Shadee Elmasry – Trumps Ideology with The Thinking Muslim – NBF 401
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In the name
of Allah,
the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful, All praise
is due to Allah, and peace and blessings
be upon the Messenger of Allah, and upon
his family and companions, and those who follow
him, and those who do not follow him,
and those who do not go astray, and
those who do not go astray, and those
who do not go astray, and those who
do not go astray, and those who do
not go astray, and those who do not
go astray, and those who do not go
astray, and those who do not go astray,
and those who do not go astray, and
those who do not go astray, and those
who do not go astray, and those who
do not go astray, and those who do
not go astray, and those who do not
go astray, and those who do not go
astray, and those who do not go astray,
and those who do not go astray, and
those who do not go astray, and those
who do not go astray, and
those who do not go astray, and those
who do not go astray, and those who
do not go astray, and those who do
not go astray, and those who do not
go astray, and those who do not go
astray, and those who do not go astray,
and those who do not go astray, and
those who do not go astray, and those
who do not go astray, and those who
do not go astray, and those who do
not go astray, and those who do not
go astray, and those who do not go
astray, and those who do not go astray,
and those who do not go astray, and
those who do not go astray, and those
who do not go astray, and those who
do not go astray, and those who do
not go astray, and those who do not
go astray, and those who do not go
astray, and those who do not go astray,
and those who do not go astray, and
those who do not go astray, and those
who do not go astray, and those who
do not go astray, and those who do
not go astray, and those who do not
go astray, and those who do not go
astray, and those who do not go astray,
and those who do not go astray, and
those who do not go astray, and those
who do not go astray, and those who
do not go astray, and those who do
not go astray, and those who do not
go astray, and those who do not go
astray, and those who do not go astray,
and those who do not go astray, and
those who do not go astray, and those
who do not go astray, and those who
do not go astray, and those who do
not go astray, and those who do not
go astray, and those who do not go
astray, and those who do not go astray,
and those who do not go astray, and
those who do not go
astray,
and those who do not go astray, and
those who do not go astray, and those
who do not go astray, and those who
do not go astray, and those who do
not go astray, and those who do not
go astray, and those who do not go
astray, and those who do not go astray,
and those who do not go astray, and
those who do not go astray, and those
who do not go astray, and those who
do not go astray, and those who do
not go astray, and those who do not
go astray, and those who do not go
astray, and those who do not go astray,
and those who do not go astray, and
those who do not go astray, and those
who do not go astray, and those who
do not go astray, and those who do
not go astray, and those who do not
go astray, and those who do not go
astray, and those who do not go astray,
and those who
do not go astray, and those who do
not go astray, with evidence.
So let's have him on, Muhammad Jalal out
of England.
And it's late at night now in England.
It's now 9pm or so, right?
Actually, it's half past seven, but it's as
cold here today as it is in New
Jersey, I think.
But thank you very much for your kind
introduction.
It's great to have you on.
I remember your live stream coming out, your
podcast coming about during COVID, I think.
You just started up maybe around COVID, maybe
before COVID.
Everything in our world is BC or AC,
right?
Or DC during COVID.
But anyway, that's not what's important.
What's important is the content of your live
stream and your podcast are very thought provoking.
Let's kick it off with what you just
heard from Trump.
Yeah, bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim.
JazakAllah khair.
Thank you very much for inviting me, and
I really enjoy your shows.
And Alhamdulillah, I've been following your podcast and
your conversations for a very long time.
So it's really a pleasure to be on
your platform.
So I think it's really interesting to see
what Donald Trump is trying to do.
And of course, Donald Trump is, I believe,
is going to be a transformational president.
This is, of course, his second term.
And so the risk of having to fight
another election is not there.
I mean, he's not going to be able
to change the constitution and fight for a
third term.
So that weight of responsibility or that weight
to fight another election is no longer present.
And it's very clear to me that Donald
Trump this time around, partly because he has
got Congress, he's got the House of Representatives,
he's got a majority, of course, not an
overall majority, but a majority in the Senate.
He's got the Supreme Court.
He won the popular vote.
He is in a very strong position.
Actually, one of the strongest positions a president
has found in a very long time, because
of course, the way your system works in
America is that the checks and balances, the
Supreme Court, Congress, these work to restrain the
appetites of a president.
Well, we don't have very many of those
restraints now for Donald Trump.
So Donald Trump, in terms of his ideology,
and I know we want to talk about
that, wants to transform the United States.
Now, a lot of that could be bluster
and a lot of that could just be
hot air.
And of course, like all politicians, he has
to respond to not just the population and
people who are very much, I think, on
his side when it comes to some of
these social issues, but he also has to
respond to big money.
And big money will play a part.
And of course, he's going to have to
respond to Zionists in his administration.
So that is also something to be aware
of.
But I think Donald Trump is going to
try to change America in his own image.
And that will have a great impact on
America's economy and have an impact on America's
foreign policy.
And certainly, I think these social issues, these
wedge issues, these cultural matters, Donald Trump is
going to make sure that he sets a
very clear blue water between himself and the
Democrats.
Remember, a lot of the commentators have argued
that one of the reasons why Kamala Harris
lost is because historically, at least, I know
not during the election campaign, but historically, she
has been socially very liberal on some of
these matters.
So it's no harm to him to remind
the electorate that Kamala Harris and the Democrats
are pursuing these social agendas that most people
cannot relate to.
And one last point to make there is,
I think the Republicans and Donald Trump have
successfully argued that the Democrats today are not
the party of the working classes, and not
the party of rural America as they used
to be in past days.
If we think about Kennedy's era, and you
think about sort of post-war, the Democrats
today are very much the urban elites, and
they cater for the tastes of the urban
elites.
And a lot of those urban elites are
ridiculed, I suspect, by large swathes of Americans
who find their drama to be pretty ridiculous.
So I can imagine for Trump, it's not
a bad thing at this moment to remind
people why he will seem to be the
sensible candidate.
And Donald Trump, from where I'm standing, doesn't
sound very sensible.
But in relation to some of these extremities
of the Democrats, probably is.
It's exactly how you described the Democrats as
an an urban, an arrogant urban elite that
come out of the universities, and the media,
New York, Boston, and San Francisco are their
hubs, possibly parts of Chicago, but no one
can relate to them anymore.
Their character, their arrogant, snobby attitude, but also,
more importantly, is their insane ideas.
But I could foresee as well, eventually, the
ayah of Allah says, if it was not
for Allah using one group of people to
push off another group of people, the whole
earth would be corrupted.
So there is a, when the righteous, when
the believers, notice he says, in this verse,
people, that means they may be good or
bad.
But they're, whether accidentally, whether otherwise, they're knocking
off a certain agenda.
And that, I think, a couple years ago,
really, people felt like enough is enough with
these, with the social movement that's gone so
crazy, and so insane, and no one's ever
seen this stuff before.
And it really bothered people.
And that's really where the Democrats lost.
And maybe you could say that the genocide
definitely pushed them over, it tipped them over,
but people were really getting fed up with
the Democrats because of their complete favoritism to
this insane agenda.
And that's really where they totally, they're totally
lost touch.
I mean, if you look at the map
of, hey, Omar, pull that map up of
what the election looked like.
It's literally almost an entirely red map.
And there's only little sparts of, not that
one, go by county, Omar, get the one
that's by county, right?
The one by county is insane.
It's like almost all red.
Yeah.
And yeah, I guess that's the one.
Yeah.
So anyway, Omar's going to pull it up.
But the Democrats, it's not just the Republicans'
action, it's also the Democrats shooting themselves in
the foot and not realizing that most people
still don't want their kids exposed to this
stuff.
And when are they going to get it
through their head?
I think it's too late.
It's too late.
They're never going to move off those positions.
And they're a party that I think they're
going to need some serious reform because they
really don't get it.
And there's no way they're moving off of
their progressive agenda on moral issues.
So let's talk about this specific injunction from
Trump or what he wants to do.
What is the status in England right now?
We have a lot of viewers out of
England.
In fact, most of our viewers are out
of England who are live because we're in
the evening there.
Tell us in England, what is the law
now regarding gender and transgender and everything?
Yeah, I mean, there's been some pushback here
as well in terms of politicians.
