1 00:00:00,496 --> 00:00:06,216 Writing biography is a strange thing to do. 2 00:00:06,216 --> 00:00:08,899 It's a journey into the foreign territory 3 00:00:08,899 --> 00:00:12,095 of somebody else's life, 4 00:00:12,095 --> 00:00:14,768 a journey, an exploration that can take you places 5 00:00:14,768 --> 00:00:17,039 you never dreamed of going 6 00:00:17,039 --> 00:00:19,264 and still can't quite believe you've been, 7 00:00:19,264 --> 00:00:22,992 especially if, like me, you're an agnostic Jew 8 00:00:22,992 --> 00:00:24,817 and the life you've been exploring 9 00:00:24,817 --> 00:00:29,649 is that of Muhammad. 10 00:00:29,649 --> 00:00:32,080 Five years ago, for instance, 11 00:00:32,080 --> 00:00:35,348 I found myself waking each morning in misty Seattle 12 00:00:35,348 --> 00:00:38,831 to what I knew was an impossible question: 13 00:00:38,831 --> 00:00:42,049 What actually happened 14 00:00:42,049 --> 00:00:43,488 one desert night, 15 00:00:43,488 --> 00:00:47,082 half the world and almost half of history away? 16 00:00:47,082 --> 00:00:48,802 What happened, that is, 17 00:00:48,802 --> 00:00:51,120 on the night in the year 610 18 00:00:51,120 --> 00:00:54,971 when Muhammad received the first revelation of the Koran 19 00:00:54,971 --> 00:00:59,048 on a mountain just outside Mecca? 20 00:00:59,048 --> 00:01:03,653 This is the core mystical moment of Islam, 21 00:01:03,653 --> 00:01:05,019 and as such, of course, 22 00:01:05,019 --> 00:01:08,095 it defies empirical analysis. 23 00:01:08,095 --> 00:01:12,200 Yet the question wouldn't let go of me. 24 00:01:12,200 --> 00:01:15,384 I was fully aware that for someone as secular as I am, 25 00:01:15,384 --> 00:01:17,263 just asking it could be seen 26 00:01:17,263 --> 00:01:20,523 as pure chutzpah. 27 00:01:20,523 --> 00:01:23,205 (Laughter) 28 00:01:23,205 --> 00:01:25,816 And I plead guilty as charged, 29 00:01:25,816 --> 00:01:29,847 because all exploration, physical or intellectual, 30 00:01:29,847 --> 00:01:33,724 is inevitably in some sense an act of transgression, 31 00:01:33,724 --> 00:01:37,121 of crossing boundaries. 32 00:01:37,121 --> 00:01:43,136 Still, some boundaries are larger than others. 33 00:01:43,136 --> 00:01:46,056 So a human encountering the divine, 34 00:01:46,056 --> 00:01:49,178 as Muslims believe Muhammad did, 35 00:01:49,178 --> 00:01:52,019 to the rationalist, this is a matter not of fact 36 00:01:52,019 --> 00:01:53,776 but of wishful fiction, 37 00:01:53,776 --> 00:01:57,714 and like all of us, I like to think of myself as rational. 38 00:01:57,714 --> 00:02:00,598 Which might be why when I looked at the earliest accounts 39 00:02:00,598 --> 00:02:02,375 we have of that night, 40 00:02:02,375 --> 00:02:05,194 what struck me even more than what happened 41 00:02:05,194 --> 00:02:10,716 was what did not happen. 42 00:02:10,716 --> 00:02:13,868 Muhammad did not come floating off the mountain 43 00:02:13,868 --> 00:02:16,818 as though walking on air. 44 00:02:16,818 --> 00:02:19,292 He did not run down shouting, "Hallelujah!" 