The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Hatem Gabr responds to Sam Harris on Radical Islam

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

My friend Hatem Gabr objects to many of the things Sam Harris said, and recorded this response.

Hey, Noam, thank you for having me comment on your interview with Sam Harris. I appreciate that. I could really respond to everything he said, butists, you know, as he thinks he does. He doesn't understand how they think. He doesn't understand how they act. He doesn't understand that they don't really care about Muslim or Islam or that they don't follow the teaching of islam or anything for example you know at the uh near your interview at the 39th minute and 52 second he was talking about the jihadist and he said he said um he thinks that they have a powerful attachment to religious symbols like he said that he doesn't think that they would do anything to harm the al-Aqsa mosque.

And he even made a joke about it. He's like, oh, you're safe if you live close to the mosque, which is ridiculous and not true and historically wrong because they attack so many holy places. They attack mosques. They attack every terrorist attack. They did so many terrorist attacks in the Middle East

before they did anywhere else. And the holiest place in Islamic religion, Mecca, you know, in November 1979, a group of extremist Saudis seized control of the Grand Mosque and took hostages of the worshippers. And, you know, Kaaba had been on fire, set on fire before.

The black stone was stolen. Like, so many things. I don't know what he's talking about. He just really doesn't get it. He really doesn't. You know, the second point is that in your interview, also at the 10th minute of your interview, you were asking uh you were sharing your experience about you know being around a lot of muslims you have a lot of people that you know

uh you work with or you met you know arabs and muslim and you said that they the good people they not they don't buy with the agenda they're not jihadists as he likes to call them and or fanatic or all this and he was just the way he responded is like, he always talks down. And he even says like, oh, people who become your friends are a self-selected group. You know, and you're correct. And I was like, no, these are people like happen to be in my life. They happen to be around me. And then he goes to compare Islam and Muslim to Nazis, you know, and how Nazis like even unmask, as he

said, the people that were there and maybe they're pretending that they were like Jews and then they turned out to be part of the Holocaust and genocide of the Jews back then. And he compared that to Muslims saying that they, oh, they can treat you like certain way, but they really are something else and that's just that's comparison to nazis is disgusted and it's racist and it just shows what kind of person he is you know um uh also you know in the 15th minute and 43rd second you know uh he claims that the horrific death in gaza is entirely the fault of hamas like come on entirely like everything not there's not nothing else to blame all these people that died uh the innocent people just all hamas um and then you know, when he gets cornered, all of a sudden he's not informed.

Like when you ask him the 21st second, 21 minutes, sorry, and 20 seconds. I'm pretty tired. Sorry. You ask him a question about, you know, delivering aid. And if he thinks that Israel is doing what they're supposed to be doing, you know, or are they using it as maybe leverage or they, that was a great question. And all of a sudden he was like, oh, well, I'm not informed about aid and what's possible is not. Any person, any logical person can answer a question like that. And it's obvious, you know, yes, there is ways you can put aid to the civilians, you know, especially the more that war takes, you know, you can take, there's so many ways, but for him to escape question like this, he just so arrogant

that he doesn't want to, during the whole interview, you don't feel like empathy. You can't detect it in his voice. Even when you talk about civilians, he always, he always talked down when you talk about Muslims or Islam and all that. You know, and, you know, the other thing that I always, you know, noticed in all his interviews and this one too, is like he always tried to like, oh, I'm not talking about all Muslims. I'm talking about some Muslims. But then he always made comments about everything. Actually, in the 44 minutes and 57 seconds, he said, and I quote, he's like,

we need, what we need are 2 billion Muslims who will get out of their own identity politics and start doing something. So now it's all 2 billion people, you know. Now there's nobody that's helping, everybody now, you know. And even if there's good Muslim, they're very slow to condemn i mean you know you you try you use words like you know um civilization civilized uh

this you know that but the way you talk about muslim and now you say all two billion people and even he's so obsessed with islam and muslims like even in the an hour and two minutes into the conversation he was talking about china and then all of a sudden he flips it back and he's like oh it reminds me of our relationship with islam with the wealthy aware wealthy countries just found their uh wealth in the uh underground the oil and all that they didn't really do anything islam and he said islam before that and then he tried to collect correct it to like gulf countries and then he went back to islamic country and all this all islamic countries are rich everybody just find oil did we have not

contributed anything to mankind nothing you know mathematics medicine arts uh lecture like math and he made fun of quran obviously it's of's only one book. Come on. We all know the history of Islam, not here to defend it. And there's a lot of countries that like, what about Malaysia? What about Turkey? There's Pakistan. There's so many. But the way he talks about things is always like, no

empathy, looking down, talking down. He never praises Muslim or Islam. He talks about suicide bombing like it's like everybody like 1.9 billion people if they want to all commit if they were all like that suicide bombers or one percent of them would have been crazy you know i think the problem is he doesn't think that muslims should be part of the solution. It's only a problem. And this is insulting to all Muslims. It's especially insulting to Muslims who sacrifice their lives.

You know, the men and women in the U.S. Army, in the CIA, in the FBI, in the police. You know how many Muslims were, you know, hostages right now in Gaza as well? You know how many Muslims, actually, I just found out that in the IDF, you know, how many Muslims provided information and were part of operation to get, you know, Saddam Hussein or Osama Bin Laden, how many scholars, you know, sacrificing everything, but he doesn't want to hear that. He wants to just make, you know, Islam and Muslims are the problem, and the solution does not include them, you know, Islam and Muslims are the problem.

And the solution does not include them, you know, which I think is Islamophobic. And I think it's racist, to be honest, because you just want to eliminate everybody, which, you know, it's crazy. Of course, everything, we have a lot of problems that we need to solve. But the majority, and I'm talking about 1.9 billion people, the majority are in the right path. You know, he doesn't talk about, you know, what led to all this, you know, oh, nothing happened.

Like they just, there's no wars. There's no constant war. There's no colonizations. There's nothing happened. The West did not do anything. You know, I think that the solution have to and is including Muslims that are responsible. There's a lot of scholars that, you know, sacrifice their lives to fight terrorism. And remember, bin Laden, Taliban, all these guys before they attacked here, the United States, they attacked in the Middle East.

And they were being hunted. before they attacked here, the United States, they attacked in the Middle East. And they were being hunted. And they were, like, labeled terrorists a long time ago. So I think he needs to really look at the... He's not going to change. It doesn't matter. But, you know, for the people that, you know, see it, at least have empathy. When you talk about, like, mankind, any death is horrible, you know? And if you don't talk it, at least have empathy. When you talk about like mankind, any death is horrible, you know?

And if you don't talk it with sympathy, if you don't think that being Muslim and being, you know, human and you have a part of it, if you think that he's just a problem, then you have a problem. I think that you are just as radical as the people you're criticizing and you're definitely

not making it a better place. That's my nothing against you personally. I don't know you. But but I think that you need to take a look at the big picture. You mentioned text in Quran and you don't really get it, you know. But it's OK. We live in a world where everything is one click away. If you want to find out the truth, you would, you know.

So that's it. You know, that's all I want to say. And I thank you for this. And I, again, you know, for Sam Harris, you know, please try to educate yourself. It's never too late. Peace. try to educate yourself it's never too late