TRIGGERnometry - "The West Must Defend Itself" - Yasmine Mohammed

Episode Date: November 22, 2020

Canadian human rights activist and author Yasmine Mohammed joins us. Support TRIGGERnometry: Locals: https://triggernometry.locals.com/ https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Paypal: https://bit.ly/2Tnz8yq 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

Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kishin. And this is a show for you, if you want, honest conversations with fascinating people. Our brilliant guest today is an author and human rights activist. Yasma Mohamed, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. It's great to have you here. Listen, obviously, the reason we wanted to talk to is you've been pretty outspoken recently in the wake of a number of terrorist attacks in France. there's a broader issue to discuss as well. I can't wait to get to that because it's a really important conversation, but maybe it's best for us to start off by you telling our viewers a little bit about who

you are and what is your backstory. How have you come to the place that you're in? Because it is very, very interesting, to put it mildly. Yeah, so I grew up in Canada to a Muslim family who were very religious. and so I went to Islamic school. I was put in hijab at the age of nine, so that's what covers everything but your face and hands. And, you know, your typical Islamic religious thing.

So you'd have to wake up before the sun rises to pray, and then you pray five times a day, and the last one being before you go, before the sun or after the sun sets. So being in the north, because I grew up in Canada, that ended up causing a lot of problems with the very long days sometimes. And so there's a lot of sleep deprivation. It's my memory of childhood. And like in Ramadan as well. So Ramadan, you can't eat from sunrise to sunset. So that meant that, you know, some days it would be like 10 or 11 hours of not eating.

When you're a kid is pretty tough. So it was a pretty strict Muslim, upbringing that I didn't realize was really strict. I thought it was just the way it was, because everybody that we knew was like that, too. And I guess I was a bit problematic because I was always asking questions. I didn't, you know, I would just ask basic questions all the time. Things didn't make sense to me. You know, how were all the prophets Muslim, if Muhammad is the one who started Islam? How were Adam and Eve Muslim too? That doesn't make any sense. Just the most basic questions like that that I'd ask, I'd get in trouble because that means it's the devil whispering in your ear, you know, not having faith or questioning your faith,

meant you're a bad person. So my mom decided that she needed to marry me off to somebody who was strong enough to control me. And so they chose a member of Al-Qaeda. And I say they, meaning my mom was married to a man. So her and my dad broke up when I was very young. I didn't grow up with my dad, but she remarried a man who was already married and already had three kids because an Islam a man can have up to four wives. And so she was his second concurrent wife.

And together they forced me into a marriage with a member of Al-Qaeda who was 15 years older than me. And I had a daughter with him pretty soon. And I wanted to get away from him, obviously, because he was abusive and, you know, just a horrible human being. But it wasn't until I had my daughter that I found the courage to do that because I wanted to protect her from having the life that I grew up in. I wanted her to have a different life and her to have freedom and her to have choices. So through a long series of events that I outlined in my book unveiled, strategic placed behind me.

Yeah, very slick. Through it, you know, it wasn't easy, obviously. It was very difficult and it was just through the skin of my teeth. I was able to get away and go to university. which I never imagined I'd be able to do. And when I was in university, I just took a history of religions course because it was going to be focused on the three monotheistic religions. And I thought, well, you know, I know for sure I'll ace a third of this course

because I went to Islamic schools and my mom was the head, like the head of the Islamic Studies Department and we had to make sure that we always did well. Otherwise, it would make her look bad. And so I knew the religion inside out. And so I thought, well, this will be, you know, an EZA or whatever. And I never imagined that it was going to change my life entirely. And everything unraveled once I started to take that, learn about my religion sort of from a, with a critical eye.

We looked at it, you know, from an objective point of view. And I was allowed to ask questions. And it was a safe space like my professor was, he grew up in Lebanon. He grew up Christian in Lebanon. on. And so he kind of understood a lot of my background and stuff. And he wasn't the kind of proff that would be concerned about Islamophobia, bigotry, or whatever, like, we could actually have conversations in the classroom. And so, yeah, it all unraveled from there. And 9-11 happened, and that also really helped to push me out. And that's that. And then I, I, I, I, I, I,

I went on living my life, got remarried, had another daughter, you know, and I stayed quiet about everything, just from fear mostly. I knew our son was in prison, but I also knew who was connected to Al-Qaeda, so he'd have friends everywhere. So I changed my daughter's name, changed my name. We moved cities quite often. And eventually I was able to relax and kind of forget that that was my background, like just go on with my life, just buried it, basically. Never really dealt with it. And then the infamous episode of Bill Marr with Sam Harris and Ben Affleck happened. And in that episode, Sam Harris and Bill Mar were trying to talk about the problems with Islam and how the issues in that religion were so anti-liberal, anti-women, you know,

anti-freedom, et cetera. And Ben Affleck just refused to let them have that conversation. He jumped in and called them gross and racist and et cetera. So the next day, my Facebook was covered with friends who were, you know, so proud of Ben Affleck for shutting down that gross racist man and done it. And I'm like, oh my gosh, like I have failed you people. I have not because I kept it all to myself. I didn't say anything.

