Lauren Booth – Western Students derail Zionist Dystopia
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the ongoing discussion of the "monster" and "monster" narrative, as well as the use of TikTok and Instagram to promote anti-cibile and anti-cibile groups. They emphasize the need for political engagement and cooperation in addressing issues such as racism and the rise of white supremacy, as well as the importance of education and empowerment of the American public. They also touch on the negative impact of the current political climate on people, particularly on their ability to express themselves and their values. The speaker suggests that there is a need for strong political stance and better understanding of the teachings of the prophet Muhammad, as well as for people to be present to catch the emotional and political nature of the situation.AI: Transcript ©
Gaza is a cipher for the confusion in
the world right now. Americans
have had a veil ripped
off them. They've been shaken from the reverie
of junk food and junk telly and junk
lives
to look and really consider
why are we here?
There's no question that,
the impact
of Gaza
has touched on virtually every corner of of
the world and,
every segment of almost every society. I mean,
we're talking about Muslims, but also non Muslims.
We're talking about
leftists and Jews, and we're talking about mothers
and
grand grandparents
and young and the such.
And the kind of,
of of reaction
to the genocide over the course of the
past 7 months
has been absolutely amazing. But that
impact has not only touched on people,
but it has definitely
impacted on,
public opinion, on societies. People all of a
sudden
and I have to say I'm someone who's
been in this particular fight now for decades.
Probably for the very first time,
I'm noticing this kind of change in media
narrative
and media coverage,
because of the kind of commentators that are
coming on and the things that are that
that they are saying,
how has has all of this seen
from
your your point of view? How how has
it looked? What what's what's your impression of
all of this, especially when you look back
at your homeland
and the kind of reaction there and,
you know, what's happening on the on the
level of media, politics, everything, society. There's two
things here, isn't there? There are the guests
that are coming on to the mainstream
and are saying extraordinary
things that you go, oh, you can't say
that in the UK, but now you can,
which are truths,
which are self evident truths using the word
genocide,
talking about mass murder, talking about the occupation
as a settler colonial occupation,
moving the parameters of the debate. But then
there's something else.
Underneath that is a refusal
by Sky News and BBC
to change their way of thinking,
and they're looking really out of step. So
I'll give you an example. A couple of
days ago,
there was a Sky News presenter
at one of the,
occupation
of campus movements in the states. I don't
can't remember which one. And she said, they're
chanting anti Semitic things here, and you can
hear them going, we're not moving. We're not
you can hear it. Kind of it's a
bit fuzzy. And she's like, yes. I can't
understand what it is, but it's clearly anti
Semitic.
And you're like, never. I mean, that's gotta
be a meme. That's gotta be if there
is a moment
in media history that represents the now, it's
that
false framing continuing
and making,
you know, our main our main street colleagues
look stupid.
You know, the the press conference that was
delivered by Netanyahu
a few days ago, you know, sort of
lambasting
the student movements across America, claiming that they
were calling for the death
for Jews when there were
hundreds
of camps
erected by Jews
against Zionism and against Israel and against the
genocide,
proudly standing in the front lines of all
of this,
it was almost
farcical had it not been so tragic. I
know it absolutely is farcical. And you see
now,
because everybody has a camera phone,
that when people try to fake an attack,
it's really not coming across.
The the the the young woman who said
they stabbed me in the eye when they
just walked past and did that.
You know, how ridiculous that is.
3, 2, 3, 5 years ago, that there
wouldn't have been the counternarrative.
The problem is that she can say that
on the Piers Morgan show. Piers Morgan will
continue to repeat it. And so will the
mainstream media until it's a girl was hospitalized.
Are you happy with this? And you say
it didn't happen. They're like, it did happen.
And so we're we're kind of post truth.
Yeah. We are post truth. You've got Netanyahu
sitting in a studio going, I can't believe
that us, the most moral people on earth
with the best army, are being accused of
terrible things. It's like
and so
how do we and how do our coming
generation
and those who are awakened to this reality
cope with that dystopia?
That's the ongoing question. How do any of
us cope
when they will lie?
But the refreshing thing is that people are
seeing through that, and they're seeing throughout almost
instantaneously.
I mean, for instance, that press conference, Netanyahu,
claiming that there were cause for death
of Jews and, death to America. I mean,
no one was was saying that.
And then people were responding with images of,
you know, people erecting medical tents and, you
know,
erecting medical tents and, you know, the tents
where people can have discussions on various issues
and and crashes for children. And
and and and
this generation, and I experienced this from my
own children as well as from those I
see,
they're extremely nuanced in terms of how to
react, how to fact check. You know, that
term that we we all
all of a sudden had when Trump came
into presidency a few years ago,
but now
the young are actually doing that. They are
fact checking for themselves. They do it. And
and you're correct in terms of the BBC
and Sky and, and CNN and the like.
They're so out of step
that people are switching off, and they're turning
to new forms of information.
And the young particularly are immediately getting to
the heart of the matter, to the truth
they're finding out for themselves. They're getting to
the source of what's happening,
and
they're relaying it in such a creative
fashion.
So this begs the question,
is it that modern technology was which was
brought about by the system
that I label often as being so corrupt,
you know, capitalism and the like and materialism
and consumerism that it's, you know, thrust down
our throats.
Is it that this has found,
you know, that particular way to find out
truth from falsehood?
