Imam Tom Talks About Secularism (2022-06-30) ​

0:00:02 hello everyone and welcome to blogging
0:00:05 theology today i am delighted to talk
0:00:07 again to imam
0:00:09 tom fakini welcome back sir
0:00:12 thank you very much thank you for having
0:00:14 me i'm so happy to be back well for
0:00:16 those who don't know um imam
0:00:19 tom has kindly agreed to continue
0:00:21 discussing the books that have made a
0:00:23 significant difference to him
0:00:25 intellectually and apart from the
0:00:28 intrinsic interest in what he might say
0:00:30 it will hopefully encourage us all to
0:00:32 read good books
0:00:34 for ourselves
0:00:35 and for those who don't know tom
0:00:37 accepted islam in his early twenties and
0:00:40 he holds a ba in political science from
0:00:44 vassar college and a ba in islamic law
0:00:47 from the islamic university of medina
0:00:50 where he graduated in 2020 and he's also
0:00:54 a qualified chaplain
0:00:56 and imam thomas coney the imam and
0:00:59 program director of utica masjid in new
0:01:02 york obviously in america
0:01:04 now he has a fantastic youtube channel
0:01:07 entitled uh itica masjid i got that
0:01:10 right which i will link to in the
0:01:12 description below now i never recommend
0:01:14 youtube so but on this occasion i do say
0:01:18 please subscribe and you won't regret it
0:01:21 so without um any more ado tom i know
0:01:24 you have some notes uh prepared about a
0:01:26 particularly interesting book which i
0:01:28 have started to read myself which i
0:01:30 think um you'd want to say a few words
0:01:32 about so um over to you sir
0:01:35 sure well after bismuth
0:01:38 um you we had talked about kind of the
0:01:41 books that had made the largest
0:01:42 impression on me previously and
0:01:44 certainly up there is this by
0:01:48 called formations of the secular
0:01:50 and
0:01:51 we kind of kicked around the idea of
0:01:54 okay let's have a second session what
0:01:56 book should we read or you know what
0:01:58 book should we discuss and
0:02:00 this one came to mind because even
0:02:02 though it was written almost exactly 20
0:02:04 years ago
0:02:06 it is very very timely especially for
0:02:09 everything that has been unfolding in
0:02:12 uh kind of the muslim anglosphere in the
0:02:15 past month or two
0:02:17 at least here in north america we've had
0:02:19 something of a reckoning i think
0:02:21 with uh the lgbtq lobby uh and movement
0:02:26 with the muslim
0:02:27 population so i think going back some
0:02:31 years
0:02:32 most of the kind of
0:02:34 scholars they were
0:02:36 fairly um i think they underestimated
0:02:39 where all of this would go
0:02:41 uh they kind of took a fairly soft
0:02:44 stance on things
0:02:45 um and we've kind of reached a point now
0:02:48 where it seems and i hope that the tide
0:02:50 is starting to change where we've had a
0:02:52 lot of people kind of come out and say
0:02:55 um
0:02:56 you know okay no this has to stop and
0:02:58 we've had certain flash points
0:03:02 things happening in canada as well which
0:03:04 we'll probably get to in a bit um
0:03:06 that have have kind of stirred a
0:03:08 critical mass what i hope is a critical
0:03:10 mass to start pushing back and asserting
0:03:12 themselves and what sort of struck me as
0:03:14 significant was that if you listen to um
0:03:18 many of the folks who are
0:03:20 on the scene in the north american kind
0:03:22 of taoist scene
0:03:23 folks who
0:03:24 are way more knowledgeable than i am
0:03:26 about islam and have studied
0:03:28 way longer than i have i mean
0:03:30 have been studying for longer than i've
0:03:32 been a muslim so i don't mean to
0:03:34 take anything away from anybody but
0:03:37 i hear certain
0:03:39 i guess
0:03:41 political ideas or ideas that are kind
0:03:44 of
0:03:45 common knowledge of supposedly
0:03:46 conventional wisdom keep being
0:03:48 regurgitated regarding the arrangement
0:03:51 of secular politics or religion within a
0:03:54 secular society
0:03:56 and um
0:03:57 with all due respect to everybody
0:03:59 involved
0:04:00 that ideas that are that are quite naive
0:04:03 and ideas that don't really illustrate
0:04:06 that we've got a mature grasp as a
0:04:08 muslim community as to how
0:04:10 politics in a secular space work
0:04:12 how religion can and cannot and does and
0:04:16 does not enter into uh politics in a
0:04:19 secular space
0:04:21 and so i thought that it would be a
0:04:23 really
0:04:24 opportune time to revisit this book uh
0:04:26 and sort of uh reacquaint myself with
0:04:29 something that had you know
0:04:32 shaped me in ways that i can't even
0:04:33 account for at this point you know but
0:04:35 um
0:04:36 but also thinking that it would give us
0:04:38 some
0:04:39 novel and interesting ways to look on
0:04:41 look at how things are are going on now
0:04:44 um
0:04:45 so and that's honestly what i found to
0:04:48 be frank right and even just from the
0:04:50 introduction you know uh he kind of
0:04:53 the author he talks about
0:04:55 how are we conceiving
0:04:57 of this thing that's called secularism
0:04:59 and many of the points that i that i
0:05:01 heard um repeated by by
0:05:04 famous more qualified speakers uh and
0:05:06 scholars than myself
0:05:08 is kind of this taking secularism at its
0:05:11 word for being a simple clean break and
0:05:15 separation right secularism as
0:05:16 separation right so you know the
0:05:18 religious commitments are going to be
0:05:20 separated from the political ethic
0:05:22 and that's what's going to enable us to
0:05:24 all get along
0:05:26 right
0:05:27 and when we talk about a lot of people
0:05:28 have remarked this comes into play and
0:05:30 is significant when we're talking about
0:05:32 well okay
0:05:33 we might
0:05:35 personally
0:05:36 disagree with homosexual unions or uh
0:05:40 transgender you know ideology or surgery
0:05:43 or these sorts of things but do we have
0:05:45 the right then to assert our
0:05:47 political will or to assert our
0:05:51 personal moral convictions in law
0:05:54 right and i hear most people saying
0:05:57 regretfully i hear most people saying
0:05:58 that no they have to be completely
0:06:00 separate
0:06:01 is that i can have my own personal
0:06:02 morality and ethics and it and then
0:06:05 political rights are an entirely
0:06:06 different thing
0:06:07 um so this is kind of taking for granted
0:06:10 this kind of
0:06:11 assumption that a secular sphere or a
0:06:13 secular politics or a secular society is
0:06:16 one of separation that is true that it
0:06:18 is can i just be before you continue
0:06:20 thank you for those i just want to
0:06:21 introduce people to this book again i've
0:06:22 got my own copy uh here it is snap uh
0:06:26 form it's a very unglamorous title um
0:06:28 which betrays fascinating content form
0:06:31 uh formations of the secular
0:06:33 christianity islam and modernity is the
0:06:36 subtitle the author is chap called talil
0:06:39 assad who is
0:06:40 a distinguished professor of
0:06:42 anthropology at the graduate center of
0:06:44 the city university of new york so he's
0:06:46 actually from the same part of the us as
0:06:49 yourself and it's published by stanford
0:06:51 university press um as you say it was
0:06:53 published a while ago 2003 anyway here
0:06:56 and um without going through all the
0:06:58 chapters but the the first section is on
0:07:01 the secular what that is he defines it
0:07:03 thinking about secularism and then he uh
0:07:06 goes into the various religious um
0:07:08 challenges and understandings of that so
0:07:11 it's a very richly uh narrated book uh
0:07:14 it's actually quite readable
0:07:15 surprisingly um
0:07:17 and so i i've read the introduction i
0:07:19 actually do recommend it if you uh
0:07:21 wanted a more theoretical understanding
0:07:23 of the issues so just wanted to um
0:07:25 introduce people to that book you can
0:07:27 easily google it it's available
0:07:29 mainstream publishing platforms as well
0:07:30 i've discovered so yes thank you yeah i
0:07:33 i get carried away easily with this book
0:07:35 uh for anybody who wants a bird's eye
0:07:36 view of the whole book uh so he
0:07:38 essentially divides the book into thirds
0:07:40 um so the first third is about the
0:07:43 secular kind of as a as a as a
0:07:45 ontological or whatever we're going to
0:07:47 call it category and then the second
0:07:49 third is about secularism so that's the
0:07:50 political project which seeks to advance
0:07:53 or enshrine or institute the secular
0:07:56 something called the secular and then
0:07:57 the third the final third is about uh
0:08:00 secularization so it's about
0:08:02 historically how does secularism play
0:08:04 out and he looks at some case studies i
0:08:07 believe in egypt and
0:08:08 otherwise
0:08:09 um
0:08:10 so yeah so in the intro he talked about
0:08:13 this kind of okay this is how secularism
0:08:15 kind of accounts for itself as this kind
0:08:17 of separation as this kind of break from
0:08:19 the past the past we had um
0:08:23 religious violence right like the the
0:08:25 thing that we're all afraid of uh
0:08:27 religious intolerance people who were
0:08:29 not able to live together
0:08:32 with disparate religious commitments and
0:08:35 so in came secularism and saved the day
0:08:38 it found us a an arrangement where
0:08:40 everybody could privately believe what
0:08:42 they wanted and publicly not kill each
0:08:44 other right that's kind of the
0:08:46 the account that they would have you
0:08:48 believe and so as said says now hold on
0:08:50 a minute it's not that simple that
0:08:55 the secularism is not merely about
0:08:56 separating religion or religious
0:08:58 commitments actually uh the secular or
0:09:01 secularism is as much about producing
0:09:05 certain commitments and certain
0:09:06 religiosity
0:09:08 closing down others so he kind of says
0:09:10 that it's about um
0:09:14 three things that he that he kind of
0:09:16 focused on that secularism produces new
0:09:19 concepts of religion that did not exist
0:09:22 before
0:09:23 uh it produces new concepts of ethics
0:09:25 that did not exist before and it
0:09:28 produces new concepts of politics that
0:09:31 did not exist before
0:09:32 and all of these new concepts they form
0:09:36 certain imperatives right they are uh
0:09:39 guaranteed by certain actions and
0:09:41 threatened by other sorts of things and
0:09:43 so they need to be
0:09:44 maybe defended with a certain type of
0:09:46 violence even depending on uh on what's
0:09:49 going to happen but the main idea and we
0:09:50 actually to you know to bring it to bear
0:09:53 and to make it very obvious for people
0:09:55 uh people might say well how does
0:09:57 secularism produce a new kind of
0:09:58 religiosity well let's see what exactly
0:10:00 was happening in canada recently right
0:10:02 this past week or this past two weeks we
0:10:04 have the canadian government supposedly
0:10:06 a secular government
0:10:08 who is trying to
0:10:10 actually teach muslim children
0:10:13 that uh it's okay to be muslim and not
0:10:16 straight or what if i'm not straight or
0:10:18 all these sorts of then there was a
0:10:19 poster with a supposedly homosexual uh
0:10:23 muslim couple on it that there was a big
0:10:25 petition and they eventually got to be
0:10:27 uh taken down as as offensive here we
0:10:30 have the the secular government
0:10:32 producing a type of religiosity right a
0:10:36 type of religiosity that
0:10:38 is unprecedented did not exist before
0:10:41 right so we can't accept we can't accept
0:10:43 this uh
0:10:44 the the surface level claim that
0:10:47 secularism is just about
0:10:49 separating what's religious from what's
0:10:51 uh not or separating religion from
0:10:54 politics no it's much much more
0:10:55 complicated than that and that's what
0:10:56 the author is striving to
0:10:59 uh get us time of course i mean is the
0:11:01 obvious point is the usual whipping boy
0:11:03 uh france of course which is the uh you
0:11:05 know the the epitome of securism that
0:11:08 they would certainly see themselves
0:11:09 directly telling muslims uh in france uh
0:11:12 imams in mosques what they can and
0:11:14 cannot say about their own faith and if
0:11:17 they don't say the right thing they
0:11:18 literally expel from the country as an
0:11:20 imam was literally weeks ago simply for
0:11:22 reciting the quran hadith um on gender
0:11:25 relations which uh allegedly offended
0:11:28 the french state and the man was
0:11:29 literally deported um so
0:11:32 that there the state is managing and
0:11:34 crafting the religion into an acceptable
0:11:36 secularist form uh and the penalties are
0:11:39 ultimately violent physical removal from
0:11:41 your home and expulsion from your
0:11:44 country i mean that's pretty extreme
0:11:47 right yeah who who could call that
0:11:48 tolerance right and so you see that
0:11:50 in a certain surface level there's this
0:11:52 whole um self-perception or maybe we can
0:11:55 say like legitimizing discourse like
0:11:58 what do
0:11:59 secularists want us to believe that
0:12:01 secularism is about or maybe we can call
0:12:02 it a myth right this is the secularist
0:12:04 myth but then you have to actually look
