two women who, well, I saw the story where King Abdullah's own daughters.

[752] So he's got like a shitload of wives and a whole bunch of kids.

[753] And, you know, this one, I think it was a Jordanian wife, and he had four daughters were there.

[754] Didn't have a son, so he wasn't happy about that.

[755] And he's had them under house arrest, imprisoned for 15 years.

[756] So...

[757] Why?

[758] Because they spoke up about male guardianship.

[759] There's a law in Saudi Arabia that says that, like, women are not allowed to do anything without the permission of a male guardian.

[760] Like travel, work.

[761] Really?

[762] Yeah, they can't.

[763] Some things they can't even do with the permit, like they can't, they're not allowed to drive.

[764] Yeah, I've heard that.

[765] So they can't do that even with permission of a male guardian, but pretty much anything else, whether it's working or traveling or any of that stuff, they can't do it without express permission of male guardian.

[766] So they spoke out about it because their guardian was their dad, was a king who they barely even knew.

[767] and their mother, right, she's also female.

[768] So it really restricted a lot of things that they could do.

[769] So they started talking about, you know, gender discrimination, you know, issues, the situation of women in Saudi Arabia.

[770] And they did an interview in 2013, and it's online.

[771] It's with Russia today, with RT.

[772] I think that's what it stands for Russia today.

[773] So, and they were able to get a Skype connection and do this interview and they spoke out.

[774] And after that, nobody really heard from them again.

[775] They didn't do any other interviews.

[776] So I actually got in touch with.

[777] So here's where my connection happened is I went to a school called Monartal Riyadh, which was like an English medium school for foreigners and Saudis as well in Riyadh.

[778] And she was in the girls branch.

[779] And I knew these two girls who were in the girls branch who went to school with her, who were good friends with one of the daughters, the youngest one.

[780] Her name is Jawahar.

[781] And when they found out about this imprisonment, they were just shocked.

[782] I mean, they went to high school with this girl, and she was King Abdullah's daughter.

[783] So I'm actually working on a piece about that.

[784] I just didn't whole interview with them for an hour just about a week ago.

[785] And it's just the whole story is crazy because Abdullah is being, you know, Cameron, Obama.

[786] everybody's been praising him as a reformer and all the things that he's done for women in Saudi Arabia and he had his own four daughters are prisoners have been imprisoned and they're being they've been starved you know they've had a lot of their dog diet of starvation because they weren't getting enough food all these things that have been happening and the you know the hypocrisy and the double standard is just amazing you know Westminster Abbey and in the UK flew their flags at half mass when Abdullah died.

[787] This is a guy who sanctioned all those beheadings.

[788] I mean, he can stop that shit if he wants to.

[789] The sorcery beheadings and the lashing of bloggers and the imprisonment of his own daughters.

[790] He could stop that.

[791] He could have stopped it and he didn't.

[792] He just said that we'll allow women to vote in 2015.

[793] Fuck.

[794] And everybody's like, good job.

[795] We'll allow women to vote on things that we agree with only.

[796] And You don't really get an option to vote on a lot of things.

[797] Like, do you want a king?

[798] No, I don't want a king.

[799] Do you think that people should have their head cut off for sorcery?

[800] I would say that's not progressive.

[801] Yeah, that's his own.

[802] That's his call.

[803] So it's a different world out there.

[804] And that's why it's hard.

[805] Like, you know, when you're there and you come here and, you know, and when you hear like the sort of the Noam Chomsky thing, or the Glenn Greenwald thing that, you know, we need to stop all this Islamophobia and, yeah.

[806] Yeah, when you see the apologism and it immediately cuts you off.

[807] And it affects people like Rife Butterwee, right, the blogger.

[808] Yeah.

[809] And it affects people like that.

[810] It actually harms them.

[811] I mean, the people that we should be getting behind.

[812] Right.

[813] And supporting in those parts of the world are the dissidents and the reformers.

[814] And there are a lot of them.

[815] It's just you can't, you don't hear from them because they can't speak.

[816] because they're terrified.

[817] Like the same way, people are so terrified of Islam that when this Charlie Hebdo thing came out, no one, no one on the left, like actively criticized it or published those images or, you know, put it on the front pages of their magazines.

[818] It wasn't something that was done.

[819] Yeah.

[820] It wasn't like something where everyone stood in unity and said, everyone's terrified.

[821] Yeah.

[822] They're terrified that they're going to be next.

[823] They're going to get their heads got off.

[824] They're going to get shot.

[825] Someone's going to storm their office.

[826] and gun them down because they also published the cartoon.

[827] And Sam Harris made a really good point.

[828] Like, it was the one chance that journalists had uniformly to stand up against this type of shit and just everyone publish it.

[829] Every fucking magazine, every newspaper, everyone across the world.

[830] Publish those images.

[831] But everybody's like, fuck that.

[832] Self -preservation took over.

[833] Did you see that thing on Sky News?

[834] There was this woman who was interviewing.

[835] Like when they did the reprint and they put the cover of, you know, they put Muhammad on the cover again, you know, crying and so on.

[836] So she was interviewing somebody about that.

[837] And then the woman that she was interviewing started pulling up the paper and showing the cartoon and she immediately cut away.

[838] She said, I'm sorry, we can't show that.

[839] And I'm so sorry to anybody who was offended and so on.

[840] Anybody who's offended at a cartoon?

[841] That's amazing.

[842] You know the stuff, there's a lot of, I was, My mom gets upset at me sometimes.

[843] She's like, you know, can you do the criticism, but don't do the mockery.

[844] And what does that mean?

[845] Well, it just means that, you know, when you make fun of it, when you draw cartoons and it's insulting, that is different.

[846] And I understand where she's coming from.

[847] But I think mockery is super important.

[848] Like, if you think about, like, the interview, the Seth Rogen movie, you know, you have all of these sort of, you know, journalists and everybody writing all these.

[849] inquisitive, you know, biting critiques of the North Korean regime.

[850] And all it does is that, you know, because Kim Jong -un wants to be taken seriously.

[851] And he gives him, you know, he's like, okay, I'm legitimate.

[852] Everybody's criticizing me, you know, they don't like what I do.

[853] But when you make a movie with, like, dick jokes and, you know, the kind of thing that the interview was, and you make fun of it, he goes apeshit.

[854] Well, how come they didn't go ape shit over the Team of America movie?

[855] They did, actually.

[856] Yeah, Kim Jong -Giel was not happy about it.

[857] Of course he wasn't happy, but nothing happened.

[858] It wasn't like what's going on with this.

[859] Yeah, it wasn't like what happened here.

[860] And I'm not sure exactly why they didn't.

[861] That was a longer time ago.

[862] Maybe his dad's a little bit more chill.

[863] Probably.

[864] It's impossible.

[865] He might be more sensitive.

[866] He's like, the young one.

[867] Yeah, maybe he feels less legitimate because he just kind of got it from his dad.

[868] He's a little insecure, I think, probably.

[869] Well, he's got a fat face.

[870] It's hard.

[871] But lazy fuck.

[872] Can't work it up.

[873] Yeah, he's, uh, that's the thing.

[874] Like, you know, when you, when you have, uh, this kind of mockery cartoon, like the dick jokes and the cartoons, piss these people off a lot more because they want to be taken seriously.

[875] Right.

[876] Like they have these, uh, like, they can't do it through ideas because their ideas are all bullshit.

[877] Right.

[878] Like they're, you know, women can't drive or, you know, you should beheaded if you leave the religion or change your mind about what you believe and so on.

[879] those aren't the kind of things that you're going to get people flocking to you with you know through rational discourse so you know you have to use other means why is the why is that part of the world so archaic in their beliefs is it because that's the cradle of civilization that's the oldest form of symbol what we know today like the oldest civilizations that we're aware of that we can track it's like six thousand plus years ago which is mesopotamia right the middle east sumer iraq Babylon.

[880] Those areas, that's like where we believe civilization sort of began.

[881] And those same areas have the most archaic form of religion and social justice.

[882] Their ideas are so barbaric in a way or so old.

[883] I mean, the idea that, you know, women have to cover themselves in veils and they have to, these oppressive ideas, it's the exact opposite of where the world is heading, especially because of the Internet.

[884] There's more and more openness, the exchange of information.

[885] It's quicker than it's ever been before, and it's really hard to, like, hold on to, like, a really stupid idea today.

[886] Yeah, right.

[887] A stupid, oppressive idea.

[888] But in that part of the world, not so much.

[889] And it's, like, this momentum, the momentum of the past is so strong.

[890] Well, you know, one of the reasons for that.