I mean, the equivalent of the Democrats in
Britain, of course, the Labour Party here and
for a while pursued a progressive agenda.
In fact, even the conservatives who were the
equivalent, of course, of the Republicans, they pursued
a very socially progressive agenda.
Because the conservatives for a while under David
Cameron, if you remember him as Prime Minister,
they realized that they were losing touch with
the electorate.
And one of the ways by which he
exposed himself to a broader electorate was to
move on some of these progressive issues.
It was Theresa May, who was Prime Minister,
who at one point wanted to introduce self
ID without medical certification.
So it was just self identification without the
limitations that may come from seeking medical advice.
She didn't successfully get that passed.
In fact, she never finally sought to do
so because she realized there would be a
backlash from her own party.
But since then, both political parties have moved
in a very conservative direction, even the Labour
Party.
So Keir Starmer, who's the Prime Minister today
of the Labour Party, he would never talk
about these progressive issues.
And because he knows that his party were
out of sync with the population.
So we still have, if you ask about
the law, and I'm not so conversant in
all the details of the law about this,
but gender reassignment surgery is legal, of course,
in the UK, but it requires a lot
of medical oversight.
Ironically, by the way, it was the Scottish
National Party in Scotland who tried to dilute
that in Scotland, because health policy is the
purview of the Scottish government.
And it was Hamza Yousaf, believe it or
not, who was the First Minister of Scotland,
who fought very hard to introduce self identification
for trans individuals.
He actually even fought a case at the
UK Supreme Court to try to overturn a
veto by the central government that didn't allow
him to do so.
And subhanAllah, I mean, it's a sad place
for a Muslim politician to be.
So I suppose, I know a lot of
your health policy is decentralized, and it's down
to individual states.
But in the UK, at least, movement hasn't
really been made in that direction, simply because
the electorate just wouldn't have it.
I mean, the last election, for example, the
Labour Party successfully argued that they would not
be entertaining any of these matters, any of
these issues, as part of their policy agenda.
What about the government?
Does the government in the UK recognize different
genders on their official forms, their census, etc?
Yes, they do.
But not on, so it's slightly technical, you
can't change, as I understand it, you can't
change your original documentation.
But what you can do is get replacement
documentation that reflects your new gender assignment.
But that can only be after a medical
procedure.
And so one needs to go down that
pathway before doing so.
What Hamza Youssef wanted to introduce is that
he wanted to remove the necessity, effectively, of
doing that.
And so one could self ID.
Again, I think some states in America allow
self ID, I'm not sure if I'm right
or wrong about that.
But it's not as I think, it's not
as progressed or progressive as it is in
the in the United States.
Yeah, honestly, just hearing government officials talk about
that.
I think it's important, you know, for people
to hear they want to hear that, right?
They just want to hear it from a
government perspective, or from someone in government.
Let's talk about your research.
You're writing about Trump's ideology.
My first question, does Trump have a fixed
ideology?
If you ask me, it seems to be
really general, basic law and order, old fashioned
men and women, right?
That's what it seems to be more of
a nostalgia.
So what are you coming across?
Yeah, I, I've been thinking a lot about
this.
And in fact, I had a conversation with
Sami Hamdi about this yesterday.
He's back in the UK.
And he spends more time in America, I
think, at this moment than in the UK.
And we were talking about whether Trump has
a fixed ideology, whether he's just everything to
everyone, or as someone once said, Trump is
as good as his last conversation.
So if you meet Trump before he gives
a speech, he potentially will echo your, your
voice because you're the last person he spoke
to.
And so that indicates a president who really
doesn't have any fixed positions.
I disagree with that.
I think certainly, his personality is like that,
you know, he is someone who moves with
the wind.
But I think he does have some fixed
positions, especially on on economic and foreign policy.
And I think these fixed positions actually are
out of sync with the American consensus.
So since the Second World War, liberal America,
when I'm in liberal America, I don't just
mean the Democrats, I mean, Republicans as well
here.
Liberal America has established this thinking about ordering
the world according to America's footprint.
And so they established what became known as
the liberal world order.
And the idea was that America will be
at the center of this global tapestry of
states.
And America through NATO, and through its economic
alliances, and through its, its very various international
institutions, would be able to establish a world
in its own image, right.
And so it's what some call a globalist
agenda, you know, a world where America is
at the center.
And America has hundreds of US bases around
the world.
And it manages to keep the peace in
inverted commas through its global strength.
And this is sheer weight of military prowess.
Now, that America has been under a lot
of scrutiny.
And I think it started really, during the
war on terror and its failed operations in
Afghanistan and Iraq, and then just the amount
of the burden that America's military has on
on its on American taxpayers, and how that
has impacted ordinary Americans.
I remember in 2016, when Donald Trump was
first fighting elections, he was questioned about, about
his foreign policy.
And he said something quite instructive.
He said, we've spent $4 trillion in the
Middle East.
If we had kept that money at home,
we could have rebuilt America three times over.
And I suppose the point he was making
was this America first ideology, this idea that
globalism, America's position in the world, America's military
alliances, America's requirement to project power, all of
that has been at the expense of American
people and America's taxpayers and ordinary Americans.
I mean, you know, liberal American, I mean,
liberal American in terms of Democrats now, liberal
America scoffs at the country, the countryside, you
know, the Bible Belt, the Rust Belt, Americans,
you know, those Americans who have different values
to them.
But of course, these Americans, of course, have
suffered as a result of their industries being
exported to China and Singapore and to Malaysia
and to elsewhere.
And, you know, workers who would work in
Detroit car factories, for many generations suddenly found
themselves without job and without occupation.
And they found themselves, you know, consumed by
alcoholism and drugs and the rest of it.
So you've had this social breakdown in many
of these Rust Belt cities and towns.
Now, I think what Donald Trump stands for,
back to your question, is he stands for
a type of, of economic and global policy
that concerns themselves with America first, and not
with these global entanglements, because these global entanglements
have harmed America.
Right.
And I think that's a coherent philosophy, I
have to say, it's out of sync with
large swathes of American consensus thinking.
And you saw that in the last, in
the first Trump presidency.
Trump, of course, did not had not had
did not have control of the Republicans as
he has now.
And so he had to sort of outweigh
the different types of Republicans and bring them
into his cabinet.
So he got Jim Mattis, and he got
McMaster, and he got, you know, all of
these guys who were very globalist, the neocons
were in his cabinet.
And the idea was that he could sort
of have have a balance of of people
in his cabinet.
Some of them reflected his his very nationalist,
white nativist, you can say worldview, and others
reflected the more globalist position.
And, of course, these people then worked against
it.
They, they moderated his foreign policy and his
economic positions, they tried to hold hold him
back on some issues.
Well, I think this is going to be
a Donald Trump who's unrestrained, a Trump who
is able to project his philosophy upon the
country and change that country.
And I think that's a philosophy.
I mean, you know, I think that's an
ideology.
Okay, fine, it's not a thick ideology, maybe
there are things is still going to have
to outweigh some tensions within the Republican Party
and, and balance that out.
But I think he doesn't believe in something,
I think it's, in a way, it's a
democratic ruse to say this man is just
a vacuous nobody.
I don't think that's the case, right?
I don't think that's the case.
And America First is, as you say, an
ideology.
And, but I would also say that, is
it such a radical one?
Isn't every country, shouldn't every individual has to
save his own life and rectify himself before
he rectifies others?
Then he's got to take care of his
household before he worries about somebody else.
Like the nearer is more important than the
further.
Isn't it a common sense ideology for everybody,
every nation, if we were to even just
accept the status quo of the nation states
that we have?
Yeah.
Wouldn't every country care about itself first?
Well, exactly.
And that is the case for normal states.
But in the in the words of Robert
Kagan, who wrote a really good book, I
mean, Robert Kagan is the neocon that turned
liberal, but he wrote a really good book,
The World America Made, it's a slim volume,
and I would advise your, your viewers to
read it, because I think it's a really
good read.
He talked about America's liberal world order being
in its enlightened self interest.
And so of course, by expanding your military
and economic weight around the world and projecting
your power in all corners of the world,
the idea really is that you bring the
coffers home, you bring like the British Empire
vote, where the gold and the riches of
India came back to Britain, America will reap
both sorts of rewards.
So ultimately, his argument was and is that
America's global empire is there to serve its
own self interest.
