A critical look at Wokeness with Abu Amina Elias (2022-08-21) ​

0:00:02 hello everyone and welcome to blogging
0:00:04 theology today i'm delighted to talk
0:00:06 again to sheikh abu amina ilyas you're
0:00:09 most welcome sir
0:00:11 assalamu alaikum thank you for having me
0:00:13 welcome
0:00:15 um for those who don't know uh abu amina
0:00:17 elias is currently a research librarian
0:00:19 for middle east studies at new york
0:00:22 university in abu dhabi
0:00:24 and research fellow for the akin
0:00:26 institute for islamic research and he
0:00:28 embraced islam in
0:00:30 2004 at the age of 20.
0:00:33 he studied islam from a traditional
0:00:35 perspective with local scholars and
0:00:38 imams
0:00:40 he's the author of the recently
0:00:42 published article entitled
0:00:44 the false promise of identitarianism
0:00:48 which looks at how certain postmodernist
0:00:50 ideas have influenced some muslim
0:00:52 scholars and leaders especially in the
0:00:55 west and is published on uh the muslim
0:00:58 matters website and i'll link to in the
0:01:01 description below
0:01:03 so would you like to introduce us to the
0:01:05 main themes of your paper
0:01:09 yes
0:01:25 peace and blessings upon his messenger
0:01:28 i ask a lot to guide me in our
0:01:29 discussion
0:01:30 because it's a difficult topic
0:01:33 and i was not um
0:01:35 i was not very eager to write about it
0:01:37 but i was asked to do so by
0:01:40 some of my colleagues and that's what um
0:01:44 was the origin of the essay and why i
0:01:46 wrote it
0:01:48 and basically
0:01:49 um
0:01:52 to summarize the themes of
0:01:55 the
0:01:56 the essay and what we will go into more
0:01:58 detail
0:02:00 today
0:02:01 um
0:02:02 is uh
0:02:04 understanding the ideological basis of
0:02:08 left-wing extremism in particular in the
0:02:11 united states but it's a global
0:02:13 phenomenon at this point
0:02:15 and how it contradicts our
0:02:19 islamic beliefs
0:02:21 why it's a big problem
0:02:23 it's having influence on our young
0:02:25 people
0:02:26 um
0:02:27 and all of the various flaws that we can
0:02:30 see
0:02:31 in regards to it um
0:02:34 the fact that it has a bad relationship
0:02:36 with the truth
0:02:38 um that it's a form of tribalism
0:02:41 um that is is worldliness
0:02:44 uh it is based on the pursuit of power
0:02:46 and not the pursuit of truth
0:02:49 um it's causing divisions within
0:02:51 families it's causing divisions within
0:02:53 generations it's causing the younger
0:02:56 generations to disrespect the older
0:02:58 generations
0:02:59 um and
0:03:01 it
0:03:02 has always alarmed me and i have always
0:03:04 and we have discussed this among myself
0:03:07 and
0:03:08 my various colleagues at different
0:03:09 places
0:03:11 um but it really is
0:03:13 um
0:03:14 we can't really ignore it anymore i
0:03:16 don't believe
0:03:17 and um
0:03:20 it's uh it's having such an influence on
0:03:22 people that
0:03:24 it's i feel like it's threatening our
0:03:26 theology
0:03:27 that uh there are muslims who are trying
0:03:30 to inject
0:03:32 foreign non-islamic ideas
0:03:35 into the islamic tradition that are
0:03:37 divisive that are harmful
0:03:40 and i felt like i had to speak about
0:03:42 that
0:03:43 and i didn't really want to because this
0:03:45 isn't something that i
0:03:46 usually speak upon it's something that i
0:03:49 observe in society and i'm concerned
0:03:51 with and that i have read
0:03:54 relevant literature upon
0:03:56 and viewed debates upon
0:03:59 um but you know usually i would just
0:04:01 talk about theology and i wouldn't talk
0:04:03 about politics i would talk about
0:04:05 psychology and spirituality and these
0:04:07 things
0:04:08 or what i would like to research and
0:04:09 talk about most
0:04:11 but i felt compelled to talk about this
0:04:14 topic so that was the
0:04:16 that was the summary of the essay and um
0:04:19 you know i didn't want to write it but i
0:04:21 felt like i had to
0:04:23 and i'm glad you did i've read the essay
0:04:25 i'll say a link to it in description
0:04:26 below i think it's definitely uh worth
0:04:28 reading and i encourage people to look
0:04:30 at it it's not very long i think it's uh
0:04:32 readily understandable and quite punchy
0:04:35 in parts it doesn't uh
0:04:37 you know you're not uh hiding your your
0:04:39 views uh which is fine um but i just
0:04:41 like to ask before we go any further
0:04:43 because we're using terms like
0:04:44 identitarianism and post-modernism and
0:04:47 so on but just as a kind of the
0:04:49 antecedent ideology behind
0:04:51 identitarianism which of yet you've yet
0:04:53 to do fine what is post-modernism
0:04:55 because that's been around for quite a
0:04:56 while now hasn't it it's not just a
0:04:58 recent phenomena affecting social media
0:05:00 we're
0:05:00 we're going back decades here aren't we
0:05:02 i think
0:05:03 right um so
0:05:07 let's talk about
0:05:08 post-modernism so well let me let me uh
0:05:13 explain why i use the term post-modern
0:05:15 identitarianism identitarianism because
0:05:17 that's not a common uh way to analyze
0:05:21 this phenomenon that we're talking about
0:05:23 um i use post-modernism because the
0:05:26 effect the influence of post-modern
0:05:28 philosophy which we will discuss shortly
0:05:30 um is the influence on this political
0:05:32 movement is obvious and i use
0:05:34 identitarianism because of the way that
0:05:36 this ideology
0:05:39 constructs discourse in order to divide
0:05:41 people by identity groups and then to
0:05:43 set them against each other and that is
0:05:46 used as a means for politicians to get
0:05:48 power and it's used by activists for
0:05:51 their for their agendas and so on
0:05:54 um and the
0:05:57 the
0:05:58 the challenge of of
0:06:00 confronting this political movement is
0:06:02 that they don't
0:06:04 have an a label that they attach to
0:06:08 themselves
0:06:09 okay so they will call themselves
0:06:11 democrats but not all the democrats are
0:06:13 on board with them they will call them
0:06:15 they might call themselves progressives
0:06:16 but progressivism is a different
0:06:19 idea
0:06:20 they might call themselves liberals but
0:06:22 it's definitely not liberalism where i'm
0:06:24 not talking about liberalism
0:06:26 today especially not in the classical
0:06:28 sense of
0:06:30 all the freedom of speech and all of
0:06:32 those things
0:06:33 you know this is a movement that
0:06:36 it has been in the shadows and only has
0:06:37 recently
0:06:39 uh come
0:06:41 has appeared in very public ways
0:06:44 and
0:06:46 they have been obscure in academia
0:06:49 and um
0:06:50 we're going to talk about all the terms
0:06:52 that we can use to identify them but
0:06:54 this was the term that i wanted to use
0:06:56 because i feel that they need to be
0:06:58 labeled
0:06:59 and they won't label themselves right
0:07:01 they will call themselves democrats or
0:07:03 liberals or whatever but those aren't
0:07:05 accurate labels there's those are labels
0:07:07 that they hide behind
0:07:08 we want to understand what are their
0:07:10 ideas and what makes their ideas
0:07:12 distinct from the democratic party and
0:07:15 make their ideas distinct from
0:07:17 liberalism or progressivism or all of
0:07:20 these other groups that they are
0:07:22 uh allied with and and mixed with
0:07:26 so that's the reason why i chose those
0:07:28 terms right
0:07:29 and as muslims
0:07:32 we
0:07:33 we have labeled sex in ways that they
0:07:35 haven't labeled themselves right because
0:07:37 they didn't label themselves and we have
0:07:39 to label that idea in order to
0:07:41 distinguish it from our beliefs right so
0:07:43 this is the label that i chose
0:07:46 and it may not necessarily stick and it
0:07:48 may not be the best one um
0:07:50 and i'll i'll explain a little bit more
0:07:52 about why i chose that term uh but that
0:07:55 was my rationale for the whole
0:07:59 for the title of the article basically
0:08:02 so modernism or post-modernism i'm sorry
0:08:06 right
0:08:09 so we need to define post-modernism
0:08:12 so what i'm going to do is i'm going to
0:08:14 read from my notes
0:08:16 i'm going to read from scholarly
0:08:17 reference
0:08:18 sources in particular the encyclopedia
0:08:20 britannica and they have two articles
0:08:23 that i'm going to be citing
0:08:25 these are scholarly peer-reviewed
0:08:26 articles they're open source articles so
0:08:28 you can get them on google
0:08:30 they're easy to understand they're
0:08:32 concise summaries of the scholarship
0:08:34 that i'm going to be
0:08:36 reading from directly so that people
0:08:38 know
0:08:39 that i'm not making this up
0:08:41 i'm not
0:08:43 uh taking this from a white right-wing
0:08:45 provocateur on twitter or wherever this
0:08:48 is from the scholarly sources okay so
0:08:50 let's just
0:08:52 yeah
0:08:53 so let's define postmodernism
0:08:55 from this encyclopedia article
0:08:58 the authors write quote post-modernism
0:09:02 in western philosophy
0:09:03 is a late 20th century movement
0:09:05 characterized by broad skepticism
0:09:08 subjectivism or relativism
0:09:11 a general suspicion of reason
0:09:14 and an acute sensitivity to the role of
0:09:16 ideology in asserting and maintaining
0:09:18 political and economic
0:09:20 power okay
0:09:22 so that's the definition of
0:09:24 post-modernism okay
0:09:26 and post-modernism was a reaction to
0:09:28 basically the western enlightenment
0:09:30 values so you had the modernist movement
0:09:33 and everything was supposed to be
0:09:34 scientific and rational
0:09:36 um and despite that scientific and and
0:09:39 rational basis that
0:09:41 people
0:09:42 imagined that the society was moving
0:09:44 towards
0:09:45 uh there were still obvious injustices
0:09:47 in in the in the society there were
0:09:49 still obvious problems
0:09:50 and for whatever reason this movement of
0:09:53 philosophy developed and i'm not saying
0:09:56 that i'm an expert on
0:09:58 this philosophy and all of its thinkers
0:10:00 because they have a lot of different
0:10:01 thinkers that
0:10:02 even disagree amongst themselves it's a
0:10:04 broad trend
0:10:05 okay but they are
0:10:07 united mostly in
0:10:09 uh uh skepticism
0:10:12 right so they're they're not they're
0:10:13 skeptical of truth claims uh
0:10:16 subjectivism so they don't believe uh in
0:10:18 objective reality they don't believe
0:10:21 there's an objective truth
0:10:23 and relativism
0:10:24 so they don't believe that uh moral
0:10:26 values for example can be absolute that
0:10:29 morals are relative and and so on uh
0:10:32 they have a suspicion of reason so
0:10:34 they're suspicious of the scientific
0:10:36 method when it's properly applied
0:10:39 um
0:10:39 and they are
0:10:41 concerned with ideology with
0:10:44 political power basically so
0:10:46 so this was the
0:10:48 the the post-modern
0:10:50 philosophical movement okay and it
0:10:52 merged with another movement
0:10:54 that
0:10:55 we will discuss after this that is
0:10:58 called critical theory which is in an
0:11:00 academic movement
0:11:02 um and they they kind of draw off of
0:11:04 each other to create these um academics
0:11:07 and activists who are out there and and
0:11:09 and harming a lot of people with their
0:11:11 ideas
0:11:12 in society um
0:11:14 so what are the problems the main
0:11:16 problems with uh post-modernism
0:11:22 the first is that post-modernism is