And while I was watching that episode, I was almost, I teared up. I was so excited and happy that these two American men on national television were talking about me, essentially, because they were talking about people who left Islam and they gave the statistic of like close to 90% of people in Egypt feel that people who leave a slam should be executed. Well, that's me. My family is from Egypt and I left Islam. They actually care about me on real time with Bill Maher. Like it just felt like I was finally being seen and heard for the first time,

something that I was even too scared to talk about with my friends I was seeing on television. And Ben Affleck came swooping in like the white night that he is and he shut down the conversation. And the reason, you know, I felt really betrayed obviously by Ben Affleck, especially since he did a movie called Dogma, where he had no problem criticizing Christianity for the same issues. But when it came to Islam, suddenly we can't talk about those things. We can't talk about, you know, the much more atrocious things that are happening in this day and age because of the fact that there are so many Islamic theocracies. And so that is what inspired me to start writing my book.

And once I started writing my book, I just organically ended up in, activism. It wasn't something that I ever chose. It just kind of happened. And then I started my organization. And so now this is like a huge part of my life. Well, and Yasmin, first of all, it's good to know that Batman isn't Islamophobic. So that's a weight of all of our shoulders. But also, as well, isn't part of the problem? We talk about Islam. But like all religions are like Christianity and Judaism, there's various different sects. Some are more conservative than others. So, to talk about the religion itself, it doesn't really get to the heart of the issues with certain sects of the religion. Well, I guess I should clarify that, you know, Islam is very different

from Christianity. So in Christianity, you have like 30,000 different sects or something like that. In Islam, 90% of Muslims are Sunni Muslim. So that's how I grew up. So when we talk about the the religion of Islam, we're talking about that, you know, basically the words on the page. Because unlike the Bible, the Quran is the literal word of Allah. So it's not metaphorical. These are not stories. These are edicts, right? It's a law book. These are rules. And so I guess it's important not to conflate Islam and Muslims. Islam is the religion, the words on the page. you know, the, the scripture, the demands that the religion makes. Okay, so those are very clear.

Scholars have been, you know, studying those for years. They make Sharia laws based on them. And like I said, 90% of Muslims follow Sunni Islam. The other 10% are mostly Shia. So think of Saudi Arabia. 90% of Muslims follow that. And about 10% of Muslims follow Iran's. Islam. Look, I spend a lot of time telling you what's wrong with the world, so let me tell you

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They both force women into modesty clothing. Iran a bit more because they'll actually imprison women. Saudi Arabia doesn't imprison women anymore. But a lot of women have been imprisoned and still are in prison. And a lot of women were being imprisoned in Saudi Arabia for wanting to drive, but no women in Iran, Reverend Friesen for wanting to drive. So even though it's a little bit of a different flavor in how they are misogynist, sexist, evil towards women, it's, you know, very similar. So that is the religion of Islam. It's Sharia, basically. It's Hid'an, it's Hadith, it's Cira, the life of the prophet. Then there are close to two billion Muslims. So I think that's what you're talking about there. So there's the way people follow their religion, of course,

varies wildly, right? You could have somebody all the way on the left like Magic Nawaz, for example, who is a reform Muslim. And so, you know, he believes in equality of the sexes. He is not an anti-Semite. He believes in LGBT equality. etc, etc. Things that would cause him to be killed by people on the opposite side of the spectrum, even though they also both of them, both extremes call themselves Muslim. And then, of course, you've got all the Muslims in between. So it's anywhere from Madid Nawaz to like ISIS on the other end. And everybody is calling themselves Muslim, but they are all following the religion. differently in that some are going to follow it word for word and not ignore one single letter

which would be ISIS and then other Muslims who choose to cherry pick and say well no I'm not actually going to do that because I don't think we should you know stone people to death for adultery or I don't think that we should cut off the hands of thieves or whatever the case may be Yes, I'm sorry to interrupt. May I just jump in there? Because I think that's a really important point that you made there. So quite often, certainly in this country in Britain, we are told when there's a terrorist attack or when this issue is being discussed, that ISIS or Al-Qaeda or any other Islamic-inspired terrorist organization, these are people who, quote, unquote, have perverted the faith of Islam. Whereas what you've just said, and correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm just trying to understand, what you've just said is actually, the opposite. In other words, the people who are not committing these attacks or who are not engaging in throwing gaze off buildings or whatever, those are the people who are not following the religion. That's correct. So what you're saying essentially is ISIS have a literal interpretation of the religion. Whereas the Muslims who, the Muslims, sorry, just who are not doing

any of that, they are the ones who are not following the faith of Islam to the left. Correct. Yes, correct. So it's like if you think of it, I'm going to compare that to Christianity, if you think of people who follow the Old Testament. So think of Westboro Baptist Church or something. They are going to be very literal and follow exactly what that book says, whereas most Christians would have no problem eating shellfish or whatever the other rules are. So it's kind of like that. So, yes, the Muslim, the ISIS, Al-Qaeda, all of the jihadis over there, they are, following the religion to the letter.

