1
00:00:00,090 --> 00:00:05,550
Ladies and gentlemen, Los Angeles. Good evening and welcome to Liberty Centre.

2
00:00:06,060 --> 00:00:09,900
My name is Eugene Rogan and on behalf of the fellows of the Liberty Centre,

3
00:00:10,200 --> 00:00:16,770
it's my great pleasure to launch this first seminar of our Friday seminar series.

4
00:00:17,580 --> 00:00:25,140
It's not an entirely innocent initiative to explore the state of the field in contemporary Islamic studies.

5
00:00:25,560 --> 00:00:32,580
Indeed, our Speaker today didn't even realise what the back agenda had been until he appeared today and I feel today.

6
00:00:33,210 --> 00:00:39,930
But the fact is, we're going to be launching a search to refill the chair in contemporary Islamic studies.

7
00:00:40,440 --> 00:00:44,159
And we thought it's a subject we haven't really had the opportunity to explore in

8
00:00:44,160 --> 00:00:49,170
great depth recently and what a good opportunity to get to know the field better.

9
00:00:49,800 --> 00:00:57,750
So we're hoping to get a number of practitioners from the field of contemporary Islamic studies to come and help us realise where

10
00:00:57,750 --> 00:01:04,620
the field is going in a way that will lead us to successful recruitment and the best possible appointment to join this community.

11
00:01:05,250 --> 00:01:08,010
So we have eight speakers lined up.

12
00:01:08,520 --> 00:01:15,260
I will skip this week's speaker and lead the honour of introducing him to our chair for tonight, Professor Longino.

13
00:01:15,750 --> 00:01:19,170
But we will be covering the whole range of the field next week.

14
00:01:19,170 --> 00:01:24,510
We have Professor Asma as far as dean from Indiana, Indiana University in Bloomington.

15
00:01:25,350 --> 00:01:35,400
We will have a week three fund lecture from Seattle School ID, Week four, Professor Katrina de la Cura for the NSC in week five.

16
00:01:35,790 --> 00:01:39,180
Professor US Volcanic is from Utrecht in the Netherlands.

17
00:01:40,210 --> 00:01:44,670
Week six Professor Rachel Scott, who will be coming to us from Virginia Tech.

18
00:01:45,970 --> 00:01:52,330
Week seven, Dr. LV and Vehicle was coming from the University of Edinburgh and Week eight

19
00:01:52,900 --> 00:01:57,700
Professor Sahara Siddiqui coming from Georgetown University's campus in Qatar.

20
00:01:58,300 --> 00:02:06,130
We feel that each of these scholars is really opening new avenues of exploring our field in ways which will provide for fantastic seminars.

21
00:02:06,520 --> 00:02:10,360
And so I count on seeing you week in, week out for the seminar as it unfolds.

22
00:02:10,930 --> 00:02:17,520
But I'd like to get right down to the business of this week's seminar, and I'd like to invite my colleague, Professor Nabeel to introduce US Speaker.

23
00:02:17,560 --> 00:02:29,770
So welcome and please come back. So it is now my turn to to to welcome you.

24
00:02:29,800 --> 00:02:38,440
My name is Eugene. Just told you and I am delighted to welcome today Professor Mohammed Halim.

25
00:02:39,010 --> 00:02:43,209
Professor Halil is a Professor of Religious Studies and Adjunct Professor of

26
00:02:43,210 --> 00:02:49,000
Law and Director of the Muslim Studies Program at Michigan State University.

27
00:02:50,080 --> 00:02:57,129
He specialises in Islamic thought. He has edited various volumes, such as between heaven and [INAUDIBLE], Islam,

28
00:02:57,130 --> 00:03:04,540
Salvation and the Fate of others, and also, more recently, Muslims and US politics.

29
00:03:04,540 --> 00:03:16,150
Today, a defining moment. And he's also the editor of and the lead investigator of the Muslims of the Midwest Digital Archive.

30
00:03:16,930 --> 00:03:19,270
However, as many of you will know,

31
00:03:19,630 --> 00:03:29,290
Professor Khalili is author of Islam and the Fate of Others The Salvation Question that was published by Oxford University Press in 2001,

32
00:03:30,100 --> 00:03:43,900
and also of jihad, radicalism and The New, which was published by the University Press of the other place in 2017.

33
00:03:44,500 --> 00:03:54,940
And as you will have noticed, the title of that book is not completely unrelated to the topic of his lecture today.

34
00:03:55,210 --> 00:03:58,510
So, Professor Hamid, looking forward to you and your partner.

35
00:04:05,220 --> 00:04:09,300
Well, thank you very much. Thank you, Professor. You for that generous introduction.

36
00:04:10,200 --> 00:04:18,720
It's a pleasure to be with you all. Many thanks to Professor Eugene Rogan and the fellows of the Middle East Centre for inviting me.

37
00:04:19,050 --> 00:04:20,880
Professor Rogan has been a very gracious host.

38
00:04:21,840 --> 00:04:32,160
And I also I'd like to thank Stacey Churcher and Caroline Davis for arranging this lovely visit and you all for being here on a Friday, 5 p.m.

39
00:04:36,530 --> 00:04:46,460
In the midst of a lively televised exchange between journalist Fareed Zakaria or Zakaria, as it's commonly pronounced, and neuroscientist Sam Harris.

40
00:04:46,910 --> 00:04:53,720
On the topic of Jehad Zakaria declared, The problem is you and Osama bin Laden agree.

41
00:04:54,380 --> 00:04:58,490
After all, you're saying his interpretation of Islam is correct.

42
00:04:59,510 --> 00:05:03,200
Well, Harris responded. His interpretation.

43
00:05:03,710 --> 00:05:09,230
This is the problem. His interpretation of Islam is very straightforward and honest.

44
00:05:09,830 --> 00:05:17,030
And you really have to split hairs and do some interpretive acrobatics to make it look non-canonical.

