Modern Trends- Orientalism – Perceptions of Islam

Salam Alaikum Warahmatullahi Wabarakatuh on Welcome to another session where we're going to be talking about perceptions of Islam and Muslims throughout the world. Now this is extremely important because obviously, a big part of the media discourse in particular, is this is the fact that someone will come and say Islam is and then fill in the blanks, or Muslims are and then fill in the blanks. Now, a lot of what we have to do, as let's say, Dawa carriers or whatever is then combat these misconceptions, and or misnomers. But before we, before we can do that, we need to kind of have frameworks in place. And we need to be aware of both the literature and the data that surrounds

Islam and Muslims, the most cutting edge data the most, up to date data relating to Islam, and Muslims in this session, that's what we're going to be doing, basically, and we're going to equip everyone here, with both the frameworks which are very useful to us in our responses, and also the data which is also useful to us when we're speaking to people. And I'll be honest, in this kind of session,

a lot of my own public, you know, discussions with people, especially when they speak about Muslims, because that's what, that's what many people in the world are interested in. Most people in, for example, Western culture, are not necessarily interested in religion to follow by interested in the people that follow it, because people have a sociological interest. And so when they say Muslims believe in this, or Muslims do that, and Muslims, whatever they're interested in this and and a lot of what they say will be inaccurate. How do you combat that without yourself generalizing in a certain way speaking without data, we're going to be talking about it. But before I start with that,

I think it's important

to mention a few frameworks which the Western Academy has recognized. And I think everyone needs to know these things. One of them is what's referred to as the post colonial

analysis school of thought, the post colonial school of thought, who knows anything about the post colonial school of thought, what is the post colonial school of thought? Who are some of the main protagonists of the school? Who are some of the main what are some of the main books on this?

Okay, so this is why it's so important because

this is very important, I'm sure when I say you'll, you'll recollect, but probably one of the main protagonists is as Woodside.

And he wrote a book called Orientalism. And Orientalism was, in this book Orientalism at Woodside. He used two or three different frameworks.

He used what is called Gramsci and framework,

a Gramsci was a Marxist thinker.

And he also used the post modernist framework and the use of kind of discourse analysis, he, I would argue, these are incoherent, like, because post, post modernism,

and Gramscian frameworks are not in not entirely in unison with one another.

I'm not sure if you noticed, but when we were talking to Jordan Peterson, tangent, right? He says this all the time, he says, post colonial Marxists. I'm not sure if you've noticed this. And I asked him, Who do you mean by them? And then he mentioned Derrida. Do you remember that back and forth that I had with him? I said, Who do you intend, with the post colonial sorry, the post,

modernist Marxist and he's Jacquees, Derrida.

I certainly agree with that. And then I said to him, he said, I said, it's a worthless battle. I don't want to get into it. But just to let you know, since we're talking about it now, post modernism is post modernism, if you remember, attempts to deconstruct meta narratives, so anything which is a meta narrative tries to deconstruct it,

including Marxism. So in other words, Marxism is not. It's not

commensurate with post modernism. Now, Edward sites however, Edward Saeed, he says he in the beginning of his book, Orientalism, he said, I'm going to use two or three frameworks. He's I'm going to use the post modernists framework, I'm going to use the Graham sheen framework, and I'm going to use

of discourse analysis.

An argument that can be made, I'll be honest, I think in the first master's I've done I made this argument to good effect. And my professor said this is fair enough argument is that these two frameworks don't actually make sense together, going back to Jordan Peterson's imaginary phantom postmodernist Marxist that he talks about. There is no post modernists Marxist they don't exist. This this segment of individuals

Make person that he's created and So who are these people? Jacquees? Derrida, he's not that if you ask Jack who is Derrida or Michel Foucault? Are you a Marxist? They will say we're not Marxists. We believe in this instead. Anyway, point is

Edward side.

He, he writes really well.

Like if you if you really want to have

a good experience with the English language in an argumentative structure, Edward cites books is one of the top top 50 books you can read in English language.

Especially Orientalism. He's written, he's written many other books, we've got them here, in fact, covering Islam in this shelf a few so no one wants them. These books he writes well, but not as good as oriented and Orientalism. He does discourse analysis. And what he does is this basically his main argument, is that the way and he gives the example of the National Geographic, I'm not sure if you've come across this magazine, the National Geographic is a magazine, where she talks about like animals and this and that. And

he says that the way in which the West is now looking at the east,

is that the and he uses this phrase, they are used as Oh, they are looked at as subjects of inquiry.