And this is why it's really, that's not a true statement to say that they're the ones that are perverting the religion or they're hijacking the religion. The truth is that, and I mean the word perverting and hijacking don't work because I think it's a positive thing that people are cherry picking and choosing not to follow aspects of the religion. So I completely support Muslims who want to maintain their identities as Muslims, but also want to live in this century and to live as progressive, liberal people

and who don't want to follow very conservative right-wing ideology that is barbaric and archaic. And you ask me, why do you think it is that in a world which is more technologically advanced, than it's ever been, particularly in the West, liberal democracies and so on and so forth, that we have suddenly seen a rise in this type of very, very conservative outlook amongst young people in particular. Well, I think it's unfortunate that those are the voices that you hear because those are the voices that are not scared to speak up. The truth is there is a tsunami of people that are leaving Islam. I mean, I don't think anyone's left. in Islam and Iran. I mean, that's obviously hyperbole. But most Iranians are because they have

Sharia, because they have the Islamic regime, because they're getting pure, unsugar-coded Islam, they hate it. And the same thing happened in Iraq as well. When ISIS, you know, was big in Iraq, people were leaving Islam in droves because they were seeing, oh my gosh, this what my religion teaches? Because it's very different when it's theoretical and when you actually see it. And that's exactly what happened to me with 9-11. When 9-11 happened, it wasn't, it's kind of hard to explain. It's like you knew that that's what you're supposed to do. You understand that they were following the religion and that was the right thing. But you feel so sick just as a human being.

So you're kind of conflicted and it pushes you to deal with that conflict in your mind, right? With that cognitive dissonance. And just like me, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people started leaving the religion

when they started to see what ISIS were doing in Iraq and Syria. So I think that, it's unfortunate that you don't get to hear their voices and you don't get to see their faces and you there are a lot of feminists all over Saudi Arabia, all over Iran, all over Egypt, all over the Muslim world that can't speak because if they do, I mean, they know what jihadis do, right? They live in that world. Like we know there's so many cases I could tell you. There's people that have been hacked to death in the streets of Bangladesh,

people that have been beaten to death in Pakistan, people being stabbed. I mean, this is happening now in Europe, but this is not new news for anybody in the Muslim majority of world. I mean, as we're talking now, 35 kids at a university in Afghanistan just died yesterday. Sunni's killing Shias, Muslims killing Muslims. And so we're used to that kind of violence at every turn.

turn. And that's why people are too scared to speak up. So there are a lot of other magic nuises out there, but they're not living in the UK. So they can't put their faces and their names out there. They can have private Twitter accounts and interact with me and interact with each other, but you don't get to see them. You don't get to hear from them. I mean, recently there was a bunch of mosques in France that all signed this paper that basically saw that basically saw. said, we denounce people that say Muslims are being discriminated against in France. That's a lie. That's not true. We're happy here. We love it here. Not one single person signed their name to that. They signed the names of the mosques that they belong to and the organizations

that they belong to because they know that if they sign their name to that paper, they're putting their life and their family's life at risk. So it's incredibly dangerous. for moderate Muslims to speak out. And so it just looks like the conservatives are the majority, or it looks like they're the ones that are, that everybody else is okay with it because nobody's pushing back. I hear that a lot. People are like, why aren't Muslims pushing back against this?

And I equate it kind of to the woke culture, because that's a way of getting them to relate it to something in their lives so they can understand. And I say, well, you know, in America or Britain or anywhere in Europe, people are afraid to speak up against woke culture because they're afraid it might affect their job or they're afraid people might call them racist. They're afraid that friends or family might judge them

or treat them differently or even stop being friends with them. So multiply that by like a few thousand. And that's the kind of fear Muslims feel about speaking up against the extremists in their religion. because not only will they lose their jobs, they will lose their jobs, they'll lose their livelihoods, they'll lose their family, and they could lose their heads as well. Right. Do you think the mainstream media are biased?

Yes. That's why you watch Trigonometry. But we all still read the news, and the thing you really want to be doing is comparing how different publications cover the same story. That's where ground news come in. Drawing from 40,000 media outlets around the world and over 30,000. thousand new stories per day, they empower you to arrive at the truth yourself. Don't do that. Just watch Trigonometry. Everyone here at Trigonometry loves ground news because they've got so many

brilliant features, but there's one feature in particular that we all find incredibly useful. It's the blind spot feature. It is the news blind spot and what this allows you to see is what your particular media that you're consuming, whether you're right or left, is not covering. There are certain issues that the right-wing media will never cover and therefore if you only watch the right wing, you won't know. Equally, on the left, it's the same thing. And what the news blind spot allows you to do is to get the information that the people who you're getting your media from are not telling you. And they've also got an amazing website, which is ground. For those of us who live in the 21st century, unlike Francis and have phones, just download

