The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 209. Islam and the Possibilities of Peace | Mohammed Hijab

Episode Date: December 14, 2021

This episode was recorded on November 10th, 2021.In this episode, philosopher Mohammed Hijab joined me to discuss a wide array of topics, such as the traditionalist interpretation of Islam, its metanarrative, the story of the prophet Muhammad, and some common ground among monotheistic Abrahamic religions.Mohammed Hijab is an author and philosopher whose main interests lie in political philosophy, philosophy of religion, and comparative religion. He seeks to spread a better understanding of traditionalist Islam while engaging with prominent thinkers and philosophers worldwide.Find more from Mohammed Hijab on Twitter:https://twitter.com/mohammed_hijab[00:00] Intro[01:48] What beliefs and practices are central to Islam?[04:12] Islam’s unmoved mover argument for God and the universe[07:30] “Things made of parts... must be contingent on being created by something else, a sorting mechanism [that] doesn’t necessitate [creation itself].” Mohammed Hijab[08:25] “It is problematic, through the lens of Islam... for there to be a god of a triune nature like [in] Christianity.” MH[08:58] “Islam does not believe that there’s an element of divinity... in human beings.” MH[10:09] “The word Islam does not mean peace; it means submission. Islam believes that everything in the universe submits to God.” MH[10:57] The metanarrative of Islam[12:12] Mohammed’s view of worship and belief[12:48] “We believe in... the inherent belief in God implanted in humans.” MH[15:20] What’s the purpose of belief?[17:00] The instinct for God arguments vs new atheists[18:27] The Muslim ideal for worship, compared[24:36] Muslims and Christians as followers of Jesus Christ[27:59] How does Dr. Peterson envision the spark of divinity?[28:25] “The divine spark is embodied virtue... reflective of the highest value, operating at a local scale.” JP[29:42] How are the attributes of God knowable to a Muslim? The importance of the original version of the Quran[35:07] “Islam is an evangelizing religion... we want everyone to embrace it.” MH[35:31] Bridges to Islam[38:50] “I’m speaking from the perspective of someone who’s a traditionalist Muslim and not a liberal or enlightened Muslim.” MH[40:47] An abridged story of the prophet Muhammad. The Mecca and Medina periods. Rationalizing the warrior emphasis of many Muslim teachings[44:10] Muhammad’s warrior traits and Hijab’s interpretation[49:20] Exploring the terms “warlord” and “defensive wars.”[50:54] In Hijab’s opinion, what’s the central driving force behind the expansion of Islam?[52:10] “Islam has the capability of being expansive through war... and of making peace treaties. It does and should do whatever’s in its best interest, just like every country.” MH[55:39] Against totalitarianism[58:46] “Evangelising isn’t the same as compelling.” MH[58:56] “Let the best story win. I would say that the proper mode of conversion is something like a shining example.” JP[01:00:28] M.Hijab on western misconceptions of Islam[01:03:20] Other seldom-discussed aspects of Islam[01:08:53] M.Hijab’s take on the war in Serbia[01:11:05] The economic output of Islamic countries[01:15:18] M.Hijab on why the traditionalist view is superior to a liberal one[01:21:34] The struggles of belief. How can we check our own views?[01:23:44] Wrapping up#Islam #Christianity #God #Quran #Jesus

Welcome to season 4 episode 66 of the Jordan B Peterson podcast. In this episode, dad met with author and philosopher Muhammad Hijab, whose areas of expertise are political philosophy, philosophy of religion, and comparative religion. They had a very engaging conversation and covered a lot, too much to try and recap here, but some highlights were how Islam is seen in the West. It's metanerative, the life of the prophet Muhammad, and the traditionalist take on the Quran in Islam itself. If you enjoy this episode, please be sure to subscribe. I understand that, and I'm not even saying

that there's something exceptional in that regard about Islam, although the rate at which it happened was quite remarkable. But it still, it presents us with a problem, doesn't it? I mean, everyone, it presents everyone with a problem. And the problem is, well, for example, the problem is reconciling the idea of turning the other cheek with the idea of a just war, a defensive war, an expansive war, for that matter.

And of course, that issue is relevant to Islam because Islam exploded outward and produced the biggest empire of the world had ever seen in the space of a few short centuries. So then you ask, well, what's the spirit? What is the spirit that animated that? And is that attributable to the Islamic doctrines themselves? I don't want the answer to that. Now let me tell you the answers to that. And this is what I want to tell you conclusively, and this will help to that, okay? And this is what I want to tell you conclusively, and this will help build bridges, honestly, because we can maintain the war with theses,

we can maintain the expansionist thesis, but here's what I'll tell you. Islam has a capability to be expansive, and it also has a capability of making peace treaties. And it does, and it should do, wherever's in its best interest, just like every country should should do whatever is in this best interest, just like every country should do whatever is in this best interest. Hello everyone. I'm pleased today to have as my guest discussing Muhammad Hizyab. And this discussion has been postponed a number of times because

of illness and I'm very glad that we're able to do it today. And I thank him for his patience in continuing to pursue this and being willing to talk to me, despite I think being delayed three times, which is one more time than is unforgivable. But in any case, how many hijab is an author, a student of compared religion and a philosopher of religion? He's the co-founder of Sapiens Institute, and is a researcher and instructor for that organization. He has a BA in politics and a master's degree in history. He's acquired a second master's in Islamic studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies.

His lab is also completed a third master's degree in applied theology from the University of Oxford, where he focused on the philosophy of religion in applied settings. He's now doing his PhD in the philosophy of religion on the contingency argument for God's existence. And many people, I was looking a while back for people to talk about Islam with.

And many people recommended that I talk to Muhammad Hizab. And so I talked to Mustafa Akil a couple of weeks ago. He's known more, I would say, on the liberal front. And so I'm very pleased to be able to talk to Muhammad Hizab today. Thank you very much for joining me today. It's very good of you to put up with the delays. So no, no, no, no, no. I'm just, thank you for having me, honestly.

It's was a pleasure. Well, so I'm going to ask some really basic questions because the, the, it's very difficult to understand another culture from the outside. And you, and you also have, for as an outsider, you have no idea how much you don't know about what you don't know even. You're blind to your own ignorance.

And so I'm gonna start with basic questions. I wouldn't say that I have a tangible understanding of Islam. I mean, I have some understanding of Christianity. I've been able to get the sense of Christianity at a reasonably deep level, I would say, at least compared to other things I know. And I've kind of felt the same way about certain aspects of Buddhism and Taoism,

but as a religious system, a system of thought, Islam has remained relatively opaque to me, despite the fact that I've done a reasonable amount of historical reading. And so what is it in terms of practice and belief that are absolutely core as far as your concern to practicing the Islamic faith? Well, the first thing is I think we should start with the bare bones basics. And the bare bones basics is first to say that we believe in God. And the kind of God we believe in is one God worthy of worship. In fact, the Quran makes a series of arguments, rational arguments for why we believe in the type of God that we believe in.

For example, in chapter 52 verse 35 of the Quran, it says, Amhulukhumin raiyari shayin, amhumul khalikun, amhala kassumuratiul abbala yukinun, were they created from nothing or by nothing, were they themselves, the creators of themselves, did they create the heavens and the earth? They have no certainty. In other words, the Quran is hinting here at the fact that it's impossible for something to come from nothing, and it's impossible also for something to give rise to itself. And so the universe, for example, if we take this as an example, couldn't have come from nothing,

and it couldn't have created itself, it couldn't be self-generating and or self-maintaining. And there can't be a world in fact, the Quran would indicate, there cannot be a world with only dependent things, things that require other things in order to exist, add infinity. And so what is required outside of the series of dependent things is something which is independent, which all things depend upon and which itself depends upon nothing. And this is what the Quran refers to as a summit or the idea of God being self-sufficient and independent. So the idea of God is a prime move, a prime mover argument. It's a prime mover argument. A lot of why do you think that why do you think that the same argument that you put forward in relationship to the generation of the universe can't be put forward as an objection

in relationship to God? You know, because you make a logical case that something can't come from nothing and something can't create itself. But you move from a philosophical perspective. This isn't a religious critique, from a philosophical critique perspective, you just move the problem back one step. What advantages do you think there are to moving the problem back one step, or am I mischaracterizing it?

Well, I tell you what Dr. George Peterson, what you said is very similar to what Richard Dawkins said in an debate with the Archbishop of Canterbury. And he said that, well, if you have, and he said this debate, he made this argument in Oxford. And he said that, if you look at the universe, well, if you're saying that God has made the universe in this way, then your God who's more complicated than he would add this layer of complexity. Yes, yes.