[891] That's where I think our role comes in a little bit, or the role of the West, the U .S., is, you know, the reason that the Saudis are lashing bribe for the reason that they're beheading people for sorcery has nothing to do with U .S. foreign policy or Western imperialism or really anything like that.

[892] But the reason they've been able to maintain it, the reason they can actually, you know, keep those archaic legal codes in place and not really have to do anything about it is because, you know, They're very rich.

[893] They have a lot of oil.

[894] They don't really need to progress.

[895] You know, they're making that money.

[896] And the reason that they have that is because, you know, we've all propped them up.

[897] We have supported them.

[898] And, you know, I mean, you saw, like, do you remember when King Abdullah visited Texas, I think it was in 2005?

[899] And then George Bush was holding hands with him.

[900] Yeah, they were walking around holding hands.

[901] Yeah, and they kissed each other on the cheek.

[902] Like a couple of queens.

[903] Yeah.

[904] That's that.

[905] And they, so you had that.

[906] And then in a few years later when Obama, his first year of his presidency, he was at the G20 summit in London.

[907] And there was a controversy where everybody thought he bowed to the Saudi king, which he sort of did.

[908] Right?

[909] When he met him, he shook his hand and he bowed.

[910] So that's kind of, that symbolizes where the U .S. Saudi relationship is.

[911] But they have to do that.

[912] It's not just, you know, we can blame the leaders for being allies.

[913] Saudi Arabia, but, you know, it's sort of the same thing that you see when, you know, people driving around their SUVs filling them up with gas.

[914] And I will say that, you know, every time we fill our cars up with gas, we're all bowing to the Saudi King.

[915] We're all doing exactly the same thing.

[916] With fracking now, it's kind of changed quite a bit.

[917] You know, United States produces more gas than anyone now.

[918] Yeah.

[919] And that should change.

[920] And I think that it is a positive thing.

[921] I mean, whatever the controversy is about fracking right now, and you have to make everything safer, obviously.

[922] But eventually anything that helps us get off foreign oil.

[923] Because that's what funds it.

[924] I mean, yeah.

[925] Well, these areas like Abu Dhabi and Dubai and the areas that were just 50, 60 years ago, barren.

[926] I mean, there was nothing there.

[927] And now there's thriving, huge cities.

[928] And the economy is just blossomed out of oil.

[929] Yeah.

[930] It's oil, and then tourism and things like that.

[931] But it's not really innovation.

[932] It's not like they're providing some sort of service or manufacturing any kind of goods or they've got any even cultural elements that are going around all over the world that is able to monetage.

[933] How does that change?

[934] Well, that's the reason for their success.

[935] You said it yourself.

[936] It's the oil.

[937] Yeah.

[938] Change that and you change things drastically there.

[939] Like they're the thing that would put an end to all of them is, if they ran out of oil, or if we didn't need their oil anymore.

[940] Would that, though, I mean, would that really, it seems like there's so much momentum on their side.

[941] I mean, the culture has been so firmly established.

[942] Their mindset has been so firmly established.

[943] This adherence to radical Islamic philosophy and ideology is so firmly established.

[944] How does one ever change that?

[945] You change it when you have to, right?

[946] Like, when you have to move on with life, when you can't maintain that, Like, if the rest of the world is moving on and you are not able to stay in that bubble when you need to have international trade relationships, when you are dependent on diplomatic relations with other countries and you can't just get away with the shit that you do all the time, then that's how countries evolve.

[947] That's how they progress.

[948] They haven't needed to do that yet because they're fine.

[949] They're in their bubble.

[950] They've got a lot of oil money.

[951] Everyone's happy.

[952] Everyone's well fed. I mean, they're obscenely rich.

[953] Like, you know, like trillion are rich.

[954] Yeah.

[955] Oh, they're fucking crazy rich.

[956] When I was there, like, just going into Riyadh, you can't, as a tourist, you can't go into Riyadh, and this is, I'm talking about them in the 90s.

[957] I mean, you know, when you see those movies with all the futuristic cities and stuff, it was, it really looked like that.

[958] The architecture, the buildings, the highways, and it's just, it's beautiful to see.

[959] It's the people that are walking around are all wearing burqas and.

[960] Ancient clothes with the most sophisticated modern city.

[961] like such a weird technology yeah it's it's it is really strange it's like and there's one royal family that's running it's a whole bunch of brothers and it's it's kind of like uh and and the the the people who live there and come stay there for a little while and go away all the expatriates it's uh it's it's like they're running a hotel it's like a family running a hotel and it's got all its money and sort of american accounts was accounts you know wherever and uh people just check in and check out all the time.

[962] You get paid according to your passport.

[963] I met a dude.

[964] I don't want to say his name.

[965] He's a prince in one of those places who listens to my podcast.

[966] We had a long conversation about MMA.

[967] He may be.

[968] He's a young guy.

[969] It was weird talking to this young guy who's probably, you know, we didn't discuss his finances, but I'm assuming he's insanely wealthy.

[970] But he just wanted to sit down with me and talk about the UFC.

[971] He's a big fan.

[972] Oh, yeah?

[973] So we had this weird conversation about, you know, strategies and tactics and fighters and the trends and where things are moving and changing.

[974] But, you know, I'm talking to, you know, a guy who could one day be the head of one of these gigantic governments.

[975] I mean, I guess you call it a government.

[976] It's not really.

[977] Monarchy.

[978] Would you call it a monarchy?

[979] Yeah, it's a kind of, I mean, it's a kind of government.

[980] Yeah.

[981] But it was very strange.

[982] Very strange.

[983] have this conversation, you know.

[984] It is, yeah.

[985] It's a really different world.

[986] It's like another planet.

[987] And to be fair, his was a less suppressive.

[988] We're not talking about like Saudi Arabia, beheading people over sorcery.

[989] It's not that.

[990] But, you know, that part of the world is, it's almost impossible, I think, for a lot of people who are apologists for that part of the world to rationalize it or to understand it the way you do.

[991] it's you know what it's really unbelievable and i understand that now right when when i was there just explaining the way that things happen there to people over here it's it's just so removed and so alien that people either shut it out of their mind or they don't believe it um so i've seen that a lot and uh like i'll you know i'll tell you stories what i'm doing in my book is you know And when I talk about these things, I was try to bring personal anecdotes into it before I go into the topic in detail because, you know, it helps people to relate to it.

[992] Sure, yeah.

[993] So this is something that happened when I was in fifth grade.

[994] So I went to the American school there, which is kind of why I talk like this.

[995] And when I was in fifth grade, we made snowflakes during the winter.

[996] I got a paper.

[997] Fold up a piece of paper and you cut it and you make snowflakes.

[998] And we decorated them with glue and glitter.

[999] our names and so on and the teacher put them up on the door all right or the bulletin board i can't remember exactly and you know you take a lot of pride in that kind of stuff when you're a kid i was like 10 or 11 years old and there's a ministry of education guy who used to come in and used to check the school to make sure everything is operating correctly you know like you you had to say winter holidays you can speak about christmas you couldn't have read during valentines and so on so they he saw the snowflakes and he started yelling at the teacher in Arabic the teacher didn't even know Arabic and in front of all the kids and he just took a pair of scissors and he cut one of the tips off of each of the snowflakes yeah and so I remember thinking I was like wow it worked really hard on that and you know he just like amputated one of the tips off the snowflakes and then we asked the teacher what happened and we wanted to know and that's when I found out about the star David So star David has six points So anything that has like six points is Apparently banned there So she told us about the star of David She said it's a sign of the Jews So this was my introduction to the Jews I didn't really know anything about the Jews before But I just thought I was like wow These you know These must be scary people Whoever they are Like the guy's cutting like tips off of snowflakes Fucking snowflakes Christ So I went back and And, you know, I asked my dad about it.

[1000] My dad was a, you know, dad was a professor.

[1001] So he was a fairly rational guy.

[1002] And then he told me about the whole Israel -Palestinian history, explained it to me as well as I could understand it.

[1003] And then he pulled out a map.

[1004] It was one of those, you know, inflatable globes.

[1005] And he tried to show me Israel on the map.

[1006] And it wasn't there.

[1007] Like, this map was, we bought it in a bookstore in Riyadh.

[1008] And there's no Israel on those maps.

[1009] There was no Israel.

[1010] It wasn't even like they labeled it.

[1011] something else, so they made it all Palestine.

[1012] Like, I remember this distinctly, there was a border.

[1013] They'd drawn the border, and the rest of it was the same color as the Mediterranean.

[1014] Same color as a sea?

[1015] Yeah, it was as a sea.

[1016] So it was just like a little notch.

[1017] So, you know, this was, I remember we bought the World Book Encyclopedia, you know, around that time.

[1018] That was a big thing.

[1019] Encyclopedias are obsolete now.