0:11:24 irrational
0:11:26 it is an anti-rational
0:11:29 philosophy
0:11:30 okay and that's that is opposed to how
0:11:32 we are supposed to be as muslims because
0:11:34 we as muslims are supposed to be
0:11:36 rational evidence-based people
0:11:38 and post-modernists believe that
0:11:40 rational
0:11:41 and evidence-based claims and
0:11:42 truth-based claims are functions of
0:11:44 power and not natural or objective truth
0:11:47 or reality no because the crowd the
0:11:49 crime doesn't
0:11:50 crime exhorts humankind to uh have you
0:11:53 not thought you know to use their reason
0:11:54 to actually reflect
0:11:56 and if you if you if you rob us
0:11:58 then you are taking away uh our
0:12:00 god-given faculties to and intelligently
0:12:03 understand reality well it's very
0:12:05 subversive of uh
0:12:07 us in that sense
0:12:09 yes absolutely and that's that that
0:12:11 makes it very problematic
0:12:13 and i'm going to quote again from the
0:12:15 encyclopedia of britannica just so that
0:12:17 you everyone is clear that
0:12:18 post-modernism is quote the rejection of
0:12:22 an objective natural reality which is
0:12:24 sometimes expressed by saying that there
0:12:26 is no such thing as truth
0:12:29 end quote but i love that quote by the
0:12:31 way because this this is you know
0:12:33 philosophy 101 in making that statement
0:12:35 they are making an objective truth claim
0:12:40 it's it's self-refuting to say there's
0:12:42 no such thing as objective truth is to
0:12:44 make objective truth claim that there's
0:12:46 no absolute truth is a claim to absolute
0:12:48 truth if you're making a statement about
0:12:50 metaphysics and ethics and morality in
0:12:51 general so it's a is a very naive
0:12:53 statement that actually refutes itself i
0:12:55 would argue
0:12:57 yeah i agree and it's it's uh it's
0:13:00 self-contradictory it's confused and um
0:13:03 and you'll see that a lot of people who
0:13:04 have
0:13:05 been influenced by this philosophy and
0:13:07 they don't even know that that they're
0:13:09 they're being influenced by
0:13:10 post-modernism their ideas are very
0:13:12 confused and they're not grounded and
0:13:15 their their ideas are unstable
0:13:18 and there's no limits to the logic where
0:13:20 they're where their minds are gonna go
0:13:21 because you know in islam we have the
0:13:23 limits that allah placed upon us but
0:13:25 they don't have any limits because
0:13:27 they're constantly breaking boundaries
0:13:29 because there's no such thing as the
0:13:30 truth and there's no such thing as
0:13:32 as moral objectivity or anything like
0:13:34 that
0:13:36 um so that epistemology that
0:13:38 epistemology which is the theory of
0:13:40 knowledge that's the academic term for
0:13:42 the theory of knowledge that
0:13:43 epistemology
0:13:45 uh is false right um
0:13:48 as we believe as muslims and as
0:13:50 christians and even liberal philosophers
0:13:52 and even atheists natural atheists
0:13:55 naturalists also disagree with that yes
0:13:57 because they at least at least believe
0:13:58 there's a nature right
0:14:00 so it's interesting you'll find some of
0:14:03 the
0:14:03 the atheists some of the some of the big
0:14:05 name atheists are pushing back against
0:14:08 uh this kind of identitarian extremism
0:14:12 um
0:14:13 another point is that from the
0:14:16 encyclopedia again is that
0:14:17 post-modernist quote insists that all or
0:14:20 nearly all aspects of human psychology
0:14:22 are completely socially determined
0:14:26 end quote
0:14:27 so basically they are downplaying the um
0:14:32 the role of free will in human choices
0:14:35 and that you're basically a product of
0:14:36 your society
0:14:38 and uh you know if you were born into a
0:14:40 certain
0:14:41 identity group or a certain class in
0:14:44 society then you can't help but behave a
0:14:46 certain way and that you don't really
0:14:48 have very much
0:14:50 uh will over your own choices and in
0:14:53 this way they actually resemble a sect
0:14:55 from islam that we discussed last time i
0:14:57 was on your show
0:14:59 called the jabria
0:15:02 the people who believe that
0:15:05 allah compels us to do our deeds and we
0:15:07 don't and we don't have free will
0:15:09 right and so
0:15:10 post-modernists have a very dim view of
0:15:12 free will and they believe that
0:15:15 um you know society basically produces
0:15:18 individuals individuals don't really
0:15:20 have a free will they're the they're the
0:15:23 you know the function of group
0:15:25 identity
0:15:28 and this again is really
0:15:31 problematic because as human beings we
0:15:33 are individuals and we might belong to
0:15:36 groups but we we are individuals within
0:15:38 that group and allah
0:15:40 judges us as individuals we have
0:15:42 individual hearts and minds we have our
0:15:44 own thoughts we have our own actions and
0:15:46 that's what allah judges us upon right
0:15:49 and and things might be more difficult
0:15:52 for us to act when we're in a certain
0:15:54 society or in certain
0:15:56 social circumstances and things like
0:15:58 that i'm not denying that
0:16:00 society has an effect on people's
0:16:02 behavior but it's not
0:16:03 uh
0:16:04 the most important
0:16:06 or it's not uh an all-governing
0:16:08 principle of human behavior you know you
0:16:10 are not necessarily the product of your
0:16:13 upbringing you can over you can have a
0:16:14 bad
0:16:16 upbringing and overcome that and become
0:16:18 a great person right and despite the
0:16:20 odds that were stacked against you from
0:16:22 the beginning right yeah
0:16:24 so they have a dim view of free will
0:16:26 that's a problem
0:16:27 um potus modernist do not believe quote
0:16:30 again
0:16:31 language refers to and represents a
0:16:33 reality outside itself
0:16:36 so this is another serious problem and
0:16:39 you'll see this
0:16:41 uh
0:16:41 in the politics all over the place the
0:16:44 way language is being manipulated
0:16:46 because postmodernists do not believe
0:16:48 that language uh accurately represents
0:16:52 reality because they don't believe
0:16:53 there's a reality you know they believe
0:16:55 that language is all of it is a social
0:16:58 construct it doesn't necessarily
0:17:00 represent
0:17:01 something that's true outside of us and
0:17:04 so they have no problems redefining
0:17:06 words creating euphemisms you know
0:17:08 creating coded language
0:17:10 um
0:17:11 using these types of games
0:17:13 and and putting that in their propaganda
0:17:17 to fool people into supporting their
0:17:18 agenda who wouldn't otherwise support it
0:17:21 right and i feel like a lot of muslim
0:17:23 muslims have american muslims
0:17:25 specifically have fell into that trap
0:17:27 because they talk about
0:17:29 social justice and you know everyone
0:17:32 wants to have the same rights and those
0:17:33 are all things that we agree upon in
0:17:35 principle
0:17:36 but they're understanding those things
0:17:39 that in ways that have been redefined by
0:17:41 postmodernists
0:17:42 and have been employed in the public
0:17:45 space but they haven't told you that
0:17:47 they've redefined these things or that
0:17:49 when they say social justice they're
0:17:51 referring to a specific
0:17:53 set of political goals that they're not
0:17:55 actually telling you upfront what it is
0:17:58 people hear social justice and they
0:17:59 think i i am for social justice you are
0:18:01 i am we want everyone to be treated
0:18:04 fairly right
0:18:06 but when they say social justice
0:18:08 they have in in their minds a specific
0:18:11 type of society
0:18:13 uh that's not based on natural law
0:18:15 that's definitely not based on belief in
0:18:17 god or any religion right and they have
0:18:21 they have a society that i think you and
0:18:23 i and a lot of people wouldn't want to
0:18:24 live in if we knew this is what they
0:18:26 were working for yeah and some of the
0:18:28 things they advocate for in the name of
0:18:29 social justice like unrestricted
0:18:31 abortion up to birth or even partial
0:18:33 abortion in america are are deeply
0:18:36 sinful according to all religious
0:18:37 traditions um and they're not questions
0:18:39 of social justice at all the these these
0:18:41 can become crimes later on in pregnancy
0:18:44 obviously when you're killing uh called
0:18:46 murder in this language tradition in in
0:18:47 the later stages of pregnancy so these
0:18:49 are not neutral
0:18:51 universal kind of understandings of
0:18:53 justice they're heavily loaded from a
0:18:55 very left-wing kind of secular feminist
0:18:58 perspective
0:19:00 right and and you understand the
0:19:02 confusion because of the way they employ
0:19:03 language and if you understand the
0:19:05 post-modern
0:19:06 uh approach to the philosophy of
0:19:08 language the that they they are
0:19:10 manipulating the discourse in ways that
0:19:13 are getting people to support their
0:19:15 agenda who would not otherwise support
0:19:16 it if they knew exactly what they were
0:19:18 talking about
0:19:20 um so that's the point about language um
0:19:22 post-modernists are anti-science that's
0:19:25 another big point
0:19:27 and i'm talking about the scientific
0:19:28 method as properly
0:19:31 deployed by
0:19:32 society and scientists and academics
0:19:35 that is an experiment
0:19:37 and a repetition right you experiment
0:19:39 you get results and other people repeat
0:19:41 your results and scrutinize them and you
0:19:44 do that over and over and over and the
0:19:45 process refines itself until you can get
0:19:47 a pretty close approximation of a true
0:19:50 model of of some phenomena in nature
0:19:53 right that's science right
0:19:55 uh the post-modernists believe that
0:19:57 science
0:19:58 in being a truth claim was only a means
0:20:01 to oppress people right and so it is
0:20:04 anti-science and i'm again quoting from
0:20:06 the encyclopedia that post-modernists do
0:20:09 not believe quote a foundation of
0:20:11 certainty on which to build the edifice
0:20:14 of empirical including scientific
0:20:16 knowledge
0:20:17 right
0:20:18 so um you know this is also very
0:20:21 dangerous for society because we're
0:20:22 living in a time where technology
0:20:24 technology is advancing rapidly and
0:20:27 we're dealing with challenges and we
0:20:29 need
0:20:30 we need we need to apply the scientific
0:20:32 method to solve many of these problems
0:20:35 and to open it up to academic freedom
0:20:37 where scientists are free to criticize
0:20:39 each other
0:20:40 and to scrutinize their results and
0:20:43 you know there are many things that have
0:20:44 led to the corruption of science
0:20:46 the money aspect is one part of it and
0:20:48 the other aspect is because
0:20:50 um these sort of these soft sciences
0:20:53 which are like social science and
0:20:54 psychology and even some of the medical
0:20:57 sciences they have been
0:20:59 influenced by post modernism um in in
0:21:03 the way that they approach language and
0:21:05 things like that and um
0:21:07 and so they're not actually practicing
0:21:09 scientists even though they have a
0:21:10 science degree
0:21:12 they're not practicing the scientific
0:21:13 method
0:21:14 so if they're upset that somebody is
0:21:16 scrutinizing their
0:21:18 results their scientific results then
0:21:20 they're not scientists right because
0:21:22 scientists should be happy that other