Like zoo like creatures. And by the way, I'm subscribed to the National Geographic.

And that is like that is quite ridiculous. On Instagram, I see sometimes like the stuff that comes up, you see, on the one hand, like a parrot, and the bear and a monkey, and another man, a black man, Sunny. So in your mind, what you're doing is you're creating associative links, like this is we're going to analyze the black man, just like we're going to analyze the power and the dog and whatever it may be. What you won't find the National Geographic is a white person, then there was a suit. Do you see what I'm saying?

Do you get the point here? So yeah, go ahead. Basically, just like subjects of inquiry to look at? Yeah, like he's like, you know, like a museum discipline different humans, who just find like someone in the hijab extra, like, random mother. Nature. So yeah, exactly. So what that already does, and this is extremely powerful, it's not, there's no argument being made here. And as I say, it's we have to,

we have to now move past arguments.

There's a deeper psychological manipulation happening here.

It's association.

So we start off by showing you, the monkey.

Then we show you the power. And then we'll show you

the black man, you know, in Kenya, with his fluffy thing and colors on his face, or whatever he's doing. So what the man is doing here is the link, there's a blank moment. And there's a parrot here, they're all animals, basically.

And then, like you said, the next thing is a hijab, a woman.

And the next thing is a woman in Iran, maybe it's you know,

but you won't find a woman, a white woman walking to the, you know, the building, to go to work.

In fact, it would just be unusual to find anything like that, because it's seen as the muscle and with a firearm put it that way. They are seen as the normative and we are seen as the exception.

Do you see what's happening? So Orientalism is it's called authorization, dehumanization, these words are very important. There are other rising the alien eating.

The rest of the world is Eurocentrism.

So the center of the world is Europe, and everything else is peripheries. hashey, if so, you know, on the side.

So this is how he argues. And what he does is he brings all these examples like for the National Geographic from this novel from this place, 1001 nights, and how about 1001 nights and for Lila Lila, has been trans has when it was translated into English, there was something called orphan tail and how they try they translated it in Orientalizing way to make Aladdin or whoever the protagonist may be, to make him seem unusual.

It's always this is called Western gaze. This is the Western gaze is always like, the West is looking at this as you know, the rest in a certain way.

So it's not I mean, it's not as simple as this Orientalizing discourse. It's not as simple as someone coming and saying

yeah, the West is best. In fact, there's a book called was one of the one of these ex Muslims. West is best gotta hit the bottom shelf because we put these kinds of low level books on the

wall

We should put it in the toilet. Maybe that's something else

here that I mean that that is, I mean Westerners in British culture that's not seen as normal. So England is best is slight as to come in creep into conservative politics. This is the best country in the world, Boris has started it and now let's trust and they start using this language.

But it's not really it's not really part of British culture, to be honest with you. It might be part of American culture, definitely. But saying that West is best. And with this, we're better than these guys. Even having a flag here. It's like, you know, people think you're a nationalist or something. Right. But I'm saying saying that the West is best in this direct way, is, is is a lazy man's method to manipulation.

They're better at manipulating than that. And this is the idea. So Edward sides book, the main thrust of the argument, is that the subject of inquiry are these other people? Well, the East and the West, is is the

is everything is set to that, obviously, before we had Franz Fanon,

who wrote The Wretched of the earth.

And this is another important

person who

went to Algeria, and he spoke about it and he saw French colonialism. He famously said that what is this woman within a club is and what is this garment that frustrates the colonizer, you know,

frustrates the colonizer, the things that frustrate the colonizer. And so, Orientalism has, there's only a few big names, but it's now become a discipline. So, like, if you go and do a sociology degree, if you do a philosophy degree, if you do, even a politics degree, you will have to cover this.

If you do almost any degree, you'll cover Orientalism, you'll cover his book, you'll you'll be required to read at least parts of it. Why? Because it has shaped the discourse. Now, who was he responding to who's responding to a person called

Bernard Lewis.

Now, Bernard Lewis was another historian who talked about the decline of the Muslim world and why, you know, all these kinds of things. He's spoken much more conventional way. And he was attacking him throughout the book saying like, this is a very binary way of looking at things. And there was a good reputation here.

And there's another book, which I think is behind one of you guys is called Samuel Huntington's book, on the clash of civilizations. So this is more Bernard Lewis esque.