This, your God, who's complicated, would require it even greater. He would require even greater explanation. Really great. You're a great, you're a God. Yeah, yeah. So really interesting, Anthony Kenney, who's an agnostic himself, is a philosopher and agnostic, he came in and he said, well actually, take a look at this, you've got an electric razor, which is made up of many different component parts. And you have a cutthroat razor, which is made up of one part. And he said, although the electric razor is more complicated, it serves less functions than the cutthroat razor, because the cutthroat

razor can cut your throat, and it can also cut an apple, for example. And so it's a fallacy to assume that just because something is complicated or that something has many features and attributes that that thing itself requires an explanation. And in fact, if we had an infinite regress of such explanations, then obviously that would lead to a kind of absurdity. meaning atheists and agnostics in the field realized the redundancy and the philosophy and the argument that is put forward by the likes of Richard Dawkins who said that kind of thing. And I would also add to that one point, the argument from composition which is usually a corollary to the contingency argument usually is made in the following way that everything that is made of parts is contingent that the universe or say a multiverse is made in the following way. That everything that is made of parts is contingent,

that the universe or say a multiverse is made of parts, therefore a universe or the universe and all the multiverse is contingent. The parts that we are talking about, immediately logically are things that can be attached and detached. So that doesn't apply to a classical season, doesn't say that God is made of parts the same way as human beings are or as universes are or multiverses are and so and in fact the Quran hints at this itself it says the one who created you and composed you and configured you in any form that he wished he put you together and so the fact that you have such configuration in the universe will indicate to the fact that you have an external sorting agent that has, has particularised the universe in a certain way and that has composed the universe in a certain

way. So the argument really is that things which are made of attachable and detachable parts, that those things are contingent, that doesn't apply to God on any theistic paradigm. Now what I would say though, sorry to kind of drag this on a little bit, is that this would disqualify something like the Trinity from being true. And in fact the Quran, this is the Islamic position, is vehement in its opposition towards a triune God. So for example in chapter 23 verse 91 it says matahavallahu min waladin wa ma'kanamahumin ila ifen la daha baqundu ilahain bi mahalaqa wa la ala baaluhum ala baad

that god hasn't taken a song and he doesn't have any gods with him if that had been the case each god would have taken what he has created and they would have tried to dominate one another the idea therefore that there can be more than one all-powerful entity is an inconceivable and unintelligible idea from the Islamic paradigm. So it's seen as problematic to say the least or conceptually impossible to say even more, to suggest that something like a trinity can be true. When it's talking about, for example, Mary and Jesus, it says, something very simple. Can I call any time that both of them used to eat food?

So in other words, the impossibility of something limited like Jesus, a man, being God at the same time, being unlimited. Because the definition of God is that he's unlimited is all-pluged. Do you think that there's a divine spark in human beings? are there any other ways to make it? What are the other ways to make it? What are the other ways to make it? What are the other ways to make it? What are the other ways to make it? What are the other ways to make it? What are the other ways to make it? What are the other ways to make it?

What are the other ways to make it? What are the other ways to make it? What are the other ways to make it? What are the other ways to make it? What are the other ways to make it? what's the central, what's the central, what's the central, you say, structure of value within a human being that makes them worthy of respect, say, in the sight of God or worthy of value in the sight of God? The Quran states, we have, we have dignified the child of Adam. So that we do believe in something called human exceptionalism.

We do believe that human being has been specialized or specified among all other things in creation to have free will, for example, to have a personal relationship with God, to have a loving relationship with God. People don't realize this, especially in the Christian tradition. But one of the names of God from the Islamic tradition is that he's the loving one al-wadud in Arabic in the Quran as well. So we believe that the relationship that human beings should have with God is a loving relationship, but it's one of submission. This is the main thing. Islam doesn't mean peace. Islam actually means

submission. Islam comes from the root Arabic word is to Islam. And what it means is submission. Islam comes from the root Arabic word is to slam. And what it means is submission. And really what the picture is in the Islamic cosmology is that everything in the universe is submitting to God. Everything the laws of nature have been placed there by the law maker, which is God. And so we as human beings are volitional. We have free, we do believe in free will, but we also believe in a theological compatibilism. And so the kind of predeterminations, actually one of our pillars of faith to believe in that. So in that sense, we have to voluntarily submit to God in the same way that everything else in creation is so much. What does, what does that submission mean?

What that means is that all the prophets and messengers came a full time. So this is the metanarrative of Islam. Abraham came, Moses came, Jesus came, and all of them came with exactly the same message. And that message is to worship, to believe in one God, and to worship in only one God. And to do that, you have to follow a guidance. So each and every single one of those messengers, they came with, we believe in our narrative, they came with two things effectively. They came with a message which is to worship God, meaning to submit to his laws, and also with some kind of evidence space to suggest that they are prophets. So some of these stories would have been known,

obviously to you, you've done a biblical series, so I know you're very aware of those stories. We have very similar stories, like in Moses, Abraham, Jesus, but they're slightly different. Those stories are slightly different. In fact, sometimes radically different, especially considering some new testament kind of narratives. And so the thread that joins or the flesh that joins

all of these kind of messengers and prophets is that they all came with one fundamental message which is to believe in one God, worship one God. We believe that the prophet, we know that. So hang on, I'm still not understanding this exactly. I'm not sure what you mean by belief. Like the way you laid that out was in some sense propositional.

Right, you made a logical argument for the existence of God, but you take the existence of God as given in some sense to begin with because of your faith. And then you provide your belief with a rational argument, but it wasn't derived from a rational argument. And so I don't, so when you talk about belief, do you mean belief in a set of propositions about the nature of God? And if you do or don't, what do you believe? And how would you separate out that belief from what you term as worship? Right. So actually, there's one thing that ought to be known now.

It is a logic theology. We believe in something called the fitrah, which is an instinct to believing in God. And now I'm not sure if you're aware of the work. So why bother with the propositional arguments then. It's I've told me they just seem like a side a side venture. You know, to argue with some some scholars have said that in Islam. Sorry, I'm sorry. Okay. No, no. Yeah. In fact, some modern day philosophers of religion have that kind of

stance, like Elven planting God, he seems quite, you know, agnostic about the other thing. I mean, we can, the thing is, what we're saying is it would be committing something like the naturalistic fallacy to suggest that just because something is the case, or there is a fallacy, maybe, just because something is the case that I ought to be the case. So in order to prove the, or it's a demonstrative proof, for those who are in what we call Shek or Doubt. And this, but the truth is, as you've mentioned, and is as in the literature, like, for example, Justin Barrett has

this in his cognitive psychological or cognitive science literature, I'm not sure if you've come across his stuff. But basically, yeah, basically what he says is that we have an innate, he's words exactly receptivity to believing in God. In 2011, the Oxford Anthropological Society, they had done a huge study of 32,000 children. And what they found was that children innately and intuitively, instinctively have a belief of a higher power of some sort.

Now they're born with that belief, and in fact, in one of the papers in Justin Barrett's book, he literally mentions the Fittra or the Islamic theological concept of an instinct in believing in God. What is his last name? Barrett.

How do you spell that? I think double R, double T, believe. Just in Barrett. Okay, that's useful. Yeah, well, it just strikes me that in you see, the problem with debating people like Richard Dawkins about the existence of God is that he will formulate the argument in propositional terms and then force the person, so to speak, I don't imply any melis on his part, but as soon as you accept that the the battle is to be one on propositional grounds, you've already accepted a certain definition of God. And I think you lose the argument instantly.

I think the the argument for instinct, something like that is is much more powerful because one of the things I'm led to, to wonder when you laid out your argument is, well, what purpose does belief in God serve? Or your faith in God, let's say. And I think belief, see, it's also really interesting to try to distinguish between belief in something and faith in something.

Like if you have, imagine you have faith in the good. And so how do you demonstrate that? Well, you believe that good is more powerful than evil. You believe that you should act in a manner that's, that's, that's, uh, appropriate to the good. And so then you act that way. And that's the faith. The faith is demonstrated in the actions. Yes.

But it's not exactly, it's not exactly propositional. And, you know, partly because I would say, if you look at good and evil, for example, it's not that easy to make the case that good is more dominant or more powerful than evil, all things considered in human affairs. Now, I think it is, but you know what I mean, you can't make a compelling propositional case that that's absolutely true, but you can reflect your faith in your actions. The thing is, you mentioned Richard Dawkins. I wrote, as part of the Sapiens Institute,

we wrote a small booklet called The Scientific Delusions of the New Atheists. And we refuted him on these kind of things. If you read the God delusion, he literally spends five pages of hundreds talking about the cosmological argument. And I think too, talking about the teleological argument and I think too talking about the teleological argument or the fine-tune argument. I do think that not much work has been done by

new atheists in new atheists meaning like the four-horsemen or whatever in trying to actually tackle these arguments and sometimes when they're on debates with other philosophers of religion, I don't think they, from my perspective at least, they don't actually provide the satisfactory defense. Yeah, well, the instinct argument is an interesting one because it seems to me that part of the, and this is why I was pressing you, pressing you to some degree on the issue of the definition of worship is that I don't see much difference between the instinct to worship and the instinct to imitate. And I do believe that there's compelling evidence, psychological and biological that we human beings have a remarkably strong instinct to imitate. And the question is, well, what is it that we're oriented to imitate?

