WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.000 [Sarah Haider: Islam and the Necessity of Liberal Critique] 00:00:04.020 --> 00:00:07.262 (Moderator) Hi everybody and welcome to this next presentation entitled 00:00:07.262 --> 00:00:10.437 "Islam and the Necessity of Liberal Critique". 00:00:10.729 --> 00:00:15.406 I'd like to welcome Sarah Haider, who is one of the co-founders 00:00:15.406 --> 00:00:18.007 of the Ex Muslims of North America group. 00:00:18.007 --> 00:00:20.034 So, please join me in welcoming Sarah. 00:00:20.044 --> 00:00:26.434 (Applause) 00:00:29.304 --> 00:00:30.304 (Sarah Haider) Hi Everyone, 00:00:30.304 --> 00:00:32.414 (Audience member) Hello 00:00:32.414 --> 00:00:37.672 I'm Sarah, and for the last two years I have worked to build an organization 00:00:37.672 --> 00:00:39.911 for non-theist ex-Muslims, 00:00:40.263 --> 00:00:43.706 those who once identified themselves with Islam. 00:00:43.706 --> 00:00:47.486 and now call themselves atheists, agnostics or deists; 00:00:48.138 --> 00:00:50.702 and the organization is called Ex-Muslims of North America. 00:00:50.702 --> 00:00:54.666 We are a relatively new organization, but we are growing quickly 00:00:54.666 --> 00:00:57.111 and we now have communities of ex-Muslims 00:00:57.111 --> 00:00:59.271 in over fifteen cities. 00:00:59.621 --> 00:01:03.689 As you can imagine, it is notoriously difficult for ex-Muslims 00:01:03.689 --> 00:01:07.819 to find others like ourselves. Trying to build friendships among people 00:01:07.830 --> 00:01:12.618 who are often under siege and deep in the closet is incredibly difficult. 00:01:13.322 --> 00:01:16.759 In the first place, how do you even find people who are often deliberately 00:01:16.759 --> 00:01:18.683 doing their best to stay undercover? 00:01:19.322 --> 00:01:23.344 As an organization we work to provide ex-Muslims with much needed support, 00:01:23.355 --> 00:01:25.996 support to free themselves from the shackles of religion 00:01:25.996 --> 00:01:28.897 and to be themselves, to learn about each other's suffering, 00:01:28.897 --> 00:01:30.858 and above all else, endure. 00:01:32.599 --> 00:01:35.894 We are in a peculiar situation, my colleagues and I, 00:01:36.221 --> 00:01:39.785 we are intimately connected with more godless ex-Muslims 00:01:39.785 --> 00:01:41.850 than likely anyone else in the world. 00:01:42.341 --> 00:01:45.818 I have heard thousands of stories from hundreds of people, 00:01:45.818 --> 00:01:48.418 about their experiences with Islam. 00:01:48.814 --> 00:01:52.464 Some lucky few were able to leave the faith with little consequence, 00:01:52.464 --> 00:01:56.543 the relationships with their families and friends and communities 00:01:56.543 --> 00:01:57.740 remained intact. 00:01:58.113 --> 00:02:00.388 But for most, this was not the case. 00:02:01.104 --> 00:02:03.208 Our journeys have seen tremendous struggles. 00:02:03.208 --> 00:02:08.544 For some the cost was only social, loss of friends and families. 00:02:08.544 --> 00:02:12.065 For others, they risked their health and mental well-being 00:02:12.075 --> 00:02:16.620 from being locked into psychiatric wards to enduring physical violence 00:02:16.620 --> 00:02:18.200 from all family members. 00:02:18.809 --> 00:02:22.088 Ex-Muslims, arguably more than any other group, 00:02:22.088 --> 00:02:25.698 are deeply familiar with the problems entrenched within Muslim communities 00:02:25.698 --> 00:02:28.084 and inherent within Islamic scriptures. 00:02:28.732 --> 00:02:32.407 As most of us happen to be both people of color 00:02:32.407 --> 00:02:34.984 and first- or second- generation immigrants, 00:02:34.984 --> 00:02:36.593 we are doubly affected, 00:02:36.593 --> 00:02:39.439 both by hatred and violence from Muslims, 00:02:39.439 --> 00:02:43.435 but also bigotry and xenophobia from the broader American public. 00:02:44.639 --> 00:02:47.989 Despite all this, my experience over the last two years 00:02:47.989 --> 00:02:52.412 has made me wary of speaking up, even to an audience such as this. 00:02:53.313 --> 00:02:56.783 I always expected feeling unwelcome from Muslim audiences, 00:02:56.783 --> 00:03:00.177 but I did not anticipate an equal amount of hostility 00:03:00.177 --> 00:03:01.835 from my allies on the Left. 00:03:02.927 --> 00:03:05.231 For example, when I first published a piece, 00:03:05.231 --> 00:03:09.411 fact-checking Reza Aslan, who is a prominent Muslim scholar, 00:03:09.677 --> 00:03:12.236 on his dismissal of female genital mutilation 00:03:12.236 --> 00:03:15.820 as only an African problem, not a Muslim one, 00:03:16.089 --> 00:03:19.123 I got many responses from people unhappy with what I wrote, 00:03:19.758 --> 00:03:22.443 almost all of whom questioned my motives 00:03:22.443 --> 00:03:24.576 rather than addressing my claims. 00:03:24.576 --> 00:03:27.953 To my surprise, most of my critics were not Muslims. 00:03:28.323 --> 00:03:31.655 Rather they identified as liberals and sometimes even atheists. 00:03:31.655 --> 00:03:38.307 Some darkly alluded to my "agenda" and others claimed that as a former Muslim, 00:03:38.628 --> 00:03:42.008 there was no way I could be trusted with fair criticism. 00:03:42.620 --> 00:03:44.864 Now remember, I published a fact-check. 00:03:45.205 --> 00:03:48.633 It seems to me that it would be easy to verify my claims, 00:03:48.633 --> 00:03:51.386 fact-check the fact-check, so to speak. 00:03:52.149 --> 00:03:56.115 But instead, Muslims and some people on the Left preferred instead 00:03:56.115 --> 00:04:00.218 to throw around suspicions about my character and my intentions. 00:04:01.024 --> 00:04:03.350 Those who oppose Christian authoritarianism 00:04:03.350 --> 00:04:07.732 will find that the broad majority of liberals, religious or non-religious, 00:04:07.917 --> 00:04:10.061 side with them and will ofter their support 00:04:10.061 --> 00:04:13.687 in the fight to push religious morals out of our politics and public life. 00:04:14.344 --> 00:04:17.033 Even religious liberals sometimes look upon 00:04:17.033 --> 00:04:20.150 the politically-charged religious right with distaste 00:04:20.150 --> 00:04:24.167 and some work with secularists to keep them out of our politics. 00:04:24.470 --> 00:04:25.508 The executive director for 00:04:25.508 --> 00:04:27.683 the Americans United for {Separation of} Church and State, for example, 00:04:27.683 --> 00:04:28.875 is an ordained minister. 00:04:30.006 --> 00:04:33.432 Atheists and secularists can feel secure in the knowledge 00:04:33.432 --> 00:04:35.770 that their allies on the liberal Left will stand with them 00:04:35.770 --> 00:04:39.060 when their target is the far-right Christians. 00:04:39.548 --> 00:04:42.958 It makes sense: liberals don't share much, many common values 00:04:42.958 --> 00:04:44.490 with the religious right. 