Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "Is Islam Sexist?" with Dr. Elham Manea

Transcript

"Is Islam Sexist?" with Dr. Elham Manea · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Good day, humans. Welcome to installment number two of my collaboration with the University
• 0:07
  of Technology Sydney. This is a series called Permission to Think. It's a public event
• 0:13
  speaker series of online conversations. The man behind this is Professor Alan Davidson
• 0:19
  who's the Dean of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney. I am
• 0:25
  a professional fellow there, which basically, which means that I have these fascinating
• 0:30
  conversations with interesting people who the university and I decide are worth speaking
• 0:35
  to in this series which tries to bring intellectuals into the institution who are not necessarily
• 0:44
  predictably university-ish and who don't play into the sort of thought bubbles that a
• 0:51
  lot of educational institutions are currently captured by. Today's guest doesn't in every
• 0:58
  way you could possibly want her to not be predictable. She's not a knee-jerk reactionary
• 1:04
  who is anti-Islam. She is not a pandering left-winger who's jumping at shadows and terrified
• 1:14
  of criticizing Islam. She knows what she's talking about because she's a deeply wise
• 1:19
  and experienced person. Dr. Alan Manaya is an associate professor at the Institute
• 1:24
  of Political Science at the University of Zurich in Switzerland and she's a Yemeni originally
• 1:32
  who's a specialist in the Middle East and North Africa and is essentially an expert in
• 1:38
  the ways, well among many other things with regard to Islam, but in particular of particular
• 1:43
  interest to me is her expertise in the ways in which Western countries have gone limp
• 1:50
  in defending human rights when it comes to anything to do with Islam. And not just abroad.
• 1:56
  We all know the bombast of the George W. Bush administration, for example, trying to spread
• 2:01
  human rights across the Middle East to a mixed success, should we say, but not just that,
• 2:09
  the failure to actually stand up for the human rights of our own citizens who happen to be
• 2:14
  Muslims in the West, in particular, citizens like young girls in Muslim communities who
• 2:21
  Elham is deeply concerned about. And this is not a, as I say, a predictable reactionary kind of
• 2:28
  knee-jerk bombast. This is not Muslim bashing in any way, shape or form. This is the community
• 2:34
  from which Elham herself comes. So I won't keep blathering on about this. Suffice it to say that
• 2:39
  this is well, well, well worth your time in listening to because it's so rare to find someone
• 2:44
  who has such a nuanced and balanced perspective on one of the most complicated cultural war
• 2:48
  issues of our time. Please enjoy the second installment of Permission to Think. If you want to find
• 2:55
  out more about it, just Google UTS Permission to Think. You'll find the landing page. You'll find
• 2:59
  past episodes like the one that I did with Peter Begozion and increasing episodes into the
• 3:04
  future as well. This will be an ongoing series and the episode will drop roughly monthly.
• 3:09
  In the meantime, enjoy this combo with the one I'm only, Dr. Elham Manahi.
• 3:24
  Can you tell us where you grew up and what that was like?
• 3:28
  You could call me a mixed salad of some sort, okay? So I was born in Egypt. My father comes from
• 3:36
  E.M. and my mother has Egyptian roots. It's a complex story, but Egypt is the focus here.
• 3:44
  And due to my father's diplomatic career, we've been raised in eight countries. I've
• 3:53
  put it this way, including Egypt, Yemen, Iran, Morocco, Kuwait, Germany in my early childhood.
• 4:01
  And then the United States, and then I settled here in Switzerland, 27 years ago,
• 4:07
  and my husband is Swiss. So right now I'm Swiss, Yemeni. So I'm a mixed salad.
• 4:16
  Do you feel you have roots anywhere? Do you have roots in Switzerland now after 27 years?
• 4:21
  Yes, I certainly have roots here in Switzerland. I live in this street, the same street,
• 4:29
  since 27 years. I just came back from Egypt and Turkey, but when I left Egypt, I also felt
• 4:41
  I left part of me there. So do I have roots? I have roots here in Switzerland,
• 4:49
  but I have roots also in the Middle East and specifically in Egypt and in Yemen.
• 4:56
  You're feeling something there when you're talking about that. Is that the smells and the
• 5:01
  sights and the sounds and the memories and the evocative things of Egypt from your youth?
• 5:07
  When you grow up, the sounds, the smells, as you said, the streets, even the
• 5:19
  avan call in Egypt, it's done in a very beautiful, in a melody form. You have different forms
• 5:33
  of avan in Yemen, in certain areas. It wasn't exactly very pleasant, but these sounds
• 5:42
  smell as the culture. Yeah, I miss that. I really miss that. What did you make of that country
• 5:49
  you were growing up in? What did you make of Egypt at the time?
• 5:56
  Well, the problem is basically I've been in different countries and Egypt was always a stop
• 6:01
  over every summer. I've been there because of my grandmother and I grow up also.
• 6:10
  I have several years there. What do I make of it?
• 6:18
  It's part of me. Egypt is part of me. Yemen is part of me. Yemen is also part of me.
• 6:26
  And the fact that it's going through this civil war right now is very painful. I have to put it
• 6:32
  this way. But I try to deal with that pain in being constructive and doing something about it.
• 6:42
  That is writing a research book about the roots of the conflict in Yemen.
• 6:48
  When it comes to Egypt, as I said, it's also home. It's also home for me.
• 6:56
  But that doesn't mean, if you think about it, people think if you lived in different countries,
• 7:07
  you don't have roots. I don't have roots. But I learned over time that
• 7:16
  at the end of the day, it's the human that counts. And I've met everywhere. Humans, persons,
• 7:26
  where you could connect with, where you can transcend all of these cultural, religious differences.
• 7:36
  And from that perspective, you can call me a global normer as well.
• 7:43
  I'm asking only because I'm interested in whether or not people have diverged from their roots or
• 7:49
  whether their intellectual life has taken them in interesting other places that gives them a
• 7:54
  perspective on the things that they took for granted when they grew up. How do you look at Egypt,
• 7:59
  how do you look at the Muslim and Arab world from the perspective of where you are today?
• 8:06
  Yes, and that's a very good question, specifically, because I understand as well the importance
• 8:15
  of the rights that I have here in Switzerland. I've been here 26 years. I enjoy
• 8:21
  a direct democracy that allows me to decide with my fellow citizens on the issues that matter
• 8:33
  here in Switzerland. I have certain rights as a woman. And please understand me, Switzerland
• 8:47
  was a little bit late when it comes to women's rights. So we only had the right to vote in 1971,
• 8:55
  the family law that used to give the husband a form of guardianship changed in 1988.
• 9:05
  And if you think about that, you understand that these were hard one rights. Women really,
• 9:12
  women with men, they fought really hard for these rights. And coming from Yemen,
• 9:18
  and here I have to basically say, coming from Yemen, I know how difficult the situation for
• 9:26
  women is, from firsthand experience, from family context. And there was a period when I understood
• 9:36
  emotionally, I put it this way, emotionally, that there's something wrong with the manner by which
• 9:47
  we have, we experience life as women within that context, in different contexts, not only in Yemen.