At the end of the day, America's become
rich on the back of, you know, exploitation
of other countries around the world and the
back of the dollar dominance and on the
back of the manner in which America is
able to, is able to interfere in every
affair in every place in the world, right?
Now, Donald Trump's point is, well, fine, maybe,
just maybe we were successful for a while
using that strategy.
But for a long time, that's failed us
because that's failed America in general.
I mean, Donald Trump made a very interesting
point.
And again, I hate to say Donald Trump
is, you know, is a is a clever
guy here.
But he made a very interesting point, which
I actually believe I think is true.
He said something about China, he said that
in the 2000s, we allow China to become
a member of the World Trade Organization, right?
And Bill Clinton at the time did so.
It was end of 1990s, early 2000s.
I think it's just about when he was
leaving presidency, but he paved the way and
it was George Bush Jr, who finally consolidated
that.
So it was a consensus between the two
parties.
They lowered the standards to allow China to
be part of the World Trade Organization.
Now, if you're part of the WTO, that
gives you preferential trading rights with every other
member of the WTO, right?
It was a really radical move.
But Clinton and Bush at the time had
in their mind this sort of real, really
ridiculous idea that if China trades like a
capitalist country, China is going to become a
democracy like us, and China will soon become
a liberal-minded democracy like us, right?
And so the gateway into becoming a cappuccino
drinking New Yorker, if you live in Beijing,
is to first become a capitalist country.
And we're going to make them capitalist and
rich.
And then they're going to become like us.
Actually, what happened was completely the opposite.
China has become a stronger authoritarian state.
And it's using its riches now to build
its military.
And China now, at least regionally, if not
in many corners of the world, can compete
with America on a military basis, on a
like-by-like military basis, right?
If I can interrupt one second, why would
the Americans care about the Chinese people becoming
more liberal?
Because there is this philosophy, and it goes
back right to Immanuel Kant.
There is this philosophy that when countries become
liberal and become democracies, they're not going to
go to war with one another.
It's what Francis Fukuyama said.
When you have two countries that are democracies,
Britain and France are not going to go
to war one another because they look and
feel the same.
They're both liberal countries, right?
You know, America is not going to go
to war with Canada because these are liberal
countries, whereas America could go to war with
China or North Korea because one is a
dictatorship and one is a liberal democracy.
So they've got this philosophy.
And it's a crazy philosophy, by the way.
It makes very little sense in reality.
But a philosophy, I mean, it was Thomas
Friedman, the even more ridiculous writer for the
New York Times, who wrote in 1991, I
think it was, he developed this theory called
the golden artist theory of world peace.
And the argument was that if a country
has a McDonald's in it, that country is
never going to go to war with another
country that has a McDonald's in it.
Because McDonald's represents capitalism, a free market capitalism,
but it also represents a type of liberal
economy and a liberal society because it's young
urban elites that go to McDonald's and, you
know, hang out there and whatever.
And so it represents a type of attitude.
And that attitude would mean that you never
go to war with one another.
Right.
And so if you can convert and it
is it's a conversion.
I mean, it's a religious conversion.
If you can convert lots of Chinese people
into it to become good capitalists and good
liberals, then you make them like us, but
also you make them less threatening to us.
Right.
So in effect, what they wanted to do
is make China into another Japan or Germany.
If you remember, Germany and Japan after the
Second World War were completely reoriented into into
these liberal democracies they are today.
And that's what they wanted for China.
And by the way, that's what George W.
Bush wanted for the Muslim world when he
when he went to war in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
OK, so, yeah, I mean, I guess I
get the idea that if people all become
liberal democracies, they won't fight each other.
But I mean, if we just take it
to its logical extension real quick, if the
entire world became liberal democracies, it's not fathomable
that there is going to be a world
without war.
Right.
So but I do get the idea.
Well, they would say they would say, I
mean, they would say, for example, the European
Union.
So the European Union is the sort of
like premium liberal institution.
And these are 27 countries that come together.
And by the way, to become a member
of the liberal EU, you've got to be
a liberal democracy in a capitalist country.
You've got to adopt these.
It's what they call the Copenhagen criteria.
You've got to adopt these sort of thick
values.
And so, you know, historically, Poland and France
did not see eye to eye because Poland
was a communist country and France was a
capitalist country.
But today, you know, you can't foresee a
war between Poland and France.
At least that's what they argue.
And so you've now got this happy union
of Europeans who live in this family of
states.
And if they have disputes, the disputes are
very low level and not high level.
That's the argument.
That's the liberal dream that Immanuel Kant imagined
back in the 18th century.
Yeah.
And it's essentially any group of people that
basically is saying that any group of people
who agree won't go to war.
That's like boil it down to a six
year old level, right?
If we like each other, we won't go
to war.
If we agree on stuff, right?
That's the basic summary of it.
And now when it comes to America, first,
I look at two things.
I get it that you go out all
around the world and you got your ships
everywhere.
But I only get that, and I think
most people would agree, if the people are
seeing the results of it.
So if you ever watched documentaries about England
when they had their empire, you had a
guy who received a monthly check for serving
in the military, and he had a home
that was massive, right?
You got a massive, these are like manners,
they named the home.
He hardly works anymore.
And I'm like, he just gets a salary
just like from retiring as a military man.
So he can understand why the military is
out and about.
But once that stops, then you have a
problem.
You can't tell your family, I'm working 12
hours a day, I'm out of the house
18 hours a day, but there's no money
in the bank account.
It doesn't add up, no one's going to
accept it, right?
So you're either home or you're making money
for us.
We're seeing here that very slowly, infrastructure in
other nations is surpassing our infrastructure, and problems
are amounting, dissatisfaction is amounting.
So that's where it brings up the question,
where's all the benefit, right?
Let's say you went and looted natural gas
from Afghanistan.
So why is our gas price high then,
right?
Things like that.
Those are the questions people are going to
ask.
Well, absolutely.
And that's because capitalism, it produces such an
inequality in society, those benefits go to the
very top.
And so the elites get very rich, but
of course, that doesn't trickle down.
So GDP may look promising, but of course,
that GDP isn't equally shared out in the
wider population.
When you were talking, it reminded me of
Imran Khan when he came to the United
States, when he came to UN General Assembly.
And he gave a speech where he said,
I was in Shanghai a couple of weeks
back, and the streets were immaculate, and the
public transport system was amazing, and it looked
like a futuristic city.
And on my drive here in New York,
I was confronted by potholes, and there were
traffic jams, and things were a mess, right?
And he was pointing out the inadequacies of
America's infrastructure.
And it's crumbling services in many ways in
comparison to somewhere like China.
And of course, China has its problems.
And certainly Imran Khan, I think, over-egged
the China model, to be honest.
But nevertheless, I think that's the sort of,
this is the stark contrast that people like
Donald Trump have been making.
Like we have been fighting these useless conflicts
and wars for no apparent reason.
Yeah, where's the result?
Where's the result?
And where have we reaped in reward from
these adventures abroad, right?
Yeah.
Maybe in the 1970s and 80s, you could
sort of argue that America's becoming richer as
a result of this globalist agenda.
Today, I mean, especially since the economic crisis
of 2008, Americans have found themselves in a
far more economically precarious position.
So that's a question lots of Americans are
asking.
And certainly, you asked the question at the
beginning, you posed, why is it that Kamala
Harris lost?
And I think it's a number of factors.
I mean, Gaza, certainly in the swing states
had a major impact, but she lost 10
million votes.
And those 10 million votes don't obviously belong
to the Muslim community alone or conscientious community.
And there were other factors, social issues were
certainly part of it.
But I think economic concerns, inflation at the
moment is hitting Americans hard.
And especially if you live in rural America,
or in some of these old Rust Belt
states, you're struggling.
And it's that old adage, when it comes
to winning elections or losing them, it's the
economy stupid, right?
That's really what counts.
So, yeah.
Let's look at this factor, the military adventures
abroad, for sure, could have reformed so much,
could have reformed so much, could have bought
a lot of prices down for people too.
But there's another element, which is the nature
of work and manufacturing.
Now, the nature of work and manufacturing, I
think that every developing nation eventually sort of
graduates itself into a fat consumer that will
no longer do the dirty work, or the
hard work.
