TRIGGERnometry - Ex-Muslim: This is a Difficult Conversation | Sarah Haider

Episode Date: May 28, 2023

Sarah Haider is a Pakistani-American writer, public speaker, and political activist. She created the advocacy group Ex-Muslims of North America (EXMNA), which seeks to normalise religious dissent and to help former Muslims leave the religion by linking them to support networks. Sarah’s Substack: https://sarahhaider.substack.com/ Sarah’s Podcast: https://aspecialplace.substack.com/ SPONSORED BY: BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at https://betterhelp.com/trigger/ - get 10% off your first month, and get on your way to being your best self. SPONSORED BY: ExpressVPN. Go to https://www.expressvpn.com/trigger/ and get an extra 3 months free on a one-year package! Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ YouTube:  @xentricapc  Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media: https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I started to give talks and panels about the problems that I saw in the faith. Then there was a sense of, wait, wait, let's think about whether this is the right time to talk about these issues. I've started to reevaluate that and consider that maybe I was not fully understanding the fundamental values and principles of the modern left. And it is also the case that Islam treats innovation within the faith differently than other religions. I think it is more intolerant.

One of those ways in which I think Islam is different, unique in the main religions of the world, is that it is very political. The higher the percentage of Muslims in your locality, the more that this deep, you know, this blasphemy prohibition becomes actual de facto law. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry on the road from the USA. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissen. And this is a show for you, if you want honest conversations, with fascinating people.

Our terrific guest today is a writer and the co-founder of ex-Muslims for North America. Sarah Hayd, welcome to Trigonometry. Thanks for having me here, guys. It's great to have you. It's a pleasure to speak with you. I mentioned to you before that one of the reasons we so wanted to talk to is you wrote a piece after the Salman Rushdie attempted murder. that was so powerful and articulated things that I'd never really heard said in that way,

which we're going to talk about. Before we get into that, though, tell our audience who may not be familiar with who you are. Who are you? What's been your journey through life? How do you find yourself sitting here talking to us? Well, I was born in Pakistan, but I was raised primarily in the United States.

My parents came to America when I was about eight years old. So that process of becoming an immigrant and acclimating to a new country, learning language, all of that, like that's a big part of my personal history, my whole self-narrative. And, you know, I was raised in a Muslim family. And so that was, at first, a sense of, like, you know,

self-identity in this new place. It gave me kind of a grounding of who I was in this new place. And then over time, I so started to think about it. religion started to make less and less sense. And so when I was about, I want to say, 15 years old, I left the faith. I left Islam.

And it caused many problems in my family, in my personal life. And for many years, I felt very alone with this and very burdened by this. I knew many people who had left religion who were atheists from Christian backgrounds, from, you know, many Jews who were actually, they were practicing, they'd call themselves practicing Jews, but not actually believe in a God, which I thought was really interesting. But I had never known anyone like me. And for those who might not be aware, and I'm sure that many of the people in your audience do know,

but there's a very extreme apostasy stigma in Islam. And really just a huge stigma against dissent, religious dissent in general. It's not really something that's not exactly a tolerant religion when it comes to freedom of speech, freedom of thought, the freedom to leave a faith. So this was, you know, it was a very isolating experience for me to leave the faith. And then one day when I would, after I had, you know, graduated college and everything, I found another ex-Muslim. We were, you know, he was very fascinated with the idea of maybe starting something. And so we started an organization called Ex-Muslims of North America that exists to advocate for the rights of ex-Muslims, for the right to life in some parts of the world where apostasy is a crime punishable by death, but also just the social stigma and ostracism and sometimes pretty severe abuse that ex-Muslims go through. So it's really just an organization founded on secular principles, but also just to normalize religious.

dissent. That's sort of what we're orienting ourselves around and specifically focusing on Islam and the problems within the Muslim community. So that's how I spent a long time. And in my role as a co-founder of this new organization, an activist organization, I started to give talks and panels about the problems that I saw in the faith, mostly within an audience that was very friendly to me, other atheists, humanists, secular, free-freet thinkers, that sort of thing. And yet, even in that audience, I felt as if I was saying something nobody wanted to really hear. Really?

Yeah, which is to say that they were on my page when it came to religion is bad, but when I started to talk about specifically what's going on with Islam, or why in some cases Islam might be worse, you know, or there might be specific challenges to this faith. Then there was a sense of, wait, wait, let's think about whether this is the right time to talk about these issues. Muslims are going through, you know, bigotry and, you know, they're not accepted in the West. We need to think about whether this is the right, you know, time and place to be talking about these things. were in such a way. So I felt a very powerful pressure even within a community that I should have been perfectly welcomed in to not really target my criticism so directly against the religious

faith itself, to really start focus things on, focus on extremists who are extreme and they should be more like moderate Muslims who are peaceful and happy. And this sort of, what I call through language, happy liberal language that focuses on everybody. Most people are very good and kind and wonderful and there's some extremists who are just messing it all up. And that's true, but we need to talk about what ideology really means because you can be a very good person and if you have an ideology that tells you this is the good thing to do, you will do that thing.

And so we need to just be thinking about what religions and ideologies are telling people are good and right things to do because then these good and compassionate and lovely people start to do some things that are probably not so great. So, you know, I felt unwelcome within this community and very unwelcome, actually, in the broader progressive space. And that was very shocking and alarming to me. I think a lot of the people who end up in the heterodox space one way or another had this awakening this moment of like, wait, this is not how it's supposed to be. You're supposed to be agreeing with me.

You're supposed to be on my side. I'm bringing up issues that you care about, equality between men and women, you know, no persecution of religious minorities. You agree with all this stuff. Science, reason, all this, that you agree with it. You should be on my side. And then to find that you are actually not very welcome.

And in fact, seen as suspicious, as someone who is going to bring in some toxic attitudes. And it was heartbreaking, you know, at first. Really? Because I was a good little progressive liberal. But these were values and meant a lot to me. And they were a big part of why I left religion and, you know, how I saw myself as a person.

and to see myself being rejected, even though in principle I shouldn't have been. It was like being kicked out again because I left my community of origin, my religious community, and then again to feel that way on this political tribe that I felt very close to. I have a few questions, but let's start with one.