• 9:56
  It was only when I started to research that with field work. It was only when I started to look
• 10:06
  at the laws. When I realized, no, this is systematic. This is systematic. And I have to thank my mentor
• 10:16
  and my, he actually was my supervisor when I did my PhD. I started with the Arabian Peninsula,
• 10:33
  Yemen, regional politics, internal politics. But when I wanted to do my postdoctoral thesis,
• 10:41
  because in the German system, you need to have a postdoctoral thesis to be a professor,
• 10:46
  a full professor. He insisted that I talk about the gender dimension. And I still remember at that
• 10:56
  time, I was so angry inside of me at him, and I was thinking, hey, come on, this is that really
• 11:01
  typical, this is that you just won't basically pull me in that discussion about gender, blah, blah,
• 11:10
  from a Western perspective. And I'm so thankful for him. I'm really grateful for him, because
• 11:19
  if it wasn't for that insistence, and if it wasn't for the fellowship that I got,
• 11:26
  the money that I got that allowed me to travel and to look closer as a political scientist.
• 11:33
  But at this specific dimension, I don't think I would have been sitting with you today.
• 11:42
  It was like an opening, as if I realized, okay, what you felt, in fact, you can
• 11:54
  address in a rational manner, because it's not only a patriarchal structure that we're talking about.
• 12:00
  We're talking also about how the system is structured in a manner that makes the life of woman
• 12:18
  hard, that makes a woman minor. The laws are telling me that, the laws, the family laws are telling me,
• 12:27
  because on a constitutional level, you see men and women are equal before the law.
• 12:34
  Go to the family laws, and you see a different picture. But there is a political function for that.
• 12:42
  There is a political function for that. And that political function was for me like the aha moment,
• 12:51
  and so I'm very thankful to my professor. What is the political function of that inequality?
• 13:00
  If you look at the family laws in all Middle Eastern countries, and I'm specifically talking about
• 13:08
  Arab Middle Eastern countries with the exception of Tunisia, you will see that the family laws
• 13:16
  are based on your religious identity. So if you're Christian, you will have religious family law.
• 13:24
  If I'm Muslim, I will have a Muslim family law. But while that is the case,
• 13:35
  this plural, this legal pluralism, that's the expression, each group has its own family law.
• 13:42
  So prohibits and prevents the creation of a national identity. Because at the end of the day,
• 13:52
  I cannot marry you because you're Christian. These laws make it difficult to marry across
• 14:02
  these religious but also tribal lines, sectarian lines. And that plays directly to the
• 14:13
  traditional base of power of the regimes. They, in a way, depend on the division of society
• 14:26
  in order to be the arbiter. And that political function was really for me very interesting.
• 14:35
  It's funny in a sense, Alan, that you've ended up in Switzerland, which of all of the rich,
• 14:40
  Western democracies is one of the most vulcanized in that sense. It has a French bit,
• 14:46
  and it has an Italian bit, and it has a German bit, and everybody gets along, but they don't have
• 14:50
  different rules or different laws. Has that given you any insight into the way that sectarianism
• 14:57
  operates in a democracy versus in the Middle East? It's a very interesting question because Switzerland
• 15:04
  is really interesting in this respect. And I have to say, it also gave me insights of how difficult
• 15:15
  the questions that I'm raising can be. I just talked about family laws that makes it, I mean,
• 15:23
  legally, I cannot marry across my religious life. As a Muslim, I cannot marry a Christian.
• 15:32
  I don't have civil law. We don't have civil law for marriage. Here in Switzerland,
• 15:39
  you didn't have laws that prevented you from marrying across these religious lines. If you were
• 15:46
  Christian Protestant or Christian Catholic, you don't have that. But 50 years ago, I just
• 15:55
  see a certain that we had launched my husband and I with the two partners, two partners,
• 16:03
  two friends who were, you went out couple with a couple. With a couple exactly, with a couple,
• 16:10
  and they were also explaining their background as Catholics, Swiss Catholics, and how it was,
• 16:18
  it wasn't possible. It was in fact, if you dared to marry across your religious
• 16:25
  sectarian lines between Catholic and Protestant, you would lose your support of the family.
• 16:32
  You would be expelled from your own village. So these questions, even from society perspective,
• 16:42
  can be very hard. And I understand how difficult that can be.
• 16:47
  And now, I was just going to ask you about your opposition to proposals in Switzerland
• 16:55
  and in Western democracies to introduce greater sectarianism in the justice system and proposals
• 17:02
  to create alternatives to the conventional liberal democratic justice system by having some
• 17:09
  sharia courts for Muslim minorities in the West and you came out and you were very vocal in writing
• 17:14
  against that. Can you give us some background on why?
• 17:18
  Yes, because I think this is one of the issues that really made me decide to make a stand.
• 17:26
  I'll put it this way. I really had to make a stand because I just, I'll tell you what,
• 17:30
  when this discussion started, when I just came back from my field work and I finished the research
• 17:38
  for this post-doctoral thesis. It was published in a book with the name the Arab State and
• 17:45
  Women's Right, the tribe of authoritarian governments. And you come back to Switzerland and then you
• 17:53
  hear these suggestions by really colleagues that I respect. Well, they basically say maybe we should
• 18:02
  give a certain kind of space for Muslim laws. And the thing is for me, with all due respect,
• 18:12
  we're talking here about religious laws and religious laws that were
• 18:19
  pervigulated between the 7th and 10th century. These are laws that were shaped during a period,
• 18:27
  a historical period, where slavery was an accepted institution, where women were not considered,
• 18:38
  as equal. In fact, they were considered as minors in perpetual need of
• 18:46
  guardianship, male guardianship. And you come and you tell me in the name of religious diversity,
• 18:56
  we should allow religious laws that violates the dignity and rights of women.
• 19:05
  In a context where we actually fought hard to change the laws that made it, made guardianship,
• 19:16
  male guardianship enshrined. I had to take a stand and demand that we look closer at these
• 19:28
  laws. What are we asking for here? Because at the end of the day, what these demands will lead to
• 19:40
  is legitimization of systematic discrimination against women and children. In the name of religious
• 19:51
  freedom, in the name of religious freedom. The proponents of these alternative courts would never
• 20:00
  say that they do that. At they would say this is a way of empowering traditionally oppressed
• 20:05
  religious minorities to be able to conduct their affairs in a way that's consistent with their
• 20:09
  most deeply held beliefs. Even if that bumps up against, as you say, our liberal democratic conception
• 20:17
  of the rights of women and gays and whoever else it might be, who might find themselves ensnared
• 20:22
  in this parallel justice system, one place where such an experiment has been tried is in the UK,
• 20:30
  how has it gone there? That was the point where I realized Britain has been with its Sharia
• 20:40
  councils and Muslim arbitration tribunals. Britain has been used as a positive example when it
• 20:47
  concerns such models. So I decided to go to the UK and research this phenomenon within
• 21:01
  its social context because I thought, okay, I'm a researcher. Maybe the Islamic law that is
• 21:08
  being implemented in the Middle Eastern context, in the manner by which it shaped the family laws,
• 21:16
  maybe that has to do with the context of the Middle East. Look at that context within the UK,
• 21:24
  how it's being implemented. And the outcome was woman and Sharia law, the impact of legal
• 21:29
  pluralism in the UK. And with all due respect, I've seen a situation laws because if you look at
• 21:37
  family laws, I said at the beginning of our discussion, there is an exception and there is
• 21:42
  Tunisia. Tunisia has a family law, civil law inspired of an enlightened kind of reading
• 21:53
  of jurisprudence, where the idea... Why Tunisia? I don't want to go down a total rabbit hole.