[1020] And they'd taken out the entries on Israel and evolution and everything.

[1021] You know, you pay a lot of money for it, and they took it out.

[1022] they'll do those things now what i'm saying is uh you know the this was my introduction this is what i saw and my fortunately my father was rational and you know he told me the right story but there were a lot of other kids that also went home they asked their parents the same questions you know what is the star david who are the jews and i don't know what kind of responses they got i don't know what they were told so it's uh you you live with that in skis school.

[1023] You live with that as a kid who's even if you're a foreigner, even if you're going to an American school, you know, you have these ideas around you.

[1024] And the kids who are in the Saudi schools, which are separate in the way like foreigners are not allowed to go to Saudi schools.

[1025] Their textbooks are just insane.

[1026] The kind of stuff they have about Jews, about infidels and, you know, everything.

[1027] They actually teach this stuff to kids.

[1028] You know, in the UK recently, there was a, Saudi school that was in the UK and they were using some of these textbooks and there was a big brouhaha about it a brouhaha yeah yeah love that term yeah sorry that that's I was one to say that I rehearsing I'm gonna fucking say brouhaha that's incredible that they have to cut your snowflake your snowflake was symbolic of these evil wizard Jews doing their sorcery nobody would have made that connection.

[1029] But that's what I mean.

[1030] It's stuff that's so unimaginable and things that you wouldn't even think of.

[1031] I watched a documentary once on these suicide bombers and there was a school that they were running where they had these images in this children's school of these kids that had blown themselves up and they had images of them, you know, these holy images of them covered with their explosive vests and they were they had a saying on the wall above them that said the children of today are tomorrow's holy martyrs and it's just like trying to try to wrap your mind around the idea that you are you're promoting that you are going to raise these children to be holy martyrs meaning they are going to blow themselves up and kill a bunch of bad people with them, and this is going to be a great thing.

[1032] And then their images are going to be displayed at this school, and everyone's going to praise them.

[1033] And it's impossible.

[1034] It didn't make any sense.

[1035] It didn't fit.

[1036] I tried to find a place for it in my head.

[1037] I tried to shove it in there somewhere.

[1038] I'm like, this has got to be fake.

[1039] It can't be real.

[1040] No, it's a tough thing.

[1041] I'm realizing more and more, you know, as I live here, with every passing year, that people who have been raised here, it's very difficult for them to comprehend that mindset.

[1042] Because we grew up, like I grew up in a Shia Muslim family.

[1043] So, can you explain the difference for folks who don't know?

[1044] What is the difference between Sunni and Shia?

[1045] There are basically two different schools of thought.

[1046] So after the Prophet Muhammad died, you had his best friend, his name was Abu Bakr, right?

[1047] Which is what the current ISIS Caliph is named after.

[1048] and you had his son -in -law and his cousin and his name is Ali so I'm named after I don't know how that ended up like what were named after but anyway so what happens is he had these two different lines and there was a there was a conflict about you know people were they couldn't decide if the successor was going to be some people kind of flocked to the caliphate which was Abu Bakr and the other caliphs and others flocked to the imams which was was Ali.

[1049] So it was a successor.

[1050] It was just basically a conflict about who the successor was going to be and different people took different sides.

[1051] That's the long story short.

[1052] Well, that became incredibly confusing to Americans when the Iraq war went on and we realized that, oh, okay, there's a war going on now that we killed Saddam Hussein between the Sunnis and the Shias.

[1053] It's like, what?

[1054] Wait a minute.

[1055] The Muslims don't like each other?

[1056] Like, what kind of crazy shit is this?

[1057] this like that's that they've been fighting and it's not just the sunnis and shias there's a whole bunch of other factions what are the factions what are the other ones oh there's too many names it's like you know if you're talking about all the different rattle off a couple yeah so there's episcopalians lutherans so that yeah there's the sunnis and the shias they're primary within the shias you've got two different groups there's the ethnashries which is the 12ers and they believe in 12 imams and then there's another group that split off after the sixth imam into a separate sort of like descendant and those are the, they're called the Ismailies.

[1058] In the Sunnis, you've got Salafi Sunnis, which is a lot of the ones in Saudi Arabia were very conservative.

[1059] You have four major schools of thought within the Sunnis.

[1060] There's the, you want the names?

[1061] I mean, it's like Humbley, Shafi, Mullahi, and Hanafi.

[1062] So these are four different schools of thought.

[1063] They practice different things.

[1064] Like, for instance, the Shafi sect does, for them, female genital mutilation is, mandatory mandatory mandatory so in Indonesia and in a lot of Southeast Asian countries you know Indonesia where Reza Aslan says women are 100 % equal to men I would say yeah when it comes to circumcision rates they are is there more than 80 % of men and women there are circumcised so well circumcision for a man though is not nearly as brutal a circumcision for a female you're just cutting off skin you're not cutting off the clitoris there's four different kinds of FGM, according to the WHO.

[1065] So that ranges from just nicking the clitoris to all the way to removing the clitoris and the labia.

[1066] So nicking it is just sort of a scarring?

[1067] A ritual.

[1068] Yeah, Nick.

[1069] It's still pretty fucked up.

[1070] And they're all banned over here.

[1071] So it's, there's different grades to it.

[1072] But in so that's one example, right, of the Shafi sect.

[1073] And then the Malii, they have a different belief.

[1074] The Hanofis have different beliefs.

[1075] So, and they'd range and, you know, there's really liberal ones within each sect, there's really conservative ones.

[1076] So it's very wide.

[1077] Like, you know, you have jihadists who will actually go out and they'll carry out these martyrdom operations.

[1078] Then you have Islamists who agree with political Islam, but not all of them are necessarily going to carry out these operations.

[1079] And then you have moderate Muslims, and a lot of moderate Muslims are extremely conservative and they do believe in all those like conservative things like you know being gay is not a good thing women should cover herself so a lot of moderates will believe this but they're they reject the political ideology of Islam and then you have liberal and progressive moderates and they're different as well so it's it's a very you know it's a 1 .6 billion people this is a very wide it's it's extremely extremely diverse what is which is the more conservative of faction the shunni sunni or the shia Um, there's conservative elements in both, like, just to give you an example that may be more recognizable to you is, um, the Iranian theocracy.

[1080] If you can keep that, like, closer to you for, like, it's, you don't want to vary too much in the sound.

[1081] You can just pull it towards you.

[1082] It moves around a lot.

[1083] Oh, yeah, cool.

[1084] But it's weird.

[1085] These things are very directional.

[1086] All right.

[1087] There we go.

[1088] Oh, there.

[1089] Yeah, that's louder.

[1090] Um, so the Iranian theoryocracy is a Shia theocracy.

[1091] So that's extremely conservative Shia Islam.

[1092] The Saudis are Sunni.

[1093] It's extremely conservative, Sunni Islam.

[1094] What did they hate about each other that they're willing to go to war?

[1095] The Bronx successor.

[1096] It's a historical difference between Shias and Sydney's.

[1097] So it's like Baptists going after Catholics?

[1098] Yeah, sort of in that way.

[1099] And yeah, pretty much similar.

[1100] They just have different ideas of what the belief should be.

[1101] And there is an element of labeling people who don't agree with you, non -Muslim.

[1102] So a lot of Saudis will say that the Shias.

[1103] or Kaffir, they're apostates because they rejected belief in the caliphs.

[1104] And then that makes them punishable by death.

[1105] And you know, you have to go out and you have to kill them.

[1106] And there's also an ethnic thing there too.

[1107] There's the Arab and Persian ethnic rivalry.

[1108] So it's extremely complicated.

[1109] And that's why Bush ended up in such a mess when he went into Iraq.

[1110] Because I don't think he...

[1111] I mean, this is a hard thing to understand for a lot of people.

[1112] And apparently, from what I read, he, I don't think he had any idea.

[1113] I don't think he knew the difference between Shias and Sundays beyond just a superficial level.

[1114] He probably had no idea that that was going to go down, that there was going to be some sort of a brutal civil war to try to reclaim power.

[1115] I mean, no one in this country had any idea that that was going to happen.

[1116] There was going to be a civil war between the two competing factions of Islam.

[1117] Yeah.

[1118] Yeah.

[1119] I have a friend, his name is Faisal Mothar.

[1120] He is in Iraq.

[1121] He grew up in Iraq, and he started the global secular humanist movement while he was in Iraq.

[1122] So he became a target for a lot of people.

[1123] And the global secular humanist movement now has like, I think, 300 ,000 followers on Facebook and so on.

[1124] So it became huge.

[1125] And he was also from a Shia family, and he was targeted by al -Qaeda.

[1126] And they managed to kill his brother.

[1127] And after that, he went into, he was running around over all over all.

