Tom Facchine – The Surprising Reason Behind Imam ‘S Journey To Islam
AI: Summary ©
The conversation discusses the history of postivaism and how it has been used to benefit Muslims. It is a disease and not healthy lifestyle, and modernity is a false universalistic movement. Post historicism is responding to the " pest Ready" movement, and it is a response to the " pesteless" movement. The "monarch" concept is used to describe groups and people who do not fit a definition, and the "monarch" concept is used to describe the behavior of men. The speakers emphasize the importance of self-conscious and acknowledging one's own values and emotions to create a safe and healthy relationship.AI: Transcript ©
Let's do the compulsory if I could speak
so loud.
Yeah. Mom, it's like we haven't been with
each other all the weekend.
But, you know, one thing, that was really
interesting that led
me to Islam. Yeah. I thought I had
to,
you know, went to interrogate this a bit.
Definitely. So what's your manhaj?
Do I need to make my, my Shahada?
Shahada. Yeah.
Yeah.
So, yeah, a lot of people misunderstand,
postmodernism and post structuralism. And they kind of
borrowed this from the right because the right
kind of critiques the left. Obviously, everybody knows
the excesses,
and the
crimes of the left.
But I always get kind of annoyed, guys.
Yeah. I mean,
I've always even critical of,
you know, messing with the left and the
right, but
I always say to others, don't just want
to enter debates amongst rival factions of the
fathers Exactly. And pick sides. Exactly. Because you're
gonna end up making mistakes and you're gonna
end up, joining the debate on their terms
and not even realize what you're talking about.
So you look at the right, people like
Jordan Peterson, etcetera, you know, they criticize the
left as neo Marxism, as, you know, postmodernism,
and then those are the evil things, and
that's all that's responsible.
That's very crude. And, like, you know, with
all due respect to Jordan Peterson, he has
no idea what he's talking about when it
comes to social theory or the intellectual theory
intellectual history of the west.
You know, there's
some
strands
of postmodern
thought that are actually really useful,
and actually are part of my conversion story,
believe it or not,
such as, you know,
just the idea of deconstruction. Right? Now the
problem that they're responding to is the idea
that everything should be deconstructed. And, of course,
that's where you get into absurdities. That's where
you get into relativism. That's where you get
into there is no truth. Everything is liquid.
Everything is plastic. And, obviously, as Muslims, we
reject that. But the answer is not to
go back to, like,
before postmodernity
to, like, the enlightenment values and the classical
liberalism and stuff
Peterson would have because those are equally problematic,
you know, if not even more problematic on
some parts. I tell brothers, like, in in
your attack of postmodernism, you're actually accidentally
championing modernism.
Exactly. And people don't understand what that entails.
Like, people don't realize that all reform movements,
true reformist movements within Islam are modernist movements.
In the sense that there's a paradigm and
a certain understanding of history that history is
progressive and it gets better. Right? And so
that enables
people to say, well, okay, the prophet
he introduced
certain things like reforms, like justice and now
we have to take them further in different
ways that
conveniently conform to modern liberal values,
instead of looking at the past as a
paradigmatic
anchor, which is like that's the best generation.
Right?
So the
the postmodernism,
poststructuralism,
what we we we wanna call certain elements
Yeah. Would you say it's it's correct to
say that
they they deconstruct? And then and and,
you know, using those tools or benefiting from
those tools, it's beneficial.
The problem is,
one of the problems is once they deconstruct
something,
you know, lots of people without realizing they
construct something from their own Yes. Paradigm. Or
they're left with nothing. And that's the the
purposelessness and the aimlessness of sort of you
know, the cultural aspects.
Exactly. So you think about it like this,
modernism
is a disease
and postmodernism
is a is a poison that kills the
disease.
Right? But it's poison
and so it's not gonna make you healthy.
Right? So like post modernism is really useful
for deconstructing and taking the wind out of
the sails and dismantling modernism.
Right? So it's not useless. It's not useless,
but it also isn't constructive. It doesn't leave
you with anything. And so if you don't
have an Islamic paradigm or Islamic worldview
to be able to after that or to
displace it with that, then you're left with
nothing. What if someone says you don't need
first model, then we can we we can
do other things that cause the disease.
