Islam and the West - Ed Husain

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Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Frances Foster. I'm Constantine Kitten, and this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest today is the author of Among the Mosques. Professor Hussein, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you for having me. It's a great pleasure to have you. We've had a bit of a chat before the interview started, and I can already feel this is going to be a really interesting and important conversation. Before we get into it, though, tell everybody a little about who you are, how, how are you, where you are? I've messed up that question twice now, and what has been your journey through life that leads you to be sitting here talking to us?

Well, my journey started here in London. I was born here to parents who came from two different countries, one from Arabia, another that was then British India. They came here in the 1950s, so family's been here for decades. But I migrated to the United States of America, where I teach at Georgetown University. But I'm British, I'm proud of my country, I love my country, and therefore I come back often, and I keep a close eye on on all things here. I went to school in East London. I then went and studied History and Middle Eastern Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies. During my early years, I got caught up in what's today described as extremism. I, you know, I think an older generation came to political maturity through communism. My generation of young Muslims growing up in this country came to political maturity through what we call Islamism. You know, the, the politicization, I think the, the bastardization of a faith, you know, there's making it all politicized and making it all confrontational. So I was involved with a range of organizations, you know, Hamas, which is now banned, which was then allowed. I was involved with those guys, as well as Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, and others. I saw the light very quickly. I saw how shallow they were. I left them, and I then went and studied Arabic and Sharia in the Middle East, in Syria and Saudi Arabia. The 7th of July, 2005 bombings happened. My sister missed one of the bombs by about four minutes, and it was too close to home. I came back to Britain and I wrote a book called Islamist, that did very well. And then I helped set up a think tank, and then I moved to America. The Council on Foreign Relations, at the height of the Arab Spring, got involved in some of the governments there and advising on how best to govern, but also what some of the mistakes that the Islamist organizations were making, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood. And then I came back to Britain because Tony Blair and I had a certain rapport in approaching counter-terrorism and approaching the way in which the Middle East ought to be governed. And then I started reading more of Roger Scruton's works, and I did a PhD under Sir Roger Scruton, and God rest his soul, and I benefited immensely from his knowledge and the way in which he saw the world. And then I returned to America, and, uh, I'm there now, but I come here too. So that's the long and short of it.

And we're delighted to have you. And what, what an interesting intellectual journey that, that, that is. You know, being radicalized somewhat, and then not, and then Tony Blair and Roger Scruton, very different people, and to be influenced by both, I suppose. Look, before we get into the book, let's just, we've talked about this before, and I think most of our audience understand the difference between Muslims and Islamists and all of that. But since we're having this conversation with you fresh, can you just explain to people, because I think a lot of ordinary people who don't have the time or the inclination, frankly, to get into all of this deeply, sometimes they can, they can be conflation or misunderstanding. So can you just separate this out for us, uh, so that we, we would start from a good place?

I think the best analogy, Constantine, is to look at China. The average Chinese person is not evil. They, they're, they're culturally Chinese. They have, you know, cultural traits, and they're good human beings, as most human beings are. But then you have the Chinese Communist Party, that is evil, that has a worldview that's confrontational, that wants to dominate the rest of the world. Similarly, with most Muslims, they're like every other human being. It's, it's their faith is cultural. They turn to God. They, they have a certain worldview. But among the ordinary Muslims, you have this politicized beast called Islamism, that is set up to derail the West, that believes in destroying the state of Israel, that undermines women's equality, that hates gay people, and wants to destroy every nation-state in order to create a great supra-Islamist caliphate. And that's Islamism, distinct from Islam, the faith. Now, Islam as a faith has many manifestations. I mean, the way I see it is a continuation of the of the Old Testament and the New Testament. You know, most Muslims believe, in fact, all Muslims believe in the Jewish prophets, the Hebrew prophets, and they believe in Jesus as the Messiah, which distinguishes us from our Jewish friends. But they also don't think that Jesus was crucified, and they think the Prophet, and we believe the Prophet Muhammad was also divinely inspired, and the Quran is a, is a poetic testament to that. So that's the ordinary Muslim. And I think anyone's who's met most Muslims or been to a Muslim country will know that Muslims are like anyone else, hospitable and kind, and all of those traits. But Islamism, much like Chinese communism, is the threat that produces terrorism. And that, I think, is a simple distinction.

Ed, the one thing that leaves me baffled is, uh, I, I, I kind of understand why if you grew up in certain countries in the Middle East, like my grandfather was originally from Lebanon, why you might be radicalized, right? Particularly, you know, when you see the history of that area. What I don't understand is young lads growing up in London or Manchester, growing up in the West, and then buying into this philosophy.

Yeah, great question, Francis. I don't blame the young lad. I blame the rest of us for not having the confidence to say to the young lad, "Come on board. This is Britain. This is how we live here. These are our rules. You sign up to them, and you are now a Roman citizen." That's how it used to be for the ancient Romans. You signed up to Roman values, SPQR, the Senate and the People of Rome, and you became a Roman citizen, and the whole world was your oyster, and you had the protection of Rome. And we don't have that confidence. We're busy self-flagellating ourselves for historical mistakes or otherwise, rather than saying, "Britain's one of the greatest countries in the world." That, I mean, I could go and live in China, by the way, for 50 years, I'd never become Chinese. But you can come here and sign up to British and broader Western values of reason, individualism, gender equality, and open society. And this is unique here, and it's racial equality, and you're British. Welcome on board. But if you then want to support terrorism or organizations that want to undo the thousand-year-old settlement we have here, from, you know, 1066 to Magna Carta to where we are today, then you don't belong here. You know, you belong somewhere else. We don't have the confidence to say that. So we've left people alone. And I think the focus on just, "Oh, if you speak English, you're fine." Well, no, that's not good enough. You know, that's just the bar is too low. So the, the battle of ideas is what's got to be won. In other words, if you come here, these are the ideas you sign up for. You then get citizenship in exchange for that, and you love and you're a patriotic person belonging to this country or this part of the world. The Americans do that generally better than we do. Um, but, but for as long as we don't do that, it's easy, I think, for teenagers and others to get sucked in by whether it's communists, Islamists, or others. So, you know, if it has to be a rethinking, or not blame shifting, but recalibrating, it's on the rest of us who don't share that extreme ideology to be proud of who we are as a people and as a nation and as an island, and what we've done for the rest of the world.