You mentioned that in that sort of liberal space or the atheist space or whatever it was, people would say that you shouldn't talk about Islam specifically because Muslims are under a lot of pressure and so on. Do you think that is the real reason? Or do you think there's something underneath all of that? Because I often feel, I don't know if it's the same in America, but in the UK where we live,

quite often people, they will use that excuse, but what they're actually thinking is this is a dangerous thing to talk about. Yeah, definitely. Well, I think there's multiple, motivations that are, you know, running in the background, which is why the whole thing is so confusing. You know, why you're not supposed to be behaving this way, so why are you behaving this way? I think the fear element is certainly real, and I think it is more important than some of the other ideological factors, even, just the sense of, like, I don't want to get in trouble.

I don't want to put my kids in danger. I don't want to put my coworkers in danger by publishing this thing or saying this thing. You know, I found when I would go to give talks that if I was on a panel or something like that, the other speakers would be very nervous to sort of be around me and to share a space with me. And there were times where people,

I know that they felt very, insecure just in being in the same presence as someone like me. And so they would ask for lots and lots of security, even more security than perhaps I would have asked for. So multiple times I found myself in the position of feeling as if, you know, I was a problem because I was introducing this level of, you know, risk that everybody else had now to take on to. And I think that's always running in the background.

And we don't want to feel like fearful people. We don't want to feel like the kind of person that is run by, you know, cowardly motivations. So then we have to make up something else to justify why we're behaving in a cowardly way. And I think a lot of the sort of woke rhetoric serves that function. But to fully answer your question, I think it's also the case that I think I misunderstood what the principles of the progressive left might be. be. Tell us about that. Yeah, so I, I mean, there's all this conversation about like, what is woke?

What does this mean? And people struggle to- Do you know what, sorry to interrupt you in the middle of answering a question, you know what's funny is Francis and I, when we started trigonometry, we talked about workness a lot because it was affecting our industry of comedy and then the more we looked at society, the more we saw it was having an impact. I've never said a word to you about workness. We didn't talk about it before we started.

We were interested in talking to you about your concerns about it. Islam and so on, and yet wokeness comes up straight away. Why is that? Well, I think it is part of the, maybe it's not new at all, but I think that there is a difference between what I saw as progressive ideology, liberal ideology. I don't know if that makes sense from a UK perspective, liberals and leftists and progressives are a little different,

but I have always called myself a liberal, And I meant as someone on the left who believes in freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of association and equality and all this stuff. To your right wing. Well, you know, it's interesting. So we keep running against, you know, many people in the heterodox space, they just, well, you're supposed to, everyone was supposed to behave this way. And yet they react so strongly to something I said that they should not have. And so you have this conversation of the left has lost its principles. lost its way. And I think I made a lot of the same noises for a long time. And I think that I've

started to reevaluate that and consider that maybe I was not fully understanding the fundamental values and principles of the modern lefts. In that, I don't think the governing principles are enlightenment values. And I don't know if they have been that way for a long time. I think that there, you know, I think that the political left was changed quite a bit with its encounter with, you know, socialism and socialist thinking. And if I had to, if I had to put into words what I think drives a modern left now or what its philosophy might be, I think I would, I think I would call it a kind of New Age, like, therapeutic radical egalitarianism. So this idea that we are all equal, which is, you know, and we should be equal,

economically equal, which would be the socialist thing. But the emphasis here is not so much on economics, although they still care about that, but on social equality, on equal moral affirmation and dignity. You know, there's quite a bit of therapeutic language wrapped up in all of this. this sense of I have a self and myself

and my self deserves to be validated, my choices deserve to be validated, they deserve to be affirmed. And it focuses quite a bit on this, there's a B, I think it focuses so much on the social and the personal because this orientation has shifted. And if you are a good liberal now,

you're white and wealthy or whatever you're doing well. You have a nice job somewhere and you feel compelled to show the world that you're a good person. Well, what are you going to do now? In this new modern left, you might focus on pushing up others, you know, getting them to where you are. And I think that that's why we see so much of this signaling from various power-werews. people, you know, literally sometimes kneeling at the feet of sacred people, marginalized people, lifting them up and in that act also is lifting themselves up and, you know, showing how morally superior they are to, in fact, work towards this social egalitarianism.

It's interesting that you say that because with this progressive culture, you're a woman of color. You should have been embraced and celebrated and lifted up. I should have been, right? I mean, there's so much of this that doesn't make sense. So many people who, you know, talk about how, you know, wokeness or whatever's going on impacts various communities are people of color, people of various sexual orientations. And it doesn't seem to matter. So I think there is a way in which you can cancel out your demographic affiliations, if you show yourself as being someone who's not committed to that project of radical egalitarianism.

So let's move on to Islam, and you've been very critical of Islam. What are your main criticisms of it as a religion and the ideology in particular? Yeah, I mean, I have many criticisms of it. So I'm an atheist, so I have the general, you know, atheist stance on, you know, logical contradictions and all of that when it comes to belief in general and maybe revelation and the problem of evil and all of that. I'm very motivated by those

arguments or had been when I left the religion. But then, you know, lots of things are wrong. And, you know, we believe lots of wrong things all the time. Some things are wrong and not so quite harmful because they're not really affecting a lot of people. Like maybe I believe in like astrology and the way that it impacts me is that I wear my you know like sagittarius whatever Virgo you know necklace and you know maybe I have beads of various rocks. What do they, I don't know what they mean or but believe it but people tend to have things like that and I think it gives me some kind of magical power. That's a wrong belief. That's a wrong belief that doesn't really impact our world in a way that I would consider very serious. So,

From the perspective of prioritizing what we choose to address as a society, maybe I think less about astrology girls on Twitter and more about what conservative Muslims are saying about what should be true in this world, what justice looks like, what eventually should be the fate of the world. And they see themselves as part of a political project to see this vision carried out. And I think those ideas matter.

And they affect us in the real world. And so we should be talking about it. You know, you guys are from a place which has a higher percentage of Muslims. Americans sometimes struggle with it because we know about the fringes. We know about terrorism. But the Muslim community here is far more liberal, far more well, like... Well, integrated. integrated.

And I think some of that is just due to the way that America brings in immigrants and how it chooses to, one, sort the people, so the filter is different, but also when you get here, you have to survive in different modes in America. And so I think that produces a kind of a different population. We see that on our Muslims. They're not as extreme. But we still, we do have religious pockets. In the UK, you guys see how, well, you have a high percentage of Muslims. a lot of them are not well integrated, and you see that playing out in schools, in communities.