So these are the kinds of stories you need to be aware of postcolonial theories, because they can be quite useful. And a lot of them are true, like if you think about them, especially considering that the assumption is liberalism, that the liberal ethic is about freedom, it's about expression and these kinds of things.

And there is not true truth with a capital T in that sense, but there's everyone's expression of it and these kinds of ideas.

This shows you how actually there's a deeper manipulation going on. So it's a very it's imperative for anybody in the in the Dow to actually be aware of this. And Sarah Muhammad is a contemporary writer. She writes the following I find this quite interesting because I found this

in one of her books, now she's more like left wing liberal individual probably post colonial theory like but this is what she says I find a very interesting in it. And she refers to actually she's refuting here which is very interesting she's refuting a Muslim liberal Muslim and we'll we'll cover who are the liberal Muslims

actually, let me just tell you now just so you can have a background liberal Muslims in the academy in the in the Academy are people like Fazal Rahman

he's probably the biggest one and the most prolific one Fazal Rahman is like Pakistani individual who wrote many books or major themes of the Quran.

His PhD was actually going to be seen now actually, obviously, he's one he's, he's a bonafide scholar now even even seen every center.

And he's written books about like, Sharia and stuff like that. And basically, he's not as flagrant about it. But he's not as flagrant about it. However, he's basically trying to encourage a kind of lib, liberal liberalism inside of Islam, like some some of the practices he mentioned in one of his books, polygamy, for example, and now everyone's going to hate him. We should now and not performed this practice, you know, we should we should this was this practice was back then, you know, this. Yeah. And he The reason he gives is liberal liberal reasoning. The situation has changed in these kinds of things. Before him, obviously have Muhammad Abdul Rashid river in Egypt, you know, and it

was said that he would they were the first selfies. I don't know if you know about this situation.

But they were the first selfies in a way, which is liberal way because they said we have to bring

like free from the tradition, and we have to go back to the self. But the way they're doing it their motivations for doing it were completely different to say someone like Bernie, who came after. And he has he took the same idea but he implemented it in a different way. And this is what we then find great by the way.

It's not just as Hadith Pro is the reason why we're speaking about shahada banya hammer Allah today is because

he was able to mobilize an ideology. Like it was a fixture, that was an idea. It was and that's what people have influenced do. So he took this idea, he recycled it in his own way of going back to the self, but it was now not going back to the cellar for the purposes of fitting in with the liberal order, the colonial order, but now it is actually to find out what the proper houses are set up did to do to go back to to do away with them attempts to just go back to the pure texts and so on. But why they did it and I should do it with Abdo is because they wanted to they wanted to create some kind of lenience for themselves in a colonial environment. Because they didn't want to rebel. They

want to fight like that. They fought like we have to be clever about this we have to and this was an Egypt and so Russia had this was a manava or something like that his his magazine that you'll see a lot of his ideas coming out in that magazine. So you can see that there's a thread of liberal Islam, starting with these individuals, they're like they're the Muhammad Abdul and then from first ramen and then the New Age ones which most people declare to be disbelievers

because they've just gone too far. People like an AMI. I'm not sure if you've heard of this person. And Naomi The question is Tada Ramadan is your liberal Muslim or not.

And it's interesting because when I was in, in universities and stuff, telecom is designed by both.

Leila How will let you Allah Allah how Allah like was that was I've been Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah Allah, because liberal Muslims consider him to be too traditional for them. And traditional Muslims consider him to be too liberal for them. They're right like his 80s. You know, this ADC, this is the Sciacca system to be su Sunni, and the Sudanese consumers wish to share that somewhere in the middle. And so the point is Tarlac. Ramadan is without

the jury's out, is he a liberal or a liberal? We don't know, Danny, but he's definitely if he is. If he is a liberal, then he's one of the best liberals from our perspective. And if he is a traditionalist, he's one of the worst ones.

Let's put it that way.

I guess as far as what the Salafi say about

visa salaries,

but everyone's got their spectrum, right. So yeah, is what it is.

So this is you had this? And then obviously, I mean, I'll do the feminist Muslim, who has been declared to be a disbeliever. Because what she said was, you know, you know, originally Coleman and I said, we offered the law while about that men are protected containers. And then we'll do one.

She said, No, I had a conscientious governor, I don't agree with this.