Which brings us neatly onto your book, Among the Mosques, in which you went out and you went into mosques around the country, and you spoke to people, and you, you asked questions. What did you find?

I found lots of good things that surprised me, and I think that those, those things ought to be mentioned. You know, in a mosque in Edinburgh, to see a gay couple sat in a mosque kitchen, now that, that really shocked me. To go, uh, into Birmingham and see a lady working in a clinic for gay people, that surprised me. I, uh, to meet young kids in the madrasa in Dewsbury who are playing with Jewish kids. I mention that because we judge a society and its strength by how it treats its minorities. And I think the ultimate test is how we treat our Jewish cousins and forebears, and how we treat people who have a different lifestyle to us in the private sphere, i.e., homosexuality. By those two tests, you know, I, I was surprised, and I was, it was generally heartwarming. I didn't expect that. Why not? Because I thought the perception of people who were religiously pious was conservative, right? As in, they would not be open to the other. But they were, and that's positive, and that's cause for hope that we can continue to maintain a pluralist, free, open Britain and open society. Um, by open society, I don't mean George Soros. I mean, I, I mean Karl Popper, who, who went to New Zealand, who loved England for its openness, for standing up against the Nazis. Yeah, I don't mean, I don't mean George Soros. I should clarify. The language has become very difficult. On every year, I know you say something, people think you mean something else.

So you were pleasantly surprised by some of these things. Are we going to talk about the Great Reset or not? To Constantine's question, um, but what surprised me was the following things. That I, I often go to synagogues, I also go to churches, in the spirit of the, you know, the Abrahamic faiths that we've all inherited, that have produced these great civilizations. And I hear prayers for Her Majesty the Queen, or in the US, you know, for the country, for the president. But I don't hear those prayers in mosques in Britain. And that worries me. There's a disconnect that, you know, the monarchy and everything else is somewhere out there. We are an insular, different setting. Um, so the lack of patriotism, public, open patriotism, worries me. The second thing that worried me was a focus on a different legal system. So in some mosques, there's an attempt to impose a Sharia law in, in personal elements of people's lives. My fear is it always starts like that. You know, you, you have a different legal system for divorce, for inheritance, uh, and, and for, you know, matters of how you raise children.

Ed, I'm going to stop you there. How does that work? So if somebody's getting divorced, or if there's, there's some kind of altercation or a perceived injustice has taken place, how does that work with the Sharia law?

Well, if I was, if I was a woman, a Muslim woman, let's say in, you know, Loughborough, Keighley, Dewsbury, Bradford, I wouldn't be able to just readily get a divorce. I would need my husband to issue a divorce for me. And in the absence of doing that, I would need to go to an Imam in a court, who would then arbitrate on the, on behalf of both couples. And then the Imam would issue a divorce on behalf of the man, or say to me that I'm not deserving of a divorce. For example, if my grounds were that I've been beaten up, and I, I don't want to sustain a relationship in which there's physical violence, that the Imam would rule that it's, it's prescribed in scripture that the man has the right to beat a Muslim woman, and therefore the divorce won't be granted. My point is, why should British women be subject to any Imam, foreign or otherwise, telling them their legal rights that are theirs by birth? In other words, it's their decision when they get divorced. It's a British court that decides whether they get divorced or not. And those decisions are not made in a mosque or any other place. So there's a parallel legal system in operation here, and it's growing. And it's a real threat because it plays on the identity of a Muslim woman. Is she Muslim or is she British? She's British. Her being Muslim is is her faith and her relationship with God. If we break that contract of having one law for one nation, we are opening up conflicts for the future. In which, this is how it started in India and Pakistan. This is how it started in parts of Lebanon. This is how it starts in parts of Bosnia, that you can't maintain one rule for one nation. So then nations start to start to break away. And I'm not saying this happens today, tomorrow. We've got to take a long-range view on these things and not make the mistake of. So the Sharia law was one. Um, a third was gender segregation. You know, we talk about apartheid, but the gender apartheid is a real factor in many of the mosques. Women were not allowed to enter in many of the mosques. These are mosques, you know, in Dewsbury, Bradford, many of the mosques in which women were put in these tiny little cupboards at the top to pray. So the gender segregation factor is real. And I think the fourth factor, and perhaps the most worrying factor, is many of the Imams, with all respect to them, are not trained to understand a post-enlightenment, post-industrial, modern Britain. You know, they're still rehashing scripture from the 1840s in India. The Deobandi movement, it's the same movement that spawned the Taliban on one side, but to be fair, they also have a secular movement in India. So we've got the more extreme version. So those three indicators are real problems for. Right. So, right now, we have 2,000 mosques. We have about 4 million Muslims. Now, amplify that in the coming years. Let's assume the number of Muslims increase. In and of itself, that's not a problem. But if we have this kind of politicized, separatist form of religious identity, then I think it's a real problem because you will see the political map changing. You will see constituencies and and politicians, you know, trying to garner votes with a certain type of messaging that leads to a more separatist, more Islamist, uh, uh, worrying Britain. Now, people may say, well, I'm being alarmist. Well, I say to you, just two weeks ago, you had a guy from Blackburn getting on a plane, going all the way down to Texas, holding a synagogue hostage. That's from Blackburn. I say to you, when the Israelis responded to the terrorism out of Gaza, we had men from Bradford come down into Finchley Road and other parts on a Saturday morning, when that, when there are fellow Jewish friends of ours and fellow citizens going to synagogue, addressing them with, you know, we're, you know, using expletives against them and their mothers. And I could go on and on and on. So we're already seeing separatism. People were driving through North London. Yeah, with a convoy saying, "Rape Jewish women," etc. Yeah. You put it politely, they used other words. Yeah.

Um, so I think you've worked out by now that I'm not a scholar of the Quran or of the faith in general. But the question I would ask is, it, it has been said by some people that the political, the merger of politics with religion is inseparable within Islam. That it is a political and theological ideology, and absent a reformation like the Christian faith had, it will always be that way. What do you say to those people?