So listen. The whole but the social media,
you know, on the ground personal
reportage
that has come through the last 10 years
and 5 years really may given us access.
I mean, Gaza was cut off. They said
that, you know, Netanyahu
and his goons still think we cut out
Jazira and nobody will see. Of course, that
is a horror.
And that always pre pre precedes a horror,
but it's not gonna do it because people
find ways around it. But here's the interesting
thing and here's what we should be aware
of, and I hope really clever people are
working on this in this coming generation.
They will stop TikTok,
and they do stop you on Meta,
and they do blind us,
and they do promote certain narratives. And the
majority of Americans are still buying that narrative
because that's what reaches them.
So in this
fog of social media war, are there I
pray that there are really smart people who
are going, we've we're already 2 years into
the alternative.
But who will buy into the alternative? If
we don't own the mainstream, how do we
get the message across? So we're almost kind
of coming to
the end of communication
on TikTok and Instagram.
What next? Yeah. I mean, and the question
what next is the question that everyone is
asking about
because we've been through so many
phases, I would say, or events,
most of which unfortunately have been tragic
and devastating,
where we thought that these were going to
be the transformative
events, but then they sort of
George Floyd. For instance. I mean,
when that happened,
I mean, the whole world was up in
arms. All of a sudden, statues of slave
masters were being brought down
everywhere in France, in Germany, in Britain, in
America.
And then it sort of fizzled out a
little bit. So a couple of things on
on that because it does relate to the
Palestinian struggle. So, Alhamdulillah, I've been invited to
Doha to speak at
a female Palestinian conference
and to workshop ideas on moving forward
in collaboration
with the Western
interest that's coming through these university campuses.
And we have to look at the paradigms
that already exist. George Floyd seemed to be
this changing moment,
but then collapsed.
Well, I have a theory about that, which
is,
not my own theory. It it is out
there that
the George Floyd
Black Lives Matter movement was already corrupted from
within
because it was primarily an LGBTQ
movement.
And you could say that a section of
that movement who were highly paid disliked the
black man as much as the police force.
So you have got a break there. You've
got
people saying, Save this group in society, but
not them.
Right? And it's that all genocides,
hinge upon
separating the men from the women and the
children.
And so we're seeing this. Let's take it
back to Gaza. In Rafa, you've got these
checkpoints now. We'll let the women and children
through. We'll do horrible things to most of
them, but some will get through. But the
men, You Rabbi Allamina, they're not human beings.
We're being asked by these movements continually to
separate the men as if they're they're subhuman
and dangerous.
And that that's an issue for, for our
communities going forward. So when I speak to
my Muslim sisters in the Palestinian movement,
I'm like, be be aware of the golden
handcuffs
of western liberalism.
Because, you know, if we if once the
killing
actually stops and Israel has a number in
mind for mass murder and then they'll go,
we're done here,
Uzibele,
Then there will come people coming in and
saying, hey. We love your women's empowerment group.
Let's do this work together. We'll give you
20,000,000. It's from this wonderful NGO.
And in 5 years, there'll be no hijab,
no face, and no memory of Palestine, and
it'll all be coexistence and da da da
da. So we've gotta be careful of that.
We have to be so strong in our
own narrative. And I think I get the
sense that a lot of the youngsters
from UCL,
from Goldsmiths,
from,
you know, all of the Columbia,
because of the George Floyd movement,
they actually are awake to needing somebody else's
narrative to be alive
and to allowing that. So, yes, it wasn't
a success in that laws didn't change. Not
one life has been noticeably
noticeably saved, unfortunately, on the streets of America.
Right? Nobody's got wealthier. No rep repayment has
been made.
But those kids were still impacted enough, inshallah,
to accept another person's narrative
as gold and worth protecting. Is it is
it also
fair to argue that all of these events
that I alluded to
for the past, let's say, 25 years,
they have sort of played an incremental role,
maybe, you know, step by step in order
to for us to arrive at this particular
moment where this is this this there is
this mass explosion of emotions as well as
convictions as well
as a search into the fundamental
ideas or so called values
of the fathers of the, you know, of
the of the bastions of of democracy and
human rights of the past 50 years or
so. Is it is it fair to say
that they have played that role? I mean,
for instance, I go back
to the anti war movement that, started in
2001, 2002, 2000 and 2, 2000 and 2,000
I'm glad you brought that up. I'm glad
you brought that up because I don't I
don't at the moment know where I stand
on protests. On the one
hand, this wonderful dynamic energy brings people together.
On the other, it's 1,000,000 of hours that
should be that could be, not should, but
could it be spent somewhere else? Isn't this
controlled descent? And the minute it's not controlled,
oh, you can march a 1000000 people down
here, but don't put a tent up there.
We'll beat you and take you. Doesn't that
tell us that that the parrot control paradigm
is kind of okay with protests? However,
I'm now gonna undo that. And I'm gonna
say,
in 2001
2003, sorry, when millions of us took to
the streets against the Iraq cataclysm,
put in by the the the British prime
minister at the time
and,
enacted shock and awe, all of that. Your
brother-in-law. Yeah. Tony Blair,
that we felt
disappointed, horrified as things unrolled. And we're like,
well, that didn't work. If you if 2,000,000
people on the streets can't do anything, what's
the point? Where's the democracy? But
6 years later,
that same prime minister had to leave a
little bit earlier than they wanted.
And the Labour Party had to kind of
maneuver
itself and change its its outlook because of
that. Because we because they they just we
disperse, but we didn't forget.