00:04:44.490 --> 00:04:46.753 But when the same scrutiny is applied to Islam, 00:04:46.753 --> 00:04:52.066 you find that inexplicably some people on the Left begin to align instead 00:04:52.066 --> 00:04:54.338 with the Islamic religious right. 00:04:54.923 --> 00:04:58.452 The consistent exception has been the secular and atheist communities. 00:04:59.814 --> 00:05:05.624 When luminaries of disbelief movement like Harris and Dawkins speak about 00:05:05.624 --> 00:05:10.736 the horrors of Christianity and write books condemning it, they are cheered, 00:05:10.736 --> 00:05:14.629 their works lionized, their presence sought at events and conferences. 00:05:15.017 --> 00:05:17.153 But when they turn the same critical gaze 00:05:17.153 --> 00:05:18.913 towards the religion of my family, 00:05:18.913 --> 00:05:21.034 they are told to cease such offensive talk, 00:05:21.034 --> 00:05:24.968 to refrain from criticizing the same oppressive forces 00:05:24.968 --> 00:05:26.384 that they criticized in the past. 00:05:27.301 --> 00:05:29.563 There is an instinct to pigeon-hole anyone 00:05:29.563 --> 00:05:32.850 who says something negative about Islam, to broadly label them 00:05:32.850 --> 00:05:34.586 in such a way that nearly guarantees 00:05:34.586 --> 00:05:37.375 that most on the Left will ignore what they have to say. 00:05:38.060 --> 00:05:42.222 The first method, I found, of people dismissing my claims, has been that 00:05:42.222 --> 00:05:45.455 since as a brown person I can't easily be painted as a bigot, 00:05:45.455 --> 00:05:48.149 is that I must be pro-war 00:05:48.149 --> 00:05:51.503 or broadly support the far-right agenda in some way. 00:05:51.785 --> 00:05:53.393 This is not true. 00:05:53.710 --> 00:05:58.145 Sometimes I am called an Uncle Tom or a house Arab. 00:05:59.177 --> 00:06:00.935 Another term thrown around at ex-Muslims 00:06:00.935 --> 00:06:03.442 and other brown critics of Islam 00:06:03.442 --> 00:06:05.766 is "native informants". 00:06:05.766 --> 00:06:07.472 This was my first time hearing this. 00:06:07.850 --> 00:06:11.552 I won't go into the many reasons why this is an impressively disgusting thing 00:06:11.552 --> 00:06:14.784 to call someone, with the vague implication 00:06:14.784 --> 00:06:18.307 that we are brainwashed in some way, or are betraying our own kind. 00:06:19.412 --> 00:06:23.034 While it is somewhat understandable, why someone like Myriam Francois, 00:06:23.034 --> 00:06:28.222 who is a white convert to Islam, why she would refer to us as native informants, 00:06:28.222 --> 00:06:32.688 it is beyond my comprehension how such a transparently racist term 00:06:32.688 --> 00:06:34.706 was used by the journalist Max Blumenthal 00:06:34.706 --> 00:06:37.247 in his article condemning Ayaan Hirsi Ali 00:06:37.247 --> 00:06:40.272 to cast a shadow over her role in this debate. 00:06:40.827 --> 00:06:42.686 I wonder if Blumenthal would feel comfortable 00:06:42.686 --> 00:06:46.259 using similarly racist terms against anti-clerical dissidents 00:06:46.259 --> 00:06:49.164 from African-American or other minority communities. 00:06:50.034 --> 00:06:52.196 Bill Maher is someone who has been painted 00:06:52.196 --> 00:06:54.292 by the Left and the Right as a bigot. 00:06:55.040 --> 00:06:58.034 Once on his show, Bill Maher mentioned the high rates of support 00:06:58.034 --> 00:07:01.048 for the death penalty for the crime of atheism in Muslim communities. 00:07:01.646 --> 00:07:04.156 In response, Dean Obeidallah, 00:07:04.156 --> 00:07:07.276 who is a comedian and author and liberal Muslim, 00:07:07.746 --> 00:07:12.162 attempted to defend the Muslim countries by pointing out errors 00:07:12.162 --> 00:07:13.878 in the statistics Maher used. 00:07:14.482 --> 00:07:16.427 Let me quote his piece on CNN. 00:07:17.210 --> 00:07:21.015 He says - "a 2013 Pew poll actually found 00:07:21.015 --> 00:07:25.064 that only 64% of Egyptians supported this" 00:07:25.064 --> 00:07:30.890 - by this he means the death penalty - "still alarmingly high, but not 90%" 00:07:30.890 --> 00:07:36.992 and only thirteen Muslim nations have penalties for apostasy, while 34 do not". 00:07:38.551 --> 00:07:41.761 Can we realistically imagine something like that being published 00:07:41.761 --> 00:07:48.195 if it was about any other minority, in an honest effort to downplay the horror? 00:07:48.952 --> 00:07:51.719 What if it was "only 64% of Americans 00:07:51.719 --> 00:07:54.330 support the death penalty for converts to Islam" 00:07:54.693 --> 00:07:56.592 - Muslims don't have it that bad - 00:07:56.855 --> 00:08:01.387 "only 64% of French citizens support the death penalty for Algerian immigrants" 00:08:01.716 --> 00:08:05.691 or "only 64% of Americans support the death penalty for homosexuality"? 00:08:06.748 --> 00:08:11.020 How bad is the situation, how terrible the human rights abuses 00:08:11.020 --> 00:08:14.337 and how little the worth of the life of a human being, 00:08:14.337 --> 00:08:19.173 when 64% is viewed as a defensive statistic? 00:08:20.645 --> 00:08:23.175 If the situation was that a fully one-third of western nations 00:08:23.175 --> 00:08:26.084 had legalized the murder of Muslims, how appalled would we be? 00:08:26.506 --> 00:08:28.785 What would the Left's reaction be? 00:08:29.480 --> 00:08:33.178 As an ex-Muslim I am horrified that something like this would be published 00:08:33.178 --> 00:08:35.392 on the web-site of a major news organization 00:08:35.392 --> 00:08:38.222 and not a single voice was raised in outrage. 00:08:38.592 --> 00:08:40.726 Why is my life worth less? 00:08:41.047 --> 00:08:44.017 Does my simply being raised in an Islamic tradition 00:08:44.017 --> 00:08:48.957 grant the Islamic religious right overt ownership over me and my body, 00:08:48.957 --> 00:08:52.426 grant them license to murder me and my fellow atheists? 00:08:53.096 --> 00:08:57.208 The claim actually being made by citing this statistic was that Maher 00:08:57.208 --> 00:09:02.314 was supposedly making too much of a fuss of atheist persecution by Muslims. 00:09:04.044 --> 00:09:07.412 Now I do not wish to denigrate the author, Dean Obeidallah, 00:09:07.412 --> 00:09:10.164 but to illustrate the depth of the problem, 00:09:10.164 --> 00:09:13.296 that in trying to defend what he perceived to be an injustice to Muslims, 00:09:13.296 --> 00:09:16.072 he did not even notice the depravity of what he wrote. 00:09:17.510 --> 00:09:21.483 As a consequence an audience on the Left now frightens me 00:09:21.483 --> 00:09:24.514 nearly as much as an audience of Islamists does. 00:09:25.082 --> 00:09:28.634 I have had to think long and hard about whether I want to give this talk today, 00:09:28.634 --> 00:09:31.704 to what extent I should mince my words, 00:09:31.704 --> 00:09:34.058 and what consequence it would have on my work. 00:09:34.598 --> 00:09:37.894 It's not my intention to cause offense but I firmly believe 00:09:37.894 --> 00:09:40.759 that there are things that need to be said, elephants in the room 00:09:40.759 --> 00:09:45.192 that no one but some bigots on the far right are willing to acknowledge. 