0:21:24 people are double checking their work
0:21:26 because scientists in theory should be
0:21:28 trying to find the objective natural
0:21:30 truth
0:21:31 that we all
0:21:33 agree
0:21:33 on and that has to be the basis of our
0:21:36 understanding of the world right
0:21:39 so but post-modernists don't believe any
0:21:41 of that and so when post-modernists talk
0:21:43 about following the science and they
0:21:45 talk about you know their scientific and
0:21:47 everything like that they're not
0:21:48 actually talking about the process of
0:21:50 science they're talking about the
0:21:52 credentialed aspects of science so these
0:21:54 are people who've gone through and
0:21:55 gotten degrees and are able to maintain
0:21:58 academic jobs and therefore have
0:21:59 authority to speak as if they were
0:22:01 priests of a church right and i mean
0:22:04 they don't have religion because they're
0:22:05 they're all functionally atheists
0:22:07 because um this is another point i was
0:22:09 gonna make that um if you don't believe
0:22:11 there is an objective natural truth and
0:22:13 you are denying the name of allah that
0:22:15 he is
0:22:17 he is
0:22:18 the truth right allah is the truth and
0:22:20 the truth is one
0:22:22 whether that's religious truth or
0:22:24 natural truth scientific truth moral
0:22:26 truth personal truth all of these are
0:22:29 the same aspects of the one truth which
0:22:31 is allah
0:22:33 so when the postmodernists deny that
0:22:35 there's an objective reality they are
0:22:37 denying this name of allah subhanahu wa
0:22:40 island so that's functionally atheism
0:22:42 and that and and and they are
0:22:44 functionally atheists even if they go to
0:22:47 church or even if they
0:22:49 follow a religion or they claim to
0:22:51 believe in god or something like that um
0:22:53 if you don't believe that that the truth
0:22:55 is one and that allah is one and that he
0:22:57 is the truth then then you're an atheist
0:23:00 right so these post-modernists are
0:23:02 functionally atheists
0:23:03 um
0:23:05 that was another point i wanted to make
0:23:07 the last point um
0:23:10 that i'll say about post-modernism
0:23:15 and again this is a direct quote from
0:23:17 the encyclopedia
0:23:19 quote and i think this is just a summary
0:23:22 of everything we talked about just so
0:23:23 you
0:23:24 everybody is clear what we're talking
0:23:26 about
0:23:27 quote post-modernists deny that there
0:23:29 are aspects of reality that are
0:23:30 objective that there are statements
0:23:32 about reality that are objectively true
0:23:34 or false that it is possible to have
0:23:36 knowledge of such statements
0:23:38 i.e objective knowledge that it is
0:23:40 possible for human beings to know some
0:23:42 things with certainty and that there are
0:23:45 objective or absolute moral values right
0:23:48 so not only do they deny that there's a
0:23:50 truth in their reality they did they
0:23:52 deny that there are absolute moral
0:23:54 values
0:23:55 and so you can see uh if somebody
0:23:58 actually believes this
0:24:00 they can start to rationalize all kinds
0:24:02 of atrocities in their mind right
0:24:06 they can rationalize eugenics they can
0:24:08 rationalize
0:24:09 um
0:24:11 you're killing old people because
0:24:12 they're they're a waste on society and
0:24:14 and killing
0:24:16 autistic children you know and aborting
0:24:18 aborting fetuses that are eight months
0:24:20 to term and
0:24:22 babies not even aborting fetuses
0:24:24 aborting babies that are that are almost
0:24:26 the term right and that which is what
0:24:27 they've said that they want to do
0:24:29 right and which we believe is is killing
0:24:31 in our religion
0:24:32 all scholars agree on that
0:24:34 right
0:24:35 so you can see how this
0:24:37 uh philosophy uh is militant against
0:24:40 religion in general and therefore it is
0:24:43 a threat to our religion and um because
0:24:46 this philosophy
0:24:48 animates a lot of academics who then
0:24:50 animate the activists who then pressure
0:24:53 the politicians
0:24:55 um and then the corporations get
0:24:57 involved and all of the in the hollywood
0:24:59 gets involved
0:25:01 and then you have all these groups that
0:25:02 are putting the pressure on society to
0:25:05 accept these values that there are no
0:25:07 absolute truths and and there are no
0:25:10 absolute moral values they won't come
0:25:12 out and just say that exactly but if you
0:25:15 understand that's the basis of their
0:25:16 action right
0:25:18 um
0:25:19 you can see that that is a threat to us
0:25:21 as a as a group right and and you'll see
0:25:23 that because ever since this group the
0:25:26 identitarians what i'm calling the
0:25:27 identitarians the post-modern
0:25:29 identitarians
0:25:30 ever since you've seen them come to
0:25:32 prominence within the last decade or so
0:25:34 in the democratic party the democratic
0:25:36 party has been
0:25:37 uh less interested in religious freedom
0:25:40 and has been even uh openly hostile to
0:25:43 it at times and again that's a threat to
0:25:46 our rights right i mean it's not even a
0:25:49 matter of us like wanting to share our
0:25:51 religion they don't even want us to
0:25:52 practice our religion right they think
0:25:54 our religion is is a tool of oppression
0:25:58 right
0:25:59 and christianity and so on right or any
0:26:02 any type of truth claim is an act of
0:26:04 oppression right
0:26:06 so that is post-modernism and then there
0:26:09 is the next big piece of this that we
0:26:12 need to discuss and that is called
0:26:14 critical theory
0:26:16 you ready for that yep ready for that
0:26:19 yep
0:26:21 okay good
0:26:22 and again i'm going right to the
0:26:24 encyclopedia of britannica
0:26:26 again
0:26:28 this is an article you can get on google
0:26:30 scholarly reviewed reference source
0:26:32 and they define critical so again
0:26:35 let me let me back up and introduce so
0:26:38 post-modernism is the philosophical
0:26:40 aspect of it right okay
0:26:42 the academic and the ideological aspect
0:26:45 of it
0:26:46 um
0:26:47 the
0:26:49 uh
0:26:52 sort of the vision of what they want
0:26:54 society to be is informed by an academic
0:26:57 discipline that is called critical
0:26:59 theory
0:27:00 right
0:27:01 and critical theory um
0:27:04 uh arose in about the 1930s and 40s um
0:27:08 according to the frankfurt school that
0:27:10 was
0:27:10 the frankfurt school and they were a
0:27:12 group of marxists who
0:27:14 came to the united states and
0:27:17 then developed their ideas and had to
0:27:19 explain why marxism failed uh and and uh
0:27:24 um and then to start and decided to
0:27:27 apply
0:27:28 marxist analysis to
0:27:30 social and cultural problems in america
0:27:33 right because why didn't america go
0:27:34 communist because the whole world was
0:27:36 supposed to go communist so the marxists
0:27:37 had to explain that and then so they
0:27:40 turned their analysis to society and
0:27:42 culture as opposed to economics
0:27:44 um so i'll again
0:27:47 define critical theory according to the
0:27:49 encyclopedia it is quote a
0:27:52 marxist-inspired movement in social and
0:27:54 political philosophy originally
0:27:56 associated with the work of the
0:27:58 frankfurt school as i mentioned end
0:28:00 quote right so who are they can we just
0:28:03 mention a few of the big names of the
0:28:05 frankfurt uh school um
0:28:07 particularly those that ended up in the
0:28:08 states it was it herbert marcus
0:28:11 that's the big one that i know off top
0:28:13 my head and i would
0:28:16 notice the others if i
0:28:18 read them but off the top of my head i
0:28:20 can't remember okay uh but the the this
0:28:23 is you can google this and
0:28:25 you know there's a lot of information
0:28:26 a very celebrated book called one
0:28:28 dimensional man which uh uh looked at uh
0:28:31 capitalism in the states the way it kind
0:28:33 of reduced the human the human being to
0:28:35 a kind of commodity consumer and so on
0:28:39 much of that that was arguably
0:28:41 insightful but but also this is the the
0:28:43 whole movement we mentioned uh is off
0:28:45 also called by some people cultural
0:28:47 marxism which is definitely a a term of
0:28:50 the right um but it doesn't mean it's
0:28:52 only less valid uh it could be valid
0:28:54 anyway wherever it comes from um so so
0:28:57 this critical theory is also known as
0:29:00 uh cultural marxism in the west
0:29:02 yeah it has been called that and it was
0:29:05 even called that
0:29:07 decades ago by the people who were
0:29:09 practicing it um but you know it uh
0:29:13 far right extremists were rallying
0:29:15 around against that and some of them
0:29:16 committed shootings and mentioned
0:29:19 cultural marxism in their manifestos so
0:29:21 it's not something i'm very comfortable
0:29:22 using
0:29:23 um because i don't you know i'm not on
0:29:25 their side and um
0:29:28 uh
0:29:29 so just be aware of that
0:29:31 um
0:29:32 and and even in academia though um
0:29:36 i think it's more common to refer to it
0:29:37 as critical theory but it is marxism as
0:29:39 applied to culture yes
0:29:42 yes uh so
0:29:44 yes so we we
0:29:45 we've established the fact that critical
0:29:47 theory is a marxist movement and um
0:29:50 what is marxist about it as applied to
0:29:53 society and culture well in classical
0:29:55 marxism you had this binary of the
0:29:58 proletariat and the bourgeoisie the
0:30:00 proletariat was the lower economic class
0:30:03 the working class the bourgeoisie was a
0:30:05 higher economic class in the ownership
0:30:07 class
0:30:08 and there was obviously exploitation and
0:30:10 injustices and nobody i think can deny
0:30:13 that that was a fact and marx was
0:30:15 responding to those facts
0:30:19 but his theory
0:30:20 basically locked these two groups in an
0:30:22 eternal
0:30:23 well not an eternal struggle but
0:30:26 in a zero-sum game that the proletariat
0:30:29 had to crush the bourgeoisie had to
0:30:31 seize their private property and then
0:30:33 had to you know had to have the
0:30:35 bureaucracy distributed fairly across
0:30:38 everybody in in in the society and were
0:30:40 they were all comrades
0:30:42 and everything like that and so it's a
0:30:44 very utopian ideology
0:30:46 um
0:30:47 and it was viewed as a remedy to the
0:30:49 excesses of capitalism and there's a lot
0:30:53 that
0:30:54 marxists have wrote that are critiques
0:30:56 of capitalism that are valid
0:30:58 uh but this
0:31:00 binary
0:31:01 idea
0:31:02 where they're locking
0:31:04 two groups of people in a straight
0:31:06 zero-sum struggle where one has to
0:31:08 defeat and crush the other
0:31:10 that is i believe the most dangerous
0:31:13 part
0:31:13 of
0:31:15 any type of marxist analysis any type of
0:31:17 marxist ideology or inspiration
0:31:20 and marxism is extremely dangerous to
0:31:23 society and i think to the world and
0:31:28 marxist governments have killed more
0:31:30 people than the fascist governments if
0:31:33 you're just talking talking about the
0:31:35 raw
0:31:35 body counts if you think about the
0:31:37 stalin
0:31:38 regime that just killed millions of
0:31:41 people
0:31:42 even more than the nazi regime
0:31:45 um
0:31:46 you know this is what happens when
0:31:49 human beings are demonized within a
0:31:52 marxist paradigm okay because stalin was
0:31:55 able to get away with killing millions
0:31:57 of people because he he was able to show