Yeah, that's an interesting argument, and I would say that's a historic argument. It belongs in the history books. It belongs in our past, because you can't live, 30 million Muslims who live in the West. The West is built on secularism. It's built on secular laws, and it's built on nation-states. You can't live as a citizen in those countries and believe that you're now going to undo secular laws, undo nation-states, and bring in some kind of Sharia arrangement. If that's what you want, then, you know, please live in Afghanistan, because that's what they're trying to do over there, because they want to go back to a different world. The world has moved on now. Can Islam modernize? Can Muslims modernize? Absolutely, they can. And the best evidence for that is what we're now seeing in several of the Arab Gulf countries. And the best evidence for that is that we now have 52 Muslim nation-states. They're not forming a caliphate. They want to be secular nation-states. The best evidence for that is those countries want secular laws. Other than Afghanistan, not, not a single, 51 of the other Muslim countries, you know, want to lash women or want to stone adulterers or want to bring any of those holy. Saudi Arabia, I don't think women are lashed anymore or stoned. But the point is, even in Saudi Arabia, they're trying to reform and modernize. Actually, I see exactly what you're saying. The only question I would put to you, I have a friend who actually trained as an Imam before moving on with his life, and one of the things he always said to me is, "People like you who are saying we need to move on, you are blaspheming according to the scripture. You are trying to reform a religion that has very precise definitions of how you ought to behave, and the idea of reforming is blasphemous."

Yeah, I don't agree. I don't think the, the, the Muslim record over the last 1400 years agrees. In 1857, the Ottoman Empire, the Caliphate, decriminalized homosexuality. You know, this is before Oscar Wilde by 140 years. You know, so it's just worth bearing in mind that there is a long tradition of reform and change and modernization within Islam. I mean, the Prophet Muhammad was supposed to be a reformer. That's the whole point. He had a problem with the doctrine of the Trinity, and he was trying to reform. Islam began as a reformation. It began as change. It began as a renaissance. We can't now become the people who suddenly are becoming frozen in time. That's not who we are. It's not blasphemous to seek for change.

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Across the Muslim world has changed. My fear is that Muslims in this country are stuck in the 1970s imagination of what it means to be Muslim. The Middle East is changing. For example, the Abrahamic Accords, who would have thought that you would have peace in the open, a warm, lively peace with, with Israel, between multiple Arab nations? So my point is this, that reform and change is normal. You know, you can either change. Edmund Burke famously said that in order to conserve, you've got to change. Conservation depends on change. If you don't change, you die. So Muslims have got to change and adapt. We saw in the life of the Prophet Muhammad, he changed from being in Mecca to Medina. You know, we saw his companions changing when they went from place to place. You know, we saw Islam in Indonesia is different from Islam in Bosnia, is different from Islam in Nigeria, is different from Islam in Saudi Arabia. We can't now say that in the year 2022, here in England, we are not going to change and adapt. Well, then don't come to England, because there's a certain way of doing things here. When you're here, you do them as they're supposed to be done, rather than trying to recreate Afghanistan here.

One of my mates is, is a Muslim lad, and I was talking to him about this, and he said to me, "Part of the issue with what we're seeing in this country, Francis, is that a lot of poorer people came from India and Pakistan and Bangladesh to this country, and they have a far more conservative version of Islam than the upper and the middle classes in places like India." Is that true? Would you agree with that?

That's partly true, but it's not the whole story. Because we have people who came from India who were Sikhs and Hindus from similar parts of the subcontinent. You know, Sikhs came from the Punjab, Muslims also came from the Punjab, Hindus similarly came from parts of India from which Muslims also came. Then it begs the question, why is it that we have Hindus and Sikhs who are very patriotic and generally much more integrated than parts of Bradford and Keighley and, you know, East London and so on? There's something else going on. And it's the question that we discussed at the outset, Constantine: Islamism. The desire to have a political ideology. Make Islam your personal faith and love God as much as you want. But when you make that your political ideology, which you must impose on others, you must hate Israel, you must dislike and see women as second-class citizens, that non-Muslims are somehow filthy, and that that public, public politicization is the problem. If we had to identify one thing, it would be that. And then I would also ask the question, why is it that Muslims in America are so generally much more integrated? You know, I, I don't want to name names, but someone who I know from here went to live in America, a prominent British journalist, is a British Muslim journalist. Went to Washington DC, went into a mosque to pray, and he was shocked to see that many of the members of that congregation were Muslims who worked for the CIA, the State Department, the Pentagon, the US Army. And he, he just, his whole thing was, "I thought we were against all of those institutions." But American Muslims are American, and they proudly serve in the US armed forces. When we see more and more and more British Muslims serving in the British armed forces, there are a good 600 or so at the moment, but we need to see that reflected, as per, you know, 4 million Muslims. Then, you know, you were making real progress. When Muslims start to pray for Her Majesty the Queen, the Royal Family, you know, we're making real progress. When Muslims in Britain start to behave like the United Arab Emirates and other countries, and make peace with Israel, and love their fellow Jewish forebears, you know, we've made progress. Until those things happen, we have a genuine concern for what awaits this country.

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Ed, how much of this is a problem from rogue Imams preaching this kind of hatred, this intolerance? I'll give you an example. So for about three, four months when I was doing supply teaching, I was working in an Islamic primary school. And I had a brilliant time, actually. I really enjoyed it. They were lovely people, warm, kind, one of the best schools I've worked in, really, really was. It was lovely. You mentioned there was a lot of discipline there. Yeah, yeah, which I agree with. No bad thing in a school. Yeah, exactly, exactly. He always complains about the discipline, lack of discipline. Yeah, they were, they were behaved, actually. But there was only one incident that caused me real cause for alarm. In that, three o'clock or half two, they, they had an Imam come in to give Islamic studies. And he sat these kids down. And I was teaching a Year Two class at the time, it was covering maternity. So how old is that? So Year Two. This is about six and seven years old, right? And he sat them down, these little kids, sweet little kids. And he was telling them stories from the Quran, all good. And then he went, uh, and then he told the story about Jesus, and why Jesus, and the story of Jesus. And he said to them, "Jesus was killed because the Jews were jealous of him." And then he, and then he repeated it several times more than was necessary. And I remember watching it and going, "What's going on here? Is it, is this indoctrination? What's happened?" Do you see what I mean? I felt really uncomfortable. Yeah. And I didn't quite know what I was seeing. And then when you see about these other rogue Imams, you think, is this what's happening up and down the country? So I'm sorry you had to encounter that.