And I think that that's, we have to be able to talk about this, honestly. And we have to be able to talk about what's motivating the belief, not just the fact that it's bad that Muslims are treating, unwelcome to gay people or whatever in a specific locale. That is bad, but what's motivating it? Why do they believe that this is the right thing to do? not bad people, like what we said, they're not bad people. They think that what they're doing is right.

So we have to be able to meet them at that intellectual level and tell them, you know, convince them, persuade them why it isn't right. We've talked about the intolerance of gay people and you've spoken a lot about Islam's relationship with women and how women are treated differently under Islam. For people like myself who may not be aware of it or understand it, can you just break it down for us. What does that actually mean? Well, so to start with the women's element, so Islam is a sexed religion. Many of the older religions are. They have this role they see is the right role of man and the right role of women.

And they are traditional roles. What would you expect would be the role of men and what you would expect to be the role of women. And because it is a religious belief and it is not really something you can negotiate, it is really hard to move past what the religion might prescribe. And as a consequence, you see in the Muslim, throughout the Muslim world, you see women's rights are, you know, far, some of the worst countries in the world for women are Muslim majority countries.

Like, let me put it that way. So this is a big problem. And it is also the case that Islam treats innovation within the faith differently than other religions. I think it is more intolerant. intolerant because of specific verses and scriptures and we won't get into all of that, but I think it is less accepting of evolution in belief.

And I think you see the consequences of that because Muslims are socially rigid. When they are socially conservative, they are rigid in their beliefs, and it's very hard to get them to budge. And I think that is a consequence also of the belief itself. There are elements of, I guess, a different. between Islam and Christianity that feel foreign to Christians. So I have to sort of explain and breaking down a little bit, but one of those ways in which I think Islam is different,

unique in the main religions of the world, is that it is very political. It is innately political. You can't really separate this. Muhammad was a politician, a statesman, as well as a religious leader. You know, that's within the accepted scriptures and texts. And that's why you see such a thing, like, Islamic states, you know, and you see a drive and a push towards a more unified approach

to religion and governance and politics. So this makes the conversation around democracy, around human rights, around just secularism, the separation of mosque and state in this case, to be very tricky, to be very difficult. And it is harder to convince Muslim majority populations to shift in that direction. And so we see different challenges in Muslim majority of countries when it comes to advancing democracy, advancing secularism in particular. So I think that those things matter. The differences in the faith matter. And in some ways it is, of course, because the faith is different, in some ways it might be better suited for some challenges of the modern world.

I think some Muslims would say that. and they might have a point in a place or two. And then in some ways it is definitely not meeting those challenges. I think the difficulty with us in the West is how do we maintain tolerance, religious tolerance, our ideals of religious tolerance, and also keep in mind that we should be allowed to criticize ideas. We should be allowed to make people feel uncomfortable. You know, and this rubs the modern, you know, liberal left in a very wrong way.

They feel as if, you know, this is a very self-esteem-oriented ideology now. And to say that, well, I'm going to criticize Islam. I'm going to target its ideology directly. I'm going to bring up verses, and I'm going to challenge Muslims around me to, you know, explain or move in their religious beliefs or to abandon them as I did, this strikes the modern liberal as bigotry, you know, because you're making them feel unwelcome. You're making them feel lesser than. You're making them feel a challenge in this environment, and that's discrimination, that's, you know, that's bad, it's not nice. And it makes this work very challenging, because ultimately,

you have to be able to discuss the reality of it. You have to be able to discuss the ideological tenets directly. And of course, this will make people feel bad, of course. But that's the work of bringing in a group of people from a very different part of the world with very different ideals and integrating them into our society and making them equal in our society, equal citizens, with the same stake as everybody else.

Who said that was going to be? a wonderful process that was going to make everyone feel great. Because the thing that I've always found very interesting is you have feminists who, obviously that's what they do. They talk and write about women's rights and how women are being discriminated against and they talk about how women are being discriminated in the West. And they pick these tiny little issues that don't make a difference either way. And they avoid the topic of Islam when you look at girls. So I've taught in schools as a, when I'm when I was a teacher, which were majority of Muslim schools,

and you're seeing six-year-old girls wearing a hijab, and you think, why do they need to do this? Why is this? But nobody wants to talk about this publicly and say, I don't agree with this, and this is wrong. Yeah. It's depressing, because there are consequences to this lack of action. Where I think too many countries in Europe are, and when it comes to this kind of negotiation,

that you should, ideally, it should be a negotiation between the incoming immigrants and the native populations is not a negotiation at all. It's like a hostage situation. It's a situation which one side has all the moral and even political weight behind it and the other side feels as if they cannot challenge it lest they be decried by others around them as right wing. And this fear of being right wing is so much greater than I think what the sense of unease that everybody feels about seeing a lot of conservative ideals in practice around them.

Yeah. Well, Sarah, this brings us on to what you said in the wake of the Salman Rusty thing, because while I think you're right that a lot of people fear being smeared or called, you know, Islamophobic or racist or whatever for talking about some of these issues. I also think it's very clear now that there's good reason to be fearful, in Europe at least, if you speak up about some of these issues or if you criticize the faith as you do, that you're likely to find yourself in danger. And the point that you made in your brilliant article was that we in the West have become

confused about the source of that violence and where it comes from. because we think, well, these people are so offended by something that's been said that they are outraged and that's why they're reacting this way, but it's not true. Yeah, yeah. We tend to look at things from this psychological perspective. We're hurting people's self-esteem, we're offending them, we're evoking emotions in them that are unpleasant and thus they are reacting to our provocation.

And I find that it is completely missing the point when it comes to what's going on with at least the more radical fringes of Islam, certainly, and I think, in fact, much of it, much of the problems that we're seeing. But in the radical fringes, they don't feel offended. And even if they do, that's not what's motivating them. That's not why they're moving forward.

That's not why they're going to stab you tomorrow. because they're so offended and they can't control themselves and they're, you know, that's even a racist idea on some level that you are so incapable of controlling your emotions

that you can't help but, you know, have it just burst out of you in a fit of violence and rage. It's a condescension as well as just a point-blank misunderstanding.

So what is the truth? What is it that motivates them? What's motivating them is that they understand their faith as calling on them to defend it when it is attacked. So when somebody is taking part in an action that is prohibited by Islam, extremely prohibited by Islam in the case of drawing Muhammad, then they must, as dutiful Muslims, they must act and defend this faith, act in the way that God would want them to act. So it's less of a personal thing and more of this cosmic thing of defending this idea. So it's essentially enforcing a blasphemy law on the West.