So I don't know. It's it's slow change.
It's agonizing change.
And you and you have to watch people
die and and be in pain in the
midst of it.
But in a way,
I mean, whilst the devastation of Gaza is
immeasurable
and it's extremely
probably impossible to quantify.
Mean, we talk we continue to talk about
these tens of thousands killed, tens of thousands,
injured, and 1,000 upon 1,000 under the rubble
still.
But it's not
a numbers game. It's
about the devastation of so many lives, of
so many dreams, of so many potentials, of
so many aspirations.
It's about
the devastation
of the the fundamental
values, which
which the western world particularly
held so high
for since the, you know, the 2nd world
war. And for which
the wars in Afghanistan were fought. The wars
in Iraq were fought. So many wars. So
many conflicts around the world. That be it.
And we don't believe don't believe don't believe
they were fought. Well, that was why people
backed them because they claimed
that it was for human right. It was
for the liberation of women. The very same
soldiers who are now arresting young
girls across American campuses. Them out of hijab.
Forcing them out of hijab
and treating them in the most brutal ways.
The very same. But it was only ever
a veneer. So what's interesting is is that
veneer a harder cell now? Is it more
fragile than it's ever been? Is it the
pecking of a bird at the shell of
an egg that and something is about to
emerge? You can't interfere with that process. It
has to be peck, peck, peck, and take
that amount of time. Maybe.
Inshallah, God God willing. What's,
what's your impression as to the
the political discourse,
the kind of argument
that we need to use this moment in
order to impact the political class,
to tell
them that we don't want
this anymore. We want something else.
What do you think of this? You're not
gonna like this. I don't believe in politics.
I don't believe in any of it.
You don't believe I don't believe I don't
believe in this class of politicians
as having any morality. Something has gone badly
wrong with the human being, and it's nihilism.
And it is a a lack of faith.
It's a lack of belief in God.
And these these, I'm sorry, they are godless,
monetized,
robotized
human beings
who you can't reach. I mean, how it's
almost
it's akin to to a physical pain
to watch a girl stand up at a
major talk of Hillary Clinton and say, children
are dying in Gaza. My family just got
killed. And she's like, can you get her
out of here, please? And you're like, oh
god. There are demons walking amongst us.
How do how do we reach those people?
They don't want us to reach them. They'll
just build walls
and, and put police in the way. It's
almost isn't it almost a reaching a just
write them off and do something different?
I have to examine this one. No. No.
No. I mean I just don't believe that
they have any ethics. I don't believe there's
an ethical system. You you have a point,
but
my investigation, if you wish, will
depart from the point as to
well,
in light of the kind of reality that
we have. Okay. So the reality is solid.
Yeah. Reality is polluted on every single level.
I'm with you. You know, I
think that, the,
you know, the new liberal,
ideology that's painted everything,
that brought us this
that had the facade of democracy but now
bit by bit is being revealed as
something akin to the kind of brutal dictatorships
that we find across the Arab world
only in a nicer garb, in a suit
and tie, in a, you know, kind of
neat cutlery sort of put in a French
etiquette point of view, but is now being
revealed by the people who are trying to
change that kind of system. Is it a
bit like the end of The Wizard of
Oz? Right? A bit. Where where Dorothy's standing
there in this big voice, I will do
this. And she goes behind. There's a little
man going, hey. Give me a minute. And
there's behind them and then it turns out
to be nothing whatsoever.
Is this a bit of this? And the
question is okay. So
how do we start
to,
to change all of this? How do we
begin
to address these issues? How to how do
we get back
on the right track, on the track towards
building something else? Now,
you and I are both Muslims. We have
our fundamental beliefs in that, you know, the
entire universe is focused and the focal point
is
Allah. We we all know that.
But the fact is that the majority of
people aren't Muslims, and they do not depart
from that same point. Well, now you've raised
it. Okay. That's that's that's problematic.
And that's problematic. Why? Because that void has
been filled by nihilism. And nihilism is a
structural belief where
nothing exists, nothing matters, and that leads to
depression, psychosis,
and a very dark gloomy way of looking
at, let me just get what is here
now. So when I'm talking about, I don't
believe that the political process
can work as it stands,
I think we have to go deeper into
westernism.
Westernism
is a you know, I'm not so so
sure about white supremacy. I think, look, there
is an umbrella of westernism which is has
been in place for 4 and a half
100 years.
And part of that is white supremacy.
Alright? But there but but the umbrella of
this idea of we know what is best,
and we're gonna take what we have and
smash every culture until we, the small number,
get it.
And then you add that philosophy
of nihilism,
which which has been coming through Foucault
and through other philosophers
in the last 100, 150 years. Horrible, toxic,
nothing means anything.
The hope is, by the grace of Allah,
this generation are finding a cause that matters.
So I think do I think this is
a turning point? Yes. But it's westernism we
need to be looking at, not tinkering with
a with a deliberately
smashed
system of politics.
If you, if you had an audience and,
you had a few minutes with the young
people
who are
in Colombia or in Harvard or, you know,
camping in UCL, for instance.
What would be your message to them if
you could, you know, give them something
that would
assert their fundamentals
that led them to leave their classrooms,
leave their books
and such and their preparation for their exams
and sits and raise the Palestinian flag
and sort of
refuse the accusations, the demonizations,
the,
you know, the the the charges that they
are being,
you know, anti Semitic, for instance, or the
such. They are giving so much in order
to be there to make that decision. I
just wanna roll it back a bit to,
and I will I will I will address
that because it's a beautiful question. Okay. Let
let's do that first.
