Dr Sarah Eltantawi | Misogyny, Muslim Brotherhood & Marketing the Sharia | MindTrap#55 | Mufti MALM

hmm [Music] there's also a heater i do have a sorry i do have a like a steam heater that like makes some noise

firstly let me just make sure there is just to a quick audio check make sure the sound is coming through um all right let me just bring up the the people on facebook and youtube alright people arrive so let me just one moment just taking out guys you're doing it you're doing it hazard razali king robbery alright people i take it you can all you can hear the sound coming through loud and clear

excellent excellent excellent so right so for tonight people allahu akbar we have with us an esteemed guest i'm just bringing up the profile picture for you on the screen right there you can see tonight's guest uh dr sarah tantawi from new york people the united states allahu akbar a professor at fordham university in islamic studies herself she's completed her master's and ph.d

none other than harvard itself let's bring on tamasi caballeros let me present dr sarah hello hello for taking the time out to join us tonight on mine trap inviting me all right so i'm just uh just doing a quick uh just a sound check just want to make sure that with the guest as well there has been on some occasions sometimes

um just guys i take it you can all hear uh dr sarah loud and clear so sarah allahu akbar you've had quite an um quite an impressive academic journey um you know studying such a prestigious place uh going through islamic studies at harvard and masters right through to a phd you've gone on to teach islamic studies yourself tell us a bit about your your kind of inspiration to get into

into this this journey this academic path that you've taken because it's not something that seems you know intuitively there for somebody in america to think well i know let me go to harvard and study islam it doesn't seem like it's uh you know it's not a kind of go-to because it doesn't seem so lucrative it doesn't seem so you know it's not that society doesn't really reinforce it for us so so shed some some of your insights on that okay well thank you so much um well yes you're right that it's it's

wasn't an obvious um path well actually my undergraduate degree was in english literature and rhetoric which i was at uc berkeley and rhetoric is kind of the equivalent of philosophy so i was like i can figure out the meaning of life through philosophy and literature and then what happened was two things happened as an undergraduate one i read edward saeed and that was different and two i was in a graduate class at the law school called law in the work of art

and my professor said rationality itself is a western invention before the western man as he put it humanity did not know what rationality was and he put that at descartes you know we did not know what rationality was now of course i grew up in a muslim family um i knew enough to know that that was not true i knew of the existence of something called kalam i knew of that muslim theologians had employed rationality and thought about rationality so at that point i became interested in an intellectual sense in comparative

philosophy and so when i went so then i that was uh i was at berkeley and then i i said i'm going to do my master's degree in middle eastern studies and i'm going to do comparative philosophy well then i got to harvard and it was the east coast and it was it was very different from berkeley and all of my classes were politics language history i had soldiers in my classes um i had future diplomats in my classes and so i kind of was introduced to this whole other approach to education which was a lot more concerned with um i would say

power and so yeah and that was very shocking to me and i i can't say that i had a fantastic time every moment of my life um realizing that this was the case but but i i i did learn a lot and um by the time i finished my master's degree in the in the it was a two-year program and in the summer between the two years i did a a program in the west bank um where i learned arabic and i saw the occupation firsthand uh visited gaza and that really changed my life and then when i was finished with that i

went to syria and wrote a travel guide um for it was like the best job ever i was basically paid to go to every restaurant and hotel in syria and write about it and i didn't get anything beyond that but that was fine you know and you and you left that job yeah they don't let you do that forever unfortunately yeah and then they stop paying you and then you have to cut you have to leave so that was between my two years and then i came back finished my master's degree and i thought okay i'm not gonna go on and i thought i was gonna do a phd in english and i was gonna be like this reader of literature

no after i saw what i saw in syria and in the west bank and gaza i decided okay i need to do something else but i didn't know what this was um i graduated in june of 2001. oh wow okay and when were you at syria doing that was the summer of 2000 and in palestine as well so when i got back that fall the interfather broke out like the second into father broke out like um three weeks after i left so i was just very affected by all of this i was quite young you know and i would and i would still be affected today but i was super affected and so then june 2001 i didn't know what to do with myself

i went home to los angeles and my aunt said hey why don't you volunteer at this american muslim organization and you can and i thought what and she said yeah you know you can write uh i thought okay well i wanted i went and met with them and i said okay i can write a report about media coverage of the middle east and that's what i was really obsessed with so i'm gonna volunteer and you know they'll give me donuts and i'll live with my parents i was quite the loser at that moment but you know i i didn't have anything else to do with i just was figuring it out so uh september 1st 2001 was my start date

at this organization and then september 11th happened whoa yes my my friend called me and said turn on the television and then i rushed over to the mosque and then all these microphones were being put in my face you know what is islam and i knew enough to say you know okay slam five pillars if there's you know like so suddenly i'm doing all this media and then within a month i was i had a job and i was moved to washington d.c

where i was doing um just this like i call it the triage you know just this disaster after disaster you know the um damage control damage control exactly i did a lot of media i did lobbying work i really got to know washington dc and um and i learned a lot about the american muslim community as well and i began forming a lot of questions about islam i was traveling all over the country visiting american muslim communities checking out how politics worked looking at the scene the american muslim political scene and how it was functioning

and um by the you know i'm very grateful to the organization i was working for the muslim public affairs council lovely people there and and um you know i i'll always be grateful to them by the time i finished i was finishing up you know it's like three years in and i just thought i agree with so much of the politics but as a i i'm not there's something missing in terms of a lot of things theologically and in terms of creating a wide enough net to include all of these muslims i knew who were disaffected and who weren't participating in any of this and

who were feeling the brunt of 9 11 but who wouldn't didn't feel comfortable for example going to a mosque regularly so at that point i uh got together with three friends and colleagues and we formed the progressive muslim union and and then i moved to new york and did that kind of full time and then i learned the difference between trying to organize among a more conservative community versus organizing among a more progressive community and i feel like much easier than the latter actually is it basically because

you know um i mean i'm sure there's social scientific research to back this up but i my theory is that more conservative folks um are just listen to authority more you can kind of well they don't listen to me because i'm a woman right but i mean but you got to if you get the big guy to tell them to do things they do it you know give us money do this lobby here but um so i saw that happening but then when you're in the progressive community or people who are more artists liberals professors you know everyone is an island opinionated quite opinionated

yeah and and yeah yeah that's right opinionated so that was like herding cats wow and uh yeah i mean interesting and and we you know i think we did succeed in widening the net um but it then they ended up breaking up actually around um disputes about the iraq war so the iraq war was starting and sort of some people thought sort of i wouldn't say anyone well there was one person at least that like very rah-rah-rah supported it and there were a few others who thought well you know maybe change has to come at the point of the of the military and then i would like to clarify that i was in the other camp

along with my uh my three of the co-founders who thought no we do not support the war in iraq this is not the way to go about things and so um we ended up resigning and and that's when i decided to go back and do my phd in religion um in islam islamic studies because i had just accumulated so many questions um by that point oh and yeah yes yeah and then something else happened but i'll tell you more so right so phd harvard islam and your phd was centered around

oh you're asking yes no no no i mean obviously an islam and sharia but but from from you how would you best explain um one obviously what it was centered around but why yeah well okay so when i was working in dc um i was the communications director of the organization i was working for and i was in a meeting of major american muslim leaders who were mostly arab and south asian um and quite wealthy right um kind of power brokers in the american muslim community and my phone just kept ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing

and i kept ignoring it and then i just you know i thought something must really be wrong i'm getting a call every two seconds so i ran out and started answering the calls and it was cnn bbc msnbc you know all of them saying there's this woman who is being sentenced to death by stoning in nigeria for committing adultery and can you please tell us in two bullet points why is islam so violent why is islam stone people why does islam hate women and so um that was my job you know to try to uh you know reframe those questions and but then i was like what's going on let me let me figure out what's going on with

this case and let me do a deep dive into this and so the first thing i did was i went back into the meeting and i i said hey can i interrupt for a minute um i'm getting all of these calls about this woman who's stoned being sentenced to death by stoning what can you tell me about i'm getting all these media calls and they said sarah stoning is not in islam and stoning only happens in africa and they were wrong on both points so i thought i thought why why are they wrong on both points and what's going on and um there's and then

and then so that's on the american muslim side just kind of like totally denying that there was the stoning punishment and kind of pinning it on africa which is not true at all and then um the other side of the spectrum i have all these people calling me about very concerned about this one woman who might be sentenced to death by stoning which of course you know i obviously that's terrible i don't support that but this is 2002 the run-up to the iraq war and i'm just every day waking up in this like horrible hellscape in which you know people are clinically discussing you know will it be 150 000 dead

or 200 000 dead and just having these very kind of clinical conversations about that so i really noticed a difference in the level of outrage right so this extreme outrage about this one woman and then there's these like clinical conversations about this you know impending destruction of an entire country in society so i thought okay that's also interesting so i wanted to explore all of those things so when i i'm like i'm the person that when i got to my phd i had my dissertation topic on day one i really wanted to figure out what is going on with stoning nigeria this case the western reaction all of it

so that's how i got interesting and and this is a uh a fascinating kind of question really a fascinating phenomenon that this longing that muslims have for the sharia let's say or this alleged longing and this is obviously part of what you were investigating but it's something a lot of people are asked that you know muslims want the sharia this this is the question that you know muslims want sharia everywhere and people are like well why on earth do they want it yeah this is this is what people are asking isn't it

yeah right i mean you see and this is something i've said before as well that you see this is a uh this is really a false dichotomy presented to muslims when when this question is asked that do you want sharia people feel that of course this question translates as do you whose side are you do you place yourself on the side of god or the side of man and people will have a loyalty to god to say well of course god but what is it that they in their minds

understand when they say shariah um and this is something that you've obviously you're very incredibly focused on in in studying isn't it so what what did you find yeah i mean that's like the question because when i like you said kind of in the western discourse or even in the non-reflective muslim discourse it's like of course we want sharia of course we want and then the western discourse is all muslims are born wanting sharia and it's like okay what does that mean what is it so i went to nigeria and i simply asked people why what is sharia why do you want it and i ended up formulating

a kind of dichotomy it's in my book it's the difference between idealized sharia the ideal and political sharia which is not my term that's nigerians termed term for what actually happens when the ideal enters into the realm of politics which as far as i can tell is always disappointing um so the ideal is so it's case by case in some way it's so it's as you said it's god's law so this is the thing that's so dangerous about playing with this in the political realm is when you have

all of these sincere people in nigeria in pakistan and egypt everywhere that are saying there are sincere muslims and of course they want god's law but when you if you're a cynical politician and you're sort of playing with that the public will reject you eventually because they don't want that ideal to be messed with because they believe it you know so what they really wanted in the case in nigeria i would boil it down to an end to poverty and corruption you know and and poverty is quite obvious it's actually the same

problem because the disparity in wealth is really very unbelievable nigeria should be one of the wealthiest countries in the world it has huge oil reserves amazing natural resources but it's um it was actually the year that the sharia i called the sharia revolution but the year that people started marching on the street for sharia nigeria was actually ranked the second most corrupt country in the world so you know i actually saw a scene for example of like a dirt road with like goats you know wandering and people sitting on the sides you know making food and then you go down the end of the dirt

road and then there's a governor's mansion where there are like 15 mercedes benzes just in the maids quarters you know i mean the level of disparity behind all the iron gates so people are seeing this and they want an end to that that's what that's what they want sharia to do and that and and another key thing here uh dr sarah is that you see they say there's an a very important distinction to be made between sharia and phil and what people because when people say we want

sharia what is not in their mind is we want a fake book indeed no i mean sharia is an ideal in and of itself right and filk is the manifestation of that ideal and people want the ideal so yes you're absolutely right they're not thinking oh we want a reduced version of siddhi khalid's to rule us which is what ended up happening that nobody said that you know um so what they but they believe in god's justice so that is what they were calling for and

this is why as soon i mean people are smart you know as soon as they saw that the politicians so there were a lot i'm going to be fair there were a lot of sincere people in nigeria who were trying to implement what i call idealized sharia but how do you do it i mean that the first thing they do is they turn to the foot books and and and then there's this pressure to be quick and do it overnight and they have to contend with the fact that nigeria nigeria is a secular country it has a constitution it has magistrate courts so um there's a time pressure to like reduce the sharia you're not going to have this like

flowing legal system that exists organically such as in like the midst of the ottoman empire happen overnight if you're if you're in a nation state in a diverse nation state drawn colonial borders you know like nigeria for example so um you ended up with this kind of reduced legal code which just bullet points and i think that's why punishments like stoning end up becoming much easier to meet out in that context because it's also reduced if you do this wrong or that wrong you get stoned it's it's it's funny because uh i mean it's not funny at all but i mean it's it's strange

that the that stoning uh is has become the icon for sharia it's you know if people if a country was to say we're going to in state sharia i could you know the uh i can the icon for that is simply that they will stone people to death now that is i mean how did it even get to them [Laughter] you know there is evidence in um so in nigeria

until 1903 from 1809 to 1903 it was ruled by a caliphate the sokoto caliphate and is a um it was a caliphate of native sons you know ruling themselves and this is a time that most people look on with pride and if you look at the polemical literature of the people who started that caliphate they actually talk about specifically isolating stoning as something that people need to take seriously because of tahrir there's a sense that or deterrence there's a sense that stoning is the most gruesome punishment

and it's the punishment that can prove to the masses that this is a serious legal system that we mean business you know that that there's teeth behind this and that same attitude was present in the nigerians many of the supporters of sharia that i spoke to no like we mean business with this we're gonna stone you now i don't think anyone in either of those contexts imagined mass stonings this is deterrence but there's that sense of like it gives it's a legitimizing severity yeah i mean because a lot of people generally when

they think of islam like if if you were to say well we're going to rule by islam the the kind of default backdrop understandings that come to their minds are one the concept of justice like they feel that there will be justice two people feel that there will be some kind of wealthy like maybe you know they hope that there will be like hospitals that can now cater for people there will be some kind of education you know we we're not gonna be extorted financially and we're not going to i mean these are the the fundamentals which

are just general values that you know are in the world today which especially like let's say what people look at the modern world ironically and they they will see this as just pure kuffar but these are the same values fundamentally that they too will be aspiring to because that is ultimately what islam would be that you know in that it is just allah is just commanding you with by justice and compassion uh that had to have good ethics so yeah but i i i do find it so shocking that

how especially in recent times hudud is the the poster for sharia it is the you know it is it is the the kind of the menu it is every it is what at the advertising facility i'd say well we're going to have hadood in place advertising is a very good word yeah yeah and it comes from the muslim side and the western side um yeah and i feel in some ways it it's also and it's quite easy to to be actionable to some extent as

opposed to saying let's start having justice because justice is like like how the hell do you go about having justice yeah that's what the sharia commissions were trying to figure out it's so interesting because a lot of the time what ends up happening is that they just i don't know what it is but they end up focusing on women yeah i mean because do you not feel that there is this um you see there's this kind of mindset that with time there is a decadence that is taking place a moral