• 21:59
  Why Tunisia and not Algeria? Tunisia is in fact a very important case because of the
• 22:09
  its state formation. Look at the history of this country. And you see a state that has a long
• 22:17
  history of central authority, a long history of constitutional development. In fact, I mean,
• 22:25
  it's in the 18th century that this country inspired even the Ottoman Empire in terms of providing
• 22:35
  basic rights to its citizens. It was one of the first countries that abolished slavery.
• 22:43
  And it was a development that came from within, from within Tunisia. And it's maybe there is also
• 22:51
  a factor that it is a country that it's not really divided in the manner that you see in Yemen.
• 22:59
  So the outcome, if you may say, of the Arab Spring in Yemen and in Tunisia, it's no surprise that
• 23:07
  Yemen disintegrated into civil war and even a collapse of its central state, whereas
• 23:14
  Tunisia is still holding. Despite the difficulties, it's a very difficult situation that politically
• 23:23
  and economically the country is going through, but it stands as an example. And add to that that when
• 23:33
  it was, I mean, it's a colonial control of France, if you compare how it controlled Algeria
• 23:42
  and Tunisia, you see huge differences. In Algeria, it really deliberately tried to divide this
• 23:49
  society. In Tunisia, it learned from the mistakes because it led to work, it led to a huge
• 23:56
  bloodshed. In Tunisia, it learned from these mistakes and did not try to destroy the whole kind
• 24:03
  of like bases, central and administrative bases. In fact, it built on it and it did not try to
• 24:10
  problematize family law. So if you look at this, what happened in Tunisia, in a way, the post-colonial
• 24:19
  state came with much to start with, it has to do with the history of the country itself.
• 24:27
  It has to do with the different method of the colonial power that controlled the country for
• 24:34
  a certain period. And then you have the leadership and the vision of the president who came
• 24:39
  after independence, Burkimba, and this president had the vision that on the one hand, we need
• 24:47
  separation between state and religion in order to have a state that is neutral to its own,
• 24:53
  to its citizens. But on the other hand, we need a different family law, a family law that
• 25:00
  change also the social structure. Because from his perspective, the man wasn't a feminist,
• 25:06
  this is very important. What he was interested in, he was telling us, I need a modern state,
• 25:14
  a modern state needs husband and wife and two children, not husband and four wives and several,
• 25:24
  I don't know how many children. So the family law was a key tool for him to change that social
• 25:32
  structure. And when he came, there was already development from the legal perspective,
• 25:40
  Muslim legal perspective, where they came also with their own interpretation that there is
• 25:46
  nothing wrong of saying that a woman can be her own guardian.
• 25:56
  Okay, so we have carved out Tunisia as the exception to the rule of family law dominating
• 26:05
  in these countries. So then when you, having grown up in these cultures, these societies,
• 26:10
  these political systems, go to the UK to look at the way that it's being implemented there,
• 26:15
  what do you, for a start, just explain to people who aren't familiar with the British experiment,
• 26:19
  what a sharia court in the UK even is or what it presides over.
• 26:25
  You have two forms of application for Islamic law and the UK. The one with the first
• 26:35
  type is through what is called Sharia Councils. The numbers varies between 35 to 80, but you have
• 26:47
  really very famous councils, like the one in Litton, the other one in Birmingham. And these
• 26:54
  councils, you have a kind of self-appointed shaykhs who reside on these courts and they decide
• 27:18
  when it comes to family affairs of Muslim couples. When it comes to the Sharia Councils,
• 27:27
  the majority of those who go to these councils are women, women seeking divorce.
• 27:38
  Islamic law allows the husband to divorce his wife with uttering three words,
• 27:48
  taluk, taluk, taluk, that means divorce divorce. One word three times, divorce divorce divorce,
• 27:54
  and you have a life, a marriage ending. I'm sure it's that easy for the women as well, right?
• 28:05
  Yes, and on the other hand, women, either they have the right,
• 28:13
  either they can get a divorce if their husband agrees, you know,
• 28:19
  similarly in the Jewish law, for a woman to be able to get a divorce, she needs to get from her
• 28:28
  husband, also that he also gives her, he gives her the divorce in a get.
• 28:37
  But that only with his permission. So that's the first thing, the second thing, if she can
• 28:43
  prove hum, he hits her, he drinks, he doesn't sleep with her for six months, things like that, okay?
• 28:51
  Or with when she gives up her financial rights written in the marriage contract,
• 29:01
  and in that case, she can get a divorce from a judge usually, it's called hola.
• 29:11
  The problem is basically, if you look at the type of Islamic law that is being implemented,
• 29:18
  that's why I mentioned Tunisia. That's why I mentioned Tunisia.
• 29:24
  Women, they go to these courts because they need a religious divorce. This has to do with
• 29:32
  the fact that some of them think from a religious point of view, they need to have a religious
• 29:40
  divorce, but the main issue in fact has to do with the lack of registration of religious marriages.
• 29:54
  You have many studies, many surveys that showed that at least 61% of British Muslim marriages
• 30:04
  are not conducted, are not registered, they're done religiously. So women, when they end up,
• 30:11
  unusually, the majority of them, they do not know that the British law does not recognize
• 30:18
  these marriages. You have to register it here in Switzerland, we have a different situation where
• 30:25
  first I have to marry a civil marriage in order for me to be able to marry a religious marriage.
• 30:32
  That's not the case and there are, right now, this is what is taking place in Britain where there's
• 30:37
  a campaign to change the laws because the laws only consider the marriages of Christian, Jews,
• 30:46
  and cubic, these quakers, I'm sorry, and quakers, these marriages are recognized once conducted
• 30:58
  religiously, they are also registered automatically. The campaigns right now are pushing
• 31:04
  for changing that to include Muslim and Hindu and other minorities' marriages. So
• 31:14
  to go back to the point, they find themselves in marriages not recognized by British law,
• 31:22
  they need a divorce, they have to go to these Sharia councils. The Sharia councils, unfortunately,
• 31:30
  the type of Islamic law they are applying is not the Tunisian one, the Tunisian one will tell you
• 31:35
  you don't need to go to a Sharia court, you need to go to a civil court to get a divorce,
• 31:41
  and then you will divide your asset equally according to the law. Now what they do is they take
• 31:48
  the Yemeni family law. The one that tells you I cannot leave the house without the permission
• 31:55
  of my husband. I have to fulfill his sexual desires and not the other way, that's written in the law,
• 32:03
  that's written in the law. And I even with the Hula option, the one that I mentioned before,
• 32:09
  where I have to give up my financial assets and rights in order to get a divorce without his
• 32:14
  permission, that family law tells us, no, the husband has to say yes to that divorce. And you
• 32:24
  end up in a situation, I was surprised to go to the UK and to see a context that reminded me
• 32:36
  very much with what I've seen in a Yemeni context. In fact, I mean, you've made the point in the
• 32:43
  past that some of these interpretations of law go even further than the law does in the home countries
• 32:50
  of the people from which they came, that there might be British Pakistanis who are being ruled on
• 32:56
  in British Sharia courts using a more extreme version of Sharia law than exists in Pakistan itself.