And there's a window where that decline is
still above the poverty line, but just you're
going down.
And another country like China is on the
way up under that line.
So, I think that's unavoidable.
It's a bad habit that people fall into.
But it's unavoidable that you will find any
consumer, why would any manufacturer, any company pay
an American factory and have to pay people
who want to have SUVs and want to
have cable and want to have Netflix and
have all these expenses and living at a
very high standard relative to the world, versus
I can go and have that done in
another country far cheaper, because they're accepting of
that.
They're accepting of lower standard.
It doesn't mean I'm abusing them, but they're
just accepting of less money.
I don't think it's always abuse.
It could be abuse.
It could not be abuse.
But I don't think I can get, all
right, forget all this military adventures and this
useless stuff.
Let's just focus on ourselves.
That I sort of support and I can
understand that.
But I don't really see the technological and
the manufacturing development and changes ever being solved.
It's simply the fact that other people are
willing to live a simpler life.
They're used to living a simpler life.
And therefore, their labor is cheaper.
Your labor is too expensive.
So, everything is going to be manufactured elsewhere.
And whenever economies, nations try to finagle their
economy and make it things artificial and force
people to just manufacture here, that's not a
good practice.
So, what's your take on the tech and
labor element and manufacturing element of things?
Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting.
Donald Trump has stated that he believes in
trade protectionism.
So, he wants to put tariffs on almost
every product that comes into the United States.
Now, of course, he's not going to do
that, but he hasn't distinguished.
He certainly thinks that China needs to, its
products and its SUVs and its cars need
to be subject to trade tariffs.
But he also believes that even the European
Union have been taken advantage of America's marketplace.
Donald Trump, I think, does believe in tariffs.
He gave a speech where he said that,
you know, tariff is a beautiful word.
It's even more beautiful than love.
A guy like tariff is a better word
than love, right?
So, he is a protectionist and he believes
that we shouldn't allow foreign countries to take
advantage of our economy.
And so, here's the logic.
The logic is we're offshoring lots of manufacturing
in the Far East, for example.
So, Americans are offshoring to the Far East
and Chinese companies are then selling their products
and flooding their products because they're made cheaply
into the American marketplace, right?
And because we give them unfettered access to
America's marketplace, they can just flood those products
and we're becoming poorer as a result of
it.
Our workers are losing their jobs and the
products on sale are not made in America.
He wants to put an end to that
and the way to do that is to
have tariffs so that even if Chinese labor
is cheaper, even if the labor in the
Philippines is cheaper, when they sell those products
into America because of tariffs, those products will
become far more expensive.
Now, of course, that comes with its own
problem because it will make those products more
expensive to American consumers, right?
But I think in Trump's mind, we're allowing,
we're feeding China, we're giving China the economic
weight in order for China to become a
superpower and we have to put an end
to that.
We have to manage this rising superpower.
A lot of Muslims tend to feel that
the Americans are obsessed with the Middle East
and certainly, you know, with Gaza, there is
a certain obsession with Israel and that's bipartisan.
That's not going to change with Donald Trump,
right?
But I think on a larger level, Donald
Trump just wants to stay out of the
Middle East.
He would prefer the dictators to run the
Middle East as they wish, you know, so
he likes Mohammed bin Salman, he likes these
other sort of brutal rulers because they keep
the population from revolting and from standing, from
rebelling against their rule.
He likes that, but he doesn't really want
to get involved in Middle East.
I mean, if you remember, one of the
reasons why General Mattis resigned was simply because
he withdrew a large number of troops from
Syria because I think he said something like,
you know, what the * are we doing
in Syria?
Just keep the oil.
So have troops around the oil fields and
the rest of it, you know, let them
do it themselves, let them deal with it
themselves, right?
And so, you know, I think there is
a philosophy there.
The philosophy is that we have to focus
on the rise of this superpower, China, and
all of our attention needs to be on
that country.
And Biden has not spent enough time focusing
on China's rise.
And we have to forget about these other
foreign entanglements, especially in the Middle East.
And we've got to forget about trying to
democratize the Middle East and make it look
like us, because that's a fool's errand.
And let them continue to do whatever they
want between themselves.
And that's your question about just sort of
the trade disparities between America and the rest
of the world.
I think that it's interesting.
I think that, as I said, I think
from Donald Trump's perspective, it's better that large
amounts of manufacturing take, you know, happens in
America, onshoring he calls it, or they call
it.
And if it can't happen in America, it
then happens in states like Mexico, which have
agreements with the United States, free trade agreements
that the United States is in control there.
You're like, you know, Mexico is not going
to threaten America anytime soon, whereas China is
going to threaten America sometime soon, right?
To the extent that, you know, lots of
Americans like Graham Allison are now predicting a
war between China and America.
And that's very plausible, I think, in the
coming few decades.
I mean, who would benefit?
Both sides would be severely harmed by it.
They would be.
But if you remember, I mean, Graham Allison
talks about this in his book, The Thucydides
Trap.
So he goes back to history, and he
argues that when you've got an established power,
and then you've got a rising power, at
some stage, that established power is going to
become so worried about that rising power, that
it's either going to have to go to
war with it, or it's going to have
to negotiate a settlement with it.
And his argument is that in only four
occasions in 2,000 years of history have
they ever settled in amicably.
In the vast majority of occasions, there's been
a war between the rising power and the
power that's rising.
So Germany and Britain, for example, First World
War, right?
The First World War was a war of
empire, because Germany was rising, and Britain became
much more afraid about Germany's rise.
And it realized that if it didn't deal
with it at that stage, Germany would be
just too powerful, and Britain could no longer
handle its power.
And so yes, it may come to blows.
But I think, believe it or not, there
are serious people in America who've come to
the conclusion that it's now a matter of
when, not if, America goes to war with
China.
Because if we don't do that- If
I remember right, it was after the Second
World War where Britain, in effect, handed over
the reins to America.
And that's because Britain was destroyed.
Britain was in a state where- it
was in no state where it could stand
up to America at that stage and say,
no way, are you going to now take
over?
In many ways, Britain sort of willingly did
that, because it saw America as an ideological
ally.
So I can't remember the rest.
There were a few other occasions in the
19th century, I remember.
I think it was France and Russia.
I can't remember any, but we can come
back to that.
But anyway, his point is, it's possible and
plausible that war between China and America would
take place.
And I think Donald Trump is going to
put that focus back on China, as he
did in his first term.
By the way, Russia is really interested in
it, because Donald Trump's view about Russia, by
the way, is that Russia should be an
ally in our fight against China rather than
an adversary.
So it's like his view.
And again, it tells you something about the
philosophy of Donald Trump.
And again, I'm not trying to over egg
his thinking here, but I think the people
around him certainly, they would like Russia to
be on Team America's side, fighting the fight
against China in the same way that America
was able to rule over China during the
Nixon era to its side, so that China
and America stood against the Soviet Union.
It was a policy called triangulation that Kissinger
coined and developed in the 1970s, when they
brought China out of the cold.
They want to do something very similar with
Russia.
And that's why Putin sort of knows that.
And Putin, when Trump was reelected, Putin gave
a very conciliatory speech and said that Donald
Trump is a wise man and he's a
better person than Joe Biden.
And that may hint to why Donald Trump
wants to end that Ukraine conflict quite quickly
as well.
Okay.
Let's go back to tariffs real quick.
All right.
You want to trade in our country.
I get that.
But usually corporations, do they pass that tariff
price onto the consumer?
They're not like paying it out of pocket,
then selling us at a competitive price.
Aren't they passing it down to the consumer?
And as a result of that, so how
is the American consumer winning?
How is the American citizen benefiting?
So yeah, you're harming China.
You're making them pay more, but aren't they
passing that cost on to the consumer?
That's very true.
And again, I was speaking to a brother
about this yesterday, who's an economist.
And that is exactly the question I stated
there.
And of course, that causes inflation in the
short term, because the prices will go up.
Now, his argument is that not unless you're
willing to readapt your economy to fill that
vacuum, so if your economy then can step
in and start producing those products, or at
least friendly economies can start producing those products,
then in the short term, there may be
a hit.
But in the medium to longer term, you're
able to weather that storm quite well.
And I think that's partly what the thinking
is, at least of some members within some
new appointees in the Trump administration.
Again, it's fraught with lots of challenges.