So people, they rejected her as a as a Muslim. Anyway, the point is, this is the kind of the background of liberal thinkers. Now you've got another guy who she's talking about now and that's why I'm bringing this to the table called

Hello double fertile? Yeah. He's he's seen as is a contemporary guy, but he's, uh, he writes a lot. And he's well known Academy. I don't know if he's in what Tesla what he is, but he's taking a liberal position where he's saying, Look, Islam and human rights are compatible. This kind of liberalism and Islam are compatible. If not, we'll make it a bit. He's not saying this. But Yanni in the sense, we can create the flexibility, we should create the flexibility moralities a certain way. Morality can be understood outside of religion. I remember reading his stuff in it. So someone who is not I don't even think she's a Muslim. I don't know if she's Muslim or not. But she's a liberal

and her own right. She's responding to him. So this is the background. Yeah. So this is what she says. And the reason why I'm bringing to the table is Catholic is very interesting.

Because horrible fuddled essay, is an erudite attempt to explore those principles and values with with Islamic political and legal traditions that could be made compatible with ideas of liberal democracy.

Abroad fadul joins a growing number of scholars who have been writing on this theme in the last few decades. Some of these vices are in the Muslim world and others in the Europe, Europe and United States. These things these things represent a wide spectrum of physical perspectives. Some of the Reformers trends within the Islamist movement, for example, chronicled visually in Egypt, the divisions call out rashid al nanosheet, who lives in exile in France,

and others as part of a more straightforward secular liberal line.

Yeah, the increased attention that the Western media have recently given these explorations indication of the hope that liberal Islam has been invested with, following the events of September 11. And potential resources for quote unquote saving Islam for its more militant and fundamentalist interpreters. So she's saying that these individuals are given a voice, because it's a strategy from the west to try and create, you know, liberalizing atmosphere. She continues, because I like what she says next. It's really powerful.

She says,

haven't get the whole thing. Yeah, good.

Curiously, in this exploration by Muslim scholars, Islam bears the burden of proving its compatibility with liberal ideals. This is I want you to think about this

wording very carefully, because it's very powerful. Yeah.

Let's take it step by step. She says curiously, in these explorations by Muslim scholars, Islam bears the burden of proving its compatibility with liberal ideals. Islam bears the burden Yanni. The onus is on Islam and Muslims to change. It's not on who, liberalism or liberals or the white men, we go back to what we brought back to Orientalism. Now she's taking this discovery and see what's going on here. Going back to National Geographic,

going back to the black man, being compared with the bear in the National Geographic, or the parrot or something like that, and putting these pictures associated with each other. That's what

is going on here. So the black man has to wear the suit.

It's not the white man that has to wear the traditional Nigerian costume.

We, we we bear the responsibility for copying the white man. We have to be like him. We have to follow his language, we have to speak like him, we have to act like him.

Do you see Islam is the one who bears the responsibility? Now what she says next is very powerful. I like it. Yeah. Considering she's her positioning, essentially, she goes, this line of this line of question is almost never reversed.

Imagine I just want you to think for a second Yeah. Imagine if I'll have a conversation with

some somebody like intellectual. And I say to him, why is it that your country does not have to hate?

Why is it that your constitution does not have monotheism?

Now it's almost comical, because it's like, what why should it we don't believe in that. We believe in the secular values we believe in this is our history. If you don't like it, you can leave. It's really as simple as that. I have no qualms saying any of this. It's almost laughable saying, imagine this, I go further. Imagine if I speak to a woman in the street? Do we do that? Well, yeah, we go on the street, woman go to Piccadilly go to Leicester Square. And I say to Woman, why is it that you do not wear the full face covering? And that you wear what you're wearing right now? And she turns around and says, What do you mean this? I've never thought about that. No thought about doing? I'm

not Muslim. I'm not some of that.

So she knows what she means by the line of questioning is never reversed.

And if it is reversed, it's actually laughable.

That's how bad is. But if someone comes to almost a woman ask her. Why is it they have to wear this?

It's not a laughable proposition. I remember in university will lie. We had a hijab ago. And that professor, middle class English man, he asked him directly, why is he have to wear this?

In front of everyone? He said this. And the class wasn't objecting. It's not. It was like, Yeah, let's speak about it. It's worth discussion. But sort of dislike when the line of questioning is somehow reverse is comical. It's laughable.

But it's always that we have to we we have the responsibility of proving ourselves justifying ourselves, exonerating ourselves, explaining ourselves to the white man.