45
00:05:18,080 --> 00:05:24,110
This exchange took place a little more than 13 years after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

46
00:05:24,770 --> 00:05:35,660
In the years following the 911 tragedy, various individuals known as New Atheists have produced influential anti theistic and anti religious works.

47
00:05:36,200 --> 00:05:41,930
And perhaps, needless to say, the new atheists represent only themselves and not atheists more generally.

48
00:05:42,470 --> 00:05:45,470
In fact, some of their most vocal critics are other atheists.

49
00:05:46,010 --> 00:05:50,270
In any case, much of the focus of New Atheist works has been on Islam.

50
00:05:51,110 --> 00:05:56,450
Some new atheist writers were themselves profoundly transformed by 911.

51
00:05:57,230 --> 00:06:07,129
In the case of the prominent X Muslim writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali, for instance, her doubts about Islam were supplanted by non-belief when she found it,

52
00:06:07,130 --> 00:06:15,710
as she puts it, impossible to discount bin Laden's claims that the murderous destruction of innocent lives is consistent with the program.

53
00:06:16,970 --> 00:06:23,870
As for Harris, he reportedly began writing his landmark book, The End of Faith, on September 12, 2001.

54
00:06:24,680 --> 00:06:26,479
In this New York Times bestseller,

55
00:06:26,480 --> 00:06:36,920
Harris writes that the future of Islam most troubling to non-Muslims is the very principle bin Laden invoked to justify 911 jihad.

56
00:06:38,360 --> 00:06:44,060
And as the English evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins would have it, it was belief in the literal truth,

57
00:06:44,360 --> 00:06:53,579
the literal truth of the Koran that led 19 well-educated middle class men to kill thousands of people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

58
00:06:53,580 --> 00:06:58,790
And by the way, I have to tell you, I just feel a great sense of trepidation of talking about Dawkins on his home turf.

59
00:07:00,170 --> 00:07:07,970
In this presentation, I intend to scrutinise some especially influential New Atheists claims regarding violence in Islam.

60
00:07:08,870 --> 00:07:12,140
Now some might ask why talk about the New Atheists?

61
00:07:12,770 --> 00:07:17,329
Isn't this giving them undue attention? Well, I've chosen to focus on the new atheists,

62
00:07:17,330 --> 00:07:26,870
largely because of their unique and ostensibly significant influence on Western and to some extent non-Western intellectual discourse.

63
00:07:27,410 --> 00:07:32,630
Having taught in the humanities at two public research universities in the American Midwest,

64
00:07:33,080 --> 00:07:41,930
I have found that many of my own colleagues and students have been and continue to be more profoundly influenced by the writings of new atheists than,

65
00:07:41,930 --> 00:07:49,850
say, polemical works by far right and religiously affiliated critics of Islam, whose impact is more obvious in other contexts.

66
00:07:50,860 --> 00:07:55,060
As such, I don't think it makes much sense to ignore the New Atheists.

67
00:07:56,380 --> 00:08:01,120
I discuss some of their claims and arguments in my book Jihad, Radicalism and the New Atheism.

68
00:08:01,120 --> 00:08:06,880
And please excuse the shameless plug and I'm sorry that it was published by the other members.

69
00:08:08,800 --> 00:08:15,670
Now, I must say this was a dark project, quite unlike my first book on Salvation and Divine Mercy, which was published.

70
00:08:16,570 --> 00:08:20,530
Nevertheless, this was a project I felt compelled to undertake.

71
00:08:21,280 --> 00:08:30,520
Today, I'd like to focus on the new atheist claim that Muslim terrorism can be best explained by faithfulness to Islamic scripture.

72
00:08:31,600 --> 00:08:37,000
And of course, this theme is not unique to the New Atheists. And in the brief time I have,

73
00:08:37,780 --> 00:08:46,540
I'd like to pay special attention to the ever influential writings of Sam Harris so critical of all monotheistic traditions.

74
00:08:47,020 --> 00:08:53,470
Harris has much to say about what he calls the problem with Islam.

75
00:08:54,070 --> 00:09:04,090
The title of one of the chapters of The End of Faith. Indeed, from the very beginning of this book, Harris casts a light on this particular problem.

76
00:09:05,230 --> 00:09:14,740
Harris opens the end of faith in dramatic fashion, depicting a scene in which a suicide bomber detonates himself in a crowded bus.

77
00:09:15,610 --> 00:09:21,669
Harris tells us that the bombers parents are sad when they hear the news,

78
00:09:21,670 --> 00:09:32,220
but also feel tremendous pride because they know that he has gone to heaven and has sent his victims to [INAUDIBLE] for eternity.

79
00:09:32,230 --> 00:09:36,550
It is a double victory, assuming we know nothing else about the bomber,

80
00:09:37,180 --> 00:09:44,260
such as his past economic status, intelligence, educational background or profession.

81
00:09:44,440 --> 00:09:50,440
Harris rhetorically asks, Why is it so easy, so trivially easy?

82
00:09:50,800 --> 00:09:55,900
You could almost bet your life on an easy to guess the young man's religion.

83
00:09:57,460 --> 00:10:03,340
HARRIS His point here is clear religious beliefs in this case, Islamic ones, can be dangerous.

84
00:10:03,760 --> 00:10:10,390
But I'll come back to this point. Inspired as he was by 911 to compose the end of faith.

85
00:10:11,200 --> 00:10:15,370
Harris has much to say about the problem of Muslim suicide terrorism.

86
00:10:16,030 --> 00:10:20,650
As he presents it, it is Islamic ideology that best explains this phenomenon.

87
00:10:21,460 --> 00:10:27,460
After all, Harris notes, Muslim terrorists define themselves in religious terms.

88
00:10:28,090 --> 00:10:32,080
Of course, the same is true for many of their Muslim opponents.

89
00:10:32,170 --> 00:10:35,740
A much larger group. For Harris, however,

90
00:10:36,250 --> 00:10:47,560
the exception often proves the rule and his efforts to cast Islamic doctrines of jihad and martyrdom as a sufficient explanation for Muslim terrorism.