0:12:06 at what's going on in the reality of it
0:12:08 and ask ourselves how different is it
0:12:11 really
0:12:13 or what are the points where there's
0:12:15 overlap okay there's this other type of
0:12:17 intolerance going on or perhaps even
0:12:19 just the contours of the map have
0:12:21 changed who gets to be tolerated and who
0:12:24 doesn't perhaps grant it granted you
0:12:26 know
0:12:26 we're talking you know uh 1600s england
0:12:29 and europe you know yes bloodbath you
0:12:32 know when it comes to different creeds
0:12:33 and different religious commitments and
0:12:35 we could say that certainly religion was
0:12:37 the cause of intolerance or we could say
0:12:39 that um if religion was not the cause
0:12:42 then it was at least used to legitimize
0:12:44 a lot of violence and bloodshed and
0:12:45 things like that but it doesn't
0:12:47 necessarily logically follow that
0:12:49 secularism would have any less of a hand
0:12:52 in violence or intolerance or anything
0:12:55 like that right is violence uh do does
0:12:58 religiosity have a monopoly on violence
0:13:01 such that if we remove religiosity then
0:13:03 suddenly we're going to live in peace
0:13:05 and prosperity that seems to be the
0:13:06 assumption
0:13:07 and i think we've lived long enough now
0:13:09 in
0:13:10 in secular societies to find that that's
0:13:12 very much not the case uh it's simply
0:13:15 shifted the map as to
0:13:17 what types of violence are seen as
0:13:19 acceptable uh necessary even right and
0:13:22 what types of violence are seen as
0:13:23 gratuitous barbaric and need to be kind
0:13:26 of corrected and and removed
0:13:29 um
0:13:30 so
0:13:31 with all that being said
0:13:32 he situates uh the secular project and i
0:13:36 really appreciate that he goes into this
0:13:39 um
0:13:40 somebody had recently asked in a
0:13:42 whatsapp group that i'm in well uh
0:13:44 does that mean let's say though
0:13:46 we can say that there's a precedent for
0:13:48 secularism within islam that was the
0:13:50 claim right because there's deen and
0:13:52 dunya so we can separate between uh what
0:13:55 is secular and what is religious perhaps
0:13:57 we can translate it into that idiom and
0:14:00 it might appear to be a similar thing
0:14:02 right um but
0:14:04 essen makes the point and it's a
0:14:05 significant one that what we're talking
0:14:08 about here is not
0:14:09 describing reality
0:14:11 we're talking about a hegemonic
0:14:14 political project right so he talks
0:14:17 about this situating secularism as a
0:14:19 political goal
0:14:20 within modernity and the west okay so
0:14:23 you always have your like
0:14:25 your group of academics that says hold
0:14:27 on now like the west is not really a
0:14:29 coherent category right you know you
0:14:31 have uh i don't know the basque country
0:14:34 in spain they're not really part of the
0:14:36 dominant cultural west or you might have
0:14:38 um you know mexico they're just as much
0:14:41 west as
0:14:43 the united states of america
0:14:44 so how are you going to use this concept
0:14:46 called the west and they do the same
0:14:48 thing with modernity they say but what
0:14:50 do you mean modernity like we have uh
0:14:53 india is also has modernity and these
0:14:55 other places have modernity and you
0:14:57 can't just say that modernity is a
0:14:58 european thing
0:15:00 as it says you're missing the point
0:15:01 we're not trying to describe a reality
0:15:04 that exists we're trying to account for
0:15:06 a hegemonic political project
0:15:08 right so you know the west is an idea
0:15:11 yet to be realized europe even is an
0:15:15 idea that's yet to be realized right uh
0:15:17 who's not all of europe is part of the
0:15:19 eu not all of europe is a
0:15:22 cultural you know uh monolith or even
0:15:24 subscribes to the same values not at all
0:15:26 right ukraine and russia have you know
0:15:28 bore this out um and the same thing with
0:15:30 modernity right modernity is the same
0:15:32 modernity is a hegemonic project it
0:15:35 doesn't do us any good to stop and say
0:15:37 well wait a second well these other
0:15:38 people have modernity
0:15:40 it doesn't matter people are dying
0:15:42 people are dying because
0:15:44 some people in the world that have a lot
0:15:46 of power think that modernity is a
0:15:48 project that makes it worthwhile to kill
0:15:50 other people in certain circumstances
0:15:53 yeah or that the west
0:15:54 is a significant enough project to
0:15:57 impose violence upon other people who
0:15:59 don't get in line with the project
0:16:01 right and so we've seen this in in
0:16:02 britain at least with tony blair in the
0:16:04 past and other politicians who uh
0:16:07 subscribe to what some people call a
0:16:08 neocon agenda which is to export freedom
0:16:11 uh to the rest of the world with
0:16:13 military force and that literally it
0:16:16 involved uh wars uh wars on iraq and
0:16:18 libya afghanistan militia it's funny how
0:16:20 they always end up being muslim
0:16:21 countries but anyway um so this is not
0:16:24 just a a benign
0:16:26 intellectual uh space it is actually
0:16:28 weaponized and um
0:16:31 and the countries have been attacked and
0:16:33 literally hundreds of thousands not
0:16:34 millions of people have been killed in
0:16:36 the name of freedom which is western
0:16:38 liberal secular freedom of course it's
0:16:40 not some abstraction it has a particular
0:16:42 as you say hegemonic uh configuration it
0:16:45 has a particular asymmet the asymmetry
0:16:47 of power is very clear because you know
0:16:50 we send bases into the far east america
0:16:52 does to near china and so how many
0:16:55 chinese bases are there off the coast of
0:16:57 california or how many uh are off the
0:17:00 coast of france
0:17:01 none so you clearly get a sense of where
0:17:04 the direction of travel is when it comes
0:17:05 to military power and ideology and um so
0:17:09 and of course everyone sees this apart
0:17:10 from the west i think we the west which
0:17:12 anything we're just
0:17:13 hanging out and just doing good things
0:17:15 but actually there is a lot more going
0:17:17 on there under the surface of the
0:17:18 ideology
0:17:20 yes it's the same thing that also you
0:17:22 know this is the same kind of critique
0:17:24 that enriches uh our sense of racism
0:17:26 right we deal with this a lot in the
0:17:28 united states so people say
0:17:30 they they tend to want to reduce racism
0:17:32 to intent
0:17:34 the intent of the individual or a
0:17:36 prejudice that someone holds and so
0:17:38 you know there can be uh white is racist
0:17:41 against black and black can also be
0:17:42 racist against white and it's sort of
0:17:44 the same response well one of those
0:17:46 types of racism is hegemonic
0:17:48 right and the other one isn't okay you
0:17:50 know so that's not to diminish the fact
0:17:53 that prejudice and uh bigotry and all
0:17:55 these sorts of things exist yes but when
0:17:58 one side is sort of supported by guns
0:18:00 and bombs and the police state and
0:18:02 surveillance and uh penalty like you're
0:18:05 saying you know with law and extended
0:18:07 prison sentences and all these sorts of
0:18:09 things then it we need to not
0:18:12 not succumb to like the technicalities
0:18:15 okay yes all categories are
0:18:17 oversimplifications sure but the
0:18:19 categories enable us to get at a real
0:18:21 truth that's happening in a real
0:18:22 violence that's happening and hopefully
0:18:24 enables us to do something about that
0:18:26 violence right so that's sort of the
0:18:28 point that he's making by situating
0:18:30 secularism as a political goal within
0:18:33 modernity and within western modernity
0:18:36 um
0:18:37 and so he says that it's not the only
0:18:38 political goal there's other political
0:18:40 goals of western modernity among them he
0:18:42 identifies constitutionalism he
0:18:44 identifies
0:18:46 moral autonomy this is a big one when it
0:18:48 comes to now we're
0:18:50 trying to express our autonomy with our
0:18:52 gender and choosing it or debates about
0:18:55 the hijab and who's able to choose and
0:18:57 who has false consciousness and these
0:18:59 sorts of things right and also i mean i
0:19:01 i did a tweet i know it's slightly off
0:19:03 the subject that uh there's a wonderful
0:19:04 photograph uh
0:19:06 in the london times i think it's in
0:19:08 reuters i uh taken america uh protesters
0:19:11 uh against the recent roe versus wade uh
0:19:14 in court decision uh basically
0:19:16 rendering that history and the
0:19:18 photograph showed a woman holding a
0:19:19 placard saying my body my choice so i
0:19:22 took that photograph and i put above it
0:19:24 i put a beautiful quote from the quran
0:19:26 but very roughly paraphrasing saying
0:19:28 everything in the universe belongs to
0:19:30 god um in other words it's like a
0:19:33 counter narrative
0:19:35 woman's bodies our bodies everything in
0:19:37 the universe the universe itself belongs
0:19:39 to god actually it doesn't belong it's
0:19:41 not our private property we can use and
0:19:43 abuse as we see fit there's a
0:19:45 fundamental clash of metaphysics or
0:19:48 world view there between the the
0:19:50 feminist moral autonomy argument and any
0:19:53 i think religious perspective be a
0:19:55 catholic muslim
0:19:57 jewish and so on i mean it has a very
0:19:59 different metaphysics and and this for
0:20:01 me is the fundamental philosophical
0:20:03 clash of of the of the world between
0:20:06 those who reject the transcendent and
0:20:08 want to focus exclusively on the dunya
0:20:10 and those who have uh recognized the the
0:20:12 transcendent however they may
0:20:14 characterize it but nevertheless they
0:20:15 recognize it
0:20:16 fantastic yes and and the irony is that
0:20:19 people of faith realize that they are
0:20:21 making metaphysical claims and that they
0:20:23 have metaphysical commitments whereas
0:20:25 people who believe in the what halaqa
0:20:28 call the theology of progress they don't
0:20:30 realize that they indeed have
0:20:32 metaphysical commitments they would
0:20:34 rather argue their uh case based off of
0:20:37 other sort of tactics like the
0:20:38 inevitability inevitability of history
0:20:40 and progress and these sorts of things
0:20:42 um moral autonomy they don't realize
0:20:44 that
0:20:45 just sorry i probably just wanna
0:20:47 a friend of mine has seriously said to
0:20:49 me as an argument uh because my views
0:20:51 are not necessarily completely in accord
0:20:53 with the zeitgeist he says how can you
0:20:55 how can you say these things in 2022 and
0:20:58 i'm thinking
0:20:59 so what's the time what's the calendar
0:21:01 date got to do with anything but this
0:21:03 this was meant to be a serious part he's
0:21:05 made this point several times
0:21:08 as if the mere flow of time can have any
0:21:10 relevance to uh morality ethics god
0:21:14 obligations to the transcendent but for
0:21:17 him this was a serious point and it's
0:21:19 not an unusual point uh but this this
0:21:20 kind of inevitability of progress so
0:21:23 yesterday so today is better than
0:21:25 yesterday and yesterday was better than
0:21:26 the day before it's kind of inexorable
0:21:28 which is completely false i mean it's
0:21:31 been debunked uh by many uh thinkers who
0:21:34 who just reflect on it for five minutes
0:21:35 is completely false obviously as our
0:21:37 world goes into environmental
0:21:39 catastrophe and and war
0:21:42 we're not going in and we're going in a
0:21:44 very different way unfortunately
0:21:46 yes excellent and uh asset actually uh
0:21:49 unpacks a lot of things that go into
0:21:50 what makes that viewpoint possible in
0:21:52 the first place um doesn't get to it in
0:21:54 the intro but he gets to it later in the
0:21:56 book
0:21:57 talking about uh
0:21:59 and this is why he calls his book
0:22:01 formations which is kind of like you
0:22:02 said a mysterious title but what he
0:22:04 means by formations are basically like
0:22:07 categories and concepts through which we
0:22:10 think about things and how they
0:22:13 not only come and go but they shift over
0:22:15 time right so uh he wants us to pay
0:22:18 particular attention to certain concepts
0:22:20 such as the sacred such as secular
0:22:22 religious right these are fairly new
0:22:25 concepts um and he'll go into further
0:22:28 detail about that later in the book but
0:22:29 the idea is that the formation of the
0:22:32 concept itself and it's being kind of
0:22:35 packed in with meaning and associations
0:22:37 and oppositions to other things shapes
0:22:40 the way the shapes the possible opinions
0:22:43 that we can have about something and
0:22:45 shapes our our sensibilities right so
0:22:47 that somebody would have that
0:22:48 sensibility
0:22:49 and they've been saying this for you
0:22:51 know probably over 100 years it's like
0:22:52 maybe someone 100 years ago was saying
0:22:54 like come on you know uh great grand
0:22:57 great great great grandfather of paul
0:22:58 williams you know like uh it's 1913 like
0:23:02 get with the time right so you get with
0:23:04 the national socialist times yeah the
0:23:06 latest thing on the block yeah exactly
0:23:08 so there's a certain there's there's