I would say solidarity
is beautiful,
but you can't lead it.
You can't lead it because you're still in
in a place
of of relative luxury,
and you have a different way of life.
Are you ready for the Muslim women in
hijab to say, I wanna be married, I
want my children to be safe, and I
want to worship Allah to Allah. Are you
really in solidarity?
I or are you
at some point going to say this is
the way you you should live and tell
us how to live? That's what we need
to be molding now is a shoulder to
shoulder
with the oppressed people leading.
That's not easy
for Westerners to listen to. We have to
take them forward on that journey and say
solidarity
is what you're doing now. But it only
continues if you listen to the to the
people
who
who are having their rights,
taken from them. So that's gonna be really
interesting. And I remember
when I went to,
I was in Gaza in 2009
after Operation Cast Lead. It seemed like it's
now a kind of footprint of what was
to follow,
a horrible
period of bombing,
you know, mass civilian casualties, 2,000 on the
on that, which seemed massive, subhanAllah.
And a journalist,
I wasn't Muslim at the time, he said,
come and meet my wife. Now I was
in solidarity. I put my life on the
line. I'd gone on a flotilla to to
Gaza. I was in it to win it.
Right?
But still,
I came from the west. I had my
ideals of what freedom looked like. And in
my mind, I thought,
she's probably gonna be really nice and really
boring. Stay at home, mom, nothing to say.
So I go to their apartment in Gaza
City,
and lo and behold, guess what? She serves
a feast.
I mean, I could not cook that if
you gave me 10 days
and a team of people with me, and
this is something for a guest. And I'm
looking going, well, you know, she can do
that because she's a stay at home mom.
You know, I'm brilliant. I've got my mind.
I I I don't focus on cooking. We
westerners, we we do something different. So I
said to her after this amazing meal,
you know,
it can't be easy with your 11 children
to to cook a a meal like this.
I'm very grateful. It's so patronizing.
And I remember she said, yes. It is,
not easy, especially doing a PhD in further
maths. I'm like,
I was furious.
I was furious inside. And then she proceeded
to very politely mop the floor with me
intellectually
8 8 days till Sunday.
And I that was a lesson I had
to learn. You cannot bring your preconceptions of
who, what, where
with you. You have to be constantly letting
go. And they're very brave.
And we love these kids. Are you ready
to let go of what you think the
world is? And if you are, then then
we can make a future together, inshallah.
It's
again, I come back to where
where do you start? I mean, because you
had this physical encounter.
You had this face of it. You,
you know, happen to
go into this person's
dominion,
into their lives,
See them firsthand.
Not everyone not everyone around the world has
that luxury. And especially now, I mean, come
on. I mean, sometimes, you know, I I
think we're so unfair. I mean,
what does Gaza need to do more
to educate us? What does it what do
the people of Gaza need to give
more
in order to
open our eyes? So painful, isn't it? When
you when you see
our beloved, brothers and sisters who have taken
up the camera,
maybe they were doing it before
the genocide, but have been daily
saying, I'm not gonna communicate with you anymore
because you don't care.
And and I'm gone. You won't see me
again. And people are dropping off. And people
are vanishing. And you don't know whether they're
alive or they just don't wanna tell us
their reality anymore. But your question was,
you know, how do we communicate that? And
it's a really good one.
I
when I was 16,
I remember being on my college campus,
and a speaker from the ANC came
to teach us about apartheid.
And and you can hear about apartheid
from someone who
you live beside every day and go to
college with and even a professor. But when
you have someone who's like, I saw this
with my eyes and bring you into their
reality and you are joining their struggle,
that's far more powerful. So I think,
the next the next stage is to equip
and
help the Palestinian voices
to who are in English. This is very
vital.
Okay? The holocaust wouldn't have mattered if it
is saying stayed in German and Yiddish.
Right?
English is is right now the language because
because this is the the the global elite.
Right? You've got to get your speakers lined
in a row. They're gonna be winning women
speakers. You've got to have your your people
paying for their flights, making sure that they're
they're
they're organized and getting them to speak to
as many people as possible. We want those
voices. You and not me, not you. I
should be redundant. I wanna be redundant in
this.
Write us out
with the Palestinian
voices.
But again,
one step ahead, the Zionists are like, we
can't have them on campus because it's hate
speech from the river to the sea. Even
talking about Palestine, unless you say it doesn't
exist, is hate speech.
So I think the first battle is really
to delineate
American and British laws and European laws about
free speech. I think that's actually
the first quarter battle. Mhmm.
I,
I happen to stumble across,
a video clip,
where Mohammed al Kurd,
from Jerusalem,
where he addresses the camera.
And
he says something quite powerful, but something that
is very, very nuanced.
And he responds to the charges of either
anti Semitism
or the like or anti Jewish
or Jewish hatred or or the like.
And he says something
which,
you know, since then, I've been I've been
thinking to myself,
how can this be,
how can this be articulated
in a
clear, in a nuanced,
in a concise
way
to today's
activists,
but also to the general public who are
still undecided.
And, basically, what he says is, listen. The
fact that my house
was robbed
by
invaders and settlers who happened to be Jewish
is not my fault.