decadence and that moral decadence is strongly associated with women becoming more and more corrupt as well that's like a strong salient feature of that decadence that you know look oh my god women are not dressed properly or women or you know and and anything that claims to reign in control on women seems to kind of make people think oh we're going to control the decadence and this kind of depravity within society i think you really nailed it on the head there yeah to connect to control women is to control

the chaos it's to drain things in um also i mean i think that's i think that's true it's also just a kind of social fact that women are tend to be weaker in these societies so they can't fight back i mean everyone doing because you know i spoke to women one of the nice things about the fact that i did this research is that i'm a woman so as women will talk to me uh it's kind of hard to talk to women sometimes in these societies and it actually took me a long time to get some of them to warm up to me but you'd be surprised a lot of the i mean first of all i knew this but the women are super smart and they see they see what's happening and um in fact

it was women that made up the term political sharia like they knew that because these are all kind of men again some of the men were very sincere but some were very corrupt and some were using the sharia experiment to just get more power for themselves women can see right through this you know and um and they know intuitively that you know this isn't really sharia this is some other thing the guys are doing and so they just but it's you know you can you can um impose your will on women because they don't have as much power and and it comes back to that thing as well that this

is an uh i mean relatively speaking it's an easier actionable um kind of course to say well right women can't do this you can't do this you can't do this um it's it's much easier than trying to say okay let's set up a system that's going to deal with hospital care and let's going to set up a health system or let's say i mean those things will take years in the making and they require an infrastructure to say well right okay women can no longer leave their homes with without their heads covered it's a very it's it's it's very

actionable it's it's you know it's enforceable quite swiftly and it makes people think oh yes you know we are now controlling this kind of you know morality is coming back to us that's right absolutely oh look sharia is working you know the women are uh they can no longer ride on the back of a motorcycle with one man they have to find another way or they have to wear a different kind of hijab or they yeah it's it's a quick fix and it's also um visual yeah yeah exactly i mean some some people were asking and uh just here so i thought i'd just mention i have

spoken about this previously that um my uh about because we've mentioned stoning uh my i have got videos on these that my understanding is in line with several of the maliki's of the past who had stated uh there's a famous scholar from the around the seventh century of islam abu qasim al-buzuli and he had stated that the change with the day and age so his famous fatwa was to substitute the hadood for financial penalties and this was then followed up for centuries by

different ulama of the maghrib so um and that's something i i've got videos under trajectory hermeneutics explaining all of that but that has been my perspective that the do change as was done in in in the east as well by uh the some of the ottoman sulayman al-khanuni changing a lot of the kind of carnaun and stuff but um this thing i mean coming there there were some um some questions here as well i mean that you might get a lot as well uh and one of them namely about hijab and you know like this this is something

people just it's almost like a knee-jerk kind of reaction that you're probably very uh accustomed to dealing with yeah you know people will be like oh my god how can this woman be speaking about let's say sharia not we're a hijab now by the way my my own uh clips on hijab and my views are that the head covering is not necessarily part of the hijab it's more modesty is what the the quran in essence is speaking about and there isn't something from the quran

sunnah clearly that speaks of a you know this now we call it hijab but uh whether it's in that sense but over to you i mean this is something that you uh probably have faced a lot unfortunately is it happening now no there was a comment so i just thought well there was uh you know there were there were a few there were a few people just curious ah okay like why i don't wear hijab yeah yeah as in as in yeah well i don't wear hijab because it's not part of my my mother doesn't wear hijab my

grandmother barely wore hijab it's not part of my and they're all muslims my both of my grandfathers were muslim scholars um and so i have a very kind of firm understanding that islam comes from other factors besides hijab and it's not something that's been a very it's not something that anyone has ever um i mean i do have some uncles now who are trying but you know uh the tactic is to say you look so much better with it on but it's not i'm not against but it's not it's

um i just don't it it shouldn't have to be something which yeah it's not a and it shouldn't have to be something which is a validating factor no you know but i'm stubborn i mean to the extent that it is something that people want me to do to be validating to them i'm not going to do it that's insincere you know it has to come from me it had would have to be something i want to do and i'm not bowing to pressure to satisfy strangers you know that's not going to happen so i've i find it quite ironic that people will um let's say they will engage a discussion

um it could be something on tv they could be watching let's say a documentary or watching something there could be a woman explaining something but the moment it is oh a muslim woman oh it becomes now well oh well um you know what what happened to hijab and you think well you know these these kind of points in essence it's just something to debilitate kind of dialogue debilitate um discussion debilitate to kind of like break things down i this this is i just find it ironic

i do wonder where it's coming from you know that um like why yeah why is there a need to place a lot of barriers for women to talk it's interesting when i was doing a lot of media you know i was defending muslims and i was really taking on some difficult topics on the american national media and i've never worn hijab so i wasn't wearing hijab at the time and most people were like well thank you so much for you know being against the iraq war on the on the o'reilly factor and dealing with death threats the next day so we're gonna give her a really big

pass but you know one or two people would always say well what about the hijab and it's like you buy yourself a lot of not getting that feedback if you are kind of defending the community um but the moment you want to i mean i don't know i just think um if you look at anyone and kind of disqualify them based on something that they're wearing or not wearing you know that's kind of your problem to figure out why that's so i personally find that it is it is uh it is something within people who feel they

have an a kind of inherent authority to just try and tell people off and again and there's nothing better than religion to as a tool for that i see you know i just yeah i i just feel that that this is people feel that they have this kind of like birthright to tell other people off always and and that's uh just religion is the best way to say well god says yeah i mean um it does happen more from men than women it it has occasionally happened from women but actually it's mostly men yeah it's mostly it'll mostly just be meant to be fair

right so i can't maybe you can you can tell me what's going on probably no no i mean i just thought that's an interesting but on that uh following on from that discussion i mean what is that woman who's been um studying the shelly are conducting studies discussing it uh creating an awareness on a lot of these intricate topics what do you feel are certain um areas especially to do with women that need to be brought to the forefront that you know as as a woman as an active

uh muslim woman i mean especially when it comes to islam what do you what do you because it's i mean this is one of the big things right now isn't it this whole thing about uh you know women islam as soon as islam is mentioned i mean because a lot of people will be upset as well um sometimes you you get a reaction um you know that islam is misogynistic and you do get you know people pushing these tendencies as well i mean what are your i don't know if you've

had much engagement on the on that area well i mean generally i think we focus on the on we often focus on the wrong issues so for example people get really really upset i you know i would say i don't have a statistical analysis and i don't want to upset anyone but upset them don't worry [Laughter] my my impression is that for example people get more some people not everyone but some people i don't know i don't know you know one thing that needs to be

determined is like youtube comments how representative is that of humanity like that's what i don't know because uh pro hopefully not very but you know but it seems people get more upset about okay she's not wearing hijab or let's say this country right now people are very upset about france which yes it does have some it seems to be going in a fascistic direction but are you as upset about um fgm um that's being justified by islam seriously are you upset as upset about that

are you as upset about um the lack of education for women in various parts of the muslim majority world the high levels of depression that all of the issues that you know once in in nigeria the rates of hiv the fact that polygamy means that mass polygamy means that so many women don't know where their husbands are and are susceptible to huge rates of hiv are you as upset about that at least as upset as you know hijab and france and all the kind of western generated issues and i don't see that and i find that very problematic because