And you're probably right, in the short term,
it's going to be quite harmful to the
American consumer.
But I feel that for American policymakers now,
China is an existential threat.
Its rise is going to cause a problem.
And you've got to listen to John Mershimer
to really appreciate America's policy towards China.
I think Mershimer is on the money.
By the way, Mershimer has been brilliant on
Gaza, of course.
He has been.
He's been wonderful in Gaza.
But you've got to watch Mershimer's comments on
China and China's rise, because they're really very
clever, very smart man.
In fact, Mershimer wrote a book fairly recently
about the folly of liberal America and how
it's tried to export liberal ideals around the
world and why that's failed.
So Mershimer has called out America for its
stupidity over China, but also its stupidity in
the Middle East.
Why would these people want to adopt your
values?
What is it?
And they're always going to resist your values.
And that's just the nature of the differences
and the plurality that exists in the world.
Okay.
So let's move to another subject that's a
big part of the Trump campaign, and that
is borders.
So to be honest, on America First, I
think that's a common sense position for everybody.
Every nation cares about their own nation first,
right?
Borders.
Everyone locks their door at night.
Why shouldn't the city lock its door at
night?
Doesn't every nation need some order onto who
comes in and who comes out?
All right.
I get all that.
Simultaneously, our tenants here in the soup kitchen,
I don't want anyone coming after them.
I'm going to put them in the basement.
I'm going to hide them.
I love them, right?
And so I'm sort of personally mixed.
I believe in the law and order.
There's laws.
And how could you just have a nation,
everyone just coming in the border?
I also realize that just as I have
feelings towards certain people, I'm going to help
them.
If ICE comes around at night, Tom Holland,
this guy is not messing around, right?
But I think it's, what is his name?
Tom Holman, whatever his name is, the new
guy.
He's not messing around, right?
And if I had borders, I would select
a guy like that too, right?
If I had borders in a nation, I
wonder, why don't we just put the military
down there?
What is the military doing, right?
What else do they do?
Their job is to protect the border.
If people are coming in, why don't you
just put the military down there, right?
Use them.
But any event, the real reality on the
ground is that citizens have strong relations with
some of these individuals.
At the individual level, you can be torn.
At the legal level, it's cut and dry.
To me, it's cut and dry.
But at the individual level, you can be
torn.
As I thought about it today, it's like,
yeah, I believe in this law.
I would do the same thing if I
had a nation, except for so-and-so
and so-and-so and so-and-so,
right?
Because I know them.
I love them.
I see them regularly.
Let's hear your take on that.
Yeah.
I'm somewhat conflicted by what you say there.
I get the point you make.
But of course, from a historical, maybe I'm
going too far if I say Islamic, but
at least a historical Muslim perspective, our policy
was one of open borders.
Of course, the structure of our state for
the large swathe of Muslim history were not
nation states, small states, but rather empires or
caliphates, effectively, or sultanates as we would coin
them.
These were, in effect, large European unions.
You could travel from one part to the
other.
You wouldn't need to have travel documentation.
The currency will be the same.
You would be able to find a home
in every place.
You would have these caravanserie places where you
could lie down for the night.
It would be provided by the coffers of
the Bayt al-Marlin.
In modern parlance, Islamic history was one of
being very open-minded when it came to
borders.
Partly because, I suppose, the Islamic ethic is
that the more people experience Islamic societies, the
greater they have the propensity to embrace Islam.
It's da'wah to invite non-Muslims into
your country and to experience the beauty of
Islam.
We see that in a mini-sense today
when Westerners go to a Muslim country like
Afghanistan expecting it to be a horrible place.
They come back saying, I think these people
are amazing and Islam is a beautiful religion.
You see that all the time on social
media.
Back to your point about Donald Trump's philosophy.
On one level, we've said that Donald Trump
believes in this America First idea when it
comes to the world.
Why get involved in foreign antagonists?
He believes in protectionism and tariffs when it
comes to the economy.
America's economy should not be challenged at the
expense of allowing other countries to rise.
We've got all of that.
Also, Donald Trump culturally represents what is fair
to call a nativist strand.
Some have called it a white nativism, and
that may be true or not.
He believes in a type of America that
is racially quite uniform and culturally quite uniform.
That impacts the way he views foreigners and
the way he views others.
Certainly, that comes out in his speeches and
the way he talks about others.
Now, of course, he's got to be very
careful in the way he speaks because he
doesn't need to offend voters.
And surprisingly, Latin American voters, Latinos voted for
him in greater number this time around than
last time around.
So he was successful in doing that.
But I do believe that Donald Trump believes
in his cultural supremacy of Westerners and of
white folk.
I think there is that strand there.
We saw that in his first presidency in
the way he viewed, however you view them,
the BLM movement, but also the George Floyd
murder, horrific murder, the way he viewed the
treatment of black people who were treated horrendously
sometimes by the police force in various cities.
So I think that it would be wrong
to argue that Donald Trump is some savior
when it comes to his cultural views.
He has got a very closed mind about
like if you were to sit with him
and have an honest conversation, I think you'd
be I think it wouldn't be surprising to
find that he would he would believe that
Europeans are at the top of this hierarchy
and and others are, you know, maybe less
inferior.
And so so so, you know, does he
subscribe to maybe something like a Samuel Huntington
idea that you've got these civilizations around the
world and they should be kept separate from
one another?
Because once you start intermingling and you start
bringing them together, that's when you when you
cause problems.
I suspect there is something like that going
on in his mind when it comes to
when it comes to others.
But so so you're are you saying that
you think that open borders is a better
policy than closed borders?
Because, you know, I think we could look
at it as also a harm principle, too.
It's one thing that you close your borders
from no one to come in.
It's another thing to give order to how
someone comes in.
Yeah.
So I think that's the middle ground.
It's you can't just have no border at
all for a nation because so because where
does it end?
If you have no border at all for
a nation, then you have no border for
the state, then for the town, then for
the neighborhood.
And then you're going to have.
You know, you're going to you're going to
have some some chaotic areas in your in
your nation, and it's going to affect the
way people live every day.
And so there's got to be that middle
ground has to be that we're going to
allow in this number of people.
And then there are temporary visas.
There are whatever.
And I think that every nation has their
own order of this.
So, you know, that's that's more likely to
be the right way to have if you
want to have open borders and you just
want to be interacting with the world.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But there's got to be some kind of
order to it.
No, no doubt.
No doubt.
And one needs to manage that intake.
And of course, when we think about modern
economies, demography really matters.
So if you think about across Europe at
the moment, the average age is going up
year on year.
And so we're now reaching sort of 30,
40 average age.
And that's a problem for for for economies.
I mean, Britain, for example, has a major
problem because of Brexit.
We no longer have members from Poland and
Romania easily coming into the UK.
And it's a very it's a far more
difficult process to come into the UK.
And so a lot of those jobs that
these people were filling are no longer they're
no longer able to to find to find
workers.
So, for example, the building trade in Britain,
you know, plumbing and these sort of basic
services are now suffering and as a result
of too few laborers.
So you do need to have a steady
flow of of of labor.
And of course, those who are coming from
Latin America are working age.
Right.
And so they are going to fill those
jobs that Americans Americans require.
You know, I agree.
I mean, I think any nation state you
know, will need to have managed managed borders.
All I'm trying to indicate here is is
that Donald Trump, I think, has a there
is a there's a cultural philosophy around that.
Yeah.
Which I think we shouldn't discount.
And I think you and I see it
in his speeches in the way he talks
about others.
Yeah.
Yeah.
OK, let's talk about it's about the same
subject from a different angle.
I always debate this subject.
Nations do well when their people are unified.
People are unified when they share a culture.
Simultaneously, a diverse nation is very strong, too,
because it has a lot of different perspectives.
Where is the tipping point where excess of
cultural difference ends up actually making everybody unhappy?
Everyone's disunited.
Nobody really shares any culture with anyone.
And most of us grew up in a
time where the only time that there is
any cultural unity is, you know, small pockets
of MSA, PSA, Masajid, liberal institutions, organizations.
So most of us have never tasted it.
But when I imagine a successful group, they're
unified because they share the same ideas.
They share the same culture.
So I actually appreciate that point of things.
But you also have power and diversity.
Where's the line?
Where's the balance?