Yeah, most Muslims don't believe Jesus was killed, much less killed by Jewish people. So it's, it's strange that this Imam would be putting out basically Nazi propaganda. Um, you know, we all know that Jesus was Jewish. We all know that the New Testament, most of his followers were Jewish. So it's wrong to just blame Jewish people because, you know, his movement was Jewish. Um, so, so that, that aside, rogue Imams, yes. But I, I don't, so I've got to be honest, Francis, I don't think the problem is with Imams. Yes, we have Imams that could be better trained, and yes, we could have Imams that are much more patriotic. But the Imams are responding to the congregation, because, you know, their salaries are raised, you know, among the congregants. If I had to identify one source where things need to be addressed, and you're near there, which is the education space. You know, on our university campuses, we're afraid to assert, you know, what would be, you know, right values versus wrong values. We're afraid to say that certain values are, yes, superior to other values. If you believe, you know, in female genital mutilation, I'm sorry, that belief is not just inferior, but it's invalid in the eyes of someone who believes in gender equality. There's a superior and right value, and there's an inferior, incorrect value. If we're not prepared to make that argument, then on university campuses, we have this moral relativism. Everything's right, all values are the same. Then art, and what that then produces is a media class and a political class that won't challenge the Imams when the Imams are saying that a woman who is beaten up in her marriage, seeking a divorce, can't get divorced because somehow it's scripturally valid. So it's all connected. But the, the root of it, even for the rogue Imams, is to do with what we're teaching our elites, if you like, those who are going to be forming the new cohort of political and media leaders. And I think so much of that is to do with, with, with, uh, with the university space that needs to, you know, it needs to again, you know, remember that the university is, is an outcome of the, the, the academy that Plato started, that the Socrates is student, that it was about seeking the truth, it was about philosophy and reflecting on the world, and not indoctrination. So once that, I think, is addressed, then then we'll see, you know, the wider education system, and then the rogue Imams and others are minimizing, because it's all connected. It's all interconnected. And, and for as long as we, the rest of us, don't have confidence in who we are and asserting that, I don't think we can hold migrant communities hostage and say, "Oh, how did, how dare you believe X, Y, Z?" Well, no one told them to think otherwise, and no one explained that in Britain, you know, women are equal in the eyes of the law. They have legal status that's equal to that of a man. They think they're second-class citizens because no one sat down and said to them, "No, it's different here." So I, I blame ourselves for not getting all this right.

Before I ask you about how we try to remedy some of this, which I think is very important, obviously, the one thing that strikes me is I watch, I used to not anymore, but I used to watch a lot of TV Newsnight, Question Time, all of that stuff. And I fear that I, like many people listening to this and watching this, have never heard a Muslim on television or on the radio or on YouTube, frankly, talk the way you're talking. So when we think about Muslim, we think of someone who Newsnight would have on as a sort of, "Let's trigger everyone," Anjem Choudary, or some rogue preacher or whatever. Right? I don't think many people have heard someone who is Muslim come in and talk about gender equality, come in and talk about, "Well, look, if you don't like it in this country, and you want to live in a caliphate, well, there's some people trying to make one over there, you go back there and do, do that." Right? We're not having that conversation, honestly. So I'm really grateful that you're here and we're having this discussion, genuinely. But it does seem to me like what you're describing is a very serious problem, very serious problem. And when you look at, you, you talked in one of your previous interviews about the population dimension of this, the, the native population, uh, or not the native, whatever you want to call it, the, the white British population, or the non-Muslim population, let's say, is declining as a percentage because we're not having enough kids. The Muslim population is doing great, big families. And if you expand that over time, which isn't a problem in and of itself, I agreed, in and of itself, fine, agreed. But what kind of Islam is emerging? Well, right. If you let, I don't know what the percentages are, but let's say 0.1% of all British Muslims are Islamists. Let's say for the sake, it might be more, might be less. Do you know, would you have an estimate?

We don't have a percentage, but what I can tell you is currently 43,000 people are being monitored by the intelligence agencies. That's a problem enough, right? So, so let's say the Muslim population grows to, what I think it's like 15 million by 2050, something like that, some of the estimates from the ONS, which versus four now. So then we might expect, absent a significant political change in that era, in the area, that it's not going to be 43,000, it's going to be 130, 150,000, right? So if this continues, the scale of the problem is going to get bigger. Yes. And the political repercussions of that, you've alluded to, are going to get bigger. Yes. And the violence will get worse. Yes. Right. So what the hell do we do about it?