91
00:10:48,130 --> 00:10:56,750
He highlights the case of a so-called failed Palestinian suicide bomber named as a dead Zeidan.

92
00:10:58,000 --> 00:11:06,520
The letter, Harris writes, described being pushed to attack Israelis by the love of martyrdom.

93
00:11:07,680 --> 00:11:13,660
He's done added, I didn't want revenge for anything.

94
00:11:14,260 --> 00:11:18,250
I just wanted to be a martyr.

95
00:11:19,360 --> 00:11:25,089
Mr. Then the would be martyr conceded that his Jewish captors were better than many,

96
00:11:25,090 --> 00:11:30,880
many Arabs with regard to the suffering that his death would have inflicted upon his family.

97
00:11:31,390 --> 00:11:37,030
He reminded his interviewer that a martyr gets to pick 70 people to join him in paradise.

98
00:11:37,510 --> 00:11:42,680
He would have been sure to invite his family along that Paris far.

99
00:11:43,210 --> 00:11:48,760
They then story was revealing and representative of a broader phenomenon of faith.

100
00:11:49,240 --> 00:11:58,390
Leading directly to destruction is suggested by the fact that this quoted passage appears in the introductory chapter of The End of Faith.

101
00:11:59,050 --> 00:12:03,530
Paris does not tell us anything else about death.

102
00:12:04,420 --> 00:12:15,880
But there is, in fact, more to his story. When discussing and quoting Sudan parasites, a June eight, 22 New York Times article,

103
00:12:16,900 --> 00:12:23,650
a close reading of this article reveals another side to the would be suicide bomber, too.

104
00:12:24,010 --> 00:12:25,990
What was he then? To quote the article. Excuse me.

105
00:12:26,920 --> 00:12:36,670
Zaidoun, a fifth grade dropout who could read but not write, became a carpenter, then a pedlar of newspapers and other products in Israel.

106
00:12:37,510 --> 00:12:44,230
When the latest conflict began in September 2000, he said he saw work fruitlessly in Jenin,

107
00:12:44,620 --> 00:12:50,260
settling for a couple of hours, spent each day carrying boxes of vegetables in the market there.

108
00:12:52,040 --> 00:12:56,300
The rest of the day, he spent sleeping or hanging around a pool hall smoking.

109
00:12:57,020 --> 00:13:05,870
Then he happened to watch a religious lesson on television that convinced him he was wasting his time in what he called his life's turning point.

110
00:13:06,320 --> 00:13:10,370
He quit billiards and began going to the mosque regularly.

111
00:13:10,940 --> 00:13:15,980
Eventually, he stopped smoking. He insisted that he was drawn to martyrdom.

112
00:13:16,370 --> 00:13:20,630
By what? By what he read in books, not by anything he heard from his imam.

113
00:13:22,040 --> 00:13:27,140
After Israel first raided Jenin refugee camp at the beginning of March,

114
00:13:27,680 --> 00:13:35,840
Mr. Zeidan said he began to think seriously about becoming a suicide bomber with regard to his planned attack.

115
00:13:36,500 --> 00:13:44,570
He insisted that he had sought to kill only soldiers, whom he described as overwhelming adversaries.

116
00:13:45,440 --> 00:13:51,709
The author of this article, James Bennett, informs us that his two plus hour a conversation with Zaidoun,

117
00:13:51,710 --> 00:13:57,590
then 18 years old, took place in an Israeli hospital shortly after the failed attack.

118
00:13:57,770 --> 00:14:07,930
Was it then was expecting to be prosecuted? Guarded by two Israeli police officers manacled by a wrist and an ankle to his bed.

119
00:14:08,410 --> 00:14:15,520
He said bitterly that he knew that he would be jailed for life and remembered only as a terrorist.

120
00:14:17,360 --> 00:14:20,210
I feel sorry because it was a mistake, he said.

121
00:14:21,290 --> 00:14:29,210
But as a human being, I should live like others the way that there is, the way there's an Israeli state.

122
00:14:29,570 --> 00:14:33,950
There are people living in this state, enjoying life, having someone protect them.

123
00:14:34,610 --> 00:14:38,900
I don't live in this situation. I don't feel I'm secure.

124
00:14:40,430 --> 00:14:45,530
Soldiers can enter Jenin at any time, he said, and he constantly feared being arrested.

125
00:14:46,220 --> 00:14:49,760
As long as life continues like this, he said.

126
00:14:50,090 --> 00:14:57,800
You will have people who think like me. He insisted that he wanted peace, but he saw little chance for it.

127
00:14:58,640 --> 00:15:02,390
Now, assuming he dead, genuinely sought martyrdom,

128
00:15:03,020 --> 00:15:09,500
it is difficult to overlook the obvious political dimensions of his actions, his challenging life experiences,

129
00:15:09,710 --> 00:15:14,090
his limited education, and the circumstances of his conversation with Bennett,

130
00:15:14,600 --> 00:15:18,860
the author of the article with Israeli Officers Nearby and a Trial Looming.

131
00:15:19,610 --> 00:15:25,850
Incidentally, Bennett, the author of the article himself, calls into question the trustworthiness.

132
00:15:26,430 --> 00:15:33,710
They then, he writes, insisted today that he has not detonated his bomb, but instead had been shot twice in the stomach by soldiers.

133
00:15:34,160 --> 00:15:37,610
That account was not supported by his wounds, according to the hospital.

134
00:15:38,510 --> 00:15:49,010
Remember all Harris tells us about the dad's motivation to attack Israelis, and that is that he was driven by a love of martyrdom.

135
00:15:49,880 --> 00:15:54,410
Furthermore, Harris never conveys the dense criticisms of the Israeli army.

136
00:15:54,890 --> 00:16:01,400
Instead, Harris simply tells us that if he then conceded that his Jewish captors were better than many, many Arabs.

137
00:16:02,240 --> 00:16:11,660
This is a remarkable example of cherry picking. And we see something similar in Harris's treatment of Islamic scripture,

138
00:16:12,350 --> 00:16:19,210
as he cites various translated Koranic passages without giving due consideration to their respective contexts,

139
00:16:19,220 --> 00:16:23,450
the surrounding passages and other more precise translations.