0:23:10 certain um philosophical moves that have
0:23:13 been put into place historically that
0:23:15 enable that viewpoint to to even emerge
0:23:17 in the first place uh and and have
0:23:20 somebody come to the conclusion that
0:23:21 that just makes sense a sensibility like
0:23:23 you said why would you even assume that
0:23:26 things would progress that that assumes
0:23:28 a certain subject right it assumes a
0:23:30 certain teleology of history it assumes
0:23:33 a certain as we said metaphysics right
0:23:35 that um
0:23:37 we have this and i don't want to tip the
0:23:39 hand too much because he'll get into
0:23:41 basically how when secularism kind of uh
0:23:44 took over or displaced other ways of
0:23:47 experiencing the world
0:23:49 it created a certain
0:23:51 imperative of moral progress and this
0:23:54 idea that uh history was just
0:23:57 accumulating progress which is very
0:23:59 different from the teleologies that we
0:24:01 find within traditional faiths or other
0:24:04 pre-modern teleologies which is like the
0:24:06 world's going to end and it ain't going
0:24:07 to be pretty right is is kind of you
0:24:09 know most world religions kind of take
0:24:11 that side of perspective now we've got
0:24:13 this very very radically different one
0:24:15 uh i'm not
0:24:17 you know vain enough to say that it's
0:24:19 unprecedented but i'm not aware of any
0:24:21 other sort of worldview
0:24:23 that and that antecedes this sort of
0:24:25 enlightenment worldview that no actually
0:24:27 things are just going to get better and
0:24:28 better and better and work constantly
0:24:30 because now we're using reason and
0:24:32 reason is cumulative and we're just
0:24:33 going to keep building building building
0:24:35 there might be bumps in the road right
0:24:38 but we're going to keep on
0:24:40 getting better until we reach this
0:24:42 utopia of human pleasure and autonomy
0:24:45 as i said this is clearly uh not the
0:24:47 case i i'm not sure how many people
0:24:49 still subscribe to this myth uh well
0:24:51 maybe that's the popular zeitgeist
0:24:52 actually but anyone who reflects as i
0:24:54 say we're talking about environmental
0:24:56 catastrophe uh which is a planetary
0:24:58 issue and possible uh catastrophe in an
0:25:01 unprecedented way i mean that this is
0:25:03 obvious and
0:25:04 and it's in our face and it's beginning
0:25:06 to happen now and no one denies that
0:25:08 even though those who deny them that you
0:25:11 know man may have caused an attribute
0:25:12 it's a natural psych everyone's agreed
0:25:14 it's happening uh so we we can't look
0:25:17 complacently on our future um we are
0:25:20 using radical action but you're right
0:25:21 traditional faiths traditional
0:25:22 worldviews have always seen as kind of
0:25:25 downward spiral towards an eschatology
0:25:28 which is not very rosy but the kind of
0:25:31 star trek idea of you know going boldly
0:25:33 forth into the universe with captain
0:25:35 kirk or charlie picard you know always
0:25:37 the rosy future where all these species
0:25:39 or
0:25:40 you know this is just um pie in the sky
0:25:42 we're we're living in a in extremely
0:25:45 dangerous times and there's no guarantee
0:25:47 that we'll come out of it alive but of
0:25:49 course for muslims as i was saying
0:25:51 earlier to anot another friend i think
0:25:53 islam is an optimistic religion is a
0:25:55 religion of hope that sunnah is hope
0:25:57 because god is in control it is very
0:26:00 clear it's clear in the bible too
0:26:01 actually that god is not only the owner
0:26:03 but has control over all things and at
0:26:06 the end of the day all things will be
0:26:08 well uh god will i mean will will
0:26:10 prevail regardless of the seeming chaos
0:26:13 in our own lived situations i think
0:26:16 very much yes and uh you said a really
0:26:18 interesting thing which is about how
0:26:20 it's in everybody's face and but what
0:26:23 what accounts for the differences and
0:26:25 how we view it is our interpretation of
0:26:27 those facts right and so uh the person
0:26:30 who thinks so you know come on paul get
0:26:31 with the times it's 2022. you know they
0:26:34 would view all of those catastrophes as
0:26:38 only indicating the incompleteness of
0:26:40 the liberal project
0:26:42 right and so what we need is more
0:26:46 more more poison
0:26:48 we get better
0:26:50 that's right that's right whereas you
0:26:51 know if you if you know and that's a
0:26:53 metaphysical position but you know a
0:26:55 different metaphysical position it's
0:26:56 like actually no this is indicative of
0:26:59 the
0:26:59 soon-to-be collapse perhaps of this
0:27:02 entire uh worldview or at least an
0:27:04 indication that it's not sustainable
0:27:06 that this is not an uh a blip that this
0:27:10 is actually the results of the system
0:27:12 that you're pursuing uh so fighting the
0:27:14 ground for people who are interested in
0:27:15 dawah you know that's one of the grounds
0:27:17 upon which dawa has to be fought you
0:27:18 know you take somebody who is a feminist
0:27:21 uh or sort of you know a radical uh
0:27:24 supporter of some of the more modern
0:27:26 ideologies
0:27:27 and they they they have this tension in
0:27:30 them where they simultaneously believe
0:27:32 that we're getting more and more free
0:27:34 when it comes to individual autonomy and
0:27:36 yet the world is
0:27:38 more and more sick and the environment
0:27:40 is you know teetering upon destruction
0:27:42 right that's a real weakness to exploit
0:27:45 when it comes to a conversation with
0:27:46 somebody because uh it is a point of
0:27:48 tension and it's it's not apparent and
0:27:51 despite the lip service that you know
0:27:53 feminist ecologies and and this and that
0:27:55 you know sort of subfield of uh of
0:27:58 academia kind of give lip service to
0:28:00 well if only we implemented feminism
0:28:02 better then we would have a non-coercive
0:28:05 non-violent etc etc a relationship to
0:28:08 the environment but the proof is in the
0:28:10 pudding where are we you know what's
0:28:12 happening right now i mean i mean it's
0:28:14 the old trip i know but you know the
0:28:15 marxists are often reproached for you
0:28:17 know look what's happened to communi how
0:28:18 awful communism has been in history ah
0:28:21 but we haven't really tried real
0:28:22 communism yet yes you've never been in
0:28:24 the soviet union between china
0:28:26 here and then they result in literally
0:28:28 hundreds of millions of deaths still we
0:28:30 need to try again and
0:28:32 come right this time how many times we
0:28:35 have to make the same mistake before we
0:28:36 realize there might be something wrong
0:28:38 with the idea in itself that we can
0:28:40 create you that the fault being in my
0:28:42 view that we can create a utopia on
0:28:44 earth
0:28:45 without recognizing i mean it's a
0:28:47 different subject but i think there's a
0:28:48 fundamental flaw in the whole idea of
0:28:51 this dunya inspired utopian vision which
0:28:54 uh islam mercifully is completely free
0:28:56 of and you know the the the perfect
0:28:58 world where we aspire to of course is uh
0:29:01 uh heaven or paradise uh god willing so
0:29:03 oh it's right it's right there it's
0:29:04 right in the conversation because it
0:29:06 depends on you know and i think that
0:29:08 there's no more fundamental difference
0:29:09 between a person who believes in an
0:29:11 afterlife and a person who doesn't right
0:29:13 that's that's one of the more sort of
0:29:16 exposing i think tensions or points
0:29:19 for those who believe in kind of the the
0:29:21 secular account that oh your personal
0:29:24 beliefs don't matter
0:29:26 no they do actually like the theological
0:29:28 commitments that you hold matter
0:29:30 everything honestly and somebody's uh
0:29:34 their sense of morality their sense of
0:29:36 imperatives what are the things that
0:29:38 threaten them what are the things that
0:29:39 guarantee their security and safety
0:29:41 they're
0:29:42 perhaps not influenced by anything more
0:29:45 than whether they believe in an
0:29:47 afterlife or not um and i think it's one
0:29:50 of the great mystic of our time that
0:29:51 because we live in a mass society oh a
0:29:53 little old me i'm i'm just one little
0:29:55 atom amongst many many many people it
0:29:57 doesn't really matter what i believe is
0:29:59 of no consequence because i'm just one
0:30:01 individual and that this sense of that
0:30:03 the mass dilution of moral
0:30:05 responsibility of just one person
0:30:07 because it's not the case because before
0:30:09 god we are ultimately one to one or what
0:30:11 we are alone with god and so our beliefs
0:30:14 do matter but the the kind of mass
0:30:16 secularism gives the illusion to some
0:30:18 that they can kind of hide away in a
0:30:20 corner of a crowd and it doesn't really
0:30:22 matter what they think but of course we
0:30:24 know metaphysically or theologically
0:30:25 actually we our beliefs are held to
0:30:27 account by one who takes us seriously in
0:30:30 that sense i suppose yes yes i mean even
0:30:32 the i mean and this is a tangent but uh
0:30:35 even bad theology has horrible side
0:30:38 effects like look at sort of the
0:30:40 look at all the repercussions that we're
0:30:42 still living out because christianity
0:30:44 has based its theology upon
0:30:46 false revelation
0:30:48 right
0:30:48 inauthentic revelation we have uh
0:30:51 excesses to this side and excesses to
0:30:53 that side and you know this kind of
0:30:55 doubling down
0:30:57 uh on sort of things that aren't true to
0:31:00 the point where now people have gotten a
0:31:02 bad taste of it and they've said well
0:31:03 you know all religion is bunker all
0:31:05 organized religion is bunk really
0:31:07 they're speaking from their experience
0:31:08 with christianity um the the rivalry
0:31:11 between quote unquote science and faith
0:31:13 is really the rivalry between the
0:31:15 ecclesiastical church and and
0:31:18 science you know we find no such sort of
0:31:21 parallel within muslim traditional
0:31:23 civilization so you've still got people
0:31:25 living out the consequences of bad
0:31:27 theology
0:31:28 why would we not expect similar or even
0:31:31 more consequences from having uh even
0:31:33 worse theology
0:31:35 believing that there's no afterlife
0:31:36 believing that this is the only arena of
0:31:38 action and reward that we have and so
0:31:41 therefore we have to
0:31:43 achieve the utopia we have to move
0:31:44 towards the utopia here because there is
0:31:47 nothing after after we die that's kind
0:31:49 of a scary prospect
0:31:51 Music
0:31:52 but anyway so so essen puts secularism
0:31:55 as one of the political goals of western
0:31:58 modernity among others consumerism
0:32:00 another one industry
0:32:02 um civil equality
0:32:04 human rights democracy and the ones
0:32:07 we've mentioned before moral autonomy
0:32:09 and constitutionalism
0:32:11 he also points out that
0:32:13 modernity is about the proliferation of
0:32:16 certain technologies
0:32:17 uh so he talks about the technologies of
0:32:20 production the assembly line industry uh
0:32:23 technology is certainly of warfare
0:32:25 uh the nuclear weapon right we were
0:32:27 talking about previously travel
0:32:30 entertainment medicine these are all
0:32:32 sort of proliferating technologies that
0:32:34 are sort of uh def
0:32:37 they help define modernity not so much
0:32:40 in
0:32:41 what they are or the newness of them but
0:32:44 in their ability to create new
0:32:46 experiences of space new experiences of
0:32:50 time new experiences of cruelty new
0:32:53 experiences of health new experiences
0:32:56 of consumption and knowledge all of
0:32:59 these sorts of things um
0:33:01 mark the modern epoch right um if we
0:33:04 want to give
0:33:06 and they might even be able to be
0:33:08 described qualitatively so he talks
0:33:10 about disenchantment that's one of the
0:33:11 big ones that marks
0:33:14 what's the quality of this new
0:33:16 experience generated by the
0:33:18 proliferation of these technologies one
0:33:20 of them is disenchantment to imagine
0:33:22 that
0:33:23 by explaining the way that things happen
0:33:26 to work mechanistically
0:33:28 we're giving the real account of what
0:33:30 actually happens right right we're now
0:33:32 giving you the knowledge that you get
0:33:34 isn't just any knowledge it's direct
0:33:36 access to reality
0:33:38 as opposed to some sort of myth that you
0:33:41 might have believed in before
0:33:43 um you know
0:33:45 one thing that we can like look at for
0:33:46 an example we're trying to make it real
0:33:48 uh time okay how do we experience time
0:33:50 when i was in medina medina was still a
0:33:53 place where people met up according to
0:33:55 the prayer times right which was kind of
0:33:57 pleasant it was also kind of maddening
0:33:59 if you're used to being very punctual
0:34:00 but
0:34:01 it was kind of enjoyable to say okay
0:34:04 i'll come over after asser
0:34:06 and maybe they don't show up until
0:34:08 maghrib
0:34:09 i have five minutes before before this
0:34:11 was something normal right there wasn't
0:34:13 people look at you if you were like you