Now, we can't really you might say, Well, the way to defeat this is to go completely apologetic, we can come to solutions. But if you do it or it will, it will look wrong. Aesthetically, I promise you.

Why did you take this and why did you do that? Why'd you listen to music? Why? It won't work. So there is a middle ground of how to deal with it. We'll come to that in a second.

But she's saying the line of inquiry is never reversed. Yeah. We do not ask for example. What would it mean? What would it mean to take the resources of the Islamic tradition and question many of the liberal political categories and principles

For the contradictions and problems they embody, or how would one thinks these problems by bringing the resources of Islamic political history to bear upon them. For instance, many of the aforementioned offensive forces including holida, befuddle, urged that liberal conceptions of individual autonomy, human rights and individual freedom be incorporated into Islam versus us, and will follow in his essay argues that the Quranic celebration and sanctification of human diversity should be made the ground for incorporating what appears to be the liberal conception of tolerance, and ethic that respects dissent and honors the right to adhere to different religious or non

religious convictions is striking that the normative claims of liberal conception such as tolerance are taken at face value, and no attention is paid to the contradiction struggles and problems that these ideals actually embody.

As scholars of liberalism have shown, yeah, the history the historical trajectory of a concept like tolerance encompasses violent struggles that dispossessed people or dispossessed people have had to wage to be considered legitimate members of liberal societies, not to mention the ongoing battles about what it means to tolerate someone or something. Who does the tolerating, and who is it tolerated? Under what circumstances? And to what end is kind of similar to the conversation we're having with Andrew Tate funny enough?

Talking about tolerance, they always put this word of tolerance there, but who is the tolerated one? Who's the tolerating one? And what is tolerance? And what are the limits of tolerance? Who is setting those limits? You see,

the point is

she's making the same point. We can't flip the script.

And she made a very good point when she says, Look, we don't even look at the veracity, the truth of liberalism. In other words, we don't. And this is where I like to stop.

And it seems like a very simple, straightforward question. But before we talk about us being like, you tell us why you're right.

Like, a very simple question I like to ask is, what evidence you have that liberalism is true.

Because now we both have to bring evidence to the table, I have to bring evidence to Islam. And you have to bring evidence for liberalism. So we both justifying things.

I don't like asymmetrical types of relationship unnecessarily.

You shouldn't either, especially when it comes to Islam, because a little Sophia, your law, your fundamentals of law, as a professor have the upper hand is better than the lower hand. So if you start a conversation and your hand is already on the bottom, you're you're already on the ropes, it especially if we're dealing with these matters, so we have to try and calibrate and bring about some kind of

equality here. We started by saying, Okay, so do you tell us no problem? What do you believe in you believe in whatever it is they believe in, fill in the blanks.

Prove what you believe. And I'll prove I believe in and see which proof is better.

And this is the Quranic question called How to Bucha Hana come and go to Santa Fe, Bring your proof if you're truthful, all we have to do is go back to what the Quran is telling us to do.

Bring your proof basically, we start off with everyone proves provides their proof for what they're trying to achieve.

So that's the first thing.

Any questions here

and this is one of the biggest problems with allying with the West, I would start with the left the left wing, because left wing agenda is actually so encroaching is like when you ally with the left on issues to do with, let's say LGBTQ homosexuality, transgenderism,

where there are clearly different paradigms.

You convolute

you the moral standard?

We don't we no longer know what groups believe in? What did the Muslims believe in? What did you believe in and it becomes a quid pro quo it becomes I scratch your back, you scratch mine. The ultimate truth is utility truth. How do we save ourselves from destruction?

It's no longer okay, you know, this is a principle that we're going for versus this principle.

Any questions on these points? Okay, let's move on to the next slide. Because there's another slide here that I sent you guys.

Now we went first thing we went through.

We spoke about some things

another thing now so going back to your answer this question, a lot of people will come and say Muslims believe in this Muslims believe in that especially the right wing, especially visa vie, Sharia law. Muslims believe in terrorism or whatever. Maybe

A good way to combat that is through studies and data sets. Yeah. So for example

in terms of the what the studies,

or methodology, how do we know what question is? How do we know what Muslims think? Okay, so I'm telling you now this is a ways that soldiers would come about to tell you how anyone would think not just Muslims. Yeah. Number one, voting information and free elections, okay?

If you want to know what our country thinks about or what where it stands, that can be an interesting measure. I'm not saying it's perfect, but just take a look. And it has to be a free election can be a rigged one.