On everyone. On everyone. On everyone. It is a de facto blasphemy law that the entire world is in one form or another going through. And unfortunately, I mean this is one of the trickier elements of it that you have to, be able to just articulate, even though it's so difficult to articulate, that the higher the percentage of Muslims in your locality, the more that this blasphemy prohibition becomes actual de facto law, you know, becomes something that you have to fear when you start talking

about this religion. And so I think in America, I have less to fear than I do in many other parts of the world. I think I've less to fear here than I do in some parts of Europe. Many parts of Europe, unfortunately. And this is also a very, it's a, I even feel bad saying it, because you're not supposed to talk about these things. But realistically, of course, if there's more people around you to hear what you're saying, to then interpret their belief in this very literal way, you're more likely to be in danger. And what about, you've meant, you've mentioned the distinction between the good Muslims and the extremists, let's say. And we've had many people on the show, you know, former Al-Qaeda operative, Amund Dean, for

example, and others who've studied this issue a lot, who kind of explained to us that really the battle isn't between the West and Islam, it's between Islamists and everybody else. And that's why, you know, the stat that people often say is, well, the biggest victims of terrorism, Islamic terrorism are Muslims. So isn't it the case that the problem is less about, you know, the however many billion Muslims around the world, most of whom aren't doing anything like this? And it's really about those extremists who are taking a particular interpretation. Isn't that the case?

I don't think so. Why not? I mean, I hardly ever talk. I mean, we've talked about it just now. And in my piece with someone Rushdie, I talked about it. But in my work, on the whole, I hardly ever talk about terrorism or extremism, those radical fringes of it. I think that they are very helpful in radicals in general. They're helpful in getting you to understand where a logic might lead.

But that logic is still there, even if it is not present in its very literal extreme form, it is always there and it's always still affecting you. It's still affecting the society in which this logic is prevalent. And, you know, so it's tough because you don't want to paint the average Muslim who really isn't doing anything, just wants to go about their day and, you know, their lives might not be putting their children in, you know, Burka. So my parents were not extremists. They were quite liberal for Muslims. I was not forced to do or wear a burqa. I was not, you know, I was enforced into a marriage or anything.

I did have to dress conservatively what would be considered very conservatively here. I was expected to eventually have an arranged marriage, not today, not to participate in certain social habits, like, you know, partying or drinking or anything. Obviously, that was prohibited. But my parents didn't, you know, hurt me or harm me or force me into, you know, more extremist elements of the practice. So is it fair to then call these good people who are just their immigrants are working hard every day, trying to give their children a good life? Is it fair to say, to demonize them in any way, to say that there's something deeply wrong with their cherished, most cherished beliefs? I get it.

I get why this is hard to say, why this is hard to talk about. But it's simply not true that you can cleave off extremists from what gives them strength, right? Because extremists actually, you know, they, in the case of religious extremists, they're not operating in a total vacuum. They're not, you know, kidnapped somewhere and brainwashed

and now they're coming out. They have grown up their whole lives with a certain kind of beliefs. And those beliefs are accepted largely within their community, just not in their extreme form, but the internal logic of it is accepted.

So yes, you give your life to God. You restrict yourself from these and these behaviors. What the society around you are filled with disbelievers and people who are going to hell and they're burning in hell. I mean, there's just these general ways of looking at the world that is, in fact, a view shared by everyone, you know, with the exception of maybe Muslims who are so extreme that other Muslims would not call them Muslims, like extremely religious, extremely liberal, I mean. I don't think it doesn't make sense to separate it. Well, wouldn't this be the case with almost any belief? Like, for example, I believe by virtue of de facto observation that there is a difference between men and women. Yeah.

Right? It doesn't mean I believe that women should be maltreated because of it. Yeah. But there are some people who do. Yeah. So can I not be cleaved off from them? Can I not be cleaved off from the people who think men and women are different, therefore women shouldn't vote? I think you can and you can't, right? Like, I mean, there's...

I quite like to be pleased also. Sure, right, sure, but let's say you have... Let's talk about that specific example. So even I would not disagree with you there. I, too, believe that there are, you know, differences between men and women. And yet, I hold that there are certain, you know, legal inequalities that women ought to have. And that is Justin Gooden Wright. So am I, by giving them even a little bit of, you know,

By agreeing with them even on that perspective, am I just agreeing to it all? I don't, I understand what you're saying when you say that there is a difference, and I agree that there is a difference, but does it make sense to pull it apart entirely and say that there is no reason to investigate this? So when it comes to, let's say, women and men, what would you say that the extremists might do with your belief that women and men are different? They might say women shouldn't vote. They might say women shouldn't vote. Right.

So then you have to be able to logically make the case why your slippery slope is in fact not a slippery slope. Why that there's either it's colliding with another slope that matters to you, another set of values that is also important. And there's a good reason why we shouldn't go down that slippery slope. you should be able to articulate it. And I'm sure you can, actually. I'm sure you can explain to that person why suffrage of women is important, even though it is true that men and women are different. So we have to be able to acknowledge that you share that belief and you have to be able to explain

why that logic doesn't actually flow entirely to where they are. Or maybe there's another logic that's more important. There's another value, another principle that clashes with that. and we should listen to where that's taking us as well. But you can't say, no, I'm just, I'm so different. I don't want what they want. And yes, I share this belief, but I don't want what they want. And so don't put me in the same camp. And I shouldn't be able to, I shouldn't be discussing this issue in depth

and explaining and articulating my position as well. I guess what I'm saying is this. If there are, let's say, 1.4 billion people around the world who believe that men and women are different. And 99% of them, despite recognizing that as a fact, don't believe that women should be discriminated as a result. And 1% do.

Is it fair to make that connection, or should we say there are some extremists who also happen to believe these things? I'm not saying it's a fair argument. I'm just curious to... I don't even think it's a good argument, you know? Thank you. It doesn't make...

It's just not... It doesn't move our discourse in a direction that is actually productive. Because ultimately you have to be able to explain to the extremists and persuade them to your side, which means, okay, we agree on this. But here's why you're wrong. Yes. And then move them to where you are. So if observably, most Muslims are peaceful and tolerant to some extent

and are able to live in Western society. Why can we not target our concerns specifically at those extremes? Why does it have to be about the faith itself? I think because there are some beliefs that fundamentally should be rejected. Like what? There are some beliefs. So I'm a secularist. I believe deeply that it is good and right and just.