You can't accuse me of
of of
Jewish
hatred when it was
someone
who happened to be Jewish, who happened to
be carrying the Star of David,
who killed my neighbors,
who ransacked my land, and who are now
committing the genocide in Israel. Stop asking me
this.
It's not my fault.
Had it not been someone Jewish, I would
have stood said the same stood the same.
It just so happened that it was someone
who happened to be Jew who
was proud
to use their Jewishness in order to justify
the killing, the ransacking, the thieving,
and the harassing. And still to this very
day,
I find that enormously powerful. It's been a
very clever trick, hasn't it, to to say
that on the one hand,
the right wing, the settler colonial,
mechanisms, they're so violent and so ready to
hurt and maim are at the same time
so fragile on the front line They're going
like this. You stabbed me in the eye.
You made me upset. You're you're wearing that
kefir in the street, and I'm feeling triggered.
Get a life.
I really like
what, and and applaud what is being said
now. You know, you look stupid, right? This
whole fake fragility thing, when behind the woman
who falls to the ground and nothing's happened
to her, our guys coming up and pushing
our our sisters. There were and these are
associate professors of universities.
Did you see that? Jonathan, somebody who was
in her face calling her the, you know,
the b word. And
no, we don't put up with it. You're
lying,
and you're whole, and you're violent,
and we don't have to apologize for our
stance.
It's,
yeah. I mean, the the fact that
the fact that people
have the gall,
to say I'm offended by you raising the
Palestinian flag when actually the
the country or the state or the entity
that you are defending
is actively involved in committing a genocide.
And yet
I'm the one who should look after your
feelings
and not raise a flag or not chant
from the river to the sea is And,
Anas, there's a there's a deeper question here
about who gets to be angry.
Right?
Why is it always
that the oppressed non white person has to,
you know,
Appease. Try to appease and make a difference
in in a certain way. So I'll give
you an example. You can march along this
street, but you put a tent there and
you can't. You're allowed to say peace and
love, but you can't say free Palestine. What
as long as we are forced
to protest
in a mechanism
that is shutting us down,
then then we're not gonna make a difference.
So I really applaud all of our student
leaders who who are saying, we're gonna chant
from the river to the sea, and that
is actually not aggressive compared to anything that
you're doing. I remember my husband said,
that as a man from the Caribbean,
his most disappointing
moment in the whole of the Roots series,
remember in the 19 seventies about the slave
trade, was when Kunta Kinte,
they finally caught what, you know, had a
moment of retribution potential against the slave master.
And he threw
down, you know, the whip and ran away.
And he said as a as a as
a Black person, that made him feel sick
because he saw in that, oh, that's how
you sell, like, the roots story.
You've gotta be nice in the end and
play nicely with your oppressor, and we're gonna
delineate how, how that looks like.
Yeah. It's,
I think it's, it needs a lot of,
introspection.
It needs a lot of
examination as to how we even as as
activists, as people who believe in the cause,
with people who think that we stem
from the right place
and are saying the right things,
I think much of our beliefs as well
need need a lot of examples. Palestinians
from the left position for decades,
don't talk about your own,
resistance
has had is a shame on the movement.
And And also, you know, one of the
arguments continuously is and whilst I do not
dispute for a single second
the fact that,
essentially, Palestine
and, obviously, the case of Gaza
is a humanitarian
issue,
But to take away and try to sanction
the religious and belief elements within,
I think is doing the whole cause a
great disservice.
Well, where where did that lead the Palestinians
in the 19 eighties? It led them to
the Oslo Accords. Thank you very, very much.
We democratized.
We we we dressed like you. We swallowed
cover. But we, I feel Palestinian.
The Palestinians
said that they've done this and they've they've
swallowed the narrative. And here's Yasser Arafat. Here
we are. And you just destroy the land
from thereon in. But in a way, you
know, you destroy us from inside as Muslims.
That's what I'm talking about here. I'm talking
about this as an ummah subject as well.
Because there like you say, there is definitely
a move to
you know, there are already people looking at
what
post
genocide
Palestine looks like. Today, Tulkarem
has a huge invasion
by the Zionists
on all different levels, chewing up the streets,
smashing the houses, killing the young.
And
once they're done with that and their dream
is to to to push the Palestinians into
an even smaller space,
then the Palestinians will be told, now you
can speak in this way and you can
dress this way. And and you've lost Al
Aqsa, but it didn't really matter because Islam
is only beneath the the your question is
one about land.
They were there are outside forces who want
this to be a flag waving moment
because what has happened in the Arab world
is
ridiculous.
Everybody behind their little flag, their little invented
flag.
So how old is your flag?
52 years. Oh, congratulations.
And I die for my country. It's like,
oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. What does what I
mean, since you you brought up the subject,
I mean, what kind of impression does that
leave with you when you
see, you know, on one hand, we're looking
at across America, across the UK, across many
cities in Europe
and how people, young and old, are responding
to Gaza are defying. I mean, I was
talking with a German with a friend from
Germany the other day.
And, I mean, Germany has been absolutely
horrendous, I mean, and has brought back laws
that have been
absolutely,
you know, in the echelons of history and
totally
draconian,
brought them back
particularly for the sake of the pro Palestine
campaign
and have gone full circle, apparently. I mean,
they're now doing the very same things
that they did as, you know, when the
Nazis was was in charge, but now they're
claiming that they're doing it in order to
counter
anti Semitism, but doing the very same things.