0:32:00 that these bourgeoisies were evil they
0:32:02 were bad they had to be cleansed you
0:32:04 know and then he and then they also
0:32:07 believed they had this utopian vision
0:32:09 that they were going to produce this
0:32:10 great society that was going to
0:32:13 bring peace and justice and fairness for
0:32:16 all time you know it was the end of
0:32:17 history for them
0:32:19 and you know then the end justified the
0:32:21 means and so if you had to crush people
0:32:23 and kill people and send people to the
0:32:25 gulag to achieve your utopia then you
0:32:28 know that was the lesser of two evils in
0:32:29 their minds right
0:32:31 okay and marxism
0:32:32 is atheist of course and marx was
0:32:34 explicitly atheist as was lenin stalin
0:32:37 mouth said
0:32:38 so these these people didn't believe in
0:32:40 transcendent truth anyway so at the end
0:32:42 of the day who cares i guess from their
0:32:44 point of view
0:32:46 exactly yeah i'm glad you said that uh
0:32:49 because marxism was an explicitly
0:32:51 atheist ideology and they
0:32:53 uh they persecuted the church in russia
0:32:56 uh under the stalin regime under the
0:32:59 lenin regime that was before it
0:33:01 um
0:33:02 and so you'll see already they have a
0:33:05 lot in common kind of with postmodern
0:33:07 philosophy right
0:33:09 so you have uh
0:33:11 we were talking about like the
0:33:12 historical marxism let's go back to the
0:33:14 critical theorists so the critical
0:33:16 theorists are marxist so that's the
0:33:18 the paradigm that they're using to
0:33:20 analyze society right and you'll see
0:33:22 that it has a lot in common with
0:33:24 post-modernism they're concerned about
0:33:26 power they're concerned about ideology
0:33:29 uh they're concerned about
0:33:32 justice in their minds which is not a
0:33:33 theistic type of justice
0:33:36 right
0:33:37 so uh there was this blending
0:33:39 of critical theory and post-modernism
0:33:43 in uh
0:33:44 academia right in american academia and
0:33:47 i assume in british academia
0:33:49 oh it was because
0:33:50 big in france i mean we haven't
0:33:52 mentioned yeah and others a lot of these
0:33:54 ideas actually began in france not in
0:33:56 the united states uh began in the 1980s
0:33:59 uh foucault and others and were exported
0:34:02 to united states britain were exported
0:34:04 everywhere in the west and then took on
0:34:06 a different momentum uh through the
0:34:07 media the corporations as you say
0:34:10 yes
0:34:12 so you had you have
0:34:14 generations of academics who um were
0:34:17 doing their analysis
0:34:19 on the basis of critical theory and on
0:34:21 the and on the basis of post-modernism
0:34:23 so there's sort of a synthesis of these
0:34:25 two strands of thought
0:34:27 uh and then those produce the modern
0:34:29 critical theories that we have now which
0:34:31 i call the identitarians
0:34:33 so it's critical race theory it is
0:34:36 critical gender theory critical feminism
0:34:40 uh queer theory which is also a critical
0:34:42 theory
0:34:43 uh in library science which is where i
0:34:45 work there's critical information
0:34:46 literacy really uh wait wait which is
0:34:49 really fun
0:34:50 yeah
0:34:51 yeah and that's really problematic
0:34:53 because
0:34:56 again like uh
0:34:58 you have to believe that there you have
0:35:00 to hear information from both sides and
0:35:02 you kind of sort of have to assume
0:35:04 there's an objective truth in order to
0:35:05 have information that you should begin
0:35:07 with
0:35:08 but they're using critical theory to
0:35:12 analyze information literacy concepts
0:35:14 which i think turns on on its head but
0:35:16 that's a different
0:35:17 that's a different topic altogether uh
0:35:20 but so you have all these critical
0:35:22 theories and then there they can be
0:35:24 put under this
0:35:26 umbrella of critical social justice
0:35:28 right critical social justice
0:35:31 and then
0:35:32 when one or more critical theories are
0:35:35 used in the same analysis that is called
0:35:37 intersectionality
0:35:39 okay
0:35:40 so intersectionality i know is a term
0:35:42 that people use uh even the activists
0:35:45 use it right and and uh
0:35:48 that is when
0:35:49 uh you know someone's using critical
0:35:51 race theory and critical gender theory
0:35:53 and then they're doing it in a
0:35:54 a synthesis of analysis using those two
0:35:56 theories right so they intersect right
0:35:59 so hence intersect intersectionality
0:36:02 so these are the academic terms that we
0:36:04 can use to define them in academia
0:36:08 but these theories have
0:36:10 escaped the lab so to speak
0:36:15 yeah right um you know critical race
0:36:17 theory was very obscure in the 70s and
0:36:20 you know it was just a few handful of
0:36:21 academics
0:36:23 um and it wasn't taken very seriously
0:36:25 for a long time and then um just in the
0:36:28 last five years the activists have
0:36:31 mainstream those concepts of critical
0:36:34 race theory right and it's no longer
0:36:36 just like a method of legal analysis
0:36:38 that was done at harvard
0:36:40 among a few you know it's now like a
0:36:43 blueprint for activism right and that's
0:36:45 with regard to race and then they do
0:36:47 with regard to gender and sexuality and
0:36:50 feminism and so on right
0:36:53 so that's the academic origin of it
0:36:56 um and so i you know and
0:37:00 uh because i mean because this is an
0:37:02 obscure like academic theory and nobody
0:37:04 really knows what i critical theory
0:37:06 is or
0:37:08 you know nobody even wants to read up on
0:37:10 that stuff it's really boring uh they
0:37:12 don't have the time i don't i don't
0:37:13 blame them for that you know
0:37:16 so let's call it something that is
0:37:19 easily understood on its face and i
0:37:21 think that is identitarianism
0:37:23 so it's the critical theory the marxist
0:37:26 binary as applied to identity
0:37:30 so
0:37:31 instead of the proletariat and the
0:37:32 bourgeoisie you have
0:37:35 the races
0:37:36 separated in a zero-sum game against
0:37:39 each other and then one
0:37:41 has to basically
0:37:43 defeat the other right
0:37:45 um
0:37:46 and uh same thing with uh
0:37:49 feminism uh
0:37:51 not necessarily their earlier iterations
0:37:54 of feminism but like
0:37:55 sort of the radical feminisms that are
0:37:57 out there you know men men are
0:37:59 oppressing women and therefore women
0:38:01 have to organize and really have to
0:38:04 you know
0:38:05 be antagonistic to men
0:38:07 and um
0:38:10 you know and sets the genders together
0:38:12 that's
0:38:13 that's
0:38:14 causing a lot of problems because men
0:38:16 and women
0:38:17 in in islam men and women are the allies
0:38:19 of one another allah says that in the
0:38:20 quran right
0:38:22 and we it's very divisive it encourages
0:38:25 people to identify in quite divisive
0:38:27 ways of particular identities gender of
0:38:30 race and sexuality and so on since
0:38:32 instead of stressing the commonalities
0:38:34 of our human origins and our destiny uh
0:38:37 orientated towards god
0:38:39 we're fractured as a society into ever
0:38:42 increasing identity politics
0:38:44 identitarianism and you're saying
0:38:46 obviously this is an unhealthy thing and
0:38:48 it sets people against each other uh in
0:38:51 ever increasing identities it's not like
0:38:52 there's just the six identity issues it
0:38:55 seems it's like the lgbt
0:38:57 the the additional letters of the
0:38:59 alphabet added fairly regularly it seems
0:39:03 yeah because there's again there's no
0:39:05 limits to the where the logic can take
0:39:07 them right so
0:39:08 um
0:39:10 you know we have limits within our
0:39:13 religion that
0:39:14 where the logic stops i just i simply
0:39:16 can't move beyond a law's limit on a
0:39:18 particular issue
0:39:20 right
0:39:20 for moral reasons right religious
0:39:22 reasons and
0:39:24 uh they they don't have uh they view all
0:39:26 barriers as uh
0:39:28 as oppressive right if it gets in the
0:39:31 way of how they want to live their lives
0:39:33 or what or or whatever desire that they
0:39:36 have if there's something in the way
0:39:38 even if it's an idea they have to break
0:39:40 it down and they have to deconstruct it
0:39:42 and they have to
0:39:44 delegitimize the people who
0:39:46 promote it
0:39:47 you know and there's no end to that and
0:39:49 so you see that um
0:39:51 the
0:39:52 the teenagers that are growing up today
0:39:54 are growing up with very extreme ideas
0:39:57 um
0:39:58 such as it's shopping
0:40:00 such as yes
0:40:02 there are can you give concrete examples
0:40:04 of what's what's happening do you think
0:40:07 yeah like uh their views on race their
0:40:09 views on
0:40:11 uh sexuality uh their views on religion
0:40:14 um
0:40:16 i don't wanna get into like specifics i
0:40:17 think people understand okay what's out
0:40:20 there okay um
0:40:24 uh you know these these kids are making
0:40:27 tick tock videos
0:40:28 right
0:40:29 and
0:40:30 sometimes these go around on twitter and
0:40:32 you can you can see that you know they
0:40:35 have these very extreme ideas you know
0:40:38 um they're not
0:40:40 they they're their identities aren't
0:40:41 stable they don't know who they are um
0:40:44 they don't have any values that are
0:40:46 grounded because they're told that you
0:40:48 can just make your own values
0:40:50 and you know you can just make your own
0:40:52 tradition and you don't have to follow
0:40:53 anybody you can just follow you know
0:40:55 whatever you want you don't have to
0:40:56 listen to your parents you don't have to
0:40:58 listen to your tradition or your
0:41:00 religions or anything and then that's
0:41:02 not healthy for kids because kids
0:41:04 children and teenagers or children they
0:41:06 need guidance from their parents and
0:41:08 their elders right and they need to be
0:41:10 told
0:41:11 how to grow up and mature in healthy
0:41:14 ways and and
0:41:16 the political activists out there
0:41:17 because they're busy breaking barriers
0:41:20 they're not then they're not giving
0:41:21 children guidance and these children are
0:41:23 lost right
0:41:25 it's this kind of blank slate is this
0:41:27 also called uh there's a very eminent
0:41:29 psychologist stephen pinker i think he's
0:41:30 a professor at harvard uh who's very
0:41:33 much alive and producing he's got a book
0:41:35 on the blank slate philosophy which i've
0:41:37 got and read um
0:41:39 the the idea that we are social
0:41:41 constructs say gender sexual out of
0:41:44 whatever
0:41:44 it is actually wholly false uh the
0:41:47 science is very clear this is not
0:41:49 really controversial in science in
0:41:52 psychology peer-reviewed psychological
0:41:54 studies men and women are different
0:41:56 actually and this is objective again
0:41:58 terrible word objective in other words
0:42:00 but it's empirically verifiable in the
0:42:02 way you describe defying science earlier
0:42:04 so the idea of what we are just blank
0:42:06 slates born into this world and we can
0:42:08 craft and make our own identities is
0:42:10 actually empirically scientifically
0:42:12 false and that's not an opinion that's
0:42:14 an objective scientific fact and there's
0:42:17 masses of empirical evidence which
0:42:18 stephen pinker discusses in his book but
0:42:21 he looks at the origins of this ideology
0:42:23 in the enlightenment i mean it's not