the app from wherever you get your homes. Yasmund, let me push back very gently on some of that because when Francis was asking you about why we're seeing a lot of of Muslims in the West remain very conservative down the generations. We have surveys in this country. And if you poll Muslims in Britain about homosexuality, about sex outside of marriage, about what should happen to apostates, you do find that there's a very significant majority of people. And actually, quite often, the younger generation have a more strict code that they follow, or at least think of. So why is that happening, which I guess was the point. point of France's question. Yeah, I mean, believe it or not, those polls as abysmal as they are

are way better than if you polled people in the Muslim majority world. So people that do come to the West, their minds are getting opened. It's a slow process. And the thing is, it's not just risky as far as like if you're in Pakistan, you could go to prison or you could be killed or you could be lashed in the streets in Saudi Arabia. All of these things are true. But even if you're in Europe or in North America, you're going to be judged by your community. You're going to be judged by your family. And so you're too scared to even have those thoughts in your own head. This is, I'll give you my experience. growing up, I knew I was supposed to hate non-Muslims.

I knew I was supposed to hate Jewish people. I knew I was supposed to hate gay people. How did you know that? So because I was taught that. I was, that was, that's the rules, right? Like this is, you, you must hate anything that Allah hates. This is a very common thing, right? So if Allah hates gay people, then you must hate gay people.

Allah loves Prophet Muhammad. You must love Prophet Muhammad. You have to, you know, there's, They call it the Saratum Mustakim, the long, thin, it's almost like a tightrope. When they put it visually, it's a tight rope. And below the tightrope is hell. So you have to walk a very, very thin, straight line and do not waver or you will fall into the depths of hell. So there's no thinking involved.

You just constantly have to stay focused. So you don't, you're not allowed to question things. It's really hard to, I'm going to try and convey to you guys what it feels like to be indoctrinated. Like, as a child to have the fear of hell put in you, they tell you in detail about how your skin will and your flesh will melt off and then it will regrow and then it will melt off again. And I remember asking my mom at like six years old, like, well, if that keeps on happening, won't you eventually get used to it? And she's like, no, each time it's going to hurt just like the first. first time, you know, and you get told of Aadab al-Qabran, that means like all of the punishments that are going to happen to you when you're in the grave waiting for the

day of judgment. So the snakes that are going to go into your eyeballs and blah, blah, blah, blah. So really, really, really vicious, scary stuff that you're told as a little kid. and by the time you're an adult and you want to start questioning, it's like, you know, there's, I think you even have a saying in Christianity, something like give me a child younger than seven and then I'll give you the man or something like that. Like once you've indoctrinated them. It's a judge where you're saying, give me the boy at eight years old and I'll show you

the man at 18. Yeah, yeah. So it's kind of like that. They just indoctrinate you from a young age. And then by the time you're an adult, it's like too difficult for you to even go there because you've been, your mind has been so trained to stay on this long, thin, straight line and not to waver. And so even though I knew that I was supposed to, that I had to hate gay people, hate Jewish people, want non-lissans to be killed, want a slam to spread across the world, want the caliphate to rise, pledge me. my allegiance that when the caliphate rises that I would go and support it, you know all of the stuff and you you spew all the stuff you're supposed to spew, but you never really think about it.

You're just, you're just kind of like, well, you're brainwashed, right? So you're just, you're just repeating it. And so if I were to sign or if I were to fill out one of those polls at that time, I would be horrified by my results. I was one of those women that would say, I want to wear hijab. I like it, right? It protects me. It keeps me modest, right? You just, you say what you need to say and you do what you need to do because you're so scared of burning in hell. And you're so scared of losing your family and you're so scared of all of the horrible things that could happen. And yes, but aren't these values completely at odds with living in a secular Western society? They 100% are. And I think that that's what the process. What the problem is.

problem is now. I think the problem is that, well, there's two problems. Number one, people are not willing to admit that these values are not only the opposite of Western values, but they are against Western value. They oppose Western values. That's the first thing. People need to accept that and understand that and deal with that. And secondly, which is really unfortunate, is that now there is no pride in Western values. There's no pushback. So at least when I was growing up, I would hear in the home, you need to wear hijab so that you don't get raped because if you get raped, it's your fault because you didn't cover yourself properly. I'm hearing victim blaming. I'm hearing slut shaming. I'm hearing like textbook rape culture at home. But when I left the house,

I would hear the exact opposite. I would hear very, very feminist, strong, you know, messages that oppose the messages I was hearing in the house. And so that allowed me to, it allowed it to push through the indoctrination. What's happening today, unfortunately, is that kids who are like me being grown, growing up in these Muslim households that are being told these things, like democracy is terrible, you know, feminism is a lie, liberalism is a failure, all of these things. Those things, unfortunately, is being supported outside the home too, right? When the Charlie Hebdo, when people were being killed over cartoons, the reaction should have been immediate printing, those cartoons on every single Western media possible as a show of strength to say, no, we believe

in freedom of expression. We believe in freedom of speech. We will not be bullied. We will not capitulate. But instead, we capitulated. And we said, well, we shouldn't hurt their feelings and da-da-da-da-da. And while we're busy capitulating, they're busy feeling strong. They're busy feeling the moral certitude that you feel when Allah is behind you, that's why you're winning. Right. That's why we're able to make these Europeans get down on their knees is because we are in the right and they are in the wrong and we are stronger than they are and we are smarter than they are.