0:34:15 were nuts if you said i'll see you at
0:34:17 six o'clock like on the dot they didn't
0:34:19 have that culturally at least in in most
0:34:21 of the city so this is a different
0:34:23 experience of time right you're in the
0:34:25 masjid and two people are arguing you
0:34:27 know do we make the event at 844 or 846
0:34:30 right and it's like well is this how
0:34:32 we've been experiencing time since the
0:34:35 time of the prophet
0:34:36 or is this a very new experience of time
0:34:39 right and is there and it's not just a
0:34:41 matter of technology technology is not
0:34:43 neutral technology carries with it
0:34:45 metaphysics so if we break down time
0:34:48 into numbers yeah quantity now every
0:34:51 second is substitutable it's homogenized
0:34:53 right everything is like everything else
0:34:56 this is different from how we experience
0:34:58 time if we say that oh this particular
0:35:00 time is blessed this has a blessing
0:35:02 in this time right or if i uh pray
0:35:05 federer in the masjid then my whole day
0:35:08 is going to be blessed allah will bless
0:35:09 my time yes right
0:35:11 two completely different ways of
0:35:12 experiencing time and so the modern
0:35:16 proliferation of these sorts of
0:35:17 technologies shape the way that we
0:35:19 experience things that's what and
0:35:21 understand the only years i agree i
0:35:22 think you put very eloquently and
0:35:24 beautifully there but the irony is at
0:35:25 the same time we live in a world after
0:35:26 einstein when there is the general
0:35:28 theory of relativity where we now know
0:35:30 that space time as a continuum
0:35:33 is relative so it's no longer this
0:35:35 absolute as you say unit following unit
0:35:38 this is kind of a mechanistic a linear
0:35:41 understanding of time it's all very
0:35:43 relative to the observer anyway so the
0:35:45 paradox is even in this the technology
0:35:48 as you say does it does make it just
0:35:50 produce these metaphysical effects but
0:35:51 we know in science actually this is not
0:35:53 how reality is anyway
0:35:55 it's dependent on the observer um about
0:35:58 going into
0:35:59 uh quantum mechanics and general
0:36:00 relativity but it's uh it's all very um
0:36:03 all very bizarre
0:36:04 and that's very fascinating too because
0:36:06 that shows you that what really is going
0:36:08 on isn't reality as such but what
0:36:12 account of reality is is most amenable
0:36:15 to the state
0:36:16 right because the state is what benefits
0:36:19 from from uh administering time in a
0:36:22 homogeneous
0:36:24 fungible way right it doesn't really do
0:36:27 for the state you know to work very
0:36:29 efficiently for us to acknowledge uh we
0:36:32 might acknowledge it as a curio right
0:36:34 okay yeah relativity okay great you know
0:36:36 quantum physics you know you look at
0:36:37 something and it changes position that's
0:36:39 very cute but when it comes to you know
0:36:41 what time is the bomb gonna drop on
0:36:44 this village in in yemen right it's by
0:36:46 the it's by the clock and it's by the
0:36:48 second and it's by the number right so
0:36:51 uh it comes back to kind of what way of
0:36:53 looking at the world is most amenable to
0:36:55 the secular state
0:36:56 um
0:36:58 good stuff right so another sort of
0:37:01 thing so one of the qualitative ways of
0:37:03 of describing what are these new
0:37:05 experiences being produced by uh by
0:37:08 secularism by western modernity one of
0:37:11 the ways of of describing it is
0:37:13 disenchantment like that's one of the
0:37:14 qualities
0:37:16 and then another way to look at it is
0:37:19 what sort of subject is being assumed or
0:37:21 subject is being produced
0:37:24 so if we have all these technologies
0:37:26 that are being proliferated they're part
0:37:28 of modernity they carry with them a
0:37:30 certain logic a certain even metaphysics
0:37:33 what's the assumed subject let's take
0:37:35 like the let's take the cell phone right
0:37:37 you've got we've got these things in our
0:37:38 pockets right
0:37:39 certainly it assumes a certain
0:37:41 individualistic subject
0:37:44 right it's not um meant to be a communal
0:37:46 device right somebody looks over your
0:37:48 shoulder at your your text messages
0:37:51 what are you doing get out of my
0:37:52 business right
0:37:54 and even
0:37:56 that's kind of a quaint example but it
0:37:57 even affects how we interact with other
0:38:01 things this is like we're talking about
0:38:02 and the big stake for us as muslims is
0:38:05 how is our religion changing
0:38:08 how is our relationship to our religion
0:38:10 changing
0:38:11 right through the proliferation of these
0:38:13 technologies that have certain
0:38:15 metaphysical commitments right so i
0:38:19 recently read an article on the
0:38:20 dililification of of fip and i thought
0:38:24 that it was kind of an interesting point
0:38:25 they talked about for example
0:38:27 the way that fick arguments
0:38:30 used to be justified
0:38:32 historically right
0:38:34 in the modern era people put a lot more
0:38:37 emphasis on the leo show me the evidence
0:38:39 right now
0:38:40 this is not to paint this as a bad
0:38:43 development this is actually a good
0:38:44 development in the sense that
0:38:46 um it's getting people closer to the
0:38:48 scriptures the texts and it's getting
0:38:50 people kind of renewed in almost a
0:38:52 revivalist sense of reacquainting
0:38:54 themselves with this
0:38:56 scholarly tradition that we have but
0:38:58 there is also a point there that
0:39:00 this
0:39:01 system of legitimizing knowledge
0:39:04 is a little bit different from what we
0:39:05 had before where if a person didn't have
0:39:08 access to the scholarly literature they
0:39:11 would be dependent upon a certain
0:39:13 scholarly figure
0:39:14 they would basically have to take that
0:39:15 person's word for it as an authority and
0:39:18 whether they were right or wrong
0:39:20 they would have to be like well that's
0:39:21 as far as i can reasonably go and i'm
0:39:23 going to have to take this person's word
0:39:24 for it
0:39:25 now we have the proliferation of digital
0:39:27 technology and all these sorts of things
0:39:29 we have access in a different sort of
0:39:30 way so the authority changes now we we
0:39:33 authorize and legitimize our own
0:39:36 individual convictions uh am i going to
0:39:39 you know hold my hands in prayer above
0:39:41 my belly button or below my belly button
0:39:43 or you know i want to see the evidence
0:39:45 right and that assumes a certain
0:39:47 subjectivity that assumes a certain
0:39:49 power of the autonomous subject like you
0:39:52 know who am i to be able to
0:39:54 be able to gather everything and sort
0:39:56 everything and prioritize between this
0:39:57 and that and the other again that's not
0:39:59 saying that this is bad per se but
0:40:02 it might have changed the way that we
0:40:04 interact with our faith right
0:40:07 another way which is possibly uh more
0:40:09 beneficial i mean like you i've got my
0:40:11 my iphone just to give two round
0:40:12 examples uh one of my apps is is
0:40:14 clubhouse um which people may know is is
0:40:17 a you know perfectly halal i can see way
0:40:20 of interacting in various kind of rooms
0:40:23 or something with people um
0:40:25 and um that there are many uh muslim and
0:40:27 christian and other uh rooms where
0:40:29 muslims and others discourse and argue
0:40:31 or debate or or just hear lectures and
0:40:34 you know and anot another space is
0:40:36 twitter space actually i i've opened a
0:40:38 few of those up and on one occasion
0:40:41 uh
0:40:42 they pledge to speak to a brother at
0:40:43 cambridge university who is very
0:40:45 familiar with what's going on in india
0:40:46 at the moment particularly the way
0:40:48 muslims are being persecuted in quite
0:40:50 extraordinary horrendous ways and open
0:40:52 up a twitter space and we were able to
0:40:54 talk about this globally with
0:40:56 unknown hundreds of people but there was
0:40:59 a sense of a global community um
0:41:01 speaking from india pakistan america
0:41:04 britain france
0:41:05 uh all over the world just talking about
0:41:07 our concerns and learning about what's
0:41:09 really happening people were in india
0:41:10 we're giving their feedback
0:41:11 extraordinary the real-time actual
0:41:14 connection even though it was just over
0:41:16 twitter of all things um but that's
0:41:18 unprecedented i think in the history of
0:41:20 the umma where people can just
0:41:22 spontaneously gather
0:41:24 virtually throughout the planet um and
0:41:26 just share their concerns about what's
0:41:28 going on in the umma and and it doesn't
0:41:31 cost anything and it's reasonably
0:41:32 efficient so those are kind of two
0:41:34 examples where technology facilitates
0:41:36 global uh interaction and information
0:41:39 exchange and uh feelings of out feelings
0:41:42 of empathy and sympathy as well for
0:41:43 those who
0:41:44 are suffering um
0:41:47 which i never would have encountered
0:41:48 before and this is uh an extraordinary
0:41:51 development uh of course there's a dark
0:41:53 side as well the the detachment of
0:41:55 sexuality from
0:41:57 real life bodily you know communion with
0:41:59 male and female and so on it through
0:42:01 pornography and online is is a terrible
0:42:04 um scar on our civilization or about
0:42:07 globally even and that's something um to
0:42:09 be addressed at another time so there's
0:42:10 some real dark sides to this technology
0:42:12 as well as
0:42:13 some rather beautiful kind of
0:42:15 opportunities to share with other people
0:42:18 of faith throughout the world
0:42:20 and that's one of the takeaways
0:42:21 definitely is that instead of just kind
0:42:23 of uh slavishly uh accepting what
0:42:25 everybody is is telling us or being
0:42:28 we want to be intentional right we we
0:42:30 want to see the developments as they're
0:42:32 happening and so we want to be able to
0:42:34 use the good uh and maybe even exploit
0:42:37 the weaknesses we were just talking
0:42:38 about points of tension within kind of
0:42:40 the the theology of progress and you
0:42:43 know
0:42:43 how like we want to be able to be aware
0:42:46 of those points of tension to exploit
0:42:47 them for down purposes and you know
0:42:49 justify and prove sort of our own
0:42:51 metaphysical commitments and we also
0:42:53 want to see the the possibilities that
0:42:55 are being opened up um for for us to
0:42:58 collaborate for us to uh move forward
0:43:00 for us to actually
0:43:02 shape the direction in which we're going
0:43:04 so that we're actually uh helping to
0:43:07 shape instead of just consuming
0:43:08 consuming consuming everything and
0:43:10 that's the worry with if somebody just
0:43:12 gets up on stage and says well uh i'm
0:43:14 going to have my own personal opinions
0:43:17 about x issue but i support the
0:43:19 political rights that to me doesn't seem
0:43:21 like a very intentional aware uh
0:43:24 positionality as to how all of these
0:43:26 things are being affected and which way
0:43:28 influence is going one way or the other
0:43:30 i think we have to be a little bit more
0:43:31 aware so that we're able to sort of
0:43:33 shape
0:43:34 uh these sorts of things and help steer
0:43:37 them as much as possible in a way that's
0:43:39 beneficial to them
0:43:41 i think we can be i think that subject
0:43:42 has been revisited um without some
0:43:44 mentioning names certain senior muslim
0:43:46 uh academics in in america have made
0:43:49 very bold statements and made a
0:43:50 supporting gay marriage
0:43:52 uh
0:43:53 he says it's not a quid pro quo but it
0:43:55 does seem like it to me you know uh well
0:43:57 maybe the public space with them respect
0:43:59 our rights as muslims if we respect
0:44:01 their rights to do their thing it sounds
0:44:02 like quit procrastination is not but
0:44:04 there seems to be a little bit of
0:44:05 backtracking there to some extent uh by
0:44:08 him and by others because i mean i i
0:44:10 always had always thought you know it
0:44:12 must i don't mean to be disrespectful
0:44:13 about america but it must be very
0:44:15 difficult being a muslim in america
0:44:16 because the pressures uh because the
0:44:19 population muslim population america i
0:44:20 think is much smaller than uh
0:44:22 proportionately i mean than say in
0:44:24 france or even in britain and and so the
0:44:27 the pressure to conform and you know say
0:44:29 the right things just to get on in life
0:44:31 and not be victimized or lose your job
0:44:33 must be huge i'm not saying they're not
0:44:35 huge in france but at least we've got
0:44:37 numbers in france and so i kind of think
0:44:39 oh you know i i kind of the pressures
0:44:41 must be great but i think that the price
0:44:43 one pays in a in a faith that is
0:44:46 warped out of almost recognition just to
0:44:49 kind of make peace in a secular hostile
0:44:52 society and it's not really peace it's
0:44:53 kind of surrender really isn't it it's
0:44:55 like okay we recognize the hegemony here
0:44:57 we're gonna
0:44:58 kind of concede this and concede to
0:45:00 having concede that and you end up being
0:45:03 i don't mean to be rude about christians