00:09:45.741 --> 00:09:48.250 We are all, I hope, familiar with what happened 00:09:48.250 --> 00:09:50.768 on January 7th at the offices of Charlie Hebdo. 00:09:51.553 --> 00:09:55.045 Masked gunmen killed twelve people, shouting Allahu Akbar!, 00:09:55.045 --> 00:09:59.533 later revealed to be two brothers, French nationals of Algerian origin. 00:09:59.988 --> 00:10:05.047 There was global outrage and a large show of solidarity for the cartoonists, 00:10:05.047 --> 00:10:08.080 which appeared to be the obviously righteous things to do. 00:10:08.080 --> 00:10:10.268 Until of course the religious began to speak up 00:10:10.268 --> 00:10:14.180 with claims of "provocation" and hurt feelings. 00:10:15.055 --> 00:10:17.947 But that was to be expected, Islamists have been saying that for years, 00:10:17.947 --> 00:10:21.425 and indeed, no religion really accepts any form of ridicule 00:10:23.494 --> 00:10:25.990 - if they have a choice in the matter, that is say. 00:10:25.990 --> 00:10:28.068 However, what was more distressing to me, 00:10:28.068 --> 00:10:31.001 was the response from many of my allies on the Left. 00:10:31.001 --> 00:10:33.800 Over and over I heard the claim that Charlie Hebdo was somehow 00:10:33.800 --> 00:10:38.046 a racist publication, and while, of course, of course, 00:10:38.046 --> 00:10:40.504 murder is always wrong and should be condemned, 00:10:40.504 --> 00:10:42.874 it is nonetheless "understandable" 00:10:42.874 --> 00:10:45.276 that the gunmen would feel provoked by the cartoons. 00:10:46.095 --> 00:10:48.624 Now, I don't know about you, but I don't want to meet the man 00:10:48.624 --> 00:10:52.178 who "understands" why someone would feel compelled to murder another man 00:10:52.178 --> 00:11:02.396 because he didn't like a cartoon that he drew. (applause). 00:11:02.396 --> 00:11:05.975 It's important to realize that mocking and critique are not that different 00:11:05.975 --> 00:11:08.585 in the eyes of the most religious people. 00:11:08.821 --> 00:11:12.501 There is no fair amount of fair and friendly criticism 00:11:12.501 --> 00:11:16.097 that the very religious will accept if they have the power to shut it down, 00:11:16.097 --> 00:11:19.582 as evidenced by the prohibition on heretical speech 00:11:19.582 --> 00:11:21.662 in theocratic states throughout history. 00:11:22.276 --> 00:11:25.184 There is a curious double-standard at play. 00:11:25.574 --> 00:11:29.585 When Muslim clerics and activists that are known to be 00:11:29.585 --> 00:11:33.465 anti-Semites and homophobes are welcomed on campuses, 00:11:33.465 --> 00:11:38.606 touring nationally, invited to give lectures by Muslim student associations, 00:11:38.606 --> 00:11:42.148 while feminists like Asra Nomani, who has been fighting 00:11:42.148 --> 00:11:45.177 for the equality of the sexes, for the right of female entry 00:11:45.177 --> 00:11:47.731 to the priestly class, is branded as a bigot 00:11:47.731 --> 00:11:50.112 by the same Muslim student organizations 00:11:50.112 --> 00:11:52.655 and the authorities at universities like Duke 00:11:52.655 --> 00:11:55.092 succumb to this brazen attempt to silence her. 00:11:55.747 --> 00:11:58.438 Similar patterns are repeated across the Western world. 00:11:59.228 --> 00:12:01.919 Maryam Namazie, who is an ex-Muslim activist, 00:12:01.919 --> 00:12:06.510 was dis-invited to speak at Trinity, Ayaan Hirsi Ali at Brandeis. 00:12:06.510 --> 00:12:09.986 The British Students Union now allies itself broadly 00:12:09.986 --> 00:12:13.254 with Islamist organizations such as CAGE. 00:12:14.114 --> 00:12:16.952 To quote Nick Cohen from his article from the Guardian, 00:12:17.632 --> 00:12:20.956 "University managers are no better than their teenage heresy hunters. 00:12:21.378 --> 00:12:24.695 They say they want to oppose radical Islam in argument. 00:12:25.207 --> 00:12:28.385 The Lawyers' Secular Society took them at their word. 00:12:28.739 --> 00:12:32.764 It tried to present an investigation at the University of West London 00:12:32.764 --> 00:12:36.028 into Islamist groups that were all over campuses, 00:12:36.028 --> 00:12:40.731 despite their record of advocating Jew hatred, homophobia and misogyny. 00:12:41.114 --> 00:12:44.863 The university authorities banned the secularists." 00:12:46.069 --> 00:12:49.038 Let me be clear. I don't think anyone, 00:12:49.038 --> 00:12:52.325 even bigots emerging from Muslim communities or anywhere else, 00:12:52.325 --> 00:12:53.511 should be silenced. 00:12:53.511 --> 00:12:57.205 What I ask is that we stand up for the right to speak of all, 00:12:57.205 --> 00:12:59.981 including those both those who stand with us 00:12:59.981 --> 00:13:02.645 and those who call for the death of our fellow dis-believers. 00:13:03.584 --> 00:13:07.097 Our society functions because we believe that hurt feelings 00:13:07.097 --> 00:13:10.354 mean essentially nothing in the eyes of our justice system. 00:13:10.354 --> 00:13:14.067 But of course it is claimed that this is a special case, 00:13:14.067 --> 00:13:16.679 because these aren't just personal hurt feelings, 00:13:16.679 --> 00:13:20.231 these are religious hurt feelings, and not just any religion, 00:13:20.231 --> 00:13:23.367 but the religion of the underdog, of the brown man. 00:13:24.067 --> 00:13:26.591 And the Left decided long ago that the hurt feelings 00:13:26.591 --> 00:13:30.114 of the Christian religion mattered little, and it was imperative 00:13:30.114 --> 00:13:32.529 that we disabuse the notion that Christianity 00:13:32.529 --> 00:13:35.569 would ever feel safe from criticism or even outright mockery. 00:13:35.894 --> 00:13:40.201 Indeed many of our greatest thinkers have delighted in exercising this right. 00:13:40.889 --> 00:13:46.170 I want to quote Thomas Paine, from his book, The Age of Reason: 00:13:47.217 --> 00:13:50.371 "Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, 00:13:50.371 --> 00:13:54.871 the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, 00:13:54.871 --> 00:13:57.025 with which more than half the Bible is filled, 00:13:57.025 --> 00:13:59.878 it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, 00:13:59.878 --> 00:14:01.308 than the word of God. 00:14:01.308 --> 00:14:05.795 It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; 00:14:05.795 --> 00:14:11.210 and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel" 00:14:12.775 --> 00:14:17.338 I wonder if Paine had been murdered for his outright contempt of Christianity, 00:14:17.338 --> 00:14:20.386 how different would the West look today? 00:14:21.006 --> 00:14:24.135 what message such a gruesome deed would have sent? 00:14:24.135 --> 00:14:26.420 how many people would it have silenced 00:14:26.420 --> 00:14:28.412 with its promise of more bloodshed to come 00:14:28.412 --> 00:14:31.289 if they had the audacity to repeat his crime? 