And we have a law behind us and they don't. And we are Muslims and they are non-Muslims, etc. So that's that us versus them mentality is being unfortunately. what's the word I'm looking for, guys. Well, it's been spread through the whole of society. Yeah. It's being spread and it's being validated. Like everything that they're being taught is being validated outside in the real world.

And that's terrifying to me. When I saw the EBDO cartoons on the buildings in France, I honestly, I teared up with joy. I was like, this is what you need to do. That is exactly it. A show of strength that has zero violence, but it's saying we will not bend the knee. That's exactly how you need to respond because they are very strong. So we need to respond with strength as well. Do you enjoy watching problematic content online that you don't want your friends or family to know about?

Of course they do. They watch Strygonometry, mate. Well, we have just a solution for you. It's called ExpressVPN. At the moment, your ISP is able to track every single website that you go to, and then they sell that information onto advertisers and others. ExpressVPN allows you to prevent that from happening. It also means that you can be located in a different region to the one that your IP shows up as. We always use ExpressVPN for our browsing, can be Francis. Absolutely. And by the way, you sound like an expert.

Keep your browsing history to your search. yourself, visit expressvpn.com forward slash trigger today. To get three months free subscription, visit expressvpn.com slash trigger. That's XPR, E-S-S-V-S-V-N dot com slash trigger today. Good job spelling it out for them, mate. It doesn't sound patronising at all. Absolutely. Oh, and by the way, all those little words you use.

I've got no idea what they mean. Yasmin, and what do you say to people who say, well, all that would do is antagonize people unnecessarily. It would be offensive to many Muslims who otherwise wouldn't be involved. It would obviously lead quite likely to more reprisal attacks, so innocent people all over the West would pay with their lives for this unnecessary offense that we're giving to Muslims. It's not unnecessary. The thing is, it's your values, right? Especially for French people, right? equality, fraternity, liberty, this is their country. So for them to bend the knee when it comes to something like that is so much more than just,

like people would say things like, oh, it's just cartoons, just stop printing them and everything will be okay. That is so not true. Look at Indonesia. Look at Egypt. Look at Maldives. Look at so many different countries. it doesn't work that way.

Can you imagine ever somebody saying to their kid comes home and says there's a bully that's beating me up and he's saying he wants to take my lunch money every day. And you as a parent would say, well, just give him your money. Give him your money and then he'll stop. Right. Like, no, he won't. He's going to keep going. He's going to feel empowered and he's going to feel strong and he's going to feel, you know, he's going to do more and he can get more out of you. And that is exactly what happens.

History has shown that over and over again for the past 40 years. Ever since the Islamic regime in Iran, people have been scared, shitless, all over the Muslim world, because they're like, oh, the extremists are going to get us. Oh, no, the jihadis in their suicide vests are going to get us. So we have to give them what they want. We have to give them what they want. And they are constantly giving up all of their freedoms, all of their secularism. You know, women are giving up their freedoms as well almost happily because they're trading it for this false sense of security. Think of the black box in the plane when the hijackers were about to fly their planes into the World Trade Center.

What did they say? They said, just sit down and be quiet. and we'll fly back to the airport. Everything's going to be okay. Nobody do anything stupid. Just sit down and be quiet. Everything's going to be fine. That's just what they said before they killed everybody on board.

So appeasing bullies, appeasing terrorists is never, ever, ever the right direction to go. and you think it's cartoons today, it's not going to stop here. As soon as you give up one of your main freedoms or anything, they're just going to keep pushing for more, more, more, more, more, more, more, until the whole world is exactly how they want it to be bowing to Allah. And yes, I mean, there is a counter-argument to that,

which is obviously, you know, saying that, you know, Islam is one of the, I think it's a protected characteristic in the UK that we talk about how, you know, Islamophobia is similar to anti-Semitism. Do you agree with that? Or do you agree with the term? Okay. Not at all. Because anti, when you're Jewish, that is your ethnic tribe, as well as your religion. In fact, a lot of Jewish people, it's only their ethnic tribe and they're atheists.

They're not, right? Is that, yeah, exactly. So when you say it's a protected class, that makes sense. That's like saying, yeah, a Jewish person can be a protected class, black person, gay person, et cetera, et cetera. But are Christians a protected class? Right? Muslims are just, it's just a religion. It's not an ethnicity.

And so there is this hope that they can conflate it with anti-Semitism, that they can say, oh, look, it's the same thing, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism. It's not the same thing. it's very different. Islamophobia is not anti-Muslim bigotry. They're not worried about the human beings. They're worried about the religion. That's why it's called Islamophobia

because they don't want you to criticize their religion, which is exactly what all of this Charlie Abdo nonsense is about. It's because from their perspective, they're not allowed to draw Muhammad. So if they're not allowed to draw Muhammad, you're not allowed to draw Muhammad. That's the rule. And that's that they don't, you know,

if you are drawing Muhammad, that is an insult to their religion. And so they want to stop you from insulting their religion or criticizing their religion or doing something that is against their religion. And so that's why all of these terrorist attacks have been happening.