And if you have the separation of church and state, in a democracy that this is going to lead to a lot of good outcomes for that democracy. It's going to make the pursuit of justice and truth easier. It's going to lead to a kind of civil society that is nice and energetic and heterodox. And so this is an important central tenet of my belief. If you disagree with that, even a little bit, we have a problem. So if you are a moderate anti-secularist versus an extreme anti-secularist, To me, you're problematic because the problem is that you think that there shouldn't be a separation.

You think there's just a little separation or a lot separation? Yes, there's a difference there. But people like your parents, they're not trying to create a caliphate in the United States. They're not trying to create caliphates, but they do believe in those values, and it is still important to try and move those people in a direction that would be healthier. Because ultimately, communities are, you know, they're not, it's not tiny little hotspots. of extremists who don't talk to each other, everyone talks to everyone. If you move a certain group along, the liberals along to, you know, closer to where we would

want them to be, you move everybody else along with them, like, to some degree. So I think it is always worth challenging. So, but I think, Sarah, what I'm trying to get to is I'm trying to understand what parts of that particular faith are so problematic and fundamentally incompatible with the West. Would you be able to specify a few things? So the people who are listening, and myself included, can understand this. Yeah, I mean, secularism, we just talked about that a little bit. So there's no...

So Islam is a political ideology as well? It makes no... It's nonsensical in Islam to say that religion should be entirely separate from the state. Okay. As it is traditionally understood. And that is why there's so many Muslim majority countries that struggle with this. and they have many laws that, you know, or like, say, Bangladesh, for example, like they are secularists in many ways.

They are supposed to be secularist, and yet they have elements of the law in which they believe, you know, religious authorities can have, like, some say, like family-oriented, domestic sort of things. So you sort of see this, you know, whittling away at the edges of extreme of secularism, even in fairly, you know, liberal Muslim democracies. And in the moderate Muslim world, well, it's a lot more, it's a... Religion pushes in into all aspects of life. And the most extreme country, Saudi Arabia, that are list explicitly, we are a theocratic

state, there is no freedom of thought, there is no freedom of belief because there are always running against what may or may not be deemed in blasphemy. In Pakistan, for example, I have conversations with scientists, people who are professors, you know, talking about geology, you know, something that is very physical and real about the world. And they fear their students to the extent that what they teach might go against the Islam, might go against religious, you know, understanding of the universe. They fear that if they talk about this, if they teach these kinds of lessons to their students,

they might be accused to bless me. And so you see these societies that are, you know, pulled back, like held back away from what we call, you know, the modern world because their ability to think openly and freely is just curtailed by religion. at every level, you know, even in very abstract levels, of course, artists, yes, human rights activists, women, these are the very explicit examples, but also scientists who are trying to learn about the natural world. But if you have a theocratic state, they believe that that is not true.

And that what you are teaching about the natural world is, in fact, blasphemy, and then you're under threat. So there's a societal-wide effect of the lack of secularism. and then you get to a society that is just incapable of finding truth, right? So it's incapable of scientific inquiry. The Muslim world is one of the worst producers. It is now, but there was a time when it was at the very forefront of science. The Golden Age. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, a lot of the medical and other things that were developed in that time, we're still used to this day, an algebra and all these things, right? Yeah. So I won't go too deep into my... theories about the golden age of Islam. But let's leave it at this. I think much of what happened then, the great achievements of the Muslim world,

were allowed, you know, permitted because the people in power, the Caliph's in power at the time, were fairly liberal. So this is a kind of a benefit of an authoritarian state, that if you have the man at the top, if he happens to be fairly liberal

and encourages movement in scientific arena or whatever and is tolerant to this, then you might see progress. But if he isn't, then you don't. And that's my theory for why you saw something, you saw sort of the spurt, you know, a lot of interesting thinking and innovation. I think they were protected by the state at that time.

But of course, the next guy came along and said, I don't believe this and I don't believe you should be allowed to have these freedoms and they strip those freedoms away from them. This is why it's important that those freedoms are baked in. They are unmovable in the way that they are in the United States. And what was it like being a young girl and a young woman in the Muslim faith? Did you feel that there were certain things that were available to men that weren't available to you? Were you seen in a different way? I mean, it's a sexed religion.

It's a religion that views the appropriate place for women and the appropriate place for men to be very different based on what God says will get you into heaven. You know, you behave a certain way as a woman, and you have these duties, womanly duties, and then you have these duties as a man. Now, having said all that, you know, these were, these offended me a lot when I was a young woman

who wanted her freedom. and wanted to get away from all these restrictions around her. I felt that I was a person who had a lot of potential, and I felt like this potential was being restricted by these various restrictions around me. But having said that, I did, when I was a believer, I thought it was right. I thought it was, God knows more than you.

So who am I to question? You know, who am I to say that, you know, actually I should be allowed to leave as far as I want and dress how I want? Who am I to say that? I don't know that. I don't have his brilliance. I'm not the creator. I'm not omniscient. And I've followed logically that my own moral intuitions or the, you know, the moral beliefs of the society around me could not be true.

simply because there is a God and he has a message and he tells you what that message is so you should follow so I followed with the logic of that up until I left religion and that's when it started to bother me that's when it chafed

but it actually didn't chafe before then because I'm a very I'm not too dissimilar I think from the kinds of people who end up becoming jihadis from the perspective of let's follow this logic as far as it'll take us that's comforting

But Sarah, what was a moment for you where you thought, I don't, there's something here I can't get on board with? When was the moments that you started to have doubt? Was there a particular incident? Hmm. Well, I had atheists who were my friends. I know that they instigated some of the more critical examinations that I had faith. I was always a questioning person, so I always questioned the edges of it.

but the edges of it are they're more flexible in the sense that it could be that there's some human interpretation that went wrong along the way or my teacher is wrong specifically in what he's teaching me I was always questioning but I never questioned the fundamental

idea that there may not be a god and literally didn't never conceived of such a thing until I met some atheists and these were young men who had just left religion themselves. So they were in their anti-theist phase, kind of like the asshole, Reddit atheist kind of phase.