00:14:32.277 --> 00:14:37.144 Would that fear have silenced those who insisted on the freedom of speech? 00:14:37.618 --> 00:14:40.492 How would that have affected the face of our nation? 00:14:40.492 --> 00:14:44.279 Now I hope that you will reflect with me, on the fact that 00:14:44.279 --> 00:14:46.447 not only was he not murdered, 00:14:46.447 --> 00:14:49.470 neither were his contemporaries who mocked religion, 00:14:49.470 --> 00:14:54.281 also even then three centuries ago, I don't believe he contemplated the idea 00:14:54.281 --> 00:14:56.441 that writing would actually lead to his death. 00:14:56.935 --> 00:14:59.046 And yet, in the twenty-first century, 00:14:59.046 --> 00:15:02.566 this is the reality of those who speak out against Islam in Muslim countries 00:15:02.566 --> 00:15:04.703 and increasingly in Western ones. 00:15:05.962 --> 00:15:09.228 It is not uncommon to hear from commentators in various media outlets 00:15:09.228 --> 00:15:12.746 that the victims of Charlie Hebdo had somehow provoked others 00:15:12.746 --> 00:15:16.117 with their offensive cartoons into taking their lives. 00:15:16.689 --> 00:15:22.051 The sentiment seems to be that the cartoonists must to some degree 00:15:22.051 --> 00:15:24.681 be held accountable for their own murders, 00:15:24.681 --> 00:15:28.007 even as dozens of cartoonists from the East drew panels 00:15:28.007 --> 00:15:30.717 in support of their counterparts in the West, 00:15:30.717 --> 00:15:32.966 risking their own lives for freedom of speech. 00:15:35.095 --> 00:15:38.458 Two months ago, PEN, an organization that has stood for free speech 00:15:38.458 --> 00:15:42.620 for nearly a century, announced their decision to honor 00:15:42.620 --> 00:15:44.066 the magazine Charlie Hebdo 00:15:44.066 --> 00:15:46.449 with the PEN Freedom of Expression Courage Award. 00:15:46.908 --> 00:15:49.980 Yet amongst those that were members of PEN, 00:15:49.980 --> 00:15:52.494 there were some that refused to stand with Charlie Hebdo, 00:15:52.494 --> 00:15:56.383 initially six table heads and as of now, 204 writers. 00:15:57.533 --> 00:16:00.441 I would like to remind everyone that we've been here before. 00:16:00.952 --> 00:16:04.040 When Salman Rushdie had a fatwa calling for his death, 00:16:04.411 --> 00:16:08.806 PEN America under Susan Sontag's stewardship stood for him, 00:16:08.806 --> 00:16:13.291 even while a significant percentage of the intelligentsia cast him aside. 00:16:13.487 --> 00:16:16.602 Figures as diverse as the Archbishop of Canterbury 00:16:16.602 --> 00:16:19.249 to multiple members of the British Parliament, 00:16:19.249 --> 00:16:25.144 one of whom condemned Rushdie as, quote, an outstanding villain, 00:16:25.144 --> 00:16:29.833 whose, quote, public life has been a record of despicable acts of betrayal 00:16:29.833 --> 00:16:33.702 of his upbringing, religion, adopted home and nationality. 00:16:34.606 --> 00:16:37.226 As there were eastern cartoonists standing with Charlie Hebdo, 00:16:37.226 --> 00:16:40.464 there were Irani writers from the Muslim world that stood in defiance 00:16:40.464 --> 00:16:44.108 and defended Rushdie, some of whom were subsequently attacked. 00:16:44.917 --> 00:16:48.432 In light of the recent attack in Garland, Texas, 00:16:48.432 --> 00:16:51.375 I'd like to share the prophetic words of Norman Mailer, 00:16:51.375 --> 00:16:53.501 from over two decades ago: 00:16:53.501 --> 00:16:56.732 "In this week of turmoil we can now envision a fearful time in the future 00:16:56.732 --> 00:16:59.046 when fundamentalist groups in America, 00:16:59.046 --> 00:17:02.521 stealing their page from this international episode 00:17:02.521 --> 00:17:05.366 will know how to apply the same methods 00:17:05.366 --> 00:17:07.618 to American writers and bookstores. 00:17:07.618 --> 00:17:10.796 If they succeed it will be due to the fact that we never found 00:17:10.796 --> 00:17:14.839 an honest resistance to the terrorization of Salman Rushdie." 00:17:16.369 --> 00:17:20.857 Where in 1989 and 2005 authors and cartoonists considered 00:17:20.857 --> 00:17:22.876 a vague possibility of retaliation, 00:17:22.876 --> 00:17:25.876 it has now metastatized to an ever present threat; 00:17:25.876 --> 00:17:29.774 like clockwork the violence intensifies and repeats. 00:17:30.509 --> 00:17:33.188 The cowardly response in the intervening decade 00:17:33.188 --> 00:17:37.852 has also been repeated time and time again, everytime emboldening the voices 00:17:37.852 --> 00:17:40.129 calling for the curtailment of free speech. 00:17:40.700 --> 00:17:44.466 The Rushdie fatwa was the first battle, a battle in which we surrendered, 00:17:44.466 --> 00:17:47.802 and continue to pay the price for that appeasement today. 00:17:49.242 --> 00:17:54.177 So why is it so difficult for many on the Left to criticize Islam? 00:17:54.182 --> 00:17:55.768 Why do they shy away from it? 00:17:56.236 --> 00:18:00.527 I believe that the primary reason is that many are simply incapable of separating 00:18:00.527 --> 00:18:03.644 the criticism of an idea with the hate directed towards a people, 00:18:03.644 --> 00:18:05.860 and immediately call the first "racism". 00:18:06.890 --> 00:18:09.596 That idea should not be entertained for very long, 00:18:09.596 --> 00:18:12.823 as if there can be no valid reasons to critique an ideology 00:18:12.823 --> 00:18:15.495 rooted in seventh-century patriarchal norms 00:18:15.495 --> 00:18:20.137 except for hatred toward the very people imprisoned by those ideologies. 00:18:21.609 --> 00:18:24.604 There are people who use the phrase "Islamophobia" 00:18:24.604 --> 00:18:28.496 both to mean criticism of the people and of the religion. 00:18:28.972 --> 00:18:30.545 I know that many Muslims do this, 00:18:30.545 --> 00:18:33.255 it is an easy way of stopping others from criticizing their religion, 00:18:33.255 --> 00:18:36.558 but I believe that many in the West use this word 00:18:36.558 --> 00:18:39.194 because they haven't quite thought of why it might be harmful. 00:18:39.487 --> 00:18:41.788 Islamophobia is a meaningless term. 00:18:41.788 --> 00:18:46.801 It serves to confuse and to muddle two very different forms of intolerance, 00:18:46.801 --> 00:18:48.666 based on two very different reasons, 00:18:48.666 --> 00:18:51.766 towards which there should be two very different reactions. 00:18:52.532 --> 00:18:54.919 Sometimes it is claimed that the critique of religion 00:18:54.919 --> 00:18:57.513 is critique of the identity of the believer, 00:18:57.513 --> 00:18:58.732 and is therefore bigotry. 00:18:59.339 --> 00:19:02.710 This person's identity happens to be based on ideology, 00:19:02.710 --> 00:19:04.753 so if you criticize their ideology, 00:19:04.753 --> 00:19:07.811 you are necessarily generating hate towards that person. 