Like what? What what else has
I mean, it hasn't well okay. I mean,
it it can, but I mean, like,
you have to be able to understand what
modernism is
and what are its values and how to
respond back. I mean, we live in The
problem is not knowing what modernism and postmodernism
is. Yeah. So can you Yeah. Sure. So
modernism is a nutshell. You think of it
of as the enlightenment. Like the enlightenment embodies
modernism in a sense that, you know and
there's subcurrents and, you know, okay. It it
the map is always
more
simpler than the terrain. There's you know countercurrents
and subcurrents or whatever but the main thrust
of modernity
is
that we can come to objective knowledge, dispassionate
knowledge about everything. We can construct a universal
justice, universal
with through a universal culture based off of
universal reason,
you know.
And so that was, you know, responsible for
obviously the big push to colonialism
and sort of, like, not valuing other people's
systems of reason and traditions of reason and
things like that. You know, and there's lots
of sort of, you know, either aesthetic or
epistemological
sort of decisions and valuations that were made.
Right? The written word over the spoken word.
You know, oral tradition is seen as something
unreliable.
Right? Religion is seen as something that's superstitious
and taboo.
Right, versus sort of the cold objective knowledge
of the west. Right? So
that's
modernism in a nutshell. And
what was what happened was that basically,
the postmodern movement is response to that movement
and basically saying hold up, Your supposedly
universal values and knowledge and judgments are actually
particular.
They are not universal. They don't apply to
everybody. They're particular to Europe, maybe even particular
to white Europe or to male Europe. Of
course, that's where we get feminism and stuff
like this. And we're not endorsing it. But
we're saying that's the idea is that it's
responding to this over or this let's call
it a false universalism because we believe that
Islam is universal and the universalism.
But modernism is kind of a false universalism
that postmodernism
is responding to. And in order to respond
to it, postmodernism's
move is basically like there is no universalism.
There is nothing that's universal. Truth is just,
you know, it's malleable. It's it's plastic. It's
liquid or historicism where
now everything's a
product of
history. Everything's a
product of, you historicism where now everything's a
product of history. Everything's a product of,
your privilege, your positionality, your subjectivity, these sorts
of things.
So that's really an effective tool to shutting
up a modernist. The saying was like, okay.
You think that,
Western science is like the end all be
all. No. Actually, no. It's very particular. It's
very it's got assumptions. It's got values. It's
got an epistemology.
It's got cosmology. It's got an idea of
anthropology. What is the human being? So those
are postmodern critiques of modernism,
but they don't build anything. So that's the
thing. So you can use it as a
knife, as a bomb to blow up, to
destroy, to dismantle, but then you have to
have something else.
I can't say,
Yeah. Oh, I shouldn't, yeah, I shouldn't have
said that second thing. Let's stick to pre
modern weaponry. No. You can't say, I was
gonna say you can't say,
your nice, juicy sandbox are in such a
public place.
Yeah.
Yeah. But yeah. It has to but it
doesn't leave you with anything. And that's where
Islam has to the historical moment that we're
in, a lot of people have, you know,
been taken by postmodernism
in some form whether it's like the super,
like, pop culture form of it or the
more theoretical forms of it.
Islam now but people have realized the consequences
now culturally of only destroying. Yeah. Only destroying
leaves you fractured. It leaves you without
relationships, without culture, without community, without purpose. It's
very alienating. And so that's where people are
really feeling those those those things now. So
that's where now historically at this moment Islam
could step in and say, look, you didn't
have to throw out the baby with the
bath water. You didn't have to get rid
of everything or deconstruct everything. It was important
to deconstruct modernity. It was important to deconstruct
the the project of the enlightenment.
But there is truth. There is objective to
truth, but it comes doesn't come from human
beings. Doesn't come from universal reason. It comes
from Allah. It comes from the divine. Some
Muslims that
that shout about postmodernism, against postmodernism,
and at the same time, you know, complain
about modernity.
They are themselves postmodernists.
Most people just don't understand. Most people don't
understand what postmodernism really is, and it's not
their fault because, again, there's a difference between
what goes on in the academy, books, like,
you know, it's like, you know, there's a
huge difference between Foucault and these deconstructuralists and
the reading them in the academy and then
how they're
interpreted and then deployed
in real time in the real culture.
Right?
I mean, I mean, it's football. I
Manon is a giant, you know He's a
shaytan. Yeah. He's a shaytan. Yeah. But some
of his books are awesome.