0:45:04 but you know certainly in britain you
0:45:06 end up um having kind of a secular
0:45:08 humanist faith with a religious veneer
0:45:10 which is a lot of christianity in
0:45:11 britain it is frankly it's just secular
0:45:13 humanism uh which says the word jesus
0:45:15 occasionally but that's about it it's
0:45:17 not the guts of it the heart of it is
0:45:19 gone completely and being replaced by
0:45:22 secular liberalism although people don't
0:45:24 acknowledge that but it's obvious i
0:45:25 think
0:45:26 very much so yeah and um you know it's
0:45:28 interesting because sometimes the uh
0:45:31 the old traditional scholars like they
0:45:34 can be written off as you know kind of
0:45:36 they're out of touch and they don't
0:45:37 understand what's going on but sometimes
0:45:39 they can be so remarkably perceptive so
0:45:40 one of the scholars that i was closer to
0:45:43 in medina umpiti
0:45:46 some people know of him
0:45:48 he
0:45:49 would always tell me because he knew i
0:45:50 was from america and he said the one of
0:45:52 the most important things
0:45:54 live together the muslims have to live
0:45:56 together in america they have to live
0:45:58 side by side it was almost as if he
0:46:00 understood the the gravity and we have
0:46:02 this in the hadith of the prophet
0:46:04 about the the jamaa right there's a sort
0:46:06 of inertia that is really really
0:46:09 important for us
0:46:11 being together neighbors a critical mass
0:46:14 because it's going to keep someone from
0:46:16 being in that isolated situation where
0:46:18 they feel like they need to make a
0:46:19 compromise or they feel like they need
0:46:21 to um step down or package things in too
0:46:24 soft of a way
0:46:26 um you're definitely right you're
0:46:27 playing on your own like me or going to
0:46:29 the mosque to play uh either fajr or us
0:46:32 or whatever it is there is a big
0:46:34 difference even though physically i'm
0:46:35 doing the same we're doing the same
0:46:37 thing but to actually be with uh uh
0:46:40 other muslims and waiting for the prayer
0:46:42 and then the prayer itself and then
0:46:43 afterwards this makes a big difference
0:46:45 and it kind of creates uh uh uh
0:46:48 something that's greater than the sum of
0:46:49 its parts you're creating an uma as you
0:46:52 say so um there's wisdom in what that uh
0:46:55 your shake in medina said i'm sure
0:46:58 yeah very much so yeah we we do have
0:47:00 that problem and i'm hopeful that we're
0:47:02 we're becoming more aware of it and as
0:47:03 you said sort of walking some things
0:47:04 back now um but uh especially previously
0:47:08 we had talked about redemption and
0:47:09 islam's ability to redeem the space and
0:47:12 it's ripe for being redeemed but we have
0:47:14 to have the confidence and even the
0:47:15 boldness um to allow it to
0:47:19 redeem and not change it for a small
0:47:21 gain and i'm sure you're probably aware
0:47:24 but uh there's a history a historical
0:47:26 precedent to kind of what happens to
0:47:28 religious sects and denominations in the
0:47:30 united states especially and the
0:47:32 christians dealt with this pretty much
0:47:34 exactly 100 years ago like when uh
0:47:36 evolutionary theory was first like
0:47:38 really really going mainstream and you
0:47:39 had these sorts of things this is the
0:47:41 split between the mainline protestant
0:47:43 denominations and the evangelical
0:47:45 denominations and essentially the uh the
0:47:48 mainline protestant denominations got
0:47:50 bit by the bug of reform in the sense of
0:47:53 uh very much secularizing and now we're
0:47:56 buying up their churches and turning
0:47:57 them into mosques yes right so that it's
0:48:00 the writings on the wall and i feel like
0:48:02 we're we exist in a very much a similar
0:48:05 moment
0:48:06 as muslims in north america and our
0:48:08 issues are different but it's the same
0:48:10 sort of principle are we going to let
0:48:11 ourselves become the secularized uh you
0:48:14 know sort of islam or are we going to
0:48:16 kind of
0:48:17 hold at the barricade and kind of uh
0:48:19 keep our our identity yes i know i don't
0:48:22 know
0:48:23 obviously i'm not in in the states and
0:48:25 you're obviously american but
0:48:27 what's your sense amongst american
0:48:29 muslims is there a lively awareness of
0:48:32 being part of a global ummah or is it
0:48:34 very much oh we're american muslims and
0:48:36 this is our this is our reality in our
0:48:38 country and our you know or because you
0:48:41 you are a small part of a
0:48:43 huge vast global umma which is what two
0:48:46 billion people and uh you know with a
0:48:49 great history that goes back 1 400 years
0:48:51 obviously
0:48:52 is there that awareness because that
0:48:53 seems to me part of the solution if one
0:48:55 is
0:48:56 aware of this global interconnectedness
0:48:59 a communion to use a christian word or
0:49:01 or fellowship uh or is one looking or or
0:49:05 do muslim american muslims are are they
0:49:07 quite insular because notoriously
0:49:09 politically i mean i've been to the
0:49:11 states a few times as well known that
0:49:12 americans generally don't tend to be
0:49:15 that politically aware of what's going
0:49:17 on in other parts of the world you know
0:49:18 if you read the press at all it tends to
0:49:21 be quite insulin of course america is a
0:49:22 superpower so it's what
0:49:24 you know it's understandable if they're
0:49:26 a bit lazy about thinking about other
0:49:27 people's needs and concerns but but but
0:49:30 so is that reflected in the american
0:49:32 muslim experience or is this awareness
0:49:34 of a global community do you think yeah
0:49:36 i think you know one of the problems
0:49:38 about the united states is that it's so
0:49:40 big
0:49:41 that you know the just enormously vast
0:49:44 that the experiences vary so much right
0:49:47 so you have in our city utica you have
0:49:49 people who just came and they
0:49:51 live on a block with people from their
0:49:54 own village and they have a very dense
0:49:57 social fabric and they have this sort of
0:49:59 sense of connectivity there's some
0:50:01 families that go on umrah every single
0:50:02 year right um and they they do feel that
0:50:05 connect they have the you know the
0:50:07 television channel with the kaaba you
0:50:09 know on 24 7
0:50:12 and they homeschool or they go to
0:50:13 islamic school and so
0:50:15 you can structure and that's the benefit
0:50:17 of the united states is that we still
0:50:18 have the freedom and the traditions to
0:50:21 structure your life as you want so that
0:50:23 whoever wants to create that sensation
0:50:25 of connectivity can
0:50:26 right but but
0:50:28 if you come at it with sort of an
0:50:31 assimilationist
0:50:32 mentality where you want to kind of okay
0:50:35 what's shaping your decision making okay
0:50:37 maybe you're going to move to the
0:50:38 suburbs because you can get a bigger
0:50:40 house there and it can be a better
0:50:41 school district but you're going to be
0:50:43 the only muslim in class
0:50:45 right
0:50:46 now the gravity has completely changed
0:50:49 you know you're concerned this is you
0:50:50 know dean and dunya you're making you're
0:50:52 making choices at the end of the day and
0:50:53 you're showing your priorities if you're
0:50:54 going to
0:50:56 get into a better school system but the
0:50:58 trade-off might be that yeah you're
0:50:59 going to have
0:51:00 much less of a sense of ummah
0:51:03 much less of a sense of and that's not
0:51:04 to paint things with a simple brush
0:51:06 there's ways of of tweaking it and kind
0:51:08 of building your own experience but
0:51:10 these are the sorts of things you can
0:51:11 find extremely different experiences and
0:51:13 extremely different sensibilities even
0:51:15 with a very very small geographical
0:51:17 space
0:51:18 um depending on
0:51:19 how kind of the the families going about
0:51:22 things
0:51:23 so i can't speak to one particular
0:51:24 overall experience but
0:51:26 yes you find everything
0:51:28 okay that's fair enough it is a huge
0:51:30 country it's one thing that impresses
0:51:32 visitors i know you go to the us
0:51:34 it's it's a a vast well as a federation
0:51:37 is a collection
0:51:38 of different spaces and almost different
0:51:40 countries in in their field and their
0:51:42 geographical location and the weather
0:51:44 and the cuisine and uh it's not like
0:51:47 france which is not any smaller but much
0:51:49 more homogeneous uh with a single
0:51:51 unitary state here you have a a much
0:51:54 more diffuse and vastly systematic yes
0:51:57 and so we this comes into play like when
0:51:58 we see reactions like when we saw the
0:52:00 reactions for in birmingham for example
0:52:02 uh standing up to kind of the imposition
0:52:04 of the of the sexual education quote
0:52:07 unquote that they were trying to impose
0:52:08 there you know
0:52:09 the sort of denseness of social fabric
0:52:12 really does aid those sorts of things
0:52:13 right uh being so diffuse and so spread
0:52:17 out in the united states is is probably
0:52:18 a challenge
0:52:20 um more than it is a benefit though you
0:52:22 know it might have
0:52:23 some sort of benefits when
0:52:25 if something gets bad somewhere you can
0:52:26 easily go somewhere completely different
0:52:28 but there's uh there's
0:52:31 most of the united states remains
0:52:32 unexplored to me i've been in some
0:52:34 states and i haven't ever been to the
0:52:35 west coast and you know it's just have
0:52:37 you ever been to california yet no never
0:52:39 i've never been
0:52:40 passed uh past minnesota it's the
0:52:42 farthest west had gone okay the whole
0:52:45 area past minnesota i've never been out
0:52:47 that far so it's i i spoke to a guy at
0:52:49 speaker's corner on sunday from
0:52:50 california he said it's a different
0:52:52 world i mean you're very as an american
0:52:54 speaking about them is completely
0:52:56 different from the rest of the united
0:52:57 states he said anywhere
0:53:02 um
0:53:03 so yeah so i mean uh getting back i
0:53:05 guess the last sort of main thread that
0:53:10 kind of brings up in this introduction
0:53:11 of the book is he's going to kind of
0:53:14 tackle head-on uh secularism's account
0:53:17 of itself so he brings up charles taylor
0:53:19 and charles taylor is you know the
0:53:21 exponent par excellence of of secularism
0:53:24 and he kind of recreates some of his
0:53:26 arguments and justifications for
0:53:27 secularism and he basically exposes them
0:53:30 or or contradicts them that's one of the
0:53:32 things i enjoy most about i've just read
0:53:34 the introduction to be honest is
0:53:35 interaction and critique of charles
0:53:36 taylor who is a very famous uh
0:53:38 philosopher
0:53:39 and expert on hegel that's how i know
0:53:41 about him but but yes he beautifully
0:53:43 deconstructs his his thought and shows
0:53:46 the the implicit assumptions that are
0:53:48 operational there in a very nice way i
0:53:50 enjoyed that
0:53:52 yes so so he he talks about okay so how
0:53:54 is uh secularism legitimized what's the
0:53:56 myth right so um he talks about the one
0:53:59 that usually gains the most traction and
0:54:01 he quotes charles taylor at length is
0:54:04 about as we said before creating a
0:54:06 political ethic that is independent of
0:54:08 religious conviction right the
0:54:09 assumption there that religious
0:54:11 conviction when it formulates
0:54:14 and constitutes the political ethic that
0:54:16 it's going to result in violence so what
0:54:18 do we do easy we separate the two we put
0:54:21 religious conviction into a private
0:54:23 sphere we put
0:54:24 your political ethic is independent of
0:54:26 that that governs your public life and
0:54:28 everybody gets along
0:54:31 he notes he notes that embedded in this
0:54:34 is some sense of the good
0:54:37 purposely left undefined right so
0:54:39 whereas before the thing that you would
0:54:41 pursue
0:54:42 as somebody whose political ethic was
0:54:45 rooted in your religious conviction
0:54:47 right would yes be a sense of good but
0:54:49 something that is much more tethered
0:54:51 something that is much more uh
0:54:53 grounded in a textual tradition right an
0:54:56 interpretive tradition a spiritual kind
0:54:59 of uh we could say scriptural a
0:55:01 scriptural tradition
0:55:03 now it's completely unmoored
0:55:05 right it's completely unmoored from
0:55:06 those foundations
0:55:08 now that has consequences one of those
0:55:10 consequences
0:55:11 is that
0:55:13 it's in a constant state of
0:55:15 renegotiation
0:55:17 so what is the good
0:55:19 now you've
0:55:21 severed the the link to the scripture to
0:55:23 the scholars into the clergy now it's
0:55:26 just floating in space
0:55:27 it has to constantly be negotiated what
0:55:29 is the good what's the good thing and
0:55:31 that's why we see now in this last
0:55:33 however many hundreds of years or
0:55:34 whatever that we've had secular society
0:55:37 things have changed so much so quickly
0:55:39 right because the horizons it's not just
0:55:41 about change the horizons for possible
0:55:44 change have been just exploded
0:55:46 because the good has become much more