And I think we're like, if you look at the developmental psychology literature, for example, it seems quite, it seems to be the case that if a child has an intact nervous system and they have one or two good models around them that they'll be drawn towards those good models and imitate them and and develop quite circumstances. And you know, that instinct to imitate also underlies phenomena, phenomena like the experience of awe and the experience of charisma. And that charisma, you know, has an effect on attentional function and on the proclivity to behave. And so I think the propositionalized arguments deliver the religious ideas over to the propositional camp, and that's dominated already by scientists in many ways. It's a losing battle. I don't think it's the right one.

So worship, you just, so, okay, so one thing the West and Islam agree on, although I think Islam is part of the West, by the way, because we're all people of the book. I mean, the triune God in the Christian sense is still subordinate to a higher order unity. And so, and so there is a powerful movement towards monotheism in Judaism and Christianity in Islam. And that seems to be a point of some agreement. We're also all three societies are also people who've made a decision collectively in some mysterious manner that a book should sit at the basis of culture, a specific book that's been aggregated in in a strange way in a mysterious way. And so we also agree on that. And so that's, you know, that's a starting place at least.

And obviously there's been a lot of interpenetration of ideas between Islam and Judaism and Christianity. I mean, the prophets in Islam are the same prophets that go through the three major Western monotheistic religions. And so that's a fair bit of commonality. And so that's a good place to start building bridges. And so, okay, so Islam is stringently monotheistic. And then the submission idea, what exactly, I mean, God is ineffable in a sense. And so, what does submission mean exactly? And how is that related to worship? And how is that related to the good, let's say, on a practical level? So I think what you said before, there was a point you made about the finding faith

through action. And I think that we would strongly agree with that. And that's what we believe. Our definition of faith is what you basically believe in the heart, say on the tongue and do with your actions. That's like a definition of faith for us, or Eman, the idea of Eman. In terms of the good, now there are different conceptions in the slam of the good.

But the main thing is we believe that God is good, now there are different conceptions in Islam of the good. But the main thing is we believe that God is good, quite similar to what Christians believe. And therefore, he wants good for human beings. And that the injunctions of God are also good. In terms of submission, and this is extremely important here, submission can only be done through revelation. That is our position. The position is that submission is actually impossible without a guidance. And the guidance we believe obviously is the Quran. But we also acknowledge the Torah, the original Torah that was sent to Moses

and the original in Gile or the gospel that was sent to Jesus. But what we have is, you can call it a doctrine of the Hadith, which means corruption. So what we believe is that what happened is with these books, you've had basically corruption happen to them. So we don't know what is part of that book and what is not part of that book.

We don't know exactly what Jesus said and what isn't. And because there is no clear chain of narration back to Jesus Christ. But going back to the point of submission, submission is to follow the prophets, all of them. Because a Muslim cannot be a Muslim, unless they believe in, revere, love and respect, all of the prophets, including Jesus, Moses, Abraham,

and all of them, follow all of them and in their way. And once again, we believe that they were divinely inspired. So, and there is evidence that all of these prophets come with. And I think I was on that point on something you that, the differentiating factor between the prophet Muhammad and the rest of the prophets is we believe whereas all of the other prophets came for their people and their time, we believe that Muhammad

came for all people and all times. Well, that's certainly what Christians say about Christ. Yes, but in the Bible, you'll find up, you know, some verses that are saying I've only been sent for the last sheep of Israel. And so there's some tension, you know, you see this, you see something like the rise of a universalism, a spirit of universalism that surpasses fundamental tribalism, even of a religious sort. And it seems there seems to be a struggle that takes place in the gospel in some sense conceptually between this reversion to something that's more tribal and something that's genuinely universal. But I think the universalist spirit wins out quite clearly.

In other ways, Christianity wouldn't be an evangelizing religion. It's designed to try to bring everyone out of the whole. It's a tension. Sorry. It's largely because of the tension between Paul and James. And a lot of modern day Christianity is based on poor line kind of interpretations. Rather than kind of James was very much a man of the law himself. He was, you know, he didn't believe that the law was abrogated.

He didn't believe that. In fact, there's huge tension obviously in the Bible between both those two men. And obviously, there's historical reasons for that as well. But what you will say is, we would say that there are clear verses in the Bible, like for example, we point to Isaiah 42-11, where there indicates a new prophet that's going to come. And in fact, Isaiah 42 11 in particular is extremely important because it even specifies the region. It says it will be sent to the people of Qadar. And the people of Qadar as in Genesis, Qadar was the son of Ishmael and basically from him is the lineage of Muhammad or the Arabs if you like.

And so it is a whole discussion in the whole of Isaiah 42 about a new prophet going to come and he is going to come to the people of K.D.R. and the people will be rejoicing on the mountain tops and in fact the name of the mountain in Medina which is present this out of the Arabia is mentioned which is the Mount of the mountain in Medina, which is present there, Saudi Arabia, is mentioned, which is the mount of a seller. And so we would say that actually Muhammad was a continuation of Jesus Christ. And that Jesus Christ as a prophet, also in the Bible, doesn't say that there's not going to be another prophet after me. And so there's no reasonable reason for us to think. Oh, and I think Christ actually said that believers would be able to do the things he did and more. So there's actually a prophecy of a multitude of prophets in some sense, which would perhaps be a

consequence of taking the fundamental doctrine, the spiritual doctrine of Christianity seriously. Yes, I mean, as we said in interpretation, in many ways we are all followers of Christ. And that's another point of commonality. Like we, we, we see the Messiah Jesus Christ as a man We believe, like most of the things that you'll find, we actually believe in those things. There's huge commonalities between Islam and Christianity from that perspective. The major difference is we would say that it's not intelligible or conceivable or partnable to believe any human being

with a date of birth could never be called God. And this is where we kind of diverge from the Christian mainstream. This episode is brought to you by Elysium Health. I want to tell you why their products are the perfect gift that keeps on giving for the holidays. Elysium works with leading institutions like Oxford and Yale to make the benefits of aging research accessible to everyone. They collaborate with many of the world's best researchers to make innovative health products that let customers lead healthy lives for longer. Not only do they have dozens of the world's best scientists working with them, eight of them are Nobel Prize winners, but some of them are pioneers in aging science with three

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Canva dot me slash Peterson, and I hope you enjoy the rest of this episode. Yeah, so, okay, so let me tell you about some things I've been thinking about in your relationship to that. Well, you know that Nietzsche announced the death of God in the late 1800s, and you know what the consequences of that have been,

have been at least to some degree. And of course, Dostoevsky was talking about exactly the same things, that pretty much exactly the same time. But the philosopher of religion, Merchè Eliad, in his historical investigations, indicated that the death of God is something that has happened to many cultures in many places over many times. It's not a unique event in, let's say, Western history.

And his explanation for that, at least in part, was that as there is a movement towards unification under a monotheistic umbrella, let's say, which is perhaps a precondition for the union of diverse people. The one of the consequences of that is that that central unifying value becomes so abstracted because it has to cover such a multiplicity. It becomes so abstracted that it becomes sufficiently, it flies away and something. He called that deus abscondus, if I remember correctly, is that the idea of the spirit just flies away because it no longer has an attachment to the world. And one of the ways that Christianity solved that, if you think about it from a kinetic form, in an emptied form, in an partially emptied form, in the person of Christ, in a particular place and a particular time. And it's a variant of the prophetic idea,

although taken to its absolute extreme, the prophetic idea is that there are people who are marked out in history, marked out by God, by their relationship with what's highest in some spectacular manner. And so I guess one of the things I would say about the Islamic resistance to the idea of the divinity of Christ is that there isn't emphasis on Islam on the special status of prophets, of certain prophets, and their particular special relationship with God, which seems to elevate them

above other men in some important sense. And so, and drawing a line precisely between that claim and the claim of Divinity and Carnate is not an easy matter. So, well, I would actually disagree with that. I think there's a clear distinction in the Quran between the the prophets and ordinary men. This is actually one of the clearest distinctions. But is there a clear distinction between the prophets and some spark of divinity inside those men? What do we define as a spark of divinity? Well, I would say it's what it's partly what gives people charisma, although it's not always that. It's also partly what marked these men out as being prophets. I mean, it's what we look at when we say that man is great.

That's a great man. That's a great person. That was a great deed. Well, yes, yes, fair enough. But I would say also embodied virtue. And it's embodied virtue that is in some sense reflective of the action of the highest value operating at a local scale. Yeah, so that's exactly what we believe. We believe in the doctrine of infallibility or isema.

And so we believe that all prophets basically did the best thing possible for human beings. And this is narrated about the Prophet Muhammad, in fact, And this is narrated about the Prophet Muhammad, in fact, you know, in the Kalala, Hulu Kinalim, the Quran in the chapter 68 verse to you that, and you have impeccable virtue, basically the highest level virtue. And this is something about all the prophets. And obviously, if that wasn't the case,

they wouldn't be sufficient guides for us in terms of humanity. So if that's what you mean by a spark of divinity, I don't think it's a point of resistance. Yeah, well, these things are hard to sort out, right? The terminology, and that's part of the complexity of these sorts of discussions. And yeah, for us, what divinity is basically having the attributes of God. So once again, since we know God through his attributes, from that perspective, that human beings cannot possess the fullness of the attributes of God. If you want, I can recite to you.