0:42:24 like this goes back to
0:42:26 critical theory or something in the
0:42:28 1930s to germany this goes back
0:42:30 performing
0:42:31 to uh uh uh i ideas of human nature
0:42:34 propagates in the enlightenment this is
0:42:36 the 18th century so we're going further
0:42:38 and further back so what we're seeing
0:42:40 here the uh
0:42:41 the the antecedent ideologies that have
0:42:44 uh provided the context of these new
0:42:46 spin-offs
0:42:48 to develop as the police car goes past
0:42:51 um so i guess what i'm saying is that
0:42:53 this is a kind of a western tradition uh
0:42:56 still doing its thing it's an unstable
0:42:58 tradition that is constantly evolving in
0:43:00 different mutations and evolving and and
0:43:03 taking on new forms and maybe new
0:43:05 languages but there is a kind of um
0:43:07 subterranean metaphysics and
0:43:10 epistemology that kind of looks rather
0:43:12 familiar and we can trace it back many
0:43:14 centuries
0:43:15 um and contrasting with that of course
0:43:17 is the islamic uh tradition uh which
0:43:20 stands in a very different way to for
0:43:22 fundamental truth existence of god
0:43:25 and an objective moral order created by
0:43:27 god himself and i can't think of any two
0:43:29 more antithetical worldviews than than
0:43:32 this kind of western tradition and the
0:43:34 islamic one because the christians
0:43:35 unfortunately certainly in the west have
0:43:37 largely gone over to this
0:43:39 modernist view or post-modernist view as
0:43:41 have other groups so muslims tend to be
0:43:43 the only group standing globally i think
0:43:45 who
0:43:46 retain the integrity of their faith in
0:43:48 the face of these challenges
0:43:50 uh yes everything you said was correct
0:43:53 and um
0:43:54 what what concerns me is the way that
0:43:56 christianity has been infiltrated by
0:43:59 these ideas and
0:44:01 and really watered down yeah to the
0:44:03 point that
0:44:05 uh it is very submissive to um
0:44:09 to the political ideology i mean they
0:44:11 and they're not standing and they're
0:44:12 just going along with it you know and
0:44:15 and uh i i'm afraid i don't want to them
0:44:17 to make inroads into our tradition to do
0:44:20 the same to us because they they have
0:44:22 their eyes on us and as they have done
0:44:24 with the christians yes and it it it
0:44:27 frightens me that christianity is is
0:44:30 being
0:44:31 uh deconstructed so quickly and
0:44:33 efficiently in the west because
0:44:36 as a muslim
0:44:38 and a christian who believes in god we
0:44:41 have that part in common and we believe
0:44:43 in jesus and we believe that there's
0:44:45 human nature and we have a lot in common
0:44:47 in fact way more than we do with these
0:44:50 uh identitarians and atheists and
0:44:52 post-modernists that we're talking about
0:44:54 right and
0:44:56 as regards to human nature we do have
0:44:58 this concept that's mentioned in the
0:44:59 quran and in the sunnah of the fitra
0:45:02 right you have the the in the the
0:45:05 innate human nature with which god
0:45:08 created people so we're already created
0:45:10 with the blue with the blueprint right
0:45:12 we already have a set
0:45:13 of genes and we already have a set of
0:45:16 uh the ways our brain are going to
0:45:18 develop that blank slate
0:45:20 ideology as you said it's it's old
0:45:22 and it's false and it's anti-scientific
0:45:26 right
0:45:26 and stephen pinker and he's an atheist
0:45:29 right and he knows it's not
0:45:30 scientific he's a formidable opponent
0:45:32 and the evidence he marshall from his
0:45:34 own expertise as a harvard psychologist
0:45:37 is irrefutable i mean this is
0:45:38 multidisciplinary fundamental science
0:45:41 that has been verified over and over and
0:45:43 over again it's not really disputed in
0:45:45 that area but outside of it you'd think
0:45:47 it was some kind of
0:45:49 you know anyway as you say he's an
0:45:50 atheist he has no theological agenda
0:45:53 yeah but he believes there's a natural
0:45:55 reality right so he's he's not the same
0:45:58 as as these people but
0:46:00 uh
0:46:01 because they're pushing this blank slate
0:46:03 ideology onto the children under the
0:46:05 kids and the teenagers you you see a lot
0:46:08 of bizarre behavior among teenagers and
0:46:11 um you know it's very concerning that
0:46:14 the the the the
0:46:16 this will have a generational effect and
0:46:18 we won't see it until 20 10 or 20 years
0:46:21 later
0:46:22 maybe
0:46:23 faster than that but these are third
0:46:25 fourth order consequences to the ideas
0:46:28 that are being applied and so people uh
0:46:31 people on the left and and of that type
0:46:33 of persuasion they'd like to say well
0:46:34 how does it harm me that i'm doing this
0:46:36 or i decide to live like this or
0:46:39 anything like that or that i'm teaching
0:46:40 children this well it might not harm
0:46:43 them in the sense as if you punch them
0:46:45 in the face it's not harming them that
0:46:46 way
0:46:48 but it may harm them
0:46:49 later in their life that they didn't get
0:46:52 a proper upbringing and it may harm the
0:46:54 society later on that an entire
0:46:56 generation didn't get a proper
0:46:57 upbringing upbringing
0:46:59 so um
0:47:01 and i forget the
0:47:03 the anthropologists uh
0:47:06 he was harvard but was back in the 1920s
0:47:08 but he wrote about generational
0:47:10 uh effects of the the change of sexual
0:47:13 norms right when a society changes its
0:47:16 sexual norms um it takes two or three
0:47:19 generations for you to see the full
0:47:20 effect of that on the family and so on
0:47:23 and everything and so
0:47:25 um you know the the decisions that were
0:47:27 made in america with regard to
0:47:29 uh abortion and the sexual revolution
0:47:31 and everything like that we're seeing
0:47:33 those come to fruition now 60 years
0:47:36 later right and at the time they were
0:47:38 probably like i i can just i should be
0:47:40 able to have sex with whoever i want i'm
0:47:42 not hurting anybody these are two adults
0:47:43 we can live our life the way that they
0:47:45 want but because they promoted these
0:47:47 ideas and generations of people grew up
0:47:49 with them in secession now we're dealing
0:47:51 with uh many pathologies in society
0:47:55 making mental illnesses in society of
0:47:57 people who never grew up with a proper
0:47:59 understanding of the role of sex uh
0:48:02 sexual intercourse and intimacy and and
0:48:04 the proper relationship between a man
0:48:06 and a woman and marriage and all of
0:48:08 these things that were fundamental to
0:48:10 civilization and that people took for
0:48:12 granted as a given uh until they were
0:48:14 challenged right and then ultimately uh
0:48:17 delegitimized in the minds of a lot of
0:48:19 people i think there's a slight danger
0:48:21 here in my view if i if i may in being
0:48:23 overly pessimistic there has been
0:48:25 substantial pushback against this
0:48:27 socially we're seeing for example roe
0:48:28 versus wade this uh extraordinary um
0:48:31 supreme court ruling was overturned
0:48:33 recently by another supreme court and um
0:48:36 you know there are there is movement on
0:48:37 social media you know people like gordon
0:48:39 jordan peterson uh and others uh are
0:48:42 powerful voices for a more what i would
0:48:45 call more normal and natural
0:48:46 understanding of gender for example or
0:48:48 uh and and i i think
0:48:51 i mean i could be wrong but i think we
0:48:52 are beginning to see a substantive
0:48:54 political and social pushback not on
0:48:56 social media but politically as well
0:48:58 that's much clearer in the united states
0:49:00 than it is say i think in britain but uh
0:49:03 you know things that start in america
0:49:05 end up tend to end up going elsewhere
0:49:06 and also we mustn't forget that many
0:49:08 parts of the world are profoundly uh
0:49:11 uh disliking of this eastern europe
0:49:14 russia china and other parts of africa
0:49:17 and the middle east although they're
0:49:18 coming under
0:49:20 uh pressure uh they absolutely don't
0:49:22 like this stuff you know it's not like
0:49:24 everyone's you know you mentioned
0:49:25 christians in the west being sort of
0:49:27 submissive to this a lot of places in
0:49:28 the world are not i mean china for
0:49:30 example is you know an emerging
0:49:32 superpower you know it couldn't be less
0:49:34 sympathetic to this i understand you
0:49:35 know that they're not interested in
0:49:36 these
0:49:37 bizarre western liberal notions which
0:49:39 undermine the family in social cohesion
0:49:41 and blah blah blah and this is
0:49:43 officially a communist society of all
0:49:44 things so i know that there's a
0:49:47 multi-polar kind of reality emerging and
0:49:49 uh there may be pushback uh even within
0:49:52 the west america uh so maybe it's not
0:49:54 quite as pessimistic as one might
0:49:56 initially think
0:49:58 yeah i think so and i i i understand why
0:50:01 i probably came off that way
0:50:03 i mean
0:50:04 this content is disturbing this subject
0:50:06 is disturbing but you're right there has
0:50:08 been
0:50:08 pushback and i was
0:50:11 happy that the issue of abortion was
0:50:13 returned to the states because i think
0:50:15 it should have been a state issue to
0:50:16 begin with and that
0:50:18 if you want to
0:50:19 uh if you want a very um
0:50:22 permissive abortion law then you need to
0:50:24 persuade people to be able to vote on
0:50:25 that at least in the american context
0:50:28 that's how the american politics is
0:50:29 supposed to work and the reaction to
0:50:32 that was hysterical yeah but um
0:50:36 and that was actually what led me to
0:50:38 write the article to begin with because
0:50:40 um i shared my opinion and and people
0:50:44 were very upset about it and and then
0:50:46 you know
0:50:47 it's yeah and then so and then i so i i
0:50:50 made some tweets and then
0:50:52 my colleague or my friend at missile
0:50:54 manners is one of me well you should
0:50:56 make these tweets into an article that's
0:50:58 more
0:50:59 refined and well
0:51:01 polished and everything and so uh it was
0:51:04 actually the abortion issue that led to
0:51:06 the article that we're talking about
0:51:08 interesting um but yeah there is
0:51:10 pushback i i'm hopeful and and and these
0:51:13 you know these uh you know as allah says
0:51:16 in the quran that falsehood is is bound
0:51:18 to vanish you know falsehood is just
0:51:19 blown away right and so if their
0:51:22 ideology is based on falsehood it will
0:51:24 eventually be
0:51:25 it will benefit will eventually go away
0:51:28 and because it has nothing to stand on
0:51:30 yeah it can't be permanent right exactly
0:51:32 so um there's no reason i think like for
0:51:35 pessimism especially not in the uh in
0:51:38 the fullest religious sense because we
0:51:40 know a lot is
0:51:42 the guardian over all of us and that you
0:51:44 know
0:51:46 the world is a trial and and he will
0:51:48 support the believers and we shouldn't
0:51:50 really be exactly fearful in that sense
0:51:53 so yeah i mean there's there's a reason
0:51:55 for optimism you're absolutely right i'm
0:51:56 glad you said that okay thank you
0:51:58 sergeant shrubs carry on
0:52:00 oh yeah so um
0:52:03 i have some comments about the tesla
0:52:06 yeah
0:52:07 my question because you was going to be