45 00:02:19,292 --> 00:02:21,652 and "Bless the Lord!" 46 00:02:21,652 --> 00:02:25,380 He did not radiate light and joy. 47 00:02:25,380 --> 00:02:26,959 There were no choirs of angels, 48 00:02:26,959 --> 00:02:30,259 no music of the spheres, no elation, no ecstasy, 49 00:02:30,259 --> 00:02:33,921 no golden aura surrounding him, 50 00:02:33,921 --> 00:02:38,063 no sense of an absolute, fore-ordained role 51 00:02:38,063 --> 00:02:41,139 as the messenger of God. 52 00:02:41,139 --> 00:02:44,094 That is, he did none of the things 53 00:02:44,094 --> 00:02:46,848 that might make it easy to cry foul, 54 00:02:46,848 --> 00:02:51,995 to put down the whole story as a pious fable. 55 00:02:51,995 --> 00:02:54,827 Quite the contrary. 56 00:02:54,827 --> 00:02:58,572 In his own reported words, 57 00:02:58,572 --> 00:03:00,949 he was convinced at first 58 00:03:00,949 --> 00:03:06,230 that what had happened couldn't have been real. 59 00:03:06,230 --> 00:03:08,942 At best, he thought, it had to have been a hallucination -- 60 00:03:08,942 --> 00:03:10,751 a trick of the eye or the ear, perhaps, 61 00:03:10,751 --> 00:03:12,926 or his own mind working against him. 62 00:03:12,926 --> 00:03:15,103 At worst, possession -- 63 00:03:15,103 --> 00:03:17,392 that he'd been seized by an evil jinn, 64 00:03:17,392 --> 00:03:19,183 a spirit out to deceive him, 65 00:03:19,183 --> 00:03:22,192 even to crush the life out of him. 66 00:03:22,192 --> 00:03:25,216 In fact, he was so sure that he could only be majnun, 67 00:03:25,216 --> 00:03:26,844 possessed by a jinn, 68 00:03:26,844 --> 00:03:28,956 that when he found himself still alive, 69 00:03:28,956 --> 00:03:33,805 his first impulse was to finish the job himself, 70 00:03:33,805 --> 00:03:36,008 to leap off the highest cliff 71 00:03:36,008 --> 00:03:40,126 and escape the terror of what he'd experienced 72 00:03:40,126 --> 00:03:47,228 by putting an end to all experience. 73 00:03:47,228 --> 00:03:50,148 So the man who fled down the mountain that night 74 00:03:50,148 --> 00:03:52,599 trembled not with joy 75 00:03:52,599 --> 00:03:57,319 but with a stark, primordial fear. 76 00:03:57,319 --> 00:04:03,239 He was overwhelmed not with conviction, but by doubt. 77 00:04:03,239 --> 00:04:06,040 And that panicked disorientation, 78 00:04:06,040 --> 00:04:08,919 that sundering of everything familiar, 79 00:04:08,919 --> 00:04:12,587 that daunting awareness of something 80 00:04:12,603 --> 00:04:15,512 beyond human comprehension, 81 00:04:15,512 --> 00:04:22,087 can only be called a terrible awe. 82 00:04:22,087 --> 00:04:25,301 This might be somewhat difficult to grasp 83 00:04:25,301 --> 00:04:27,839 now that we use the word "awesome" 84 00:04:27,839 --> 00:04:32,018 to describe a new app or a viral video. 85 00:04:32,018 --> 00:04:35,223 With the exception perhaps of a massive earthquake, 86 00:04:35,223 --> 00:04:37,871 we're protected from real awe. 87 00:04:37,871 --> 00:04:39,759 We close the doors and hunker down, 88 00:04:39,759 --> 00:04:42,305 convinced that we're in control, 89 00:04:42,305 --> 00:04:45,327 or, at least, hoping for control. 90 00:04:45,327 --> 00:04:47,235 We do our best to ignore the fact that 91 00:04:47,235 --> 00:04:49,296 we don't always have it, 92 00:04:49,296 --> 00:04:52,053 and that not everything can be explained. 