• 33:03
  So and that shows you a certain dimension that we seem to forget that very often specifically,
• 33:12
  if a certain community starts to close and in a new home country, they often,
• 33:26
  they can often be more conservative than their own citizens from their original home countries.
• 33:38
  And I've seen that, I've seen how in Egypt, for instance, every time I go to Egypt, I'm so surprised
• 33:43
  of how things are developing and going in a direction, or you see even questions that some here
• 33:51
  may not even dare to question, are being posed in Egypt, but not here.
• 33:57
  Yes, my step grandfather was from Paris and he moved to Australia and he went back to Paris
• 34:06
  for the first time, 30 years after moving to Australia and didn't much care for it because it wasn't
• 34:10
  as good as the real Paris, you know, the one that was still in his brain and that's often how migrant
• 34:15
  communities feel about they're stuck in a little bubble from the past while their homeland evolves.
• 34:21
  But I want to get to, I want to get to some of your thoughts about what's underpinning all of this
• 34:25
  because it's really interesting. You talk about sort of a paradigm, which you call an essentialist
• 34:30
  paradigm, that the people who are well-meaning usually white Western left wingers inhabit in
• 34:39
  order to think that it's the right thing to do to create these kinds of parallel systems for minorities
• 34:44
  in Western democracies. What is the essentialist paradigm?
• 34:52
  I would say a paradigm of thinking that has become characteristic of Western academic
• 34:57
  post-colonial and post-modern discourses and I'm not saying that all post-modern post-colonial
• 35:05
  researchers exhibit this essentialist kind of feature, but you see it's so dominating even in
• 35:14
  the academic sphere, but it reflects on the policies that we're seeing. What do I mean with that?
• 35:21
  I see features, four features. On the one hand, you have a tendency to look at multiculturalism,
• 35:32
  not in the manner as a lived experience. You and I, regardless of our color, religious or
• 35:41
  religion, regardless of what you might call differences, we accept each other
• 35:51
  on an equal basis of respect and we live together. No, if you look at the essentialist paradigm,
• 36:00
  the idea is in fact more, we're talking about multiculturalism as a political process, one that
• 36:07
  put us or set us into boxes and define policies accordingly. So if I'm using myself as an
• 36:17
  example, I'm in ham mana and academic of, I actually takes all the boxes according to this
• 36:31
  form of identity politics, I'm woman, I'm Muslim, I'm brown, okay, with three boxes,
• 36:39
  but you don't see me as Elham, the academic, you don't see me as Elham who may in fact not act
• 36:48
  in the manner that you expect the Muslim woman to act. Even a Muslim woman with a headscarf,
• 36:54
  you would have a certain kind of perception of how she should behave, she should behave,
• 36:59
  or what you expect her to want. That's not the case with the essentialist. One, in fact,
• 37:08
  insists we are members of groups and members of oppressed groups, if I may add this, and as an
• 37:17
  oppressed group, we have to be protected. And in a way, takes the agencies of the individual
• 37:26
  within each of these boxes. And yes, I'm sorry Elham to interrupt, but I'm just noticing that
• 37:35
  it's interesting that your status as a quote unquote oppressed minority leads the white
• 37:41
  savior academic to treat you in a certain way and want to protect you as a, let's say a Muslim.
• 37:49
  And yet, in so doing, they might actually be throwing you into, throwing you at the mercy of
• 37:55
  misogynistic members of your own community who have less respect for your rights as a woman,
• 38:02
  than the left-wing academic who claims to be standing up for you does.
• 38:07
  And at the same time, that's the problem with the group rights, because that's another feature
• 38:12
  of this essentialist paradigm, that they insist as a group, I belong to the Muslim, as a group,
• 38:19
  we have certain rights. And that means this ties rather well with this idea of like, let's apply
• 38:27
  Islamic law in order to protect the rights of this religious group. But look at this Islamic law
• 38:33
  that you want to apply. See how it reflects on the likes of women, on children, men and women
• 38:42
  of different sexual orientation, persons who believe in different religious who may not be even
• 38:52
  Muslims, who would like to have different who are free to choose or not to choose to be religious
• 39:02
  or not to be religious, to have a religion or not to have a religion. All of these
• 39:07
  are impacted by this very Islamic law that you're telling me I have to apply. And while they're
• 39:14
  doing that, they also, in a way, you said it, they even take, they look at these laws without
• 39:27
  its context. It's as if they are taking us from our context. Look at this social context. Look
• 39:34
  in the Middle Eastern countries. How many men and women are standing today, fighting for changes
• 39:42
  in these laws? I mean, the agency, it's there in many of these men and women in these countries.
• 39:51
  And yet we come here and it's as if it's something solid, made, crafted, and you can cut and paste.
• 40:02
  And that has consequences. That's the problem. The most important feature as well. And that
• 40:11
  brings the guys well with the fact that you bring laws, you know they are violating the dignity
• 40:18
  and rights of the individual with impunity. And yet a culture relativist form of approach tells
• 40:30
  you, well, that's their laws. This is the way we see it as violating. They don't see it. Well,
• 40:36
  guess what? Look at all the soap operas in Arabic. When they talk about these laws, they show you
• 40:44
  the pain of the woman. They show you the pain of the woman. So if you think that humans
• 40:51
  may feel pain differently, think again. Just try to live under such laws and tell me out
• 40:59
  to work. Some people in the West who regard themselves as being pro-Muslim, who regard themselves
• 41:08
  as being on the side of Muslim minorities, whether they're Muslims themselves or not, will respond
• 41:13
  to what you're saying frequently by saying something like this is a caricature of Islam. Of course
• 41:20
  there are extremes in every society. We have sexism in the West. We have extremists in the West.
• 41:26
  We have religious fanatics like Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City former. We have the Ku Klux Klan.
• 41:32
  We have, you know, Texas passing laws preventing women from having abortions. There are of course
• 41:39
  extremes. You can't generalize about Muslims. Most Muslims are perfectly normal lives and there's
• 41:45
  no reason to demonize Islam in such a way by singling it out as being uniquely sexist. What's the
• 41:51
  response to that? It's a very good question and I'm not trying to demonize Muslims. This is what I'm
• 41:57
  trying to say. I'm just saying stop producing people to their religious identity. Look at them in
• 42:03
  their diversity. It says, why don't you look at me as a Yemeni, as Egyptian, with my national identity
• 42:12
  instead of the Muslim. And at the same time, address the fact that yes, there are laws, religious
• 42:19
  laws that infringe on the human rights of those who belong to this very country or very religion.