140
00:16:24,080 --> 00:16:27,920
And here, I think, an effective antidote is your speaker next week.

141
00:16:28,430 --> 00:16:33,350
Professor Asmus already in and specifically her book, Striving in the Path of God.

142
00:16:33,860 --> 00:16:35,419
Here, Professor of Saladin,

143
00:16:35,420 --> 00:16:44,630
examines various Koranic passages on jihad and warfare and reveals the various ways that Muslim commentators have interpreted such passages.

144
00:16:45,630 --> 00:16:53,640
When talking about Jehad, Harris's sources are limited as he relies heavily on the late Bernard Lewis.

145
00:16:54,560 --> 00:16:56,940
I'll say more about Professor Lewis in just a moment.

146
00:16:57,900 --> 00:17:07,350
Muslim scholarly sources are noticeably absent from his bibliography, and this might explain the following passage from the end of faith.

147
00:17:08,040 --> 00:17:17,610
Harris writes Surely there are Muslim jurists who might say that suicide bombing is contrary to the tenets of Islam.

148
00:17:18,030 --> 00:17:25,050
Where are those jurists, by the way? And the suicide bombers are therefore not martyrs, but fresh denizens of [INAUDIBLE].

149
00:17:25,590 --> 00:17:35,490
Such a minority opinion, if it exists, cannot change the fact that suicide bombings have been rationalised by much of the Muslim world.

150
00:17:35,820 --> 00:17:41,760
Of course, the reality is that when Harris was writing this multitudes not all, of course,

151
00:17:41,760 --> 00:17:50,730
but multitudes of prominent clerics and scholars, had publicly and explicitly condemned suicide missions and terrorism or more broadly.

152
00:17:52,020 --> 00:18:02,250
At one point, Harris remarks, one can only marvel that suicide bombing is now more widespread and is focussed firmly on Muslim terrorism.

153
00:18:02,580 --> 00:18:07,650
Harris neglects the broader Muslim landscape. He was apparently unaware, for instance,

154
00:18:07,950 --> 00:18:15,510
that suicide attacks of any kind were historically uncommon in the Sunni tradition claimed by Sunni terrorists.

155
00:18:16,110 --> 00:18:21,900
Interestingly, the very authority Harris relies on when discussing jihad, Professor Bernard Lewis,

156
00:18:22,470 --> 00:18:28,440
who was hardly an apologist for Islam, had this to say in a 2009 co-authored work.

157
00:18:29,730 --> 00:18:36,389
The emergence of the by now widespread terrorism practice of suicide bombing is a development of the 20th

158
00:18:36,390 --> 00:18:42,990
century and has no antecedents in Islamic history and no justification in terms of Islamic theology,

159
00:18:42,990 --> 00:18:49,410
law or tradition. It is a pity that those who practice this form of terrorism are not better acquainted with

160
00:18:49,410 --> 00:18:54,690
their own religion and with the culture that grew up under the auspices of that religion.

161
00:18:56,450 --> 00:19:07,490
Recall that Harris opens the end of faith by depicting a suicide bomber and then asking the reader why it is so easy to guess his religion.

162
00:19:08,120 --> 00:19:15,200
But Harris never grapples with the fact that before the early 1980s, there was no such thing as a muslim suicide bomber.

163
00:19:15,410 --> 00:19:18,140
And even after that, even after the early 1980s,

164
00:19:18,500 --> 00:19:26,480
the tactic of suicide bombing was never once employed in a conflict as intense as the Soviet Afghan war,

165
00:19:26,780 --> 00:19:32,330
a war, incidentally, that involved so-called mujahideen and foreign fighters like bin Laden.

166
00:19:33,170 --> 00:19:41,360
Nevertheless, as Harris would have it, Muslims have not found anything of substance to say against suicide terrorism,

167
00:19:41,630 --> 00:19:44,720
including the actions of the September 11 hijackers.

168
00:19:45,380 --> 00:19:54,410
This, of course, is an unfortunate myth. The reality is that the targeting of innocents to say nothing of the kamikaze method of attack was

169
00:19:54,410 --> 00:20:00,200
a recurring theme in the September 21 condemnations issued by countless scholars and clerics.

170
00:20:00,920 --> 00:20:07,520
But not only does Harris in the end of faith, seem aloof to the major currents of Islamic thought,

171
00:20:07,790 --> 00:20:11,240
he also fails to maintain a consistent line of reasoning.

172
00:20:12,540 --> 00:20:22,470
Consider his statements on pacifism twice in the end of faith, Harris contrasts Islam with the pacifist Jain religion.

173
00:20:23,220 --> 00:20:31,140
First, he states that there's a reason we must now confront Muslim rather than Jane terrorists in every corner of the world.

174
00:20:32,040 --> 00:20:37,860
And that's and that reason is simply the nature of the Islamic tradition, according to Harris.

175
00:20:38,490 --> 00:20:43,889
Now, I should note that the entire Jane population would amount to no more than one half

176
00:20:43,890 --> 00:20:49,110
of 1% of the worldwide Muslim population and is mostly concentrated in one country,

177
00:20:49,110 --> 00:20:55,800
India. In any case. Second, Harris asserts that in contrast with Islamic fundamentalism,

178
00:20:56,550 --> 00:21:05,430
a rise of Jane fundamentalism would endanger no one because observant Jains will generally not kill anything, including insects.

179
00:21:06,390 --> 00:21:10,350
And so one gets the impression that pacifism endangers no one.

180
00:21:10,770 --> 00:21:17,430
Okay. And yet, just a few pages earlier, and in the context of defending the use of military technology,

181
00:21:18,030 --> 00:21:25,320
Harris describes pacifism as a deeply immoral position that comes to us, swaddled in the dogma of highest moralism.

182
00:21:25,950 --> 00:21:31,500
It allows a variety of monsters currently loose in the world to threaten the rest of us.