And yet he tells me that there is
not a day that goes by by without
a demonstration with 1,000 upon 1,000, sometimes 100
of 1,000 people. So are we not? I
think the problem is we're not hearing the
German voice. I I haven't heard many Germans
interviewed
to say what it's like under that. We
know that there's this tier of this broken
political system who are
are selling, making money out of,
the the the guns and, guns, bombs, whatever
they sell to Israel. Right?
But what are the people actually thinking about
this, I wonder? I I don't actually don't
know. I think, that would be an interesting
discussion to have. But but, I mean, carrying
on from my question, basically,
you see this
and people defying
laws, defying threats,
defying
intimidation, actually, actually, actual intimidation.
And then you look to the neighbouring countries,
the Arab countries, the Muslim countries,
and you see,
I don't know whether it's it's paralysis,
whether it's in diff I'm pretty sure that
deep inside people feel, you know, just like
ourselves. They're they're boiling inside. They're simmering. I
mean, they're they're just ready to go and
do whatever it takes in order to save
Palestinian child with such.
But the fact that, you know, on the
face of it, you see virtually nothing apart
from pockets. Can we give that old example,
Annas, about the elephant?
You get a baby elephant,
and a circus
ties a heavy chain around its front leg
for 6 months. And every time it pulls,
they beat they they beat the baby elephant.
When that elephant is big, they can have
a piece of of of rope very light
to a peg in the ground, and it
won't resist anymore. So I think when we're
talking about our brothers and sisters in in
the Arab world, let's look back to uprisings
and and,
protests that have happened that I'm not even
aware of in the last 70 years, because
there was a huge passion for Palestine.
And haven't they been beaten into submission?
I was speaking to a Palestinian Jordanian sister,
and she said, you know, my father fled
the Nakba.
And
she's very disturbed right now because he will
not even
watch anything on Gaza.
He won't watch it, and he's silent about
it. What can you do? What can you
do? And her theory, which is interesting, is
that
a lot of the Arab states were given
Western money,
Right? The gold and handcuffs that I spoke
about at the beginning.
Jordan was developed
in the seventies, eighties, nineties by
international aid.
Right? And they all got kind of fat
on the roasted calf and very comfortable with
it and don't rock the boatism.
Don't rock the boatism. And that doesn't work
for somewhere like Egypt where there's mass poverty.
But places
the places in the gulf region,
we're doing okay. Don't don't mess with us.
The prophet, peace be upon him,
was once asked, what do you fear for
your nation?
And at that point, he didn't say famine,
hunger,
enslavement,
poverty.
He said wealth.
Wealth. And, of course, you know, we become
wealthy. We fear death. We wanna hold on
to it, And we and we lose our
focus. We lose who we are, and we
lose our
our empathy.
Yeah.
You're you've been involved with the attempts
to,
sail a boat that would break the siege
on Gaza and that would deliver aid.
You worked on this for months on
end, and you saw
activists and supporters come from all corners of
the of the world in order to take
part
in this freedom for flotilla.
It might not have transpired.
It might not have happened for a variety
of reasons, many of which political. But,
what was your impression? What what what did
you think
as, you know, you were making those calls?
You were liaising. You were organizing. You were
speaking to the media about this. Let me,
first of all, not accept the premise of
that question. I came on quite late because
I offered some support with social media. So
there are campaigns called the free,
the freedom, the coalition,
And there's EHA that the major charity in
Turkey. Turkey. Yeah. And their and their their
their strategy groups, I wasn't a part of
that. But I have been,
you know you know,
a part of it for the last 6
weeks, we can say.
And I have met the people
who
were
willing to put their lives on the line.
Because
every of the 250
plus people who came from around the world
to take these boats to Gaza full of
8
knew that there was a high chance
of Israeli attack.
And I think what we're seeing
spread now, and let's talk about the young
again on these campuses, is not on my
watch.
When you ask,
the
elderly lady,
who can barely remember her own name, to
be quite honest. You know, I met her
3 times a day. She said, what's your
name, honey? And it's like, doesn't matter.
She's like,
you know, she doesn't wanna live and die
with this happening in her lifespan without having
done something.
And I think that
is the most moving thing of all. And
on the flotilla this time,
there were a great deal of Muslims, by
the way, a great deal of Arab Muslims.
Jordanians were well represented.
I think there were some Egyptians.
So that young voice is coming through
from from from our And let's not forget
the last time
this happened, there was the case of the
Mavi Marmara where people were actually killed.
9 people,
I think 9 people were killed.
Dozens injured by gunfire.
The,
Israelis
opening fire from lines from the helicopter.
I've spoken to survivors
who were standing behind the cameraman who's filming
it. They shot through the camera lens
and took out the back of his head.
The and and a list of people that
they wanted to deliberately
assassinate on board, which which included some some
some shi'uk, subhanAllah,
that were found later on. And
yet people are still willing to do that.
And I think if we can
really latch onto the fact
that hearts move people
and the intellect must follow the heart and
that we must be brave hearts,
We're
all going to have to be brave in
some way. You know, there was
when you first met me
15 years ago,
I was considered
with, along with many other people, a rogue
voice. Like, I had people say to me
afterwards, we didn't wanna speak to you because,
you know, the whole Palestine thing, the rocking
the boat thing.
And, you know, we were pushed,
marginalized,
deplatformed
by the Muslim community.