00:19:08.279 --> 00:19:10.066 But I wonder what would happen 00:19:10.066 --> 00:19:12.273 if we applied this type of thinking to everything? 00:19:12.726 --> 00:19:16.537 What if New Agers decided that criticism of New Age spiritual healing 00:19:16.537 --> 00:19:20.050 was a form of hate against people who chose to identify that way? 00:19:20.050 --> 00:19:23.037 What if Hindus decided criticism of the caste system 00:19:23.037 --> 00:19:26.824 was a deeply offensive form of racism against Hindu people? 00:19:27.243 --> 00:19:29.677 How much of that would retard reform? 00:19:31.143 --> 00:19:32.571 There is another version of this argument 00:19:32.571 --> 00:19:35.236 which claims that criticism or ridicule of Islam 00:19:35.236 --> 00:19:38.524 feeds into the bigotry by the far-right 00:19:38.524 --> 00:19:40.335 and therefore causes harm, 00:19:41.122 --> 00:19:43.810 and I want everyone to know that the argument is almost never 00:19:43.810 --> 00:19:47.391 that Islam doesn't deserve the critique or ridicule as a religion, 00:19:47.391 --> 00:19:52.400 but that it is harmful to voice this for the damage it would do. 00:19:53.143 --> 00:19:56.913 Now one of the writers that opposed the award for Charlie Hebdo claimed that, 00:19:56.913 --> 00:20:00.657 quote, the narrative of the Charlie Hebdo murders 00:20:00.660 --> 00:20:03.804 -- the narrative of the Charlie Hebdo murders -- 00:20:03.804 --> 00:20:07.497 white Europeans killed in their offices by Muslim extremists 00:20:07.497 --> 00:20:10.644 is one that feeds neatly into the cultural prejudices 00:20:10.644 --> 00:20:12.135 that have allowed our governments 00:20:12.135 --> 00:20:15.177 to make so many disastrous mistakes in the Middle East 00:20:16.317 --> 00:20:19.287 -- the narrative of the Charlie Hebdo murders! 00:20:19.480 --> 00:20:22.298 I read that statement and I realized that for some writers 00:20:22.298 --> 00:20:25.502 the problem wasn't just that the cartoons were offensive, 00:20:25.502 --> 00:20:30.071 it was that the reaction of Muslims to the cartoons fed into 00:20:30.071 --> 00:20:31.863 a stereotypical Muslim trope, 00:20:31.863 --> 00:20:35.185 a reaction that was very inconvenient for a group 00:20:35.185 --> 00:20:38.105 trying their best to paint a picture of a peaceful Islam, 00:20:38.383 --> 00:20:40.510 despite mounting evidence to the contrary. 00:20:41.517 --> 00:20:44.952 It is quite clear that allegiances here aren't to the truth, 00:20:45.432 --> 00:20:49.660 instead the aim is to selectively hide inconvenient truths, 00:20:49.660 --> 00:20:52.856 truths that are deemed to be harmful, should they ever be acknowledged. 00:20:53.828 --> 00:20:58.599 I assume the fear is that we do not want to give support to actual bigoted people. 00:20:58.900 --> 00:21:02.497 Anyone who watches Fox knows how they use fear-mongering tactics 00:21:02.497 --> 00:21:04.066 to promote xenophobia. 00:21:05.136 --> 00:21:08.853 But the liberation of a billion and a half Muslims in the world, 00:21:08.853 --> 00:21:10.830 Muslims who are suffering under the yoke 00:21:10.830 --> 00:21:13.801 of an ever-present theological authority, 00:21:13.801 --> 00:21:15.907 should be at the forefront of our minds. 00:21:16.453 --> 00:21:19.673 As has been repeated hundreds of times by critics like myself, 00:21:19.673 --> 00:21:23.447 the primary victims of Islamism are Muslims, 00:21:23.447 --> 00:21:26.886 be it in terms of terrorism, violence, misogyny, 00:21:26.886 --> 00:21:31.306 freedom of expression and religion, and economic decline. 00:21:31.306 --> 00:21:35.566 Yet bizarrely, to some, these concerns are secondary still 00:21:35.566 --> 00:21:37.437 to not presenting offense. 00:21:38.926 --> 00:21:41.523 Still there are others who believe that those in the West, 00:21:41.523 --> 00:21:44.424 that people in the West have no right to speak about 00:21:44.424 --> 00:21:46.105 problems of "brown cultures" 00:21:46.105 --> 00:21:49.279 due to the legacy of colonialism and other forms of violence 00:21:49.279 --> 00:21:51.070 the West has cast upon the East. 00:21:51.795 --> 00:21:55.732 This is a strange argument because it ignores the history of the world, 00:21:55.732 --> 00:22:00.367 a history in which various nations, Muslims and non-Muslims, 00:22:00.367 --> 00:22:03.686 have succumbed to the ebb-and-flow of conquest, repeatedly, 00:22:03.686 --> 00:22:05.114 for all of recorded history. 00:22:06.022 --> 00:22:10.073 Many Islamic countries in fact had horrific laws before colonialism. 00:22:10.607 --> 00:22:13.975 Two of the epicenters of Islamic thought, Iran for Shia Islam, 00:22:13.975 --> 00:22:18.712 and Saudi Arabia for Sunni Islam, resisted colonialism. 00:22:20.712 --> 00:22:21.742 -- Excuse me -- 00:22:22.332 --> 00:22:25.621 In fact, Saudi Arabia was founded in 1744 00:22:25.621 --> 00:22:27.004 as an extremist state, 00:22:27.004 --> 00:22:30.156 the first iteration of which was destroyed by the Ottomans, 00:22:30.156 --> 00:22:32.344 due to their religious fanaticism. 00:22:32.782 --> 00:22:35.652 The first Saudis in fact attacked and desecrated 00:22:35.652 --> 00:22:38.711 some of the most holy Muslim sites and were stopped 00:22:38.711 --> 00:22:41.274 not by intervention of the West but by other Muslims 00:22:41.274 --> 00:22:43.269 that viewed them as dangerous fanatics. 00:22:43.658 --> 00:22:46.254 There was then no American imperialism, 00:22:46.254 --> 00:22:48.204 no frame of wars against other Muslims, 00:22:48.204 --> 00:22:51.240 and yet, fundamentalist Wahabbis existed, 00:22:51.240 --> 00:22:53.104 and were attacking other Muslims, 00:22:53.104 --> 00:22:56.193 very much the same way that ISIS attacks them today. 00:22:56.805 --> 00:22:58.721 Reform is impossible 00:22:58.721 --> 00:23:01.578 when you constantly shift the conversation away 00:23:01.578 --> 00:23:05.959 from Islamic fundamentalism, and back to western violence and imperialism. 00:23:07.077 --> 00:23:09.657 But don't get me wrong. It is important to discuss this, 00:23:09.657 --> 00:23:12.729 it is important to discuss imperialism and the harm that it caused. 00:23:12.729 --> 00:23:16.298 But violence in the name of Islam has terrorized the Middle East 00:23:16.298 --> 00:23:18.666 ever since its inception, and it is important 00:23:18.666 --> 00:23:20.496 that we don't derail this conversation. 00:23:20.798 --> 00:23:26.545 The moral paralysis out of fear of the right, out of fear of furthering bigotry, 00:23:26.983 --> 00:23:30.658 out of shame of prior crimes committed by other white people 00:23:30.658 --> 00:23:34.014 should not trump all considerations. 00:23:34.752 --> 00:23:37.143 When I read articles of why Muslims should not be ridiculed 00:23:37.143 --> 00:23:42.546 I get a sense of condescension, a sense that there are those who believe 00:23:42.546 --> 00:23:46.071 that the most essential trait of brown people is their religion, 00:23:46.071 --> 00:23:48.899 a defining feature in fact, and due to this 00:23:48.899 --> 00:23:51.897 they presume that we won't reform or we can't, 00:23:52.229 --> 00:23:55.448 that religion is something inherent to who we are 00:23:55.448 --> 00:23:57.693 and that it won't respond to pressure, to change 00:23:57.693 --> 00:24:00.734 the way Christianity responded to pressure by secularists. 