183
00:21:32,160 --> 00:21:36,720
Then, shortly after defending the limited use of torture when dealing with terrorists,

184
00:21:37,140 --> 00:21:46,290
he elaborates on the false choice of pacifism and explains why we must accept the fact that violence or its threat is often an ethical necessity.

185
00:21:47,340 --> 00:21:54,420
Thus, Harris's conception of legitimate violence actually overlaps to a large extent with that of many Muslims.

186
00:21:54,600 --> 00:21:57,870
Actually, it seems to exceed the views of many other Muslims.

187
00:21:58,650 --> 00:22:02,790
But let's get back to Harris's main argument as he sees it.

188
00:22:03,450 --> 00:22:11,610
What makes Muslim extremists extreme is their devotion to the literal word of the poor and the Hadith.

189
00:22:12,570 --> 00:22:21,330
Violent radicals we are led to believe are monsters precisely because of their close adherence to the letter of Scripture.

190
00:22:22,500 --> 00:22:26,399
This is a point Harris makes in various writings, including The End of Faith.

191
00:22:26,400 --> 00:22:36,840
In his 2015 co-authored book Islam and the Future of Tolerance, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Richard Dawkins make similar claims in their respective works.

192
00:22:37,470 --> 00:22:46,080
In her 2015 book, Heretic Ali remarks that since 911, she has been making a simple argument in response to Muslim terrorism.

193
00:22:46,680 --> 00:22:49,740
It is foolish to insist, as our leaders habitually do,

194
00:22:50,220 --> 00:22:56,400
that the violent acts of radical Islamists can be divorced from the religious ideals that inspire them.

195
00:22:57,360 --> 00:23:02,610
Thus, those who maintain that Muslim terrorism is actually a problem of poverty,

196
00:23:02,610 --> 00:23:10,110
insufficient education or any other social precondition are offering, as she puts it, facile explanations.

197
00:23:10,860 --> 00:23:15,840
This is because Islamic violence is rooted in the foundational texts of Islam itself.

198
00:23:17,160 --> 00:23:22,470
Dawkins makes similar claims in his 2006 New York Times bestseller, The God Delusion.

199
00:23:23,430 --> 00:23:32,459
But in blaming Islam's foundational texts for contemporary terrorism while downplaying other factors Harris,

200
00:23:32,460 --> 00:23:39,660
Ali and Dawkins present explanations that are just as facile as those of the apologists they criticise.

201
00:23:40,470 --> 00:23:45,870
In evaluating the claim that Muslim terrorism can be best explained by scriptural literalism.

202
00:23:46,500 --> 00:23:56,730
Let us consider two case studies. The first is the justifications for terrorism presented in a 2017 ISIS publication.

203
00:23:57,810 --> 00:24:04,080
The second is bin Laden's justifications for the killing of innocent civilians on 911.

204
00:24:05,070 --> 00:24:09,900
Now, there's a lot to say about ISIS or ISIL or their.

205
00:24:11,040 --> 00:24:21,210
But at the interest of time, I'd like to focus on a single article that appeared in January 2017 in an issue of the online magazine Lumiere.

206
00:24:21,630 --> 00:24:22,530
ISIS magazine.

207
00:24:24,200 --> 00:24:34,190
The article entitled Collateral Carnage presents a justification for terrorism against its enemies and the killing of Innocent Civilians.

208
00:24:35,150 --> 00:24:43,640
According to this anonymous article, although Muslims may not exclusively target non-threatening non-Muslim women and children,

209
00:24:44,510 --> 00:24:54,230
such innocents may be generally attacked nonetheless if they are not distinctly isolated or easily distinguishable from enemy non-Muslim men.

210
00:24:55,070 --> 00:24:59,900
And according to this particular article, all such men would be considered combatants.

211
00:25:00,900 --> 00:25:10,800
This, by the way, contradicts the May 2017 issue of Rumi, which notes that some categories of men are not to be treated as combatants.

212
00:25:11,130 --> 00:25:14,460
So we actually have a contradiction. Within just a few months.

213
00:25:14,970 --> 00:25:23,520
And this is but one illustration to me of how inconsistent these ICC documents are in any case,

214
00:25:23,520 --> 00:25:26,640
to justify the collateral killing of innocent women and children.

215
00:25:27,240 --> 00:25:33,120
The Aisha, the ISI's author, points to two reported prophetic precedents.

216
00:25:35,220 --> 00:25:39,390
One is the prophet permitting the use of Manganos.

217
00:25:39,840 --> 00:25:48,750
The author uses the broader term catapults, which the author claims were common in siege warfare even during the life of the Prophet.

218
00:25:49,860 --> 00:25:58,380
They were common. The Rumi author's assumption is that the Prophet used a weapon of mass destruction that led to the deaths of innocents.

219
00:26:00,640 --> 00:26:09,370
But a careful examination of the various authoritative Hadith collections and biographies of the Prophet seem to undermine this key assumption.

220
00:26:10,000 --> 00:26:13,690
Some biographies do not bother to mention the use of Manganos at all.

221
00:26:14,410 --> 00:26:16,300
Others mention it in passing,

222
00:26:16,840 --> 00:26:26,080
and the detailed account we have paints a picture quite different from those seeking to legitimise massive collateral killings.

223
00:26:26,710 --> 00:26:28,960
In the rare detailed account we have.

224
00:26:29,320 --> 00:26:37,600
We read that the Prophet's Persian Companions and Men and Ferdowsi, who often has a perhaps is very conveniently there to offer military suggestions,

225
00:26:38,560 --> 00:26:46,900
suggested the use of a on to breach the walls of the fortress of the Bellicose Thief tribe.

226
00:26:47,800 --> 00:26:56,110
Accordingly, the Muslims constructed imaginal, but they never actually put it to use as the individuals who were attempting to operate

227
00:26:56,110 --> 00:27:00,970
it were killed when the forces of the thief attacked them with hot iron and arrows.

228
00:27:01,510 --> 00:27:07,720
The Muslim armies have subsequently continued to lay siege to the fortress without the use of manganese.

