Making Sense with Sam Harris - #47 — The Frontiers of Political Correctness

Episode Date: October 6, 2016

Sam Harris speaks with Gad Saad about political correctness, academic taboos, Islam, immigration, Donald Trump, and other topics. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe.

Thank you. of the Making Sense podcast, you'll need to subscribe at SamHarris.org. There you'll find our private RSS feed to add to your favorite podcatcher, along with other subscriber-only content. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one. Today's guest is Gad Saad. Many of you know Gad from his video blog, The Saad Truth. That's S-A-A-D. And if you know Gad, you know that he's been fighting some of the same battles online against the regressive left.

Gad is a professor of marketing at Concordia University in Montreal. He's also taught at Cornell and Dartmouth and UC Irvine. And he's pioneered the use of evolutionary psychology in marketing and consumer behavior. And his books include The Consuming Instinct, The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption, and Evolutionary Psychology in the Business Sciences. He's published many scientific papers, and again, he regularly podcasts at the Sad Truth, S-A-A-D, on YouTube. As you'll hear, Gad and I get into some controversial areas, and we spend a fair amount of time talking about the attendant risks of doing so. Apologies for my voice throughout. I've just been recovering from a cold, but hopefully I still made some sense. And now I give you Gad Saad.

Well, I'm here with Gad Saad. Gad, thanks for coming on the podcast. So great to be with you, Sam. Obviously, we have many fans in common and many people listening will know who you are. But for those who don't, just tell us something about your background and how do you describe what you do at this point? So I'm a professor. Professor of Marketing is my official title, and I also hold the Concordia University Research Chair in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences and Darwinian Consumption. I know it's a mouthful. What basically that means is I try to marry evolutionary theory in the context of consumer

behavior. So generally in the behavioral sciences, but in particular, since I'm housed in a business school and I'm in a marketing department, I try to look at what are some of the biological and evolutionary underpinnings that make us who we are as consumers. So how did you come to focus on consumer behavior? So consumer behavior. So I had done an MBA and where, you know, my curiosity with this field had been titillated, although I had a background, a very technical background in mathematics and computer science and some operations research, but I had always been interested in behavioral sciences. And so it seemed like consumer behavior would be the nice place for me to marry my technical background, because I was originally thinking of being a mathematical modeler of consumer choice.

because I was originally thinking of being a mathematical modeler of consumer choice. And then when I went to pursue my PhD at Cornell, the gentleman who became my eventual doctoral supervisor suggested that I take some psych courses. And in one of those courses, advanced social psychology, halfway through the semester, the professor assigned a book called Homicide, which was written by two Canadian evolutionary psychologists, where they explained criminality from a biological and evolutionary perspective. And so that was the genesis of my interest in evolutionary psychology. And since I wanted to study consumer behavior, that's where I had the idea, okay, well, since no one has looked at

the biological roots of consumer behavior, that's what I will focus on. For those who don't know, and they can discover your podcast on YouTube, on the sad truth, you are a very committed enemy of political correctness and moral relativism, postmodernism and identity politics and all of these other intellectual and ethical trends that seem to be going in the wrong direction, but yet you are a professor at the university. Do you ever regret getting into this swamp and dealing with these issues? You know, it's funny because you probably heard the term, of course, having skin in the game, right? It's difficult to have more skin in the game than somebody who is sort of in the cesspool of all of these ideas that you

mentioned a few minutes ago, and yet try to, you know, critique them from within. Look, the reality is, I think that my unique personhood is such that I sort of couldn't live with myself if I don't tackle wherever I see some enemies of truth or reason manifesting themselves. And so in a sense, I can't be anything than what I am. So I regret in the sense that if I were a bit more of a careerist, if I were a bit more strategic in my thinking, then I might have taken a slightly different road. But I simply can't do it. I mean, I always try to be polite.

I always try to be as. I always try to be as kind as I can be, always have decorum. But I can't sit idly while, you know, the humanities and some of the social sciences are being infected with movements that are genuinely grotesque to human reason. They're an affront to human decency, if I dare say. And so I speak out against it. And so, and that, if you like, shapes a lot of what I do. I mean, of course, when you are an academic, when you're a scientist, you're trying to pursue some area of truth or try to get closer to understanding some phenomenon.