You know, we need to sort ourselves out.
In the UK right now,
there have been a number of,
new, new councilors
voted in
on,
Gaza genocide.
What does it mean in the UK platform?
I pray to Allah that they don't
negotiate their beliefs in order to stay in
power. They don't become
a point of,
negotiation or compromise.
Yeah, that's that's a very
good point. And to be perfectly honest, when,
you know, I'm part of the Muslim vote
as well as various other campaigns in order
to get the vote organized.
And I have to say that the
the the the question that comes up and
we're confronted with more than any other probably
is
what guarantee is that,
once this person who is, you know, saying
all the right things right now
might not
change their position once they're in office. So
the position then, and you and you'll know
this better than me, is if you flood
the market,
then a percentage of them are gonna get
through. Right?
Hopefully, that that they won't be alone. They
won't feel isolated. They won't feel like they're
surrounded and
silent in government and then have to leave
office in order to say what they actually
think. Say it while you're there.
Say it from day 1. By the way,
that's not only,
Muslim politicians. Apparently,
most politicians who leave office or are on
the brink of leaving office, all of a
sudden have this, you know, kind of revelation
and start speaking and saying all the brilliant
things. You know, I've had journalists,
say that
in BBC news offices, journalists, young young journalists
are crying
at news bulletins like, I'm writing this awful
script.
You know, where is the backup for them?
Where is it gonna be their outlet?
Are we creating structures that are going to
say, we can bring you
to this? Where are our young voices going
to go? And I think that's that's where
we need to be looking.
What do you think
British Muslims
ought to be concerned with right now? I
mean, obviously, we have Gaza. We have Palestine.
But what
should they be thinking of? Because let me
let me,
paint a picture,
within my circle of friends, which I'm talking
about a couple of dozen very close friends.
We confide in each other and as such.
There is
quite a percentage of them
who I would suggest
are
virtually tired of everything, and they're looking for
someone somewhere else
to go, to migrate, to raise their kids,
to have families
and to sort of escape from,
you know, we used to talk about the
rat race,
but now it's more than that. It's about,
you know, whether you talk about personal
issues and the cost of living crisis, which
is
which is, you know, debilitating.
It's it's it's that bad.
As well as the narrative,
the escalation and the rise in Islamophobia,
as well as
and I, you know, I I'm I'm
I'm sorry to say this, but whilst Britain
remains
far way ahead of France and Germany and
the likes in terms of, you know, the
the the the scope of freedom and the
ability to to be active and to say
what you think,
But
comparing to where we were 10, 15, 20
years ago,
it is nigh on, you know, an
autocracy almost. I mean, the kind of laws
that are being brought in. I mean, we
can mention the Rwanda law, but, you know,
they have the borders and nationalities law, which
is just there lingering in the in the
sidelines just waiting to to to be at
the fore.
The ban on protests, the curtailing of freedoms
of of speech. What's happening to people who
dare
speak their minds and what's happening in their
jobs, you know, for their future careers, for
their pensions, and the like.
People, you know, are now I have to
say, they're getting tired of where we are.
But at the same time, when they ask
me, you know, because I travel around, so
they come to me and say, you know,
and as well, where do you think we
should go? Where do you think we should
go? What's the good I you know, I'm
I'll be honest. I wouldn't dare,
you know, give an answer.
And and that sort of fills me with
with sadness first, but also trepidation because
I am a believer
that we still have a job to do
and that we can
do that job. That job is not an
impossible mission. It's a doable job.
But we just need to,
you know, organize, open our minds, open our
contact books, get in touch with people and
have those discussions. Do you believe
that
Islam and attachment to the masjid
is going to be a focal point from
which beauty can flourish in the United Kingdom?
And should that be the starting point?
I would like to think so, and I
think,
it is possible,
but
I don't think we're there yet. I don't
think we're there yet.
So what comes to fill that gap? Business?
That that's that's a very good question. So
is it? That's a very, very good question.
And that's something that
I think more and more people are not
only Muslims by the way, are sort of,
asking about. And that's how many, by the
way, are finding Islam and where we're seeing
all those clips on TikTok from across the
Atlantic, you know, in America, Canada, as well
as across Europe where people are saying, you
know, hang on. You know, what's happening in
Gaza has
made me ask questions that I never thought
of posing before.
And all of a sudden I'm reading these
verses of the Quran. I'm finding,
you know, these answers which I'm deeply impacted
by in such. I think
that that is
a potential. That's
Look. Can we live simpler?
Can we live simpler in the UK? Can
we live communal?
Can we opt out? We have so much
money. We're one of the we're we're we've
got the poorest community in the UK and
some of the richest,
and that's a disconnect.
And I and and and we we we
need the money from the richest to really
go into projects
that are going to, at first and foremost,
build up the solidarity
with their faith,
with goodness,
with with sharing what we have with those
in need. I'll give you an example.
There was,
10 years ago, a masjid
who,
was asked by young women, why are you
only having a crush for Muslims? We we've
got nothing here. You know? And they started
to invite them in and gradually. And and
that's a beautiful thing.
Other masjids,
offering free free health checkups
because you have to wait 2 or 3
weeks and you might not see the same
doctor. You know, we have these, a great
level of professionalism
in the UK.
Can we focus on that? Yes. Go focus
on the politics and it will or it
won't work. But in the meantime,
our criteria as mopmanin,
as believers,
is to serve our community. And when we
start doing that, that's where we're gonna make
the difference. But that comes through us knowing
the deen. And if we're still churning out
kids with expensive degrees and no deen,
well.