• 42:32
  Address the fact that we're talking about communities that are diverse and yet you insist
• 42:44
  on reducing them and treating them as one block. It's as if, as if South Asian, look at the South
• 42:54
  Asian context, for instance, the South Asian Muslims in the UK. They come from Bangladesh, from
• 43:03
  India, from Pakistan, even those from Pakistan. They are divided along regional, linguistic
• 43:14
  and sectarian lines and yet we insist on looking at them without addressing the differences,
• 43:22
  the diversity in their identities. And at the same time, I'm just insisting that one should look
• 43:38
  at what is taking place in Middle Eastern societies about the action, the civil society actors
• 43:46
  who are trying to change these laws, those who are standing to harassment, sexual harassment,
• 43:55
  those who are trying to also change perception to women and look at these countries and you realize
• 44:04
  that what you're telling me that we are here doesn't really add up to what we are witnessing in
• 44:12
  these society. And this brings the final, the final feature of the essentialist, the one that
• 44:19
  is the most important one, is the white man, white woman's third. This is the feeling of this guilt
• 44:30
  that you see so featured in this paradigm, when so ashamed of the colonial past, of the
• 44:46
  wrongdoings that took place, and you have a lot of problems that took place and paying that was
• 44:54
  caused by colonial periods. But that shame, that guilt translate into attempting to be paternalistic
• 45:06
  and maternalistic towards what they consider as the prost group. And that makes discussion very
• 45:16
  difficult, very difficult. There's so much to address there, but I just want to make one point
• 45:22
  about, since you mentioned South Asian Muslims, it made me think also of a countervailing force
• 45:29
  to your anecdote about the quest for liberalism in the Arab world, which is the impact that Arab
• 45:37
  Islam has had on Asian Islam. So Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country and Australia's
• 45:45
  closest big neighbor, when I would back back around Indonesia as a teenager, the form of Islam,
• 45:52
  there was very moderate, women seemed very self-expressed. And today you can see more
• 45:59
  headscapes, more veils, more burgers, more, I mean, people reading Arabic texts, which is completely
• 46:05
  alien to Indonesians, you know, being funded a lot by Saudi money and by a more extreme version
• 46:12
  of Islam. What do you make of that countervailing force inside Islam, which is extremifying things
• 46:18
  around the Muslim world? Yeah, that brings us to the issue of Islamism in its different forms.
• 46:27
  You're very much right. If you look at Indonesia, if you look at Egypt in the 60s and the 70s,
• 46:36
  you would have seen a different picture than what we're seeing today.
• 46:39
  And here we bring the political dimension. We're talking about an ideology, a political ideology
• 46:53
  that is based on a fundamentalist interpretation of religion. And that it's a far-right political
• 47:01
  ideology, a religious far-right political ideology called Islamism. And this ideology was very
• 47:14
  important due to political factors during the Cold War. During the Cold War, if I talk about
• 47:25
  my region, the Middle Arab Middle East, during that Cold War, you actually can see countries
• 47:33
  allowing with the Soviet Union and countries, allowing with the United States. And some regimes
• 47:40
  that were facing opposition from movements that were leftist in nature. So the mean, the mean
• 47:52
  to face these ideology was Islamism. From the perspective of these regimes, including the United
• 47:59
  States, which worked together with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, from their perspective, we were facing
• 48:07
  an ideological communist threat, leftist threat within the Arab context. It was a pan-Arab
• 48:15
  leftist threat. And we're using a religion, a religion from their perspective. But what they had
• 48:25
  was a political ideology. And they didn't take, for instance, selfishism. That's a very
• 48:31
  esoteric, beautiful form of Islam. Instead, they took a new fundamentalist one, a reactionary
• 48:40
  interpretation of Islam. The one that comes from the heart of Saudi Arabia, it's called
• 48:50
  Wahabi, Salafi Islam, named after its founder. But at the same time, he looked at the South
• 48:58
  Asian context in Pakistan. They used also the interpretation of their own version of a new
• 49:06
  fundamentalist movement called Diobandi, also named after the seminary that was teaching
• 49:15
  this line of Islam in the 18th and 19th century. So the result was this. I mean, these movements,
• 49:24
  I'm talking right now specifically, these new fundamentalist movements, they were modern,
• 49:29
  but French, in the sense that we're not really embraced by the majority of Muslim
• 49:38
  majority countries. Due to this political factor, the state mainstreamed them, mainstreamed them
• 49:48
  in the manner by which it gave a much bigger platform to their creatures, changing the
• 49:58
  curriculums, changing the way religion is being taught. And even if you look at Yemen, for instance,
• 50:06
  in the 70s, before the curriculums were changed, there was one class every week about ethics,
• 50:17
  inspired of Islamic religion. Respect your parents, love your neighbors, don't steal,
• 50:24
  be a nice person. And after the coalition that took specifically at the end of the 70s,
• 50:31
  and with the rise of the influence of Muslim-Badavu, that's a political Islamist movement,
• 50:39
  you saw a change in the curriculum to seven hours, unfortunately, often interpretation that is
• 50:49
  literally is a fundamentalist interpretation of religion. And I remember when I came back from
• 50:56
  Morocco, I was 16 years old, went to high schools in Sana'a,
• 51:08
  in the religious classes that I learned there, they were telling me that if I don't pray five times,
• 51:18
  I will be killed. I deserve to be killed. The way religion has been taught to us, it was not
• 51:32
  a message of love. It was a message of control, hatred, hatred, because it's not only me that I
• 51:40
  basically the rules don't only apply to me, the rules also insist that I treat those who do not
• 51:53
  share the same interpretation, I'm not even saying the same religion, they should be treated by me
• 52:02
  differently due to their religious practices or religious identity. And that changed a lot.
• 52:12
  And you see that in the manner by which Indonesia, Malaysia today, the discourses that you'll hear,
• 52:22
  the most visible feature of it because when they start, they start with women, and in Afghanistan,
• 52:30
  you've seen right now. You saw Taliban just came, what was the first thing they did? You have to wear
• 52:39
  they have their dressing code, they are segregating men and women, erasing the faces of humans from
• 52:51
  from the walls. This is Diobande Islam. This is really a new fundamentalist Islam, and that
• 53:02
  fringe fundamentalist interpretation became mainstream because of this political factor,
• 53:14
  because of these states. And just want to make a connection that you make in your book,
• 53:21
  Women and Sharia Law, which is that this interpretation of Islam, this Islamist interpretation of
• 53:28
  Islam, insofar as it takes Islamic law as a given and as synonymous with Sharia. And insofar as it
• 53:36
  regards all Muslims as being homogenous and insofar as it regards Muslims as people for whom religion
• 53:44
  is the most important thing in their lives. These are the same beliefs that Western leftists
• 53:50
  have when the Western leftists are introducing things like Sharia courts in the UK.