0:52:09 are there any parallels worth noting uh
0:52:11 in the islamic tradition and i know
0:52:13 having read your article of course that
0:52:14 you you make a parallel uh exact or
0:52:18 inexact might be the question but
0:52:20 nevertheless there are parallels in your
0:52:21 view
0:52:22 yeah um it's an inexact um it's not
0:52:25 perfect because there really is no
0:52:27 precedent
0:52:28 uh in early islamic history for the
0:52:30 ideas that we're seeing now um not like
0:52:32 from within the tradition i mentioned i
0:52:35 mentioned the more tesla
0:52:37 for a reason but i want to say off the
0:52:39 front
0:52:40 up front
0:52:42 uh that the more tesla
0:52:44 were much better than these post-modern
0:52:46 philosophers and these
0:52:48 marxists and atheists and critical
0:52:50 theorists and because the tesla even
0:52:53 though they had a methodology which i
0:52:56 believe that diverted from
0:52:59 the way that the righteous predecessors
0:53:01 understood the quran and they still
0:53:02 believed in absolute truth and they
0:53:04 still believed the quran and sunnah were
0:53:05 divine revelation
0:53:07 uh and i i believe that their
0:53:08 methodology of driving theological
0:53:10 beliefs was flawed um but they were
0:53:14 muslims right they were muslims that
0:53:16 were misguided in some ways and then
0:53:17 even some
0:53:19 muslim scholars like zamakshari
0:53:22 uh who was a tafsir scholar who was a a
0:53:25 um
0:53:26 of them
0:53:28 or
0:53:30 sympathetic to it uh his works are read
0:53:32 by sunnis and are valuable and um there
0:53:35 are other commentaries that i've read
0:53:37 that were by montezuma scholars that had
0:53:40 insightful things to say and so they
0:53:42 they're muslims i'm not saying they're
0:53:44 not muslims and i'm not equating them
0:53:46 with these people at all but
0:53:48 so the more tesla why i brought them up
0:53:51 is because there was a radical group of
0:53:53 who um
0:53:55 they basically found favor with the
0:53:57 ruling class with the caliph and then
0:53:59 they used this power to promote their
0:54:02 doctrine
0:54:03 uh by force upon the population uh and
0:54:06 and against sunni muslim scholars like
0:54:08 ahmedabad
0:54:11 um and they beat him almost to death
0:54:13 right and what was the doctrine that
0:54:15 they were promoting it was the doctrine
0:54:17 that the quran was created okay but why
0:54:20 did they why was that even an issue
0:54:24 as i understood it they they said that
0:54:26 the quran was created because uh if the
0:54:29 quran was was uncreated and allah was
0:54:31 uncreated that would be co-eternals and
0:54:33 there could be no two co-eternals in the
0:54:35 greek philosophical scheme right so they
0:54:38 were influenced by the greek
0:54:39 philosophical
0:54:41 ideas right and it caused them to invent
0:54:43 this saying that the quran was created
0:54:46 that nobody before had them nobody
0:54:48 before them had said
0:54:50 and then began to persecute people
0:54:52 muslims scholars imams
0:54:55 for not accepting this idea and this
0:54:57 doctrine that they made up
0:54:59 and then and there was no precedent
0:55:01 before so that was influenced by uh
0:55:04 ultimately by greek philosophy greek
0:55:05 philosophical concepts and that's what
0:55:07 kind of impinged on their their thinking
0:55:09 uh resulting in a a novel
0:55:12 uh position an unprecedented position on
0:55:14 the creativeness of the quran
0:55:18 yeah so i the reason i brought them up
0:55:21 is because i thought that was a good
0:55:23 example of how a foreign philosophy can
0:55:27 be
0:55:27 uh
0:55:29 it can influence muslims to commit
0:55:31 atrocities against their muslim brothers
0:55:33 and sisters
0:55:34 for one
0:55:35 and um and then to create new
0:55:37 theological beliefs to have no precedent
0:55:40 in islam
0:55:41 at all right
0:55:42 so and i believe that that paradigm of
0:55:45 that particular incident i'm not saying
0:55:47 it's about all the more
0:55:49 because
0:55:50 you can't i don't think we can
0:55:52 generalize about all of them
0:55:53 uh but on that particular incident i
0:55:56 could see
0:55:58 that muslims who are being influenced by
0:56:00 the the postmodern identitarian movement
0:56:05 are trying to
0:56:07 create theological beliefs i've seen
0:56:09 some of them reject hadith
0:56:11 because it conflicted with
0:56:14 racial or gender issues the the issues
0:56:17 that they learned about from non-muslim
0:56:19 academics in this field
0:56:21 right i've seen um
0:56:23 and and there's other examples of this
0:56:25 in academia like i don't want to get um
0:56:29 we could pull those out i don't know
0:56:30 have those off the top of my head um but
0:56:33 muslims i think are aware that this
0:56:35 trend is out there and um
0:56:38 and what really concerns me is that the
0:56:41 the the muslims getting too close to a
0:56:44 political party getting too close to a
0:56:46 political movement
0:56:48 um and that them being influenced by its
0:56:51 negative aspects
0:56:53 and in particular the young people being
0:56:56 influenced by the negative aspects and
0:56:58 so
0:56:58 uh the the thing is if the muslims
0:57:01 the muslim young people right not the
0:57:04 adults necessarily but if the muslim
0:57:05 young people if they don't have a
0:57:07 relationship to the imams and the
0:57:09 scholars and the the pious worshipers
0:57:12 and the uncle in your masjid that is a
0:57:14 great guy who who
0:57:16 would do anything for you and have that
0:57:18 relationship with uh the muslim
0:57:21 community in this scholarly tradition in
0:57:24 in
0:57:25 sunni muslim community
0:57:27 then they will look to political leaders
0:57:29 right and they will look to some of the
0:57:31 muslim politicians in america none of
0:57:33 whom i am satisfied with and who might
0:57:35 have criticized openly before
0:57:38 um and they'll they'll look they'll look
0:57:40 to joe biden or they'll look to
0:57:42 alexandria castillo cortez or they'll
0:57:45 look to any any of these politicians who
0:57:48 are flashy on social media they'll look
0:57:50 to them for guidance if they're not
0:57:52 getting it from the scholars and the
0:57:53 imams of our community and if they're
0:57:55 looking to those people they're going to
0:57:57 be influenced by their ideas and they
0:57:59 might
0:58:01 try to you know and they're they're
0:58:03 still muslims i'm not saying they're not
0:58:04 muslims but they might try to synthesize
0:58:07 those ideas within our tradition
0:58:10 and i in fact had conversations with my
0:58:13 colleagues uh about this exact issue and
0:58:15 i told them that i believe that these
0:58:17 ideas were dangerous and i didn't want
0:58:19 these ideas to be mainstreamed in our
0:58:22 community and we had
0:58:26 i wouldn't say heated to discussions but
0:58:29 we had very intense discussions about
0:58:32 this issue
0:58:33 and
0:58:35 and ultimately you know
0:58:38 it's come to where it is now right
0:58:40 and i don't think it's something that we
0:58:42 can ignore and and i i don't want to see
0:58:45 any muslim of a scholarly
0:58:48 uh
0:58:49 who who has a scholarly office or who is
0:58:51 any mom or is in any leadership capacity
0:58:54 flirting with any of these ideas at all
0:58:56 because i just think that's very
0:58:58 dangerous especially
0:58:59 uh people who are like imams and have a
0:59:02 religious like um
0:59:05 veneer or religious perception you know
0:59:07 this is a religious person and then
0:59:08 they're tweeting
0:59:10 politicians and they're tweeting
0:59:11 activists and those activists are going
0:59:13 out and saying very racially diverse and
0:59:16 divisive stuff right and they're saying
0:59:19 uh stuff that's not true
0:59:21 they're saying stuff that is you know
0:59:24 not true about gender not true about
0:59:26 human nature but they say hey this the
0:59:28 retweeted this guy this guy is good
0:59:30 i can listen to him i can listen to this
0:59:32 msnbc guy or this cnn guy or this
0:59:36 washington post guy because the shaykh
0:59:37 retweeted him so it's good that i can i
0:59:39 can listen to him right because i trust
0:59:41 the sheikh the sheikh retweeted this guy
0:59:43 so therefore i'm going to listen to this
0:59:45 guy and take his word for it and these
0:59:46 children don't know any better right and
0:59:49 they don't know that the the the
0:59:51 journalists have become propagandists
0:59:53 and journalists have become activists
0:59:54 and a lot of these journalists
0:59:56 are
0:59:57 uh
0:59:58 the the um
1:00:01 are applying critical theories right
1:00:04 they're not neces they're not academics
1:00:06 and so they're not developing critical
1:00:07 theories but they're applying critical
1:00:09 theories in the way that they report the
1:00:10 news right
1:00:12 and that brings me to another point i
1:00:14 wanted to mention and which i linked to
1:00:16 in the article because i linked to an a
1:00:17 big part of this
1:00:19 is that a lot of the information that
1:00:21 you get on
1:00:22 uh
1:00:23 from news sites and whether it's left or
1:00:26 right uh a lot of it cannot be verified
1:00:29 and a lot of it cannot be trusted
1:00:31 and i linked to an article that was in
1:00:33 the harvard business review and the
1:00:34 title of the article is why the news is
1:00:37 not true
1:00:38 right and this is written in the 90s
1:00:40 and basic the basic um
1:00:43 point that the author was making i think
1:00:45 still applies today right because he
1:00:47 talked about
1:00:49 the rise of pulitzer
1:00:50 journalism yep
1:00:52 so
1:00:53 uh
1:00:54 you know the news way back before
1:00:56 pulitzer was basically a bulletin board
1:00:59 of factual events this happened you know
1:01:02 this this this it was really boring and
1:01:04 nobody would go seek it out it was just
1:01:06 like it was really like reading the
1:01:07 bulletin board at your at your school or
1:01:10 something it was just like why would
1:01:12 anybody is not entertaining at all right
1:01:14 but pulitzer came and he revolutionized
1:01:17 the news because then he started to tell
1:01:18 the news with characters and with middle
1:01:20 of villains and with the narrative and
1:01:22 admit his story made it entertaining you
1:01:25 know he was the first one that did that
1:01:27 and so he revolutionized the news that
1:01:29 way and then the news could become a
1:01:30 business because the news was
1:01:31 entertaining and it was interesting
1:01:33 right
1:01:34 and then that developed into what we
1:01:35 have now now we have 24 7 uh
1:01:38 entertainment news infotainment which is
1:01:41 news that is
1:01:43 meant to be entertaining or at least
1:01:44 interesting or stimulating you know you
1:01:46 have you have it at all times of the day
1:01:49 you can have a perfectly curated twitter
1:01:51 feed of all your favorite journalists
1:01:52 who are always repeating the same thing
1:01:54 and you'll never hear anything from the
1:01:56 other side if you don't seek out those
1:01:58 views you'll never hear any dissident
1:02:00 information and therefore you will be
1:02:02 misled right
1:02:04 one of the principles of information
1:02:06 literacy is that you have to get
1:02:08 information from dissident sources uh
1:02:11 and from multiple sources and then you
1:02:13 have to look at them all together and
1:02:14 you have to synthesize what you think is
1:02:16 true from all this information or what