That seems like a perfectly reasonable perspective. I mean, we're all limited in fellible creatures. And we'd be fools not to see that. The attributes of God, how are they knowable? Is that only through relationship with the book? Or is that also, does that also have an experiential element as far as your concern? So, what I can do in fact is I can recite for you a couple of verses from the Quran because what we believe is they have they are known through the revelation. And I can recite for you maybe 10, 22nd verses and translate for you and show you what I think it will give you more flavor of what you believe. Sure, do what you will.

So the Quran states in the end of chapter 59. وحمن رحيم والله الذي لا إله إله الملك كدوص السلام من مؤمنوا هاي منوا العزيز جبار وتكبر سبحان الله

يعني لا يشركون والله خالق So let me read the translation from, from, I don't want to get this wrong, right? These two verses I think are probably the two best verses that answer your question in the Quran. Allah is He, okay, I want to get something maybe a bit better. Translation, all right, Maastin Khan. He is Allah that there is no God worthy of worship except for him, the King,

the Holy, the one free from all defects, the giver of security, the watch over his creatures, the mighty, the compiler, the supreme, glory be to him, glory be to God, high as he above all that they associate as partners with him. He is Allah, the creator, the inventor of all things, the bestower of forms, to him belong the best names. All that is in the heavens and the earth glorify him, and he is the Almighty, the wise. So these are, I would say the two, potentially the two best verses that summarize for us. So, right. So it's an attempt to use a multiplicity of virtues to define a supreme source of good.

So, okay, I have a technical question for you, a procedural question, I guess. When we're talking, so you sang those verses, and then, so here's what happened. I asked you that question. You sang those verses or chanted them, or combination. Okay. But there's a melodic element to that and I don't understand the language and then you translated them and so why approach the answer to my question in that manner? Because we believe that the Quran in its original language has an element in it or has a virtue if you like to it or an to it, which cannot be felt or experienced phenomenologically, if you like, just mere translation. We believe that.

So what purpose does that serve in the discussion with someone like me? hopefully because we believe the Quran has divine qualities itself. The Quran itself has divine qualities. So we believe number one, it's a cure. We believe it's actually a physical cure, as well as a spiritual cure. We believe that it's a guidance. We believe that it's something which will literally put you in a psychological state of ease. So in a sense, what you'll do, it hopefully, you know, will have an effect on you, which is physiological, maybe psychological. And in a sense, it's like giving you something to taste rather than just explaining what it tastes like. You know, and so that's why I feel it's how do you know when that's how do you know when that's appropriate and when it's not It's you don't obviously don't all the well, but you don't yeah, I don't mean that. I mean, no, but but I so that's why I asked the question

It's obviously you're making distinctions. You're not you're not doing what you just did with what is your Every time I want to give you the funnest. You see? Yeah, okay, okay. You know what I mean? So part of it is to let you hear what the Quran sounds like. So you can kind of, if you hear it, maybe you go somewhere to a Muslim country and you hear that in the background. Or you maybe even walking down, I don't know, you're from Alberta. Yes. Yeah, you know that.

Yeah, I think you've mentioned it before. I've been to Edmonton actually in Canada. There's a Muslim community there. Maybe you'll hear it in someone driving and you know, I remember that I know what that is, you know, so it's just to get to gain maybe so why did that make you smile? Because that would make me happy. I mean, cry openly and honestly, because we want the best. I mean, to be honest with you, if you want me to be totally honest, yeah. Now, that's what I'm hoping for. Yeah, all right. What you asked me before we start the show.

I mean, one of our, not objectives, but one of our hopes, okay, is that people embrace Islam and become Muslims. That's, Islam is an evangelizing religion. It's a religion which aims literally to enter every home. There's a there is actually a prophetic saying that says that Islam will enter every home, not necessarily mean everyone will become Muslim, but will enter every home in some way, shape or form. You mean like what's happening right now with this

podcast? There you have it. You see, it's part of it. No, there's a there's a series of predictions that the prophet makes and this is part of the evidence package, we believe. Okay, so you also talked about the fact, you know, when we started, be just before we started this, that part of the reason that you're talking with me is that you hope to build bridges. And so this gets down to some, and I want to return to the fundamental attributes of Islamic belief. I don't want to let that part of the conversation lag, but, you know, Christianity is also an evangelizing religion. And Christians hope the same thing. So while you know what that has caused, and is still causing. And so we have to contend with this, all of us that are alive now. And so we have two evangelizing religions. They're both fundamentally monotheistic. They emerge from a tradition that's quite similar.

There's many things that they have in common, but the border between them has been rife with conflict for a very long time, and that has not ended, and it's become more distributed and so forth. One of the things about Islam, I would say, that frightens the West is that the, especially in the modern world, is that it appears that from a psychological or an anthropological perspective, I also see that as human societies have come together and organized themselves in ever increasing sized groups that the necessity for an emergent monotheism as a uniting factor might be crucial. And it's clearly the case that the emergence of Islam united diverse people. And in that union, there is a kind of peace. That's the definition of union. And how much strife and force and conflict and catastrophe had to attend that unification is a matter of debate.

We don't know how these things can be managed. We don't know how to manage them any better. But we're still stuck with this problem. Now we have two fundamental monotheisms that are head to head. No, no, that's, that's an oversimplification. And hypothetically, we're both motivated by the desire for something approximating peace. And so, and we want to build bridges. And that's why you and I are talking. Yes. But, but I don't know what to do with the mutual evangelical.

What would you say? Impulse. Like my sense is, Christians turn to yourself. You're a problem. You can fix yourself. You do that. And the other things are going to sort themselves out of their own accord. And I do believe that. And I actually believe that that message is in some sense centrally Christian. It's like look to yourself and be the example. And that's the best way of, let's say, convincing other people if that's what you're interested. And it's also the only real effective way of bringing peace. So, well, I'm not sure you think of well, I'm a traditionalist Muslim, okay, which means I'm orthodox, I'm not a liberal at all. In fact, I oppose liberalism to be quite honest with you.

In the sense that I criticize it, I don't think it's the truth with the capital T. I don't, so a lot of enlightenment ideas I oppose them, openly, right? And so I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who is a traditionalist Muslim, someone, and by that I mean, I stick to the Quran and the Sunnah, which is the prophetic sayings,

and the Jewish prudential tradition, which is derived from those two sources and other sources as well. But this is a traditionalist perspective, which I think represents the majority. Here's what I will say. The first order of business you have in Peterson, Dr. Jordan Pearson, is for us, I think,

to acknowledge that both religions have a capability of peace, okay? This is extremely important. And that requires education. So I'm just gonna be honest with you, like for example, the World comment that you made, okay? I've about the prophet. I think that is part of the problem.

I have to be honest because- Yeah, I wanna get to that. Dr. Jordan, here's the thing that I don't see you as some kind of enemy of Islam. I genuinely don't. I see that we need to- Yeah, and I don't wanna be either. I have lots of people in the Islamic world

who are listening to what I'm doing and watching and being supportive of it. This is probably, and here's what I'll say to you. Now, I can tell you that as a matter of fact, like my close friends and traditionalist Muslims listen to you, I mean, that's for sure. In fact, they love you. You think they'd have something better to do?

No, no, no, no, no, because a lot of your views kind of coalesce with the Islamic viewpoints, especially on like the nuclear family, on alcohol. I know you don't your PhD on alcohol, actually, your thesis. And obviously, Islam is one of the only religions in the world that bans alcohol completely and our drugs and stuff. But don't back to the point like we said we want to build bridges and we said we want to understand each other. And I think what you said, there's's important we do have two evangelizing religions. We have to look at the character and the life story of the prophet because with the prophet Muhammad here's two things that we have to look at. Number one, there was the Meccan period and I'm sure

you're aware in that period. The prophet Muhammad was, you know, first of all, he was an orphan, and then he got married to a woman at the age of 25, Hanim was Khadija, she was actually his boss. And then after that, you know, he said that he received revelation at the age of 40 in the mountain, in the cave, sorry. And then after that, there was a time of persecution. And then after that, he went, he went to different places, he went to Tartif, which is a place outside of Mecca.

He went to a Oswald Huzrat who had two clans, two tribes. And what it was is that he was trying to get support for his project or the monotheistic project because he was being boycotted, et cetera. He eventually got it from an elsewhere, khazraj, these two tribes because they actually believed in the religion of Islam. This is documented like without a shadow of a doubt. This is what happened. And then is this in the Medina? Is this the Medina period that you're speaking of? So this is actually technically the

Mechim period. Okay, still the Mechim period. Yeah, so right before Medina literally was established because Medina is the it was so called was established, because Medina was so called after the Prophet, because Medina just literally means the city in Arabic. It was called the Ethra before and then they changed it into Medina to Nebi, like the city of the Prophet. And so that's why it was kind of called Medina after that. In that time period, so we got 13 years of Medina. The vast majority, I'm not going to say all about the vast majority of wars that took place.