And why do we have these, I guess you, I think it would be accurate to describe them as double standards. You mentioned Christianity. It's perfectly normal to mock Christianity. Whole swathes of culture have been devoted to it, comedically, artistically and otherwise. Obviously, that treatment doesn't seem to be the same in this case. Why do you think that is?

I think it's because people don't understand that Muslims are not a race. Muslims are not in ethnicity. They haven't clued in that it's more similar to Christianity in that sense. sense than it is to Judaism. They don't, you know, I try to make the argument like, you know, you know a Catholic person from Italy or from Mexico or from America or from Britain, they have in very different cultures, very different religions, very different music are everything. They don't share anything except for the religion.

Yes, that's right. And Muslims are like that too. You know, you've got Muslims, these, the teenager that. killed Samuel Petit was from Chechnya, same thing, the two brothers that did the Boston bombing. So they're from Russia, you've got people from Albania, you've got people from Germany, you've got people from America, you got people from Egypt, Saudi Arabia. These are places, people that are wildly different. They are not an ethnic group. They are, they are not a tribe. They are, they share nothing in common culturally except for the, I mean, they don't share anything culturally.

what they share is the religion of Islam. And I think that in the West, people can't even tell the difference between a Pakistani and Arab. For the longest time, people were saying, imagine Nawaz was Arab. I'm like, what part of Arabian's Pakistan? Like, there's just not,

unfortunately, even though it's the second largest religion on the planet, it's such a minority group in the West that people are just not aware of it. They don't understand. I mean, they are learning. Do you really think that's true, Yasmin? Do you not think it's just people are afraid?

People are afraid. Of the repercussions. Of criticizing Islam. So we've invented the word Islamophobia to shut people up because if people aren't shut up, then they're going to say and do things that offend Muslims, which will result in reprisals. Well, yeah. So the word Islamophobia was created by the Muslim Brotherhood, who are Islamists. similar to Hezb al-Tahrir.

So what's important to know about Islamists is that they have the exact same goal as the jihadis. So Islam requires that the whole world be Muslim, that everybody bow to Allah. That's what the religion demands that Muslims do. So there's different ways of doing it.

You've got the jihadis on one end, so that's all of these terrorists, Al-Qaeda, you know, ISIS, Boko Haram, etc., etc. or all of the lone wolves all over the world, they want to terrorize people so that they bow to Islam, basically. They never criticize the religion

that they are in control. And then you have the Islamists who are like Muslim Brotherhood, Hizbathir, you know, the organization of Islam a cooperative, so Turkey, you know, Erdogan, they are people in nice suit that speak, you know, with, they don't look like jihadis, right? They look like proper diplomats. But they have the exact same goal, but they're not going to do it in the same way.

Jihadis will do it through murdering people. Islamists will do it through more diplomatic means. So they outline the three ways that they're going to do it. One of them is through immigration. another way is, and through immigration, by that I mean, so by the time Muslims reach a certain point of population, then they can make demands because they're a voting block now. So immigration is important for that reason.

And also through the wounds of the Muslim mothers, so each man marry four wives, continue to have babies, to grow the Ummah, so that you can have more control. And then thirdly, through using secular law, against themselves. So basically using those secular laws to, to, to, so that they can bring Islam in, you know, okay. But no, that makes sense. Yeah. So, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, 100% correct. That is exactly why it was created in the same way that cutting off the

teacher's head is a way to stop criticism of the religion. It's just two different methods towards the same goal. And you brought up that awful, awful case, which happened in France a matter of weeks ago. Nobody seems to be talking about it anymore. Nobody seems to be discussing it. There doesn't seem to be any particular outrage. It just seems that, you know, all the particularly the white liberals have shrugged their shoulders and we've all moved on. Why is that? You know, it's, it's, you know, like I said earlier, it's terrifying for me to see that.

It was so scary for me to see how nobody really cared about the issue with Samuel Petit except for people in France. I mean, you didn't hear any voices coming out of the UK or out of the US. In fact, the U.S. was writing headlines that made it seem like the French police were the bad guys in this scenario because they killed the guy who just behead a teacher. So the reason why it terrifies me is because it's to your own detriment. Like the fact that you're not paying attention to these things, first of all, it feels like a betrayal, too. Like, you know, like with George Floyd, the whole world started having, you know, walkouts all over the world protests in support of George Floyd. But where were the protests in support of Samuel Pitti anywhere in the world?

It's like nobody, why, why didn't his life matter? You know, he's a teacher doing his job, talking about freedom of expression. Like that's, that should have been, that should have shook everybody to their core and made everybody say, hold on a minute. That's an attack on our basic freedoms. But, you know, unfortunately that didn't happen. And then there were very closely after it, there were a few other terrorist attacks in France and now one in Vienna. And so there's just constant terror happening And it takes people's attention away.