You know, so that's, that's one way of doing surveys like that of pew, because POC is the gold standard of survey information. So if you quote, Pew Pew Research, and it's not conducted by Muslim people in a Muslim environment for Muslim purposes, this is one of their gold standard things.

What Muslims watch online, which you can gather this information, we talked about this before, through things like Google Trends. If you're going with google.com, for slash trends, or whatever, google trends.com,

and you put down

certain keywords, you'll see what people are watching. And another thing is Google ngram. And Graham, Google ngram is like, you have these books, and you see what keywords are being used in each book from the 1500s. So now, they've got a digital library. So it's a very interesting thing, Google and Gramsci. For example, if you write the word, the F word,

you know, the African, therefore,

you put it in, you'll see how it went in the English language, people started using this word, like when it became popular word, maybe somewhere in this maybe 50s, I would guess that's what you have. For example, let me just tell you the relevance of this, you have certain TV programs are set in the 20s. Or the films are sanitized, and they all use an effort I'm thinking. But this wasn't a common word and that time.

I mean, it wasn't really common words at a time, how you can use engrams to kind of bolster your case, say, for example.

Another thing before, these are something called alexa.com. Now, now, there are other websites, I can give you the names of them later on, for your own purposes. Not Alexa. But other websites. Alexa used to tell you the ranking of a website, like for example, you can put in a country of your choice. And you put like, what are the top 10, top 20 websites that are watched in that in that particular country? You'll find obviously at the top will be things like YouTube and Google and all these things. Yeah. YouTube is like number one actually overtakes Google in some countries.

So the ranking is usually Google's number one, YouTube's number two, and maybe Facebook or something is number three. Yeah. And then after that, you have all these kinds of websites. And you know, Amazon has, they're probably in the top 10. Somewhere. So to see what pornography websites have there, I tried to do analysis, actually,

of

whether or not it's true to say that Muslim countries, they watch more pornography than others that I actually put in. I don't know if it's true, you know, because, you know, in every almost every country in the known world, a pornography website is in the top 50 of websites, at least three or four or five, in every single country in the world. It shows you that this is a very powerful industry. You know,

there's actually a book that I've read, I shouldn't maybe I shouldn't mention this.

But I will

that today on this point,

which is I tell you what it's called.

It's called a billion wicked thoughts. Yeah.

By August and gather, I don't know this has been to be. I mean, the cover of the book is haram cover. But maybe you can get an audiobook. And this book is interesting, because it tells you what sexual things people thinking about what fantasies, what they like, throughout the world. Because that's very interesting, because we'll see if there's connections and trends and stuff, and I'll be looking into this matter as well.

Well, like it tells a lot about human life. Maybe I'm not gonna go into this, but there are certain countries where certain taboos sexual taboos are.

And then those same taboos are like exaggerated.

The people watch these things online. And you can see like, even the pornography websites they have.

They have datasets. Anyway, moreover, wisdoms watch online. This is very important, for example, like

I did my own research on Egypt. Yeah, I wanted to know,

I started putting on Google Trends. Certain names of Islamic speakers. Ahmed Khaled, this

Some that Muhammad Hassan whatever the big ones and I also put in the names of the Qura the of the bustle of the summit and hopefully these ones because these are the main Quranic recite is that all Egyptians agree or like them, Min Sherry And these

and I tried to do a data analysis to see what's going on.

It was amazing because I'm not saying correlation causation, but I found

I think it was 2008 I need to look back at the data, but I'm giving you an example of something I found there. There was a time I think it was in 2008, where I'm gonna hand it his numbers was very similar to Tamar Hosni. Now Tamar Hosni is the number one singer, one of the, like, top singers in Egypt. Like, you know, I don't know, the equivalent of Adele hill or something like that top singer. In Egypt, we have temat, Hosni, so I was, I was shocked to find that he was competing with, like, almost the same people were listening to Islamic content, and to Quran as much as they were listening to music, which is actually very powerful. Because, you know, in any country, that's

powerful. After the political things happened, especially when the Brotherhood took power, I started to see a complete lack.

Now, I'm not saying, but one of the theories is that when you have Muslims in power,

you have less people like them more or less.

Because when anyone is in power, they're disliked, when anyone is empowered in this life. So it was it was interesting, but maybe it was because it was a bit of a sham organization, or because of the failures, regarded to that particular thing. But it was interesting. I thought I was looking at these things interesting. Because you want to see what works and what doesn't work. Do you see? So Google Trends really works, this is a nice thing to use.