In fact, all of the wars that took place before the conquest of Mecca were defensive. So the pagan Arabs went to Medina and tried to siege it, Beder, Ahud, Azab, or the Khandakh, and all of these are names of wars. In fact, there was, according to Makhaya, in Montsgullar, there were 19 such wars in ten years. So that's almost an average of two wars every year. And for me, I see that actually as an evidence for profit because the profit was actually fighting in these wars. He wasn't just throwing people around to fight for him.

He was fighting in them and they were defensive wars. So in that time period, what happened was, I'll give you one example. Okay, so let me interject something there because that's how very hard thing for me to get straight in my mind. Now, I would say that and the division in Islam that occurred almost immediately upon Muhammad's death and which has not been rectified to this day, quite the contrary.

That's also, you know, that's a problem for everyone. It's a problem for Muslims, that's also, you know, that's a problem for everyone. It's a problem for Muslims, it's a problem for Christians, it's a problem for everyone. And it's a problem that could really get out of hand. Now, it's not like I don't know that the Protestants and the Catholics were at each other's throats for, you know, hundreds of years. So, but that's not the issue at the moment.

So, now, in Islam, there's a tremendous emphasis on Christ's doctrines as well. And there isn't any evidence that Christ himself took part in, let's say, wars. Okay. So it's hard. And let me just agree with that. What do you mean? Okay.

Well, if you if you analyze Christ as an archetype, when he comes back in his second coming, he is going to dominate the world. And one can say, well, that's not the historical Christ But when we're looking at him in the way that look that's a reasonable That's a reasonable judge if we look and I understand that a judge a judge has a judge has that that Marshall Element and I don't think it's reasonable to use the archetypal representation as an argument against the the historical reality And look I'm not saying to you that I know that what Muhammad did was wrong. That isn't what I'm saying.

I'm saying that I don't understand how participation in those defensive wars, let's say, but then that was also followed by a tremendous explosion of Islamic expansion, right? The biggest empire of the world had ever seen in a very short period of time, right at Europe's doors. And so, and that was also followed by the severance of the Islamic faith into two major categories and internecine conflict there. And so there's that stream of armed conflict activity. I think that your, with respect,

I don't think you're getting the history fully right here. Because, yeah, that's fine. Go already here. The war in Jemal and Safin, the wars between Shia and Sunnah, or what would then be, it's not really between Shia and Sunnah, because quite frankly,

Shiaism had not been established as a, but the wars of the companions. How many people lie in those wars? Do we have any numbers for maximum we can say? No, but it's but it fair enough man And it's not like it does not Chris. It's not by Christianity hasn't been right with internet-seemed conflict Yes, no, but the thing is but the fact is is that it was almost immediately after Muhammad's death that this fracturing took place among the people That were closely allied with him and it was a bloody fracturing and it isn't always that it's been

wrapped. How bloody was it? How bloody was it? Well how bloody does it have to be? You know it doesn't take much. Okay well let's be honest let's be fair. Yeah yeah okay let's be fair right with with with with the walls that took place 30 to 40 years and it wasn't immediately after because you said that in a video the day he died that's that in the video, the day he died, that's wrong. It didn't happen the day he died. It happened 30 to four years after. It happened 30 to four years after. How long, how many members of Muhammad's immediate family

survived during that 30 years? My understanding was that most of his immediate family died in an armed conflict, relatively. Most of his immediate family died in his own lifetime. Yes, well, I'm not speaking of them, but I'm speaking of what happened after he died. These facts are right. Yeah. Okay, look, first, first facts, Muhammad, Salassalam, we say Salassalam in peace and blessings be upon him. All of his children died in his life. Okay, except for one. So most of the members of his

immediate family and his wife died, Khadija died. So, most of the members of his immediate family and his wife died, Khadija died, his uncle Abu Talib died, his other uncle Hamza died, they all died within his lifetime, either due to illness or due to some other cause who, for example, like one of the defensive was Hamza died. And by the way, Muhammad forgave his killer, and that's something which goes against the wall of thesis, because

when he then conquered mecca, when he conquered mecca, he was actually no fighting. I'm not sure if you know this, it's called fat hamacca, when he went into and conquered mecca, he didn't fight anybody. It was no fighting. There were a few people that that were exempted, but he actually quoted what Joseph quoted to his brothers in the Quran, which is letter 3 by Ali Kumrayon that no blame is on you today. And so, and this by the way is a bedrock example of forgiveness in Islam because these were people that were persecuting him for 13 years.

These are people that were that killed his uncle. Like I said, there's one person called Washi his uncle. Like I said, this one person called Washi, who literally killed his uncle and mutilated his body. And he said to Washi, I forgive you, but I can't see your face because of how he said, Minkin Tureib and the Wajhaka, Wajhaka and he said, can you keep your face away from me because I can't psychologically, I can't be my faith, but I do forgive you, he said. So he forgave people that killed his own family members. And this was after he himself attempted a treaty with the pagans called Hodebiya. And so they broke the treaty

and that's what initiated the conquest of Mecca, which was not a conquest that was fighting. Now if you compare this because I think the comparison, if there's any comparison that can be or should be made, it's Jesus's second coming with Muhammad in the Medinian period, not in the Meccan period. In the Meccan period, both were being persecuted, Jesus in his life and Muhammad in his in the Meccan period. But Jesus, when he comes back, he will then get authority and he will be, he will be ruling with the I and Septa according to the Bible. He will be crushing his enemies as a system

Corinthians under his foot, humbling his enemies, others foot and killing and violent stuff. So in fact, what the, I will actually argue today that the New Testament representation of Jesus Christ in his second coming is way more violent than Hamad's conquests in the Medina. Okay, well, look, like I said, I wasn't I wasn't trying to make the case. I wasn't trying to make the case that what happened in Mecca or Medina was wrong. Like, so let me explain that a little bit. So Christian Europe fought a defensive war against the Nazis.

It isn't obvious that that was wrong. I don't think that was, I wouldn't say that's defensive. Well, okay, fine, but I understand the concept of defensive war. And then when America got involved in World War II, it was not under immediate threat by Germany and they colonized it. And here's the thing, it overtook Western Germany,

you see, and here's the thing, the term war that you use with the Prophet, you've never used with Harry Truman, you've never used with Roosevelt, you've never used with Winston Churchill, all of which conquered countries, literally literally in wars. Because I feel like there is, there is a bias there. And you've actually never used it with anybody else, aside from the Prophet Muhammad, in your public output. And I think that's unjustifiable. I think that you have

biblical prophets like Moses, you have biblical prophets like Joshua, you have Jesus in his second coming, all of which were warrior prophets. And you've only used the term, war load with the Prophet Muhammad. And I think that is unjustifiable. I think what makes someone a war load? And then if it's conquering lands, then how are true men as a war load? Then, you know, and so on and so forth. In fact, the Prophet Muhammad was a war load. Well, I guess that's a real tough question, isn't it? What makes a warlord, then you know, and so on and so forth.

In fact, the government, I guess that's a real, that's a real tough question, isn't it? What makes a warlord and what makes a just war? It's not like any of us have the precise answers to that. And that's what partly what we're trying to have shout out. The definitions of the word warlords. The definition of the word warlords, according to the calluses that someone who acquires force by aggressivity and violence.

Well, in the historical side. And you push back on me, so I'll push back on you to some degree. Okay. Well, it's certainly the case that the expansion of the Islamic Empire was accomplished by a tremendous amount of war-like activity, and that wasn't defensive. Now look, I understand that monotheism is a difficult state to attain, and that monotheistic societies have emerged in the midst of conflict throughout human society.

I understand that, and I'm not even saying that there's something exceptional in that regard about Islam, although the rate at which it happened was quite remarkable. But it still, it presents us with a problem, doesn't it? I mean, everyone, it presents everyone with a problem. And the problem is, well, for example, the problem is reconciling the idea of turning the other cheek with the idea of a just war, a defensive war, an expansive war, for that matter. And of course, that issue is relevant to Islam because Islam exploded outward and produced the biggest empire of the world had ever seen in the space of a few short centuries.

So, yeah, well, so then you ask, well, what's the spirit? What is the spirit that animated that? And is that attributable to the Islamic doctrines themselves? I don't know the answer to that. Now let me tell you the answers to that, okay? And this is what I want to tell you conclusively and this will help build bridges, honestly, because we can maintain the war with theses, we can maintain the expansionist thesis. Well here's what I'll tell you. Islam has a capability to be expansive and it also has a capability of making peace

treaties. And it does and it should do whatever is in its best interest, just like every country should do whatever is in its best interest. In the pre-modern world, we did not, I think this is highly anachronistic, in the pre-modern world, there was no such thing as the UN. It was a realist international relations framework whereby everybody was fighting everyone. The Roman Empire didn't care about what you, it didn't care about you, quite frankly. It was expanding itself.

The Persian Empire was expanding itself. And the Arabian Peninsula was in between both. And so it could have either been swallowed by those two other empires or it could decide to, in fact, we will impose our governments on them before they impose it on us. And it decided the former, rather than the latter, it decided to expand.