[1128] kinds of different countries until he finally got refugee status in the U .S. And he came here recently.

[1129] And he's full of stories about Iraq and how complicated it is.

[1130] And some of the other people, you know, I've talked to you, they say that the reason Saddam Hussein, you know, was so effective is because he ruled with an iron fist and he kept all of these sort of religious rivalries under control.

[1131] And he prevented anybody to, he was fairly, like, pro -secular.

[1132] A lot of these dictatorships are, so they're secular.

[1133] and uh you know they just didn't in the moment you took that fist away everything just went nuts yeah that's what it seems like from our point of view from our confused point of view when all that was going down that was a very strange moment where most uh americans were standing back going wait wait wait what's going on like they're they're competing again they're fighting with each other like in their two rival sections away what no one knew that they were rival factions of Islam.

[1134] This guy Reza Aslan, he is a very interesting sort of polarizing figure.

[1135] Some people think that he is like an interesting historian, a voice of reason, and other people think he's completely disingenuous and not just like incorrect about certain things, but that he's just, he's full of shit.

[1136] yeah that's sort of sam harris's take on him is that he's just he's just he's just dishonest i i agree with sam harrison i think he's very dishonest what is his objective like what is he trying to do because my friend duncan is enamored by him my friend duncan read his book on jesus and he's just he said it's an absolutely fascinating book and just really thinks the guy's very interesting but then i talked to sam about him and sam said that he had some really dishonest dealings with some conversations with them where yeah he's like I've only read the stuff he's had I've had some exchanges with him on Twitter and so on and he he's sort of like a very classic apologist and he's Muslim yeah he's Muslim so I don't know about his belief I'm not sure whether he really is a practicing or believing Muslim or not but he's definitely an apologist and he's one of these guys who whenever anything terrible happens he's like well we got to look for the root cause Islam is not the root cause and at one point he said that like he's one of those guys who responds with everything by with accusations of bigotry and Islamophobia like he'll just call you a bigot and you know especially that you know people here especially liberal white Westerners that's a last thing they want to be called it's just a great way to shut down the conversation and people know this people in the Muslim world generally they know this they know they can completely shut you up if you just accused they just accuse you of racism.

[1137] There's so much guilt involved with that.

[1138] Especially white people.

[1139] We're so guilty.

[1140] Yeah.

[1141] And the white, sort of Western, like, you know, they mean well.

[1142] Right.

[1143] But they have the sense that they're like, okay, we don't want to be called racist.

[1144] We don't want to be called bigots.

[1145] So, and I think he kind of, he uses that a lot.

[1146] And one of the things that he said, for instance, is that he actually wrote.

[1147] He was like, these books, the Quran, the scriptures, they don't.

[1148] mean anything in and of themselves.

[1149] These words have no meaning.

[1150] It is a people, like a misogynist, violent person will bring their meaning out and they'll see in it what they want.

[1151] Like as if the book is full of Rorschach tests.

[1152] It's like ink plots that you can interpret and these words don't mean anything.

[1153] And I was just thinking about the implication and I wrote this for the Richard Dawkins website is, you know, if he's saying that like these people, they didn't get their ideas in the book, the book has nothing to do with it, then he's saying that all the people in the Muslim world are disproportionately inherently violent and misogynistic.

[1154] Right, because if the words don't have any meaning, then they've just chosen to behave this way.

[1155] It's got to be something in their DNA.

[1156] And they're rationalizing it with those words that don't mean anything.

[1157] And that's bigoted.

[1158] Essentially, that's actually even more bigoted because you're saying that these people are inherently like that, it's in their DNA.

[1159] That's the way the people are.

[1160] It's not that they've been led by some ancient, misled, rather by some ancient ideology.

[1161] And you can't fix it, right?

[1162] It's like because they're just like that.

[1163] So to me, that actually sounds, that's a much worse position to have.

[1164] It's a much more bigoted position to have.

[1165] And to neglect obvious causes, like, you know, when we talk about root causes, anytime someone says, Allah, Akbar, if they do something, or they say, Jesus made me do it.

[1166] We always kind of ignore that.

[1167] Like, okay, let's ignore that.

[1168] Let's look beyond it.

[1169] Every time, but when you're looking beyond something, you're never going to see what's in front of you.

[1170] Right.

[1171] So if I tell you I did something, a horrific act because it was my political beliefs or because I played a certain video game or I liked a certain band or I was pissed off about U .S. foreign policy, you'll take that at face value.

[1172] Everyone will.

[1173] Like the moments anybody says U .S. foreign policy, you know, Rezaa Slan, Glenn Greenwald, I'll be like, oh, okay, they said what the cause was.

[1174] We should believe them.

[1175] But way more than U .S. foreign policy, they're telling you why they're doing things.

[1176] They're doing it for God.

[1177] They're doing it for the afterlife.

[1178] But when we listen to that, we don't take that a face value.

[1179] We're like, no, that's impossible.

[1180] It has to be something beyond it.

[1181] It's the only thing that we don't believe.

[1182] That religion and religious belief can actually do these things.

[1183] They can actually trigger people to act on them.

[1184] That's almost impossible to fix.

[1185] It's a tough thing to fix.

[1186] And I, there's this one after that, you know about the attack on the school in Pakistan where they killed 140 people and 132 kids.

[1187] And they just went and they were like seven suicide bombers that just went in and they just took out all those kids in the age 12 to 14.

[1188] So that shook up the world.

[1189] And after that, I was talking online to this Taliban sympathizer.

[1190] I don't know if he was a member of the Taliban, but he was definitely a sympathizer.

[1191] and you know he he told me something that just completely like it was actually really chilling and he said he's like you know i don't it's not that i believe in an afterlife i know there's an afterlife he's like we don't think of death as an end you know death is like this is just a human concept something people who believe in materialism believe we know the death is not an end And then he pointed out the Urdu word, which is the language from Pakistan, for death, which is intakal.

[1192] And intakal actually means transition.

[1193] It doesn't mean end.

[1194] You know, it doesn't mean death as we know it.

[1195] So he said even the word for death, intakal means transition.

[1196] It means you're moving on to another world.

[1197] And then he went into more detail.

[1198] He's like, these kids, like, you know, if kids have had the chance to sin, there's a higher chance of them going to hell.

[1199] but if they're young and innocent then they're immediately going to go to heaven so we don't think of we don't think that we're killing these kids and we're ending their lives we think that we're actually sending them to a place where they're going to be protected from their evil infidel parents oh fuck and they're not evil sense and then he he said that if I'm trying to remember all of it because there was some really important elements of you know what he said that gives us insight into how they think yeah and then he said the reason that we blow ourselves up.

[1200] He's like, you know, we're killing ourselves.

[1201] If death was such a bad thing, we wouldn't do it ourselves.

[1202] But we know where we're going and we know where we're taking the kids as well.

[1203] So we just don't think of it in the way that you do.

[1204] And most Muslims, you know, he was talking about all the Muslims condemning it.

[1205] He's like, most Muslims, their faith isn't as pure.

[1206] If they really believed that there was a heaven, they were doing the right thing that were going to get there, they wouldn't be mourning this.

[1207] They would be celebrating it.

[1208] He's like, but they are of poor faith.

[1209] And, you know, we're of.

[1210] the right face and I was it you know when you so that's the mindset that you're going up against and how do you fight it you fight it like that scene from aliens where he says you got to pull out and nuke it from orbit so ever see that scene where it's this is different from what you were saying about the drones out of here yeah it seems like we need to nuke the entire world start fresh with new monkeys no people are just so fucked the fact that a human being in 2015 can literally operate and think that way.

[1211] No, it was absolutely amazing.

[1212] But it's important to, you know, I was watching this movie and I, no, was it a TV show?

[1213] And someone said something, where they said the moment you demonize your enemy or the moment you call your enemy the devil, you're not going to be able to understand them.

[1214] You know, the moment you've decided that they're the other and this is just pure evil, you'll never understand their motivation for why they do what they do.

[1215] And I think it's important.

[1216] Like that was a very eye -opening conversation for me. I'm sure.

[1217] Well, I, please go.

[1218] Go on.

[1219] No, no, I was the saying.

[1220] I've heard that before.

[1221] People have told me that since I was a kid when I was raised religiously.

[1222] You know, that it's not permanent.

[1223] You know, this life is just temporary.

[1224] It's the afterlife.

[1225] But I don't think anybody really, like, truly, truly believes that that's it.

[1226] and that's why this life is useless.

[1227] People still get upset when their loved ones die and they still fear death.

[1228] They don't want to die early.

[1229] If they really, really thought that they were going to someplace great afterwards, it wouldn't be that much of a fear for any of us.