93 00:04:52,053 --> 00:04:56,215 Yet whether you're a rationalist or a mystic, 94 00:04:56,215 --> 00:04:58,910 whether you think the words Muhammad heard that night 95 00:04:58,910 --> 00:05:03,174 came from inside himself or from outside, 96 00:05:03,174 --> 00:05:07,878 what's clear is that he did experience them, 97 00:05:07,878 --> 00:05:10,314 and that he did so with a force that would shatter 98 00:05:10,314 --> 00:05:12,635 his sense of himself and his world 99 00:05:12,635 --> 00:05:15,775 and transform this otherwise modest man 100 00:05:15,775 --> 00:05:22,468 into a radical advocate for social and economic justice. 101 00:05:22,468 --> 00:05:27,710 Fear was the only sane response, 102 00:05:27,710 --> 00:05:32,734 the only human response. 103 00:05:32,734 --> 00:05:35,242 Too human for some, 104 00:05:35,242 --> 00:05:37,975 like conservative Muslim theologians who maintain that 105 00:05:37,975 --> 00:05:39,842 the account of his wanting to kill himself 106 00:05:39,842 --> 00:05:42,280 shouldn't even be mentioned, despite the fact 107 00:05:42,280 --> 00:05:46,734 that it's in the earliest Islamic biographies. 108 00:05:46,734 --> 00:05:49,525 They insist that he never doubted 109 00:05:49,525 --> 00:05:56,135 for even a single moment, let alone despaired. 110 00:05:56,135 --> 00:05:59,972 Demanding perfection, they refuse to tolerate 111 00:05:59,972 --> 00:06:04,691 human imperfection. 112 00:06:04,691 --> 00:06:11,886 Yet what, exactly, is imperfect about doubt? 113 00:06:11,886 --> 00:06:14,860 As I read those early accounts, I realized it was 114 00:06:14,860 --> 00:06:18,670 precisely Muhammad's doubt that brought him alive for me, 115 00:06:18,670 --> 00:06:21,067 that allowed me to begin to see him in full, 116 00:06:21,067 --> 00:06:24,653 to accord him the integrity of reality. 117 00:06:24,653 --> 00:06:26,822 And the more I thought about it, 118 00:06:26,822 --> 00:06:29,839 the more it made sense that he doubted, 119 00:06:29,839 --> 00:06:36,422 because doubt is essential to faith. 120 00:06:36,422 --> 00:06:39,302 If this seems a startling idea at first, 121 00:06:39,302 --> 00:06:42,963 consider that doubt, as Graham Greene once put it, 122 00:06:42,963 --> 00:06:46,798 is the heart of the matter. 123 00:06:46,798 --> 00:06:51,203 Abolish all doubt, and what's left is not faith, 124 00:06:51,203 --> 00:06:56,446 but absolute, heartless conviction. 125 00:06:56,446 --> 00:07:00,317 You're certain that you possess the Truth -- 126 00:07:00,317 --> 00:07:04,608 inevitably offered with an implied uppercase T -- 127 00:07:04,608 --> 00:07:07,166 and this certainty quickly devolves 128 00:07:07,166 --> 00:07:10,678 into dogmatism and righteousness, 129 00:07:10,678 --> 00:07:14,781 by which I mean a demonstrative, overweening pride 130 00:07:14,781 --> 00:07:18,569 in being so very right, 131 00:07:18,569 --> 00:07:26,457 in short, the arrogance of fundamentalism. 132 00:07:26,457 --> 00:07:30,933 It has to be one of the multiple ironies of history 133 00:07:30,933 --> 00:07:33,991 that a favorite expletive of Muslim fundamentalists 134 00:07:33,991 --> 00:07:37,182 is the same one once used by the Christian fundamentalists 135 00:07:37,182 --> 00:07:39,994 known as Crusaders: 136 00:07:39,994 --> 00:07:45,219 "infidel," from the Latin for "faithless." 