Well, that's the, I mean, you know, you, you've made my case perfectly, I think. You know, this is, this is the real issue. But thank you for your kind words. This is a real issue. It's not going away. We're afraid to talk about it for fear of allegations of, you know, quote-unquote, Islamophobia. Um, you know, the Chinese accuse us of Sinophobia when we talk about communism. You know, it's the same thing. Yeah, Russians now got onto on the racket as well. But make that up. It shuts down conversation. You know, yes, there's genuine fear, and yes, there's, you know, uh, attacks on Muslims, and they should be condemned, and they shouldn't happen, and every individual is sacred. There's no doubt about that. But it goes back to us having the confidence to be able to say what you just said. You know, "If Britain is so despised by you, please leave. You're not forced to stay here. You can always go to Afghanistan, or you can go to the remnants of ISIS, you know, wherever they're, you know, still operating in parts of Syria, or, you know, go wherever you want." But, and may I interrupt you very briefly? I, I'd love you to expand on this, but you must know, as someone who used to work in politics, how toxic what you've just said is, but someone's got to say it. Someone has got to say it in order to give our politicians and our media class confidence over time. I'm not seeking votes, I'm not seeking popularity, I seek the truth. I love this country. I have two daughters, and I want them to grow up in a country in which they're not discriminated against. I want them to grow up as proud Muslim women who have the rights as any other woman as British citizens. I don't want them to marry a man who says to them that, "Oh, I can beat you because it says so in scripture." Nor do I want them not to be able to get a divorce because they're dependent on some Imam. Nor do I want them to inherit any less than a than a son would. So for me, this is very personal. And I want my children, and I want their generation and others to grow up as proud Westerners. And there must be no conflict between being Muslim and being Western. And if there is a conflict, then being Westerner comes first, because the West is equally Islamic in my eyes, and I can make that argument based on history and scripture. There is no contradiction. There is no clash of civilizations. We've got to have the confidence to say that. That this, this part of the world, I mean, you don't get to say Thomas Aquinas without Averroes, or Maimonides, you know, and without that, you don't have the Reformation, and where we ended up now with the Enlightenment. So we've got to stop saying that we're somehow at a clash. Once that's done, and we agree that Muslims belong here as Westerners with equal rights, but sign up to the Western values, you know, stop trying to subvert them, then what we're in a position to, to do is to tell, give our politicians that confidence, which is what they don't have. We haven't won the argument yet. And I think once we've won this argument that we're having now, because ultimately we will, and we must, for the, for the safety, security, prosperity of this country and this part of the world, we must. Every other option is a non-option for us. You know, there, there isn't going to be a harmonious coexistence in parts of Blackburn. There just isn't. You've got to win this argument. And people who want to live a separate life have got to decide whether they want to be in this country or somewhere else. Otherwise, it causes genuine long-term, uh, clashes and conflicts that are not in the interests of any, quote-unquote, community. You know, I hate that term, by the way, because we're in, we're individuals. We're citizens. And where we're in this country, you know, subjects. And another country, citizens. So that's the first point. The second point is the education issue. You know, uh, whether it's at school level or whether it's at university level, this has got to be addressed. That what Britain is, as, as its own history, what it is in terms of, I mean, I call it rigor, reason, individualism, gender equality, the openness of this country for free speech and free press, its uniqueness, and racial equality. Every one of those facets are opposed by Islamists and communists, by the way. And that's why those six letters or ideas that form the acronym RIGOR inform us and come, hello, high water, we mustn't compromise on a single one of those. And now there's Hegelian dialectic where you just compromise and find a third way. Now, we've come to this point through a lot of blood and through a lot of treasure being sacrificed in two World Wars.

Yeah, no, I, I agree with you. I agree with you completely. And by the way, your point about the fact that there is no clash of civilizations, it's been echoed by many of our previous guests who we've talked, Amon Dean, former Al-Qaeda, informer turned started working for MI5, and many others to explain to us what you said, which is the conflict isn't between Islam and the West. The conflict is between Islamists who hate the nation-state and want a caliphate, and everybody else. Yes. Which is why they're not only blowing up people in this country, they're blowing people all over, all over the Middle East have died, of course. Yes. That's because they want those nation-states not to exist. Exactly.

Exactly. So I get all that. My question to you, and I, trust me, I fear what you fear as much as you fear it, and I see it coming as much as you see it coming, because it's obvious. Once you start playing identity politics in this way, the end is obvious, into tribal conflict. It's inevitable. But you can say this because you're a Muslim and because you're brown. I can say because I'm an immigrant and because I have dark skin, and I can go, "Well, as an immigrant, I actually, you know, if Russians in this country said, 'We need to make this the greater Russia and live by Russian standards and adopt the Orthodox Christian religion,' I'd be like, 'Why don't you [ __ ] off back to Russia?'" That's what I would say. And I'd be okay to say that. But Francis wouldn't, right? And I'm not saying people shouldn't say, because we should be able to, as individuals, as patriots, as citizens, take a position that's of relevance to our individuality, our citizenship in our country, regardless. I mean, Martin Luther King's, "content of your character, not to judge." That was his dream, not to be judged by the color of your skin. And that's who we are. We can't. We had two black Roman emperors. You know, the Romans had that. They were a hot spot of, you know, and that's who we are. That's what makes us unique and different and open and special. So how do we get there? This is what I'm asking.

But continue to defend the Enlightenment heritage that we have. You know, those of us who want to conserve liberalism, or the Enlightenment tradition, and that's what it is. We, we can't. I think we're doing it now. That we're defending our inheritance, and we refuse to give up. I refuse to be seen just as someone with a certain skin tone, or just as my gender. Judge me by my content of what I'm saying, and my character, and my behavior. Don't judge me by, because otherwise we're undoing Martin Luther King. You know, we're undoing all those people who died. And it's got to be done by us doing what we're doing, but defending it by not cow-towing, but not doing the tribalism. You know, um, and ultimately, you know, in the long term, it's got to be winning the political argument, reform on our university campuses, and by, by winning the battle of ideas among Muslim communities and others. And I think, forgive me for being an optimist, I think we are. I think I don't think we're losing this. What do you have?

I think we're, well, the evidence is for us winning. Well, I think, you know, you're seeing even from, uh, David Cameron to Angela Merkel to Boris Johnson to Macron, these are all centrist political figures who have thrown out the baby of multiculturalism. You know, they, they, they realize that, you know, you, you can't just say we're, we're all the same. So, so that's now, yeah, that's a positive sign. The second positive sign is that there are many more Muslims who are making the kind of arguments that I am, and people from other faith backgrounds. And the third argument is, I think, I, I always judge something historically, and now, by the way, in which we're treating Jewish people, because they're, you know, they're an ancient people who've been with us for 6,000 years, and everyone who's mistreated them has got it wrong over the years. So how Muslims interact with the Jewish state is absolutely vital. You know, Israel was so isolated just five years ago, and now we're seeing a greater acceptance of Israel, which bodes well for the future of the Middle East. But we haven't seen that here yet. And I think that's another positive sign. A fourth sign, if I have, is the defeat of Jeremy Corbyn. You know, that's got to be a good sign that we were on the cusp of an anti-Semite taking power, and Labour Party, one of our great political parties, taken hostage by these, you know, the, the ugly alignment of the far left and and Islamists, defeated roundly, you know. So I think those are, those are signs that we must. And, you know, my teacher Roger Scruton used to say that, you know, we must always be optimistic, otherwise we run the risk of talking ourselves down and embracing, embracing a negative future. And we mustn't, and we can't.