00:24:01.274 --> 00:24:04.625 While they believe themselves to be supporting tolerance, 00:24:04.625 --> 00:24:08.336 what they are really supporting is the religious right of the East, 00:24:08.636 --> 00:24:12.055 and not just any religious right, not the religious right that we have here, 00:24:12.342 --> 00:24:14.860 it's a religious right the West hasn't seen for centuries. 00:24:15.229 --> 00:24:20.508 To me, someone who opposes the most foundational liberal principle, 00:24:20.508 --> 00:24:21.965 the freedom of expression, 00:24:21.965 --> 00:24:26.255 in order to protect the sensibilities of this Islamist religious right 00:24:26.255 --> 00:24:27.948 is a liberal only in name. 00:24:28.568 --> 00:24:32.929 In fact, what kind of person holds two different groups of people accountable 00:24:32.929 --> 00:24:36.411 to two different standards of acceptable behavior but a bigot? 00:24:37.144 --> 00:24:39.383 Islam, like all patriarchal religions, 00:24:39.383 --> 00:24:43.178 is a tool used to justify abuse of women and minorities. 00:24:43.559 --> 00:24:46.721 Does our concept of tolerance extend towards tolerance 00:24:46.721 --> 00:24:49.728 of systematic subjugation of women and minorities? 00:24:50.430 --> 00:24:53.781 What else can excusing abuse made in the name of tolerance be called 00:24:53.781 --> 00:24:57.371 other than a benevolent, self-serving form of bigotry? 00:24:59.052 --> 00:25:01.565 No matter how seemingly compassionate the motivations, 00:25:01.565 --> 00:25:04.101 we must not hesitate in being honest 00:25:04.101 --> 00:25:08.449 in calling out our allies for their hypocrisy and their illiberal mores. 00:25:10.013 --> 00:25:13.725 Sometimes I feel as if people view secularism and free-thinking 00:25:13.725 --> 00:25:17.669 to be concepts owned by the West, something inherently Western. 00:25:18.401 --> 00:25:21.468 To push secularism and free thought to Muslims then 00:25:21.468 --> 00:25:23.830 is to push a Western identity onto them. 00:25:24.524 --> 00:25:26.601 It is no more than ignorance of history 00:25:26.601 --> 00:25:30.767 to feel that Enlightenment ideals can only be shared by this civilization, 00:25:30.767 --> 00:25:33.636 rather than a progression of all of humanity. 00:25:34.151 --> 00:25:35.448 Indeed throughout history 00:25:35.448 --> 00:25:38.141 there have been champions of these very same ideals, 00:25:38.141 --> 00:25:41.302 there have been free-thinkers in every culture in the world 00:25:41.302 --> 00:25:42.812 that have bled for these ideals. 00:25:43.640 --> 00:25:46.192 There have been countless free-thinkers that challenged faith, 00:25:46.192 --> 00:25:51.775 that tried but sadly failed to interpret scripture in a less misogynist way, 00:25:51.775 --> 00:25:54.186 even in patriarchal Islamic societies. 00:25:54.824 --> 00:25:57.111 For example, the seventeenth century had 00:25:57.111 --> 00:26:00.140 a crown prince of the Mughal dynasty, Dara Shikoh, 00:26:00.140 --> 00:26:04.969 who was committed to rights of all religions, Hindu, Sikh, Muslim alike, 00:26:04.969 --> 00:26:09.004 working to bridge the gaps between the leading lights of all faiths. 00:26:09.728 --> 00:26:12.270 As you may anticipate, this was not to last, 00:26:12.270 --> 00:26:14.192 Dara was murdered by his own brother, 00:26:14.192 --> 00:26:19.330 claiming that Dara's tolerance was a sign of his apostasy, 00:26:19.330 --> 00:26:23.850 a brother that is now revered in Muslim circles as being a guardian of the faith. 00:26:24.577 --> 00:26:26.149 Similarly, there have been women 00:26:26.149 --> 00:26:27.786 that have led the charge for their own rights. 00:26:28.395 --> 00:26:32.197 Exactly two hundred years ago, Fatima Baraghani was born in Iran, 00:26:32.544 --> 00:26:37.089 an extremely intelligent woman, who as per custom was married young, 00:26:37.089 --> 00:26:39.678 and wasn't allowed to further pursue her education. 00:26:40.769 --> 00:26:44.310 She was attracted to a radical movement brewing in the country, 00:26:44.310 --> 00:26:46.738 which espoused equality of the genders. 00:26:47.061 --> 00:26:51.541 She joined and rose to be one of the leading lights of that movement. 00:26:52.715 --> 00:26:55.753 To symbolize a break from Shariah, at one gathering, 00:26:55.753 --> 00:26:59.479 she took off her traditional veil in front of an assemblage of men 00:26:59.479 --> 00:27:01.662 and brandished instead a sword. 00:27:02.882 --> 00:27:06.153 Now this sight caused such a shock among the crowd, 00:27:06.153 --> 00:27:09.467 that many grown men screamed aloud. 00:27:10.040 --> 00:27:12.866 One man cut his own throat in horror, 00:27:12.866 --> 00:27:16.833 fleeing the scene as blood poured from his neck. {Laughter} 00:27:19.043 --> 00:27:22.444 But she did not enjoy freedom or live long after this incident. 00:27:24.222 --> 00:27:28.271 The tragedy of the Eastern past isn't that we haven't given birth to reformers 00:27:28.271 --> 00:27:32.417 but that the violence of our oppressors has eliminated us, time and again. 00:27:32.990 --> 00:27:35.775 Even in modern times, one Somali author, 00:27:35.775 --> 00:27:39.828 Abdisaid Abdi Ismail, wrote a book where he audaciously argued 00:27:39.828 --> 00:27:44.449 that Islam doesn't actually call for a death penalty for apostasy. 00:27:44.449 --> 00:27:47.535 He was rewarded for his efforts by having his life threatened, 00:27:47.535 --> 00:27:49.569 and calls for his book to be burned. 00:27:50.767 --> 00:27:52.773 A British reformist, Maajid Nawaz, 00:27:52.773 --> 00:27:56.007 has had fatwas issued calling for his death 00:27:56.007 --> 00:27:58.576 for simply saying on a tweet 00:27:58.576 --> 00:28:01.452 that a cartoon of Muhammad doesn't personally offend him. 00:28:02.077 --> 00:28:05.377 The religious right has been murdering reformers for centuries, 00:28:05.377 --> 00:28:07.922 but we are still here, fighting for our future, 00:28:07.922 --> 00:28:11.406 the same fight that the West has had much greater success in. 00:28:11.966 --> 00:28:16.165 It is strange that the very same people, who wish to tamp down on the power 00:28:16.165 --> 00:28:20.758 of the Christian right and use the advances that the West has had, 00:28:20.758 --> 00:28:23.961 to insist that we must be defined by our religious right. 00:28:24.636 --> 00:28:26.376 Let us assume, for the sake of argument, 00:28:26.376 --> 00:28:30.480 that we can all concede the idea that Islam, as a religion, needs reform, 00:28:30.480 --> 00:28:34.139 or at the very least, Muslim communities do, both in the West and abroad, 00:28:34.139 --> 00:28:36.989 and in the way that they choose to practice their faith. 