And you can filter it,

what Muslims buy is another thing.

For example, that's much harder to to, to find out about. But now Amazon,

I think there are ways you'd have to pay some money, like you have to pay a lot of money to find out, not that much. But you there's a way of finding out what products people buy on Amazon and stuff like that.

They do it for business purposes. Like they pay like three grand five grand and find out. But unless someone is doing a big study, it's not worth the thing. Who Muslims fund.

You know, and that shows you like, for example, if Muslims fund and organize organizations or Muslim funds, so it shows you that that obviously, when people put their money into something, they believe in it.

So, these are some of the ways we can find out, obviously, there's always gonna be methodological problems, every single of those categories, every single one.

There are methodological problems, but

if you have in your mind, okay,

we're gonna get started doing that, well, you have to start being aware of the datasets.

The Pew datasets, okay, what are the main studies that are like done on this area of the Sharia on terrorism? Like, for example, John Esposito and Dalia Muga. Had, they wrote a book, it's kind of like, what a million Muslims or what a billion Muslims think. And they were going through some datasets, and they were asking the question, how many of you actually sympathize with with ISIS or whoever it may be? And it showed it was a negligible amount. And these are very important things because they're peer reviewed. You know, the Pew Pew Research actually asked the same question about terrorism, for example, and you see, it's negligible.

So once again, when you're having this discussion, how many people think this and how many people believe in killing the infidels and stuff and you bring that to the table? So actually, there's a negligible minority that believe in that, that strengthens and bolsters opposition.

And it's important because a lot of it's a barrier to entry for many people coming into Islam. This this is what Muslims think.

Obviously, be careful when you're inference making don't make causation correlation are not the same thing. Don't make that link all the time.

I'll give you an example. Here I put an example of the data.

This is pew research data views on strictly following the Quran for laws after wildly different countries. Yeah. So you can see.

The half or more this is pure research. I'm just reading half or more and four of the 10 countries surveyed say that laws in their countries should strictly follow the teachings of the Quran. This opinion is particularly prevalent in Pakistan 78%, one of only five declared Islamic republics in the world and the Palestinian territories. Support for strict adherence has grown in

The Palestinian territories in 2011, only 36% of Palestinians said their laws should strictly for the Quran.

So basically, it shows you for instance, countries which are more likely to follow the Quran, Sharia law and which which are not. So saying Palestinian territories have increased is the link between war and Sharia? Because Somalia is another country, Afghanistan is another country, which is very high on these kinds of lists. Like most if you ask most Somalis in Somalia, should we follow Sharia law? They will say yes, same thing of Afghanistan. Same thing with Pakistan. But these are war zones. Because you're if you're facing death every day, you're most likely to be religious. Maybe maybe that can be an influence. I'm not saying it is. The Palestinian territory is the same thing.

But if you go to some countries where death is like, for instance, Bosnia,

Bosnia, we're talking about Albania before, but Albania is one of the least Islamic countries in terms of practice in the world. Because of all the same thing. Yeah, right next to it. It's an independent country. Now it's was almost completely westernized.

Now, if you compare Bosnia with Albania, you'll find that the level of religious in Bosnia is much more.

Why? Because if you compare Bosnia with Kosovo, there was war in Kosovo. But the major genocides took place in Bosnia, there was more genocides in the in Kosovo. So maybe, is there a link to be made that we don't know for a fact about war, the war link deaths, if there's a threat of death is more likely to increase religiosity, or whatever, you can make your inferences, you can we can discuss those. I'm not saying this is the case. But what I'm saying is that when you have this data, you can start thinking about what works, what doesn't work, what happens and what doesn't happen.

And then you can also face some of these Orientalist critiques. Because now if someone says Muslims believe in this and say, well, actually, according to this, they don't. So now you have backing with some level of methodological bias. However, having said that, you have to if you want to get to the high levels of this thing, it's not good enough just going on pure.com and see what they sent you. The high levels of it is going on their methodology and seeing how they collected their data.

One of the companies I used to work for I used to work for data. I'm not sure I've told you guys this, I swear for data collection company. Yeah, it was just around the corner. It's not on the corners. And he's London, actually.

And what I had to call these guys, they were they were responsible for creating the asset surveys and stuff.