Ed, it's, it's such a brilliant conversation. I'm really enjoying it. We had Ed West, the journalist, who, and he made the point, and it's something that struck me, and I always think about it, actually, that if you don't talk about taboo subjects honestly, then what happens is you're never going to find the solution to the problem, because you're not discussing the problem in an honest and frank fashion, and you're not dealing with all the facets of the problem. My worry is, is that we continue along this route where we have taboos. And what always happens in this situation is you get nefarious figures from the far right who will come along and go, "Look, they're not talking about it, but I'm going to." And that can start a movement. And what happens at that point is that you're in a really dangerous situation. Yes, because what you're doing is just collecting tinder by not talking about it. And eventually, something's going to happen. There's going to be a spark, whether it be a terrorist incident or something else, and we're going to, we're going to be in a very dangerous place.

Absolutely right. And that's not too exaggerated whatsoever. You know, it, it, it takes just one or two incidents to create. I mean, I, I could, you know, in my mind, you know, Serbia comes to mind. No one thought that Serbian nationalism would trigger the First World War, but it did. You know, in France, now you've got someone from the far right who's a serious political contender again. This is the fourth French general election in which there is someone from the far right that's a popular contender. And Britain has been very blessed over the last millennium that we don't have extremist political forces. You know, but we shouldn't take that for granted. The English-speaking world is genuinely at risk with this issue. So we should speak about taboo subjects. I mean, since when did we stop pursuing truth? Since when did we stop having a battle of ideas? And we got to where we got to by discussing taboo subjects. The Enlightenment was exactly that, you know, having a reasoned conversation with religious clerics and others in order to get beyond dogma. Now we can't. Having got here after 500 years of people dying and which is being burned and heretics being killed, uh, you know, civil wars and world wars, we can now, we can't now say we've got a new set of dogmas, and please, we're not going there. No, we are. We're going everywhere. There's going to be free conversation based on respect, but pursuit of truth, but.

The use of free reason, without which we're lost. We're going back in time. It's regression. And our forefathers, you know, many Muslims and others died in both World Wars. You know, didn't fight two World Wars for a free world in order for their grandchildren, us now, to be captured again for a new set of dogmas where, as you say, taboo subjects are off the table. They mustn't be.

But you work in a university, Ed. You must have seen with your own eyes how freedom of speech has been degraded. You know, students complaining that they need to feel safe, etc., etc. People being de-platformed. Yeah. I, I, I work at Georgetown University in Washington D.C., and I've got to say, in all honesty, I haven't faced any of those difficulties. I honestly haven't. I teach a course on Western civilization and Islam and Judaism, and how the three forces over time gave us the modern world. And, uh, you know, I defend the West. I explain the West. My students are there, part of the security studies program, to then go out. Many of them have done active duty in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. So, I mean, it's the real-world stuff. And I've got to say, I haven't.

Yeah, you're not dealing with pink-haired 18-year-olds, though, are you? The postgraduates. And you're not talking about the trans issue. They're all welcome. They're all welcome. They are all welcome because they too deserve to be in these classes in order to have those conversations. You know, I also cut some slack to the younger generation. I think you're allowed to be a, you know, blue-headed or pink-headed, whatever it is, for a period of time. And then you grow up, right? You grow up. You realize the real world, and then you start to appreciate the inheritance that we have. I mean, Stephen Pinker is completely right on, by every measure, where we were just 200 years to where we are now. You know, we can only give gratitude to the past, to where we've arrived.

And how much of a problem do you think is the narrative? And look, the narrative has got a certain merit to it. You know, that America are the oppressors. What they've done in places like Iraq, Syria, has caused untold suffering. They had no business being there. How much of a part has that played in radicalizing young men?

It's had some. I mean, they, those are grievances that are used, right? But 9/11 happened before Syria, before Iraq. You know, in 1993, Omar Abdul Rahman, the Blind Sheikh from, you know, Egypt, was involved in the World Trade Center. This is 1993, after the West had got involved in Bosnia against the Serbs and other Christian nations, you know. So, I, these are all ideological kind of issues that they use to mobilize people. The real issue at the crux of it is that there is a movement out there, just like the Chinese Communist people hide among ordinary Chinese people, Islamists hide among ordinary Muslims. And it is that force that's active in 52 Muslim countries that seeks to destabilize, as you rightly said, Constantine, those countries first and foremost. You know, over 45,000 Pakistanis have been killed by the Pakistani Taliban. And to do away with those nation-states and that secular settlement, and before it comes here. So, it's that ideology which we've got to defeat. And the good news is this: we have defeated other ideologies, and we have won. But the way we've done that, yes, you know, the radio free Europe and so on, those are all tactics. But we have got to assert and retain and defend and be proud of who we are. If we're not going to defend who we are, I mean, Hillary Elder used to say this, the great Jewish rabbi, that, you know, if a nation doesn't know who it is and defend itself, it doesn't deserve survival. That's a strong warning to who we are. If we want to continue to be the world's top dog, we've got to know and defend and pass on this heritage to our children. Again, you know, Edmund Burke was brilliant at this. You know, that society is a contract between the past, the present, and the yet unborn. I mean, this is our heritage. We have got to defend it, for if we don't, nobody else will.