How do we come to that?
You have any ever thought about this?
Yeah, I have thought about because it sort
of it's it goes into the conversation about
models of multiculturalism.
Nice to teach this when I said he's
politics.
So there are there are a number of
philosophies or think thoughts about how do you
build diverse societies?
And so the dominance China are what we
call the liberal multiculturalists.
So you've got people like Will Kimlicker, who's
a Canadian who coined or developed this idea
of liberal multiculturalism.
And the idea is as follows.
And it actually is very similar to that
Fukuyama, that sort of liberal hubris, that arrogance
that you talked about earlier.
So the idea is as follows.
In order to build a diverse society, if
you've got a Pakistani coming in, or a
Bengali coming in, or a Indian coming into
your country, you've got to embrace them with
open arms.
So you know, if they come in through
a managed process, you've got to embrace them,
you don't show hostility towards them.
But the idea behind liberal multiculturalism is that
as they come into the country, and they,
they realize that they've got to get get
buying that country, they've got to work, they've
got to integrate, you're going to start negotiating
values.
And so within time, if it's not the
first generation, there's certainly the second generation, are
going to still be Muslim or still be
Hindu, still be Sikh or still be whatever,
right, Buddhist or whatever it may be.
But in that process of integrating, they're going
to have to adopt some of the thick
values of liberalism, and embrace those values of
liberalism so that they can integrate.
And so in the liberal universe, diversity is
okay, because diversity leads to everyone being good
little liberals.
Well, it's just a superficial diversity.
It's a superficial diversity.
And that's actually what someone like Bhikkhu Parikh,
who is a different type of multiculturalism, he's
what we call pluralist multiculturalism.
Bhikkhu Parikh argues, it's just it's superficial diversity,
like what you really want.
So he basically says to the liberals that
you're you believe in a liberal supremacy, and
you're hiding behind these fancy terms, right?
Like you want everyone to be liberals, and
then you claim I still want them to
be a Muslim or Hindu.
In reality, you want them to adopt your
religion.
And Bhikkhu Parikh, I think is really interesting.
He's a Hindu.
He's a Lord here in the House of
Lords.
I interviewed him on my program.
And he's a very interesting guy, because he
argues, Look, if you really believe in diversity,
you've got to believe in deep diversity, you're
gonna have to accept there are some communities
that will have radically different values to you,
if you invite them into your country, don't
expect them to change radically, you're going to
have to find a way to deal with
them and to and to accept that diversity,
right?
And to find a way in which you're
going to find commonalities between you without diluting
what you what you believe in.
Now, how realistic is that is your point?
Like, how realistic is it to have diverse
societies, where we have stark differences?
Well, I suppose, historically, like the Islamic model
was that we didn't, we never really expected
other communities, unless they willingly embrace Islam, we
never expected other communities to give up things
for the sake of of being part of
the Muslim polity, right.
And so the Islamic standard generally was that
you would, Muslim states would allow communities to
establish what today they will call ghettos, establish
their own sub community groups, right.
So the Jews would have their subgroups, and
you know, the the major ones will have
their subgroups and all of these communities.
And they would live in those communities, almost
like uniformly in those subgroups, because Islam didn't
meddle with their religious affairs.
Whereas liberalism meddles in our religious affairs, liberalism
says to us that we need to teach
all of our kids, you know, a particular
social agenda, right.
Whereas, you know, the Islamic model was to
let let them remain as they are, and
let them be as they are.
And, and as long as they didn't interfere
with the public law, so some of the
sort of standards of public law, then Islam
gave a great amount of plurality.
In fact, Islam was far more pluralistic than
any liberal state today.
Yeah.
And the sign of pluralism is that you
have multiple court systems.
Yeah.
And that's what the millet system, millet is
community, the millet system had in the Ottoman
Empire.
And I'm sure before that, too, they had
the same idea where Jewish communities had their
own courts.
And they even had their own, they gave
their own punishments, had their own judges, as
long as it was within that community, Christians
within their community.
And then once you entered in the public,
like you said, then you're going to the
most of the Sharia court after that.
So that's where I think that people are,
that's a great answer, the idea that diversity
is not actually a real diversity.
It's essentially just melting the beliefs into one,
and only the faces on the outside are
diverse.
But in the United States, I'm starting to
see, well, everyone is starting to see, the
left and right actually have different beliefs about
reality itself.
And that's why the divide between them is
bigger than it's ever been before.
Because it's not just, should there be big
government, small government, but our identity is No,
they actually believe total different things about existence,
about the universe, about truth, about words, about
the meaning of everything.
They're so disparate.
The only thing they agree on is Israel,
right?
Who's funding both sides, of course, as usual.
But I want to talk about this.
Someone here is asking, what is a more
direct answer to the border question?
No, my answer to the border question is,
my personal opinion on it is, you have
to have a border if people want to
come in.
They got to come in on your process,
right?
On the conditions that you set.
I mean, just think about it as a
home.
I could have people come into my home
on my terms, right?
And just work your way out outward, right?
Everything's going to be on your terms.
You want to come in, you want to
do business in the state of New Jersey,
on the state of New Jersey's terms, you're
going to follow their permits, etc.
You want to go into, come into a
nation, you got to come in on their
terms.
It can't just be an empty.
Then what's the point of having two different
states?
Then make Mexico and the US just the
51st state of the United States, right?
So, point being is that we're talking about
diversity and borders.
There has to be a process.
But the real dilemma is what happens with
people who have been here for a long
time.
And now we're going to and we've let
things happen and we let things people move
and have families and have connections here.
And now we want to act upon the
law that we've been turning a blind eye
to and deport everybody, right?
That's where the human side is going to
conflict with your legal side.
Because legally, yeah, okay, you're illegal, so you
should be deported.
I get that.
But there are so many human sides to
it.
And I thought about this coming in today.
I thought, you know what, if these guys
downstairs, they ever come for the guys downstairs,
right?
Well, although I get the law, I'm going
to, the way I reconciled it is, I
agree with the law.
The law is the law.
But I'm going to give these guys a
chance.
I'm going to help them out.
I'm going to put them in the basement.
I'm going to put them somewhere to give
them a chance, right?
To survive this type of thing.
But so that's the question that we have
to ask.
What would you do?
If you ruled, what would you do?
No, I'm a little, I'm a little different
to you.
I just feel that American and maybe this
is my, my sort of my, my side,
my time to sort of place my, my
politics very squarely on the table.
I mean, I think America has has destroyed
so many countries and has caused so much
bloodshed and misery around the world.
And then when these Afghans or when these
Mexicans want to come to America, I mean,
Mexico used to have a thriving agricultural economy
until NAFTA, until the North American Free Trade
Association was signed.
And that flooded the American marketplace with industrialized
agriculture coming from Canada and the USA.
And today agriculture in Mexico is very special.
It's like avocados.
It's things that only Mexico can grow or
grow well.
And those agricultural workers then had to move
to the cities to work in poorer jobs,
in Ford companies, in Ford manufacturing units in
order for, and that dislocated families and that
destroyed sort of those family units for centuries
that used to live on the farm and
used to live together.
They were now dislocated.
And then when those jobs became more scarce,
these young people then had to try their
best to go to the United States to
work in any job in order to make
their way and send remittances back home.
And so now you've got a mother who
living in California or in Texas, whose daughter,
a young daughter is living in Mexico with
their grandfather or grandmother.
And it's a sad tale of just the
total misery of this economic order that America
has created in the world, right?
So I'm from the outside, right?
So I'm a Brit here talking about America,
but I don't have very much sympathy for
the American state who's putting up the borders
largely because of the type of economic and
military order it's created in the world that
has harmed large numbers of people.
A hundred percent.
You're a hundred percent right about that.
We can't discount that.
And the way I look at it is
that if a person has made his way
in a time where you didn't observe your
own border, right?
And they've made their way and they could
get testimony from people.
You got to give them some kind of,
because they've contributed, right?
Give them some kind of leeway.
If you've been here, let's say, I would
say you've been here two years.
All right, fine, deport.
But you've been here three and four years
and five years and six years, and you
got a family, your kids go to school,
you're a worker, you haven't broken any laws.
You have people who could testify that you're
a contributor to the nation in some way.
There's got to be a system like that.
Now it would take a long time, right?