0:55:48 liquid and much more malleable
0:55:50 um there is no authoritative answer when
0:55:53 it comes to what the good is it can be
0:55:55 redefined it can be it can shift this
0:55:57 way it can shift that way
0:55:59 the second thing of note not just in
0:56:01 that it has to be consistently
0:56:03 renegotiated and it actually sets us up
0:56:06 for
0:56:07 um
0:56:08 very dramatic shifts and that this is a
0:56:10 constant sort of conflict but it's
0:56:12 renegotiated as politics
0:56:15 and this is how politics takes the
0:56:17 center stage as opposed to your faith as
0:56:19 opposed to religion and your religious
0:56:20 convictions and things like that now
0:56:23 your religious conviction is something
0:56:24 private if you want to have a say or
0:56:27 argue about what's good in society it
0:56:29 has to be argued as politics
0:56:31 and negotiated with everybody else in
0:56:34 your society
0:56:35 um
0:56:36 so this is kind of the the
0:56:38 how secularism is kind of for better or
0:56:40 for worse but this is kind of how it's
0:56:42 uh it's being framed here
0:56:45 so when we come to
0:56:47 the features and this is one of the main
0:56:49 features of this kind of setup the the
0:56:52 secular setup
0:56:53 supposedly according to charles taylor
0:56:55 is that
0:56:56 yes we have to negotiate this good but
0:56:59 here's the silver lining here's why it's
0:57:01 better than previous society now we have
0:57:04 a horizontally organized direct access
0:57:07 society
0:57:08 whereas previously it was hierarchical
0:57:11 previously it was vertically organized
0:57:13 previously it was a very very hard
0:57:17 non-permeable barrier between the clergy
0:57:19 and the laity and if you weren't clergy
0:57:21 you had nothing to do with defining what
0:57:22 was good so now yes we're going to
0:57:24 consistently redefine what is good every
0:57:27 year now
0:57:28 every five years 10 years 30 years maybe
0:57:30 in the past but at least everybody gets
0:57:33 a say now that is we know is incredibly
0:57:36 critical of this idea and beautifully
0:57:38 deconstructs it and well better what is
0:57:40 debunks it i think it's important to be
0:57:42 more accurate he he shows that this is
0:57:44 uh just buncombe it's not true yes and
0:57:47 he points to three specific things to
0:57:49 kind of uh illustrate the fact and his
0:57:51 assertion that
0:57:52 it's patently not true that there is no
0:57:55 true free equal exchange between members
0:57:58 of society um but he wants to point our
0:58:01 attention first to notice what has been
0:58:03 created as a concept is society in the
0:58:06 first place right before this sort of
0:58:08 arrangement there was no such thing as
0:58:09 society there was we were talking about
0:58:12 the ummah right your sense of ummah
0:58:14 that's not society
0:58:15 right so we've had now an entirely new
0:58:19 way of thinking about our relations with
0:58:21 other people the idea of a society is
0:58:24 predicated upon you with your personal
0:58:27 religious convictions and your kind of
0:58:29 public law me with my personal religious
0:58:32 convictions and the public law that we
0:58:34 share that we have to
0:58:36 consistently negotiate
0:58:38 and so he points to three things he
0:58:39 points to uh interest groups pressure
0:58:41 groups right lobbies basically he says
0:58:44 look at aipac right look at uh these
0:58:46 sorts of lobbies that
0:58:48 exert immense control well what got me
0:58:51 in arena it's interesting got me reading
0:58:52 this it is um where is it
0:58:55 um
0:58:56 this book
0:58:58 this is a bit random this plato's
0:59:00 republic now i mentioned this written
0:59:01 two and a half thousand years ago i do
0:59:03 recommend this by the way so very
0:59:05 up-to-date now the reason i mentioned
0:59:06 this is there's a wonderful a beautiful
0:59:08 critique of democracy as he calls it in
0:59:10 here he surveys a whole ninja system
0:59:12 democracy autocracy monarchy tyranny
0:59:15 you name it oligarchy and democracy and
0:59:18 one of the problems of democracy that
0:59:19 plato said two and a half thousand years
0:59:22 ago was precisely what you have just
0:59:24 said you mentioned aipac and the
0:59:25 pressure groups but he talked about to
0:59:28 use modern language the vulnerability of
0:59:30 this democratic system to pressure from
0:59:33 the these uh interest groups that that
0:59:35 basically assert their will over the
0:59:37 demos over the people so this is
0:59:39 actually a weakness in democracy and the
0:59:41 democratic system according to plato so
0:59:43 i i thought there's an interesting segue
0:59:45 and he didn't mention that plato had
0:59:47 actually come up with this idea
0:59:48 theoretically uh a couple of thousand
0:59:50 years ago but anyway he did
0:59:52 he has some interesting things to say
0:59:54 about plato in the in the next part of
0:59:55 the book about uh i've read that so
0:59:57 maybe he does i beg your pardon
0:59:59 no he doesn't make the point that you're
1:00:01 saying about democracy but he does he
1:00:02 does talk about plato and sort of the
1:00:04 the role of poets versus philosophers
1:00:07 the idea of mythos versus logos and kind
1:00:10 of which is the privileged form of
1:00:12 knowledge and that actually comes it
1:00:14 ends up being very significant for how
1:00:16 religion the category of religion was
1:00:17 formed and what we associate with
1:00:19 religion religion as sort of like uh the
1:00:22 modern myth uh as opposed to the
1:00:24 verifiable truth which is kind of logos
1:00:26 but we'll get there that's another
1:00:29 conversation there but so he points to
1:00:31 pressure groups right he points to these
1:00:33 lobbyists and how that this is actually
1:00:34 a very very small elite right that you
1:00:37 have the oil lobby and the israeli lobby
1:00:39 and these closed meetings dinners you
1:00:41 know fundraiser galas and these sorts of
1:00:43 things this is where policy is being
1:00:45 formed this is where policy has been
1:00:47 politicians are being influenced it's
1:00:48 not an open access society not open
1:00:51 access horizontal access this is an
1:00:53 elite elite occupation you say often
1:00:54 clandestine that's not elected or and so
1:00:57 on and yet it is has a massive
1:00:59 disproportionate influence on the
1:01:00 democratic process and and sets the tone
1:01:03 that the media then follow or media
1:01:04 maybe are part of this the only thing i
1:01:06 mean and they form what we should think
1:01:09 what is acceptable opinion what we
1:01:11 should think about israel or lgbt or
1:01:13 american foreign policy or or anything
1:01:15 it it and this is how it kind of it
1:01:17 works i guess yes fantastic and that's
1:01:19 actually his his second uh his number
1:01:22 two and number three points that kind of
1:01:24 subvert and undermine this claim of an
1:01:27 open access public space opinion polls
1:01:29 and mass media so he says that we assume
1:01:32 and we see an opinion poll that this is
1:01:34 merely descriptive of reality and we
1:01:36 don't realize that this is actually
1:01:38 used it's a tool to anticipate and also
1:01:41 to influence
1:01:42 right um and
1:01:43 anybody you know can go
1:01:45 search online about how statistics can
1:01:47 be manipulated but even as you just said
1:01:49 what questions get asked yes right in
1:01:51 the first place like this is something
1:01:53 that is it's not just describing reality
1:01:56 in a benign way to us it's actually
1:01:58 controlling and managing the ways in
1:02:00 which we think about things and even our
1:02:02 emotion emotional responses to things a
1:02:05 an interesting example came up recently
1:02:06 in the last few
1:02:10 weeks where there's two there's a muslim
1:02:12 think tank that
1:02:14 released some sort of muslims and
1:02:16 suicide
1:02:19 data that was being presented was sort
1:02:20 of indicating that muslims were at a
1:02:22 very very high risk of suicide if i'm
1:02:23 not mistaken and it's less it's less
1:02:25 important uh as to the um uh
1:02:29 the kind of facts on the ground as it is
1:02:31 to kind of like this point about
1:02:33 how
1:02:34 our
1:02:35 different data produces different
1:02:37 imperatives right um and someone within
1:02:40 the muslim academic sort of sphere
1:02:42 challenged these findings and said that
1:02:43 this is a mess that these are not you
1:02:45 know there's this problem with the
1:02:46 method and this problem with the way
1:02:47 that the research was conducted and this
1:02:49 is not actually true you can't make
1:02:51 those conclusions at all and the stake
1:02:54 what is at stake in that sort of debate
1:02:56 and argument
1:02:57 there's a little bit of back and forth
1:02:58 on twitter as far as i understand like
1:03:00 no like this wasn't like whatever yes it
1:03:02 was but what's at stake is there there
1:03:04 are imperatives and there are
1:03:05 assumptions and there are kind of action
1:03:07 points that are at stake when it comes
1:03:09 to
1:03:10 which one is true okay if it's true that
1:03:13 muslims are somehow uniquely in the
1:03:15 united states uh likely to
1:03:18 experience suicidal thoughts or this or
1:03:20 depression or these sort of things then
1:03:24 people will point the finger where
1:03:25 they'll point it towards out-of-touch
1:03:26 leadership and they'll point it towards
1:03:28 you know oh maybe this is a backwards
1:03:30 religion or maybe that you know it's not
1:03:32 uh you know getting with the times
1:03:34 there's all these sorts of uh
1:03:36 imperatives that could be formed
1:03:38 whereas if the findings are the opposite
1:03:40 if we're actually doing better than
1:03:41 everybody else with suicide the the
1:03:44 script is completely opposite it's like
1:03:45 oh well look at how amazing islam is it
1:03:47 actually regulates our emotions much
1:03:49 better than anybody else and so we have
1:03:51 less pressure to conform less pressure
1:03:53 to reform less pressure to do all these
1:03:55 other sorts of things so
1:03:56 opinion polls are not merely descriptive
1:03:58 they're all they're often used to
1:03:59 anticipate and to influence and
1:04:01 similarly as you said the mass media
1:04:03 right the mass media how things are
1:04:04 presented obviously we see this every
1:04:06 time palestine is attacked uh you know
1:04:09 all of the images are from the israeli
1:04:11 cafe where somebody had to put down
1:04:13 their latte and they were afraid for
1:04:15 their puppy right where the um you know
1:04:18 the palestinian children are starving
1:04:20 and getting slaughtered and you know
1:04:21 torn apart limb from limb which we don't
1:04:24 see right because we're kind of
1:04:25 presented with certain images and we're
1:04:27 presented with uh when when uh
1:04:30 palestinians kill you know it it's
1:04:32 always you know in that sort of active
1:04:34 tense where in the palestinian is killed
1:04:37 it's always in the passive voice and all
1:04:39 these sorts of things that are very very
1:04:41 well known that they do in order to kind
1:04:42 of shape the way that we're emotionally
1:04:44 responding and processing these sorts of
1:04:46 realities
1:04:48 so all of this to say that yes that this
1:04:49 is not a um
1:04:51 this is not at all a uh an equal
1:04:54 free
1:04:55 public space society to exchange ideas
1:04:58 and and and things like that um that and
1:05:01 and essendon has a very useful way of
1:05:03 thinking about it he's like if
1:05:05 pre-modern governance is about brute
1:05:08 compulsion and force
1:05:10 liberal governance is not based on the
1:05:13 opposite which would be consent and
1:05:14 negotiation but rather something perhaps
1:05:16 in the middle that he calls statecraft
1:05:18 or what foucault would call
1:05:19 governmentality so basically it's you
1:05:22 know this method of discipline
1:05:25 right in
1:05:26 attempting to
1:05:28 put discipline in spheres that are
1:05:30 fairly secretive and not very apparent
1:05:33 but then when we have to
1:05:35 we always have the emergency powers and
1:05:37 we always have the martial law we can
1:05:39 resort to if necessary
1:05:40 um
1:05:42 that was the the one main sort of uh
1:05:45 feature that that essa takes issue with
1:05:47 when it comes to the main sort of
1:05:49 account of what secularism is
1:05:52 or why it's good or why it should exist
1:05:54 so he says okay well if
1:05:57 we don't have a horizontal direct access
1:05:59 society a free open public space then
1:06:02 perhaps we should rethink this entire
1:06:04 thing that why is secularism
1:06:06 particularly advantageous over another
1:06:08 sort of system of of
1:06:10 managing sort of uh belief and
1:06:14 non-belief or or whatever have you
1:06:16 perhaps there are other ways the other
1:06:19 thing that he points to is the
1:06:21 the move that happens
1:06:23 within secular societies is one towards
1:06:25 individualist citizenship so this is one
1:06:27 of the main main features of uh
1:06:30 secularism whereas and this is the
1:06:33 second aspect of where the political
1:06:35 becomes the real
1:06:36 right um it's the transcend
1:06:39 the the transcendent political identity
1:06:42 is the real identity who are you really