It's awesome to read. Yeah. Yeah. And deconstructing
kind of some more popular,
notion where modernity and the the the
things that the, you know, secular
states today, you know, claim about themselves. Yeah.
What what was it about Foucault that kind
of, you know, led led you to Islam?
Yeah. No. I mean, the the hadith of,
reminds you of,
like, right? It's
like,
you know, he he spoke the truth even
if he's a liar, you know.
The
most, I think, important book of Foucault is
the order of things and that's the one
that I read in undergrad that really sort
of shifted my thinking and got me into
the idea of of genealogical
work, what he calls and what the postmodernists
call genealogy.
Genealogy is just basically trying to trace back
how do we get here.
Right? We have certain sensibilities, we have certain
thoughts about things.
They didn't come from nowhere. They're not self
evidently true. So where do they come from,
right?
You know, for example, the idea of the
nuclear family. Right?
The idea that,
of a 2 income household. The idea of,
you know, all these sorts of things, these
sensibilities that we have,
you know. So for example, yeah, we were
talking before about how someone kind of challenged
me because I'm very critical about feminism and
things like that and they're like, well, I
love my career. Like, I'm not miserable. Things
like that. And they're like, well, I love
my career. Like, I'm not miserable. I'm not
like the slave of some, like, you know,
jerk boss who's hitting on me. Like, I
actually love my career. I I I chose
it and I'm very fulfilled.
And my point was, like, you know, like
Foucault would say, how much did you really
choose it? I love my I love my
career, but I can't wait till the weekend.
Yeah. No. Right. Exactly. Well, that's a different,
that's a different critique. But but yeah, no.
Foucault would push you to think, well, what
is, what is, what is choice really? Because
you grew up in a society that was
not neutral to this decision. It had values
and it values one thing over the other
and it's going to deploy a certain power
in order to get you to choose one
over the other, whether it's cultural sort of
influence, shame, exactly, valuation, you know, people telling
you since you're a little kid, it's like,
oh, you're gonna do great things, you know,
what do you wanna be when you grow
up? Oh, yeah. It's like, I wanna be
a good person that gets an agenda. Nobody
says that. They say, I wanna what it's
your employment. Right? So we're valued by our
employment. Like, these are very particular things. How
space do you serve maybe for production? Yeah.
Of course. How much we yeah. We we
trash old people. Old people are useless within,
you know, our capitalist system because they're not
they don't produce. Somebody looks after old people
as a job gets paid or, you know
Yes. Profit for some some shareholders somewhere, then
they're fulfilling their potential. Right. They have to
monetize. To their own parents.
Uh-huh. Oh, no. They're just, well, how's that?
Exactly. It has to be read in the
economy as a wageable sort of taxable and
just taxable,
you know, income earning sort of scheme. Right?
It's this commodification of of labor, the commodification
of the self, putting numbers to it, evaluating
it, very materialistic.
Right? So, Foucault gets us to think about,
well, what led you to make that choice
and how much can we say that choice
was really yours? And obviously that can be
taken to a ridiculous extreme. Yeah. It was
your choice morally
but let's not pretend that there weren't influences
that shaped which one seemed exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. He's a little bit no. People who
took him to an extreme and he didn't
say that. That's not actually what Foucault said
but some people interpreted him or misinterpret him
as Fadriz like just like, you know, it's
like you have and that's actually where we
get identity politics from. Like if like the
idea that, you know, you are determined
to only be able to say certain things
if you're a a white straight man. White,
you know, the the cis het
patriarchy. Right? Supposedly, what's the critique there? The
idea is that your identity and positionality
determines,
hard stop, what you can say, what you
can think. You can't represent justly
somebody with darker skin than you, somebody who's
not straight, etcetera, whatever, you know, which is
false. Straight. Quote, unquote straight. Yeah. Right? And
then we say right. Do that now. Yeah.
Right? Yeah. Yeah. Who knows?
But
so so, you know, that's kind of taking
Foucault to an extreme that he didn't I
don't think that he actually espoused. But Foucault
was trying to get us to seriously think
about what constitutes us, right, to go in
a self introspective sort of journey of, you
know, what are the factors in society and
elsewhere that shaped me to have my sensibility
in the first place that I would like
a career as opposed to staying at home,
you know, etcetera. So that that kind of
spirit of Foucauld led you to question Definitely.