And but the problem is, so you've got this very small sliver of society now. You can say to them, look, if you're not happy here, go. But what do you do with them, really? Because if you put them into prison, they not only become even more radicalized, they radicalize other people. You know, what was interesting, Francis, is the strongest reaction that we've seen from that camp, that small camp you've identified, was when Priti Patel threatened to remove their citizenship. That's the thing that gets to them the most because they realize they're operating under the banner of British protection. The moment you remove that protection, you start seeing them getting edgy. The only time I've seen them in the last 15 years mount a serious challenge to that way of thinking, which tells us that it hurts them, which tells us that it worries them. So, in the meantime, I think that's exactly the way to go. That if you are, we have a word for it, it's called treason. You know, we've had it on the books for more than 600 years. Um, if you commit acts of treason, there will be repercussions. In a free and fair society, you mean, of course, you can question, you know, our direction of travel. And of course, you can question, you know, certain social practices. I think we're all aghast that we, you know, we have a culture of people getting drunk and vomiting on the streets. We want to, we all want to see a better country. But let's work on this together rather than saying the entire West is at fault and therefore we're going to blow you up. Um, and if people are of that persuasion, then we have, we've got to make being in Britain for that type of person unwelcome.

And do you think, are you in favor of stripping citizenship? Sorry, for instance, in the case of Shamima Begum? Are you in favor of, uh? Well, Shamima Begum, I'm afraid I am, because she made a conscious decision and she went, even though she made it as somebody 15, underage, under legal age, etc., etc. But I don't think, I don't think we've seen genuine contrition from her. You know, I still have a problem with the kind of people that are representing her. You know, I don't want to sound libelous here, but there are genuine issues as to the kind of people that are representing and the kind of arguments that they're making, and the lack of contrition. You know, wearing western clothes isn't contrition. You know, there's an ongoing legal process, and let's not get into that. But the point is, you know, Shamima is a reminder to millions of Muslims as to how great this country is that she wants to come back. You know, she's not saying that she wants to go to Afghanistan. So, but here's the problem. And you, as an educator on this, I'm sure you've grappled with this question. I doubt I'm the first person to ask you this. But this is the problem of a tolerant society. If you become too tolerant, then the intolerant people within the society will triumph. But to a British listener hearing the idea that we might take someone who's here in the third generation, who's never been to any other country other than Britain, who hates this country, who's maybe committed violence here, to strip them of their citizenship, isn't that un-British?

No, it's very British. Very British in the sense that your citizenship is something that's dependent on you having a contract with the rest of society, where you don't go around killing them, destroying them, undermining what this country is all about. When that's why we have something called the treason laws. And every year we celebrate Guy Fawkes Night because he was a Catholic terrorist trying to blow up Parliament. Guy Fawkes, remembering that moment, is among the most British things to think to do. You know, so I don't think it's un-British to say, if you want to blow up Parliament, and we've had four attacks in the last 10 years on Parliament from Islamist extremists, if you want to remove the British freedom of women to wear whatever they want, whenever they want, however they want, wherever they want, if you want to kill our Jewish citizens who contributed to this country from 1070 with William the Conqueror all the way to Israeli and onwards, you're not part of us. And the way you're not part of us is that you no longer enjoy the privileges of a British passport and British citizenship. Now, it's obviously got to be violent and it's got to be active. I mean, someone who's questioning all of that is fully within their rights, as was Jeremy Corbyn, to want to make friends with the IRA and want to make friends with Hamas and Hezbollah. You're fully within your rights to be a dissenter. But when you take up arms and when you undermine, you know, us, our people, our institutions, and then you join forces with our enemies to destroy our soldiers, British soldiers who are putting their lives at risk so that all of us can sleep at home peacefully at night, that's not British. And the way you punish that is by removing the very documents and the very privileges that allow you to commit treason against us. I know, you know, Guy Fawkes is the best example that comes to my mind.

So I guess what you're saying, we should deal with acts of political terrorism differently as we would with common criminals. So if someone, you know, if there's a stabbing incident on the street, we don't deport people for engaging in that. But if you are engaging in that for political purposes, as an act of intimidation, of terrorism, etc., you consider that a different issue.

They've been, there have been several Islamist terrorist plots against the monarchy, against the Prime Minister, against the Foreign Secretary, against Parliament. Three parliamentarians have been attacked. I mean, this in the last 15 years. What more do we need before we say, when you act against the country, its institutions, its history, its symbols, and you attack our most treasured minority communities, i.e., Jewish communities, and you know, we've had suicide bombers from here going to attack Israel. At what point do we say enough? And I think that point is here. And I think this point is now. And I think Priti Patel is right to want to remove citizenship from people who don't want that citizenship, who hate that citizenship, who speak out against their citizenship, and commit acts of violence against our greatest people, our armed forces. And we've got to be able to make that argument with complete confidence. You know, a lot of mainstream people watch our show, and I hope they're listening because I don't know, I haven't thought as deeply as you have about this, and instinctively, I am quite uncomfortable with the idea of stripping people of nationality. Even from my own perspective, you know, I've made my home here, my life here. I kind of like to think that even if I make a mistake now, this is more than making a mistake, to be fair. I can stay here and serve my people. What if you took up arms and decided to want to, you know, [ __ ] off back to Russia? There's no question about that. So, I think most common sense-oriented people would agree with this line of reasoning, right? So, what I'm saying, otherwise, we don't have a country left because those numbers, agreements, and institutions are attacked. You know, I agree. So, I hope that the mainstream people who watch our show and politicians who watch our show take note of what you're saying and give you a bigger platform. I also think you're ahead of the curve. I think, you know, as a year, and I think we're at least 10, 15 years ahead. People will come to this argument in time. Look what's happening in France, yeah, in Belgium, in Holland, and across the continent. And, you know, we've always been outliers in the continent in more ways than one. And we've got to win this issue on our terms, rather than be. This is my big concern, Ed, is that I hope that the people who hear this and listen to this, and who come in the future to addressing this issue, because it needs addressing, there's no question about it, address it from your position. Because for me, the fear of having these conversations has always been the same, which is you are emboldening people that you don't want to embolden. Sometimes you're giving a voice to people who want conflict. This is the problem, right? There are a lot of people, you see it with COVID now, and I know that you've tried to stay the hell away from it, and actually, you've made the right decision. But there are people now who are pro-restrictions and anti-restrictions who really want COVID to carry on because it gives them meaning, it gives them purpose, it gives them validity, gives them a platform, it gives them all of that, an identity. And identity as well. And that's my fear. And that's why again, I'm so grateful that you're here and we're having this conversation, because there are ways to have this conversation that are very destructive.