137 00:07:45,219 --> 00:07:49,558 Doubly ironic, in this case, because their absolutism 138 00:07:49,558 --> 00:07:54,023 is in fact the opposite of faith. 139 00:07:54,023 --> 00:07:59,982 In effect, they are the infidels. 140 00:07:59,982 --> 00:08:02,809 Like fundamentalists of all religious stripes, 141 00:08:02,809 --> 00:08:06,654 they have no questions, only answers. 142 00:08:06,654 --> 00:08:09,446 They found the perfect antidote to thought 143 00:08:09,446 --> 00:08:13,217 and the ideal refuge of the hard demands of real faith. 144 00:08:13,217 --> 00:08:15,166 They don't have to struggle for it like Jacob 145 00:08:15,166 --> 00:08:17,216 wrestling through the night with the angel, 146 00:08:17,216 --> 00:08:20,374 or like Jesus in his 40 days and nights in the wilderness, 147 00:08:20,374 --> 00:08:23,576 or like Muhammad, not only that night on the mountain, 148 00:08:23,576 --> 00:08:26,070 but throughout his years as a prophet, 149 00:08:26,070 --> 00:08:30,254 with the Koran constantly urging him not to despair, 150 00:08:30,254 --> 00:08:33,542 and condemning those who most loudly proclaim 151 00:08:33,542 --> 00:08:37,339 that they know everything there is to know 152 00:08:37,339 --> 00:08:44,233 and that they and they alone are right. 153 00:08:44,233 --> 00:08:51,646 And yet we, the vast and still far too silent majority, 154 00:08:51,646 --> 00:08:57,415 have ceded the public arena to this extremist minority. 155 00:08:57,415 --> 00:08:59,908 We've allowed Judaism to be claimed 156 00:08:59,908 --> 00:09:03,779 by violently messianic West Bank settlers, 157 00:09:03,779 --> 00:09:06,726 Christianity by homophobic hypocrites 158 00:09:06,726 --> 00:09:09,246 and misogynistic bigots, 159 00:09:09,246 --> 00:09:14,205 Islam by suicide bombers. 160 00:09:14,205 --> 00:09:16,976 And we've allowed ourselves to be blinded to the fact that 161 00:09:16,976 --> 00:09:19,168 no matter whether they claim to be Christians, 162 00:09:19,168 --> 00:09:20,783 Jews or Muslims, 163 00:09:20,783 --> 00:09:26,438 militant extremists are none of the above. 164 00:09:26,438 --> 00:09:32,052 They're a cult all their own, blood brothers 165 00:09:32,052 --> 00:09:37,546 steeped in other people's blood. 166 00:09:37,546 --> 00:09:39,748 This isn't faith. 167 00:09:39,748 --> 00:09:44,910 It's fanaticism, and we have to stop confusing the two. 168 00:09:44,910 --> 00:09:49,932 We have to recognize that real faith has no easy answers. 169 00:09:49,932 --> 00:09:54,010 It's difficult and stubborn. 170 00:09:54,010 --> 00:09:56,248 It involves an ongoing struggle, 171 00:09:56,248 --> 00:09:59,302 a continual questioning of what we think we know, 172 00:09:59,302 --> 00:10:01,867 a wrestling with issues and ideas. 173 00:10:01,867 --> 00:10:05,167 It goes hand in hand with doubt, 174 00:10:05,167 --> 00:10:08,244 in a never-ending conversation with it, 175 00:10:08,244 --> 00:10:14,639 and sometimes in conscious defiance of it. 176 00:10:14,639 --> 00:10:19,687 And this conscious defiance is why I, as an agnostic, 177 00:10:19,687 --> 00:10:23,828 can still have faith. 178 00:10:23,828 --> 00:10:26,816 I have faith, for instance, that peace in the Middle East 179 00:10:26,816 --> 00:10:31,126 is possible despite the ever-accumulating mass of evidence 180 00:10:31,126 --> 00:10:34,287 to the contrary. 