And maybe you do the first thing first
is seal off your border.
People want to come in, they come in
legally.
Then a few years, put a number on
that, two, three years or something.
Let's say three years.
Three years, you're going to be out.
Okay.
Three years, you haven't had a chance to
really completely transform your life.
But you've been here more than three years.
Now we break it up.
No crimes.
All right, let's talk.
Crimes, go back.
Three years and no crimes.
Now let's talk.
These people, give them a chance.
If they can show some kind of proof
that they're contributing to society, now give them
a form of paperwork, right?
That where they let them live, right?
Because they benefited and it was not their
fault that you A, destroyed their economies.
B, you weren't looking at your own border,
right?
Now you can't come now and try to
rip the bandaid off after it's been on
for so long.
Well, that's my take on it.
But I want to ask you about something
you said earlier about labor.
You said that when England closed their door
on the Polish and the Ukrainians, plumbing went
down and painting went down and construction went
down and you had problems with that, right?
I think that's a good thing because if
your populace has gotten so lazy and they're
not good at doing this stuff, let those
industries suffer a little bit.
At some point, some people within the nation
will say, all right, let's get to work,
right?
If we were to, and think about this
at a micro level, because I like to
look at things at a micro level and
a lot of times, not all times, you
can expand it.
At a micro level, if a family has
a cleaning lady, the house is clean, but
we've also developed very lazy habits because we
know she's coming, right?
Then one day she doesn't come anymore.
We're all going to whine and complain, but
guess what?
It's going to get so bad that we're
all going to say, we're going to get
to the point we got to reform ourselves.
We got to get better, right?
And we've got to start cleaning ourselves.
So it actually helps a nation instead of
them just relying on a crutch.
Yeah, possibly true.
But of course, another factor in this is
just basic demography, aging populations, right?
So Europe is now the oldest continent in
the world.
The average age of Europeans is now nearing,
by 2030, they're saying that the average age
of North Americans and Europeans will be 40
or above.
Whereas the average age of the African by
2030 will be around 20 or just around
20 years old, right?
And that's a really big difference in demography.
And that's a ticking time on because of
course, you'll have too few workers at the
bottom.
And of course, the way it works is
that the younger your workforce, the more productive
they are.
So you're destroying your productivity because of your
demography.
Now, we know why there is that demographic
time bomb, because of course, liberalism and urbanization
that comes out of capitalism, creates a type
of society where people do not want to
have children.
And, you know, it's a type of middle
class lifestyle that leads to this sort of
thinking that children are going to impact our
lifestyle.
And of course, we as Muslims, we know
very clearly that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
provides risk.
And having children is not going to encroach
on your risk.
Quite the opposite, actually, sometimes, right?
And I know a brother here who has
to have a van to ship around his
family.
He's going to be a happy old man
when he gets old.
And, you know, he said to me the
other day, you know, that every time I
had another child, my wife had another child,
you know, subhanAllah, I got a better job
offer or my wage went up, right.
So, you know, he was a living example
of someone who, you know, was not worried
about his risk, but actually cared more about
these wider social issues.
Now, Europe is unlike that.
Europe and North America are now, as they
get richer, they're having fewer kids.
And so the only way then to deal
with it is through foreign labor.
It's actually to get foreign labor from outside.
Britain needs that.
Britain is desperate.
At the moment, in Britain, we've got a
problem with some trades because of the lack
of labor from outside.
Remember, a lot of the Eastern European states
remain Catholic states.
And so they do have a greater number
of children.
And that was providing for these medium or
low end jobs in the UK.
So, you know, demography really matters.
Now, of course, the West in its hubris
believe that the way they're going to buck
that trend is through AI.
If you can find, you know, for a
long period, long time, you've never, there's never
been a machine that could pick fruit, because
fruit is so soft.
And of course, you just need to have
human beings to do it.
And it's very difficult.
Now, you've got, you're beginning to see machines
that may be able to pick fruit, or
have actually can pick fruit using, you know,
AI technology and various forms of tech.
The idea is that you're not going to
need cab drivers in the future and lorry
drivers, because this will all be automated, you
know, vehicles.
So in their arrogance, they think that their
scientific advancement is going to buck that trend,
right.
But it's still, I think, I think that's
not going to fully solve the problem.
And it's still going to be a major
problem for them.
So, yeah, back to your question, I'm not
convinced.
Well, I'm not sure that that that alone
is going to solve the problem.
And also, the other problem, by the way,
is there was a documentary, a great documentary
on TV, I watched once here in the
UK, where they just did that, like a,
a farmer invited British teenagers along to, to
pick fruit and to do basic farming activity.
And so the guy that you know, the
kids will come along, and within a day
or two, they'll be absent.
I'm ill, I can't do this.
Because they suffer from, you know, from laziness,
right?
Exactly.
And, and that's very hard, that cultural shift,
that cultural change is very hard to, whereas,
you know, a, a, a Romanian worker that
comes to Britain, you know, is going to
see the value about work.
And of course, even if they're getting paid
relatively to the rest of the Brits less,
that that money is going to go is
going to do very well for them in
remittances back home.
And that you can see the same for
Mexicans and others who come to America.
I think it's, I mean, it's, it's a
problem people created for themselves when they live
in a certain way, where your population decreases,
clearly, there is something terribly wrong with how
you live as a nation.
Right?
That's the first result of success is to
have people that you produce people.
Alright, so let's go to another topic.
We talked about America first, we talked about
borders, and labor, very good topic, and we're
holding you for a long time, but that's
okay, because people love you here.
And we have a lot of viewers here,
probably one of the most we've ever had,
to be honest, live viewers.
They love these political talks and the British
you're representing them because they keep saying, Oh,
Muhammad Jalal from England representing us, we love
him.
It's the accent.
It's the accent.
That's what it must be.
It must be they've never heard so much
intelligence on the live stream before because of
the accent.
We have to talk we cannot not address
Trump, address Trump and ignore his Zionism, on
one hand, but it's also racism and xenophobia
from him that the signals he gives out
to his people, and it's definitely that's the
world order that he wants to live in,
and surrounds himself with that.
So the new racist is a Zionist, whereas
the old racist, the Nazi, the old Nazi,
hated Jews, was anti Semite.
But the new type of racist is a
Zionist as well.
So tell us about that a little bit.
I mean, I mean, you're not you're not
here.
But I can definitely tell you that Muslim
women feel it complain about it.
Because they get targeted Hispanic, clearly Hispanic looking
people get targeted.
And when I say get targeted, I mean,
by people who are just hooligans, talking in
supermarkets and bullying people who they could feel
that can't defend themselves.
So tell us a little bit about what
you know about that.
Yeah, it's really interesting.
So I wrote a couple of pieces a
while back, about these, these very disturbing strands
that are developing in America, and I tried
to link it to a response to liberalism.
So what you're finding in the United States,
and actually large parts where I mean, Europe
is, is where we're now seeing the rise
of right wing parties who are extremely Islamophobic
and extremely xenophobic, right?
So it is a it's a development across
the West.
And it's a development that comes out the
inadequacies of the liberal capitalist system.
You know, the system has failed large swathes
of, of, of, of Brits or French people,
Germans or Americans.
And because it's felt for so long, the
response to that is to blame foreigners.
And that's really what you're seeing playing out
across these countries.
And Donald Trump reflects that antagonist, because Donald
Trump is a populist, they say, and you
know, I wrote a piece in in when
Biden gave the day of these his inauguration,
and I think I titled it the uncivil
war that that splits America.
And I'm going to revise that article, because
I think the point I was trying to
make there is that there is this, this
split in the United States, and it's on
a number of levels.
And it comes from a recognition that the
system is now failing them, right.
So for so long, the system was working,
okay.
And everyone was gaining something from that system,
the system now is failing economically, Americans are
worse off, they work in two or three
jobs sometimes to make ends meet.
Yeah, this is not a system that is
working for the ordinary American, right?
It's working for the elites, of course.
But it's not working for the ordinary person.
And so the response to that is to
go back to this white nativism, this cultural
supremacy, yeah, this sort of idea that we
are better than them.
So why are they taking our jobs?
We're better than them.
So why is this guy driving a BMW?
And you know, we have to make do
with with our old rusty car, right.