I think I agree. And it's a difficult conversation to have because it is about identity, heritage, faith, emotions. And that's why we've got to be reasonable about it. And I, the thing I think most people won't understand is the people who stand to gain most out of us getting this right is Muslims, and especially Muslim women. You know, who are currently, you know, who get married at a mosque and want to go for a divorce and suddenly realize they don't have any rights because they didn't register their marriage. You know, over a hundred thousand of those marriages are going on now. So a Muslim woman coming in, say, from Pakistan or any other country, has rights because under our laws, we recognize those marriages. But if a Muslim woman, born and raised in this country, a British national, gets married here at a mosque, she doesn't have any rights as a married woman because the law doesn't currently recognize, you know, Sharia marriages because we don't recognize Sharia law. So if we get this right, it's Muslims who win. It's the very country that our forefathers came to is protected. It's a win-win situation. We get this wrong, it's Muslims who suffer most. The so-called Islamophobia is harmful most to Muslims. But overall, we all benefit because this, you know, we all love this country, and we cherish the air and the soil in which we walk in the countryside, and it's beautiful. We want to maintain that. So, and do not worry that with the stripping of the citizenship and the British passport, that it potentially creates a two-tier society because there's some people who will engage in acts of terrorism, etc., etc., but because they're British for five generations or whatever it may be, they won't face the same punishment. I don't think it only becomes a two-tier society when it's a widespread problem, when you've got tens of thousands of people. I don't think that's what we're looking at. If we get this right, if we get it now, worst-case scenario, I think we're looking at a couple of hundred, three hundred people. You know, but if we let this fester, that's when we end up in a two-tiered society. And that's why we shouldn't get there. We should address this now before it gets out of control. And I think it's eminently doable. Now, we may feel squeamish about this, but I put it to you that every other alternative is far worse.

Agreed. The only problem is the way our politics works is people don't deal with problems until they become far worse. In which case, it's far worse. Looks ugly. It does. It looks bloody. It looks, I mean, it looks in parts of the North, in particular, you know, horrendous when you look at it. I'd encourage people in the South to go up to Blackburn, you know, go up to Dewsbury, and come and tell me that's England. And what will they see? I think parts of Dewsbury, industry, not Didsbury, because I got into trouble with the Daily Mail, who've got Jewbury and Didsbury. Didsbury's fine, other than a moth that produced the guys who, you know, the guys who prayed there, went and, you know, one guy in particular who used to pray at Didsbury Mosque was involved with the Ariana Grande concert. Think about that. Ariana Grande's concert attacked by a guy who prayed at a particular mosque. I go to that mosque, and I still see some of the extremist literature that was used then, used now. And it has a Sharia court too, you know. So that's what the future looks like if we don't get it right. But I think in parts of Dewsbury, what people will see is, you know, areas that look more like Afghanistan. And they should be rightly worried about that, you know.

Why should I? Why should I go to a mosque in Blackburn or Keighley and see Palestinian slogans and support for Hamas? How does that work? You've got Peterborough nearby with much bigger issues. Why are you focused on a conflict about which you have zero involvement? Why should I go into a bookshop in Walsall and read literature that's being sold that denigrates gay people and women and Jewish people? I mean, I could go on and on. I'd encourage people to read the book. I haven't plugged the book in the way that Americans plug books all the time, saying, read my book, read my book, read more. But I mean, I've documented it all, and it's in the book. And I think those who care about the future of this country should read it and defend it with every fiber of their being. Muslims and others are welcome to this country. You know, it's not putting up the barriers, and they come on board. But as the ancient Romans did, become Roman. Don't try and undermine and subvert a beautiful country and a civilization that's welcoming you, giving you shelter, comfort, and your children prosperity. That's a beautiful note to finish on. And I really admire your spirit of optimism as well. And I agree with you temperamentally, if not intellectually. Anyway, I share your optimism. But we'll see whether either of us is right. And it's been a pleasure. The book is called "Among the Mosques," and I do genuinely, of course, recommend that people get it and read it because I think they'll get a deeper insight into many of the things you're talking about. But as ever, we've got one more question for you, which is always, what's the one thing we're not talking about, but we really should be?

Christianity. Christianity. It's the heritage that has made this part of the world different from other countries and other parts of the world. Because it's with Christianity you get individualism, because it breaks from, you know, inherited religiosity. And there's, I mean, one of the things that Roger said when I last met him, Roger Scruton, I remember seeing sitting beside him in his country farm, and he said that, you know, the teaching that Jesus gave in terms of rendering unto God what is God and unto Caesar what is Caesar's, made this part of the world different. The bedrock of secularism. Now, love each other as I've loved you, you know, the bedrock of forgiveness and inclusivity. And, you know, those two teachings in particular. But I mean, I could go on, but I don't want to kind of upset people with the whole kind of crucifixion and people get upset because of the Trinity. But the point is, we don't have to talk about Jesus constantly in those terms. He was and remains probably the greatest teacher that humanity has ever had. And I think here in the West, our distance from Christianity is creating some of the dissonance that we're seeing now because we've forgotten notions of forgiveness. So part of the identity politics and cancel culture is that, you know, once someone's committed a blunder, well, what's their way back? We don't have redemption left anymore. Hence, I think the talk and remembrance of the heritage that this country and other countries indeed have from Christianity is important because without that spiritual energy, giving force, we will continue to stray away from the great heritage that has been passed on to us by Christians and others of the past.

Ed, thank you so much. If people want to find you online, where's the best place to do that?

Twitter, I think, is probably where I'm most active from time to time.

Okay. Thank you guys for having Ed. And at, what is it, underscore Hussein with one S, you know. We'll make sure to put that in the description and the link to the book as well, of course. Thank you. You've both been fantastic, by the way, and keep up the excellent work that you do. Really appreciate that. We're going to ask you a couple of exclusive questions for our supporters only. But for now, thank you so much. And thank you guys for watching and listening. We will be back very soon with another brilliant episode like this one. Or raw show. All of them go out at 7 PM UK time. And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go, it's also available as a podcast. Take care and see you soon, guys. How much do Muslim community leaders, in inverted commas, actually reflect the opinions and values of British Muslims?