• 54:05
  Isn't that interesting really? It's that instead of taking the most because, and that's here,
• 54:12
  again, how you reduce groups or individuals into their group identity and thinking
• 54:20
  they, you put them into boxes. And instead of addressing the fact that this is, I mean Islamic
• 54:27
  tradition is very diverse. I mean, me living in different countries of Islamic tradition
• 54:35
  has enabled me to see that diversity. Yemen is not Morocco, Morocco is not Syria, Syria is not Egypt,
• 54:42
  and yet we insist on treating them or like Iran. Unfortunately with the Iranian
• 54:50
  regime after the Islamic revolution, you had a different Iran than the one that I experienced
• 54:58
  during the Shah Iran time. So, at diversity does it seem to be relevant in the description of the
• 55:07
  what do you make of the almost pathological fixation on the headscarf in the past 10, 20 years
• 55:14
  in the West? It has become a symbol, you know, in the women's march in the United States after Donald
• 55:19
  Trump was elected. Everyone wearing Muslim headscarves and non-Muslims as a way of gesturing their
• 55:27
  inclusiveness, I suppose, and their opposition to someone who they regarded as being an Islamophobic
• 55:33
  bigot, but it has come to represent some sort of female liberation, which seems wholly unhinged
• 55:41
  from the way that it is used in conservative Muslim societies. Yes, and that's the problem because
• 55:49
  context matter. And again, this tendency to take an issue and tear it from its social context.
• 56:02
  That's the way it's been done. So, we're talking about a headscarf. Headscarf,
• 56:08
  you have to look at it within the context of how it has been used within Muslim majority countries.
• 56:16
  How women liberation movements in the 19th century, the beginning of the 20th century,
• 56:25
  were using this very symbol as a mean to liberate themselves. So, what does that mean? It's like
• 56:32
  they will burn it. They will burn it. And that's not only in Egypt, that's not only in Syria,
• 56:39
  that's not only in Tunisia, you know, that's even in South of Yemen. You have well-documented cases
• 56:47
  where basically women activists in order to show we are moving away of a patriarchal conception of
• 56:57
  rights, we are basically burning this symbol. Comes political Islam. Political Islam,
• 57:06
  the founder of Muslim Brotherhood, that's the womb of political Islam. Muslim Brotherhood was founded
• 57:19
  in Egypt in 1928 by a teacher, primary school teacher Hassan Elbana.
• 57:32
  And he, if you look at the way he used the woman, he was in fact reacting not only to the West as
• 57:41
  everybody is insisting, not only to Kamal Ataturk in Turkey. Kamal Ataturk was the leader that came
• 57:52
  after the end of the Ottoman Empire. He abolished the Khalifa. He insisted on the separation of state
• 57:59
  and religion and he to use the woman and her body as a symbol for his vision, for his project.
• 58:09
  Hassan Elbana was against the abolition of the Khalifa, was against separation of state and religion.
• 58:14
  For him, religion should be a political project. That means society should be guided and ruled
• 58:22
  and controlled by religious laws and was against at the same time the liberation of women
• 58:32
  as Kamal Ataturk was pushing for. Again, just like Burkiba in Tunisia, Kamal Ataturk was no
• 58:40
  feminist. He just saw the woman as a social change. So comes Hassan Elbana, what does he tell us? No,
• 58:48
  we have a different model and the woman is very central to it because she will create the new
• 58:58
  Muslim, the one that will create that Islamic state. And there is
• 59:05
  dress code for that woman. And from his perspective, it should be like this and like this. And
• 59:11
  that's why you immediately, you can tell if a person, if a woman is wearing the head's
• 59:19
  car out of an Islamist belief, or if she's doing that because of tradition, because of religious
• 59:26
  belief, religious belief, or because of economic reason, you can't say, you can't tell.
• 59:35
  But that political movement was again fringe until the 70s, until Sadat, Anorah Sadat,
• 59:42
  the president of Egypt decided that he needs to counter his leftist
• 59:51
  competitors by depending on the Islamist movements, including the Muslim Brotherhood.
• 59:58
  And with that, if you look at the pictures, the albums of the pictures, at the end of the 70s,
• 1:00:06
  you will hardly see a woman with a head's car. Today, the majority are wearing the head's car.
• 1:00:13
  The majority are wearing the head's car. And that doesn't mean that women are wearing the
• 1:00:18
  head's car because their Islamists, please understand what I'm saying. I'm just saying that
• 1:00:23
  for the Islamist movement, this head's car is central for their own project.
• 1:00:30
  Bring this question here, and you realize that this whole context is really absent from the
• 1:00:40
  discussion. The fact that you have women, yes, I know, half of my families wearing head's cars,
• 1:00:47
  and I know that you have women who are wearing that by their own
• 1:00:50
  will, but you also have those who are being pushed to wear it, whether they liked it or not.
• 1:00:59
  You also have women who are being forced to wear it with grave consequences.
• 1:01:09
  And that is absent from this whole discussion. That power dimension, that particular
• 1:01:16
  dimension, that political dimension, seems to be absent from the discussion. And I'm just
• 1:01:22
  insisting, look at the issues in its complexity, and stop turning this because these
• 1:01:30
  nice, with all due respect, feminists, western feminists, women who come and they basically wear
• 1:01:41
  the head's car in solidarity with Muslim women. Well, tell me why don't you do same campaigns for
• 1:01:49
  those women who are forced to wear it? Just as you wear it in solidarity with those who are
• 1:01:57
  being attacked because they're wearing it, do the same for those who are being
• 1:02:03
  beaten to wear it, forced to wear it. And without that complexity, just basically naive,
• 1:02:14
  essentialists. Let's talk about supporting the Muslim communities in the West because
• 1:02:23
  there is oppression, there is bias, there is prejudice against Muslim communities in
• 1:02:29
  in western countries, there is a justifiable desire amongst progressive people to ensure that
• 1:02:35
  Muslim communities feel welcome that they're not subjected to harassment or prejudice.
• 1:02:43
  And yet, as you've been saying, that can sometimes bleed into a support for the most reactionary
• 1:02:50
  elements in the Muslim communities and the kind of misguided essentialism about those communities.
• 1:02:56
  And if you try to do both, if you try to take the best of both worlds and split the baby in half
• 1:03:04
  and say we want to support the Muslim women, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to
• 1:03:09
  support what the Muslim community claims to want for itself because maybe it's just a very
• 1:03:13
  loud imam who's actually quite sexist who's telling us what the community wants. So we have to
• 1:03:18
  sideline the community in the interests of the 15 year old girl who lives in that community here
• 1:03:24
  in Australia who might not want to wear the headscarf but might risk ostracization from her
• 1:03:29
  family if she chooses not to. How do you do that without coming across as being a bigot?
• 1:03:38
  Yes, it's a very important question and it's a very difficult question, but I will start with
• 1:03:46
  something that you said. Let me ask the question who's speaking in the name of Muslim communities
• 1:03:54
  in their diversity. And very often you see organizations well organized, flushed in resources
• 1:04:06
  and they insist that they are the sole speakers of their Muslim communities.
• 1:04:14
  And if you look closer, you see political dimension here where some, I'm not saying all,
• 1:04:21
  but some of these organizations in fact are affiliated with one form or another of Islamism,
• 1:04:29
  either political Islam or new fundamentalist movements. And when they demand, they make their demands,
• 1:04:36
  they make their Islamist demands, but they make it in the name of the whole of the communities.