And in fact, the prophet in his weakest of times, he predicted that would happen. You know, there was one more in particular where they were starving and escorted handa Hanbok and he hit a rock and he said Fortihat room the Roman Empire has been conquered He here another a rock again. He said Fortihat Ferris that the Persian Empire has been conquered and then he knocked the work again He said he said this in his weakest moment. He said that the Yemen has been conquered

I see that the expansion of the Islamic Empire is a proof of Islam. And you know, it's not just me, even historians say this, how Bonneby Rogerson, he said the fact that Islam spread to the Roman Empire and the Persian Empire is equivalent to Eskimos taken over Russia and America. I believe it's miraculous if anything that this happened. I don't think it's unjustified. Well, I think actually do a piece of it. Why did it stop at Europe's borders, so to speak? If it was a word, it wasn't successful there. It couldn't go further. But the point is that it's not like the Christians at that time in Rome cared.ed, I mean, they did the same thing for years. They were expanding themselves.

Well, that's why I said, that's why I said, I wasn't making a primary fantasy case that this was wrong. I'm trying to understand it. And so, and you objected to my, we used to have the term, Warlord, and perhaps rightly so, you know, perhaps. That was an injudicious comment. I was rather shocked when I was reading Islamic history when I encountered the degree

of violence that surrounded these events. And so, you know, maybe I was, like I said, I was interested in my- I think that shows real sincerity. And it's one step closer to creating real meaningful relationships between- I think, and I think you're, you know, your defense that, well, the world was a battleground of empires. And, you know, your defense that, well, the world was a battleground of empires. And, you know, if it's, if it's push out from our territory, or being crouched upon and dominated, then it isn't obvious that being encroached upon and dominated is the right approach, the correct approach, the most moral approach, let's say, especially because there'd be no shortage of bloodshed that would also accompany that.

So sometimes you're in a bad place. And, but, you. But it's not an easy thing for any of us to, what would you say, mediate between doctrines like turn the other cheek and love your enemy, and also at the same time discuss the necessity of both defensive and sometimes expansionist wars. We all have to contend with that. And it's very difficult to contend with it. Their arguments are extremely complicated. Absolutely right and I think what's really important here because I think this is a huge misconception is to outline because I know you're against totalitarianism, you're very vocal about that. And I want to tell you that we are also a point of commonality. We are also against hotelitarianism. If we define totalitarianism as

a central government trying to encroach every private and public matter of the citizens lives. And this is something we don't believe in. In fact, this is very important. Islam does not say you have to force people either to become Muslim or that they can, or they have to live in a Islamic lifestyle within an Islamic governance. And I'm not sure if you know this, but in the title of the prophet, he made a constitution, okay, with Jewish people, with other people who are not Muslim at the time, protecting their rights, protecting their rights to worship whoever they

wanted to worship. And actually, even guaranteeing that if there were intruder forces that they would be protected like that as well. Is that the, is that the arrangement made with like fellow people of the book essentially? Yes, it was the arrangement. Yeah, I'm aware of that. Yes, and so not only this, but this was implemented

at the time of the caliph, so Omar, Al-Hapab, or Abubakir, Sadiq, Al-Aliq, Al-Biqatab, and so on. This is, we believe in a kind of pluralism in this sense. And in fact, this is, I would argue that it was more legally efficacious than what we have in a kind of pluralism in this sense. And in fact, I would argue that it was more legally efficacious than what we have in the West. Do you know why? Because permission is that true now?

Yes, even, I'm gonna tell you why. Because Christians were given courts that they could rule in and that the law would be efficacious, it would be a parallel dissenting law system which would have effect. So they would effectively be able to go and judge their affairs outside of the general framework of Islam. And in fact, this is in the Quran, Fali'ah Komahil and Jilimah Ans-Allahfi. And they took this even though we believe that the Torah has been corrupted to some extent, though we believe that the Torah has been corrupted to some extent, the remnants of they can use the Torah, whatever the corrupted version they have, to rule their affairs. And this is something that

was done at the time of the prophet, done at the time of the Calis. And so even now we would say, and I'm not saying that the whole of Islamic history has presented this confidant here that we saw in Spain, between Muslims, Christians and Jews, a good time and all other times in India. I'm not saying that of course I'm not. But what I'm saying is that I think it is disingenuous to point Islam as if it's been the most intolerant of all of these religions. Look at the al-Hambra, look at the Spanish Inquisition, look at the Crusades, look at the colonialism that has happened in the name of religion. There's no disputing with me the fact that in some sense we all have the blood of history on our hands. Yes. I'm firmly aware of that. And it's an existential burden

for everyone. And I'm not trying to make the case that this is particularly or uniquely true of Islam. I certainly know that that's not the case. What I'm saying instead to make the case that this is particularly or uniquely true of Islam. I certainly know that that's not the case. What I'm saying instead is that these are things that we have to contend with and we don't exactly know how. I tell you, I tell you. You still have the problem of these two evangelizing religions, right? That they're going head to head in some sense.

Yes, it's true. Evangelizing doesn't mean that it's compelling. And this is very clear. Well, that's okay. Now, there's an interesting point. No. Not that the points you made before aren't, you know, because I kind of think, well, let he who can tell the best story win. And then that story also has the best actors, so to speak, right? And so I would say the proper mode to conversion is something like shining example.

And then if you're governed by a doctor and this is in fact divine, and you're managing to embody that in the sense that gives you the charismatic glow of embodied divinity, two steps removed, let's say, and people are willing to abide by your words as a consequence while more power to you. And that's a lot more efficient and effective than compulsory war armed conflict or any of those things. And I mean, this is a constant problem. And I would also say that given our technological mastery

now, we really can't afford this anymore. We have to solve this problem of defensive war, expansive war, evangelical religion. How to go about uniting us under some umbrella that isn't so vague that it means nothing, how to preserve our traditions from the past. And I can't see any better way than each of us trying to be shining exemplars of our tradition. And then letting that goodness shine forth in a way that people, you may be the case

that we'll find that the better we are, the more we're like each other. I mean, wouldn't that be a kind of union under something approximating God that all good men could see in each other a reflection of something that was the highest and that that should be compelling in and of itself? Absolutely, but I think in terms of the jurisprudence in terms of what Islam is capable of,

people in the West must realize that Islam is fully capable of peace. This is what must be realized. How do we know that? It's not despite the Quran and the Sunnah or the Sains and the Prophet and the actions, but it's because of them. If you look at the Quran and you look at, for example, Chapter 4 verse 90, or if you look at, for example, chapter 1 verse 90, chapter 2 verse 1, 90, you'll see that the Islamic commandments are clearly sometimes about defensiveness, but sometimes also clearly about creating peace treaties. And this treaty of Hadebiyah is a bedrock example. So long as there's peace, treaties, there is peace. And so in terms of Muslim countries, they can perpetually create peace treaties with other people.

Muslim people, even more so because we believe we're fully under contract. And therefore you're willing to abide by a contract. This is the thing, let me tell you something, Jordan P.S. OK. The thing, one of the clearest for me, and I've done a lot of work studying liberalism, studying Christianity, and studying Islam. The clearest commonality between liberal theory and Islam is contractarianism and contracts consent.

That is a clear reason. Because in liberal theory, you have the theory of consent. And And in Islam you have the same thing. Contracts are binding. The Quran says, yeah, you're listening to him. Even with people outside the faith. Yes, especially with people outside the faith. Why especially? Why especially? Is that part of the tradition of hospitality in substance? Yes, because if you break a contract with a non Muslim, then you're driving them away from Islam. Okay, so that's definitely true. That's the answer. And so, the Islam is attempts to attract people

to its own religion. One of the categories of the characters, well, more alef at yikrul burham, money that you pay to non Muslims, so that they can feel comfortable and they can feel as if you're doing them a favor and there's relationships going on. It's a category, it is a category of the cat which is one of the five pillars of Islam to give such money. So the fact that Islam states

in chapter five verse one, oh you believe fulfill al-Adina'amu al-Ofabul-Lakud in Shaqqar al-Dukhuran. Oh, you would believe fulfill your contracts. That is generic. Al-Muslimuna al-Ashur al-Tuhar. That's not means to abide by your word. So you have to stick by your words. No, for us, if you don't stick to your words, then this shows a lack of character. It shows that you, in fact, one of the signs, one of the signs of a hypocrite is that he goes against a religious hypocrite, is

that he makes a contract, he goes against it. It seems one of the most explicable things. Do you think that there are other things that I've said about Islam that we could talk about right now that I could clear up and, you know, because I don't want elephants under the carpet, I don't want elephants under the carpet, I don't like elephants under the carpet or snakes under the carpet. So are there other things that I've said that you that that people on the Islamic side who would maybe like to not be my enemy let's say because who needs

enemies after all unless you want them. Are there other things that you think places that I've misstepped in a serious manner that should be rectified for your concern? In a serious matter, I will confine it to the warlord comment, because I think that's the one that most Muslims will. Well, you know, people in the West are afraid of Islamic expansionism, and they're okay. So let's go after that again. So the other thing that I find upsetting, let's say, is the civil war in Islam. Yeah, well, yeah. So if it didn't tell people to fight each other,

I mean, fair enough, let's say, it's not, let's say that, Islam doesn't say there should be a civil war. It's, in fact, it was predicted, but it was never encouraged. In fact, the Quran clearly encourages against civil war. Yeah and I would say the same thing about Christianity and the Enlightenment. And it gives us part of the way it gives us Protestant and Catholic wars.