1:06:44 paul you're really british right what
1:06:45 does your passport say you look at the
1:06:47 map and it's all beautiful colors and
1:06:49 it's all thinking through the nation
1:06:51 state we almost can't think through
1:06:53 anything but the nation-state we have
1:06:55 and we have all these sorts of rituals
1:06:56 to to reify and fortify this way of
1:06:59 thinking about we have the world cup we
1:07:00 have the olympics we have you know all
1:07:02 these sorts of things that you know we
1:07:04 actually are
1:07:05 in our
1:07:06 town
1:07:07 where there's actually sort of uh a
1:07:09 soccer tournament that happens or a
1:07:10 football tournament and for for you all
1:07:13 where it's organized by nationality and
1:07:15 so we were actually as a as a message
1:07:17 thinking let's organize a team for the
1:07:19 masjid but we can't because the logic of
1:07:22 the tournament is based off of
1:07:23 nationality so you see how this kind of
1:07:26 foregrounding of the political as the
1:07:28 real is actually and this gets into to
1:07:32 actually a hindrance to us as muslims
1:07:34 because part of this muslim power has
1:07:36 been built off of this sort of
1:07:38 transnational or supranational sort of
1:07:41 super political sort of organization now
1:07:43 we're forced through the nation state i
1:07:45 know i've just come across as a a quote
1:07:47 uh
1:07:48 quote i keep on my iphone it's so good
1:07:51 um he's a professor at clumber
1:07:53 university um he um let me have a look
1:07:56 uh he's written lots of amazing books
1:07:57 this is another one i'm reading at the
1:07:58 moment called the impossible state um
1:08:02 islam politics modernity's moral
1:08:03 predicament so it overlaps uh quite a
1:08:06 bit in some ways with this book we're
1:08:08 reviewing uh today that imam tom is
1:08:10 telling us about but this quote um from
1:08:13 professor halak one of my favorites if i
1:08:15 may just read it out it's a short one
1:08:17 let us remember what secularism is
1:08:21 secularism is not just segregating
1:08:23 religious life into the private sphere
1:08:26 it is rather the determination of the
1:08:29 state of what religion is and is not
1:08:34 where and how it can be and where and
1:08:36 how it can be exercised
1:08:39 in terms of political theology
1:08:41 secularism is the murder of god by the
1:08:44 state this is the quote earlier on i
1:08:46 couldn't quite remember in terms of
1:08:48 political theology secularism is the
1:08:50 murder of god by the state the state can
1:08:53 delimit limit exclude or could tell any
1:08:57 religious practice and thus has the
1:08:59 power to determine the quality and the
1:09:02 quantity of the religious sphere as it
1:09:05 sees fit
1:09:07 that's professor um
1:09:08 and i think that is an extraordinary
1:09:11 extraordinarily insightful um unveiling
1:09:14 of the realities of secularism
1:09:16 his official
1:09:17 self-presented ideology and the
1:09:19 realities of it particularly in terms of
1:09:21 its political theology it murders
1:09:24 secular is a murder of god by the
1:09:25 doesn't mean literally of course but he
1:09:27 means in terms of uh political theology
1:09:30 uh this state replaces god the state
1:09:32 becomes a god and of course that is the
1:09:35 ultimate uh kuffar is the ultimate shook
1:09:38 i should say uh dynamic point of view of
1:09:40 course because um well for obvious
1:09:42 reasons
1:09:43 yes and this is where we really need to
1:09:45 be aware and careful about all this quid
1:09:48 pro quo stuff right because if we think
1:09:51 that by
1:09:52 gaining access to a certain kind of
1:09:54 power and making certain sort of
1:09:56 concessions to get approval
1:09:59 within the kind of arrangement of
1:10:01 politics as is
1:10:02 we might think that we're guaranteeing
1:10:04 our rights and we might think that we're
1:10:06 guaranteeing our safety but what we
1:10:08 might not realize that we're doing we
1:10:10 might be actually submitting ourselves
1:10:12 to these forces to shape what our
1:10:14 religion is and what we call it right
1:10:16 and so we might end up with something
1:10:18 that they're calling islam and they are
1:10:20 teaching our children as islam and we
1:10:21 even have certain people within the
1:10:23 muslim sort of scholarly sphere or
1:10:26 academic sphere telling us that this is
1:10:27 islam and in reality it's actually i
1:10:30 think you had used the word previously
1:10:31 truncated uh version or this sort of
1:10:34 reformed remember islam which is really
1:10:37 something that is within the
1:10:39 within the control and disciplinary kind
1:10:41 of structures exactly and the problem
1:10:43 there of course is there is a president
1:10:44 in christianity which has reformed
1:10:46 itself quite literally at the
1:10:47 reformation but you know that they'll
1:10:49 point to christianity christianity has
1:10:51 changed its fundamentals it's
1:10:52 continually changing its fundamentals in
1:10:54 some churches i would argue so why can't
1:10:56 muslims do the same well it's not like
1:10:58 that it's completely dynamic and islam
1:11:00 is the fundamental uh final statement of
1:11:03 god to mankind it doesn't need to be
1:11:05 reformed it just needs to be understood
1:11:07 and obviously followed so there's a
1:11:09 misunderstanding a whole the nature of
1:11:10 the mechanism uh in equating
1:11:13 christianity and islam as if it was
1:11:15 somehow comparable in that sense they're
1:11:16 not christianity is seen by muslims
1:11:18 obviously it's something that has gone
1:11:20 astray in certain fundamental ways and
1:11:22 certain of his doctrines and and so that
1:11:24 islam is the final statement the
1:11:26 pristine final statement of god to man
1:11:28 and
1:11:29 there's nothing more to change
1:11:31 that's it
1:11:32 right they're essentially asking us to
1:11:34 unmoor ourselves or untether ourselves
1:11:36 from that that inertia that gravity of
1:11:39 the text of the you know um
1:11:42 i said references in kind of passing
1:11:45 reading the bible as literature this
1:11:47 kind of movement to read the bible as
1:11:48 literature and how you know despite
1:11:51 claims from uh
1:11:53 the people who are engaged in this sort
1:11:54 of project that this isn't offensive to
1:11:56 religion um it's exactly an exercise of
1:11:59 secular power that enables that
1:12:01 statement in the first place yes right
1:12:03 to think to even consider reading the
1:12:06 bible as as literature or the quran for
1:12:08 that matter and then to assert that this
1:12:10 is not offensive to religion right this
1:12:12 is secular power for excellence
1:12:14 absolutely right now i read that i
1:12:16 thought that was a brilliant thing
1:12:16 because it is a secular it's a secular
1:12:19 takeover of the bible in this particular
1:12:21 case and whilst pretending that nothing
1:12:23 has happened it's just a just treating
1:12:25 us no you you have just detached it from
1:12:27 the whole point of the bible as
1:12:29 christians conceive it anyway which is
1:12:30 revelation or word of god and it's no
1:12:32 longer a sacred text it's a secular text
1:12:35 like i don't know a sherlock holmes or
1:12:37 shakespeare or something else um right
1:12:39 religious literature
1:12:41 yes yes exactly and so the last points
1:12:44 that i had written down on my notes were
1:12:45 exactly sort of it's very very um
1:12:47 appropriate that you had brought that
1:12:49 quote from halak because
1:12:51 the points that assad makes are
1:12:53 essentially just fleshing out those
1:12:55 points that halaq had stated so
1:12:57 eloquently and succinctly about okay if
1:13:00 the secular
1:13:01 state is going to tell us that it is a
1:13:03 reduction of violence and a reduction of
1:13:05 religious violence and this is actually
1:13:07 the only way to live in peace uh assad
1:13:10 and others definitely had luck would say
1:13:11 that no it's just that the objects or
1:13:14 targets of the violence have changed and
1:13:17 have been kind of hidden from us in
1:13:18 certain ways so where is the violence we
1:13:20 talked about you know reading the bible
1:13:22 as literature that is a type of violence
1:13:24 but um
1:13:26 being able to first of all
1:13:29 define what is granted status
1:13:32 as
1:13:33 private what belongs is private religion
1:13:35 and what belongs in public law that is a
1:13:37 form of power right like that's the
1:13:39 secular power kind of at the most
1:13:41 foundational level
1:13:42 right the secular state gets to define
1:13:44 what is a religion and we've seen this
1:13:46 before when it comes to in the united
1:13:47 states we have religious exemptions for
1:13:49 various things for vaccinate vaccines
1:13:52 sometimes and for military service or
1:13:54 whatever and so the supreme court often
1:13:57 has to adjudicate what is a religion and
1:13:59 what is not a religion you know what is
1:14:01 even sincere religious belief and what
1:14:04 isn't which is kind of an irony for
1:14:06 people who really would like to cling to
1:14:08 the idea that secularism is simply
1:14:11 separation of church and state that's
1:14:12 not true at all uh secularism is the
1:14:15 production of a certain type of religion
1:14:16 that's amenable to the secular state um
1:14:19 and so that is sort of the first arena
1:14:21 where do you divide the line what's
1:14:23 religion and therefore private what is
1:14:26 uh or which religion gets to be private
1:14:28 and as we've talked about before which
1:14:30 religion gets to be public like for
1:14:32 example the public evangelical support
1:14:34 of israel and et cetera et cetera uh one
1:14:36 nation under god this this gets to be
1:14:38 public this gets to be enshrined within
1:14:40 institutions um and then others don't
1:14:43 right so this is all power right this is
1:14:44 all power that gets to the side of where
1:14:46 do we put this what gets considered here
1:14:48 what gets considered where
1:14:50 the second
1:14:52 uh arena of secular power who is granted
1:14:55 the ability to reason privately and who
1:14:57 is not okay so um
1:14:59 this is one thing where asset gives kind
1:15:01 of the the situation of some sort of
1:15:04 terrorist event or terrorist act okay if
1:15:07 it's a a muslim who commits the act
1:15:10 what's the response people go grasping
1:15:13 for motives and ideology or was he
1:15:15 influenced by
1:15:17 or was he like a wahabi or salafi
1:15:19 influence did he even say mia right uh
1:15:21 oh this verse in the quran and that
1:15:23 verse
1:15:26 it's every single time this happens this
1:15:28 is the kind of uh attention that that
1:15:29 comes through the media and there's a
1:15:32 secular power that's at play here
1:15:33 because the muslim subject is considered
1:15:36 unable to
1:15:37 exercise any sort of interpretive
1:15:39 reading he is constricted but he's not
1:15:42 able to to privately reason he's bound
1:15:45 or constrained to read the text in only
1:15:47 one way yeah and so
1:15:49 islam either is essentially violent or
1:15:52 this particular subsect of islam is
1:15:54 essentially violent and he read this and
1:15:56 he saw this and therefore he had to go
1:15:58 do what he did whereas if a christian or
1:16:00 an atheist or anybody else nobody would
1:16:02 say well okay there's an atheist that
1:16:04 just shot up a school and this happens
1:16:05 to us in the united states a lot it's
1:16:07 like oh he must have read marx you know
1:16:09 it's like nobody would say that it
1:16:11 literally wouldn't make any sense
1:16:12 because if you are of a certain
1:16:14 positionality or subjectivity you're
1:16:16 granted
1:16:17 the
1:16:18 right of privately reasoning right
1:16:20 you're assumed to be able to reason
1:16:21 privately so this is another power of a
1:16:23 secular state in deciding who
1:16:25 who gets the reason privately uh and who
1:16:28 even who gets labeled as a terrorist in
1:16:30 the first place i know
1:16:31 when terrorist events i mean i'm not
1:16:33 going to go into all the news events but
1:16:34 there are a whole series of uh violent
1:16:36 events motivated by uh ideology nothing
1:16:38 to do with islam where these these
1:16:40 people are not called terrorists even
1:16:41 though they have clearly targeted the
1:16:44 public to kill them
1:16:46 in the name of an ideology right and
1:16:48 it's still not called terrorist but
1:16:50 hello if a muslim does it ah immediately
1:16:52 they're terrible and i'm just staggered
1:16:54 that no one would say no one sees it
1:16:55 because a lot of people see this
1:16:56 extraordinary uh islamophobic
1:16:58 inconsistency but it just seems that the
1:17:00 media i mean
1:17:02 apparently respectable journalists and
1:17:03 you and
1:17:05 and news channels just repeat this and
1:17:08 like bbc does it as well you know and
1:17:10 i'm just i'm constantly constantly
1:17:12 struck by the inconsistency of labeling
1:17:15 there
1:17:16 well the question we have to ask is why
1:17:18 like why this like this this
1:17:20 inconsistency is ubiquitous everybody
1:17:22 knows it but why does it exist it exists
1:17:25 because
1:17:26 islam is a particularly anti-secular
1:17:28 force and so it is the legitimate object
1:17:31 of