But I think that more academics need to be using their training to weigh in on topics outside of their very limited scope of sort of official training and expertise. I'm quite astonished that there aren't more people who lend their voices. I mean, I realize that it takes a particular type of personality to put your ideas out there in front of a large audience. And most people probably feel more comfortable being in their lab, speaking only to their colleagues in the ivory tower. But it's a shame because these are all important issues that you mentioned. And there has to be many people who are combating them. Which of these issues or which among the many things on the menu that people are inclined not to talk about, which do you think is the most radioactive? Do you have a sense of what gets you into the most trouble at this point? So it depends if you mean in the

general campus or in science. So let's do both. So if we're talking about science, there was a paper that was published, I think, in 2005, either in nature or in science, and I think the title was Forbidden Knowledge. What are some research questions or research topics that you should stay away from? And probably the top two ones that are, to use your term, the most radioactive would be racial differences, any research on racial differences. And then probably second would be sex differences. So, and of course, that's definitely where I come in because a lot of the research that I do from an evolutionary perspective recognizes that human beings are sexually dimorphic by definition. I mean, that's how we define the species. And so to have a debate as to whether, you know, there are sex differences that are innate is preposterous to most people who are biologically inclined. But yet much of the social sciences have built edifices of theories and empirical edifices completely rejecting this possibility. And so from a scientific perspective,

I would say probably sex and racial differences. But in the general campus, anybody who attacks, not so much postmodernism, but political correctness. So anybody who ruffles the feathers of the thought police is in trouble. So it could be if you attack affirmative action, if you're against it, well, that's wrong think. And therefore you'll be into trouble. So I think

there are two distinct things. There's the general discourse on campus, and then there is the specific scientific fields that are radioactive. Are there any topics that you have just decided you won't touch? Obviously, there are topics that don't interest you, or you think to touch them would just be, you would just have no motive to touch them, or they would, you know, you'd have to have some negative motive in order to want to go there. But is there any topic that you think that is valid and should be productive to talk about, but it's just too damn hard to do it, so you just avoid it? So I've never consciously thought of an interesting problem to pursue, and then using the calculus that you just mentioned, decided against it. If I've not tackled the problem, typically the criterion that I've used

is that I don't find that problem sufficiently interesting for me to spend some time on it. And so really that's the key driving metric. There's a great paper that I think all doctoral students should read in their doctoral training. It is a paper from the early 70s titled, That's Interesting! With an exclamation point. It was written by a sociologist whereby he was offering a framework for trying to understand how do we determine whether a research question is worthy of pursuit. And oftentimes, one of the things that we forget is whether at the end of the journey, of your research journey, whether people would scream out in excitement. That's interesting,

right? And so really what drives me to a fault, I think, and I'll explain in a second why I say to a fault, is what I call cerebral hedonism. I just like to pursue intellectual landscapes for no other reason than because they're interesting. So if Sam Harris comes to me today and says, hey, there's this really interesting fMRI study that I'm thinking of working on, and I think your expertise would be great. And if you convince me that it's an interesting problem, I'm on board. Now, the reason why I think that that's a bit of a fault is because, as you may know, and I say this with regret, in academia, what's more promoted is for you to be very, very narrow and to go very deep. So if you study emotions, then spend the next 40 years studying emotions and fill in the blank, right? But don't foray into different lands. And I find that life is too short. I truly am somebody who's interdisciplinary,

and so I just go wherever the spirit moves me, so to speak. Yeah, well, also, reality is interdisciplinary. You know, we don't find actual boundaries on our intellectual landscape apart from those we erect based on just methodological concerns and bureaucratic concerns and how, you know, the fact that you have to physically go to one building to learn about medicine and another building to learn about biology on a university campus. But obviously, the boundary between medicine and another build-in to learn about biology on a university campus, but obviously the boundary between medicine and biology is non-existent once you look closely at it. Obviously, I'm very sympathetic with this appetite to go wherever your interest takes you.