And to be honest, it reminds me of like living in the Middle East where you become desensitized to these things. It's like, oh, there is another suicide bombing of the market. Oh, how many people died? 11. Oh, only 11, that's good. So did you want some more rice? Like you just, it's part of life now.

Right. And now it's becoming a part of life for Europeans too. and they don't even seem to be bothered by it. Well, I think a lot of people are bothered by Yasmin, but I think the question that I was going to ask you ties in very neatly into that, which is, do you think that, you know, the answer to Francis's question, why are people still talking about is that really,

we don't feel like we can do anything about it? Because I don't know what, you know, if there was a policy that you said to me, Constantine, what you need to do is, advocate for this policy for the government to follow and then all of this will be fixed. I think a lot of people would sign up to that if it was a sensible thing to do. But I don't know what that looks like. Well, so two things.

First of all, the jihadis, they were told to do terrorism now while the governments are busy with COVID. So they knew that this was going to be a good time because everybody's so busy with the pandemic. Right. And so everybody, you're fighting for, like, when you talk about what can people do, I think a lot of people are starting, when I say people, I don't mean, when I'm lamenting that nobody seems to care about it, I'm not talking about individual people. I'm not talking about you or me. I'm talking about governments, right? I'm talking about what exactly, like what you just said, to have some actual policies. But that requires them to sit down. and to figure that out. And I think that they're just drowning right now. Well, in America, I know they're drowning with the election going on.

France is in lockdown. You know, UK is in lockdown. Everybody's so busy with other things that they really haven't, they're not able to sit down and say, what are we going to do about this problem? But we've had 19 years since 9-11, which sort of started this process in a major way. I don't think we've come up with a solution.

I mean, is there a solution to this thing that makes sense that you may? Because one of the things we have to deal with is in Western societies, we do have significant Muslim minorities. As you say, there are some Islamists who are trying to use that against the societies in which that's happening. How do you deal with that? You know, if you'd have asked me this before the huge influx of refugees, I would have had a lot more hope. I would have given you a different answer because, but nobody listened to us back then either.

But, but, you know, we're at a situation now where it's pretty bad, but we need to act before it gets worse. And now when I say act, what I personally think we should be doing is understanding and it's almost, it's really different. for people who are born and raised in the West, you don't have any experience or understanding with Islam, but if you rely on people who are secular Muslims, who are reform Muslims, who are ex-Muslims, people that understand those societies, people that understand those mindsets, lean on them and let them give you advice. And the advice that they will give you is that

you need to be able to distinguish between a Muslim and an Islamist, which is, you know, sometimes very easy, but sometimes not so easy. So like the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Florida, that was done by an Afghani man, his wife didn't wear hijab. He was born and raised in America. He's not so easy to be able to tell right away, there's going to be trouble there. this latest terrorist attack in Vienna, same thing. He was imprisoned for a while and he was let go for good behavior. And they were shocked that he did this because they never thought that he would be capable. They thought that he was reformed and that he was cured of his need to go to Syria and, you know, support the caliphate.

So it's definitely not going to be 100%. But sometimes it's pretty fucking. obvious. And it's very, very infuriating. Like when you open the doors to your country and you're just like, come on in. And people were not only coming from Syria, they were coming from Morocco, from Tunisia, from Iran, from everywhere, because the doors were wide open. You know, 15 year olds or, sorry, like older men, I don't know, with beers, are pretending that they're minors and they're like, oh, yeah, I'm 15 years old so that they could get, you know, more social, security support, whatever.

There was a whole bunch of this isn't even new what I'm saying. Like if you read Ion Hersy Ali's book, which she wrote probably 15 years ago by now, she talked about this happening with the Somali community going into Holland. When they were going into there and they would just lie and say whatever needed to be said

so that they could get the social support that they needed. and if anybody tried to call them on their lives, they'd say, are you being racist? And then that would, everybody would be like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not being a racist. Okay, please continue to steal from us, but just don't call me a racist.

And, you know, Madjnawas talks about that in his book, radical. Same thing. He talked about how he was in his university. He was radicalizing students publicly. And when his administration tried to call him out on it, he accused them of being Islamophobic and racist and bigots. And so they shut up and they let him continue radicalizing students until a student was stabbed in the middle of the courtyard in the university.