181 00:10:34,287 --> 00:10:36,659 I'm not convinced of this. 182 00:10:36,659 --> 00:10:38,783 I can hardly say I believe it. 183 00:10:38,783 --> 00:10:40,725 I can only have faith in it, 184 00:10:40,725 --> 00:10:44,743 commit myself, that is, to the idea of it, 185 00:10:44,743 --> 00:10:47,744 and I do this precisely because of the temptation 186 00:10:47,744 --> 00:10:49,744 to throw up my hands in resignation 187 00:10:49,744 --> 00:10:53,265 and retreat into silence. 188 00:10:53,265 --> 00:10:57,946 Because despair is self-fulfilling. 189 00:10:57,946 --> 00:11:00,266 If we call something impossible, 190 00:11:00,266 --> 00:11:04,034 we act in such a way that we make it so. 191 00:11:04,034 --> 00:11:09,967 And I, for one, refuse to live that way. 192 00:11:09,967 --> 00:11:12,266 In fact, most of us do, 193 00:11:12,266 --> 00:11:15,842 whether we're atheist or theist 194 00:11:15,842 --> 00:11:19,782 or anywhere in between or beyond, for that matter, 195 00:11:19,782 --> 00:11:24,098 what drives us is that, despite our doubts 196 00:11:24,098 --> 00:11:26,426 and even because of our doubts, 197 00:11:26,426 --> 00:11:30,898 we reject the nihilism of despair. 198 00:11:30,898 --> 00:11:34,131 We insist on faith in the future 199 00:11:34,131 --> 00:11:38,869 and in each other. 200 00:11:38,869 --> 00:11:42,370 Call this naive if you like. 201 00:11:42,370 --> 00:11:45,467 Call it impossibly idealistic if you must. 202 00:11:45,467 --> 00:11:47,895 But one thing is sure: 203 00:11:47,895 --> 00:11:51,361 Call it human. 204 00:11:51,361 --> 00:11:54,396 Could Muhammad have so radically changed his world 205 00:11:54,396 --> 00:11:57,248 without such faith, without the refusal 206 00:11:57,248 --> 00:12:01,964 to cede to the arrogance of closed-minded certainty? 207 00:12:01,964 --> 00:12:05,230 I think not. 208 00:12:05,230 --> 00:12:07,273 After keeping company with him as a writer 209 00:12:07,273 --> 00:12:10,573 for the past five years, I can't see 210 00:12:10,573 --> 00:12:15,676 that he'd be anything but utterly outraged 211 00:12:15,676 --> 00:12:18,823 at the militant fundamentalists who claim to speak 212 00:12:18,823 --> 00:12:24,292 and act in his name in the Middle East and elsewhere today. 213 00:12:24,292 --> 00:12:28,582 He'd be appalled at the repression of half the population 214 00:12:28,582 --> 00:12:31,580 because of their gender. 215 00:12:31,580 --> 00:12:39,561 He'd be torn apart by the bitter divisiveness of sectarianism. 216 00:12:39,561 --> 00:12:42,267 He'd call out terrorism for what it is, 217 00:12:42,267 --> 00:12:47,011 not only criminal but an obscene travesty 218 00:12:47,011 --> 00:12:51,916 of everything he believed in and struggled for. 219 00:12:51,916 --> 00:12:57,185 He'd say what the Koran says: Anyone who takes a life 220 00:12:57,185 --> 00:13:00,386 takes the life of all humanity. 221 00:13:00,386 --> 00:13:07,582 Anyone who saves a life, saves the life of all humanity. 222 00:13:07,582 --> 00:13:10,652 And he'd commit himself fully 223 00:13:10,652 --> 00:13:17,672 to the hard and thorny process of making peace. 224 00:13:17,672 --> 00:13:19,107 Thank you. 225 00:13:19,107 --> 00:13:23,506 (Applause) 226 00:13:23,506 --> 00:13:27,506 Thank you. (Applause)