I guess I'm also sympathetic, and this is where these taboos, I think, creep in for even well-intentioned and not especially thin-skinned people. I'm sympathetic with the feeling that there are certain questions upon which any kind of significant interest suggests that there's something wrong with you. So, one, I'm not speaking about you personally, Gad. So, you know, I see these people who seem extremely interested in, say, racial differences in intelligence. They want to study this. They're outraged that it's, you know, a no-go area for science. It's a completely legitimate question to pose biologically, but one wonders what is the purpose of seeking that information, and what would you do with it if you had it? I can propose a possible criterion of relevance for

the exact issue that you just mentioned. So if you're an evolutionist, you study what are the selection pressures that would have resulted in the evolution of a wide range of traits, right? I mean, why is it that some people are darker skinned than others? And so from a strictly theoretical perspective, one, and I'm glad you said

that it's certainly a valid question to study, one could argue, are there selection pressures that have faced groups of individuals in our evolutionary history that would have resulted in the evolution of, you know, various, if you like, intelligence abilities at the group level. Now, the reason why that's, of course, very, very toxic is because it's one thing to argue, you know, for the evolution of a morphological feature like your melanin level. It's another thing to say group A at the group level is somehow less creative or has lower IQ than group B. But from a strictly

conceptual theoretical reason, it's perfectly reasonable to ask that question. And incidentally, that's exactly what Philip Rushton, who's probably the most known, he recently passed away a few years ago. So he's a guy who spent his career studying racial differences. And his argument was roughly what I just said, which is, look, it's an interesting question to study for reasons A, B, and C. I don't have a racist bone in my body, but I follow wherever the data takes me. And then, of course, people argued, no, there is no way that you could study this question if you didn't have ulterior motives. And so then they would concoct these associations. You know, he got money from the Heritage Foundation Institute, and they're a nefarious group, so he must be a neo-Nazi.

And I don't know the answer. I don't truly know whether he was a racist or not. But at the conceptual level, there's no reason why that should be a taboo topic. I mean, do you agree? But you just see that of all the topics in the universe to spend weeks and months and years fixated on, it's easy to see how people who would fixate for the wrong reasons would be interested there. And you can see them seize upon the data such as they are with Glee. But the irony, of course, is that both sides of this issue are taboo. So for instance, if you wanted to talk about a given community and why they may not be thriving to the degree that some other is. And you're going to ask the question, is there a genetic reason for this?

Well, that's obviously taboo. But what's left for you to consider at that point is a cultural reason for this. But to say that there's something wrong with a given culture is also taboo. So you have just taken off the table the only two facets of reality that science can deal with. And so you can basically say nothing scientifically about differential degrees of thriving in various communities. And, you know, that's obviously not a great situation to maintain for centuries in science. It's interesting that this taboo really only works in one direction, because if you're looking for good things about a culture, if you're saying that

Asians are showing some aptitude academically, or, you know, let's say quantitatively, or, you know, Ashkenazi Jews have shown a history of real literacy and a contribution to intellectual life disproportionate to their numbers, as is undeniable. To look into the biological or cultural basis of that, it may be taboo in some quarters, but it's certainly less taboo. Well, what's interesting about, I mean, you're talking about nature, nurture, and genes, and environment. and genes and environment, I think on average people would construe the genetic explanation as more taboo than the cultural one, if only because it is perceived at times wrongly so

that it is more immutable, right? There's nothing supposedly that I can change about my genes, but culture, we can change it. And I think that, and the reason why I say that that's incorrect, incidentally, is because much of who we are, as you know, is really an interaction between our genes and our environment. And so, you know, to sort of separate them as though genes can't be, I mean, genes are turned on or off as a function of environmental inputs, right? So people have a wrong idea of what's immutable or not. But I think that point is really at the root of, I think, our common friend, Steven Pinker. I mean, when he took on the blank slate, and I've taken it on in my own research, I mean, the blank slate is really

appreciated within the social sciences precisely for the reason that we're mentioning right now, which is, you know, it's nice to believe. It's a very hopeful message. It's nice to believe that no one starts off in life with anything other than, you know, equal potentiality, right? And that it's only, you know, the nefarious forces of our environment and socialization and so on that take us down the life trajectories that we go down. That's a nice message. So anybody can be Lionel Messi. Anybody can be Einstein. Anybody could be Michael Jordan. So I think a lot of the nonsense that's been spewed in the social sciences over the past hundred years is not because, you know,

most social scientists are, you know, walking degenerates who don't understand anything about life. It's, I think it comes from a good place, right? So for example, the cultural relativists, you mentioned earlier, cultural and moral relativism. So that started with Franz Boas, the cultural anthropologist, who sort of was aware that having a biological explanation for things could have a downstream effect that's bad, right? And we know all the different reasons for that, right? And therefore, let's create a worldview that, while completely incorrect, is at least more hopeful. And that, to me, is an affront to the truth, and therefore I will attack it. Again, I'm a little torn on some of these issues, because I do see some of them as just not being a direction worth going. I mean, actually,