for several reasons one it's a bit hypocritical two the muslim issues are the ones we can do something about more easily right the ones that we have some sphere of influence we could get together we could organize um and it will improve the lot of muslims i mean how what's the best way to to create you know to improve all of these situations even the ones in which western governments are becoming more fascistic i would say

concentrate on that so that that's where i kind of i mean this fgm thing that you said is so important because it's it's it's interesting that a lot of the worry is found in some of the countries like whether it's malaysia uh some parts of africa indonesia a lot of them leaning in on the shaffer afir which seems to be kind of encouraging promoting borderline mandating in certain kind of uh you know fatawa and it's like you see it's there in the muslim world as in we've muslims know about it but at the same time it's like

everybody pretends that it's not it's a non-issue like they like people be like i don't even know what you're talking about so it's interesting that there's so many important issues that are just so sidelined altogether and and completely considered non-existent although they are and they have their roots in islamic discussion whereas you know because you've got ulama that are promoting it that are teaching even though they may not be horrible people i'm not trying to say that these ulama are like some kind of like butchers out there but they but they you

know they they are teaching yeah finality yeah yeah and they're just teaching it and no and other ulama that disagree with them are not really creating a platform of discourse to challenge it with them by trying to say look guys you know this what the hell you know this is we need to deal with this so yeah that's um but yeah go ahead sorry no no no sorry please oh i just was the reason that particular issue is on my mind is because of the recent death of noah sadawi in egypt and she really campaigned more than any one single

figure against the very high rates of fgm in egypt and she wasn't a perfect person like none of us are she had very critical commentary about um i think i would say religious dogma um and she really you know in her own work she saw a connection between that and these kind of misogynistic attitudes that created the conditions that made fgm so hard to eradicate and she just died a few weeks ago and some of the reaction the the the the hatred the detestation of this woman

because she doesn't wear hijab because said something critical about islam at one point you know not even taking her totally out of context because she you know and it's like that disproportionality like it's i can't respect that exactly you know this woman spent 50 years you know um really suffering she was campaigning and and you know then this weird jealousy because the west also recognizes her as someone important uh and that's nothing i don't understand there's so many um and it comes from a lot of people who are maybe in the more political islam

persuasion and who are sheikhs maybe themselves or religious leaders and they just keep hammering her because she had a few visiting fellowships in the west or time magazine put her on the cover and it's like you're all in the west all of these things are in the west that's why i don't get it you know so it there's all of that it's just i can't you know i can't rational mind suffers yeah i mean i didn't yeah i didn't know too much about uh noel uh i just came across her as she passed because a

lot of people were speaking about all of a sudden on social media so i was thinking well who is this lady i don't i don't know who she is and so uh and to be honest a lot of what i was just reading were negative comments about her by muslim clerics uh trying to say well you know this this woman you know basically saying good riddance you know yeah awful yeah i'm so happy so i i was thinking who is this and and to be fair i i initially as soon as i saw that i sensed suspicion because i felt that you know whenever people behave in that

way especially clerics there's usually uh the person you know that that's not usually the story so yeah then i did learn that okay that she was somebody that was uh an activist she was egyptian and that she had uh critiqued certain views and it had upset people that's what i'd i'd come to learn i didn't realize she was uh once the actual projects like fgm etc but i know she was outspoken in criticizing uh the you know the clergy and stuff like this and she was also outs i think what one of

the things that really enrages the clerics i think is that she is outspoken about the way that hijab is instrumentalized by um religious authorities to create a conformity in women or the conditions for that's her reading you know and there's a difference between hijab being uh or a or a symbol of islam that women can freely choose and her argument which is that you guys are using this issue to to forward your own agenda

and i think there's a lot of truth to her argument and this enrages them because i mean i've seen it firsthand when i worked at american muslim organizations i saw women being asked okay well we're gonna go on this march in front of the camera so could you wear hijab for that and then you know you can take it off if afterwards or so i mean she's not wrong people do instrumentalize this um so you know and there's almost this push to to to kind of to to want people to acknowledge that they are now outside of the fold or they are outside of

this kind of mainstream islam by saying this so people you know they it's like they will be happy to know that this person now is not a muslim or this person is not a you know because because it makes it it's it compartmentalizes it for them oh well oh well you're a cafe anyway you know you're uh or you're not part of mainstream islam you're not part of this kind of th this rhetoric is unfortunately so common so yeah get that button worse that particular in-group

out-group you have to display the identity of the way we define it or not my observation is that that's gotten worse that it used to be more fluid but i could be wrong um yeah i'm a new twitterer so i you know i just feel like the world is so much more like black and white cancel non-cancel you're good you're bad what do you think has led to this because you know in the last few decades because you've mentioned this in a pr uh in your talk as well and uh you've done a talk for those people who haven't uh seen it alongside with sharia sarkardi and

uh dr khan and that was on blasphemy and profanity within islam but in there as well you mentioned that look the world seems to have now gotten worse like the muslim scene we're speaking about and and i agree it's something which many people have said i've said it on my monday nights with multi on several occasions that look um that that especially in the last maybe 30 40 years things have got quite worse um what do you think are the the contributing factors to that what what has

kind of nurtured that element you know especially in light of political islam i mean it's gotten worse in the muslim majority world as well as i think it's gotten worse in the west no i think it has the muslim majority world too in terms of yeah the in-group out group dynamics would you agree with that 100 because i had said in fact a couple of months ago i was discussing and i was speaking about the kind of mujahideen era and and i mentioned that you see geopolitics um that one there was obviously there's been decades of instability within

the post-colonial kind of instability that's happened uh countries trying to get back and stabilize and obviously economic issues poverty and then seeing you see it's not just that but it's when you see because we're social creatures when we see other humans kind of progressing happily towards something and we don't have it it makes it worse you know if everybody's suffering it's not as bad but when if i'm just suffering and you're living the life yeah and it's then it's bad for me it's bad so people are seeing this uh

then there is unquestionably i i mentioned that you know with the american ex uh foreign policies of trying to uh the cia trying to stop the russian um you know the whole communism thing the war on communism and kind of encour just giving a green light to muslim lands to encourage the mujahideen movement so this mujahideen movement right across the pulpits throughout you know many muslim countries was like yeah jihad jahid and people going off you know this is the era of bin laden this is the era of these people going after taliban

or the it wasn't the taliban but the precursors to the taliban the mujahideen of afghanistan and people from pakistan going in and other countries flooding in and these there's a whole generation being nurtured and you know this goes on for so long and places like pakistan for example the madrasas have been built people have graduated gone back built more madrasas who've gone back now people have graduated built more madrasas it's like you've got a generation of people that have been brought up on this mujahideen kind of backdrop where

with islam its primary purpose is to rule the world where kofar are kind of really their only purpose is to be ruled by muslims you know this this dominion and it's it's it's like lurking now as a kind of cancer in the background and i feel that it's i don't know how do you get rid of these then you get written yeah i agree with you completely um and there's milder forms of it you know not everyone's like okay we need to yeah yeah yeah but you know i just i'm shocked by what i even see on youtube with

i can't believe we're at a point where you're just calling everyone everything is coof everyone's a catheter this is new you know this is and these upstarts you know who who are they what are their qualifications they just have a camera they're calling people close to left and right and because they are it's almost like they're very extreme so they get all these followers yeah and so that's enough to have authority we have a crisis of authority in general you know before with with al qaeda it it in that jihad era as you were talking about okay that was more about the money the weapons the you know the oil money the weapons etc now