• 1:04:42
  And that would lead to consequences because the first thing that usually policy makers,
• 1:04:49
  because that's the problem that I see from the perspective of policy makers here in Western
• 1:04:55
  democratic countries. Policy makers, they want an easy way out. I need someone who speaks in the name
• 1:05:03
  of these Muslim communities so we make the good policies and we are really tweeting our minorities
• 1:05:09
  in with good conscience, what they want. Instead, what they do is that they empower such movements.
• 1:05:18
  They empower their agenda in terms of giving them the power to dictate what children
• 1:05:25
  are being taught in their religious classes. And very often, these classes will tell you that the
• 1:05:32
  founder of the Muslim Brotherhood is a saint, that the founder of the Jamaat in Islamia al-Maududi
• 1:05:41
  is a holy person. Someone who tells you I need an Islamic state and any state that does not apply
• 1:05:51
  Sharia is not a legal state is being taught as the role model. It changes the perception. It tells
• 1:05:59
  you that women are minors in perpetual need of male guardianship. This is the outcome because it
• 1:06:13
  in a way it teaches children a different model than the one that they are living in actually a model
• 1:06:22
  that stands against this democratic liberal sitting that they are living in. And
• 1:06:30
  indirectly, this cooperation, if I may say, lead to communities closing up. We've seen that
• 1:06:40
  in the United Kingdom. We see it in other countries in Sweden, for instance. And that leads to
• 1:06:47
  closed communities. And unfortunately, by treating them as groups and selecting leaders
• 1:07:02
  for these groups to speak in their name, you end up empowering the most reactionary elements
• 1:07:12
  within these diverse communities. And you end up with a situation when a demand that children
• 1:07:22
  girls should cover their hair when they go to the school becomes this is a religious demand
• 1:07:29
  that look at the schools in other countries, those are majority countries. When did we start to
• 1:07:35
  have that? When did we start to have that? And you see the political connection, the Islamist
• 1:07:42
  dimension to it. And how much, sometimes a certain accommodation with Islamist or conservative
• 1:07:50
  Muslim thinking is necessary in order to bring the Muslim community into the daily life of a
• 1:07:58
  Western democracy. I'm thinking of, for example, swimming pools in Australia. Some of the public
• 1:08:04
  schools have, public swimming pools have created one afternoon a week where there's a section
• 1:08:10
  that is covered where just Muslim girls can swim. And so they don't have to see any male
• 1:08:16
  bodies that are to see any other Australians. They can be covered and they can be protected.
• 1:08:22
  Of course, that causes a debate. Are you pandering to show venism, misogyny, sexism,
• 1:08:28
  perpetuating ancient gender differences? Or are you using the only tool you have to try to
• 1:08:36
  take these girls and make them part of the Australian lifestyle where we all love going to swimming
• 1:08:40
  pools and swimming because we're a sunny country who loves to go to pools? Which one is it?
• 1:08:45
  Okay, it's important. All I'm trying to say here is that it is important not to work
• 1:09:00
  with Islamists. That's all I'm saying, okay? I understand you have religious Muslims.
• 1:09:10
  I understand that you have religious Muslims and these religious Muslims, they do have their own
• 1:09:17
  religious demands. The question for me is does accommodation leads to infringement and
• 1:09:26
  violation of human rights or this accommodation can be done in a plural context?
• 1:09:34
  Let me put it to you this way. Maybe this will be a way to get into it. I saw a story on the
• 1:09:40
  news which was about Australia's first surf lifesaving team of Muslim girls who were
• 1:09:50
  between the ages of maybe eight or 12 or something and they had headscarf, they had full body
• 1:09:59
  swimming outfits and they were undertaking this very traditional Australian activity of
• 1:10:05
  surf lifesaving running along the beach, doing exercises and swimming and so on and they felt
• 1:10:10
  liberated because they came from conservative Muslim households. Now one part of me thinks that's
• 1:10:16
  fabulous. One part of me thinks what I'm asking I suppose is how should I feel about the spin
• 1:10:23
  that the journalist was putting on it which was to present it as a as a story of liberation? It's
• 1:10:28
  the story of these young girls who were being liberated because they are fighting back against
• 1:10:33
  bigotry in Australia, they're fighting against Islamophobia and they're expressing their
• 1:10:37
  truest, deepest sense of themselves at the age of eight by covering up all by covering themselves.
• 1:10:44
  Completely. Is this a joyful, am I supposed to share in this joy?
• 1:10:50
  And that brings me also my mixed feeling, very mixed feeling about this because on the one hand
• 1:10:55
  I can see how this eight years old girl is very happy to do this, you know, very happy to be
• 1:11:04
  allowed to do this knowing that she won't be able to do it if she didn't cover herself.
• 1:11:12
  And this dimension is the missing one, it's the missing one because as you said the media is like
• 1:11:20
  spinning it out and this is like against our bigotry, our discrimination, Islamophobic reaction
• 1:11:28
  but look at it from the perspective of this child who is a child and yet she has to cover
• 1:11:36
  herself as if she is a sexual temptation of source and that shows the problematic side of it.
• 1:11:48
  If I cannot do an action unless I do I do it in this framework there is something wrong
• 1:11:57
  with the context that tells this girl you have to cover yourself is something wrong and without
• 1:12:03
  seeing this power dimension, this patriarchal dimension and at the same time that most likely
• 1:12:12
  Islamists are the one or new fundamentalists are the one who imposes on a child this code of dressing
• 1:12:21
  we're missing the whole picture, we are really missing the whole picture what comes to this.
• 1:12:27
  And yes, when you talk about the different ways in which Islam expresses itself in these
• 1:12:33
  different communities and the richness and the complexity of these different interpretations
• 1:12:38
  there was a whole conversation after the terrorist attacks in 2001 in the west about whether or not
• 1:12:46
  this is a problem with Islam, whether Islam needs a reformation, whether it needs to find a way
• 1:12:52
  to be more pluralistic and so on. What do you make of that? Is Islam part of a problem?
• 1:13:00
  We certainly need Islamic reformation, we need that. I'm not the only one who is saying that God knows
• 1:13:10
  we have a whole many intellectuals, men and women from different countries of Muslim majority
• 1:13:22
  countries who are saying that and the discussion is taken place and it's a difficult process.
• 1:13:29
  It's a very difficult process because we have to raise very difficult questions about the nature
• 1:13:34
  of our religion, of how to move forward, of reformation, what does that mean?
• 1:13:40
  But your question in fact brings different dimension, brings different dimension,
• 1:13:45
  before I talked about a political ideology, a political, a far right religious political ideology.
• 1:13:54
  But that ideology is religious in that it depends in its interpretation on a new fundamentalist
• 1:14:04
  interpretation of Islam and without acknowledging this component, it becomes difficult to address
• 1:14:12
  the issue. Look at the recognition of many Arab countries after ISIS, the Islamic states rise,
• 1:14:28
  how they came to the conclusion that hey guys, we've been mainstreaming this fundamentalist
• 1:14:37
  interpretation. We have to stop doing that. I mean in my book The Pearls of Nonviolent Islamism,
• 1:14:45
  I mentioned that important article of the information former Kuwaiti minister who wrote an article
• 1:14:56
  with the title We Are ISIS. He said we mainstreamed this interpretation in our schools, in our
• 1:15:05
  mosques and it's time to stop that. So without in order for us to stop radicalization,
• 1:15:20
  we have to understand as well there is a religious component that has to be countered,
• 1:15:26
  but military interventions and I think Afghanistan have shown us that clearly are futile.
• 1:15:34
  The interventions that we've seen in Iraq, interventions that we've seen in Afghanistan,
• 1:15:40
  they just waste a lot of resources and opened a Pandora box that really reflected badly
• 1:15:49
  on these very societies but at the same time they did not really address the issue and the
• 1:15:56
  issue is that you have the ideological foundation of this jihadism of this virus and that ideological
• 1:16:06
  foundation is called Islamism. A political ideology but the political ideology is based on a
• 1:16:14
  religious interpretation and without saying it and articulating the problem we will be basically
• 1:16:24
  moving in circles and not crossing the boundaries of these circles and yes on the one hand when it
• 1:16:33
  comes to this violence, to this terrorism caused by Islamism there is a very important component
• 1:16:43
  that has to do with this new fundamentalist ideology and that means we have to look what kind
• 1:16:50
  of Islam we are we are teaching children under the leadership of Islamist organization that's one
• 1:16:58
  component and the general question does Islam need reformation yes Islam does need reformation
• 1:17:05
  because until today we are unable to look at our holy text and acknowledge the human nature
• 1:17:18
  in it and without addressing this specific point without separating ourselves from or without the
• 1:17:29
  ability of looking at these text these holy text within their historical context we will keep
• 1:17:46
  asking the same questions again and again and again and let me just tell you something because
• 1:17:53
  I don't want the listener or the the viewer to come out of this session feeling pessimistic
• 1:18:05
  after the uprisings of 2010-2011 in the Middle East today everybody will tell you the
• 1:18:17
  Arab Spring that was a catastrophe politically maybe but look at the consequences on a social
• 1:18:25
  and intellectual level and you see something's changing something's really changing and the
• 1:18:31
  discussion that are taking place the forums the online publications the ability to access
• 1:18:40
  information has been important last week on Saturday I was invited to an online discussion
• 1:18:49
  by a Yemeni professional forum we were three speakers all speaking in Arabic
• 1:18:59
  and we were talking about future freedom and thinking our session here it has the the title
• 1:19:13
  permission to think and we were permitted to think there and I in my talk in Arabic I talked about
• 1:19:20
  the importance of breaking these boundaries of thinking and acknowledging the human nature of
• 1:19:32
  Quran of Quran our holy book and making sure that we basically reach a conclusion that we can
• 1:19:42
  separate ourselves also from certain perceptions and laws in our holy books so what I'm trying
• 1:19:56
  to say is basically even while I'm talking to you right now I'm talking in English in Arabic I'm
• 1:20:02
  saying similar I'm saying the same but I'm glad that you that you emphasize that you're saying
• 1:20:09
  the same thing in English and Arabic because you also talk about it in your writing and we can
• 1:20:16
  we can we can end with this because I think you can take it wherever you want but you talk about how
• 1:20:20
  after the Charlie Hebdo massacre in France the Saudis the Saudi government said this is terrible we
• 1:20:29
  don't we oppose all of this there is freedom of thought and freedom of speech we they did all of
• 1:20:35
  the necessary genuine flexion towards liberal ideals that you might expect them to came to
• 1:20:40
  France the crown prince or whoever it was and paid respects and marched with the French president
• 1:20:45
  and in that very same week you make the point that there was a blogger probably more than one a
• 1:20:51
  free thinker in Saudi Arabia who was being publicly flogged in the town square for for having the
• 1:20:59
  wrong beliefs talk about about Islam so is it possible to move to another stage of Islamic
• 1:21:07
  enlightenment or reformation without doing away with those power structures at the top
• 1:21:13
  in Saudi Arabia in similar countries and if so or if not what could we in the West be doing to do
• 1:21:20
  no I'll tell you something is that was 2015 move forwards so 2021 and you see things are changing
• 1:21:31
  also in the very country that you mentioned Saudi Arabia you see a movement away from this
• 1:21:38
  reactionally interpretation of Islam now the question for me moving away because you see a form
• 1:21:48
  the development Saudi Arabia right now has taken a shape where the suffocating social religious
• 1:21:56
  control that was imposed by the regime of this very religious fundamental interpretation
• 1:22:07
  ceased ceased the things that were imposed segregation between this axis in position of either
• 1:22:16
  Nikab or Burka or headscarf that ends more liberal freedoms is taken is being given now for me
• 1:22:31
  the key issue is when Saudi Arabia threw its Salafi arm that is the word Muslim League
• 1:22:40
  when it propagates this new line religiously so the problem is this word Muslim League
• 1:22:54
  built mosques provide the books provide the training for the events and that happens in Australia
• 1:23:02
  that happens in other Western democratic countries for me in order for these changes to be really
• 1:23:11
  authentic sustainable and believable I need to see the books that are being taught to the children
• 1:23:18
  are you still promoting the writing of the Wahhabi founders and specifically
• 1:23:27
  Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhabi has a very famous book to hate are you promoting the writings
• 1:23:33
  of the Salafi Saudi leaders religious leaders if you're doing that then you're contradicting your
• 1:23:41
  own policies right but they're Salafas of course they're going to be using those books yeah that's
• 1:23:46
  the problem that's the problem and that means as on the one hand I'd like in country in Western
• 1:23:54
  democratic countries to make laws that stop the flood the financial resources that are flooding
• 1:24:05
  these organizations or mosques stop it make a stop to it and then afterwards when it comes to
• 1:24:12
  because as a Muslim this is like now I'm Swiss of air coercion but Islam is my religion it's my
• 1:24:21
  faith I would like to go to a mosque where I could even trust the iman or the religious classes
• 1:24:31
  they provide to teach my my daughter I framed from doing that because I don't have that trust
• 1:24:39
  okay so in order would you create an independent funding source for Muslim theology in Western
• 1:24:47
  countries to cut them off from Saudi Arabia that's what I'm actually demanding is that we need to
• 1:24:56
  develop at the universities certain kind of colleagues theology colleague that brings the best
• 1:25:09
  of this tradition and train imams and create religious teachings for children we need the states
• 1:25:24
  in Western democracies to make sure that this is being done in a manner that is not subject to abuse
• 1:25:36
  by fundamentalism or Islamists and and that that is yet to be done in a manner that you could say
• 1:25:46
  this country is implementing this model and we could follow suit this is important we need
• 1:25:56
  policy measures that make sure that the religious teaching the imams are being trained and taught
• 1:26:08
  in a manner that provide a religious that covers the religious demands of those who would like to
• 1:26:18
  believe but in a manner that stops this influence from the outside and changes the nature of people
• 1:26:27
  good luck with that project Alham thank you for articulating it so eloquently and thank you for
• 1:26:33
  joining us it's lovely to meet you in a pleasure thank you very much
• 1:26:40
  uncomfortable conversations is produced by Stefan Postuma follow me Josh Leppes on Twitter and
• 1:26:46
  Instagram for all the latest may your day be fruitful your mind humble your enemies generous
• 1:26:52
  and your conversations perfectly sparklingly delectably uncomfortable