it's interesting, because this is really not my bent at all, intellectually. I just tend to go where the facts lead. But I'm sympathetic with the idea that certain types of research, certain facts, which can be as factual as any other, can be so reliably misunderstood or misappropriated that it's on some level knowledge not worth having. There's nothing to do about it necessarily, or if there is, that's not obvious, and the result could be reasonably expected to be bad or unproductive for society. And so I still think that the search for racial difference in specific areas like intelligence or, let's say, aggression, there's no doubt they exist. I mean, it would be a miracle if populations that show significant phenotypic differences by dint of their distinct evolutionary paths showed exactly the same level of traits for every trait we value. I mean, there's just no way that's

true, right? So if we could really get down in a fine-grained way to the details here and scale all these different populations on intelligence and empathy and aggression and everything else that is psychologically interesting to us. What then, right? And this does come back to what you said about a misunderstanding of just what it means for something to be genetically determined or to have its basis in biology. Because obviously, as you said, ideas modify the regulation of our genes. Experience does. The brain is not a closed system. The brain is in dialogue with the world. So the boundary between nature and nurture is not hard and fast. And if you look closely enough, it really doesn't exist. So when you're talking about the ways that are left open to you to use

this knowledge, you're not talking about changing the genomes of people to improve them. At least you're not talking about that yet. And also there's a misunderstanding that creeps in that the variance is likely to be significant enough that it would be rational to judge someone based on the population they come from. Let's say it's just a fact that Koreans are, on average, better at math than white Americans. You know, I'm just making this up, but let's say something like that's true. Sure. And you introduce me to a random Korean and a random Caucasian, it would not be rational for me to think I knew anything about their mathematical ability based on their racial characteristics.

But no one's going to follow that, really. And people are just going to make these blanket judgments about populations based on the facts we find. Right. And incidentally, by the way, what you just mentioned, I mean, yes, you took the most toxic of the topics, racial differences, but almost verbatim what you just said has been used to cast a negative light on anybody who does sex differences research, right? And people say, well, you know, why can't you study something that unites us? I remember I received once a review, you know, reviewers comments, I submitted a paper to a top journal. So, you know, why are you so focused on sex differences? What's the point of that? Why not study something that unites us? Well, the reality was I was studying sex differences in information search prior to choosing or rejecting a mate, right?

How much information do men need to acquire or women before they decide that they've seen enough information to either reject a prospective suitor or to choose a suitor? So this was really at the intersection of information search and mate choice. And by definition, the nature of that research question was about a sex difference, right? I was using principles from biology to argue why I would expect a sex difference. Well, this particular reviewer, I mean, in line with some of the language that you use, said, well, what's the point of that? Why not study something that transcends our sex, that unites us? And that is a bit of an arbitrary point to take.

I mean, if I could just draw another example, I mean, Fermat, right, the French mathematician, developed theories or proposed or proved theorems, you know, several hundred years ago that collected dust for several hundred years. And then today, many of these principles are used in cryptography. Well, had he used the benchmark then of, I better do applied research that has clear immediate application value, he would have never done this. So I think when it comes to the issue that we're discussing, I tend to be a purist. If whatever I'm doing adds to this sort of greater pantheon of human knowledge in a way that's valuable, then go for it. That's my benchmark.

Yeah, but then you smuggled in value there at the end, you know, so the question is what is valuable given that there's an infinite number of things we can study and there's not enough time to do it. I totally agree with you. Obviously, my bias is in the same direction as the one you expressed. So to some degree, what the noises I'm making now are a kind of devil's advocate position. I think the idea that any of these kinds of questions are taboo is ultimately dangerous because the reason why it's taboo is because we're living in a cultural landscape where people are defining themselves in terms of the narrow communities they're a part of.