229
00:27:08,530 --> 00:27:15,040
Thus, according to this account, the Prophet only tried to use Imagine a once in a brief,

230
00:27:15,040 --> 00:27:21,340
unsuccessful attempt to breach walls that were guarded by combatants.

231
00:27:22,210 --> 00:27:25,450
This is very different from how it's presented in the ISI's article.

232
00:27:26,200 --> 00:27:29,500
The Oasis author praises the way When you read the ISIS article,

233
00:27:29,980 --> 00:27:35,140
you get the impression of things being shot over the wall and killing whoever happened to be there.

234
00:27:37,090 --> 00:27:40,360
The ISIS author seems to be unaware of such details.

235
00:27:41,350 --> 00:27:45,760
Another invoked president comes from a Hadith recorded by Bukhari and Muslim,

236
00:27:46,510 --> 00:27:53,230
in which the Prophet is queried as to whether it would be permissible to attack an enemy force at night when it's dark.

237
00:27:53,800 --> 00:28:01,840
And he responds in the affirmative, indicating that any non-combatants harmed collaterally are of the combatants.

238
00:28:02,650 --> 00:28:05,410
We can call this the they are of them Hadith.

239
00:28:06,340 --> 00:28:15,580
With this in mind, the ISIS author goes even further and asserts the best practice known as the Hadith just said it's permissible.

240
00:28:15,850 --> 00:28:17,980
The Oasis author says the best practice.

241
00:28:19,090 --> 00:28:28,090
When conducting raids is to start during the night or at the break of dawn before the sun rises while the enemy is asleep.

242
00:28:28,660 --> 00:28:37,660
At such a time, it is very likely to enter buildings where no light shines and an adult male is not easily distinguishable from women and children.

243
00:28:39,070 --> 00:28:46,660
The author attempts to buttress this claim that it is best to attack in the dark while the enemy is sleeping.

244
00:28:47,110 --> 00:28:56,710
By pointing to the example of God for the poor and states that God destroyed many towns at night or while people were sleeping in the afternoon.

245
00:28:57,370 --> 00:29:01,810
This represents a remarkable conflation of the human with the divine.

246
00:29:02,920 --> 00:29:05,350
As for the normative example of the prophet,

247
00:29:06,010 --> 00:29:14,560
the ISIS author makes no reference to and demonstrates no awareness of the well known Hadith recorded by Bukhari.

248
00:29:15,130 --> 00:29:20,080
That indicates that the Prophet actually never started an attack at night.

249
00:29:21,700 --> 00:29:29,349
As such, the ISIS author can hardly be described as a literalist, especially when one considers that one of the most widely accepted.

250
00:29:29,350 --> 00:29:34,370
Hadiths explicitly states that it is impermissible to kill women and children.

251
00:29:34,390 --> 00:29:40,330
And of course, there are other hadiths concerning various categories of non-combatants men.

252
00:29:41,710 --> 00:29:49,030
As for bin Laden. Recall that in the exchange between Fareed Zakaria and Sam Harris,

253
00:29:49,630 --> 00:29:57,940
the latter has continued to point to bin Laden as a modern Muslim and one whose interpretation is honest and straightforward.

254
00:29:58,930 --> 00:30:07,810
But consider some of the interpretive acrobatics bin Laden performed in his generally unsuccessful attempt to convince Muslim clerics and Islamists,

255
00:30:08,080 --> 00:30:15,490
including many who already held anti-American sentiments, that the killing of civilians on 911 could be justified.

256
00:30:16,930 --> 00:30:23,470
Recognising the prophet's explicit prohibition against the killing of non-combatants, most notably women and children,

257
00:30:23,920 --> 00:30:31,540
bin Laden argued that applied Nikita's tactics against the US were necessary and serve the common good.

258
00:30:32,200 --> 00:30:34,540
Notwithstanding indications to the contrary.

259
00:30:35,470 --> 00:30:44,440
And although the 911 attacks were directed mostly at civilians, many busy at work, he asserted that he was not targeting innocents,

260
00:30:44,800 --> 00:30:51,520
but rather the symbol of a threatening enemy and that collateral casualties were therefore acceptable,

261
00:30:51,910 --> 00:30:55,780
an assertion widely regarded as disingenuous for good measure.

262
00:30:55,810 --> 00:31:02,080
However, he also attempted to make an obviously modern argument that American adult civilians

263
00:31:02,080 --> 00:31:07,149
could be treated as combatants because both the taxes they paid as required

264
00:31:07,150 --> 00:31:12,040
by law and the decisions made by their government officials were neither

265
00:31:12,040 --> 00:31:17,890
unanimously elected nor unanimously supported helped shape U.S. foreign policy.

266
00:31:19,360 --> 00:31:23,860
And finally, notwithstanding his superficial claim that he was not targeting innocents,

267
00:31:24,400 --> 00:31:29,980
he endeavoured to advance and defend an apparent expansive conception of retaliation

268
00:31:30,430 --> 00:31:35,230
in order to justify the intentional killing of American non-combatants.

269
00:31:35,260 --> 00:31:38,230
Now, I'd like to spend some time on this last point.

270
00:31:40,300 --> 00:31:50,620
In October 2001, bin Laden was interviewed by the well-known Al-Jazeera reporter to sit on an interview that was not aired until January 22.

271
00:31:52,200 --> 00:31:57,270
In this conversation, which is said to be the most revealing exchange with bin Laden on record.

272
00:31:58,050 --> 00:32:03,570
Bin Laden responded to the claim that the 911 hijackers had killed innocents.

273
00:32:04,620 --> 00:32:14,940
He remarked, It is very strange for Americans and other educated people to talk about the killing of innocent civilians.

274
00:32:15,600 --> 00:32:21,390
I mean, who said that our children and civilians are not innocents and they're shedding

275
00:32:21,720 --> 00:32:27,360
the setting of their blood is permissible whenever we kill their civilians.