there's it's a little more diversified now there's this social media internet influence um and yeah i mean what i meant what i meant you see with that era there was the there was the the warfare element the fighting element but there was the normalizing of this narrative this narrative of us versus them this narrative of being firm against the kuffar um now it got normalized to a great extent now even though you know move on a few

decades people are not now talking about let's go fight but that that kind of the normality of that backdrop is still there with the older generation who are still around and they are the people who you know are have have money they are the people who have things influenced and so it's yeah so it's yeah i mean one way of looking at political islam in a broad way is that you know islam went from it's funny and i'm teaching political islam this week in my class and last week we i

did a week on sufism and it occurred to me that one thing i could say is that if sufism is the focus on the internal political islam is basically the exact opposite it's the it's in this perspective on islam that's completely focused on the external right and so that is where we are you know that the um i do think that's getting a little bit it's it's changing a bit um yeah i i feel that too okay yeah i feel that um especially you see what seems to be happening with the

proliferation of information and and that's like a two you know double-sided double-edged kind of blade because it's got the nut cases out there doing the kind of preaching but i feel that in the muslim countries the kind of middle classes have kind of had enough they're kind of really fed up with religion as it is and the middle classes of the muslim world they kind of relate to let's say uh the country whether it's western countries or other or more developed countries it's kind of like a similar culture around the world of being of just seeking you know things

that because people are they they do want to i feel that people do want ethical values they want these things but they just fed up with certain you know like this is not uh islam so right now in pakistan for example i i'm not i haven't been following it closely but there's been this whole uh kind of demonstrations going on i don't know if they still are but they were going on last week and it was to do with a particular group that had been deemed a big extremist uh they surprisingly

they were a sufi group but it was on the back of blasphemy blasphemy laws so they kind of rose and they they kind of glorified murdering anybody who blasphemes and recently with the the cartoons in france they had done all these demonstrations saying you know kick out the french ambassador and um obviously the government wasn't doing it so they taken to the streets recently and you know they just like they were borderline kind of almost like mini riots taking place and people you know destruction property this that and and the public are getting mobilized on the back of this

it's out of love for the the honor of the prophet whereas you know it's it's an easy emotion to tap into whereas really it's it's it's got you know it's not really got anything to do with the prophet the honor of the prophet sallallahu alaihi muslim yeah yeah but uh and and so you could you see this is going on in the streets but there's things like covey there's people in hospitals there's ambulances are not being allowed to pass there's you know supplies can't go through now a lot of the regular middle classes that are seeing this they obviously hating it and

yeah and they're hating with it the religion or the that version of the religion they're thinking this is just you know it's holding us back yeah exactly um yes and you know and and that whole movement has had several decades now it's like okay go ahead you you've got the floor you know you're you are the popular resistance to everything and they haven't accomplished anything what have they accomplished for people it hasn't really been a successful movement one must say you know the the kind of

political islam i mean it's they can create some social services where there are vacuums um by these mostly terrible regimes in in the region but they don't have the long-term solutions i mean we live in a very complicated world so we need kind of all kinds of participation it's not just slogans you know um keeping people down that's not going to develop countries or fix these really huge problems so i think also the middle classes like you're saying are just noticing that this isn't

a solution yeah yeah i mean and speaking of countries that have tried to you know uh take this islamic route or try to bring about some islamic uh i don't know political change egypt uh this whole the the you know the rise of the muslim brotherhood also a a reflection of this era that we're speaking of this this whole uh we are suffering we can see certain countries are doing well in the world certain people we can see we you know and that adds to our own suffering as people because we compare and

we want some kind of we're kind of desperate for some kind of salvific you know something some salvation and people say allah is the salvation and god's rule will bring that and so tell us a bit about that because that's an area that is very close to your heart as well this is another area where hopefully i don't get in too much trouble um it's all trouble it's all true it's all trouble i often say that if yeah i don't know i don't know why i didn't get into botany we would have all just been studying flowers right now but no

[Laughter] special mushrooms think about it people exactly all these fun things that nope we're just talking about she had well i mean so egypt had a revolution as everyone knows in 2011 and that revolution was organized by youth uh we call them the revolutionary youth and while some members individual members of the muslim brotherhood joined the youth the organization itself um hung back and really can't be said that they played a major role

in organizing and carrying out the revolution um you know the muslim brotherhood started in egypt in 1928 and it's had a long history that's complicated but in from where we stand now well now is a different story where we stand in 2011 after so many years and decades of oppression followed by a really major influence on the social plane like i'm kind of in danger of going through the whole history of egypt right now which we do not want to do but um it had really become a very closed group

it's hard to join the brotherhood and really get up the ranks so it's a very closed private group and so they had they can they have their own interests in mind when they make political moves so they did not enthusiastically join in with the revolution however once the revolution was successful they sort of the accusation is that you know they promised that they wouldn't run for the presidency because for for generations now um the islamists have been really the only group allowed to influence society they really had a major influence in universities in professional syndicates and whereas

let's say the left was really put down and there are other reasons i mean one interesting question is like why did the islamists survive so much when the left is so easily crushed um and uh that's a really fascinating question it does have to do i think to some degree with their strong beliefs and is it is it is it not also an element that people they because your common person has a soft spot for for the for the faith and they see it's dignified and respectable yes that's right and so anybody who holds that corner no matter how they are they they will take a bit

of that dignity because it's it's islam after all yeah absolutely and i'm not saying that the muslim brotherhood themselves aren't dignified there are many members that i've personally met who are extremely dignified um but to the degree that it's that islam is used now i'm thinking more broadly by the all of these currents of political islam to kind of hit that spot with people who are often really suffering uh just repeatedly to try to get political power it really i think needs to stop to be honest with you uh it's really becoming

seriously problematic because that is a way to get power but it's not the same thing as governance it's not the same thing as solving problems it's not the same thing as making meaningful alliances with all sectors of society it's not the same thing as dealing with minorities and and you know it's so it's it's really problematic um and we kind of basically saw that in egypt the the brotherhood did field a presidential candidate in 2013 or 2012 when they said they wouldn't um a lot of going back on their word as well they ran for parliament um when they promised that they would

only contest a maximum of 25 percent of seats but they contested all of them won about 73 percent um when morsi was president so now in that year that that the muslim brotherhood won actually barely won the popular the election um by less than a point um so which is interesting in and of itself considering that the opponent was a member of mubarak's regime and they still only won so see the a vote for the muslim brotherhood was a vote for the revolution to a lot of people and yet they still only won by a little bit because there really is

quite a lot of people who did not trust them um because they it's a closed group i mean you know so anyway but they did win and they took power and a lot of people gave them a chance and a lot of people didn't from the beginning and it is true of course that the millet so the military i mean we'd have to have a whole other conversation about the military's game the military i've been doing a lot of reading on this lately and it seems pretty clear that the military um scaf the military unit that took power after the revolution with pressure from uh more than i had

really realized with serious pressure from the united states okay really crazy let's say some would call it handed over the country to the muslim brotherhood like okay these people need to have a chance um and how they did that is kind of interesting but anyway um so the military what interfering with the brotherhood's reign but not as much as a lot of people say in fact it was the brotherhood that made all these alliances with this uh just this just some noise coming through uh right

okay seems to have seems to have stopped okay sorry all right i'm probably hitting things as i rant about so um sorry no no no sorry um the muslim brotherhood chose to make alliances with the military when they probably should have concentrated on making alliances with the people who actually started and organized the revolution and then the military turned on them and the people ended up turning on them and i think that is a that's a very interesting point that i