1:17:34 discipline and legit right whereas
1:17:39 other types of subjectivities or other
1:17:42 types of traditions or targets don't
1:17:45 attract the same attention right like
1:17:47 this is why you know one is rendered as
1:17:48 a security risk and this is essence
1:17:50 whole thing it's like you want to talk
1:17:50 about secularism we're talking about
1:17:52 violence if you're talking about
1:17:53 secularism just because the the borders
1:17:56 have changed just because the map has
1:17:58 changed right
1:18:00 they're still
1:18:01 the secular state is guaranteed or
1:18:04 threatened by certain things
1:18:05 and whatever threatens the secular state
1:18:08 is the target of the good violence
1:18:11 right and in this case you know yeah
1:18:12 okay like somebody who's trying to uh
1:18:15 somebody who's a particular type of
1:18:16 muslim subject is
1:18:18 you know the par the enemy par
1:18:20 excellence of this kind of uh
1:18:22 of this kind of way of seeing the world
1:18:24 another example kind of a little uh less
1:18:26 dramatic is how people
1:18:28 uh read women who wear hijab right we
1:18:31 have this whole idea of uh
1:18:34 well
1:18:34 are you forced to do it or not right
1:18:36 that's always the question on the
1:18:37 western journalist's mind right
1:18:39 especially especially in france the
1:18:41 default position i've discovered much to
1:18:42 my shot is otherwise intelligent
1:18:45 young people uh who i've met in france
1:18:48 the automatic assumption is a woman who
1:18:50 has a hijab is forced to do it and the
1:18:52 question is
1:18:53 you know that there's a man making her
1:18:55 wear it and that is incredibly stupid
1:18:57 and ignorant assumption is obviously
1:18:58 completely false but but otherwise
1:19:00 enlightened educated people have this
1:19:03 view and that's why i still i still find
1:19:05 difficulty in processing that actually
1:19:07 because if you ask someone any other
1:19:08 subject they'll be quite enlightened
1:19:09 when it comes to muslims they're not
1:19:12 right well yeah well then that's the
1:19:13 other thing too it's like if we're
1:19:14 looking at what are the hegemonic
1:19:17 political goals of secular modernity and
1:19:19 which ones are being offended why is it
1:19:21 so offensive
1:19:23 to a secular modern that the possibility
1:19:26 of a woman wearing hijab even the
1:19:28 possibility of her being forced to wear
1:19:30 it why because it violates the political
1:19:32 project of
1:19:33 moral autonomy right to imagine that you
1:19:36 would have to be obligated or let's just
1:19:37 say duty let's not use the word force
1:19:39 because force is actually like a very
1:19:40 slippery concept but like if someone had
1:19:43 the felt the duty
1:19:44 right to do something or felt obliged
1:19:48 obligated to do something we could say
1:19:50 you could make an argument that there's
1:19:51 some force in there somewhere
1:19:53 right or some coercion in there
1:19:54 somewhere why is it so offensive it's
1:19:57 offensive to the secular modern because
1:19:58 it violates this hegemonic political
1:20:00 project and this hegemonic political
1:20:02 goal right and which is why we trap
1:20:04 ourselves when women justify themselves
1:20:07 by saying
1:20:09 it's my choice
1:20:10 yes
1:20:11 they say i'm arguing for the hijab
1:20:13 because i chose it okay that's great i
1:20:15 support you and your choice but the fact
1:20:17 that we don't get recognition
1:20:20 unless we resort to moral autonomy shows
1:20:23 us the centrality and the hegemony of
1:20:25 that concept right you can't tell a
1:20:28 secular modern
1:20:29 i feel obliged to wear it because that's
1:20:32 what allah said
1:20:33 or i feel duty bound to wear it because
1:20:36 my family would be embarrassed if i
1:20:38 don't they would say you're oppressed
1:20:40 they would say you have a false
1:20:41 consciousness you need to liberate
1:20:42 yourself you need to run away from your
1:20:44 family and we've got all these sort of
1:20:45 movies and you know comic books where
1:20:47 you can be just like them right like so
1:20:50 this is this is what assad is trying to
1:20:51 get at not just the hypocrisy everybody
1:20:53 can see the hypocrisy but what's the
1:20:55 allergy the allergy of a secular modern
1:20:57 sort of order is the are these things
1:20:59 that that undermine its projects of
1:21:01 moral autonomy and of um you know
1:21:04 this sort of um
1:21:06 particular secular order and of course
1:21:07 the idea of autonomy is a philosophical
1:21:09 concept it has roots and a certain
1:21:11 understanding of metaphysics it's not
1:21:13 neutral it's certainly not modern in
1:21:14 some kind of clinical
1:21:16 uh progressive sense
1:21:18 it it is a philosophical position which
1:21:21 is extremely controversial and arguably
1:21:23 completely untenable anyway
1:21:25 theoretically and and in reality and
1:21:27 islam of course recognizes the reality
1:21:29 the absolute reality of god as creator
1:21:31 and sustainer of the universe and owner
1:21:32 of everything and which is uh also the
1:21:35 traditional christian view and the
1:21:37 traditional jewish view um
1:21:39 and and that is sustainable and more
1:21:41 profoundly human and humanizing actually
1:21:44 than this narrow moral autonomy argument
1:21:46 which leads to uh terrible atrocities uh
1:21:49 for example the roe versus waiting when
1:21:51 uh that that was um thrown out or
1:21:53 nullified on the word is by the supreme
1:21:55 court few days ago president
1:21:57 uh the president of france uh no less
1:22:00 tweeted in english
1:22:02 um
1:22:03 lecturing lecturing you in the united
1:22:05 states about what you shouldn't
1:22:06 shouldn't be doing extraordinary
1:22:07 outbursts but it was it was based on um
1:22:10 uh on moral autonomy argument that was
1:22:13 his position um uh an extraordinary
1:22:16 thing but maybe the french uh like to
1:22:18 lecture other people though about what
1:22:20 they should be doing with their oh sure
1:22:21 of course yeah that's rich but but
1:22:23 that's a perfect actual segue to the the
1:22:25 third point and the third sort of uh
1:22:26 exercise of secular power and this is my
1:22:29 last note for the intro is that um when
1:22:31 is violence necessary or what type of
1:22:33 violence is necessary right so you look
1:22:36 at you can't deny that aborting a
1:22:39 six-month old fetus
1:22:41 is a violence it's violence
1:22:44 and that's why actually you know the
1:22:46 pro-life a certain segment of the
1:22:48 pro-life movement has tried to bring the
1:22:50 that violence back into people's
1:22:52 cognition
1:22:53 and despite their graphic and i don't
1:22:55 like looking at you know they have
1:22:56 websites and they have posters and it's
1:22:58 quite graphic stuff uh i find it very
1:23:00 hard to stomach it but you know despite
1:23:02 their efforts it still falls upon so
1:23:05 many deaf ears
1:23:07 why
1:23:07 why because that violence is seen as
1:23:10 legitimate that violence is seen as
1:23:13 acceptable because it violates moral
1:23:15 autonomy
1:23:16 it violates the autonomy of the secular
1:23:18 self who's able to who has and
1:23:22 cites a very damning quote of simone de
1:23:24 beauvoir later on in the book about how
1:23:26 uh birthing and nursing are inherently
1:23:30 dehumanizing to women um simply because
1:23:32 they're not chosen right so we have uh
1:23:35 something that that has to do with uh
1:23:37 with freeing the secular
1:23:40 moral autonomous self is legitimate
1:23:42 violence right invading afghanistan to
1:23:46 free the women who are stuck in their
1:23:47 homes and not allowed to go
1:23:49 you know uh leave the homes et cetera
1:23:51 that's legitimate violence let's drop
1:23:52 bombs on them that's the idea right are
1:23:55 we able what about the half a million
1:23:57 iraqi children like madeleine albright
1:23:58 was asked worth it right so
1:24:02 again people who are imagining that the
1:24:03 secular arrangement of things is a less
1:24:06 violent or a non-violent arrangement
1:24:07 they're completely completely wrong like
1:24:09 it couldn't be further from the truth
1:24:10 it's just that the goal posts have shift
1:24:12 what violence is considered legitimate
1:24:14 and what what violence is considered
1:24:16 illegitimate the illegitimate violence
1:24:18 within the secular order is the
1:24:19 religious violence religiously motivated
1:24:21 violence the jihad that's why jihad is
1:24:23 such a bad word right because it's not
1:24:25 just about uh islam versus christianity
1:24:27 it's not just about islam versus the
1:24:29 west it's the category of violence that
1:24:31 there would be somebody it's like and
1:24:33 it's like trauma response it's a trigger
1:24:36 for the the western christian world
1:24:38 right to have a religiously motivated
1:24:40 violence it's like the worst possible
1:24:43 type of violence that you could commit
1:24:45 we will register every one person killed
1:24:47 for a religious motive as as if it were
1:24:50 a million people killed for a
1:24:52 non-religious mode that's basically the
1:24:53 calculus that's at play here whereas
1:24:55 other types of violence
1:24:57 they are not only justified but
1:24:58 considered necessary
1:25:00 right like whether it's aborting a fetus
1:25:02 or whether it's uh you know it's trying
1:25:04 to uh you know kill the terrorists or
1:25:06 this this threat to the nation state or
1:25:08 this threat to the secular order
1:25:10 whatever it is you know we will we will
1:25:12 exterminate and we won't hesitate uh
1:25:15 because it's the right type of violence
1:25:16 it's the good type of violence
1:25:19 gosh that's a very succinct and
1:25:21 insightful summary um is that me feeling
1:25:23 rather depressed
1:25:31 um i'm just thinking um randomly the
1:25:33 only country in history that has
1:25:36 intentionally deliberately dropped
1:25:37 nuclear weapons yes civilian populations
1:25:41 not once
1:25:42 but twice
1:25:43 yes
1:25:44 and i'm obviously everyone knows who
1:25:46 that country is and when that happened
1:25:48 uh in the name of freedom um literally
1:25:52 wiping out hundreds of thousands of
1:25:53 people
1:25:54 in an instant and some of these people
1:25:56 are still affected by that even today
1:25:58 from radiation poisoning i mean i mean
1:26:01 there are arguments
1:26:02 to be had about that but nevertheless
1:26:04 islamically
1:26:06 it is a highness crime to exterminate
1:26:09 civilians because islam of course
1:26:10 civilians non-combatants are a protected
1:26:13 group they simply uh forbidden in sharia
1:26:16 to slaughter civilians intentionally
1:26:19 targeting them but it was a an
1:26:22 instrument of a certain country's
1:26:23 foreign policy um within living memory
1:26:26 um anyway
1:26:28 even without even without the the
1:26:30 victims let's even assume that they
1:26:31 never drop it on japan even the even the
1:26:34 testing of the weapons they had to
1:26:36 evacuate islands they had to they
1:26:38 completely rendered those places
1:26:40 uninhabitable yeah like perhaps
1:26:42 permanently right it's like it's
1:26:44 different
1:26:45 it's a different order of barbarity and
1:26:47 violence and it was all considered
1:26:49 completely justifiable
1:26:51 because it's it's for the secular state
1:26:54 yeah or for secular secular freedom but
1:26:57 it's the only country in history has
1:26:57 ever done you use these weapons uh and
1:27:00 um
1:27:01 yeah we all know who they are and
1:27:02 so on so i'm not trying to make an
1:27:04 anti-back country point i'm just saying
1:27:06 that secular
1:27:08 democracies have committed these
1:27:10 atrocities and as far as i've never
1:27:12 never repented of them it's an accepted
1:27:14 practice or accepted event in history
1:27:16 and many of them are proud of it even um
1:27:19 uh extraordinary anyway um
1:27:22 perhaps we should uh leave it there i
1:27:24 think um
1:27:25 thank you very much indeed i imam tom
1:27:27 for your your time your expertise your
1:27:29 eloquence your wisdom your insights uh
1:27:32 and uh is you're always welcome on
1:27:35 blogging theology i hope uh god willing
1:27:37 you will come back again um and for
1:27:39 those who are not aware we've been
1:27:40 talking or imam tom has been talking
1:27:42 about this book uh formations of the
1:27:45 secular subtitles christianity islam and
1:27:48 modernity by professor talau assad um i
1:27:52 have my copy i've only
1:27:53 read the introduction but it in my view
1:27:56 it is certainly worth having a read um
1:27:59 along with um my other favorite book of
1:28:01 the moment um by um uh halaq of course
1:28:04 the impossible state islam politics and
1:28:06 modernity's moral predicament these are
1:28:08 hot books um if you want to and one of
1:28:11 my all-time favorites
1:28:13 uh just written a few years ago by i
1:28:15 call mr plato and his republic um a new
1:28:19 translation in the oxford world classics
1:28:21 fact there are many editions
1:28:23 you could probably even read it in the
1:28:24 original greek if you were so minded um
1:28:27 so there's some recommendations today so
1:28:29 thank you very much uh iman tom again
1:28:32 thank you pleasures online until next
1:28:34 time inshallah