And then they finally shut down the radicalization. So using, anyway, I started going off in a whole bunch of tangents. But basically what you need to do is you need to be careful that the people that you're inviting into your country, are people that share the same values as you do, or at least, if not exactly the same, similar values. So let's take the Syrian conflict, for example. In Syria, when that happened, people had the option of helping Yazidi people

who were people who were being killed, women and children that were being raped. No organizations were helping Yazidis. organizations were instead helping Sunni Muslims, which is the people that were supporting ISIS. And so when you see, when I see a Sunni Muslim covering her face, seven children, chances of that family, one of those seven kids growing up and being radicalized are, you know, pretty high. So you got to make the decisions not based on what looks, good, you know, because for us in Canada, it was about our prime minister wanted to take

pictures with women in hijab because it looks like he's all diverse and inclusive and makes them look so progressive. Well, they have the same skin color. He does his head most of the time. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. But they weren't making decisions based on who are the gay Syrians that are in danger of being killed.

who are the ex-Muslim Syrians who are in danger of being killed right who are the Yazidi Syrians who are in danger of being killed like triage it differently triage it based on not only who is in most danger but who will be able to integrate into your society easier because they're going to already share similar values as you do. But if you're going to choose people whose values are like way to the right of you, then don't be surprised if they have trouble integrating. And yes, I mean, the question is, do you think that those types of people then, that over time they will be able to adapt to a Western culture?

Or do you think that they will always remain on the, outside as a result of their values and their beliefs? I'll ask you this. If you moved to Cuba, do you think over time you would start to think that communism was great? My mother's from Venezuela, so I think you've got the answer to that question. So how about that? So if you moved to Venezuela, would you all of a sudden be like, yay socialism? Well, I do need to lose weight, so maybe for a month or so.

Yeah. But, you know, people don't, their beliefs don't change because they have moved to a different geographic location. They are the same people. And they're going to teach those values to their children as well. And in their schools, if they have private schools and in their mosques or in their churches or in their whatevers. So, no, I don't think it's organically just going to change. Sorry to jump in. Is this about a failure of integration?

Is this about a film? No, and thank you for asking that because that's something that I always like to mention because I need to, you know, there's so much white guilt going on all the time and I'm like, just relax because, and this, you know, I just watched a documentary,

was it ITV? I don't know, it was British, where somebody was going into mosques and she had like a camera and she was recording what they were saying in the mosques and stuff like that. She's a Muslim woman. Now, in those recordings, there was something that happened. They showed a part of what happened, but then they didn't really talk about it, which I think it was important to talk about.

What was important to talk about was how the people in the mosques were teaching the parishioners that they are not allowed to befriend non-Muslims. you can live in their country use their you know because they have better systems in place right better education better social welfare better X Y is it much you know for a million things that are better than like you know Mogadishu or whatever

so come live in their countries but you need to hate what Allah hates and Allah hates non-Muslims so you're not supposed to befriend them or just smile at them on the streets. They are your enemy. Don't forget that. So one of the sayings, which is common, and I also heard it in another documentary that somebody said it, which is if you're born in a barn,

that doesn't make you a horse. And that's something that they tell kids all the time. Just because you're born in Britain, it doesn't make you British. Just because you're born in Canada, it doesn't make you Canadian. You are Muslim. This is your Ummah.

This is your allegiance, your loyalty is to Muslims and your non-Muslims

are your enemy. So I hear this constant thing about like people in the West

thinking that it's their fault that Muslims were that our Muslims are having trouble

with integration. It's like, no, this is a two-way street. They don't

want to integrate with you. Now, this is, of course, I'm making a generalization. This isn't true for all Muslims, but the ones that I'm talking of, the group that I'm talking about, it is true for them. There are Muslims who do not actively do not want to integrate with non-Muslims. They don't want to even learn your language when they're living in your country. So, you know, you have to remember that it's a two-way street. So yes, you know, it's, it's important to make it as easy as possible for people to immigrate or not to immigrate, but to integrate into your

countries by offering free language courses or free culture courses or whatever the case may be. I don't know. I know that Sweden and other countries are doing stuff like that. But also keep in mind that there are some people that aren't going to want what you are offering. and if integration fails to happen, it's not necessarily because you didn't offer the right environment for that, but it's because some people just don't want to. And that was my family. That was exactly my experience.

That's why I went to Islamic schools, and that's why I wasn't allowed to interact with non-Muslim people. Because... I was going to just say, we're running out of time quickly, and every interview we do nowadays, not... No, it's an absolute pleasure speaking with you. But every interview we do now, we have to end with a sort of self-deprecating joke about how positive and upbeat it's been. This has been no exception at all.

Yeah, I think we've asked a lot more questions than we've answered today. But I do think they're at least important to ask. So with that, we've got one more question for you. Which is always what's the one thing that we're not talking about, but we really should be? Well, if I can be, you know, take this moment to actually bring up my organization, Free Hearts, Free Minds, which is an organization that I created to support people who have left us, them, but are living in Muslim majority countries. And so if you're interested to know what we do and how we help people, please go to our website,

freehearts, Freemines.com, and click on testimonials. And then you can read stories from people. who have been to our program and they tell you how we've helped them. And your book is unveiled and where can people follow you online? They can follow me on Yasmin, Muhammad, on Twitter or on Facebook and Instagram as well. That's great. Thank you so much, Yasmin. Thank you so much for watching, guys. If you've enjoyed this interview and you're new to the show, our episodes go out on Wednesday and Sunday, always at 7pm UK time,

and our live stream with Constantine. They are also at 7pm on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday every single week. We will see you very soon with another episode or live stream. Take care. And see you soon, guys.