think a lot of people um are not really grasping i really believe there was a popular revolt against islamism in egypt in 2013. and then the military came and um didn't made a coup uh and then got rid of but they could not have done it without the popular so i call it a popularly backed coup uh people argue about this point a lot of people don't like it when i say this but it really is my real opinion based on what i observed um i think a lot of people would agree with me on this so now the problem is that the military now are you know

totalitarian and that's basically a whole other story um a little more complex also than it's sometimes portrayed but the problem is you know there's the rabbah massacre which was absolutely horrible uh it was the master of the muslim brotherhood um in august of 2013. so it's very hard to not see this as all a big tragedy that the muslim brotherhood are simply a tragic kind of story but i think the objective reality is that it's a little more complicated than that um and although there's no justifying what happened

matthias with the massacre so um so i think because of the tragedy of the massacre we are not as willing to really admit that there was a popular revolt against islamism and i just think that we need to understand that pretty clearly as western analysts um to really see where the region uh to see that because what's confusing to like your average western thinker is like wait a minute why would these muslims revolt against the muslim brotherhood you know not understanding that there are several different approaches to islam and that islamism

is a different phenomena than islam you know and so my observation that the p most people who revolted against the muslim brotherhood were muslims and conservative muslims it was not just liberals no that's not true that's really interesting and it's kind of under-appreciated yeah no because it's very clear that when you look at the revolution and people that seem to be at the front of the revolution uh especially when it was being televised and it seemed to be just young people who were using social media and the tahrir

square kind of movement and they didn't really they seem to be your common person not the religious person they seem to be your you know they were the common guy and girl out there in their t-shirts and jeans and you know with their kind of uh phone mobile phone and and just that's what you know the news the media had when it was showing it so it showed it clearly demonstrated it was a people's kind of rising that the people themselves were rising it was not something you know on the back of a kind of let's have a theocracy or you

know it wasn't something done on the back of a and yeah a faith revolution it was just people we've had enough of corruption and it comes back to that same thing you know just coming right back full circle in essence all people really want is a sense of justice they just want you know like i have fundamental rights i shouldn't have to bribe people to have my basic human rights like i should you know i shouldn't have to if i need to have something done or get a permit or do something i shouldn't have to pay bribes i shouldn't have to kind of like i these are fundamental

human rights i should i should have access to them and and it's these things that people really you know when they say what god and islam and this is what they're seeing they're seeing truth just being honest living an honest you know how earning an honest wage not trying to harm people like it's basic human values i mean which today which are really you know whether it's which is what islam is saying it's not any different and and this is why i find it so surprising when sometimes muslims

will criticize like the you know the united nations kind of charter for human rights and they'll say things like well oh my god like don't endorse things like that that's me that's like made by man for human rights but it's it's right for human beings it's not really saying anything that's fundamentally different to what islam would be saying or any faith yeah this it's exactly that i mean it's exactly that turn that i feel is kind of new i mean at least it's different than the modernist in the turn of the 20th century this idea that like there's this i mean i i i keep trying to

think of a word other than cult you know but what is the word for why does it have what like so if there's a set of principles that are exact first of all we live in a diverse human community if there's a set of principles that are very similar to what you consider to be sharia principles then how could you not support that set of principles exactly what have to be part of your bubble like what's up with the bubble i think that's the new thing right and it's it's not serving us well yeah and it's almost it's seen with like when it comes to the united nations

for example or things like this it's seen with contempt like people feel that no this is a man made and for example point such and such has made this particular like they they may try and find a particular contentious point but the the overall thing it will be that no no anything that humans have come up with and and this is such a naive uh representation of islam because islam is it is you know it is allah subhan with allah saying that look he is telling you in the quran

that he this is here to enjoin good without explaining what good is because you already as human beings have an understanding of what good is you know this is here to prevent harm you know uh these things because you already know what they are the quran doesn't then go on to explain them it just has an assumption that you know what what's good you know what's bad just you know just deal with it i mean yeah i think one thing we have to think about is that when i when i think about your question of like all right well why are people nitpicking the un declaration of human rights or why are they so suspicious

one of the answers you often hear is all of the wars you know the the drones the interference piccolo the interference and so the distrust of the west and you know that's sort of the um that's the kind of immediate at this point i want to say knee-jerk response i don't want to be insensitive but like it's i don't know i think what we're witnessing lately goes beyond a rational critique of i could be wrong it looks like it goes beyond a western uh a rational critique of western foreign policy and that it's really

entered into like a a whole other sphere yeah sure i mean i get i do get that i mean i understand and i agree that naturally politics will always play a role in you know in in in human interactions especially at a global level there will always be you know whether it's even intra-muslim politics or whether it's going to be inter-politics or global politics and and naturally with you know you could you could see for example and it's interesting because you see america because america is kind of

it's it's very america's like an odd case study isn't it it's like something which uh like no country really seems to behave the way america seems to behave and it seems to have this you know uh but but at the same time it's kind of leading in in these things and it's doing this but then it's kind of throwing its weight around and it's um and it's so from a muslim perspective it's seen as the enemy of recent times um so it's seen as oh this is the enemy you know they've come look they've invaded and naturally these things obviously the iraq war and all these things

i agree are tragedies but it's interesting that you see muslim the sentiment will then become confused with other countries because it's it's not so clear what's going on with those countries so even though russia because of the russia afghan war had this kind of negative image yeah so fair enough but let's just say like so for example japan now japan doesn't muslims don't have a sentiment towards japan so it's like it doesn't even exist on the radar china it's surprising because china has good relationships with pakistan and it's in fact seen as one of the most

friendliest nations to pakistan so uh so so so they kind of confused on this okay and then people have raised the whole weekend considering what's happening to the uyghur yes so the weaker weaker issue and so it's interesting because you're going to have like imran khan the who raised who built his whole kind of his present his uh you know his presidency i mean the prime minister sorry his whole ministry on the back of uh we will establish a medinan like state he said that in his you know in his inaugural speech that we will establish

a state like that of medina and and he said and by that i mean justice and compassion and ethics and whatever but when he went over to china and then he said that look this is just a national issue it's like they're a political issue the weaker thing is not and a muslim concer it's not an islamic global concern so it's interesting the whole how politics does play that role i mean it's undeniable that uh you know yes it is true because of the way america behaves around the world it's only natural that a lot of muslim countries will be incredibly suspicious

and you know kind of just um just on the back foot whenever it comes to america thinking well you know i don't know yeah but our whole existence cannot be resistance to america you know that cannot be like you know not to get too into this rabbit hole but the syria conflict is really the one where it's like guess what america is not a center of that i'm sorry the syrian conflict is like i remember i remember this clip that said well if you think you're confused and then at the end of the four minutes you're like mega confused it says turkey iran russia they're helping them they're helping

them they're helping them the only thing you can say is that it doesn't fit the mold of an american imperialist war right so it's are we really getting anywhere by i don't know this like that to america i mean we're not kind of not there anymore but we're in a very confusing time but we need to just kind of i just feel like occam's razor razor you know like the the best way to solve the problem is to solve the problems you can solve in yourself and your society just like start there yeah no absolutely and i do feel coming back to what we were saying earlier on that you know

with with the younger generation kind of um taking more of the the kind of the front seat because of just just sheer numbers because now the muslim majority within the western world arguably even in the muslim even in the muslim world is now just it's going to be young people who are uh they're definitely 30 and below so that is now the majority of the muslims and the younger lot are increasing you know exponentially in number outnumbering those who are older than them

and thereby also diluting that kind of mindset and this is coming back to that point that i i sense that change is kind of there is some change on the horizon because people because the younger people ain't really they don't buy all this or they're not that engaged by this whole talk of i see the most interesting things on instagram and facebook from the youth like uh during ramadan right now you know normalize women being able to eat during their periods