And so they thought it was very important to expose me to the criticisms they had of Islam. I remember once I got, one of my friends gave me a list of verses from the Quran. And he said, explain these, you know, like explain these verses. He made the effort of like printing something out. And then I remember thinking it will be explained in context, which is sort of the standard religious initial response anyway. Because I did believe it would be explained in context.

Of course it would be. My religion was right and it was true. And it was a right understanding of the world. And then I went and read about the context. And the context made it worse. So that caused me to, you know, really start to look into faith in a more critical manner. And it was interesting because I always had a critical appraisal of Christianity.

Here's why we cannot, you know, trust that the Gospels are true because they've been translated, whatever, all this stuff. And here are all these criticisms I have about the historicity of Jesus. And there was a moment where suddenly my brain said, okay, let's just apply all of these criticisms. to Islam and it just all fell down like a house of cards. And so what then was the next step? Because a lot of people will take your journey and then they go, well, I no longer want to practice a faith, I want to leave the faith.

I know people who have left Islam and they get on with their own lives and they're fine. What made you want to become an activist and talk about a subject like this one, which could put you in very real physical danger? I think there's something wrong with me. Psychologically, you know, there's like a, there's a something that should be plugged in that isn't or something's missing, something's different. But I've always been kind of a proselytizer in one form or another. You know, when I was Muslim, I wanted to save my Christian friends. So I shared with them, you know, the logic of Islam and why the Trinity made the Trinity, no sense and you know and we would have all these like conversations and this is like we're 12 and we're

running a mile in gym class and we're having these like discussions about deep theological discussions of course nobody knew what they were talking about i was proselytizing then and then when i left when i left the faith it just it was of course logical for me to continue on um proselytizing to some degree but i was fine myself my family was tolerant enough that i was able to go to college, I was able to move away. I was slowly freeing myself from the kinds of restrictions that I grew up with, distancing myself from some parts of the family, of course, who were not happy and kind of living a double life in a way a lot of ex-Muslims live. But I was finding, in my own personal space, I was finding some peace, and I was finding that I could

live the way I wanted to live. It was when we started to, you know, it was, it was when we started to, you know, form what were the beginnings of the organization. Initially, just social meetups of ex-Muslims. And this was a very scary thing, especially to do in that time. Pulling in random people on the internet, you don't know them. They could be here to kill you, you know. And you had to sort of trust that they were, you know, have screenings. You call them, talk to them, trying to get, you know, gauge on who they are,

meet in a very public place. It was a very risky thing to do. we started to have these like social social events and I would have people driving over from like six hours away one way to have a two hour happy hour

and then you know I had a hotel for the night they would stay the night and then drive back it was so much effort for what was just like a brief you know brief interaction and I started to recognize as I talked to them that this was such an important

you know, reprieve from the lives that they were forced to live. And I was, you know, to use a word that I otherwise don't like, I was very privileged in my experience. And with that privilege, like, comes a certain amount, I think it's, there comes a responsibility to do something about it and make the world, at least as good for them as it was for me, in comparison, right? And so that made me think that we need to do something and address the problem at its root insofar as we could or at least loosen things a little bit to give people enough reprieve to live their lives. And Sarah, what advice would you give someone

who was in a similar situation that you are or perhaps in a more conservative family and they want to leave the faith? What should they do? How should they go about doing it? I mean, I think it depends on their family, but I would say that if they're a young person, they need to establish financial independence, you know, first and foremost. They need to have that in the bag.

They need to be making their own money. They need to be able to live their own lives away from the family control. If a family has that over them, then they have everything. And they can force you to do what you want. So that's very important for people who have immigration and their immigration statuses based on their parents, wait until you have citizenship, wait until you have permanent residency, you don't rely on that anymore. And then, you know, ask questions. I think asking questions helps a lot.

The way that I went about it with my parents was not, I didn't tell them all at once. I shared my questions as I had them, and they themselves struggled with answering the questions. And so by the end of the journey, they sort of understood, you know, okay, okay, you know, because I understood the intellectual difficulties that I was having and there were less worried that I was just leaving religion because I wanted to party and drink and strip or whatever it is that the moms are afraid that their daughters are going to do. Sarah, can we, do we have one more go at the whole extremist versus?

I'm just trying to work it out because here's, I'll tell you from a personal background, right? I grew up in the former Soviet Union and for a part of my life I lived in Uzbekistan which is a Muslim country How long? I was there for four years My father was born there and lived there most of his life And neither him or I are Muslims

But the way that the faith has practiced there Is completely different to the way that it might be practiced against Not against, The way it might be practiced in Britain where we live now By Muslims who are far more conservative I get the sense about the way that they apply it. So I'm just trying to disentangle it because for me,

it's, I cringe when people say Islam is a religion of peace immediately after a terrorist attack. I also cringe when people imply that that means Islam is a religion of violence. Because I just think there's such a massive gap between those two extreme positions in the middle where most Muslims will actually fit. Right.

Right. Yeah. So, but what I'm hearing from what you were talking about is that Islam is kind of the problem. The faith itself is the problem. Aspects of the faith are definitely the problem, yes. And they have to be loosened in one way or the other to be able to change. So let's go back to your example with Uzbekistan, Soviet country.

Yeah. Soviet countries, if you look at like social views of Muslims, you know, there's like various polls, like pew polls and galpoles or whatever, random polls about social views that Muslims might have. Women, how much they should be covered, homosexuality, how should we punish, that kind of thing. And they find consistently that the Soviet, the former Soviet bloc, which is now, you know, is far more liberal in their outlook. Right.