It's the problem of identity politics. I mean, there is no result. I can tell you there is no result that could come out about Ashkenazi Jews that I would take personally, right? The sky's the limit. I mean, it could be, you know, everything from penis size to acquisitiveness. I mean, I'm just trying to imagine what would offend people, but it's just, there's nothing, right? And for me, clearly, we have to get to a time where basically everyone feels that way about the community that they're in based on these superficial differences with respect to skin

color and all the rest. on these superficial differences with respect to skin color and all the rest. So I'm sympathetic with your bias here, but I do recognize that it's just, though the landscape is changing, there are different trends here, and in some ways it's changing for the worse. And we have, as you say, this commitment to political correctness, especially within academia, political correctness, especially within academia and especially among the young, that is making it impossible to talk about things that are obviously hugely important to talk about, not racial difference in intelligence, but things like the spread of political Islam. I worry that if you attach yourself to too many controversial things and aren't kind of curating your offense a little more carefully,

and again, I speak not about you personally, but all of us, you sort of wear out your welcome. So that's the reason why I haven't gotten the offer from Stanford. Otherwise, there's no rational reason why it hasn't come yet. Yes, right, right, right.

And that's an obvious problem that people have to consider, is what happens to your career when you touch any of these topics? I mean, when you think about someone like Charles Murray, right, who I don't know, I mean, I've met him once briefly. The bell curve guy, right? Yeah, so he wrote The Bell Curve with his colleague, who I think has passed away, and that was a hugely controversial book, obviously. And honestly, I never even read it, right? And I haven't read the chapter. I think it was just one chapter that was the epicenter of the controversy. And I don't, you know, frankly know whether what's in there justifies any of the opprobrium that has been heaped upon him. But there's no question

that his life has been affected by this. You know, I'm sure everyone who collaborates with him or introduces him as a speaker has to, on some level, apologize in advance for his history of controversy. And some of it might be totally unwarranted. Again, I don't know. But whenever I have looked into one of these scandals, like Larry Summers at Harvard, he was speculating about a different degree of variance in male and female populations with respect to math ability. And his remarks, they're just as plain vanilla speculation as you could imagine. And yet he was hurled out of Harvard for it. In any case,

that's the landscape in which we are being asked to function. And I think you do have to sort of pick your battles, although I seem to pick so many of them that it's kind of strange coming from me. But luckily for you, you're outside of academia. So in a sense, it affords you a bit more leeway, right? You're not in the viper's den, so to speak, right? Yeah, but obviously I still want to be taken seriously and given a fair hearing when I decide to open my mouth. And I have certainly paid the price for having touched so many of these topics. And even this conversation we're having now will be readily spun against me. And what happens is you wind up building all these friction points where

you have to start a conversation dealing with the thing that someone heard about you that, in fact, is not true. And again, I see that I am contaminated by this with respect to other people. So I see someone says, oh, you got to have Stefan Molyneux on your podcast, right? And so I take a look at what he's been saying and what's being said about him. And I think, I don't have the time to figure out whether this guy is really a racist crackpot. And to some degree, everyone is dealing with this problem. And certainly, they're dealing with this problem with respect to people like ourselves.

Well, you know, I mean, your point is one that I have had to deal with in my own choice of, you know, whom to invite on my show. And as you were trying to come up with some of these names and you came up with Stefan, I could mention a few from my own show. Tommy Robinson, Robert Spencer, Anne-Marie Waters, and a whole bunch of other guys, all of whom, I mean, really are, you know, probably in the circle of sort of, you know, you're an Islamophobe land, they probably score, you know, much higher than you. And I was, you know, very, very minimally concerned about, you know, exactly the issue that

you mentioned. And then again, my personhood kicked in, which said, no, I will not be silenced. I will give these guys a fair hearing. And I'm here to report that, uh, you can't imagine how many people wrote to me, Sam saying, you know, I had been, you know, hoodwinked into thinking that Tommy, you know, Robinson is, you know, he's on, he's basically Mengele, you know, from the Nazi party. Right. And then I heard him speak on your show and he struck me as very, very reasonable and very measured. I mean, he's not the most eloquent guy in the world, if I may say, but he's certainly bright, he's measured, and their opinions were changed. So it's a fine line. I mean, on the one hand, I understand. We don't live in a vacuum, and we don't want to be fighting the fights. And of course, you fight them probably a hundredfold more than I do. But on the other hand, if we if we succumb to that mob pressure, then they're basically dictating whom we can speak to. Correct. who you regret interviewing for reasons of along these lines that you you didn't actually appreciate

who they were and they managed to to fool you and and pass for reasonable but then you discover something heinous about them and now you feel solid yeah right so i have to be a bit diplomatic which is not easy for me uh there is one gentleman that i interviewed who I think it would be pretty fair to say he is an Islam apologist on steroids. But I was very calm and, you know, very measured. So I don't have any stories similar to your, what do you call it? The greatest podcast ever? The best podcast ever. Yeah. Right. So I don't have a story like that. Now, I do have a gentleman who's coming on next week who used to be, I hope I'm not misspeaking, but I think he used to be a terrorist. And then eventually he reformed and now he advises, you know, the Canadian security services about, you know, quote, radical Islam. And I think that may potentially be a difficult conversation, although it won't be on my end. But I sort of noticed he put out a couple of tweets where he started accusing me of, oh, so is this what I should expect? You're an anti-Muslim

bigot type of guy. And then I wrote him privately and I said, look, if this is the kind of discourse that we're going to end up having, then it's not really very fruitful. If you think that simply questioning you on some issue of Islam is going to, you know, have this appellation thrown at me, then it's a useless conversation. And he said, no, no, no, okay, brother, no problem, we're good. So I don't know. So I haven't had any that remotely match your level of, you know, craziness on your podcast. But hey, the future is long. You never know. Although that craziness is of a different sort. What I'm picturing here is talking to someone who you really should challenge on specific points because they have said crazy,

divisive, irrational things in the past, but they're just not saying them on your show. So you get them there and it turns out this person's a grand dragon in the past, but they're just not saying them on your show. So you get them there and then, you know, it turns out this person's a grand dragon in the KKK, but you don't know that. And you're talking about racial differences in IQ or something in a good-natured academic way. And you don't realize that this person's interest in this topic is just the tip of the iceberg and the iceberg is horrendous. I think that's a situation one could be in. I mean, you know, obviously, I think that you could have an interesting, potentially interesting conversation with anyone. You know,

I would, you know, I'd be willing to go into a prison and talk to a serial killer, because I think that would be a fascinating conversation. There are many questions I would want to ask someone who has killed many people, But at least in that situation, I would understand who I was talking to. And what I worry about with many of the people you name, someone like Robert Spencer, he comes so fully stigmatized that unless you've paid enough attention to the kinds of battles he's fought to be confident that you know that all of that opprobrium is unwarranted, well, then you just don't, you don't actually know who you're talking to. Well, one of the ways that I handled specifically the Robert Spencer case is as people started writing to me saying, hey, why are you speaking to this Nazi and so on? I said, look, you know, the comment section on my YouTube channel is open. Why don't you share some manifestations of, you know, some nefariously racist, you know,

horrible things that he's done? And then at least I could be educated. Guess what? I didn't see it. So, so I think that's one of the ways by which you could, I think, take their concerns seriously, right? I mean, you're exhibiting that you're open to having the opinion that they'd like you to have of him. You're open to that possibility. But the onus is on you to share that information. So I won't accept that he's simply a vile Nazi Islamophobe at face value and then not bring him on. And I've had this even with guys who are less toxic, right? People said, you know, why are you speaking to Paul Joseph Watson on the Alex Jones network? You know, Alex Jones is this kind of bombastic guy. Do you know who that is? I know Alex Jones. I don't know Paul Joseph Watson.

Right. Well, and the reality is that to me, I was very pragmatic about it. It's a forum. It's a large forum that would allow me to share ideas. And probably a bunch of people who otherwise would have never heard of me now know of my work precisely because I went on that show. So I think it's it's difficult to always run away from folks that come with a dangerous appellation because then it'll be just you and I talking to one another all day. Yeah. Although from my perspective, maybe speaking to you is going to get a lot of hate on me now. You never know. So let's get into these controversial waters with respect to Islam, because obviously you and I have both spent a lot of time here, and we agree, I think we agree largely, I think there are probably some interesting points of disagreement, though. But we certainly agree that the reflexive denial that the unique problems we're seeing in the Muslim world have anything to do with religious doctrine, that denial that we see everywhere is a real cause for concern, and it's intellectually and ethically unjustifiable. And, you know, you and I both

spend a lot of time convincing people that there really is a connection between the way people behave and what they believe, and they're telling us what they believe, and we should believe them in most cases. So it's, you know, jihadism is not merely political. You know, it's amazing that that's still a controversial point. I think we probably do have some different intuitions on certain points. So tell me a little bit, I think you and I once had dinner and you were talking about how living in Montreal gave you a somewhat different picture on questions of immigration and whether Islam was amenable to reform in the way that someone like Majid Nawaz suggests. And give me your picture of what's going on.

Incidentally, when you mentioned earlier a conversation that, you know, would have been difficult to be had, I tried to have that conversation with Majid. I reached out to him because I disagreed with if some of his prescriptions and You know, he blew me away because apparently the final inerrant word had been written in a book that you had done with him So that would be a manifestation in my eyes of someone who wasn't willing to engage in a discussion notwithstanding the fact that I had started my clip by saying that I applaud his work and this is the type of guy that we should be supporting. But there were specific details that I disagree with him.

That said, so to go to your Montreal question, look, the reality is that, and you've said this a million times in very large forums, we have to differentiate between, of course, individuals and between the ideology. Just let's say it for the one millionth time. So individual Muslims might be lovely, but what happens to a society when it becomes more Islamized? That, if you'd like, is a question that we all have to ask. Actually, Gad, before you get into that, which is exactly where I want you to go, you might just tell listeners who Arabic. We're Arabic in a multiplicity of ways, and some of the music that we listen to and the foods.

And if you saw us, you wouldn't know that we are anything but Arabic. The only asterisk is that we're Lebanese Jews. And when the civil war broke out in Lebanon in the mid-'70s, it became about as precarious as anything can be to be Jewish in Lebanon. And so we had to leave under imminent threat of execution. So some of the things that people in the West now are used to seeing in terms of, you know, ISIS and so on is stuff that I grew up with in Lebanon, right? That was my reality. That's what I escaped from. And so Lebanon, right? That was my reality. That's what I escaped from. And so I have firsthand experience.

I mean, not that that means that whatever I say should be more trusted, but of course, I am shaped by my own unique experience. And my own unique experience says that at any point, something could be dormant, and then it comes alive. And when it comes alive, look out, right? Because people will point to, oh, but didn't you have an otherwise peaceful existence in Lebanon before that point? Well, yes and no. I mean, we were tolerated, right? To be tolerated in the context of the Middle East is very different than to be equal, right? You're tolerated. It means that we're not going around decapitating you. Well, that to me is not the best benchmark of being an equal citizen under the law. Right. So there were institutionalized laws that did not permit Jews to do certain things, even in the most progressive of Middle Eastern countries, Lebanon. Right. judo champion, I think three years running, had to leave Lebanon before the civil war, because there were there was there were threats on him that he could no longer compete in judo, because you know, it wasn't good for a Jew to constantly, you know, win the title. So these realities are things that we faced every day, even pre war. So that's really the background that I

come from. My parents were subsequently after we emigrated to Canada, and you may or may not know this, I'm not sure if we had discussed it in our last get-together, but my parents kept going back to Lebanon after we emigrated to Canada. And in 1980, they were kidnapped by Fatah. And some really nasty things happened, but luckily we were able to get them out. So, you know, I have, in the same way that some of the other people who are in this space have personal history with this reality, I mean, I have in the same way that some of the other people who are in this space have personal history with this reality. I mean, I have it all right. I mean, I've lived it. I've escaped it. You know, for about 20 or 25 years after we escaped Lebanon, I used to have a recurring nightmare where, you know, they're coming to kill us. And I have a gun that either malfunctions or I run out of ammunition.

So this is real, right? This is part of my, if you'd like, my memory DNA. So that's my background and it shapes what I'm now seeing in Montreal, which is that Montreal is becoming increasingly Islamized. So if we compare, you know, the number of people that we would see in Islamic garb in Montreal, uh you know the number of people that we would see in islamic garb in montreal uh you know 12 13 14 years ago to today i mean it's just breathtaking does that mean that we've turned into yemen of course not but we can sort of guess what the trajectory is with more islam is there more peace is there more tolerance is there more freedom of speech or less i mean it's a it's a very simple calculus right in the same way that at the end of every day, we can determine whether that day I've put on weight, nothing has changed

in my weight, or I've lost weight. We could ask the very same question. When Islam becomes a majority in a particular society, is it for the better? And by better, I mean, by all the tenets that we hold dear in the West, is it unchangeable or does it get worse? And so that's what we really have to look at. Not so much whether, you know, how many terrorists we let in if we let in immigrants. Does Islam, once it becomes dominant, change the fabric of our societies? And regrettably, the answer is yes.