00:28:37.434 --> 00:28:40.856 I happen to believe this. All the data we have corroborates this. 00:28:41.605 --> 00:28:43.022 There's a large amount of evidence 00:28:43.024 --> 00:28:46.061 which clearly demonstrates rampant misogyny, 00:28:46.061 --> 00:28:49.685 bad attitudes towards homosexuals and apostasy within the Muslim world, 00:28:49.685 --> 00:28:52.657 supported by the law and widely accepted by the people. 00:28:54.156 --> 00:28:58.301 In an effort to draw attention away from the role of religion in all this, 00:28:58.301 --> 00:29:04.349 some have chosen to instead use excuses by a variety of reasons, 00:29:04.349 --> 00:29:05.811 none of which make sense, 00:29:05.811 --> 00:29:09.083 because Muslim countries share almost nothing between them all, 00:29:09.083 --> 00:29:10.851 except the predominant religion: 00:29:11.159 --> 00:29:15.888 not socio-economic status, not education or literacy levels, not GDP, 00:29:15.888 --> 00:29:20.424 not cultural background or history, not race or ethnicity, not language, 00:29:20.424 --> 00:29:23.799 not political system, not the history of Western colonization. 00:29:23.799 --> 00:29:26.160 What they do share is theology. 00:29:27.271 --> 00:29:31.164 Obviously Islam isn't the root of all evil, but it is an important factor. 00:29:31.550 --> 00:29:34.252 What we have here is a right wing in the West who believes 00:29:34.252 --> 00:29:36.050 that Islam personifies evil 00:29:36.050 --> 00:29:40.189 and a Left which refuses to even look into it as a source of harm. 00:29:41.051 --> 00:29:44.248 The question then becomes, how do we achieve reform 00:29:44.248 --> 00:29:47.354 without actually mentioning any problems in Islam? 00:29:47.739 --> 00:29:50.092 How do we achieve progress while shying away 00:29:50.092 --> 00:29:54.701 from one of the foundational aspects of how harmful practices are justified? 00:29:55.708 --> 00:29:58.794 Most cultures are responsive to selective pressure, 00:29:58.794 --> 00:30:01.203 and by insisting that no pressure be applied, 00:30:01.203 --> 00:30:03.616 we are acting as a brake on any progress. 00:30:04.253 --> 00:30:06.899 We have plenty of evidence that a push for secularism 00:30:06.899 --> 00:30:10.841 or a presence within secular cultures can change behavior, 00:30:10.841 --> 00:30:12.597 and even the beliefs of Muslims. 00:30:13.558 --> 00:30:16.508 For example, if you compare Muslims living in the US 00:30:16.508 --> 00:30:20.556 with Muslims in the Middle East, you will find across all metrics, 00:30:20.556 --> 00:30:25.095 that their opinions are less extreme and more in line with liberal values, 00:30:25.095 --> 00:30:28.000 than those of the population of their origin countries. 00:30:29.003 --> 00:30:32.242 Many Muslims believe that their religion is immutable, 00:30:32.242 --> 00:30:36.421 that every word of which is true, and reformers insult them 00:30:36.421 --> 00:30:37.908 when they demand change. 00:30:38.218 --> 00:30:41.420 Yet profound changes in the way Muslims practice their religion 00:30:41.420 --> 00:30:43.085 have occurred in the past. 00:30:43.555 --> 00:30:47.298 Many Muslim countries practiced slavery up until the twentieth century, 00:30:47.839 --> 00:30:51.785 with some countries abolishing slavery as recently as 1981, 00:30:52.046 --> 00:30:55.385 citing religious sanction of the practice as a justification. 00:30:55.964 --> 00:31:00.687 Saudi Arabia's slave population was estimated at 300,000 00:31:00.687 --> 00:31:03.625 a scant 50 years ago, 00:31:03.625 --> 00:31:06.666 and it was international pressure that forced abolition. 00:31:08.132 --> 00:31:11.342 Under pressure from the British Empire to abolish slavery 00:31:11.342 --> 00:31:12.504 a little over a century ago, 00:31:12.504 --> 00:31:16.234 the Sultan of Morocco cited the inerrancy of the Quran 00:31:16.234 --> 00:31:18.586 to make the case for the divine sanction of slavery. 00:31:19.372 --> 00:31:22.058 Later the chief minister of Morocco, Muhammad Idris, 00:31:22.058 --> 00:31:25.205 wrote in response to anti-slavery efforts, that 00:31:25.205 --> 00:31:28.879 "we do not interfere in religious principles which you profess, 00:31:28.879 --> 00:31:31.564 likewise you should not interfere in our religion". 00:31:32.357 --> 00:31:36.038 In the face of Ottoman unwillingness to condemn the status of slaves 00:31:36.038 --> 00:31:41.805 as enshrined in Shariah, a British statesman sarcastically stated, 00:31:41.805 --> 00:31:44.769 that one might well ask the Sultan to become a Christian. 00:31:45.868 --> 00:31:50.706 Yet today, most if not all Muslims are repulsed by the idea of slaves. 00:31:51.782 --> 00:31:55.611 Did they abandon the Quran which seemed to clearly condone slavery 00:31:55.611 --> 00:31:57.145 a mere century ago? 00:31:57.145 --> 00:31:59.589 Or were we able to shift mainstream consensus 00:31:59.589 --> 00:32:01.768 by standing up for our moral principles? 00:32:02.163 --> 00:32:03.687 I wonder what would have happened 00:32:03.687 --> 00:32:07.317 if the benevolent bigots of the West, of the Left today, 00:32:07.317 --> 00:32:10.154 who feel that it is more important to respect a culture 00:32:10.154 --> 00:32:13.595 for the sake of respecting a culture had existed back then. 00:32:14.234 --> 00:32:16.483 How many millions would be living in chains today? 00:32:17.805 --> 00:32:21.689 There is another common narrative, of the West as oppressors, 00:32:21.689 --> 00:32:24.928 how racism here feeds into the oppression of a minority. 00:32:24.928 --> 00:32:28.258 Champions of Islam have gone on record using it as a cudgel 00:32:28.258 --> 00:32:31.626 to beat against the back of progress. 00:32:32.225 --> 00:32:35.812 We need to be aware that the victim versus the oppressor dynamic 00:32:35.812 --> 00:32:38.737 isn't set in stone the way some people would have you believe. 00:32:39.227 --> 00:32:42.856 One can be a victim in one context and an oppressor in another. 00:32:43.506 --> 00:32:46.939 A Muslim man may deal with racism at work, real racism, 00:32:46.939 --> 00:32:51.641 may see career setbacks, and goes home and beats his hijabi wife 00:32:51.641 --> 00:32:54.283 because he was raised in a misogynistic tradition, 00:32:54.283 --> 00:32:57.420 using Quran's verse as justification. 00:32:58.107 --> 00:32:59.823 Should we not criticize his behavior 00:32:59.823 --> 00:33:02.046 because of his victimization in one aspect? 00:33:03.285 --> 00:33:07.999 An imam may be an anti-Semite, a homophobe, he may be indoctrinating 00:33:07.999 --> 00:33:11.024 a generation of impressionable minds into his harmful ideas. 00:33:11.527 --> 00:33:14.729 Yet the same imam might also be a victim of bigotry 00:33:14.729 --> 00:33:16.685 when he aims to launch a new mosque. 00:33:16.685 --> 00:33:20.765 He may be the target of local xenophobic attitudes. 