And this makes sense. Yeah, it's not American liberal, but it's more liberal. But it's quite consistent with non-Muslim countries in the former Soviet Union. So they kind of had similar values. So their attitudes to homosexuality are not that different to people in Armenia, which is a Christian country. But still very different to America or Britain. Right, right. So one way to think about it might be if you have competing, I don't know,

ideologies, one can soften the blow of the other. If they, if and when they conflict. That happens to, you know, Muslims who are very westernized, that might happen. Like if you've raised in the West, you've lived around liberals all your life, your parents are liberals too, you have this sort of, bless you. You have this secular morality that you have absorbed by osmosis, like through your skin. and you believe it to be true. And then you have this religious ideology as well

that's sort of saying some different things. So then you have to find ways for that to for the conflict to resolve in one way or the other or you go in one direction or the other. So often you'll hear stories of people who are extremists that were provoked into looking deeper into their religion. And they went in,

They started reading the text and they become, you know, jihadis. Or they become ex-Muslims, you know, or they leave. They have that sense of like, okay, this can't be resolved, in fact. The average person can actually live with a good deal of cognitive dissonance. Yes. You know, I think we should. We know this. So I think that, in my opinion, you know, it is really important to be able to introduce competing values

and advocate for them strongly and convince them about those values, about the value of those values, like the benefit of approaching those values, why they might be good. Inherently, that process introduces a level of doubt in your faith. I like to think about it in the sense of, I have Catholic friends who are fairly religious,

and they might say strange things but were to me strange when I first heard of they might say things like I'm a Catholic but I think gay marriage is

fine or I think some abortion should be okay in some contexts you hear that thing you hear it with Christians quite often this I'm a Christian

but yeah what that but implies is that I believe in my faith, I think it is important and I think it is probably true. But it is possible in my mind that it is not 100% the truth or that it is possible in my mind that you can reach the truth some other way, that you can reach morality in some other way.

It implies a level of doubt in your own belief, just a little. It doesn't have to be a lot, just a little, enough to make room for something else to come in and make a claim. You know, just a kernel of doubt is all you need. If you don't have any doubt, you're an extremist, you're never going to say, I'm a Christian, but, you're never going to utter those words. They make no sense. Why would but what? You know, there is a right way to behave. There's a right value system.

There's a correct way to be. No buts. I think what the Muslim world needs is just that kernel of doubt. The Soviet bloc has that kernel of doubt, partially because they stamped it into them. But I think insofar as we can introduce it, that makes a massive difference in the behavior of individuals. Just looking at it from just extremists alone, you have to be convinced that you have to be convinced that your way of life is 100% true,

that the Quran is 100% the Word of God, if you're about to kill somebody. It takes certainty, you know? If you're a rational person, it takes certainty. What if you just 99% true, you know? Just so, yes, probably, in all likelihood, 99, but maybe not. That's enough certain uncertainty that you don't slit somebody's throat, right? And that's a very crucial, very important difference when it comes to living together in the democracy,

that violence is suddenly something that is, you know, something that you can't, you can't, you can no longer justify, given your level of certainty. So I think maybe thinking less in terms of moderate Muslim, extremist Muslim, you know, liberal Muslim, and more in terms of how pluralistic is there, is their belief, you know, How certain are they in the correctness of their belief versus anyone else's? And Sarah, let's wrap this up in a slightly interesting way because you mentioned being an atheist. When I was probably 1820, I found that way of thinking very appealing. Now I'm agnostic.

And I think that's likely where I'm going to stay. But you hear a lot of people talk about the fact that, and I have some sympathy with this argument, that the decreasing religiousness of the West has allowed things like wokeness to step into that void. What do you as an atheist make of that argument? I think it's an interesting argument and makes me very uncomfortable. I can imagine.

But yeah, I think there's... It's fascinating and adds a complication to what I would as an atheist prefer. to think and be true about the world and human nature really and how we optimize for the best kind of society. I would prefer that a society in which there's no religion, you know, and also somehow we have solved for dogma, you know, the dogma that might come in other forms. I think that's the best society of all. Sure.

But is that a possible society? Right. Probably not. Is it possible for us to not have religious dogma and to also somehow resist every other kind of dogma? Is that a possible world? So from that perspective, you know, a secular but religious, does that make sense?

The world is, in some ways, worse, you know, the worst of all, you know, possible outcome, you know, maybe even as bad as ancient, you know, religious contexts. Yeah, so that's, I think that's a very interesting train of thought. I'm not sure where I end up there at the moment. I do think that there is psychological need, I think, for the comfort of some kind of transcendental values. I think they can be routed in other ways. I don't think you need God, but I think you need them to be bigger than you. And you need it to be something that draws you into the collective,

into people around you, and something that gives you this sense of belonging and personal significance, but also, and this is a word that doesn't get used enough, duty towards others. Not just that I belong here and you make me feel great and personally significant, that's wonderful. But also, what do you owe them? What do you owe your fellow man?

I think that's, that idea of duty is what is a cornerstone of communities, you know, and we're seeing the fraying of communities all over the Western world, all over the world. So aren't we respond, aren't you and I, isn't that this awful? A little bit, maybe, yeah. Insofar as we can't find something else, insofar as we can't address this problem in some other creative way. But ultimately, I think this is where modernity is going. This is the path that we're walking down, sort of alienation from each other, from physical, the physical world, from broader, you know, the world around us, our neighbors, that kind of thing. We're increasingly alienated from it.

That's a modernity challenge. Can you bring religion back and say that this is the solution? I don't know. I don't know if you can force yourself to believe something that is. you know, not true. I don't think I could. I think that even if I thought religion was very good, I don't think I could go back to it. Well, this is where I am because I think I know and have experiences of knowing that religion, not Islam actually, but some forms of Christianity, can be very bad. And Islam, clearly, there are some forms of that or some people who follow it who

can be very bad. But the level of society, I look around and I'm kind of going, You said it yourself. You need something that's above you. You need something that connects you to other people. You need the community in a world that's becoming increasingly detached from, in which we've become detached from each other. I don't know that we've come up with an alternative. Woke people have.

And I'm like, you know what? I'd rather be an Anglican. Anglicanism works for me compared to this crap. But that's not really a religion anymore, is it? Well, let's not get into that. We have five minutes left or whatever. You know what I mean? Yeah.

So how can we advocate for, or not advocate, but how can we say, well, you know, agnosticism is good or being an atheist is good. When we look around and we go the practical consequences of the lack of religion are bad. Yeah, I would say that it's exactly the practical consequences of the lack of religion. I think they're all that the lack of religion. and the incidents, more awokeism in the world or more senses of alienation,

they're all being caused by another factor that's happening together. It seems to me that there's nothing we can really do about with the tools that we have at our disposal at the moment. You mean technology? Technology has a big role to play in the overall alienation that we feel and the various social consequences.

I mean, you can't even use, you think of the social fabric. It doesn't even make sense to think of it as a fabric. It's not a fabric. We're individual threads floating around and we're knotted up in one piece or another in one online community or space and isolated there. I think the problem is a bigger one, and I don't know if old religion has the tools to solve it, partially because, well, it makes a lot of claims about the real world. And they have an effect, not a good one. And it is hard to get the, you know, a 17-year-old to believe in the literal truth of something that's making claims that are not true in the natural world. And we know for a fact.