1 of my local mosques actually has has
the kind of facilities and space to,
to arrange
open, you know, open mornings whereby
pensioners come in for a cup of tea
and a biscuit. Just have a chat, you
know, just meet with each other. People who
come across living on their own, meeting with
virtually no one throughout days and days attend,
you know, they come to the mosque every
Tuesday morning, I think, you know, for a
couple of hours where they meet with others,
Zalinga, and
they happen to be not Muslims. And then
you know they disperse once they hear the
adhan. And now they know. They know what
the adhan is about. And they know what
it means. And they are asking well, you
know. Where was the chap who had such
a beautiful voice, you know, from last week
and the such. So in a way,
mosques
have that kind of potential
and capacity. But
what's what's
I
I personally always talk about in in whenever
I'm talking or lecturing such, especially to a
Muslim audience, is that
we need to,
we need to understand, I believe, the teachings
of the prophet far better in terms of
I mean, one of the things I constantly
say and and I'm not being, you know,
a a a jurist or opposing as a
jurist. What I, you know, when I,
hear the word the the concept of the
Ummah,
I personally
expand that to include everyone everyone because they
are, you know, the people whom amongst whom
we live.
Now calling upon them, inviting them, you know,
providing for them, being at their service and
as such, I think is is the way
in which to introduce Islam. We we have
we have we have the human community and
we have the Muslim community. And the Muslim
community right now needs to catch the human
community.
We've always needed to do that. But now
with this,
we circle back around to nigh nihilism.
Kids cutting themselves at 13 because they don't
know why they're alive. I was speaking to
a a psychologist in Turkey,
a child psychologist. I said, what are you
seeing? This is really interesting. Tell me. She
said, the big thing that she's hearing is,
I don't know why I'm alive,
and therefore, I don't wanna live.
Wow. We are there to catch that. And
you made me tear up then because, you
know, Europe has an aging population.
Be nice to Muslims. We'll be looking after
you in your old age. And, alhamdulillah, we're
equipped to do that. I know a wonderful
convert sister. She's English as can be,
and she she's converted to Islam, and she
looks after people at the end of life
with such care.
And but but you're not allowed to speak
to them about, do you want me to
speak to you about God? Would you like
that? You can't even and and
we just need to be there to catch
the elderly and help them. And I was
thinking about my grandmother who was,
well, I forgive her, a real racist.
And I thought she lived in Wembley. And
as Wembley was changing, I thought if that
old white lady is walking along a street
and there's all our Asian and Arab brothers
and sisters there, are they gonna help her?
Or are they gonna stick to their own?
That's when we're not doing our job. That's
when everybody has a right to resent us.
Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. I mean,
you've now
seen matters, let's just say, from various perspectives.
So I would suggest that you have,
you have an impression
that
isn't available to most people because you've seen
things from outside of Islam,
from inside of Islam. You've encountered
projects that are of a humanitarian nature, a
political nature and the such.
And you've also commented on what is so
wrong
with
with with the West, probably the world also.
I mean, I don't know about China and
Russia and such. I'm not an expert.
But,
the Western world today about
do you foresee
because of Gaza, because of this reaction
to Gaza, do you foresee
a change of a major nature? Do we
are we to expect,
a transformative
moment anywhere in the near future? I mean,
let me let me tell you what many
young people tell me. They say what's the
use of the United Nations. They tell me
about,
okay. So the ICJ case presented by South
Africa was absolutely fantastic to to watch. It
was a brilliant spectacle.
Spectacle of democracy. But, but okay. So what's
gonna happen next?
All of this, yet the mainstream media
still fails to grasp the very basics
of what is truly human. I mean, we
you know, in media, we always tell young
budding media professionals that it's the human angle.
It's the human angle. Okay. How
much more human can you be,
you know, when when when seeing what's happening
in Gaza? Yet,
you know, the failure to grasp this, to
understand,
and to reflect
is staggering.
But people are are on board. I mean,
they they get this. They understand this. They're
having the discussions amongst themselves.
Anas, here's the thing.
Gaza
is a cipher
for the confusion in the world right now.
And
Americans
have had a veil ripped
off them. They've been shaken from the reverie
of junk food
and junk telly and junk lives
to look and really consider
why are we here?
What is is there a purpose? These people
have a purpose. Stay put.
They have a purpose.
Worship Allah. They have a purpose. Look after
each other.
Am I doing that?
And I think that is the revolution that
is happening, the self reflection revolution,
but in light of doing things for other
people.
Because this narcissistic
decade that we've had, there's a great documentary.
Everybody please watch this called The Century of
the Self. Don't know if you've watched it
yet by Adam Curtis. I heard it. I
heard of it. Yeah. Genius. Right? We have
been convinced to look into ourselves. And once
I perfect myself, I'm gonna
be the right person to be around. And
in the meantime, you do nothing.
Well, I think that's that's been taken away.
And I think the big outcome is going,
we're in a fork in the road. I
can't say what the outcome is.
Are we going towards the end of the
time? Times and in our in our tradition
and our understanding,
this is going towards the Dajjal and the
preparation for that You Rabb, in which case
this fitna is small.
Or are we another chance for humanity to
build something before that ultimately comes?
Thank you, Lauren. That was fantastic.
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