Sorry just to interrupt. It gives us a remedy. In fact the Quran is the only religious book I know that tells you how to deal with the civil war. We are in thought if I turn the middle of the moon, we are going to have a look at it. Yeah for us, we are going to have a look at it. It says that if two groups of Muslims fight وإنتاء إفتاني من المؤمنين قتتلوا فأصليح وبينهم ما يقول أن if two groups of Muslims fights then create peace between them فإن بغط إحداهم على الأخرى فقاتل التي تبغي حتى تفئ إلى أمري الله

يقول أن if one of the groups rebells against the other group then fight the one that is rebellious until it wakes up to the command of God. So Islam is categorically against civil war. Islam is Islam is clearly for pluralism, it's not for compulsion. These misnomas and misconceptions must... Okay, so fair enough. And as I said, I know that the Protestants and the Catholics were at each other's throats for years and Despite the fact that of there being no justification for that, let's say or quite the contrary in the gospels

So it this isn't the problem that's unique to Islam, but it is an ongoing problem in Islam And it's not like there isn't sectarian strife in the West I also understand that and so that that makes people watching the religious community say, wary, because, well, for obvious reasons. And so why do you, I know you can't answer this question in totality, but Islam hasn't been able to bring its own house into unified order. And so why, why do you think that is? And how is that related to Islam itself, if it is at all? There's nothing exceptional about Islam in that regard. And this once again, you made this point many times.

I'll tell you something again. Just because there's multiple interpretations of something, it doesn't mean that that thing is false. Like there may be multiple interpretations of the killing of JFK. It doesn't mean that JFK didn't get killed. People differ on things, which, especially if there's a lot of those people, which they can be more than one interpretation about. Now, in terms of body count, there was actually

a book that was written, and there was a chapter of the book by, I think his name is Nazir Sheikh, and he he done a study looking at the numbers of people that have been killed in all the major world religions, and he puts Christianity firmly at the top. I mean this doesn't require too much historical research anyway. Look at the 30 year war. Compare that with. Okay look look. Okay. Okay. So so the point you're making the point you're making is twofold is it's not the necessity for civil war isn't embedded in the doctrine. Yes. There's no reason to throw stones at the Muslim world when we can perfectly well look to our

own history. And I do think what we should do is look to our own history. I really believe that. And I believe that we all carry historical guilt for the bloodshed that's preceded the structure of all of our societies. But in the West, we look at the Muslim world and we see that it's it's it's driven apart. And we wonder, well, I know, I know there's a hypocritical element to that. I'm not claiming that there isn't.

It's not like we have our own house in order. But you have to remember something else. You have to remember there was a colonial reality that existed where Britain, France, and many of the European countries and the Western European extensions, they dominated the Muslim world for the last two, three hundred years. But I think I don't think that's particularly good argument. No, it's very good. I took, well, hang on, hang on a second. I'm not, I don't want to, I don't want to knock it away completely. The rift that I'm talking about,

though, was evident far before that. Now, the fact of that colonial complication, that could well be. The fact of that colonial complication could well be a contributor. I know the nation-state lines, first of all, were imposed. They were imposed quickly. They were imposed arbitrarily.

And partly that was a consequence of what would you say? Having to do a lot of things very quickly in the aftermath of a terrible war. I'm not trying to excuse it, but it was complicated. And I know that that's left the Middle East in this group of nation states that now comprise the world in a very complicated situation. So it's a reasonable point, but the rift was there before. And so, okay, here's what I'll say to that. Yeah, it's you were right to say that there was arbitrary lines that were drawn,

but it's not just that there were arbitrary lines that were drawn. You mentioned the Middle East, Syria, for example, which is where most of the problems are happening now in terms of the Middle East and countries is probably number one. Maybe maybe maybe a number two, but say Syria, for example, they put three, four, five, ten different factions, all of which have different understandings of religion, of ideology, of whatever it may be together. That produced wars. You know, you had Christians in Lebanon fighting Sunnis, she has fighting Sunnis, and this happened especially after the revolution.

So is the imposition of a false unity? That's what happened here. If you look at how what they're doing now, like it, look at Lebanon as an example. You have to have a Christian president and a Sunni prime minister and a Shi'ai, I don't know what it is, first minister or something. I mean, they have systems that try and mitigate these issues, but it's a mess because you're putting people that have different visions of how to run a country together and they have similar demographics. It's like 30%, 40%, 20% and so that creates more wars,

but they put them together. Almost all, I would argue on purpose, to be honest, it's divide and conquer. If you look at countries like Denmark and Sweden and Norway, which are very peaceful and very prosperous, they're also very homogenous. And they're relatively small. So the problem of governance over diversity is much reduced in countries like that. It's simpler for them to be at peace because the culture is relatively homogenous.

And so I take your point. It's not easy to bring a true diversity into something approximating a unity, especially when that unity has been, in some sense, arbitrarily imposed and also rapidly and arbitrarily imposed. So that's a reasonable point. Yeah. But I think what it is, and I've seen this in your reading list, it's like when you follow kind of Bernad-Louis's or Samuel Huntington's kind of clash of civilization narratives, sometimes you miss the nuances and these are the nuances. Yeah, well that's for sure. They're merely at the contributory factors to why,

and I still don't see how Islamic countries, there's like almost 50 Muslim majority countries, in general, like you made a point about economic potential one time. You said that. Yeah, yeah, I wanted to ask you about that because, well, that's another thing that's quite a mystery is that the comparatively speaking per capita the Muslim countries are not that productive economically. That's a there's four Muslim majority consensus. There's four out of ten Muslim majority countries in the GDP capital

top 10. Brumae Qatar Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Yeah, well, I'm not sure that I'm willing to grant the fact that most of that wealth is generated by oil as a, as a, no, not a fine productivity. The point stands is you said per capita. GDP per capita. Yeah, sorry. Yes, fair enough.

And you were right to call me on that. That isn't what, that isn't what I meant. I'm sorry. Because I don't think, well, no, I do. We got to get the words right here. We got to get them exactly right, because these things matter. I don't, well, all you know that oil wealth is often a curse, as well as a blessing. So outside of oil wealth.

You have Brunei. Brunei is another country that's in its own tent. Okay, so let's talk about Brunei. What have they done right in your estimation? I don't know much about Brunei, but I know they're were trying to implement sharia to a very high level and whatever they're doing is it's not because it's just not despite the Sharia. And why also I know is that the methodology is flawed when you look at Muslim majority countries and say well they're not doing well as non-Muslim majority countries because the Ottoman Empire 400 years ago was doing better than most countries. Yes, absolutely, yes, absolutely. And I know, I know, and historical time frame matters,

you know, because it's definitely so that's a perfectly valid point. Let me tell you something, John Pearson, you are an epistemological pragmatist from my understanding. You said before an interview that anything which serves life is true. That's what you said, I think with Sam Harris. If this is the case, and you said it's nested in baronism,

if this is your position, then the truth of the matter. Well, it's nested in a very complex manner in Darwinism. Yeah, but if it's just nested at highest truth is something like love. And I think it's very much associated with the notions of love that are central to religious traditions. And so I'm with you, but you still believe

that truth is utility and you still believe because that's the pragmatist position. And so truth is relative. I'm saying, but I also believe that the basis of utility is love. That's not so sure that I'm not so sure that you and I differ so much on that particular. Now, what jumpy is in a while, all of the situation is this, right? First of all, pragmatically, Islam is doing the best because if you're talking about evolution, then we're talking about reproduction and survivability. And Islam has got the highest birth rates in the world today. It's the fastest growing religion by a mile, but by about 2,100 it will be number one. So a real definition that should be the most true, by the way. Number one, number two is this. Is that- Well, that's a lot of love, all that reproduction. They're trying to change the subject now.

Look, number two is this. Doctor Jolmi Piersson is I'll tell you that I think I've seen your struggle against postmodernism. I've seen your struggle against myelism and I don't think you will be successful. And I'm sorry to say like this. And the reason why I don't think you'll be successful is because your framework is itself relativelyistic.

If it's utility and epistemologically pragmatic, then truth is relative. And if truth is relative, what are you going to say to up? You actually agree with the postmodernist in that sense. I think you're closer to postmodernist than you think. In fact, the pragmatist position is not in sync with love. It's not inconsistent, Jordan Peterson, with the pragmatic position that you hold.

What we are offering you in the last. I'm not going to detail out that in much more detail when I go to Cambridge and Oxford. So, I don't know, you should come. I want to come to work with the talks. I'll come. Okay, just send me a message. Do you want an invitation? I'll get your invitation. Well, that's the way that you come, because I'm going to talk about it. One of the things in Islam is to always accept invitations as well on gifts. because I'm going to talk about it. One of the things in Islam is to always accept invitations as well on gifts. And I'm going to send you some gifts as well, my friend, yeah. All right.

We need to get you some gifts. All right. So look, I'm going to ask you one more. I got a stock because I'm getting burned out. I want to ask you one more question. OK. And I would like to talk to you again. And I do hope you come and join me in Cambridge

or at Oxford for one of these talks. That would be real good. I'll get the person organizing the trip to extend you an invitation. And so now you described yourself as a traditionalist as opposed to a liberal Muslim. And we were talking a little bit about Mustafa Aqqol. And so why for you is the traditionalism

particularly important? And why should that carry more weight than, let's say, attempts to hypothetically liberalize Islam? What is it doing for you? Look, we have, and this goes back to the pragmatism point, and the postmodernism point, Islam gives you moral anchorage, in and of itself. We believe Islam itself has an

in-built flexibility, but objectively it's an, from a correspondence theory perspective, it's an outside truth which is, which is hard, which is strong, and which can oppose and destroy postmodernism and nihilism. And that's what I think a lot of your followers want to say. So you think that a traditionalist grounding is a more, it's a firm foundation as far as you So you think that a traditionalist grounding is is a more it's a firmer foundation as far as you're concerned. When a liberal decides that they want to fuse Islamic ideas with Islamic ideas with liberal ideas, they're they're almost they're almost fair enough. I can understand that and it's partly why I have some sympathy for conservative for the conservative perspective. Just one point. Okay. Yes. So they're admitting that there's almost

an admission that Islam is not complete and it's not perfect. We believe Islam is complete and it's perfect in its guidance. And we believe we have evidence for that. What whether it's the profits. Yeah. Well, okay. But there's two there's two problems I have with that. I would say, I mean, look, and I'm taking your point seriously, and I understand the utility of firm foundations as a bulwark against chaos. Okay, yes, of course. So, but here's two problems I have with that.

It's not easy to protect yourself if you're a traditionalist against the temptation towards an authoritarian interpretation. And flawed as we all are, you know, when we approach, let's say, sacred texts, we also have to remember that it's us who are reading them and divine though they may be, that doesn't mean we're perfect in our receipt receipt of their message. And so it's hard, what the danger on the on the more traditionalist side is the slide into authoritarian certainty

as opposed to the slide into chaos on the more liberal side. So how do you how do you how do you personally defend yourself against that? Well, first of all, authoritarianism on pragmatism and pragmatism are not inconsistent because in authoritarian leader. I'm not saying I have the answer to that problem. I'm not making that question. That's the first thing. Number two is, I would say, you know, you've said one time, I think, in a lecture that the one of the miracles of Christianity is render onto Caesar first.

You know, render onto Caesar belongs to Caesar and render onto God, what belongs to God? What if Caesar is Hitler? Then you've got authoritarianism over again. So I think that this is- Yes, definitely. Yeah, so yeah.

You didn't answer my question though. It was a technical question. It's a technical question. Look, and maybe I'm wrong in the formulation and you can tell me if you think I am, what I see as a danger on the liberal side is the possibility of a dissent into something like chaos. That's hopelessness and despair. But what I see on the more traditionalist side, let's say the conservative side, is a retreat into a kind of authoritarian certainty. And those are twin temptations that might be, what would you say, specific to given temperaments?

And I was asking you personally, like you're a traditionalist believer, how do you protect yourself, you know, your soul against the temptations of the winning the certainty. All right, I've got you. I got you. Okay. Yeah, no, no, I don't.

In terms of certainty, I strive for it. In fact, we want it. We don't, we don't want to, the problem is not how do you rectify error? Like, you know, you're not perfect, obviously. No, no, no, me personally, of course, I'm not perfect, but we believe we follow a perfect guidance. Right, but you follow it imperfectly. Yes, I understand.

And there's the rub. Right, so that's my point, is that given that you have to follow it imperfectly, given that you're imperfect, how do you defend yourself against inappropriate certainty? Because look, if you're imperfect, it means you think you're right about things you're not right about. That's the definition of it.

It's compounded in your eyes, right? Yes. So there are things that I, you know, in terms of my own personal, you're talking about my own personal face. So they're asking you about it. You're right, okay, I got you. There are certain things which I'll agree,

I will believe in 100%. And there are certain things I will suspend judgment on. So the things which for me constitute the anchor, I believe the moment I take the anchor away, I've plunged into chaos and allarchy and depression. And that's not something I'm willing to do for myself. So the certainty I have is that there's one God worthy of worship. That God's wisdom and guidance is the truth. That whatever God says is true. That the prophets are true. That heaven is true. That hell is true. All that stuff. The things I will suspend judgment on is how to deal with situations. Because that, I do believe, by the way, in a kind of sharia consequentialism.

And I do believe that within the Islamic framework, it's something called the solid-fick, which is basically the principles of jurisprudence that rules are not always going to work in all cases. We do believe that, by the way. So for example, I'm not allowed to drink alcohol, but in certain cases, if it's the last thing that one can do with, if they're not going to die, they're going to die if they don't do it, then you can do it. And this is just one like extreme example. We'll not allow our corner slam,

obviously. This is one of the conjunctions. But there are things we do believe in the consequential and inbuilt flexibility. With that, we have to communicate, we have to discuss, we have to speak to Muslims and non-Muslims alike. So, okay, okay. So I'm sure that. So I'm sure that. I'm not getting at what I want to hear from you specifically. You know that well, all of us struggle with the desire to have what we believe be right at all costs, right? Because it's, well, it is satisfying and it's difficult to be wrong because it means you have to improve.

You have to look at your errors. I'm asking you personally, like when you're dealing with your wife, when you're dealing with your kids, you know, how do you know when, how is it that you can protect yourself against being overweaning? This is a good question. You're going to get me in trouble with this kind of thing right now, you know, it's a little bit. This is a good question. What it is is that, you know, I've been married for like nine years now, you know, and I've had to learn that the hard way, you know, I've had to learn that the hard way that I protect myself by realizing or know my own vulnerability, my own fallibility, my own weakness, the fact that I don't get everything right. The fact that there's another perspective that there's something

outside of myself, which is greater than me. Yeah, well, that's okay. So that's that's something like, you know, because a serious discussion can be had about the relationship between humility and love, right? I mean, I think a certain degree of humility is a precondition for love because otherwise you can't take the perspective of the other person. How can you, if you don't think you're wrong, and I, like, for me, and it's certainly being the case, this was useful in my clinical practice and certainly in my marriage is I'm trying to be as attentive as I can to when

I'm wrong. And that seems to be a reasonable move. Yeah, that comes out. And I think that's really good. That's a good part of your person. I think that's why a lot of people actually love your work and love you as a person, because you come across as extremely authentic and sincere that we don't find that kind of thing in kind of it's not like it's not like it's obvious to me that the Christians have it right and the Jews and the Muslims have it wrong. And so that's certainly not the case at an individual level. No, it's way more complicated than that way more.

And so we're just not going to go for answers. If we go for answers like that, we're going to be at each other's throats. And how about we aren't? How about we're not? How about we make peace? Hey, and so you and I, we had a peaceful conversation. So good for us and hooray. And hopefully we'll have some more. And I would be very much like to see you in in Cambridge, Yorksford. And you can listen to my arguments in a more detailed manner that way. And that might address some of the philosophical concerns that you were raising. So, I'll get an invitation out to you, well, likely today. So, and hopefully we'll be able to talk again.

And thank you very much for agreeing to speak with me. I appreciate it. And for correcting me on my list, apprehensions. Thank you, Dr. Jordan. You're most welcome to come and speak on my podcast as well and as I said a lot of a traditionalist Muslims really look up to you and I think we've actually come quite a long way in being able to build bridges to summarize really from my side. So along as today we have realized that okay Islam is a religion not too dissimilar okay from the other previous dispensations as we would we would see it and that there are things that there's a flesh that joins these religions and also that

Peace is possible. Peace is possible. Well, then let's let's see if we can be good enough people to actually want peace. Let's try and see what we can do. All right, man. Well, see, I hope we see each other in the UK. And I'd like to say hello to all the listeners and watches of this from the Islamic community. And like, let's see what we can do together, man. Yeah. And you're invited to anything, any mosque, I think, in the UK will have you.

Because you've already got the presence there. Just name the mosque, and I'll get you in a meditation. Send me a suggestion. When I'm sending this invitation, send me a suggestion. I don't know if I can do it on this visit, but I'm coming back in, I think March. And I'm certainly willing to do it. That's not only willing, eager.

And I mean that, I mean eager. I would love to be welcomed in that manner. That would be a tremendous privilege as far as I'm concerned. So. No, no, I think you to be welcomed in that manner. That would be a tremendous privilege as far as I'm concerned. So no, I think you will be surprised as to the amount of acceptable that you have in particular the Muslim community. Well, hooray for that. So let's try not to mock it up with foolish words. All right, man, good talking to you. Thanks again. Thanks so much, man. you