1:02:18 most likely to be true right that's the
1:02:20 principle of information literacy and uh
1:02:24 people today they have these curated
1:02:26 twitter feeds they have the journalists
1:02:28 that they listen to
1:02:29 they don't seek out other viewpoints and
1:02:31 therefore they're only getting the
1:02:33 narratives that the journalists are
1:02:35 writing for them and these are
1:02:36 narratives that were written by critical
1:02:38 theorists right that feminist narratives
1:02:41 and and and racial narratives right and
1:02:45 and sexual identity narratives and
1:02:47 things like that and so the news the
1:02:50 facts of the news are fit into these
1:02:52 narratives
1:02:54 right and there are villains donald
1:02:55 trump is a villain in the narrative
1:02:58 and maybe rightfully so or you know
1:03:01 rightfully so on several things i would
1:03:02 say
1:03:03 um at the very least
1:03:05 uh but but he's a he's a villain right
1:03:07 he's a character in the news um
1:03:10 and uh you know they're telling you
1:03:12 stories right and they're telling you
1:03:14 what's happening through these
1:03:15 entertaining stories and the news is as
1:03:18 a fact-based
1:03:20 fact-finding
1:03:21 operation isn't supposed really supposed
1:03:23 to be that way because they're telling
1:03:25 you how to interpret the facts they're
1:03:27 not just giving you facts right they're
1:03:30 they're giving you some facts and
1:03:31 sometimes there are
1:03:33 omitting key facts and sometimes they
1:03:36 are even obscuring facts or or even
1:03:39 misquoting people directly and and doing
1:03:41 other things like that but it's all in
1:03:43 the service of the narrative because the
1:03:45 narrative is is is the is the consistent
1:03:47 element of the news right and the
1:03:50 narrative is it goes a certain way and
1:03:52 it only changes when the powers that be
1:03:53 wanted to change
1:03:55 one of the
1:03:56 examples for me you talk about um
1:03:59 being uh literally having a literal
1:04:01 understanding of news and looking at
1:04:02 dissident sources how difficult that is
1:04:04 for example the the war in ukraine at
1:04:06 the moment and we're not going to go
1:04:07 into this but it's just an example with
1:04:10 the putin's invasion of ukraine is that
1:04:12 uh alternative news sources like russia
1:04:14 today which is which is russia's english
1:04:16 language news service have actually been
1:04:18 banned in the west and i mean you can if
1:04:21 you really look hard just about find a
1:04:23 way of watching russia today um the
1:04:26 english language news source but this
1:04:27 offers a very alternative narrative um
1:04:30 but apart from that all the other
1:04:32 perspectives are completely absent and
1:04:34 you have a single narrative whether it
1:04:35 be from nato from the government from
1:04:38 corporations from all new new media
1:04:41 politicians you name it they all sing
1:04:43 from exactly the same hymn sheet which
1:04:45 strikes me as very suspicious um
1:04:47 particularly when you're banning
1:04:48 alternative points of view it's it's it
1:04:51 once once suspects one might be hearing
1:04:53 propaganda if it has to be so one-sided
1:04:56 um and that's just one example of how
1:04:59 happily everyone just uh goes along with
1:05:01 the official narrative across the board
1:05:03 um and do you even think there might be
1:05:04 another narrative is almost well it is
1:05:07 treason it's seen as treason and
1:05:09 actually uh socially taboo and i'm
1:05:11 thinking excuse me where did all that
1:05:12 come from but why can't you look at
1:05:14 various views on this
1:05:17 yeah i mean
1:05:19 um i mentioned that because this is a
1:05:22 this is why people are so indoctrinated
1:05:25 into
1:05:26 into the critical theories the
1:05:27 propaganda is a right and a is a right
1:05:30 and a left problem i'm not saying that
1:05:31 only the left wing is doing propaganda
1:05:34 and and the the right and the left will
1:05:36 unite
1:05:38 for international propaganda reasons the
1:05:40 iraq war lie was a bipartisan lie
1:05:43 republicans and democrats did that
1:05:46 but weapons of mass destruction southern
1:05:47 museum was an imminent threat to the
1:05:49 west yeah yeah
1:05:51 the democrats went along with that and
1:05:52 joe biden went along with that right so
1:05:55 they will unite around certain things
1:05:57 right but from a cultural perspective
1:06:00 uh the this is a lot of the legacy
1:06:02 mainstream media outlets the journalists
1:06:05 aren't actually reporters you know that
1:06:08 that uh image that you have of the uh of
1:06:11 the
1:06:11 what was it called watergate the
1:06:13 watergate reporter is a meeting in the
1:06:14 basement you know the president
1:06:16 amazing
1:06:18 yeah yeah right the hard nose reporter
1:06:20 is going to get to the truth and put it
1:06:22 out there you know is that kind of
1:06:23 investigative reporting happening
1:06:25 anymore
1:06:26 um in any
1:06:27 you know i mean a lot of these
1:06:28 journalists are are just cheerleaders
1:06:30 for their team
1:06:32 right
1:06:33 um
1:06:34 and and and if they were truthful they
1:06:37 would be they would be
1:06:38 criticizing the people on their side
1:06:41 right or they would
1:06:43 frame things in a way that would make
1:06:45 people come to their own conclusions but
1:06:47 they want to tell you what to think they
1:06:49 want to tell you what the narrative is
1:06:50 this is the story right this is how you
1:06:53 should interpret the facts right they
1:06:54 will hide certain facts from you and is
1:06:57 very suspicious right
1:06:59 and um
1:07:00 you know that that's a big part of this
1:07:02 right uh that all of the dishonesty it's
1:07:05 not just in the ideology itself but it's
1:07:07 in the actual news that people consume
1:07:09 right i've seen
1:07:11 muslim scholars
1:07:14 share news
1:07:16 that is has been falsified right that
1:07:18 was i don't want to say fake news but it
1:07:21 was
1:07:22 there were false aspects of the
1:07:23 reporting right
1:07:25 and
1:07:26 um
1:07:28 what the news organizations will also do
1:07:30 and this is the tactic
1:07:32 tactic of theirs
1:07:34 is that they will publish a news article
1:07:37 and it will contain false information
1:07:40 that might be beneficial to their side
1:07:42 and then they will issue the correction
1:07:44 later quietly you know it'll be
1:07:47 corrected the next day or whatever we
1:07:49 missed we didn't quote this person
1:07:50 correctly or this you know this
1:07:53 fact wasn't true or anything like that
1:07:55 and the original article went out to the
1:07:56 activists and 20 000 people
1:07:59 retweeted it and millions of people saw
1:08:01 it and got the false idea in their mind
1:08:03 and then nobody saw their correction
1:08:06 right this is also happens to be a
1:08:08 military tactic so if militaries make a
1:08:10 mistake and they bond civilians they'll
1:08:12 say at first that they they bombed
1:08:14 terrorists and then a few weeks later
1:08:16 they'd say oh yeah we made a mistake
1:08:18 right the the u.s government did that
1:08:20 recently in afghanistan
1:08:23 uh when they were leaving afghanistan
1:08:26 uh there was a uh they they uh
1:08:28 they bombed people that they claimed
1:08:30 were isis terrorists and they said we
1:08:32 killed these terrorists and you know we
1:08:34 got back at them for for you know they
1:08:36 killed some of our soldiers and then a
1:08:39 few weeks later they admitted that no
1:08:41 that was a family of six or something
1:08:43 that you know that we murdered and there
1:08:46 was no terrorists there at all
1:08:48 right uh but in the moment that
1:08:50 served its function right because they
1:08:52 had to show that yeah that they were
1:08:54 getting out of
1:08:55 afghanistan and they were strong against
1:08:57 terrorism and everything like that so
1:08:59 they did this bombing and that was a
1:09:00 successful thing and so that's what they
1:09:02 wanted people to see in that moment and
1:09:04 then serve that moment and then later on
1:09:06 they uh
1:09:08 admitted that it was it was a mistake
1:09:10 and innocent people were killed uh but
1:09:12 you know
1:09:13 how many people went and saw that part
1:09:15 of it you know with that when it was out
1:09:17 at the headline news how many people saw
1:09:19 the correction
1:09:20 right
1:09:21 so
1:09:23 this is just something about the news
1:09:24 i've had on my chest for a very long
1:09:26 time i i am an information professional
1:09:29 this is actually what i do for a living
1:09:30 so
1:09:31 it is very concerning to me
1:09:34 uh that people are so
1:09:36 illiterate when it comes to information
1:09:39 um and in particular
1:09:41 uh the way journalists are not devoted
1:09:43 to the truth and they're not even
1:09:45 devoted to to uncovering wrongdoing when
1:09:48 it's done by the people in their own
1:09:49 party right they have power concerns
1:09:53 they have political concerns ideological
1:09:55 concerns that they have means that just
1:09:58 uh they have ends that justify the means
1:10:01 they employ
1:10:02 that might be dishonest
1:10:04 right
1:10:05 and um and a lot of this is is is from
1:10:08 the influence of these philosophies that
1:10:10 we have been talking about
1:10:12 so that's my um that's my bit about the
1:10:15 propaganda part and why i listen uh i
1:10:19 linked to that
1:10:20 uh harvard business review article again
1:10:22 the title is why news is not the truth
1:10:26 and i would recommend anybody who's
1:10:27 interested in this topic to go back and
1:10:29 read that because the paradigm that he
1:10:31 describes or the author describes in
1:10:33 that article is is the same paradigm
1:10:36 that is being
1:10:37 uh
1:10:38 that we can see today and it's even it's
1:10:41 arguably even worse than it was back in
1:10:43 the 90s when these things were being
1:10:44 disappointed by this is uh your article
1:10:46 the false promise of identitarianism on
1:10:49 the muslim matters website which i've
1:10:51 linked to in the description below and
1:10:53 within the article there are links to
1:10:55 several articles actually but one of
1:10:57 them is to this harvard business review
1:10:59 uh article that you mentioned so that
1:11:01 that's where you'll find it
1:11:04 yes thank you
1:11:08 so i i we've covered a lot of the points
1:11:10 that i wanted to mention i do also want
1:11:13 to mention that because
1:11:15 the identitarianism is inherently
1:11:18 tribalist
1:11:19 they employ double standards right so
1:11:22 the the group that they don't like has
1:11:25 yeah as one standard and then the group
1:11:27 that they're trying that they claim
1:11:29 they're trying to protect has a
1:11:30 different standard
1:11:32 and this this double standard people can
1:11:34 see this hypocrisy and it aggravates
1:11:36 people and it's again another reason why
1:11:38 people will never be able to unite
1:11:41 because you know why why should i submit
1:11:44 to your ideas or why should i
1:11:46 even be in discussion with you when
1:11:47 you're not even willing to treat me the
1:11:49 same as somebody else right just because
1:11:51 of the color of my skin or my gender or
1:11:54 my sexuality or whatever yeah right and
1:11:56 so you see people's opinions are
1:11:58 dismissed right because okay you're part
1:12:00 of this group therefore your opinion