Yeah, so this is one of these topics that's very fraught. incredibly the answer is yes. Yeah, yeah. So this is one of these topics that's very fraught. And, you know, I have a position here with respect to Muslim immigration in the current context of the election, because I've been struggling to figure out what someone like Hillary Clinton could say that would make sense, given the realities we're talking about, that wouldn't be just the sanctimonious drivel that you hear from, unfortunately, from the current president and from really all Democrats, which is that this has nothing to do with Islam and to even think about paying attention to somebody's religious background when you're deciding whether to admit them into the country that is synonymous by definition with the worst forms of bigotry. So as listeners to this podcast know, I'm not a fan of Donald Trump's,

and yet if you catch him in the midst of a single sentence or something that purports to be a sentence, you will hear a more honest note struck here. It'll be something like, listen, this is coming from one religion. It's Islam. And we know this and we can't lie about it. And therefore, the fact that someone has a Muslim background tells us something about the possibility of, one, that they're jihadist, and two, that they harbor opinions. Now I'm starting to speak in a way that Trump wouldn't, but that they may in fact harbor opinions that are deeply inimical to everything we value culturally, free speech and the rights of women and the rights of gays and all the rest. And so it is just a fact that if you're going to let in 100,000 Muslims from a country like Syria,

even with the best of intentions and even with some process of screening, you will let in some percentage of that 100,000. And you know what that percentage is, by the way, Sam? Do you want to take a guess what that number is? Well, this all turns on how good your screening is, right? So if it was no screening, then you're sampling the whole society. But one hopes that there's some process of vetting here that weeds out people who are obviously solifists

or obviously sympathetic with ISIS or all the rest. So Douglas Murray was talking about this on the podcast, you know, some probably a year ago now when the migrant crisis was really kicking off. No matter how good your screening is, you have to honestly acknowledge that no screening paradigm is perfect. And there's so much political correctness on our side that one, you know, has good cause to doubt whether any screening procedure would be of the sort that you and I would support, right? So like, are they really going to ask intrusive questions about a person's religious convictions? And are such questions sufficient to tease out attitudes? I mean, let's say you could screen out all the jihadists by magically asking the right questions. Are you going to be committed to screening out people who really, down to the souls of their feet, despise freedom of speech?

People who, you know, it would take 10 years for them to figure out that they want to live in a society where cartoonists can draw the profit, right? Because right now they think that those people should be hurled from rooftops. The numbers of people who believe that in the Muslim world is far in excess of anyone who would say they support ISIS or even jihadism. And so that's the situation you're left with. To let in great numbers of Muslims is different than letting in great numbers of Christians, even from the same societies or Yazidis from Iraq, because of specific facts about the doctrine. And this is what is refreshing about the juggernaut of narcissism and delusion that is Donald Trump. Most people are in denial about this reality, and it's something we just have to honestly talk about. Now, I say all this believing that the prescription of not letting in Muslims or not letting in anyone who could be Muslim from any of these societies is not workable and in fact not wise for the reason

that many sanctimonious liberals espouse, but obviously they espouse it in the context of not actually acknowledging the nature of the problem. I mean, the buffer against Muslim extremism and the only prospect for reform in the Muslim world is Muslim moderation on some level. So it's got to be, at minimum, it's the ex-Muslims, right? It's someone like, you know, Sarah Hader, right? Right. Who just, you know, 10,000 Sarah Haters given huge platforms.

That's what the world needs. And if you keep Sarah Hader out because she came from the wrong country, or you keep Faisal Saeed al-Mutar out because he came from Iraq and he was Muslim, those are the people who have to be empowered. And those are the people who have to be given all the resources we can muster. And those are the people who we need here. And then we need people who are just like them in their commitment to liberalism and pluralism and tolerance and rationality, but who, for whatever reason, are still identified as Muslims, like Majin Awas. You need people like that at the mosque in Montreal or New York or

Houston or Los Angeles. And those are the people who are our early warning system against, and really our immune system against the spread of, quote, Islamic extremism. So if we just followed the Trumpian line of saying, okay, no more Muslims, I don't see how we have taken the step to empower the reformers. So, look, I completely agree that somewhere between Trump's prescription of no more entry of Muslims and the open door policy of the Muslims. If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at

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