you know uh nor little like oh you know hey like we didn't used to talk like you know you know i don't think you feel old like i don't know i mean they're just on this other plane and they're not you like each other you know and you're like whoa i mean normal i i think you see i think that's bringing its own challenges and yeah yeah so we're going to soon move away from the challenges of old and we're going to have this thing where everything has to be so politically correct and so

yeah we're in trouble i think we think we are in serious trouble [Laughter] i definitely cannot fit in with that culture so that's they terrify me i mean i love them i teach them and i actually really like that generation they're so thoughtful but they're also terrifying so yeah in terms of in terms of just getting mad getting mad at you

that is so uh it's interesting because there is this whole um there's a there's a it's like that you know amongst a younger generation there is a an energy to fight but but they're not quite sure what the fight is but but there's a strong spirit that is true to fight like we want to fight for something but we're not quite sure what that thing is but we need to fight for it it's like it changes every day it's like it's like it's okay there's a new thing to you know oh man

oh that's uh yeah i mean it's but do you find that this generation still have that interest you said look i teach them uh do you find that there is this interest still there in when it comes to learning and when it comes to wanting to you know acquire knowledge about about the about the tradition or or what you know just the whole history and everything the tradition yeah of course do you find that there is i do i absolutely do yeah no they're you know they they're curious they i mean the thing is the the major mysterious life questions never get

solved so they're always going to be there and they are absolutely you know this is kind of why i love teaching what i teach because i teach like the weird mysterious stuff that you know you can keep talking about forever we're not going to exhaust it you know what's what's what's some weird mystery mysterious stuff well you know why are we here the ultimate questions are right stuff you know um what is the nature of truth allahu akbar we need we need some dmt to get on this scale

oh yes that would be very interesting oh wow so no that's i definitely because i a lot of the interactions i have with uh through social media with people that are young that are asking a lot of these questions i do i do on one hand i find i see that that side that they that they can't relate to the things of old and therefore this is why maybe some of them come to people like me or they uh their interests because they do have that genuine interest they want to learn

um and now and they're very vocal they're not you know it's like you said they they they say they don't really care and they sure do yeah so which is which is quite you know because the questions now will be like well why why is it like this no and you know even you think whoa whoa okay we need to ease up but uh but on this you know on the same token there is with this i feel the whole the nature of the discourse is changing as well now you see it's coming on to things like they want to the the the discussions to do with islam

have kind of evolved as well now with them as in it's more about their kind of struggles in light of islam i guess so it's you know it's these whether it's going to be these rights movements or these you know whatever they kind of struggle that they are involved with but they want to know about that in light of islam and so it's like say about transgender issues yeah exactly so this is a huge topic now so people everybody would want to know about whereas if you went back you know 10 years even nobody would really you know this would seldom ever be asked things like this and and i feel that wow

so on but but the connection to the faith i still see it because it's like you're saying these things are you know constant journeys for everyone that that kind of soul-searching that that kind of well you know why are we here uh yeah i mean no matter what happens in in a lifespan or in a generation or in a century all human beings are always going to to have those same questions it's crazy does anybody ever arrive at the answer yeah

it's true though i mean yeah uh yeah yeah i mean you have a different role than i do you you people you're a musty so people uh people ask you to answer these questions for them i go out of my way to say that i am not um you know i'm not a spiritual leader i'm a professor so i teach you know i'm like but you know of course you design your your curriculum in such a way my goal is to show people that the absolute um complexity and intellectual depth of islam and different approaches that that is amazing because that is the the legacy of islam that i

absolutely you know i'm in love with as well that the depth the profundity of the intellectual uh the thought and just richness of that tradition that that is there i mean amongst other things but that is the the thing that i've you know that has captivated me and i hope to you know maybe kindle the flame for other people so i think you are yeah um you having to actually answer questions like what does islam say about transgenderism like that i mean you know you can do it you know but it's just like that's

those are [Music] yeah and then you've got to fight what is it because every time you engage in these kind of discussions you're thrown off orthodox people there'll be somebody trying to catapult you outside of orthodox islam well oh yeah can you go and line up with the non-muslims please i mean this happened to me a lot after the blasphemy debate yeah right and and uh i just so i'm not in that world like i don't watch those youtube videos and i don't i'm not so much on twitter and

so i was just shocked and for me i'm like wait i'm sorry who are you to catapult me out of islam like exactly like why do you feel that you have that authority it's amazing yeah when did this arrogance happen i just it's a little you know that's a little bit new like and based on what because you don't you based on what because i just you disagree with me or because i don't wear hijab and like now you're gonna get on and fire and brimstone me on and i felt that that's uh that that's actually and the discussion in and of itself was very fascinating very interesting

um for people who haven't seen it i'll um it's it's on youtube um and it's something i think definitely that if if you if you watch it it shows because even in the discussion i did feel and that uh did bring up you see it's it's not it's not about shaykh but it's just about this whole role that so often is seen that when a discussion is there to to kind of bring power elements into it like well you know orthodoxy uh sunni islam

obviously it's all sunni islam i mean uh you you weren't there arguing from a shia perspective or from a you know you you were just or other people you know mukta or khan wasn't it was all sunny islam anyway but it's just to you see when people take they assume certain agency or power dynamics within a discourse to say well you see you have to you know just let me just remind my author i remind everybody of my authority it it becomes quite i just feel that that is um you see that's what then it's all also

encouraging for other people to kind of just lash out um it's it's basically i i feel that we need to kind of outgrow this way of speaking we need to allow people to encourage discussion encourage a discourse and leadership needs to take leadership you know if if i'm an imam if i'm a sheikh if i'm you know an islamic preacher then i should be teaching my following not be being dictated to as in i'm too you know oh my god i can't you know i can't kind of like rock the boat

because no i should be kind of like well steer ahead this is how we how we're going to do this but yeah right i mean well i feel grateful that i just don't ever i don't have the gene in i don't recognize their boat like i'm not intimidated by this oh you have to be like me no i don't who are you i don't know no i don't have it um because maybe i know my history i guess you know but it's just this is a very um i don't know it's a kind of authoritarian way of acting and i don't know why how anyone can claim to speak in the voice of the ultimate truth or of

god with such authority and such fire and brimstone it doesn't make sense to me it doesn't conform to my understanding of islam and i don't know and and i feel the hubris that is assumed when people claim to speak in the voice of god i find that just so arrogant like i find that you know people criticize me people criticize me for answering a lot of my questions when i answer them by saying that look in my opinion in my understanding in my and and that's actually one of the common criticisms against me by my haters is that i mean yeah and

they say that you know well we didn't ask for your opinion we didn't ask for your understanding we're saying what does allah say and you think well look how dumb this is because obviously whoever's telling you what a lie is saying is just telling you his interpretation of what allah is saying it's not like allah is actually speaking through him yes yeah we don't do that in islam we don't have a class of people who speak directly to god and no yeah i mean i people should know that you know well maybe we don't maybe thinking is kind of scary sometimes you know so you have to grow into it yeah and i

i do feel that this thing of this um it is so this journey we have to understand that it is our journey to god like we are human beings it is our road our path it is not god coming to us in that sense that we are trying to discover along the way we are trying to kind of like you know we have to walk this path we have to realize we and there'll be ups and downs and and this is another thing with religion often people are held in check that oh my god that you has your you know that