276
00:32:27,780 --> 00:32:31,049
The whole world yells at us from east to west,

277
00:32:31,050 --> 00:32:38,520
and America starts putting pressure on its allies and puppets who said that our blood isn't blood and that their blood is blood?

278
00:32:39,180 --> 00:32:42,570
What about the people that have been killed in our lands for decades?

279
00:32:43,740 --> 00:32:53,700
He would go on to declare that his people that his people killed the civilians among the disbelievers in response to their killing of Muslims.

280
00:32:55,110 --> 00:33:02,220
Here, the interviewer, Looney interjected. So you say that this is an eye for an eye.

281
00:33:03,210 --> 00:33:09,210
They kill our innocence. So we kill their innocence. So we kill their innocence.

282
00:33:10,890 --> 00:33:15,330
Goodlatte replied, This is valid both religiously and logically,

283
00:33:16,170 --> 00:33:20,970
but some of the people who talk about this issue discuss it from a religious point of view.

284
00:33:22,780 --> 00:33:28,180
He asked, what is their proof? He's here talking about the religious scholars who have condemned 911.

285
00:33:29,510 --> 00:33:33,160
And he asked, what is their proof? Bin Laden answered.

286
00:33:33,220 --> 00:33:37,120
They say that the killing of innocents is wrong and invalid.

287
00:33:37,630 --> 00:33:41,740
And for proof, they say that the prophet forbid the killing of children and women.

288
00:33:42,460 --> 00:33:50,080
And that is true. It is valid and has been laid down by the Prophet in an authentic tradition.

289
00:33:50,800 --> 00:33:54,730
Alluding here interjects This is precisely what I'm talking about.

290
00:33:55,570 --> 00:34:05,770
This is exactly what I'm asking you about. Bin Laden continues, but this forbidding of killing children and innocence is not set in stone.

291
00:34:06,730 --> 00:34:14,500
And there are other writings that uphold it. Bin Laden proceeded to quote the perennial injunction.

292
00:34:14,920 --> 00:34:21,520
If you believers respond to an attack, make your response proportionate to a 16 first 126.

293
00:34:22,540 --> 00:34:31,630
This verse appears in a passage that, according to most of the well-known commentaries on the Koran, actually encourages restraint.

294
00:34:33,490 --> 00:34:40,120
In any case. Bin Laden continued the scholars and people of knowledge among them.

295
00:34:40,120 --> 00:34:47,050
So have FDR in the same year and in the play, you and I, so can and many others.

296
00:34:47,200 --> 00:34:51,490
And then Pataudi may God bless him in his poetry and commentary.

297
00:34:52,630 --> 00:34:59,860
Say that if the disbelievers were to kill our children and women, then we should not feel ashamed to do the same to them,

298
00:35:00,040 --> 00:35:03,640
mainly to deter them from trying to kill our children and women again.

299
00:35:04,570 --> 00:35:16,720
Now, notice how bin Laden invoked these four scholars to justify his expansive conception of justifiable retribution.

300
00:35:17,890 --> 00:35:27,100
The reality, however, is that while various scholars legitimised in cases of necessity or dharuhera collateral damage

301
00:35:27,100 --> 00:35:32,260
and the use of certain destructive methods in response to an enemy's use of such methods,

302
00:35:32,980 --> 00:35:39,790
they generally did not condone the intentional killing of innocents as a means of retaliation.

303
00:35:40,240 --> 00:35:45,690
In fact, the Koranic commentator bin Laden invoked to justify this practice and put it,

304
00:35:45,700 --> 00:35:48,399
if you remember here, he says that virtually may God bless them.

305
00:35:48,400 --> 00:35:59,260
It is foreign country, actually, and it ought to be in his Koran commentary explicitly rejects what bin Laden ascribes to him explicitly.

306
00:36:00,260 --> 00:36:08,660
He states that even if enemy forces killed our women and children and made us grieve on account of this,

307
00:36:09,410 --> 00:36:18,080
then it is still not permissible for us to kill them intentionally in a similar manner to cause them to grieve and be sad.

308
00:36:18,650 --> 00:36:22,610
This statement comes from a report of his commentary on the Koranic directive.

309
00:36:22,940 --> 00:36:29,690
Do not let hatred of others lead you away from justice, but adhere to justice, for that is closer to awareness of God.

310
00:36:29,960 --> 00:36:34,970
So here are five verse eight. By the way, I have to tell you, when I encountered this, I was in shock.

311
00:36:35,330 --> 00:36:40,670
Usually you don't find something this clear cut, somebody invoking a scholar and the scholar says the exact opposite.

312
00:36:42,170 --> 00:36:49,820
The available writings of the other scholars invoked by bin Laden reveal no obvious departure from a thought to be on this matter.

313
00:36:50,980 --> 00:36:59,680
Now there's a lot more, one could say about bin Laden's variously, ostensibly contradictory justifications for the 911 attacks.

314
00:37:00,220 --> 00:37:05,620
Suffice it to say that he was by no means a true literalist when it comes to the rules of war.

315
00:37:06,550 --> 00:37:09,840
Of course, the same could be said about Muslims in general and Muslims in general.

316
00:37:10,210 --> 00:37:11,410
They're not all literalists.

317
00:37:15,910 --> 00:37:29,469
And yet it is critical to recognise that the attempts of al Qaeda and ISIS to justify terrorism on Islamic grounds typically

318
00:37:29,470 --> 00:37:38,770
require the abandonment of both strict literalism and the historically prevailing interpretations of Islamic thought.

319
00:37:39,310 --> 00:37:44,290
The interpretations of such violent radicals are hardly straightforward.

320
00:37:44,620 --> 00:37:48,940
They are their own thing. Yet we cannot simply leave it at that.

321
00:37:49,600 --> 00:37:56,770
We must ask what motivated the 911 hijackers to kill thousands of civilians and themselves?

322
00:37:57,580 --> 00:38:04,000
How can we explain the various acts of self-sacrificial terrorism committed by ISIS members and others?

323
00:38:04,930 --> 00:38:14,950
Various prominent new atheist authors explain such phenomena by pointing to Islam not idiosyncratic interpretations of the religion.

324
00:38:15,250 --> 00:38:20,260
But the core of the religion itself. And downplaying other factors.

325
00:38:21,280 --> 00:38:30,909
While the worldwide Muslim scholarly and clerical condemnations of Muslim terrorism show that Al Qaida never did with Al Qaida,

326
00:38:30,910 --> 00:38:36,010
ISIS and other violent radicals are on the fringes of the jihad tradition.

327
00:38:36,340 --> 00:38:38,080
Harris, as I shall explain,

328
00:38:38,350 --> 00:38:47,830
places them firmly in the centre and I on Hirsi Ali suggest that such radicals are not in fact a lunatic fringe of extremists,

329
00:38:48,490 --> 00:38:52,450
as Richard Dawkins sees it. The matter is fairly simple.

330
00:38:52,810 --> 00:38:58,450
Suicide bombers do what they do because they really believe what they were taught in their religious schools,

331
00:38:58,750 --> 00:39:06,340
that duty to God exceeds all other priorities and that martyrdom in His service will be rewarded in the gardens of Paradise.

332
00:39:07,510 --> 00:39:13,540
Now compare such assessments with the more incisive analysis offered by Jessica Stern.

333
00:39:14,470 --> 00:39:20,709
Based on her research, Professor Stern finds that terrorists are typically motivated by multiple

334
00:39:20,710 --> 00:39:26,080
factors and that terrorist movements often arise in reaction to an injustice,

335
00:39:26,080 --> 00:39:29,950
real or imagined, and they that they feel must be corrected.

336
00:39:31,120 --> 00:39:35,590
Terrorism, she adds, spreads in part through bad ideas.

337
00:39:35,890 --> 00:39:44,110
The most dangerous and seductive, bad ideas spreading around the globe today is a distorted and destructive interpretation of Islam,

338
00:39:44,860 --> 00:39:48,370
which asserts that killing innocents is a way to worship God.

339
00:39:49,330 --> 00:39:58,960
Part of the solution must come from within Islam and from Islamic scholars who can refute this ideology with arguments based on theology and ethics.

340
00:39:59,590 --> 00:40:02,320
But bad ideas are only part of the problem.

341
00:40:03,100 --> 00:40:12,940
Terrorists prey on vulnerable populations, people who feel humiliated or victimised or who find their identities by joining extremist movements.

342
00:40:14,000 --> 00:40:19,180
So Stern goes on to offer suggestions for how to strengthen vulnerable populations.

343
00:40:19,720 --> 00:40:29,950
Now, there can be little doubt that some form of religious faith is indeed a critical motivating factor for many not all, but many Muslim terrorists.

344
00:40:30,610 --> 00:40:37,690
But their religion is distinct in important ways from the broader and historical Islamic tradition.

345
00:40:38,380 --> 00:40:46,600
I can understand why, as a journalist, Graham Wood of The Atlantic would characterise ISIS members as being Islamic.

346
00:40:47,020 --> 00:40:54,460
They identify as such, they invoke Islamic tradition. What is problematic, however, is Wood's added emphasis.

347
00:40:54,640 --> 00:41:01,720
Various men. Now I'd like to close by returning to Sam Harris.

348
00:41:03,040 --> 00:41:06,790
Less than a month before his aforementioned interview with Fareed Zakaria.

349
00:41:07,420 --> 00:41:12,130
Harris had appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher. How many of you remember this?

350
00:41:13,670 --> 00:41:22,790
Oh, it's just a few of. In the midst of a heated exchange with actor Ben Affleck on the subject of Islam.

351
00:41:23,600 --> 00:41:28,880
Harris, having stated that he was actually well educated on the topic, proclaimed,

352
00:41:30,560 --> 00:41:38,330
We have to be able to criticise bad ideas and Islam is the mother lode of bad ideas.

353
00:41:40,750 --> 00:41:44,800
He proceeded to claim, By the way, this is the moment I decided to write this book.

354
00:41:47,800 --> 00:41:54,010
He proceeded to claim that suicide bombers occupy the centre of Muslim communities.

355
00:41:54,670 --> 00:41:58,510
He added, We were misled to think that the fundamentalists are the fringe.

356
00:42:00,100 --> 00:42:03,460
To which host Bill Maher chimed in. That's the key point.

357
00:42:05,290 --> 00:42:11,619
The Islam that Harris portrays in his writings doesn't indeed appear to be a motherlode of bad ideas.

358
00:42:11,620 --> 00:42:19,660
But it is an Islam that the vast majority of Muslims, whether scholars or laypeople, would likely not recognise.

359
00:42:19,990 --> 00:42:26,610
A motherlode of bad analysis. It is even more extreme in some ways than bin Laden's Islam.

360
00:42:27,370 --> 00:42:34,030
This is because Harris draws a nearly straight line from the Islamic tradition to 911.

361
00:42:34,870 --> 00:42:40,569
He erroneously downplays the significance of non-religious factors when when assessing

362
00:42:40,570 --> 00:42:45,850
the al Qaeda leader asserting that bin Laden's grievances were purely theological.

363
00:42:47,230 --> 00:42:50,080
Bin Laden's Islam, however, was not that simple.

364
00:42:50,410 --> 00:42:57,880
His views on jihad were formed through convoluted reasoning and guided by a warped perception of geopolitical reality.

365
00:42:58,600 --> 00:43:02,920
Notwithstanding their profound differences, the same is generally true for ISIS.

366
00:43:04,300 --> 00:43:10,920
As such, Zakaria missed the mark when he told Harris, The problem is you and Osama bin Laden agree.

367
00:43:10,930 --> 00:43:16,660
After all, you're saying his interpretation of Islam is correct, in point of fact.

368
00:43:17,230 --> 00:43:25,990
HARRIS His interpretation of Islam is so abhorrent, so extreme that it cannot even be ascribed to Osama bin Laden.

369
00:43:26,590 --> 00:43:29,920
And on December no, I thank you for listening. Thank you.