[1230] Imagine, like, if you thought, okay, my death is a fucking ticket to eternal bliss, then it's not something that would scare you if you really, really knew that.

[1231] Right.

[1232] And these people really know that.

[1233] And they're all too willing to kill themselves and kill others.

[1234] the charlie ebdo thing confused the shit out of me not that people were willing to kill people over the cartoons i kind of already had that idea in my head but the reaction by a lot of left -wing progressive people in the united states condemning the racism of those cartoons i was like what the fuck are you even talking about you're talking about a massacre a horrific murderous massacre and you've chose to condemn the quote -unquote racism of these cartoons, which, you know, it's like killing the people that write Mad Magazine.

[1235] I mean, it's not much different.

[1236] You know, Mad Magazine or, you know, name any sort of controversial South Park, going after the guys from South Park, killing South Park.

[1237] Yeah.

[1238] It's killing Matt Stone and Trey Parker.

[1239] I mean, it's not much different.

[1240] No, no, I mean, yeah.

[1241] What is that?

[1242] That apologist.

[1243] thinking that weird sort of thinking that's embodied by a lot of those really progressive left wing like really radical left wing people like what is a there's a sensitivity to hurting people and hurting their feelings and over murder yeah over murder yeah i think that they think they'll always say that i don't i'm not defending the murders that was horrific i condemn it but and there's always a but and then there's this whole sort of justification for it this is a sensitive thing for me because I am like I'm a free speech absolutist like I just when I grew up there's a lot of things I couldn't say you know I have a friend who is being who's in jail for 10 years and he's being you know he's been sentenced to lashing and for doing exactly what I do here you know so when I look at it like him and I both grew up in Saudi Arabia we're both writers we're both pro -secularism but when I when I say something I can say it and there's no like it's fine And when he does it, he gets slashed and tortured.

[1244] So free speech is a big thing for me. So coming here, like, I just don't think when it comes to the cartoons or the movie, the interview, people are saying, well, it's a shitty movie anyway.

[1245] I didn't think so I thought it was hilarious.

[1246] But the, you know, when they start talking about the content of what is being criticized or attack, I just think it's completely irrelevant.

[1247] And in the context of what's happening, like, it doesn't matter what was in the Charlie Hebdo.

[1248] do you think they're doing that because they're terrified of retribution and they're so terrified that they're willing to side with the the murderist religious fundamentalists because they're almost worried that they're going to get attacked themselves they're like well you know i mean those cartoons were kind of like really racist and i mean i'm not saying that the that the murders were cool but i'm saying like hey why why you're promoting like horrible racist cartoons i mean let's look at that.

[1249] Well, that's where the Islamophobia phobia comes in.

[1250] Yeah, they don't want to be called idiots.

[1251] They have a very certain way of talking.

[1252] Have you ever noticed?

[1253] Yeah, they do.

[1254] These people that are super progressive and super liberal and they have this weird accentuation of certain words.

[1255] And I mean, I'm not saying that it's cool to murder all those people, but like, let's look at why were they so upset?

[1256] Yeah.

[1257] It's, you know, it is what it is.

[1258] We live in an easy culture.

[1259] It's Yeah, people are more upset about, it's not, there's this value, the value of freedom of speech, okay, which I think is extremely important.

[1260] Taken for granted, very much so by Americans in some cases.

[1261] Oh, yeah, very taken for granted.

[1262] That's something that I, and then, Faisal, the guy from Iraq I told you about, you know, he says the same thing.

[1263] You know, when he came here, he's like, you know, a lot of people are sort of apologists about it because there's a freedom of speech, and then there is this sort of political correctness and not to offend anybody.

[1264] And people will say, one thing I've been hearing a lot is.

[1265] freedom of speech doesn't mean the freedom to offend.

[1266] What does that mean?

[1267] That's exactly what it means.

[1268] Yeah.

[1269] There's no point of freedom of speech.

[1270] And it means you have the freedom to talk about being offended by that freedom of speech that other person expressed.

[1271] Yeah, everybody can say the fact that you can have this conversation about what freedom of speech means is that's what freedom of speech is.

[1272] And if the whole reason it's protected so strongly is because of the, it means the right that all of us have to offend other people.

[1273] Right, which is why I have a huge issue when people say something that other people deem to be offensive, they automatically go after their employers and try to get them fired.

[1274] Like, this isn't just a freedom of, you're not just speaking about them.

[1275] Now you're taking action to try to get them fired, which is very different.

[1276] And this is a very different kind of activism.

[1277] And it's mean.

[1278] Like what you're doing is like, it's like, there's like, there's a negativity attached to it that's very strange.

[1279] It's like it's an aggressive negativity, a rebound from something that, you know, they believe is incorrect.

[1280] Yeah, it's very weird.

[1281] Like you know, we have, we have the right, they have the right to be offended.

[1282] They don't have the right not to be offended.

[1283] You know, that's the idea.

[1284] You know, nobody has a right not to be offended.

[1285] If you don't like something, you don't have to listen to it and shut it down.

[1286] Or counter speech with speech.

[1287] Yeah, well, exactly, exactly.

[1288] That's a very good way of putting it.

[1289] Counter -speech with speech.

[1290] Counter -freedom with freedom.

[1291] If you don't like the way someone expresses himself, talk about the way they express themselves and what specifically you find incorrect about it, and that's how dialogues get started.

[1292] And, you know, people become illuminated by those sort of dialogues, even people that have opposing ideas.

[1293] You can see where a person comes from.

[1294] Even if you don't agree with it, you can see where a person comes from.

[1295] You know, there's this, we also, talked about hate speech because I think one of the one of the biggest problems with France and Europe is a lot of European countries is that they have laws against hate speech.

[1296] In the U .S. you have laws against hate crimes, but hate speech is protected as part of free speech and I think that's right.

[1297] Yeah.

[1298] You know, like that, remember the Westboro Baptist Church ruling where the Supreme Court voted eight to want to allow them to pick a funeral.

[1299] And as much as you that idea is abhorrent or anything that the Westbro -Baptist Church does is abhorrent.

[1300] That is their right, and they should be able to do it as long as it's not a crime, and it's his speech.

[1301] But, you know, they have, in France, they've got Holocaust denial laws.

[1302] They have rules against, you know, attacking, you know, like the, let me put it this way, the very same things, same rules, that their hate speech laws were actually used by the government at times to warn Charlie Hebdo.

[1303] Like, you know, what you're doing is you can give you.

[1304] Right.

[1305] So the same hate speech laws that actually protected the killers, right, protected their right to express themselves and to say, okay, do everything from subjugate women to, you know, impinge on gay rights, for instance.

[1306] Like all of those same things, the same hate speech laws were used to warn the Charlie Hebdo people.

[1307] I mean, they had that fashion designer who was arrested for anti -Semitic remarks that he made in a bar.

[1308] Right.

[1309] And so if you have hate speech laws, if you have things like that, then that causes a lot of issues.

[1310] It doesn't work very well for people who are making the cartoons like Charlie Abdo and actually ends up protecting their attackers and their ideology.

[1311] When I look at the apologists, especially in America, I often wonder whether or not it's a case of people.

[1312] It's like very similar to people, like almost like winning the lottery, becoming spoiled and not appreciating the earning of that money or someone who inherited millions of dollars and you usually find them all fucked up and drunk and they become drug addicts it's like they have they're so spoiled they're so spoiled by this freedom that they don't appreciate it's almost like you we've had so much freedom and it's gone on for so long with no consequences that until you see you actually see personally the effects of those consequences of free speech you don't appreciate you don't appreciate you free speech for what it really truly is like you may disagree with someone but if you disagree with their ability to express themselves you're a part of the problem yeah yeah i agree with every all of that yeah i mean you don't you might think those i think those cartoons are stupid as fuck i wouldn't i wouldn't draw them i wouldn't waste my time drawing those cartoons i think they suck it's not my culture i don't i don't get it maybe if i spoke french and i understood where they were coming from i would think it would be funnier but to think that there's something wrong would them doing it to the point where you're bringing that up instead of a mass murder on a magazine the shooting the cartoonists.

[1313] Yeah.

[1314] And the thing you want to discuss is like well, those cartoons are really racist.

[1315] The merit of the content has nothing to do with it.

[1316] It shouldn't even be an issue.

[1317] Yeah.

[1318] I don't even know why it was an issue.

[1319] Spoiled.

[1320] And I've, you know, there's this idea that supposing, you know, we said that the cartoons were hate speech and they were criticizing an ideology.

[1321] that a lot of people found out of the belief that a lot of people were very sensitive about, or like a historical public figure who's been dead for a long time, and, you know, the people are sensitive about.

[1322] So supposing you had that, you know, again, you know, sort of even the competition there.

[1323] You know, pull out the, they used to lampoon religions, all the religions, it wasn't just Islam.

[1324] So, you know, pull out the Bible, pull out the Quran, open it up to certain things.

[1325] And, you know, they, there is more hate speech in those books.

[1326] then there could ever be in the Charlie Hebdo cartoons.

[1327] Like there's, if you're talking about an incitement to violence, you know, killing infidels apostates, you know, go to Deuteronomy.

[1328] And if you go to Deuteronomy 20 and you read it, it reads like an ISIS rulebook.

[1329] It says, it says, you know, go into the land, you know, put the sword to all of the men.

[1330] You can take the women and the children of slaves.

[1331] I mean, that's exactly what it says.

[1332] And then in the Quran 473, it says the exact same thing.

[1333] Well, why is it then?

[1334] What is it about radical Islam where they don't just have that written, but take that and use it in a form of practice, whereas radical Christian fundamentalists very rarely go out and kill gays.

[1335] They're very rarely, you know.

[1336] Yeah, they did do it for the long time.

[1337] And one position during?

[1338] Yeah, so they did.

[1339] So it was during that time that they did do it.

[1340] And there is a response a lot of times when you talk about Islam, when you criticize Islam.

[1341] And I was like, well, Christianity had its dark ages too, you know, several centuries ago.

[1342] I'm like, yeah, and how would you have reacted when that was happening then?

[1343] That's the same way you have to approach what's happening now with Islam, because, you know, they're going through the same thing.

[1344] The books are really not that different.

[1345] Like the New Testament's a little nicer, like in the New Testament that all the torture begins after you die.

[1346] It's like the Old Testament's only during your life.

[1347] The Quran, it's a bit of both.

[1348] But, well, how did Christianity rise above?

[1349] How did they get past that into this lesser retarded stage that they're at right now?

[1350] It's secularism, separating religion and states.

[1351] So the good thing about secularism is that it allows freedom of religion.

[1352] It's the only system that allows every religion to really openly, complete religious freedom for everybody.

[1353] But at the same time, it separates that from politics.

[1354] So it allows a system of coexistence.

[1355] And I kind of, I always think that there's several steps to enlighten I mean, for me, enlightenment would be if nobody had any religious beliefs at all.

[1356] Everybody was just kind of operating rationally.

[1357] That would be very nice.

[1358] It hasn't happened anywhere yet.

[1359] But I would say that, you know, you'd have a reformation.

[1360] And after the reformation, you know, that would get you to secularism where you separate religion and state.

[1361] And then you move to a point where, you know, people can actually have that conversation and they can, you know, reject irrational beliefs entirely.

[1362] But the step before reformation, in order to have a reformation, you have to, especially in the Muslim world, You have to reject the idea of scriptural inerrancy.

[1363] You know, I have to stop taking the Quran literally, not just justifying the stuff that's in there, but just saying, okay, you know, there's this in here.

[1364] We don't believe that anymore.

[1365] And stop thinking that it's the literal word of God, which is a very tough thing to do.

[1366] But the Jews did it and the Christians did it.

[1367] What becomes the basis of your ideology then?

[1368] And it seems like people want an ideology.

[1369] They want to have some sort of a very rigid set of rules and patterns of behavior that they're expected to follow.

[1370] And if those aren't coming from God, then they're coming from man. If they're coming from man, they're open to dispute.

[1371] And that becomes the issue with a lot of people, so much so that they're willing to accept these ideas that were written down that are preposterous if proposed today.

[1372] Like the ancient writings and stories from the Bible, from the Old Testament especially, if you try to say today that you found a book and that this book was written last week by God and he wanted me to read it to you and apparently fuck all these scientists there was actually just two people was Adam and Eve and that's where people came from and Eve actually came from Adam's rib so that bitch is super lucky she fucked up the whole thing because she talked to the snake and she ate an apple and the snake told her eat the apple but everybody God said don't eat the apple she ate the snake and so because that were fucked and they realized they were naked and people go whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa Shut the fuck up Get out of here Just stop it right there Just get out of here Dummy Who taught you about life But see that's When you say all of that stuff And you know And And when we were talking about Mormonism and Scientology earlier I mean this stuff Sounds so much more insane Than Mormonism and Scientology It's right up there Well the Scientology stuff It's pretty fucking insane No that's pretty insane But The whole thing about the Thetans And they You know You're fucking From a volcano or some shit They drop your soul And this is really, I mean, this is, but this stuff is just as, it's all muddy.

[1373] It's all obviously fiction, all obviously fiction.

[1374] And the more we become illuminated about the actual true nature of matter, of biological life, the process of atoms and the subatomic particles.

[1375] And when we get deeper and deeper into the very nature of reality itself, the more we can explain, the less religion becomes valid.

[1376] And the more it becomes pretty obvious that someone in a very distant time where there was no science and there was no base of knowledge where it had been accumulated over thousands of years of people slowly but surely measuring things and figuring things out and coming up with newer and better ways to measure things that were based on the discoveries of people before them and we're all, all of us.

[1377] I mean, the reason why we celebrate guys like Isaac Newton or Darwin is because we've all piggybacked on their discoveries and learned more.

[1378] in every scientist and every biologist and every anthropologist has dug up bones we've added another little piece to this puzzle that's constantly evolving and growing and changing and then something like religion comes along that says stop all this fucking learning cut it out I mean the very idea of it is anti -progress because you're supposed to rely on some old ancient shit it's like going back to when Galileo was imprisoned or Copernicus was chastised going back to when these people were We're thought of as enemies of God because they had these crazy ideas that we today accept as fact, measurable fact, undeniable fact.

[1379] They work.

[1380] And it's also the process.

[1381] I mean, what's at the heart of religion is infallibility, like the idea that, you know, this can't change.

[1382] That's immutable.

[1383] So you have infallibility.

[1384] On the other hand, with science, the heart of scientific.

[1385] inquiry is falsifiable, which means, you know, like, just a whole idea that you start with the assumption that, okay, this could be wrong.

[1386] How do I prove that it's right?

[1387] Right.

[1388] You know, and with faith, it's different.

[1389] You start with the conclusion.

[1390] You're like, this is my conclusion.

[1391] I don't need evidence for it.

[1392] And I'm going to work backwards and see what I can do to strengthen my belief.

[1393] You know, it's two completely different dynamics.

[1394] So, yeah, I mean, the idea that the two of them can coincide, it seems less than less viable as time goes on.

[1395] Yeah, just in the basics when you look at the basics the way that they work.

[1396] And it also seems like as time goes on because of these ideas being less and less compatible, the opposing factions, science and religion are more vehemently opposed to each other.

[1397] They're more aggressive about their denial or the more aggressive about their non -accepting of these fundamentalist ideas.

[1398] The scientists today are more aggressive about their ideas that atheism is the way to go and that these religious fundamentalist ideas that are being pushed on people are a form of ideological poison they they fuck with the mind because they give the mind these very rigid patterns that you're expected to adhere to and conform to and if you do not I mean the idea of like if you don't believe or you fall out of faith you should you're supposed to have your head removed I mean, that should tell you right there.

[1399] What do you think?

[1400] You think with your fucking head.

[1401] Well, you've been thinking too much.

[1402] So we're going to cut your fucking head off.

[1403] Don't think.

[1404] You need to abide by this shit that was written down on parchment back when they thought the world was flat and the sun was 17 miles away.

[1405] Like, that's what you need to abide by because otherwise you're going to fuck up our party.

[1406] Yeah, it kind of brings you back to the whole community thing that I think a lot of people, they want that identification and they want.

[1407] want that sense of identity and, you know, group identity that religion gives them.

[1408] They need it so much that that's why they take just attacks on their ideology personally.

[1409] Yeah, and they cheer when there's reprisal for these attacks, these verbal attacks on their, I mean, there's people that cheered when those guys were murdered.

[1410] Oh, yeah, there are people that cheered all the time.

[1411] Like, in where I grew up, people used to celebrate it all the time.

[1412] I mean, like, educated people.

[1413] They wouldn't say it to.

[1414] Like within our own living room, we were sitting there, our, you know, educated uncles and aunts who had, you know, been overseas and they'd studied overseas.

[1415] They came back, you know, when something like 9 -11 would happen or, you know, any kind of attack against America would happen even with civilians.

[1416] You know, be completely supportive of it.

[1417] But, you know, when they'd go out and they'd talk to their white friends, and be like, you know, yeah, this is terrible, we condemn it.

[1418] Wow.

[1419] There are root causes for it.

[1420] We should understand what their legitimate grievance.

[1421] are and why they did it but that doesn't justify the murder but alone in your house they oh yeah a lot of times yeah really like what would they say fortunately not particularly in my house but extended family family friends i mean just on a daily basis we're surrounded by it i mean when the selman rsdi fatwa came down um you know a lot of my extended family a lot of my friends uh you know teachers at school and everything they they all supported it whoa yeah they were Killing a guy who wrote a book.

[1422] And not even a good book.

[1423] Yeah, I was never, I've never been able to read it.

[1424] Like, I like some monastery and I've read some of his stuff.

[1425] But Satanic verses just couldn't.

[1426] It's just really dense and I can't, uh, can't.

[1427] It's not interesting.

[1428] It just, yeah.

[1429] Yeah.

[1430] It takes a lot of focus, I think, to really get through it.

[1431] You need to sit down and really.

[1432] Well, you need to be interested in it.

[1433] But it's just bizarre because, I mean, it's not even specifically about Muhammad, right?

[1434] I mean, the satanic verses is...

[1435] It is kind of...

[1436] It is about Muhammad's life.

[1437] Sort of?

[1438] The satanic verses where...

[1439] I guess the way the Quran was supposedly revealed was that Muhammad got these revelations from above.

[1440] And at one point, he got these revelations that said that idolatry, certain elements of idolatry are okay.

[1441] It was like these three idol gods and, you know, okay, fine, we can respect that or people that, you know, follow them, but they're okay.

[1442] And then later on, he's like, no, no, that was Satan talking to me. It wasn't God.

[1443] So those were the satanic verses.

[1444] Right.

[1445] So they didn't end up being part of the Quran.

[1446] And that's where Salman Rusty got the idea.

[1447] So it was based on an actual documented piece of sort of Islamic history.

[1448] And he changed the name of Muhammad, and he had a lot of similar elements.

[1449] It was symbolic of his life.

[1450] So because he changed the name, he thought he was going to be okay?

[1451] Yeah, I mean, he knew that it was a satire, like, you know, like animal farm, just, you know, use animals to represent, like, real people.

[1452] Right.

[1453] So he did this.

[1454] He had fictional characters and, you know, sort of different time settings.

[1455] And he thought it would be okay because he had fictional characters, because he didn't mention Muhammad by name.

[1456] I don't know if he thought it would be okay.

[1457] I knew, I mean, I think that he knew that there would be some backlash.

[1458] I didn't think at that time, I'm not sure if he really thought that he would have to go under hiding for.

[1459] He probably would have never wrote it.

[1460] I mean, but is he okay now?

[1461] Is he allowed to just go anywhere now?

[1462] Like, did they ever release or relieve him?

[1463] I don't know if he travels with armed security.

[1464] I mean, I don't know him personally, but he does tend to do all the talk shows and everything.

[1465] I mean, he was really under hiding in those first, like, 10 years.

[1466] And this is where the spread the risk comes in.

[1467] I think there's so many people talking about this stuff now that we're not in the rusty days anymore.

[1468] Right.

[1469] You know, like, I, there's a lot of people who are talking about or writing about it.

[1470] It's all online.

[1471] So that process has started.

[1472] So in that way, you know, a little bit optimistic.

[1473] The fact that some monastery can really show up at Talk Joe's shows, you see him everywhere.

[1474] He does public speeches.

[1475] He does debates, you know.

[1476] I wonder what it's like if he does, like, the Bill Marsh, I wonder what kind of security they have.

[1477] Yeah, I don't know.

[1478] I'm not sure.

[1479] I wouldn't want to be there to see it in person.

[1480] Yeah.

[1481] Because, you know, you wouldn't want to be there the day it goes down.

[1482] down.

[1483] Well, you know, Ayan Herssey Ali, she does travel with armed guns.

[1484] Yeah.

[1485] Does she?

[1486] I know that.

[1487] Yeah, that's pretty well known.

[1488] So she still does.

[1489] And it's actually tougher for women who decide to change their mind about Islam.

[1490] Because, you know, like with my girlfriend, she's also like a secular activist.

[1491] Whenever anybody wants to send me hate mail, hate messages, they'll always.

[1492] you know, sort of argue with me. It'd be like, you know, you're bullshit, everything you're saying, it sucks, you know, or you're going to go to hell, or, you know, you should get your head chopped off, whatever it is.

[1493] You know, they'll say things like that.

[1494] But with her, it's always a sexual thing.

[1495] Like, the threats that, you know, she gets, or...

[1496] Rape threats.

[1497] Rape threats, you know, just all kinds of things that they would do.

[1498] Yeah.

[1499] And then she'll get hundreds of them.

[1500] Like, there's a lot of...

[1501] Hundreds.

[1502] Yeah, hundreds.

[1503] Now, what do you do?

[1504] when you get those?

[1505] Do you report those to the FBI?

[1506] Do you save them?

[1507] Do you document them?

[1508] Yeah, we save them and we do.

[1509] I mean, the hundreds that actually happened in one incident.

[1510] It was there's a, there's a politician in Pakistan who she knows personally and who has been sort of very vocal in his opposition to the Taliban.

[1511] And she just said that she supports him, right?

[1512] And just because of that and because he is under a lot of threat to him.

[1513] And then she had some argument with some some of the people who opposed him and uh then the rape threats started coming in and so at that point you know we would report it so we will report things like that like i can't talk too much about right what happened yeah um but and most of the time they come from like overseas and some kids sitting in villages and you know with a laptop or cell phone and sending threats so but you know there's always a chance that one or two of them are real and this is obviously a real issue.

[1514] But it is, just generally it's a lot worse for women than it is for men because there's this idea, especially among conservative cultures and a lot of the Muslim culture, is that if a man decides not to follow religion, you know, that's a separate thing.

[1515] But if a woman decides not to follow religion, she's lost all morality.

[1516] So she'll do anything.

[1517] She'll drink, she'll have sex.

[1518] You're crazy bitch.

[1519] Yeah, exactly.

[1520] How dare she?

[1521] Drinking having sex?

[1522] She's trying to be like an American.

[1523] Exactly.

[1524] That's how they measure morality.

[1525] Like there is a lot of, a lot of the people who kill people and they behead people and stuff.

[1526] They're really upset.

[1527] Like when they talk about morality, like lapsed Western morality, they talk about - Chicks and miniskirts.

[1528] Drinks, sex, yeah, things like that.

[1529] Unbelievable.

[1530] Well, but they don't think of the murder and the martyrdom and all.

[1531] Those things are virtuous.

[1532] They actually think that those things are good.

[1533] It's so backwards.

[1534] It's so, I mean, the word archaic, I keep using it, but that really is the word.

[1535] It's such an ancient version of thinking.

[1536] It's almost like an operating system that's so outdated, like you're trying to fuck with DOS.

[1537] Like you're trying to like, you know what I mean?

[1538] You're trying to like get on Twitter, but you're only using DOS.

[1539] It's like, God damn.

[1540] The operating system of fundamental religion is so fucking broken.

[1541] I know, and they, a lot of times they think that they have the updated software.

[1542] We have the most, we have the most recent religion, you know, like Islam came after Christianity, it came after, and then we had this great civilization, so, and which they did at one point, and why are we in such bad shape?

[1543] I watched the speech, sorry, I watched this speech once where this guy was talking about, he was asking questions, or the audience was asking questions, about certain aspects of Islam and how do they know whether you know if one religion says one thing but Islam says another and his answer was it's very simple because Islam is the truth and everybody starts clapping I'm like wow that's uh hmm that's uh that's uh that's hilarious we should look into is uh like you know there there is precedent for this like you know like we're talking about the holy books earlier and the holy books are very similar a lot of the stuff is like in the Old Testament actually mentions stoning non -versional brides to death the Quran doesn't even mention it it's in the Hadis which is a separate sort of like a lesser source of guidance in Islam and so there's many things that are in all of the scriptures that are pretty abhorrent but how is it that you know Jews and Christians were able to move past it I mean they had their dark ages too they did some really fucked up shit at one point but they move past it and they're here now and what is the answer to that I think that like and this is one of the things I'm exploring in my book I think like with Jews and with Christians that they were able to like have a genuine reformation where they're able to bond and come together on a sense of community rather than ideology like you know if you're Jewish you can be an atheist Jew you can be an agnostic Jew you can be a secular Jew you can be an Orthodox to you, but nobody's ever going to say, okay, you're not a Jew anymore.

[1544] Right.

[1545] You did this.

[1546] You eat bacon or whatever.

[1547] With Christians, again, we were talking about the Catholics, right?

[1548] A lot of them approach hoists.

[1549] They'll still end up going to church.

[1550] But you can't be an atheist Christian.

[1551] Technically, you can't be an atheist Christian.

[1552] Not even technically.

[1553] If you tell Christians that you're an atheist, they'll look at you like, you just shit on a plate.

[1554] I mean, they are not interested in hearing that.

[1555] There's a strong faction of Christianity, fundamentalist faction of Christianity, that they are incredibly upset at the word atheist or atheism.

[1556] No, it's a very bad word.

[1557] I mean, they actually think of atheists as worse than rapists.

[1558] I think I was reading that.

[1559] They had a survey on who you despise most.

[1560] Yeah, I saw that.

[1561] People actually think atheists are worse than rapists.

[1562] So you have, but at the same time, you don't get murders.

[1563] You don't get murders.

[1564] You don't get murdered.

[1565] And you don't even get excommunicated from the community just because you use condoms.

[1566] Like, no one's going to say, okay, you use birth control, so you're not a Catholic anymore.

[1567] But with Islam, it's still, a lot of Muslims are still in that.

[1568] You can sit 10 people down.

[1569] One of them is going to say, music's a sin.

[1570] Another one's going to say, you've got to cover your head.

[1571] And you'll have all these different viewpoints, and there's going to be fragmentation based on that.

[1572] But if they are able to come around, if they're able to focus, instead of the ideology, focus on the community.

[1573] You know, we were saying that the identity of, you know, going to church, you know, having your own family and friends and, you know, that sort of communal atmosphere that the religious belonging to a religious group gives you.

[1574] Which is a benefit for a lot of people.

[1575] I mean, that sense of community is so huge.

[1576] It's for a comfort to people, providing people with this group that they can rely upon and they feel connected to.

[1577] and joined with there's a lot of benefit to that I mean the idea that it has to be attached to some archaic belief system to some ridiculous old shit that was written down when people had a very poor understanding of reality very poor like and that's what's really bizarre about the Islamic religion is that at one point in time you know in the early you know just like the 1200s and before Islam was at the forefront of science and philosophy and writing.

[1578] I mean, it was one of the Islamic world, the Muslim world, was one of the more advanced cultures on earth.

[1579] Yeah.

[1580] And it wasn't really, again, this is where we make that distinction between Islam, the religion, and the Muslims followed it.

[1581] And a lot of this was done by the Matazalites, which was very sort of open -minded, very progressive sect of Muslims.

[1582] you know and so a lot of those things happened not because of Islam but despite it you know even back then yeah even back then it's always been like that i mean newton was a religious Christian because you know at the time he was like a virgin though too wasn't he really weird yeah he was a he was a virgin he didn't um like at that time there was no evolution like nobody knew about evolution it was pre -darwin everything so there's a lot of things he didn't know if he had known he may not have been uh we can't speculate on that but i mean he was He was a religious Christian, but we don't identify his achievements as Christian achievements.

[1583] Right.

[1584] You know, we don't identify, like, Albert Einstein's achievements as something, as Jewish.

[1585] And he wasn't even, Albert Einstein wasn't even religious.

[1586] So, but so with this, the fact that there were Muslims in a certain part of the world that were engaging in, you know, a lot of scientific inquiry, and they were really moving forward and they were being progressive and they're making new discoveries.

[1587] You know, this is something that is more of a, it's more of a testament to science and to free thinking than it is to the religion itself.

[1588] They just happen to be Muslims.

[1589] That's similar to the fact that Darwin, when he was proposing his theories, the predominant scientific community was Christian.

[1590] Most of the people that he told his ideas to were in opposition of these ideas initially because it went opposite of their Christian.

[1591] beliefs like yeah we think of scientists today as being almost universally secular or at least the the ones that we pay attention to and respect we think of them as having at the very least an agnostic religious base but back then they were predominantly Christian yeah a lot of them they were and in America and yeah everywhere yeah I think what we do is we sometimes look at it the other way around when you have when you had all that scientific progress happening in sort of the golden age of Muslims then that was happening again like it was happening despite the fact that it was Islam now when you have all of these all the terrorism all these things happening there's a direct relationship between words and the scripture and what they're doing so what we do is now we say okay just because they're Muslims you know they just happen to be Muslim that's why they're doing it but at that time we actually attribute it to Islam when it's really the other way around right?

[1592] That makes sense.

[1593] Like there isn't anything in the Quran that, I mean, the Quran says strange things just like any other holy scripture.

[1594] In Surah 86, right, verses 5 to 7, it says that man was created from a fluid ejected between the backbone and the ribs.

[1595] So essentially it's saying that semen or sperm was created in the chest.

[1596] You know, this is like a...

[1597] The backbone and the ribs?

[1598] The backbone and the ribs.

[1599] It's 86.

[1600] the belly, right?

[1601] It could be like this rib.

[1602] Yeah, I mean, you can broaden it and you can try to adjust it.

[1603] It could be like where your liver, the lower, lower ribs.

[1604] Do you think so?

[1605] Yeah, it could be.

[1606] I think it's just the testes, man. It could be.

[1607] Could be all sorts of, that seems like a pretty vague.

[1608] There's a lot of ribs.

[1609] Yeah, it's like saying Chicago's in the Western Hemisphere.

[1610] Yeah.

[1611] But you miss the Western Hemisphere because this is really, you know, there's absolutely no scientific basis to that whatsoever.

[1612] Right.

[1613] It's flat out wrong.

[1614] But, you know, they, so it doesn't have anything that said that the Quran doesn't necessarily, it's not conducive to, you know, robust scientific inquiry.

[1615] Right.

[1616] Right.

[1617] But it is, unfortunately, linked, like, you know, the words of the Quran in the scripture, it is linked to a lot of the violence that you see, a lot of the subjugation of women that you see.

[1618] And that connection is something that should be acknowledged.

[1619] That's Islamophobic.

[1620] How dare you?

[1621] There you go.

[1622] I'm a racist.

[1623] You are.

[1624] You're racist against yourself.

[1625] You son of a bee.

[1626] Gross and racist, gross and racist.

[1627] Gross and racist.

[1628] Just like...

[1629] Gross as well?

[1630] Yeah, Ben Affleck.

[1631] Oh, yeah, that's right.

[1632] He was a silly boy.

[1633] Yeah, that Ben Affleck thing was pretty weird, huh?

[1634] Mm -hmm.

[1635] I think he was just trying to get brownie points, though.

[1636] I really do.

[1637] But it's just that on that show, like the fact that that happened, it was such outrage everywhere.

[1638] Yeah.

[1639] I just noticed that when someone says something like that or if there's a Quran burned or a cartoons drawn, There's just like a lot of outrage.

[1640] But it just not the kind of thing you see when people burn people alive.

[1641] Yeah.

[1642] Then you get hashtags and when Boko Haram, like, you know you about Boko Haram?

[1643] Killing 2 ,000 people, kidnapping all those school girls.

[1644] I mean, you get hashtags and things.

[1645] You don't get the kind of outcry that you get over cartoons.

[1646] Yeah, well, that was in Africa too.

[1647] And we have a way of just going, ah, it's over there.

[1648] You know, like Darfur.

[1649] Yeah.

[1650] It's like 500 ,000 people killed by.

[1651] An Arab, the Janjaweed militia.

[1652] We could go on and on and on forever, right?

[1653] Yeah, we could.

[1654] Yeah.

[1655] Before I get too depressed, let's end this.

[1656] Yeah.

[1657] When will your book be available?

[1658] I'm still working on it right now.

[1659] We're in the middle of sort of negotiating, like, talking to publishers.

[1660] So it's still happening.

[1661] There's more interest in it than I thought there would be.

[1662] So it's a good thing.

[1663] So I'm actually, I'm looking forward.

[1664] to it.

[1665] I think the timeline is probably, I would say, about a year.

[1666] That's like my personal goal.

[1667] Well, let me know when it's done and it's out and let's do this again, man. This is great.

[1668] Yeah, that would be awesome.

[1669] Give people your Twitter address.

[1670] What is your Twitter address?

[1671] Twitter address is Ali Amjad Risvey.

[1672] It's A -L -I -A -M -J -A -Z -V -I.

[1673] And a website they can go to as well?

[1674] Website, you can just Google it.

[1675] And I've got Huffington Post archives.

[1676] So it's just Huffingtonpost .com slash ali -a -a -a -risby.

[1677] Great conversation, man. I really appreciate it.

[1678] It was a lot of fun.

[1679] Yeah.

[1680] Thank you.

[1681] I don't want to say fun, stimulating, depressing at times, but educational.

[1682] Well, at least it's enlightening.

[1683] Yes, very enlightening.

[1684] You've got to have a diagnosis before you get into management.

[1685] Diagnosis is not the fun part.

[1686] Yeah, exactly.

[1687] Well, thank you, brother.

[1688] Appreciate it.

[1689] Yeah, thank you.