as though your faith has sunk all of a sudden that oh my god you haven't done this this sense of accountability this sense of oh my god you must always you know iman now that you have it it must be this this kind of like high horse that is always kind of you are just static and it can never and people hold each other in check you know they kind of that's really sad because when i i you know people cannot we're human so we can't maintain that so it ends up with a lot of hypocrisy and double lives and and and lying uh i've seen that over and over again so

that's not really the point you know yeah no absolutely absolutely and it's yeah but i mean i suppose it is a one on the bright side there is this uh coming back to i suppose what we were saying about a double-edged kind of played which is modern-day information technology and its proliferation and you can't really stop the voice of people and although it does bring weird people but i suppose it depends that's a perspective who's weird we're pro we're probably the weird ones oh weird is not necessarily bad i think we're talking about

something another word yeah yeah so it does bring out yeah we're definitely weird it brings out the nut cases but yeah it also allows the the voice of enlightenment to just speak and you know people who want to uh gravitate towards it can do so whereas in the past like if you like let's just say even if it was a few decades ago like yourself dr you know you trying to express yourself get your message out there i know you you said i focus more on just teaching and i'm not trying to go about kind of being an imam

or something like that but still as your message just putting it out there yeah and even me like me trying to just put my message out there the truth is how would have it been done because you would have been just denied access to you know because the gatekeepers of certain platforms would just deny access because they would be like well no you know this doesn't conform this is too you know liberal or modern or or unorthodox or deviant or and you wouldn't be able to speak because that's right you know maybe you'll write a book but they'll just burn the book

yeah no you're right it's true pretty much anyone can say i i do notice that a lot of the people that i would want to hear more from um don't have as many channels on youtube i think we need more of that you know yeah it's interesting because i've i've said this um in the past as well that especially in arabic i've said that it's shocking that when you consider the number of arabic speaking countries in the world and you look at the amount of you know the like egypt al-azhar such an ancient institution uh you've got the i know it's not as functional but zaytuna in

tunis in tunis and the karwyen in morocco another institute so many universities so many reasonably you know you'll get enlightened voices but still when you run a google search for an issue in arabic like nine out of ten things forums that come up are just salafi i love that you made that point on one of your recent shows because that is so true and you know and and you said that it it's uh it's so disproportionate it's proportionate it is absolutely i say that to my students all the time it's i mean disproportional

because you think it's islam is selfism uh and it's disproportionate and that so i spent all my time trying to correct that basically yeah because that's very that's a big problem because and that's such a it's just wow and i i i don't understand how that is is like that because you have enough faculties with and talent to be able to just write stuff in arabic and have it out there on online but it just does it's not they're very well resourced and organized and you know they have states backing them you know so it's like an uphill battle but i think even just saying even

bringing it to people's attention hey guess what you're hearing it a particular version of islam here and in fact it's a reform movement and it's very recent and so you need to at least know that you need to move beyond this yeah wow absolutely absolutely so yeah well i mean i think that's that's something to to at least hope for inshallah that there is some hope from the uh enlightened voices inshallah you know on on a quick note and i know we've been uh taking up quite a quite a lot of time as well and

i'll have to catch a bit of sahur before so this but i i know we spoke previously about the whole blasphemy thing and and in egypt there was uh the whole thing with um uh with uh taha and the whole uh you know with blasphemy when he'd questioned the arabic language i'm not so sure if you were um i mean that the whole thing about when he'd questioned the jahili and said that a lot of these had been fabricated in his book of

uh uh i think it was called i think it was actually just called fish and he says a lot of this was fabricated in the abbasid era and stuff like this and yeah and he'd been put on trial for plus for me yeah in a state like egypt which you don't think is actually that harsh on such matters of you know but it's just it's just something that occurred to me i did i thought well it's just worth but it's just amazing that wow you know you can how tenuous things can be that you could be questioning something and and it's you know people could just whack on a label that oh my god this is yeah you know this reminds me of

uh shahab ahmed's work his book on orthodoxy what is islam that one not the one islam actually the other one um about the satanic verses and orthodoxy actually can't remember the name of that book right now the formation of words i can't remember what it's called see his other book that came out um about the satanic verses on orthodoxy but what he does is he shows how the satanic verses was a non-controversial event that was discussed in the earliest sources and even up until the 19th century in egypt it could be discussed openly and then at one point in the mid 20th century it became

and people were put on trial so one of his central questions is to ask what happened historically you know to make this how could something go through a very interesting point yeah yeah wow no it's i haven't actually read that book of it's okay i'll actually check that out yeah wow that's that's a very incredible incredibly powerful point that how could it be that something which uh is actually spoken by muslims and even though some muslims did reject this it's interesting actually that people like qadha yad who said that who you know decried it and said that this is

uh insulting to the prophet yet people like ibn taymiyah who's hailed today as a superhero of islamic thought that he he said that that it actually happened he said that this satanic verses it was a authentic and the devil basically got the prophet to add verses to the quran make him up to praise false gods and yeah and he said but it's it's no big deal because allah corrected it yeah and would be on trial for blasphemy today i mean can you just can we just yeah if

you just take a moment to just let that sink you think right oh my god like what on earth is he saying he's saying that shaitaan kind of influenced the prophet to kind of add verses to the quran and that two verses which glorify the pagan gods and completely nullify the heed but it's okay don't worry it did happen he this is him to say me it did happen but allah corrected it and allah says you know it's no big deal yeah that was the main position until we studied that's just crazy so you know we just

think about that and you think wow and and and considering the fact that not only was that discussed and written and kind of somehow to some extent i won't say normalized but to some extent it was kind of like tolerated and it was not yeah as in it was part of the discussion and and even then ibn samir himself is especially in recent times glorified massively like it's not it's not a problem you know you said it so what that's an academic position of his you know it's an ill me position and you think yeah this is wow

and people get him a lot of slack that they don't cut the rest of us wow that is uh so so true but uh dr sarah it's been epic uh i've really thoroughly enjoyed the discussion i mean a lot of interesting things from the shariah what it means to why people want it to hadood to iconography of the sharia why it's pictured in certain ways is the recent political kind of upheaval how that ties in with people wanting islam the muslim brotherhood all of these things right down to

blasphemy and hypnotamia and the satanic verses a lot for people to to kind of just start and we got into women's i think we've covered wow there's quite quite a bit the alhamdulillah so uh people uh sarah would you is there something if you'd like to say to the viewers before we wrap it up maybe a if there's any message and also how can they connect with you if they want to as well where should they reach out yeah well um ramadan is what i want to say to people

and thank you for this if you want to get in contact with me i have a website um sarah altmantawi.com and you can the contact form just goes to my email or you can look me up at fordham and send me an email there although if you're going to uh declare me some like a kaffir don't send it to my work account this is my website for that so that's it there you go guys you got that thank you very much i'm a big fan of yours and i really appreciate it i think the work you are doing oh shukra and chukran ideally appreciate that it

it means much alhamdulillah so shukran once again so people you've heard that you know where to connect uh reach out to the website or the email i will i'll put a link to your website in the in the youtube description okay so okay very cool very justmyname.com all right you do in it and any any books on the way inshallah i may have my book called sharia on trial on the nigeria issues and the stoning that we talked about today and i'm working on a book now on the on the muslim brotherhood in egypt so that'll i can't say that you're rattling cages you're rattling cages

yeah i don't know why but the way i was born i guess yeah right so once again and people shook her and for watching for taking the time uh if you've got any questions leave them in the comments otherwise remember to like and subscribe i'll put up the exit page as we to leave and once again from me and dr sarah once again shukran uh i really appreciate jazakallahu for taking the time out thank you so much