I'll be honest, and this might sound ridiculous. And I was actually thinking of making some like documentary about

we my job when I was younger, this was like, I got fired, like,

I got fired. The guy said to me, John, the good news, the bad news, I said, just give me the good news.

He said not has to give you the bad news first. And I don't think he fired me. I think he told me something I just left. Yeah.

Come on, what was it because this I was in I was in sales, I was in like, doing a lot of sales jobs and stuff I was just bouncing from place to place is one of the places you got commission every time you get a survey done. I'm just giving you like, actually what happens behind the scenes. So we have to call these people, these companies. And then they ask them questions service, if it was like a black and white screen? Do you know, have you seen this kind of like black and white things? You know, well, like the people next to me used to fake it. They used to call the person and just go through the thing with their own? Do you get it? Because for us, we had to get permission. And

so every server would put get like, I don't know, like 20 pounds. That's why I said it's not worth it.

And I left

because sales jobs out there that you know, when you're a salesman, you're a bit like, you know, a freelancer you go anywhere with a commission is higher.

So this guy is next to me. He's like, Yeah, calling them headset, whatever. And they just say like pretending to have conversation. And they will tell him, you know, bragging about it. They're pretending to have a conversation. You know, one day will lie. I said to them, I had a conversation. Do you ever do religious service? So yeah, we do. Ask Jesus anything. He said, Yes. So in other words, you can see the methodological problems here. They're doing religious service, calling Muslims, what do you believe about God? And they they're writing it themselves?

What do you believe? What's the reason you're doing it yourself? So there's, at the point of collection of data all the way to generalizing it, there's methodological problems.

And so when you reach the high levels of assessing datasets, this is what sociology is all about. This is the first thing if you do any sociology, a level, if you do a sociology degree, this is the first thing they'll teach you about. They call it methods and approaches. They'll have a module on that kind of thing methods or something like that. How do you collect data sets? What are the inputs? What are the weaknesses are

And the thing that comes up all the time is generalizability. I'll give you one example. Before I enter here, you might have heard of the study of, you know, the Muslims in America 24% of them become more sad.

Have you heard of this 23 24% And it's collected by Pew Research. Now this is a shocking thing says 23% of Muslims in America become aborted. So our I looked at the methodology and because when you look at the article, they said, we've interviewed the people, and they don't mention who they've interviewed and how they've interviewed them.

They've interviewed 1000 people.

And a big chunk of them are Iranians, she Iranians, who didn't know English language, they had to have translators. Now we know she Iranians, they have their own political baggage that especially the ones who have after 1979, the Islamic Revolution, so called Islamic revolution,

after that took place.

Yeah, and they had a resentment we were just talking about, like when Islamic authorities become empowered, sometimes resentment and bruise and it led to apostasy. Yes, it did. So these people, they just moved away from it. So why did why should we worship? Well,

let's just worship Jesus instead, or wherever they thought in their minds, you know?

Or they moved away from religion altogether, that became secularists. So when you interview 30% 40% of Iranians who can't even speak English as a first language, and who have a disproportionate disinterest in Islam, compared to the other Middle Eastern countries or Islamic countries, they're clearly going to have a skewed result. And if if that constitute 20, or 30%, of your 1000 people that you've spoken to, and then you told me afterwards that 23% of Muslims in America are becoming this believers. I have reason to doubt you know,

because your your is, is that compositionally congruent with the population in America. It's not. If you look at a population of like demographic population of Muslims in America, most of them is African Americans, then you find like Arabs and Asians coming from abroad. And then you'll find some, like white converts and stuff. And yes, you'll find this Iranian Sendmail. Iranian Muslims may, according to demographics, account, five 6% of the maybe less than that of the Muslim population, America, but you made them overpopulated so that you can get a skewed result. And you spoke to him on the phone? And how do I know when you were speaking to me on the phone, it wasn't

like when I spoke to them on the phone, and my friend, and it was someone else doing it, a white man who has a new colonial conservative views that just wants to make everyone seem like he's a believer.

So I don't trust your status, that's too much any

fully, especially if you've got 1000 people. But having said that, it's better than nothing. And especially when they've got more than that, like, for example, when they go on the billion Muslims, they I think they, they asked 50,000 people so now you have a stronger sample group and the basic rule of thumb, we can't go through this now. But it's the bigger the sample group, the more generalizable it is.

So once you start to familiarize yourself with that kind of thing, then you can come back Orientalist discourses.

And with that, we conclude just like on lawfare was salam alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakato