Shadee Elmasry – Interview Blogging Theology NBF 288
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Smilla Rahmanir Rahim Al hamdu lillah wa Salatu was Salam ala
Rasulillah early he was happy woman. Well, ladies and gentlemen,
welcome to the stuffiness, society, nothing but facts live
stream on a gorgeous Wednesday. And it is between Dora and Astrid
here in the United in the United States in the great state of New
Jersey, where we're streaming right down the street from the
University Hospital, Robert Wood Johnson Medical Center, and
Rutgers University. Today, we have a wonderful guests, we have
somebody who has enriched, I would say, the intellectual and
spiritual lives of I could think I could say millions of people now,
based on his viewers, and his Twitter handle is also nobody has
had more impact with less words
than our guests. Let's bring him on Omar, Paul Williams, of
blogging theology
when it comes to them, or how to live on it, gotcha. So you made me
laugh.
But it is true, though, right? What if you I liked I liked I like
tweets that are price impact for hopefully witchy coin, rather than
explaining everything, getting the grammar wrong and the spelling. So
yeah, I like epic, Chromat epic, epic grammatic tweet.
I love those tweets that you can read in less than three seconds.
Exactly. And that's one of the reasons why
pictures were worth 1000 words. Because in a millisecond, you get
all these messages in one write, and it's brilliant. And oftentimes
your tweet is just a picture
with one line,
sometimes just just a picture. And I think that's even the best
because I like to very much assume that people who sing my stuff are
intelligent and can actually work out the message for them. So they
do not need to be spoon fed what exactly indicate. So there's a
deliberate attempt there to actually minimize my own verbal
contribution to help people figure it out for themselves. And that's
part of my agenda. Really, it also when you when you say less, and
you put a picture up there,
you actually save yourself a lot of headache and heartache because
people won't come after you. Right? I'm just putting up a
picture, right? If people go after the picture, right, there is that
there's also it is actually people that can be misunderstood. For
example, my know design posts, which medium for a while now.
There are people out there I come across occasionally who are
absolutely convinced that I'm an atheist. Wow. No, seriously,
because I say no design. They got it wrong. Then they got the facial
expression. Exactly. They missed the emoji with the eyes looking
up. So they go, huh.
irony, the subtext to this, so they're not doing the work? Yeah,
hoping by reading it intelligently. And I've had
arguments to people try to tell them I'm not an atheist, and they
don't agree with me.
When I caught myself, a Muslim, it's kind of weird. I mean, they
know what I think better than I do. I mean, great. I'll tell you,
I'll tell you the all time and I say this genuinely the all time
best refutation of of evolution.
Is the picture is your picture next to the statue of Charles
Darwin. Hashtag no design, rolling, guys, right? Because
think about that brilliance of that, because we nobody would
accept that the statue has no design. Right has to have a person
behind it with an intellect a will and ability, right and knowledge.
Right? And we should say knowledge, not intellect,
knowledge, life, ability, and willpower. These four attributes
cannot exist outside of a statue. Right? Yeah. No, I enjoyed that. I
haven't. I thought I've got to have my photograph taken with
Charles Darwin.
And but if I can just clarify one point. Yeah. People often
sometimes think that I'm anti evolution. Yeah. I
That's not quite I'm a creationist, but then all
believers are creationist, every single Christian believing Jew.
But it doesn't mean I believe the universe was created in six days,
or that all those species were created instantaneously by God
wasn't some kind of macro process leading up to human. So leading up
to animals. Yeah, it just went, which was which God did through
that mechanism. I just say the red line when it comes to human
beings. The Quran is very clear that God created Adam and Eve and
by special creation, and I draw a red line at that that is
absolutely evolution doesn't come into that. That's exactly the
Islamic position. And you've interviewed a lot of people on
that, but that is exactly the Slavic position is that the
theology of Islam only requires deep belief in direct creation,
for the human being. As for frogs, giraffes, whatever you want to
believe it, you won't, you're not going to be asked about that.
Right? You want to believe they came out of each other, or you
want to believe that they were created just like Adam was
created. It's up to you. But
there is no theology or obligations on animals giraffes,
dogs, cats and squirrels and insects. Another thing by the way,
about the you know, design post the pictures is that they're
intended deliberately almost subliminally to get at the
fitness, the fitness the Fitzrovia, the fitness. The fitrah
Yeah, always mixed up. The fitrah is supposed to trigger that at
some level, even in the atheist, when they see morals or creation,
clearly the heady sign Yeah, idiot naughty, but intellectually, they
may not acknowledge that but seeing a picture, not not an
argument, not refutation, not a form of words, saying Darwin was
wrong, but picture
gets to one at an almost a subliminal level of response. And
that's why I think the what the Quran talks about the victories is
so helpful that yeah, that's why the Quran says look so many times,
and looking, it moves emotion, and an emotion, it's not just any
motion, it's an awe, and you don't have all out of accidents, nobody
is in awe of an accident, and you're always in awe of something
that's, that was done right or done beautifully or done
perfectly. So the feeling of awe never comes about when viewing
randomness, it always comes about when viewing something that
deserves praise, right. And that's the that's the rationality about
the Quran mandate to look keep looking and looking and looking.
All right, your your heart will tell you that there has to be some
knowledge and life and will behind this. And that's the motivation
behind this is basically expressing the chronic injunction
but in terms of no design posts, so that really is the what's going
on there. Now, for those watching on Instagram, you can only see
half of me and half of our guests, so hop over to YouTube, Safina
society. And you can and you could watch the rest of this interview
with both of us here and you can comment and we'll be taking some
q&a and q&a If our guests approves. I'm happy long as
they're not difficult questions. Yeah. Because Because your your
interviews are always pre recorded, right? There's no
audience interaction. Now there's a reason but I'll come to the
reason why in a sec. If you want. Yeah. Okay, good. Now today for
your for you who have always been listening to blogging theology.
This is your chance to be able to talk all right to the interviewer
himself. Now let's go back about five years. And I remember we you
see you in different comments, right, and knowing that this is
somebody who converted to Islam, and sometimes you ask a question
or say common
time passed, then didn't see you for some period of time. Then I
don't know I wasn't paying attention. Or maybe I was off
social media for a period of time because sometimes I do go off, I
come back. And all of a sudden, blogging theology is a massive
operation. And your Twitter handle is gone through the roof. And I'm
thinking myself, what happened to this brother, he's just like,
swallowed a Mario Brothers mushroom. You remember Mario
Brothers, like swallowed the mushroom, and now he's on fire. So
what exactly transpired? Well, hamdulillah God transpired and
took me out of a fairly bad place several years ago, about three or
four years ago. We won't go into that now, if you don't mind. It
was a rather difficult place in terms of my deen and so on. And it
was really during the lockdown in Cote during COVID. Actually, when
I found myself here in this place, quite isolated as as millions of
people in Britain in the world actually were.
And I came into some money and I decided, hey,
Why not buy a new MacBook Pro? Fascia, all this money didn't
really need at the top of the range MacBook Pro, but hey, I had
the money, so I buy it anyway. And, and through that on YouTube,
I thought, well, I'll make some videos because it's a way of
making contact with the world out there having some online
interaction, they didn't really have I had about about 20 Or
sorry, 2000 Twitter followers about 2000 A little bit of
interaction, I thought videos is really my medium, much more. And
so I just started to make a couple of videos, I think on
Christianity, New Testament studies, Biblical Studies,
historical Jesus, things are interested in me, drawing on the
books behind me my reading. And, and that's how it started, it was
very much my attempt to reach out during the isolation of COVID. But
after a couple of months, something strange started to
happen that the subscriptions and interest started to take off, but
in a way that was quite unexpected. So I would have
several 1000 new subscribers a day. And and then
I after a while, after a couple of months, it was several months, I
thought be really nice to have a guest. There's no chance I'm going
to get a scholar on because they don't know about me and I'm not a
scholar myself, of course, don't have a PhD. So why would they come
up? So, but nevertheless, I reached out to someone that I
quite liked a guy called Sir Anthony buzzard. He was actually
was the head of Atlanta College in Georgia in the United States is an
Englishman. And his father actually was head of Naval
Intelligence during the Second World War. And he is incredibly
distinguished lineage, distinguished himself. So I
invited him on, hey, because he's a he's a Unitarian Christian uses
a Unitarian. So I thought this is interesting, we can talk about
Jesus. And so I invited him and amazingly, he said, Yes, but wow,
this is a big coup. No, wrong. And we had such a good time. I mean,
it's such a great guy. And, and we had a really good conversation
about New Testament Greek and Christology and the struggle of
Jesus extra. And so that was like, that broke the barriers a bit for
me. And I thought, well, you know, I'd like to try someone else. But
this time go for a top notch American scholar that I knew John
Dominic Crossan, who was the head of the Jesus Seminar. He was
professor at DePaul University, one of the world's leading
scholars is still there, both of these people are still very much
with us and writing. And amazingly, he said, Yes.
And that really showed me that it was possible to seriously invite
but I had a track record that actually had people are invited.
And the videos were doing well. Yeah, that that was the beginning
of my engagement with academics. And my, my philosophy, still is my
attitude is attempting to build a bridge between the ivory tower,
the world of academia, and the intelligent layperson you will
have in mind this is
and to get experts on who could explain their expertise in ways
that which we can all answer. So I'm not just passively listening,
I'm hopefully engage in conversation asking him to clarify
what they mean, are they difficult terms allows them to define what
they mean. So that there is some input, but I'm there very much
like the viewer, as a person who is benefiting from their
expertise. And it's been, I can't stress this enough, this has been
a huge privilege for me to meet these people, including yourself
because you've been handled as a guest. I can't stress how much a
privilege has been for me, and I've learned so much as have many
other people, as you've alluded to, before, I can imagine because
I watch your Alia, type videos. And those were like three hours
part one and part two, when I think there's part three even
there's like two and three hours. So I can imagine you basically are
going to school for free essentially, right? Yes, it's
Yeah, makes sense. It is it's a free University. Dr. Alia, tie is
I don't embarrass the guy. He's a friend of mine I met him is he is
such a talented man is appalling as a polymath, by which I mean,
he's actually expert in multiple subjects, including a biblical
Hebrew, New Testament Greek, Arabic, English, obviously, Farsi
is expert on the Bible has a PhD in it, and Islam. And this is a
unique, we're not very rare skill set.
But so yeah, I have a huge fan of his as well. And when I was as a
tuner back in February,
for several days, he invited me to sit in on one of his classes where
he was doing the theology of Judaism and I thought, Wow, what a
privilege set there. You know, my jaw drops as I listen to this, and
he is witty in his classes during term time as he is like, in the
rest of his life, he's actually painting I mean, he's, he's not at
all boring.
So your first few guests, were these, these Christian scholars
study that talk about Christology. So you have a deep interest in
Christian theology. Absolutely. And and is that something that was
from your, from your? Were you ever involved academically with
that? Or is it all personal?
It's always been personal, I became a committed born again,
Christian, in my early 20s. And evangelical actually.
And I immediately took to reading the Bible, I loved the Bible, it
became a life for me the word of God, and I believe it is inerrant.
So what many people call a fundamentalist Christian.
And that was both my strength and my weakness. The strength was I
took the Bible very seriously, which we have to do in today's
world, even now, with events in Palestine, the Bible has been used
across by many to weaponize oppression of people but but also
because it is such an interesting book, actually, it's a library of
books. But the problem was, and this is the downside of it. The
more I read, the more I realized that there were problems, big
problems with the Bible, particularly the New Testament.
And so this is set me on a journey of given my nature of accessing
biblical scholars in books, to try and find answers. And that led me
to be an undergraduate studying Christian theology University. So
I did study academically, but I've always been interested in the
Bible. Still, I'm still reading it now. Because it is, apart from the
Quran, of course, the world's most important book, and in hugely
influential on the Western tradition, the Western mindset
MEP, even people to secular, many of the categories of thought that
they have and and assumptions about reality, are still rooted in
parts of the Bible.
And so it's really important to understand it anyway. Even if you
don't believe in God is important to understand anything. Can you
share some of those things that you found to be start triggering
your mind that there are some issues here? Yeah, I'm not going
to too technical. If you read the gospels, and then Paul's letters,
if you read, say, the earliest Gospel of Mark, it becomes
apparent in several places like Mark chapter 13, that it looks
like Jesus foretold the Second Coming the end of the world,
within the generation of people then living in the first century.
And Mark 1330, if you go and look it up, now you'll see all these
things it says will happen within this generation. All these things
refers to the preceding narrative, which includes the destruction of
the temple and at 70, and the return of the Son of Man on the
clouds of glory. I thought this can't be right. Because firstly,
the Bible that didn't happen when 2000 years later, also means Jesus
made a mistake. That can't happen because Jesus is God, I believed.
So off I went to read New Testament scholars, and I
discovered something pretty startling in the last couple of
100 years. What's called eschatology,
which is this study of the End Times. And the the sense of
imminent eschatology we see in the New Testament has been a central
theme in New Testament scholarship. You know, what's the
Bible most scholars think in, in some places has got it wrong.
Paul, for example, expects the end of the world within his own
lifetime. But the later writers don't Luke doesn't so much John
doesn't so much. It's complicated, because the library, but this
shocked me, I thought, hang on, there shouldn't be any mistakes,
especially not by Jesus.
So I went, I read, you know, Tom Wright anti rights, and I go
through a long list of people I read, commentary, I've read over
50, at least 50. Quiet, I stopped counting after or at least 50
academic commentaries on Mark 13. Alone. Yeah. And it's parallel
passages, Matthew 24, Luke 21, to try and find an answer to this
thing, because it I find it threatening to my face. So that
that was one is that there are many obviously, the problem is
once you start reading a scholarship, you discover other
issues that I wasn't aware of, which then became problems
themselves example the nature of the fourth gospel, the gospel of
John. And that was perhaps in bigger threat,
academic stuff, but which your average Christian has no idea
about, and yet all their scholars do they know about these problems.
So part of my job on BT some extent has been to share what
Christian scholars have been saying about the Bible and share
that with Christians. So just so people understand. The Bible is
not exactly the word is given to Jesus directly. It's marked
Matthew Paul, these gospels are essentially biographies
biographical accounts of Jesus. Okay, so, what we would call like
Cyrano narrations, or narratives, exactly the Injeel, the Gospel as
the crown calls it, is the gospel given to Jesus. And actually, the
Bible says this too, if you look at the same mark, you have, and
Jesus went around Galilee, preaching the gospel, the gospel
wasn't the message about Jesus
wasn't Christianity. It was the gospel. And if you want to know
about it, you can read in the gospels in the Bible today. So the
the four gospels don't even pretend to be revelation. They
don't pretend to be inspired. And he later gospel writers correct,
alter and amend and embellish earlier gospels. So Matthew and
Luke famously correct mark on key points, which is fascinating is
called redaction criticism in its own in our own right. But the
gospel given to Jesus what he preached is what Muslims believe
in. And scholars are made this lovely distinction, which is so
important that there's the gospel of Jesus. And then there's a
gospel about Jesus that makes sense about Jesus is called
Christianity. The gospel of Jesus is what Muslims believe in. And if
you look at the details, even in the gospels, we have now you can
see the themes are the same. Yeah. So now, you got into this, you
found some issues. I assume the evangelical tradition is very
prejudiced against Islam and in imbues in its people. An emotional
reaction towards Islam. It's one of the greatest enemies. I just
was listening to some a gentleman, very soft spoken gentleman, but he
was saying the Great Four abominations are homosexuality,
listen to other things. And he listed Islam as one of the four
great abominations to a Christian. Okay, so Oh, he said,
homosexuality, abortion. Can't remember the third one. And then
it was Islam was the fourth one. So were you also did they imbibe
that inside of you to whoever the Evangelicals that you were you
were keeping up with it's time? Well, to some extent, yeah, I
mean, British evangelicalism is much more
lukewarm, less extreme than the American version. A lot of
American evangelicals, we know who they are, they attack, many of
them attack Islam. British evangelicals tend to be more mild
for some reason. Everything about the British is more mild, right?
That's what we like to think. And,
and except when it comes to supporting states like Israel,
then we're quite happy to send them arms and give them political
cover, which has not been mild at all. It's quite evil. Anyway. So
yeah, I agree. And I think one of the reasons though, apart from
racism, Islamophobia, just sheer bigotry, but there's actually a
theological reason, and that these evangelicals believe that I have
particular understanding of Christianity, which means that
anything that comes after Christianity and their view, which
denies say, the divinity of Jesus, must be evil, by definition,
because it's denying a central truth of the Christianity. So they
have a theological motivation, you know, as well, but they tend to
obviously defame and speak evil of a lie. Actually, I've noticed
about Islam as well. So they make it they make their objections a
lot worse than they could have been, I think. And so were you
with a group? Or were you just going solo on this? Oh, no, I,
that's the curious thing, really. I never publicly, publicly ever
express my views about Islam, I expressed my concerns to fellow
Christians, I remember, or a couple of them in my church, who I
did, you know, express my great alarm about Islam and Muslims,
particularly in London here. But I never expressed it on social, so
nothing like that at all. So then you're with a group of people. And
I don't want to say the word herd mentality. But that's usually what
group mentality, we could say. group mentality is very strong,
when everyone in the group has the same kind of loves and hates. It's
very strong to come out of that. So how did you eventually come out
of that into eventually investigating Islam?
Yeah, it's not. It's not a very interesting story, really. But
it's how I embraced Islam. So at some point, I became quite as
homophobic as I say, in my own mind. And I decided to, because I
was just, I already had learned that the media, for example, often
don't fairly represent positions, which I knew were quite different.
For example, on Christianity, I thought that often you get sort of
misunderstanding. I thought, well, maybe I misunderstood Islam. Maybe
the media used to read I don't know watch the BBC or whatever,
Daily Mail. And so I thought I'd investigate this but it's also a
curious as wants to learn more about Islam. So I bought a
dreadful translation with the crown. And, and that didn't work.
I just couldn't, I couldn't even engage with the Crown at all. But
I did then go to my local mosque here at Regent's Park Mosque,
which is,
you know, pretty important mosque actually in Britain, and just
walked through the door and I thought I'd give myself three
months. I'm going to talk to some Muslims read some of their stuff.
And then at least I would have made the effort to learn more
about this religion, which I thought was profoundly wrong.
Yeah.
So I walked in the door there and on the
right hand side, you know, the Masters bookstore are books, I
recognize that so you know when, and some kind Muslim brother
bought me a heap full of books, and a good translation of the
Quran. And and that started me on a journey I went back there, I
argued with one or two Muslims that I was a Christian, I believe
in Christianity. And but over time I discovered something I didn't
because of my evangelical prejudice and dogma. It's
embarrassing to say this now, but I'm sure this is true of many
evangelicals. I actually discovered that Islam has an
incredibly deep and rich spiritual tradition, which easily rivals
that of Christianity, because I knew in Christianity we have
Thomas Aquinas, Thomas, a Becket, Julian, at Norwich, the author of
the Cloud of Unknowing, the amazing works of St. Augustine,
etc, etc, that Islam has a parallels built tradition of equal
profundity, but like much, much more of it's actually, I mean,
even going to like Rumi and everything. You know, there's a
huge tradition, which goes back many, many centuries. And this is
really impressed me and I recognize commonalities and
similarities between the two traditions, actually. And then I
that kind of woke me up to a paradigm shift.
Hang on, if if Christian mysticism or spirituality can speak
profoundly of the nature of God and our lives, and Islam is doing
something quite similar in many ways. Maybe there's a lot of truth
of Islam.
And then, and then I came across something which I didn't expect to
find, which made the biggest impact on me, other than reading
the Quran, was the life of the prophet Muhammad upon him up, I
read the amazing Syrah by Martin lings. And that blew my mind and I
thought, oh, okay, okay, okay. You know, he looks like a prophet
talks, like a prophet speaks like a prophet behaves like a prophet.
Why am I not believing he said, My God. And that was a revealing
moment, then I encountered the problem within myself.
I knew that if I accept that he was a prophet, that would mean I
would become a Muslim.
And that would mean a, a, an existential change of civilization
or over cross over thresholds, red lines, in my own life, as a white
male middle class, majoritarian person in England, moving a small,
often despised ethnic minority community. And that made me hold
back for some months and thinking, do I really do actually really
want to do this at all? Because I'm quite comfortable where I am.
Thank you very much.
So Hamdulillah, I did ultimately get the courage by the grace of
God to say the shahada at Regent's Park. So you're this story. It's
very intellectual. It's, it's between you and books. More so
then, you know, there was a kind man on the street and even like,
big intellectuals like shit, no, Hamid Keller.
He says that he was he was moved into Islam by three things. All of
them were interactions one time one moment interactions with
regular Muslims on the street. Like one per one woman saw he was
so dusty and disheveled she and she was very poor. And she took
money from her pocket and put in his hand, right?
Things like that. So but yours seems to be between you and books
and ideas, and you're thinking on your own? I think well, yeah.
Books, I think, yes. It by that one means a deep engagement with
truth. Yeah, I don't need to come across as a cerebral exercise. It
wasn't hard. Don't get me wrong. But it wasn't just that it was a
much deeper, transformative encounter with the truth,
actually, and with the, the Great, the great. In fact, there's a book
I read, and I've always always flogging this book. It's like the
destiny of man by the English writer guide. And when I started
to read that book, I was I was, I was a convinced Christian when I
finished reading that book, I was a Muslim, in my heart,
intellectually I hadn't. So it the way he communicated a profound
understanding of Islamic spirituality of the life of the
prophet in the Quran, and the and the Islamic worldview. Once I let
that really impact me, it transformed me.
So I wouldn't want buy a book conversion. See, as a bookish guy.
It wasn't it was much deeper than that. You you're reading a lot.
Are you a writer as well?
Well, I I write tweets.
Do you have an actual blog with essays?
I have actually written essays. Yeah. So I don't tend to. I do.
Yes. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I have written on some more academic
stuff, but I don't tend to do a lot of that because a lot of my
time is spent with interviewing real academics. So I feel that
they should obviously be deferred to but yeah, I do occasionally
write things when people enter
Come and to Islam in our Masjid. I give them Abdel Halim you know,
Professor Abdul Halim is maybe 10 minutes from you, right? What do
you say to this which is the give them that because that is the
easiest translation of the Quran to read.
You know, I think this is the easiest now just want to clear the
clear crown clear. We received we somebody sent us a whole box of
those so we give them out now to
you know what I don't give out though, and it bothers me to
death. i We don't have a 100 page biography of the Prophet peace be
upon him. Every biography of the Prophet is very long. Okay. Karen
Armstrong's is a good biography to write, but it's not one of those
that's readily available on Amazon. And I would like to give
them a short biography. Now, you just said that one of your biggest
turning points was the Sunnah of the Prophet peace be upon him. You
are a convert, you know, your your your your people better than a
born Muslim would know. What do you think of the idea of writing a
100 page biography of the prophet for new Muslims?
Well, I wasn't expecting that question.
I'm not the person to do that. I'm not qualified to do that. I think
a prerequisite on the corner Karen Armstrong doesn't have this
prerequisite for this. She She's unusual. The prerequisite for
writing a blog is doing a zero b knowledge of Arabic.
And I think when I was in high school earlier this year, I read
Dr. Yasser, cardies, new Sera, which is very accessible and
readable. And so I just
I'm not a page fetishist. I think I don't know why we had
this. Yeah, but you see, I mean, it all depends how big the font
is, and how thick the pages are. How many words I mean, that's
deceptive. You can shrink the pages and by changing the fonts
and the font size, so true. I think we have now just my personal
opinion, I think now in English, we have an abundance of Syrah of
excellent quality. And I'm also against just having one standard
Syrah. I think it has to be because there is such a choice.
Now, if I had a quite a quite an educated English lady or
gentleman. Yeah, I'd recommend Martin lings. I just won't forget
all the others, however good. Because of the standard of
language, the eloquence the beauty of the language, we find it
enlightening, but I wouldn't recommend that to a lot of other
people because it is quite challenging to read if you're not
used to that kind of
old fashioned if I can use that word English. So yes, I carry a
much more wider audience, I think, much more demotic.
And Karen Armstrong again, but you've had a Christian I would say
recurrent arms because she's not a Muslim, and yet managed to convey
successfully an awful lot of facts and truth about the Prophet in a
way that isn't prejudice and agree with everything she says one or
two bits where she gets a bit anyway, but she's very, very good.
So it depends on who one is speaking to in terms of
recommending a particular sera Do you see non Muslims and Christians
now and an ever have a in person Dawa type of a relationship with
them? Yeah, all the time? And where would where's the where's
the platform for that? Is it like a Speaker's Corner thing? Or?
Yeah, I mean, last Sunday, a couple days ago, I had a long
conversation which was filmed you can see it on YouTube with a, an
American missionary.
And,
and that was difficult for me, because the How can I put the the
asymmetry in knowledge between the two was pretty extreme.
But you can make up your own mind what happened there? And then
another American from California, who says he's a fan of blogging
theology, you says, I'm not sure I believe him. Really. They said he
came to them just to meet me.
I don't and because anyway, he was very different. He was very
intelligent, very respectful. And patient. I was his, I was very
happy to talk to him indeed, and we did for an hour or so. That's
also on YouTube from last Sunday.
And his questions were much more scholarly and technical. And I
find this much more interesting actually. A lot of people have us
in the data world in the YouTube world will know about Speaker's
Corner. But can you tell those who don't? What is Speaker's Corner
and whites has a role in Dawa?
Gosh, that's a good yes, indeed. It does, actually, for good or
ill. So, Speaker's Corner, so called is in London in England,
and it's part of a park a public park called Hyde Park that
literally a mile from where I'm sitting, it takes me 20 minutes to
walk down there, which is why it's so easy for me just to get down
there on a Sunday only meets on one day, a week on a Sunday.
And it's not there because the park authorities are being nice or
the police want you to turn up or anyone is there by law in the 19th
century, during the convulsions
of
when the trade union movement was was beginning in England,
many militant workers were struggling for their rights and
recognition and social justice demonstrated in this park. And and
at the beginning, they were quite brutally suppressed by the police.
So the government is parliament decided to pass a law to set aside
that area of the park, where speakers could actually speak with
with complete freedom without the police arresting them without
anyone interfering. So it's actually there by statute. So the
police can't close it down or anything special except for
really, really good reasons. Like during COVID. Sadie was closed
briefly. So so people are going there, obviously, if he is Karl
Marx went there. Oswald Mosley went there, who else? George
Orwell, the famous writer went there. Lots of very famous people
Lenin went there. Actually, he's on record. He lived in London for
a while. And when speakers go on, you hear Lenin's Can you imagine?
So, but in recent years, it's become because of the local
demography and other reasons is we can quite heavily Muslim and put
it that way. And also, with the advent of social media and
cameras, and iPhones, like my, you know, people have started to
upload recordings of their and now I'm told in the world, but you
know, there are hundreds of millions of people who have
watched videos, they're translated into subtitles into Arabic.
And it's made celebrities like Shamsi, the the Salafi speaker is
very, very well known. I can go a long, long list of people that
whether it be Muhammad hijab, or you know, who'd been there and
still go there, actually.
But I would say, mainly, I would say it's toxic, I would say
mainly, it's bad, because there's often not much positive discourse
going on, let alone down. Or often it can be quite, particularly with
some of the, some of the Christians there are
a very, very extreme, and they will insult the Prophet and so on.
So you really have to be tough skinned, and not take offense, at
least not react anyway. Because it's protected by law. So how does
this work? Exactly? So like from as soon as the daylight is up,
people start going there randomly, and picking a corner and taking an
area and making it there's and speaking? Yeah, it's just a corner
of the park. So there's no like gate or entrance fee or a
policeman saying, Hey, we started. It takes place on Sunday by
tradition. So people just turn up at some point on Monday could turn
up before the thing is, if you turn up before dawn on us day, you
could do that. But I wouldn't imagine that anyone would be
there. So it usually turn off about two to three o'clock in the
afternoon when you get most people have arrived. And then because I
have a number of friends there who I just like to chat to anyway, so
there's social sites. And like this one, they just gone. I met to
American.
One was a mission. The other one was an Enquirer. And particularly
that I hear people approached me.
And sometimes I you know, listen, as well to discussions or debates.
And you can you can learn there can be some quite good debates and
discussion sometimes. Do you see shadows around there? No, no, I
would say that's quite rare. Ironically, there's a lot of work
going on on the streets of London, actually an awful lot. And I can
tell you, because I've seen it myself many times. It is hugely
successful. I mean, just up the road from here about a mile north
in Kilburn, there's $1 store that you're going for years, you get
numerous shahada every
it's amazing, actually, just on the general public, the Speaker's
Corner is different. And I think it's because it's such a toxic
toxic atmosphere, you can't really have it's very difficult to have a
good heart to heart and authentic interact, you're human, you're
there to, you know, refute the missionaries. The missionaries are
there to destroy Islam or whatever, you know, it is not the
right place. And are they there so there's no prayer there so there's
no Christian group that setting that's praying and you get to
witness their prayer and and a Muslim group witnessing their
prayer that doesn't exist. It doesn't know a prayer Krishna said
Muslims do pray in pray Salah then CONGREGATION But there's an area
very very very close to it where the police have said you know, you
you're not supposed to pray in the Speaker's Corner because because a
huge part you can pay anywhere but it because it kind of interferes
with the smooth running of Speaker's Corner. I see. Good now
let's get to your YouTube channel. How many interviews are you on
right now? What what number of interviews is the next idea? I
have no idea. It's nearly 1000 videos. I already am
Imagine I'd have a rough guess about half of those, probably more
than half are actual videos I used to do. So you started with the
Christian scholars. What was your first Muslim interview?
Gosh, do you know I don't know the answer to that I'd need to check.
I mean, I can check now but I, I don't remember I'm just scrolling
through my old stuff now and just trying to find an answer but I
don't know the answer that no problem.
So, Alia Thai as your video here, Alia Thai discusses Isaiah 53. And
James and Paul, that was two years ago. Oh, wow. He might even have
the truth about selfies revealed I interviewed a Saudi Sheikh Hassan
Somali is actually an American who lives in the state of
Pennsylvania.
But although he's actually British originally,
Alia tied before I think Alia tie was the earliest.
Surprisingly, so some of these, some of these interviews are
actually our Sorry, sorry, some of your videos are not interviews.
They're like compilations that you made,
like Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem calls for genocide. When I click
on that, I'm gonna get like a compilation and your commentary.
Yes. Oh, yeah, I do. Yeah, there are several kinds of categories of
thing of stuff work that I do that has evolved naturally, organically
over the last two, two years. And so obviously, there's setpiece
interviews, which I really liked. And then the other Another
category is
kind of my own social commentary. So if an event happens, or like
you mentioned, I will try and think of that I feel it I actually
want to comment on
and they usually much shorter, say 20 minutes, half an hour. Yep.
Very good. If you're on Instagram, or, or you're just joining us on
YouTube, our guest is Paul Williams, out of London, he runs a
website, a YouTube channel called blogging theology, where he has
interviewed numerous numerous Christian and Muslim scholars and
he has clips, he's got a very, very successful YouTube channel.
And he's also has a very successful
Twitter handle. So check it out at blogging theology, or at Paul
Williams, free monotheist on Twitter. Eric, your Twitter handle
is called Three monotheists. His channel on YouTube is called
blogging, theology. If you're on Instagram, hop over to YouTube, so
you can see the full picture. Let me ask you this question. What is
your criterion when you invite one of your guests? What's the
criteria in there? What's the thought pattern behind that? It
depends on the guest, I have a number of guests handlers that I
see regularly now not advertised one of them. So we're in contact
on WhatsApp. And, you know, he may come up with an idea or I might
invite him on discuss a particular subject. And Dr. Louis for too is
another one. There's kind of a group of of people who kindly come
on periodically, at least.
But other than that, perhaps a bigger source is my own reading.
So, you know, I come across authors and books that I've really
appreciated and would love to speak to the author of those 10
books. So I just simply email them and say, Can you join me Come on?
And the other time they say yes, some of the time they say no,
you've had earlier today, you had a lot of Muslims, obviously,
you've had discussed
a lot of biblical things with him. Judaism with him. Have you had any
rabbis on? Yes. Just when I had to actually Rabbi Toby, a singer, who
is based in Jerusalem now. He has been hugely popular amongst
Muslims. He is, is another genius when it comes to
dealing with Christian missionaries. And their
misrepresentations of the Torah
was a genius. I mean, he's not only technically masterful with
Hebrew, but his ability to communicate clearly. And
intelligently on issues is very, very special. So yeah, I had him
on. And there's another academic in New York, a professor that
whose embarrassingly name I can't remember, I had him on once a
couple of years ago,
that he's a proper academic who discussed Judaism. There is a
Hasidic Jewish rabbi, from the Satmar. You're familiar if you're
enough for those not familiar with the Satmar Jews, they live in
Williamsburg in Brooklyn. And they're very insular. They don't.
They don't engage a lot in the world, but they're also very
deeply anti Zionist, and they believe the entire project of
Israel is sinful, and has nothing to do with Judaism and is a
hijacking of Zionism. This is based upon their, the ancient or
not an ancient, I should say, the, maybe three generations ago there.
Rabbi Teitelbaum from Austria.
Who, who had this belief? They came to to Williamsburg in
Brooklyn, after the Holocaust, and they set up shop here. We're
trying to interview somebody, I think you would also
love to talk to him. If you watch the videos of Jakob Shapiro. He's
one of the most thoughtful rabbis he communicates excellently. And
he's from the Satmar tradition. And he distills and explains very
clearly. Why is it that these Jews feel that Zionism is in fact,
against the Torah? And is it sinful in its nature? Exactly. And
in fact, it remains historical facts I mean, Alia Thai has
mentioned quite correctly is that until relatively recently, far,
the vast majority of Orthodox Jews were auto, also anti Zionist. It's
relatively recently that there's been this huge conversion amongst
Jews, generally to be very militantly pros. That is, wasn't
the case. It was a heresy as a false idea by most Jews. And so
that because once you were obviously once the State of Israel
was founded, and so on, and after that, things began to change. But
the the idea itself was seen as completely and Jewish. If you
imagine, to bring this closer to Muslims, imagine if the whatever
the reformed, progressive
or Muslim organization out there, or that group of people, these
like totally reformed, totally progressive Muslims. They're not
that many, but they make a lot of noise online. They seem to
disappear every once in a while in England itself. You had
Quilliam Foundation, what a Muslim organization, but they were
dominantly very liberal, very, very liberal, and they all
disappeared. In fact, one of them actually made Toba and is now
Alexa Bundy in Malaysia. Right, which is good for him. Yeah,
what's his name? The Pakistani gentleman, what was his name? I
can't remember his name. He was very provocative, extremely
provocative, right? Liberal, but he's made Toba to Allah He as a
chef now and he's he's an extra Bundy in Indonesia and Malaysia.
So that's good for him. The other is they disappear? They always
disappear in Islam. But let's say hypothetically, they do, don't
they? It's really odd. Yeah, that was disappear.
Imagine those people set up a state
and it called it, you know, dawdle, Islam?
And not like we need one right, but just hypothetically, not. I'm
saying that most there are tons of Muslim countries already. But
hypothetically, they set up this is going to be a land where our
chief goal is Islam, which of course is wonderful idea. Right?
When I say I don't need one. I mean, like, we have so many
countries not that such a country wouldn't be a great idea. But
imagine this type of idealistic Muslim nation was but it was run
by reforms, reformed Muslims, okay, these liberal types, your
average Muslim and your average Imam and shit, they dismiss it
outright, right. And this is exactly what's happening. With a
lot of rabbis, in the earlier times, probably fewer now. But the
bulk of rabbis, the Satmar types, the matura carta types, which are
they're a little bit more extreme even. And people disagree with
their activism, rabbis, Jews themselves, but even anti Zionist
Jews disagree with their activism. But nonetheless, that used to be
the main mainstream position is that this whole thing is sinful,
as against the Torah. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. So I recommend you
check out check out Yakov Shapiro. Thank you, you're gonna love his
work. Right. You're gonna love his lectures, you know, who had him on
is the deen show, Eddie from the deen show. All right. Yeah, he had
him on. You had him on. All right. Now, I want to ask you about some
converts that you had. And you interviewed Muhammad killer.
Muhammad killer is tell us about him a bit. Age of crisis. Yep. Let
me just turn around here. I'm looking for the book. There we go.
USA somewhere.
We thinking Islam and the West, a new, a new narrative for the age
of crises. Not not a very,
you know, doesn't draw me in that title. But when I actually read
the book, I really appreciated the fantastic book. And I had the
privilege of interviewing him at Cambridge University on that you
can see on the channel,
and a very important work and you recommend it without going into
all the details, but he, he knows his stuff. And he does offer a
profound paradigm than design paradigm for, you know, a vision
to pursue if you like, and what was his claim to fame? Was he a
diplomat or No, no, that was great. And he was a diplomat. He
was a visiting fellow at Cambridge University. So I was a professor,
okay. No, fellow.
pedantic Nope.
and close. Yeah. All right. So we do you do you have an episode that
sticks out in your mind the most from one of your interviews? No,
you said there's so many jewels if I say so it's not because of me,
because of the guests. It's difficult to have one that sticks
out the most. But there are there are some, I think, rightly,
very significant, one or two videos, actually which raise
eyebrows. And one of them it features a guy called Keith Ward,
who's a Church of England priest, also happens to be a professor of
Christians Theology at Oxford University, and it was a
philosopher. He's also probably Britain's most senior Christian
theologian, very famous, hugely accomplished, written more books,
and I've had hot dinners. A great guy, and I've had him on several
times, bless him has been a great privilege to talk to him. Anyway,
when I first I've been reading his stuff ever since I was a
Christian. Actually, I was familiar with his work. And that's
why I invited him on, because I wanted to talk to him about and
lots of questions. So I invited him on He graciously came on. Now
I already knew because of the kind, I knew from his books that
he actually did believe that Mohammed upon MVPs was a prophet.
I knew that he was a bit pluralist. So Nevertheless, I he's
such a great guy, and I he's an idealist in philosophy, philosophy
is an idealist. So that's a technical term in philosophy, you
know, following Bishop Berkeley and others, and I really wanted to
talk to him. Anyway, he came on, and I asked him the question, do
you think Muhammad, the prophet of God, he said, Yes. And, and then I
had the thought, I'm not sure. Why do your colleagues by which I met,
of course, his Christian philosopher, colleagues, and
Christian theologian, colleagues, what do they think? And I thought,
the interesting to know how many of those might be sympathetic or
not to Islam? He said, Oh, no, that they all are virtually all of
them think he's a prophet? Wow. I thought, what.
And I just suppress my reaction, because it was such a startling
thing for him to say,
and such a significant thing to say, because what it meant is that
if I can put it this way that the Christian Allama in the West have
conceded the point Subhan Allah, Islam is from God, that Muhammad
was sent by God.
You know, we've had, what, 1400 years of civilizational conflict
or tension, where the West has insisted, it's it's right. And so,
but they're their own intelligence, you have now
accepted that Islam was right. That's right, the power will be as
if the Saudi almost suddenly decided that Jesus was crucified
for their sins. Exactly. Sir, that would never happen. But so that
was extraordinary. And you can't question what he says he is, you
know, he's actually a religious professor, you get ordinary
professors. And then you get the elite professors who are appointed
directly by the king or the queen, in his case, who are called Regis
professors. So he is a very senior academic. And so in other words,
he knows everyone in the field. So he is able to make that up. And no
one's ever contradicts it. No one's texted me or written to me
saying the boys and right. So the question is the two questions. Why
do they say this? And secondly, why isn't he a Muslim? Yeah, I
asked him this. But why do they think this because these guys,
when you get to know them a bit to their work, most of them are very
honest. I mean, they are real scholars, you don't get to be an
Oxford professor, unless you have something going for you.
They looked at the other other religions, often that Islam or
Hinduism or Judaism, and you know, they've read the texts and
responsibles. And they have seen the likeness they've they know
about Moses, they also know about Mohammed, and they can see how
similar they are. And they are of the same type. They both come from
the same place, arguably. So yeah, they get it because they're
experts on it. So that's why I think they will get is because
they've looked at the evidence. Why they're not Muslims is a much
more complicated, dark question. I don't have an I asked Professor
Keith. Well, why and he gave his answer I didn't really understand
it has to do with, well, I've been brought up in this tradition, and
it's fine. It's a way to God and I recognize Islam as a way to God
didn't I mean, you know, hey, that's his answer. But yeah,
that's usually the one way to go about it. I'm having a discussion
with with the Christian gentleman right now.
And I really basically said to him, Look,
I'm a simple guy, hypothetical. I just, I'm a born Muslim, and I
follow the Prophet peace be upon him.
All I want to know is if I continue in this for the rest of
my life, and I meet God, okay. Is he going to be pleased with my
decision to follow the Prophet? Or am I going to be in trouble? Am I
going to find myself in trouble with God at the end of the day
with this decision?
And I'm asking him in his theology like in your
Christian belief. Am I wrong about this? Ultimately, at the end of
the day, he had to admit that
God doesn't punish you if you make the wrong decision.
At that point, well, then what is the purpose of being right then?
Right? Like, if the wrong if making the wrong decision, if the
wrong answer doesn't get you, right marked wrong, why do I
study? What's the point of anything? What's the point of the
whole class? If marking the answer is wrong on the exam?
So does he represent the evangelical view correctly, that
there is no clear cut line that God says if you follow any prophet
after Jesus, you will be in trouble with me on the day of
judgment he gave a joke would never agree with that. They would
always say if you Yeah, they would say that Jesus was the final last
prophet. Even though he said in Matthew's Gospel, Matthew 15, have
already been sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And
according to Matthew called a Gentile woman, a dog, a Canaanite
woman. So imagine 15, if you are not familiar with it, I'm not
saying this historical, by the way, a lot in the gospels we now
know is not historical. But nevertheless, you know, he is
presented as someone who's only sent to the Jews in that regard, I
think is historical, why it makes sense of historical context. And
the crown confirms that. But certainly for evangelicals, if you
follow Muhammad, you began to hellfire. Absolutely.
These days, I really want to engage with others, right? I see
that this war has actually caused so many people to be talking about
things that we're interested in, they're talking about Judaism,
they're talking about Christianity to talk about Islam, Christianity,
in the sense of Christian Zionism, the Christians are very amped up
about Israel,
Islam and Muslims are is constantly in the forefront. So
I'm taking this an opportunity to talk and I talked to a lot of
a lot of Christians and a lot of right wingers, usually deep in
their threads on Twitter. What's your advice on how to interact
with those types of Christians? Mainly evangelicals, mainly very
worried about immigration and things like that? What's your
advice on how to interact with them? My advice would not be to
interact with them on Twitter. It's, it's not really the right
the right forum for
decent interaction, you know, human, compassionate, intelligent,
because so much communication between individuals or human
beings is nonverbal. And Twitter is a highly kind of selective, a
slice of reality that is easily amenable to you know, so there's a
terrible medium for that. Yeah. But I think the key thing is to
show I know it might sound very basic, but many, many people are I
had certainly in the past forgotten basic principles, which
I should have remembered and try and remember now. Yeah. And when
talking to evangelicals, I used to do some very, very silly what I'm
about to say, but I really believe in this. The first thing is be
polite. Actually, I've seen some Muslims, not many, thank goodness,
but some of them just go in there and attack people Christians.
Know, be polite, say, Hello, introduce, give you give them your
name. I know this sounds very basic, but it's surprising how
often I forgot to do that. So be polite, and at least try and
listen to what they're saying. Even though you may be repellent
or completely wrong. And so you know, maintain the eye contact,
try and show them some respect, because they're human beings after
all, and because often what wins people over is not me. I mean,
this is gonna sound extremely arrogant, is arrogant. I'm gonna
say anyway, my regret saying this is easy for me to win an argument
with a Christian, usually, it's not difficult, you know, I know
the Bible better than they do. Just a fact. I just noticed that
the average Christian, not professor from Oxford, but I can
win an argument and lose the person just as easily. You know,
winning the person over is absolutely a different thing
entirely. So winning the intellectual argument is nothing
doesn't matter. really doesn't matter. Doesn't matter what proofs
I come up with arguments, what Biblical verses what facts is
irrelevant. If I attack that person, they get defensive, and
then they retort with some ridiculous statement. And we
become alienated over. So I've done that. I've been there and I
behave like that a number of times. I try and avoid that
because it's bad. Oh, the other thing was, you know, as well as
better than I is that our job is not to convert anyone. It's God
who changes hearts. And so we must move away from the responsibility
the sense of responsibility that I must convert this person. Yeah.
You know, that's not our job. It's not even job was may think it's
their job for them, but it's not our job. Our job is to retain
knowledge, facts, and then leave the rest of God and gobble.
Convert them if you want. Yep. Let's take three questions.
Audience This is your chance.
to talk to the interviewer himself, Paul Williams from blank
theology. You know, his videos are usually recorded, pre recorded and
they're put out there so there's no back and forth.
I'm going to take two or three good and brief questions. Somewhat
related to what we've been talking about. From the audience. We have
about 400 to 500 people watching here, because we have here we're
on Instagram and we're on Facebook. So bring your questions
if you're on Instagram, bring it you can put it on Instagram. If
you're on Facebook put on YouTube or Instagram. They're not checking
the Facebook right now. Facebook is nothing other than now a
glorified Craigslist if you ask me. The Facebook marketplace is
the only thing going for it. She asked me
here.
And oh, sorry, I just insulted we got a Facebook engineer sitting
right here. You need to go in there with dynamite the whole
thing and start over.
Okay,
are you are you on Facebook at all? Yeah, I have a Facebook group
called blogging theology. Not surprisingly, I have a private
amount my own Facebook for me, but they may my blog and theology is
on there. Yes, you find it useful.
It's not really for me, I have it as a service to share my own
content, but it's closed, but you can join it. In other words, it's
devoid trolls getting in and just trashing the place. Makes sense.
Yeah. Yeah, I used to be a huge Facebook fan. And I used to be on
it all the time. But over the years, it just got so convoluted
and it just never adapted. And I feel that Twitter is just
completely left it in the dust and everyone's on Twitter. Right
Great.
All right. Here's a question for you
What's my favorite color
here's a question for you. Do you think Muslims should boycott piers
Morgan's show
going on the show I guess he means going on the show and Muslims not
go on the show. I'm gonna say some it's gonna be slightly
embarrassing and awkward. Really? Because I do have a view on this
and several people have been on actually friends of mine. And I
don't mean to criticize what their decision however I do think
absolutely. We've
we've had some big guns going on that program. Whether it be
Mohammed hijab and Abdullah Andalusi another friend of mine
was on the last night. My personal view is we don't need any more
Muslims go on. Piers Morgan is a bigot isn't islamophobe he doesn't
learn I don't mind people being bigots. If if when the arrows are
pointed out they go Do you know you have a point I'll change my
mind but he doesn't he's a bigger you know you know he's just a
bigger so we should we shouldn't waste our time being his is kind
of I don't know setups for him to exercise his his vile evil views I
mean, he's you know, the way he treats Muslims compared to the way
he treats the Israeli ambassador, for example, or Israeli spokesman
at falling boycotting, but I'm gonna say that he has been on so
far shouldn't have been on but I think we should certainly not go
on ever again. Yeah, we wouldn't. We wouldn't have known the level
of or his real attitude towards things if they hadn't gone on. And
what it seems to be it's like his, his material on the show. Besides
that, he gets, you know, a unique set of viewers every time he has a
new guest. But it seems to be like the fodder for a slugfest on
Twitter afterwards, every single guest of his and him ended up
yelling at each other on Twitter. Exactly. It's very, very
unwholesome. And I remember recently another friend of mine.
Dr.
Your name is Dr. Abdul Wahid.
Who was stating the fact that you know, given how bad
Piers Morgan thinks Islam is why so many women why most converts to
Islam women. And I think it's Morgan. I heard him say, you know,
oh, they that they obviously like pressing themselves. Yeah. Now,
this is just sheer stupidity and bigotry and the fact that he is
indeed, I've seen on Twitter afterwards. He's been roundly
criticized, rightly by numerous people, but he's still defending
what he said. And that shows me he's a bigot that I can't have any
respect for as opposed to a bigot who actually listens and then
changes his mind. We all make mistakes, but this guy just in
trenches is ignorance and that's just Isha be kicked off TV and
mitre and I think he's also basically a wing of corporate
media. He's between corporate and and the new media or free media
but because when he has an Israeli ambassador or Ben Shapiro, it's
like with with mittens, he treats them right. And there's never some
kind of there's never a controversy and there's never a
fight on Twitter afterwards. So you
You're in. Yeah. Okay.
So that was a good question. Yep. Here's another question about your
knowledge of Christian theology. Christians believe that Christ
Himself is the temple. Okay. Is it blasphemous for Christians to
believe in the Third Temple?
The rebuilding of another temple? Well, I'm not a Christian. So I
can't pronounce on what's blasphemous for Christians
believe, you know, that's a Christian issue. I think believing
in Jesus as Son of God, or God is blasphemous, but you know, I mean,
but it's not my job to pronounce that to people. When you're doing
Dower, I mean, your view as a blasphemer is
quite heavy to the idea of the Third Temple. It is not, it is not
normal Christian theology, but it is very popular in recent years
amongst so called Christian Zionists, most of them are in your
country, should America reasonable. So the vast majority
of designers are actually Gentiles. They're not Jews, the
Christians. And Alia Thai has spoken incredibly eloquently about
this whole phenomenon of Christian Zionism, on on my channel, and
certainly elsewhere as well, of course. And it is a very strange
belief looking that, that somehow God will bring back the Third
Temple when he's already abolished.
The second temple in AD 70, according to the letter of the
Hebrews, which is a letter in the New Testament, was all about this
kind of thing about the how the Christian dispensation has
fulfilled or overtaken or replaced the Jewish dispensation. You can
bring back the Jewish dispensation. eschatological
setting is, is really unbiblical. It has no use in Christian
theology is really weird, actually. But it's gained this new
cut of this currency because of interesting reason. It's just like
Jewish support. Design ism is a new thing. support zone is a new
thing. And I think what's really going on this is my opinion, I
could be wrong. What's really going on behind this? Is Israel's
itself anti Muslim, pro Western position. And so many Christians
like Israel, because it's very anti Muslim, anti Islamic
explicitly. I mean, I saw that I saw on Sky News earlier this
evening, the Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom State in an
interview on Sky News, that she's apps, there's absolutely no hope
of, of a two state solution. No hope. Okay.
And she referenced in passing about the Palestinians, as in
general, how radical they was, why should you be can't be a two state
solution? Because they're radical. This is all of the Palestinians.
Yeah, yeah. Right. So this idea of the radical palette, this all
feeds in beautifully with a big narrative you find in the West, in
the United States, obviously, and in Europe, to some extent, as
well. So I can see why Christian, fundamentalist Christians would
support Zionism because it ultimately is anti Islamic, and it
fits in with the agenda. in Palestine and Israel, the
population is 5050.
Countries like Denmark, France, England, they're also complaining
of the rising population of Muslims. So they seem to each
other have similar grievances. And that's why they're really echoing
the same emotions and the same sentiments. I see these circles.
They're constantly like a Venn diagram. They're overlapping
heavily in that regard. Yeah. All right. Here's the next question.
This is from a gentleman by the name of Mark ward. He says a Salam
aleikum wa rahmatullah wa barakato. What was the most
difficult interview for you? And I did see someone else comment and
asked something about your interview with William Lane.
Craig,
could you comment on your most inner difficult interview? Well,
this is different. I mean, I've gotta be careful here, because
some of these, these have been my guests. And they might be guests.
Again, I don't want to criticize them publicly, because it's not
appropriate. I do so but I won't comment on one because
I will because I don't really mind if he gets offended because he
behaved badly. Professor Herman, who is a biblical scholar is one
of the great biblical scholars today, in my view, one of your
many people. I invited him on and we did two interviews. One was on
New Testament scholarship and so on. We had a great time. Fantastic
interview, loved it, fanned out, we're we're on the same wavelength
here and I and we were just playing off it was a fantastic
interview. He enjoyed it. He wrote an article about it on his website
really enjoyed it. Fantastic. He also separately did, and something
I'd set up,
had to debate discussion with a chap called Dr. Brown in is a
Muslim living in Saudi Arabia. He's an eye surgeon
Listen, I got it.
And the debate was on was set up to be a discussion between a
Muslim and an atheist support and representing atheism. And Bart
Ehrman behaved badly. I mean, he just did. I mean, it was so bad
that, you know, there's no one can dispute. And he actually
apologized afterwards and not on camera, but to me, but he behaved
badly. And it was, it was embarrassing, because I didn't
know what to do. I mean, we have two eminent people, I'm not there
like a school teacher in terms of behavior.
That he would, but he was being very aggressive. He kept, he made
mocking comments to Dr. Brown, they dismissive and didn't take
seriously the I thought, the discussion. And that was very,
very unfortunate, actually. And that was the worst one. I don't I
mean, it Berman's watching this, he probably isn't, of course. But
you know, I, it's just the way I saw it. And I think he did, he did
acknowledge that he behaved badly. So you were the moderator of that
debate? Well, moderation is too strong a word I was hosting it
really, I was trying to steer too bright guys in a hopefully I read
discussion towards, you know, elucidating what the issues were,
and hopefully showing that, you know, Islam was a serious
tradition. And the personalities were very different. And I think
it was a mistake to put them together anyway.
I mean, Dr. Brown's style is much more gentle than that. And I think
he was steamrollered,
very aggressive American professor who really has such contempt for
religion that he couldn't seriously. And I've seen by
ermine, as an academic, you say, who was very respectful, were
normally very respectful
and expected that approach to continue and it didn't. Do you
enjoy moderating these kinds of debates? Is that something you
look forward to doing in the future? Oh, absolutely. I was
hugely privileged to be invited to moderate debate as a tuna College
in Berkeley, California in February, where a very wonderful
professor of Islamic law from Toronto University was 100
federal, and our own Sheikh Hassan spiker.
And I was invited and did did host a debate, although I was told
wasn't quite a debate. It's more of a discussion. But really, it
was a debate between these two gentlemen. And that was very, very
interesting in front of a big audience. It's a tuner and it was
fantastic. I really enjoyed that. Because I get you know, at least I
get some opportunity to ask the kinds of questions I want to ask
even if I'm not, I it's not entirely selfish, but I get some
small window where I can actually ask what I wanted. It's very
indulgent. In that sense, what was the statement of that debate?
The same was based on on a saying called
slogan, do what thou wilt do what their will is the creed of
Aleister Crowley who was an English satanist no less
Aleister Crowley he actually be actually a featured on a Beatles
cover, Kid you not that as well. So do what they do. In other
words, you're not doing God's will. I'm doing what I want to do
is the only creed I need follow this. And the argument was
proposition was this is actually the creed of our era of the
Zeitgeist. Yeah, what we believe as a civilization you do your own
thing, without any reference to any, any divine command or divine
frame of reference. So that was a discussion and it was bought in
Liberal liberalism, nature of liberalism, whether or not you
could Islamic, or Muslim could leave and it was living in this
Muslim society. And so we talked about, you know, roles and all of
that, but it was very topical, actually, I thought, but in that
case, both of them would agree that that statement would be evil.
Yes, but hasn't spiker
did not accept that liberalism. Could actually is a viable project
project at all as problematic. Was the professor from Toronto accept
the thought of liberalism, in a modified form? The the Rawlsian
liberalism genre was the American philosopher, was actually
compatible with Islam. Like I said, liberalism is not compatible
with Islam. My own preference was very, very much for Hasson Spiker,
I think, but then I'm not there. That was, that wasn't the point
what my view was, you mentioned Satanist. Do you know about Albert
Pike's three World War of vision?
No, I don't. Okay, you might be interested in that. Check it out.
It's a short letter. That's there's verification that was
written way back in the early or late 19th century so late 1800s.
That he was a Satanist. And he had a vision from Satan that there
will be three world wars
One would knock out Christianity from Europe knock out the kings.
The second would set up a Jewish state. And the third would be
between Jews and Muslims. And the goal of the three world wars is
that it would take all this time to knock out monotheism from the
earth and give atheism * over the earth. And after atheism
settles as the dominant mode of operation in the earth after that
the Luciferian doctrine or the or Satanism itself can manifest and
invite people in from from the void that they're in. That's idea.
I think you'd find it fascinating. The Albert Pike. Yeah, Albert Pike
was it was a big set innocent from in from America.
Okay, one more question from our guests.
Who is a good question, actually.
This is from Lily Rose. Who would you really like to interview that
you haven't yet had the chance?
Yes. Okay. I had to get a couple of answers that what academically
Professor while Hallock of Columbia University dates, who am
I big fan of?
I'm still longing to interview him? I've not I've not exhausted
efforts to him, although I know people who are Imam Tom tweeted
recently yesterday, I think it was photographed with him and while
Halak you know, he's the author of the impossible stage and numerous
other books on Islamic law and epistemology is, is he's very,
very juicy academically and he's actually a Christian as well. It's
amazing. You wouldn't have it, I don't think you'd ever know that.
I'm not sure he would approve of me saying this but much you never
know that reading his books
clearly has a profound understanding and sympathy towards
Islam in the Sharia and so on. So he will be my academic number one
because I just have such huge respect for him.
But you know, other people use of Islam I've I won't go into the
details about that, but I'd like to, he does follow my work but I
like to have him on as well. I think he's a because he's such a
lovely human being there's a good embodiment, I think of of the
Sunnah of the Prophet upon every piece in terms of his adab I mean,
and he's obviously a talented as well as he's a very, very nice
person. I very much like to
just talked to him, not necessarily about heavy theology,
but whatever so but it was a long list of people I like to have one
but those two come to mind anyway. Very good. How about this one?
This is interesting. You came into Islam how have you navigated the
different contentious I should say groups within medicine I'm not
gonna say sects, the groups
that hold one another erroneous within the Sunnah.
Alison, how have you navigated that? You know, sometimes that's a
problem for people. Yeah, it was for me, I have I have journeyed
from different positions, I've now reached a position which I'm
fairly comfortable with. I came into Islam through the door of
Sufism. So through guidance work, a lot of British Muslims become
Muslim through Salafism and I didn't but through Sufism, and I
was quite happy there for some time actually been quite anti
Salafi, I picked up that virus, just because it seemed part of the
package.
And then because of an event several years ago, a very
traumatic event really, I'm not going to go into here but
a couple of Salafi friends of mine
basically saved my faith.
And as I look at the issues because
there's not the right program for this
and I gained and appreciate it again, something you yourself
might perhaps approve of, or many others but nevertheless as why at
where I'm at, I gained a positive appreciation for many aspects of
salary, the salary outlook
and whether it be the Aqeedah whether it be the handle you might
have as identify as a humbly
and so on as a methodology of the salary
but particularly since the my work on BT I found myself because I
can't I can't be although some people would like me to be I can't
be professional on the channel. I can't say well, you shouldn't be X
Mr. Muslim, you should follow this school or that school I can't do
it is simply wrong. That's not what I do.
So I've grown to have a very, I find myself agreeing with many
positions and having a positive appreciation of them. Many people
will think these positions are irreconcilable. So actually, in
some ways, I'm quite pro Sufi. I don't mean all the Sufi practices,
but the earlier ones I you know, the self purification ones, I can
read guide and who's a Sufi and still appreciate him.
I can also
Be very pro Salafi and appreciate what some, you know, a lot of
Salafi works. So I find and when it comes to the the rulers I can
be quite appreciate like his Victoria, you know, which is, you
know, very much in favor of a caliphate and I'm strong believer
in the caliphate actually now as it really key issue for us today
and also understand those who oppose this kind of so called you
know, well the whole issues so I find myself actually affirming an
awful lot and denying very little and I said to a friend of mine
recently you know, I'm just being consistent aren't I? And they said
no no this is fine you can it's the other people who think you
can't appreciate the positive aspects of these things that
aren't there's not a good place to be and so I I affirm a lot of
Sufism affirm a lot and Salafi thought I agree with the Akita,
Salafi, etc etc. Even though formally, these groups that self
identify, may be very hostile to each other. So Sophie's may hate
selfies, selfies may sit, make massively overgeneralize
statements about Sufism, and dismiss it all. I don't agree with
that. So I'm actually quite affirming of that I do. I do have
a line. By the way, I don't affirm modernism, I don't tend to affirm
liberalism at all. So I guess I'm strictly orthodox in my Outlook.
But within that, I have quite a broad understanding of what I
think is positive. I think, in the long term, having a very
nasty heart towards groups. In the long term, it just hurts you. It's
one thing to have an opinion. But it's another thing that let that
root so deeply in a person's heart, that they have such a
hatred.
It's one thing to sort of dismiss opinions that you disagree with.
But that's an opinion and it's not a person in my shooted had dead
he, he had opinions. He was a scholar, everyone knows his
opinions. But he also had a teaching that he wanted all of his
moods, all of his disciples to have a clean heart towards all
Muslims. And I think that in the long term is extremely important
to keep someone's Amen. You see a lot of people who came off, who
fell off is because they almost were their hearts were at war with
other groups. And eventually, that never leads to anything good.
So all right, let's see the
here's a question says, was Paul involved with the Morbi tune group
in Norwich in the 80s? I don't think so. Right.
Yeah, that group was told I wasn't.
I know, I know. You mean, but no, I was too young for that. Yeah.
All right. We thank you so much, I don't want to keep you too long.
Because we've we've gotten now now I know, you're used to actually
live streams that sometimes go two and three and four hours, but we
want to be respectful of your time.
Inshallah, tada, I would love to do this again. And to talk again,
I'm going to keep sharing with you some neat ideas that I think you'd
like and like to make videos out of. We're in contact privately. So
please do share. If you have any ideas like that, I really
appreciate these suggestions. Thank you. I appreciate it. A love
talking to you love your work. And let me tell you, the OMA loves
your work. So many people love Paul Williams. And I think your
attitude of sort of neutrality within orthodoxy. And Islam is
very helpful as an interviewer, if you were to pick one, so I know
that you eliminate all the other people you can interview them.
Right. So
again, I really believe that the western world is benefiting so
much from your work and Allah has chosen you in a very short period
of time to do a lot of good we ask Allah subhanaw taala to let you
continue and give you the tofield to continue this and even expand
blogging, theology, expand your work on Twitter,
and everything else, just colloquia. And thank you so much
for coming on. It's been an absolute July, you've been a great
host, thank you very much for this opportunity as well. Thank you.
Thank you barnacle effect, thank you.
Okay, there you have it, brothers and sisters, again, a lot of you
saying you love Paul Williams and love his work, you could tell from
his intention, you can see you can sense a pure intention when you
see one. And that to me, in my view is a pure intention that is
reaping the rewards of having that kind of clean heart towards the
OMA and just wanting to get to the truth and that's really
the attitude we should all have. So please make dua for him Allah
continue his work. I did tell everybody that I'm going to read a
little bit from signs at the end of time. Look at these voluminous
works. The scholars Allah bless them have spilled so much ink,
right bringing us so much here.
You've been asking about the SOFIA any other signs of the end of
time. And
it's going to be in the last volume. So this is volume Pset
seven this is the last volume. So this should have
should have looked it up before we came but it didn't. So
don't tell this
wait a second. Is this the last volume?
This can't be
where's that activism in here?
Maybe it's in a different order than I expected.
I mean, you go to activism and be down Hey, pick up the last book
right?
Logic says that right. Pick up the last book. I don't see Africa as a
man I see in medical the photo kill when it's a best in history.
Share a jeep.
Zane
look this through this for me for Africanism and her looking here if
you see a Sophia Annie. If not, let's say
let's open it up. Thank you all model for the idea. We'll open it
up in a Shambhala okay
and let's take your q&a as well at the same time
that was a good interview, wasn't it? I really liked it. And I'm a
big fan. I'm telling you. I'm a big fan of that type of
OMA wide attitude
Alright, let's take some q&a. Whether we find it or not. We'll
have to do it another time properly from that but keep
looking just right. It'd be J when you hire
all right here is wrestler where's that? Wrestler? Where was it?
I'm looking he asked about how he can attend live here. Listen, what
is our schedule here? Our schedule is Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
The studio is open, good people can attend. We don't have any
rules on attendance until something goes wrong, then we'll
make one
because that's what's going to happen, right?
Yes, send a message to inside a telegram. Say you're coming. We'll
reach out to you and we'll let you in. We're on the third floor of
the soup kitchen. One mile down from University Hospital Robert
Wood Johnson got
and we'd love for people to come and sometimes he will come with
treats. For example today. There is a nice beautiful Jersey pizza
sitting right there. Let's see what it's like. And if we have to
put it in the oven Who's this from?
Zhi Shan again, okay, very good pizza needs to go be put in the
oven. Zayn, you know how to use an oven.
Good.
All right, you know what the oven is? Downstairs. Look it up. But I
don't know if you could put the box in the oven.
Okay, so put out what to 250 or something. Yeah.
Now it's open. I opened the front door. Okay, so, secondly, in the
masjid
Tuesday, um, they're given classes from 530 to seven.
You can sit on those classes
tonight.
What's What's the gentleman's name who gave that? Tonight we have an
event John Ressler. We have an event tonight at 730 with saba.
I'm having a discussion with the members of one okay.
That's for young professionals. Okay, it's not for men for made
for marriage, but it's the same people the same age of people who
want to get married. So it comes to that.
Number three, every Thursday is a big night at mbyc I'm there I give
I read from the books have to sold off
the books of sea damage Zoo.
Good. Works of two so Wolf. And then we have Knight of sulla on
the prophets of Allah who it was sudden, next year, it's going to
be to sofern our daughter fetch classes for hour and a half, two
hours. Then night of Salah on the Prophet where we read the poetry
and the salah on the prophet from at Habib Omar have been said and
been huffy.
Every Friday night, we got something going on but this
Friday, the youth are going to New York, I don't think I'm gone. I
think I need to just take the night off to prepare for the ombre
trip. So this Friday, I won't be coming down to the masjid. But
the youth will be going to New York City for the youth night. All
right, but every
a Friday night I'm in the mosque and every Juma we're in the masjid
and then we go out to lunch. That lunch is so important. I can't
tell you it's one of the son of many automat that they they do
that okay? And have a luncheon and Sheila, here's Jennifer Phillips
Shaka question is the third a way to temple. Actually the current
Masjid there that the Jews haven't been able to recognize
is it I don't know. Good question. Hey, Zog can you look that up or
you get kicked off a Facebook if you can you look up if the temple
Okay, the third way to Temple is in the location of the mosque of
AXA muscle oxide or not. We have I am sitting here with one of the
top programmers of Facebook. He's working on meta. He is a believer
in meta, that meta is actually something that's gonna happen.
Okay. And I'm telling you why it might happen because Zuck needs a
success. Tell me the last product he did that was successful.
He bought it. Instagram. He bought it. Right. WhatsApp. He bought it.
Facebook. He stole it.
successes. Yes to steal. Yeah. But
yeah.
Virginia steel. Yes. Steve Jobs, right. Look.
Musk though, does stuff you have to admit that Tesla was in his
invention. But he took it and made it a reality those those two guys
were gonna fail. Right? The guys who founded Tesla were they
weren't sharp. They weren't strong. They weren't gangsters.
Right. He took it a major reality. SpaceX, it's the satellite, anyone
could buy a satellite, right? But he just keeps buying satellites.
So he has neuro link now. The Tesla just released a robot. Tesla
is going to be the leader in robots. He saw the robot today,
right?
Yeah, on Oculus prime, what's his name? What's the Transformers
name? Optimus Prime. That's what he called it.
Shouldn't have gone dancing everything but it walks like it
has to go to the bathroom. Right? Did you see it?
Optimus you guys didn't see he released a video on Optimus today.
Right? Optimus is his new robot. Okay.
I don't know what Optimus what that robot for regular people is
going to do, we'll find we will definitely find uses for it. But
eventually my worry is that
eventually it's going to be used for war and policing. And there's
been no empathy. See, the thing is, in policing, there's empathy.
When when a police pulls you over, or stops or something, there's
some chance I can talk to him and he could see that I'm in distress.
But if I'm speeding, let's say for example, and there's Hey, hold on,
my wife's about to have a baby and I get stopped by a robot. There's
no some of that empathy is a problem. lack of empathy, I should
say.
I don't like it now hoping up. I hope doesn't end up policing us
now. Yeah. Yeah.
That's a moral dilemma.
Yeah, big moral dilemma on AI and wars, because that's why I think
like if you have that robot, and that robot kills a baby, no one's
gonna be responsible because they're just gonna say a glitch.
Right.
Right. And no one will actually feel guilty either. Like when you
do that stuff. War Crimes usually come to an end because people they
know someone's guilty but if you keep saying oh, this is an
accident, it's a glitch.
Alright, so tell me if you got find out about the Third Temple,
and then then I have to leave.
Jonnie date seed says, I'm supposed to follow one of the four
Imams The answer is yes, we Muslims believe that the the early
scholars they sought to find the truth and they develop these
methodologies. Truth About What when we have the Quran Listen, we
have the truth, right? But the Quran and the Hadith have texts in
them have verses have had eats that can have multiple meanings.
And there are some narrations from companions. They heard something
from the Prophet other companions heard something else from the
profit. How do we bring these two together? Which one do we choose?
Okay, some companions understood a verse of Quran meaning one thing
others understood it meaning another thing which one do we go
by? So in that realm of things, we need scholarship. When you when
you were not scholars, we're going to seek out the scholars and
follow their scholarship. When we follow their scholarship. You're
essentially following the person you believe is most worthy of
following and you're following the methodology
that you believe is the right methodology. So what do you do you
study the 40 memes, watch their videos, read books about them
study all four give yourself a whole year just to let it settle
you're not going to study like boom, boom, boom No, you're going
to study overtime let things marinate in your mind observe
mosques, observe scholars then make a decision of who you believe
is most worthy of following Okay, that's how simple it is. Okay,
it's like picking a doctor
okay
you gotta go I gotta run okay a
lot of questions coming in here
bring on multi level lathe.
Please
purify our comm or chat section here from this nonsense
can we take theater from Muhammad sucks? I don't know who he is.
Maybe I should look him up. Rose Gold. Can you explain the verse?
Allah doesn't change your conditionally unless you change
what is it within yourself? It means you know what this verse
came out of a group of Benny astroglia in the ancient times,
and had a prophet, they obeyed that Prophet, they lived by that
the Torah. They were so righteous. Then Allah subhana wa Tada
stabilized their monarchy. Their village gave them wealth, their
children were coming out good. Okay, it doesn't mean there's no
problems in life, but in general, no major issues. Their enemies
were at bay, their market was moving, their marriages were
successful, their kids were good. They notice of how to how much
clay is coming in, in our in our world, in our society in our
lives. So how much goodness so they went to their Prophet and
they said we're worried to lose this goodness, then Allah revealed
to him Allah will not change your condition. All this goodness
unless you change what is within yourselves. So it originally came
down was revealed for goodness. Okay. So if you're thinking
everything's going well, it's going to continue to go well as
long as you're following the Cydia and abiding by it and remembering
Allah much and devoting yourself to your Creator.
It also applies to the opposite when we're in bad in a bad state.
Bad political condition, bad worldly condition. It's never
going to change unless we correct ourselves. Right? fix our hearts,
fix our deeds, start following this video and start devoting
ourselves to Allah subhanaw taala. Okay.
The Albert Pike prophecy has me deeply worried I need some hope.
Could you expound upon it? Yeah, they made it Satan made a big
mistake. He doesn't realize that Allah to Allah
is going to bring down an Imam and Mandy Prophet isover mme and
Iblees is making a simple mistake that he is going to outdo God's
plan. He's not going to do God's plan. But there will be trickery
that he does in the world mass level of trickery, mass level of
lies, we're already seeing it it's just happening in slow motion
because real life happens in slow motion 90% of the time. All right,
and ALLAH SubhanA wa Tada said,
there will always be people upon the truth. And Allah to Allah said
there will always be people coming into the truth and the numbers of
Muslims will always be on the increase. Converts are on the
increase, okay? And so his plan is is going to fail at that point.
Because up to now he has not yet messed with Allah of Islam in the
sense of these three world wars. The first he said, it's all about
Europe. Second one is establish Israel also was in Europe, the
third one this one is against the OMA of Islam, so it's not going to
succeed and whatever appears like success will be against him. Okay,
we'll turn back against him. Come up to Boston. Yes. So I'll come up
to Boston and Charlotte have to come up to Boston and these big
cities, please invite Schicksal demand via email. I will inshallah
to add up. Ladies and gentlemen, I'd love to hang out with you a
little bit more. But
we have to go to Zakum locator and everybody Subhanak Allahu mobie
100 A shadow and Illa Illa. Anta nests offer quantity with a cola
Sit in Santa Fe because Illa Latina Mo Mo Salah hurt. What also
will have to also be sub Mohammed Koulibaly go to Masjid Al Hussein,
go to my selenium Emma sheffey If you only have time for to massage
it if not then there are nine of these masajid all in a row. Mr.
Hussein Al Azhar Sharif master chef I say the Zainab say da Isha.
See the
deer. There are nine such masajid so go to all of them just below
head on.
Oh, well it's the Oscars over I just did it within myself during
the stream actually was said I'm on a coma rahmatullah wa barakato.
Job
know
who
God