1:12:02 doesn't matter and you're part of this
1:12:04 group therefore your opinion is more
1:12:06 valuable than that person's opinion and
1:12:08 you can't learn from this person because
1:12:10 they're part of that group but this
1:12:12 person you need to be special they they
1:12:14 you need to pay special attention to
1:12:16 them because they're from a special
1:12:17 group
1:12:18 um and that that type of tribalism is
1:12:20 just it it it's fracture it fractures
1:12:23 society and it is doing that
1:12:26 but again i like i said there are
1:12:28 indications that
1:12:30 there are there is push back to that but
1:12:32 that that's a that's a problem you know
1:12:34 the double standards it's hypocrisy and
1:12:36 hypocrisy is a major is a major sin in
1:12:39 islam
1:12:40 not not necessarily the hypocrisy like
1:12:42 of your pretending to be a muslim so you
1:12:44 can attack muslims but the hypocrisy of
1:12:47 saying something and then not really
1:12:49 believing it in your heart right you
1:12:52 you claim you want to be fair to other
1:12:54 people but then in practice you're
1:12:56 treating people different based on the
1:12:57 color of their skin or their gender
1:12:59 um you know people people notice that
1:13:02 and they they don't take kindly to that
1:13:05 right and that's not something that
1:13:07 can can uh that doesn't contribute to a
1:13:10 functioning society right
1:13:12 so there's so that that's a
1:13:15 that's a major part of this right
1:13:19 so
1:13:21 and i would also say that um
1:13:24 i'm concerned about the worldliness of
1:13:26 this because the activism
1:13:29 that we're talking about is really based
1:13:32 on the world okay we're not talking
1:13:34 about
1:13:35 dr martin luther king's activism which
1:13:37 was based off of christian
1:13:39 love of your neighbor right and then
1:13:41 there was a th he had a theological
1:13:43 basis to his activism and his marches
1:13:46 right
1:13:46 and uh
1:13:48 uh and he produced the the progress
1:13:51 right that the the 1964 civil rights act
1:13:54 and improved race relations
1:13:56 uh and it came from that framework it
1:13:58 was a christian framework that he came
1:13:59 from
1:14:00 um
1:14:02 uh but but you know he had this uh
1:14:05 theological otherworldly you know uh
1:14:08 type of view right he just didn't look
1:14:10 at things in the world he thought he
1:14:12 looked at things spiritually right in
1:14:14 terms of god right but this activism
1:14:17 this new activism it's very worldly it's
1:14:19 about power they're obsessed with power
1:14:21 dynamics
1:14:22 and power relationships
1:14:25 and
1:14:26 essentializing people's identities so
1:14:29 you know if you're from this group then
1:14:31 you your identity is a function of that
1:14:34 group and you can't be anything more
1:14:36 than what that group will allow you to
1:14:37 be you're basically not an individual
1:14:40 right and if you step out of line like
1:14:42 so for example
1:14:44 if you are an african-american and
1:14:46 you're not going along with all these
1:14:48 things then they will say that you're
1:14:49 just trying to be white right you're
1:14:51 you're trying to be white adjacent is
1:14:54 the term they used and they will call
1:14:56 this multi-racial whiteness
1:14:58 right so they had to explain the
1:15:00 phenomenon of why are blacks and latinos
1:15:04 going to the republican party and the
1:15:06 line there which was in the washington
1:15:08 post is that this is multi-racial
1:15:10 whiteness right that's what they're
1:15:12 talking about which is
1:15:13 is uh absurd right uh to to
1:15:17 those are two opposite things right
1:15:20 um it doesn't make sense to normal
1:15:22 people and and it will make sense when
1:15:24 you're when your mind is
1:15:27 wrapped up in all of these like theories
1:15:28 and everything they it makes sense to
1:15:31 them but for everybody else what are you
1:15:33 talking about multiracial whiteness
1:15:35 right and so let's say you know black
1:15:37 people who are
1:15:38 conservative or they're not they're not
1:15:40 on board with the agenda that they're
1:15:42 not really black they're not politically
1:15:44 black
1:15:45 you know uh people people journalists
1:15:47 have said that left-wing journalists
1:15:49 have said that um and and and women you
1:15:52 know women who are against abortion or
1:15:53 anti-women
1:15:55 you know uh women who are against some
1:15:57 aspect of the feminist agenda are
1:16:00 are uh
1:16:01 oppressing women you know they're
1:16:03 they're supporting the patriarchy you
1:16:05 know they centralize the identities and
1:16:08 then
1:16:08 uh you know if you step outside of that
1:16:11 then they erase your identity basically
1:16:13 and you're you're you're like uh
1:16:17 you're just like a
1:16:18 you become part of the bad guy right uh
1:16:20 you just become part of that that the
1:16:22 oppressor group and you're not an
1:16:24 individual with your own ideas you're
1:16:25 not an individual who can think for
1:16:27 yourself
1:16:28 and assess these ideas and decide
1:16:30 whether you want to go along with their
1:16:32 agenda you know your your
1:16:35 skin color should determine your
1:16:37 political views right and if if you are
1:16:40 of a certain skin color or you have a
1:16:42 certain gender or you have a certain
1:16:44 sexuality you should have these
1:16:46 political views that they've decided for
1:16:49 you that these elites have decided that
1:16:50 these are the political views that you
1:16:52 should have on the basis of your
1:16:53 identity and if you don't have these
1:16:55 views you are not actually black and
1:16:58 you're not actually woman and you're
1:17:00 actually you know you're a racist and
1:17:01 you're in your in your homophobic or
1:17:03 your whatever whatever the labels they
1:17:06 throw at you
1:17:07 so this is called the essentialization
1:17:09 of
1:17:10 the identity right they they believe
1:17:13 that the true
1:17:14 identity can only be a certain way and
1:17:17 that if you are in a certain identity
1:17:19 you can only have a certain political
1:17:21 view
1:17:22 and you're not an individual right
1:17:24 you're not really an individual with
1:17:26 your own
1:17:28 viewpoints right and and your own
1:17:30 reasons for
1:17:32 going along with them or not or
1:17:33 disagreeing or not you you should have
1:17:36 the certain views that they
1:17:38 they they they are telling you this is
1:17:39 what black people should this is what
1:17:41 black people should think
1:17:42 this is what women should think this is
1:17:45 what people of different sexuality
1:17:47 should think
1:17:48 right and they're giving you the views
1:17:50 and if you step out of those lines out
1:17:52 of those views they'll kick you out of
1:17:53 the identity and erase your identity and
1:17:56 you know no longer care about your
1:17:58 issues right
1:18:00 and and so
1:18:02 it's not really about helping
1:18:04 these groups of identities it's these
1:18:06 groups of identities are
1:18:08 politicized
1:18:10 right
1:18:11 and exploited
1:18:12 for the purpose of their purposes of
1:18:14 seeking power
1:18:16 of of their ideological goals
1:18:18 right because it's not just it's not a
1:18:21 principled belief that they want to help
1:18:24 all black people you know i mean we know
1:18:27 black people have suffered
1:18:29 racism and we know that there's big
1:18:31 problems even today and
1:18:33 we we should be sympathetic to that and
1:18:35 we should be looking for ways to fix
1:18:37 that right but these people these elite
1:18:40 people who essentialize the identities
1:18:43 of black people they want to tell black
1:18:44 people what to believe
1:18:46 and then
1:18:47 uh and basically exploit that right and
1:18:50 and they're not actually
1:18:52 caring about you know if you're a black
1:18:54 person and you don't go along with their
1:18:55 agenda they don't care about you right
1:18:57 they've said
1:18:59 that right and they've they've been
1:19:01 terrible to black conservatives right
1:19:04 high-profile black conservatives right
1:19:06 and and and have been racist towards
1:19:08 them right but they don't consider
1:19:10 racism because they consider the these
1:19:12 are
1:19:13 white adjacent
1:19:15 um
1:19:17 uh black people right and they're in
1:19:19 their theory right
1:19:22 so
1:19:25 yeah that was really heavy okay so
1:19:28 we'll stop with that uh or i'll stop
1:19:30 there on that on that issue
1:19:33 um
1:19:34 no i think it's uh
1:19:37 uh as i do encourage people to uh read
1:19:40 the article the fourth
1:19:41 uh the false promise of identitarianism
1:19:44 uh on the muslim matters uh website um
1:19:48 uh for further information there are
1:19:50 further links as well not just within
1:19:51 the article to uh certain papers uh
1:19:54 newspaper articles but at the bottom
1:19:56 there is for further articles uh for
1:19:58 further reading as well so
1:20:00 um one can really go a lot further uh
1:20:02 with this subject
1:20:04 and it's good to talk about it this is
1:20:05 an important subject and i'm very
1:20:08 pleased uh muslim scholars and others
1:20:10 are talking about this and uh
1:20:12 trying to call back some of the muslim
1:20:14 leaders that are perceived to have
1:20:15 perhaps
1:20:16 metazolite style um adopted philosophies
1:20:20 and worldviews which are not intrinsic
1:20:22 to the quran and the sunnah and are now
1:20:24 uh and some of these leaders it seems
1:20:27 are now
1:20:28 um speaking much more clearly from
1:20:31 the islamic tradition rather than from
1:20:33 external um ideologies which may not be
1:20:36 compatible with islam at all so um
1:20:39 i think this is a healthy discussion and
1:20:40 unlike you i am ultimately optimistic
1:20:43 because uh this is so alien to our human
1:20:46 nature our fitra it can't it can't
1:20:48 survive but he may do a lot of damage in
1:20:50 the meantime however and that's the
1:20:51 concern i think
1:20:54 yeah
1:20:56 so i really appreciate uh
1:20:58 the opportunity to talk about it and i
1:21:00 asked a lot to forgive me for anything
1:21:02 that i said that was incorrect and um i
1:21:04 tried to
1:21:05 phrase things in the in a sensitive and
1:21:08 compassionate way while still being
1:21:09 truthful as much as i could so
1:21:12 um
1:21:13 you know uh it
1:21:15 i just want to make that
1:21:18 make that point i actually say that at
1:21:19 the end of everything that
1:21:21 that i
1:21:22 whenever i give any one of these talks
1:21:23 you know i ask a lot to forgive me for
1:21:25 my mistakes and i'm a human being and i
1:21:27 may have said things that are wrong and
1:21:28 probably did said some things that were
1:21:30 wrong or not phrased in a wise way so
1:21:33 uh for your listeners i asked them to
1:21:35 forgive me for that and ask allah to
1:21:37 forgive me
1:21:38 um
1:21:39 but yeah
1:21:40 is there any any last thoughts or no no
1:21:43 i think no i'm just uh there's so much
1:21:45 to ponder on so i uh i say i encourage
1:21:48 people to look at the article and ponder
1:21:50 and check the links as well so thank you
1:21:53 uh very much indeed abu
1:21:56 for your time your expertise your
1:21:58 passion uh uh and desire to discuss
1:22:02 these issues publicly and i know that
1:22:04 can be
1:22:05 a costly exercise uh in today's uh world
1:22:10 so and your courage as well then for
1:22:11 that
1:22:12 thank you thank you bye-bye