So it is that that acknowledgement that others
or that belief or that perception that others
are doing better out of the system.
And, and of course, the the proud boys
and the sort of racial racialized units in
America, they believe in the Great Replacement Theory.
Yeah.
And the Great Replacement Theory is this idea
that liberal America has purposely allowed in migration,
in order for those migrants to become voters,
critical voters who will continue to vote for
the Democrats and the Labour Party, and you
know, the left leaning parties, the progressive parties
across the West.
And the idea then is that they would,
they would reward those people who have allowed
them into the country.
And and those people have allowed him those
governments would give them preferential housing and preferential
jobs and preferential this is the this is
not my argument is the argument of the
Great Replacement Theory.
And so the blame then is on these,
these liberal elites, who effectively has have, have
sewn up a system that is against the
the white, the white, the original original in
inverted commas, white inhabitant of the United States
or across Europe, right.
And believe it or not, large swathes of
white America and white Europeans believe this idea
now.
I mean, the New Zealand mosque shooter, he
wrote a manifesto where he explicitly talked about
this.
And I remember reading it.
And I wrote something about it.
For I think it was for Muslim matters
or one of these things were traversing tradition
American online magazine where he said that, you
know, he traveled around Europe.
And what he saw was was effectively this
phenomenon, right?
of foreigners being being given preferential treatment by
liberal elites.
Now, of course, that's nonsense, right?
Because, if anything, you know, we face discrimination
on a daily basis and to get get
by, you know, Muslims have to have to
work twice as hard sometimes to to get
by at work and to be recognized.
And Africans are the same.
And, you know, if you go to France,
and you know, subhanAllah, you have to be,
you know, you need to, you probably do
know, but you need to be aware of
the situation of Muslims in France.
I mean, they're treated as fourth class citizens.
It's, it's that powerless for them.
Yeah.
Okay, so I want to bring a different
angle to this.
We have to have a sense of pride,
every single one of us.
And sometimes I'm always in the minority in
this view.
But tell me what you think about this.
I don't care at all, what anyone thinks
or how they treat me.
And I also think about let's say Muslims
in France, I would blame myself for going
to a land of crusaders.
I'm not blaming the French Muslims, but this
is my pattern of thinking.
Right?
If I find myself as, as, let's say,
an Algerian in France, and I'm not getting
treated that nicely, right?
I have to ask myself the question, what
does a history book say?
And what in the world do I expect?
Why would I expect these people who did
all these other things to treat me?
Well, that doesn't make any sense.
I expect them.
I'm even surprised they let me in the
country, right?
So my attitude is, I actually expect the
worst from people who have behaved badly, right?
The Americans brought in slavery, they mistreated every
nation that they've went to, they genocided the
Native Americans.
So I expect bad behavior from them.
I don't expect them to treat me nicely
on one hand.
Number two, I'll never, ever ask you to
treat me well.
If I need something, I'll work it out
myself or I'll leave, right?
I'll either work it out myself.
I'll get tough and I'll work it out
myself.
I'll make money myself.
If you're not going to treat me well
in the company, to heck with your company,
right?
I'm not going to come and beg from
you to treat me well in the company.
I'll go to another company.
You see that sense of, we have to
have a sense of pride, but at the
same time, a sense of history, of expectation.
I would be hurt if other Muslims didn't
treat me well because we have a dean.
Nonetheless, I'm not asking you to treat me
well or to like me or to be
my friend or buddy or anything.
I'm going to move on real fast.
What do you think of this take towards
racism and xenophobia?
Yeah, I agree to it to an extent,
right?
And of course, you have your personal autonomy
and you have a responsibility to do your
best and to prove them wrong.
So certainly, that's true.
In the same way, for example, you may
be a student at school and you face
all sorts of discrimination, but you still work
hard and you make sure that you're attentive
to your studies and you do well in
your exams, right?
So that's in a way proving them wrong,
but also it's a sense of resilience that
you personally have and that your family have
inculcated.
And many Muslims and many foreigners have that
when they go to foreign lands.
It's not as if they go to these
countries expecting milk and honey, quite the opposite.
Actually, they expect racism, they expect xenophobia.
So in a sense, I agree with that.
And I certainly agree that we shouldn't sort
of just have a complaining culture, right, where
we point that out and not feel a
sense of responsibility ourselves.
But at the same time, and maybe it's
hard for someone in America to feel this,
because in America, in many ways, the system
still remains fair.
Now, I'm going to put that in inverted
commas, because you've got a constitution and you've
got these rights that come out of the
Bill of Rights.
And it's the system, even though the system
is very much weighted against us sometimes, especially
after 9-11.
But the system generally, it promotes a sense
of fairness.
And that maybe talks to an American experience,
right?
Whereas in Europe, the system just works against
you.
If you're in France, your hijab is banned.
So as soon as a Muslim girl wants
to wear hijab in school, university is banned.
They're treated culturally inferior.
I remember there was this occasion where a
Muslim African, a Muslim, he, there was a
young man who was sort of a young
boy who was hanging by his fingernails, fingertips
of a window sill.
He climbed out and he was about to
fall.
So this African migrant, recent migrant, I think
he was from Cameroon, so he was a
Muslim.
He was known as a Spider-Man.
He climbed up the building and saved this
kid.
And, you know, and Macron at the time,
who was saying all sorts of xenophobic comments
and anti- and Islamophobic comments, invited him
in and gave him the Medal of Honor,
you know, you've saved a French citizen.
And he said, you know, I'm going to
make you a French citizen, even though you
aren't, because in a way you've shown that
you are more French than we are.
Like you've proven your Frenchness, right?
Now, the guy outside, when he was given
a speech and he was asked, why did
you do this?
It's because I'm an African, I'm a Muslim
and it's part of my religion and culture
to save people, right?
So in his mind, it's Islam, it's his
African roots that brought him to this place,
right?
But from the French, deny that completely.
For them, that's barbarism.
You know, Islam is a barbaric backward faith.
And the way they malign Islam, I mean,
you know, you may have come across this
today now in France, they are expunging French
Imams, they're expelling them from the country.
There was a French Imam who read out
the Prophet's last sermon in one of his
khutbas, and he was thrown out of the
country.
Because in that khutba, it says something about
men and women, and it was translated as
being anti-equality, right?
So I don't know.
I think what I'm trying to say is
that systemically, you know, institutionally in some of
these countries, it works against you.
So then personal autonomy has very little part
to play.
You could be, you could try your best
individually, but the system is harming you.
100%.
And maybe I should have started by saying
that the default relationship here is adversarial.
Oh yeah.
We have to start with that.
The default, so here we are as a
minority in the nation, and the default is
not a friendly relationship, right?
This is an adversarial.
So for me to expect otherwise is silly,
right?
And for me to beg for otherwise, totally,
you know.
But I accept that, Sheikh Shadi, but I
think then we're lulled into a false sense
of security, because of course, when we come
here, we hear these great words about how
liberal democracies embrace diversity, right?
And we hear these great words about equality,
and we feel that these societies ideologically have
moved on, and they now embrace the other,
right?
And so it's only when, I mean, I
met, for example, a very leading journalist from
the Times newspaper, you know, it's a very
prestigious, old, one of the most established papers
in the UK, if not the world, and
a Muslim woman.
And, you know, she said to me that,
you know, I used to believe that, I
thought, you know, we could all make it.
But then when she wrote an article about
about France, and about hijab, all * broke
loose.
She was working for the Financial Times at
the time, I should say.
And her article was removed.
And then Macron replaced it with his own
op-ed.
And it was like, and that's because she
had had the audacity to point out that
the French, French secularism is harming Muslims, right?
It's a very well written article.
And she said that from that point on,
I realized it's not an equal playing field.
You know, all of these lovely words that
they give us about liberalism, about plurality, and
about equality, none of it means anything when
it comes to Islam and Muslims and your
values.
It means nothing.
And whenever I see, like, any Muslim who
is sort of using civil rights language, whether
it's in France, England, America, I'm just wondering,
like, do you read history?
You just stepped into this thing without any
sense of context at all.
And you look really stupid.
And you're going to fail and get be
really disappointed.
Let's not forget who established these nations.
And for whom did they establish these nations?
Establish this nation for themselves.
Soon as things start not suiting them anymore,
right?
To heck with all the laws that they
made.