And they know for a fact. You can't hide this from them anymore. So the ways in which religion is literally not true is a hurdle that I don't know if it can overcome. Insofar as we're considering what is a solution. I get it. I'm stuck in exactly the same place as you. What would convince you, really? I mean, that's the, so that's, what the solution is, what would it be that would change you?

Well, we've been sitting, so our friends who we're staying with here, they're Christians. And we've spent every night sitting right around here arguing this back and forth. And there's not, they haven't. They're very clever people. Yeah. And I respect them very much. But there's nothing that can convince me of that. But on the other hand, I am extremely convinced that without community, without connection, which they have,

Because if you're a Christian, you go to church, you have a community, the way you relate to other people is different and so on. You know, without that, human beings are not designed to live in this world that we live in now. Not designed, we didn't evolve. Sorry, triggering word to an atheist. We did not evolve to live alone, to live and disconnect a disembodied life. And so I feel it's, you know, particularly I became a father recently. I'm thinking about this.

Like, what are we offering people? Because this disembodied, disconnected existence is not good for us. No, no. And I think it's fraying away at every important element of human existence. Like, I mean, not to be too grandiose about it, but I think it's true that relationships, you know, sex, people are having sex. People don't have friendships. People are isolated and alone and plugged into these digital spaces that are very toxic and down. damaging to them. They are encouraged to conceive of themselves as the end product, right?

As the picture at the end that you post on your profile and the video that you take of yourself as almost a performer first and to think about yourself in third person all the time and to be signaling all the time. It's a very, it's an exhausting way to live. And I think it's a, It's not a surprise to me that zoomers are, you know, they're just fucked up. They're, you know, they're, they have a lot of problems. And it seems like not a lot of solutions. I don't have an answer for you. And I just don't think that it would be nice.

Maybe if we can have a nice form of Christianity. Can we, though? Can we, you know, pass that on to a 13-year-old that has access to the Internet and finds Reddit, atheism and they're all like, this is why it's wrong, and then you stop believing, right? So long as we don't have a choice in the matter of belief or not belief, it is important that they are making literal claims about the world that are not true. And I think will affect the ability of even a nice Christianity to go very far

in moving people and pulling them away from the disconnected. that we're seeing around us. There has to be some other solution. But I was in charge of creating communities when I was running my organization. And it was a very interesting experience in that I recognized how religion is very useful in good and healthy communities, in fact.

And religious communities are demonized a lot, sometimes fairly, I think oftentimes fairly, and then sometimes unfairly. So there's some benefits to that form of organization, and it provides benefits to the people, to the members of that community, and it's hard to replicate

that without these kinds of values tying you together. So I think that's going to be a challenge, but, you know, to end on a kind of an optimistic note, I think Human beings are very adaptable and yes, technology is throwing a lot of problems at us very quickly, which makes things difficult. It's difficult for us, I think, to adapt quickly.

But it is very possible that we do. It's very possible that we become, you know, immune to the kind of siren songs of social media and, like, the online world and find a way back to something a little bit more. healthy. Sarah, it's been a wonderful interview. Thank you so much for coming on the show. We always end the show in the same way, which is what is the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should be? Well, I don't want to tread too much ground that we have tread already. So I will say, I think we should be thinking a lot more about the ways in which the sexes are different. You know, I think we should be more thoughtful. thoughtfully considering how those differences impact us in our day-to-day lives and how they're

impacting our institutions and our social organization as women become very much a part of them of these organizations and institutions sometimes running them you know sometimes becoming the majorities of you know in in a workplace or in a field or you know you know in an organization. So we should be thinking about what that changes, if anything, whether that's a good thing, whether we want to resist it in some way. But people have a hard time even imagining that

something could be different. That to imply that, you know, let's say, the American culture, let's say academia is entirely 90% women. let's say the legislature is 90% women. People don't like it when I say that this will probably have an effect on the institutional norms, on the way the psychology behind which those norms are based, and they will create new norms,

and they will behave differently than they had before. And those institutions function well in a time and place where men were predominant in the public, space in the public sphere and that's how they were developed and they functioned well in that in that space now that that's changing and you have a different kind of person with a different kind of psychology different kind of way of socializing how do that change things and how do we need to correct for it so you know to give a specific example you know free speech on campus right like it's a it's a woke problem it's a whatever but it's also a problem of you know uh you know uh you know you know you

You have a majority female students in most campuses. You have high percentages of female faculty, and especially in administration, a very high percentage of it. And I think that that's the sort of underground, you know, we talk about the ideology of wokeism, the ideology behind, you know, free speech norms, you know, sort of disappearing in these places. But there's also just social tendencies of women that are different than the social tendencies of men. So men are like, yeah, let's duke it out, let's fight, let's offend each other, let's, you know, battle of the wits or whatever.

And somebody's crown the victor and there's a hierarchy and I'm at top and you're at the bottom now because you're a loser. And then there's the female way of socializing, which is different. You know, it's more compassionate, it's more oriented around maintenance. of feelings and equality and fairness, that kind of orientation will have effects when broadly applied. When you have 20% of women in an institution might not change anything because they just, they do what the men are doing to dominate in that environment or just survive in it. then maybe you have 50-50 and things are a little bit different, you know, and then maybe you have 60-40 and now you have majority women.

Now women can, you know, socialize in their preferred manner and the norms of that institution shift. So I think that, you know, that's just sort of the way that I think we need to be thinking about this in a much more deep way than we have been, instead of just sort of whittling away at the edges of there's not enough women here or there's too many men there or what sarah's saying is the women are coming and they're going to ruin everything so maybe you can quote me that could be that that could be the title of when you cut this out you pull it out and say that that's a great note to wrap on sarah if people want to follow your work i know you have a substack where else should people go to

find you yeah i have a substack called hold that thought um or you could just type in sarah hater dot substack.com and you'll find my my writings there. I write a lot about sex now and gender which is getting me into a lot of trouble and we did discuss here thankfully but there's next time maybe yeah

so there's a lot of that on my substack you can also find me wasting my time on Twitter my handle is Sarah the hater so you can reach me there as well perfect well thank you so much for coming on and join us on locals where we're going to ask Sarah a few of your questions

that only those of you who are on locals will get to see the answers to. Take care and see you soon. Have you found that people have left one faith are more likely to have doubts about progressive ideologies?