00:33:21.885 --> 00:33:23.928 In lieu of his sufferings, should we pretend 00:33:23.928 --> 00:33:27.926 his other despicable behaviors do not exist, or do not matter? 00:33:28.746 --> 00:33:30.879 Are we to sacrifice one for the other? 00:33:31.346 --> 00:33:34.023 Instead, can we not stand against all oppressions, 00:33:34.023 --> 00:33:37.650 stand for the equal rights of others, while simultaneously working 00:33:37.650 --> 00:33:40.099 against bigoted narratives within religion? 00:33:40.986 --> 00:33:42.609 One of my Ex-Muslim colleagues, Hiba Krisht, 00:33:42.609 --> 00:33:45.225 beautifully summed up the same sentiments, 00:33:45.225 --> 00:33:50.087 when she was talking about the misogynistic nature of the hijab, 00:33:51.118 --> 00:33:55.321 quote, feminism is defending women, Muslim women, 00:33:55.321 --> 00:33:59.347 who wear the hijab for whatever reason, against shaming or attack. 00:33:59.857 --> 00:34:05.770 Feminism is not categorically denying that the hijab can be coercive, 00:34:05.770 --> 00:34:10.120 body-shaming, slut-shaming, restrictive or psychologically crippling. 00:34:11.447 --> 00:34:14.462 We cannot avoid reality because we are afraid 00:34:14.462 --> 00:34:17.024 of the consequences of acknowledging facts. 00:34:17.024 --> 00:34:21.656 Is it ethical to avoid educating our children about Darwinian evolution 00:34:21.656 --> 00:34:24.835 simply because it has fed into Social Darwinism in the past? 00:34:25.632 --> 00:34:28.963 Our silence about uncomfortable truths simply underscores 00:34:28.963 --> 00:34:33.176 the cost of our inaction as the consequences loom ever larger. 00:34:33.694 --> 00:34:37.070 We are paralyzed by our own insecurities, by our fear 00:34:37.070 --> 00:34:40.812 that the truth will empower the worst of us, rather than set us free. 00:34:42.440 --> 00:34:44.653 We have those on the Islamic far right 00:34:44.653 --> 00:34:47.419 who say that there is no room for reform in Islam, 00:34:47.419 --> 00:34:49.937 because Islam is, and always has been perfect. 00:34:49.937 --> 00:34:53.290 We have their counterparts from the far right in the West, 00:34:53.290 --> 00:34:56.366 who coincidentally also view Islam as beyond reform, 00:34:56.366 --> 00:34:57.659 but for different reasons, 00:34:57.659 --> 00:35:00.440 as something that is irredeemably and permanently evil. 00:35:00.899 --> 00:35:03.997 Between those two extremes, we have the average Muslim, 00:35:03.997 --> 00:35:07.614 who is forced to choose between the devil he knows, 00:35:07.614 --> 00:35:11.786 Islamic dominance and supremacy, over the devil he doesn't, Western bigotry. 00:35:12.312 --> 00:35:14.999 The liberal Left needs to present a different path, 00:35:14.999 --> 00:35:17.569 not acquiesce to either form of religious dominance. 00:35:17.569 --> 00:35:20.849 It is particularly important that those who stand for compassion, 00:35:20.849 --> 00:35:22.418 that those who stand for human rights 00:35:22.418 --> 00:35:25.669 and who recognize the harmful effects of bigotry and discrimination 00:35:25.669 --> 00:35:29.990 lead the charge against religious oppression no matter where it stems. 00:35:30.860 --> 00:35:33.638 We know, not only is reform is possible, 00:35:33.638 --> 00:35:36.344 but it is ongoing against insurmountable odds, 00:35:36.344 --> 00:35:38.906 it has champions that are laying their lives on the line 00:35:38.906 --> 00:35:39.987 for a better tomorrow. 00:35:39.987 --> 00:35:43.490 We cannot and must not let the current situation endure 00:35:43.490 --> 00:35:46.386 where reformists of Islam are standing alone and vulnerable. 00:35:48.090 --> 00:35:51.386 We must remember that there is no inevitable march of progress, 00:35:51.386 --> 00:35:55.114 no guarantee that tomorrow's world will be more just, more equal, 00:35:55.114 --> 00:35:59.256 more rational, more tolerant or reasonable. 00:35:59.651 --> 00:36:01.648 Liberal rights without liberals to champion them 00:36:01.648 --> 00:36:04.188 are values without influence, with no defense. 00:36:04.655 --> 00:36:07.012 Let's not let our empathy for oppression of one group 00:36:07.012 --> 00:36:09.467 excuse their oppression of another. 00:36:09.917 --> 00:36:11.050 Thank you! 00:36:11.056 --> 00:36:34.983 (Standing applause) 00:36:39.568 --> 00:36:42.886 (Man) Well, OK, we have time for one question 00:36:42.886 --> 00:36:44.723 and then we'll have to take a 10-minute break 00:36:44.723 --> 00:36:48.004 Nobody likes a time-keeper, not speakers, not audience 00:36:48.505 --> 00:36:49.804 I'm here to be hated. 00:36:50.388 --> 00:36:51.790 (Man 2) I'm glad I got here first. 00:36:51.790 --> 00:36:55.597 First of all, thank you for your courage and bravery, 00:36:55.597 --> 00:36:56.810 with what you're doing. 00:36:56.810 --> 00:37:03.342 (Haider) Thank you (Applause) 00:37:03.342 --> 00:37:05.489 (Man 2) You mentioned the word reform a lot 00:37:05.492 --> 00:37:10.861 and others have spoken of Islam as potentially being 00:37:10.861 --> 00:37:13.527 at the, I guess the beginning of a reformation, 00:37:14.087 --> 00:37:16.312 similar to what happened with Catholicism. 00:37:17.072 --> 00:37:20.644 I guess I have two questions -- sorry, two parts. 00:37:21.270 --> 00:37:24.642 First, do you believe that we are seeing the beginning of that? 00:37:24.650 --> 00:37:30.014 And if so, do you, or should we have any confidence 00:37:30.014 --> 00:37:32.646 that that reformation, if and when it comes in Islam, 00:37:32.646 --> 00:37:39.019 will be any less bloody than what historically, we experienced 00:37:39.019 --> 00:37:40.718 with the Catholic Reformation? 00:37:41.901 --> 00:37:45.223 (Haider) I've heard that comparison quite a few times 00:37:45.223 --> 00:37:47.467 and I made it myself quite a few times. 00:37:48.317 --> 00:37:51.902 But I don't think they are exactly the same, in the sense that 00:37:51.902 --> 00:37:54.503 this change will need to happen at a different pace. 00:37:54.503 --> 00:37:56.659 It'll need to be faster, and it will be faster, 00:37:56.659 --> 00:38:03.584 because of, you know, social media and the way that secular literature 00:38:03.584 --> 00:38:06.063 and atheist literature has spread across the internet. 00:38:06.063 --> 00:38:10.491 A lot of Ex-Muslims who join our group, The Ex-Muslims of North America, 00:38:10.491 --> 00:38:15.164 tell me that they started thinking about, you know, atheism or humanism 00:38:15.164 --> 00:38:19.478 when they first read something Richard Dawkins wrote, back in Egypt. 00:38:19.478 --> 00:38:23.536 This is possible now, so I really believe that it can be faster 00:38:23.536 --> 00:38:26.369 and I think that it doesn't have to be as bloody 00:38:26.369 --> 00:38:30.240 if the West is willing to stand up for the reformists, 00:38:30.240 --> 00:38:36.498 with the reformists in the East. (Applause) 00:38:36.498 --> 00:38:39.186 (Captions are based on Arun's transcript: see link in description)