So I came into undergrad as an atheist,
as an anarchist, left. I'm a feminist. I
took women's studies classes, like, all this sort
of stuff, you know, and then
Foucault and and Friends, that whole sort of,
you know, intellectual tradition got me to do
a genealogy of myself.
And at the same time, I was studying
post colonial theory. Right? So that showed me
an international dimension about how the same sort
of beliefs and values that the enlightenment
held were wielded in a colonial way upon
mostly the Muslim world and and and elsewhere.
And so that's kind of put I I
quickly kind of came to see how epistemologically
the Islamic world and Islam was the only
serious challenge
to the episteme of the West.
And that just made me really super curious.
I was super interested in it and that
started this whole sort
of that was like a deconstruction reconstruction phase.
That was what was happening in my life.
I was basically deconstructing myself and sort of,
you know, having taking a genealogy of the
things that I had believed in up until
that point.
And then at the same time, I was
becoming exposed to Islam through various contacts and
friends and things like that and seeing that
there was another way possible,
and a a way that was very, very
appealing.
So you said
Islam is the only challenge to the western
episteme. Can you
can you
expand what you mean by epistemic?
Sure. Epistemic, well, it's just how we know
what we know, but it's certain values about
sort of,
that affect your worldview and affect everything else
downstream
of it. Right? So when it comes to
you know, if you wanna if you wanna
see the western epic scene, like, represented in
a very crude but honest way, read, what's
his face?
You know, the guy who got, you know,
Salman Rushdie.
It's not his books, but he has an
essay. And he, like, has this
stupid rant that he goes on where he
says that, like,
this, you know,
West is about eating bacon and short skirts
and kissing in public and stuff like that.
Like, he actually like, the mask is off
completely, and he's, like, basically talking about when
we talk about fighting for freedom, it's like
this is what we're talking about. Like, no,
true westerner would would be so impolite to
say those things out loud but he kind
of took the mask off and showed that,
you know, this is really kind of it's
about. Right? This idea of, let's say, bot
bodily autonomy. Right? Thinking that I own myself
in an absolute way. Right? That's part of
the western episteme. Thus, because I own myself
absolutely,
I get to do whatever I want with
myself. So now I have the right to
express every desire that comes that comes about
inside of me. And in fact, my sort
of satisfaction in life depends upon
my
exercising and realizing and actual izing that desire,
forming an identity around those desires. All that
stuff comes from the western episteme.
You own your body. Your body is the
site of your desires. Your desires are there
for you. You have to act on them
and It's central to your personhood. Yeah. It
is your personhood really because they don't believe
in a soul really. Like, not like it
so they recognize that some people believe that
there's a soul. That's not the real hard
self. Right? Like someone's had hard history in
our conference. Like like hard materialism. The real
self is just your body, your
desires, you know, your consciousness, whatever. And then
you might have some beliefs and some cultural
traditions but you know that's just like extra.
So that's the western episteme among other things.
And so you know Islamic episteme is entirely
opposed to that. You don't own yourself, at
least not absolutely.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala gave you yourself as
a gift
and so
be it the God that recognizes that gift
exchange,
there are strings attached, right? You can't do
with it whatever you want. There's expectations
as to how you're supposed to carry yourself.
What are your aspirations in life?
Obedience, fidelity, right, gratitude. These are things that
are baked into the relationship
of
the Islamic episteme as believing that Allah gave
you you.
Right? Totally different orientation towards life.
And then everything that's downstream of that, you
know, how are we supposed to be in
this world that we recognize ourselves as created
beings and that have been placed here in
a position of stewardship, khilafa.
Right? And so that changes our instead of
viewing,
you know, if I'm a material being that
needs a certain amount of calories every day
and all of you know, you're my competitor,
mine.
Scarcity mindset, competition, survival of the fittest, stuff
like that. There's all these things that it
sets off. Whereas if I believe that this
is, you know, a gift and
I'm a steward, then my relationship to you
is one of care, is one of concern,
is one of compassion.
Right? Even if we disagree, let's say, you
know, for if there was like a non
Muslim here, it's like, I might hate their
decisions and hate their ideology and hate their
guts, but I still want good for them.
I want them to be guided. That's a
relationship of stewardship because Allah put me here
to care and take care of everybody, you
know. Exactly. So, you know, the everything's different.
Everything's different, you know, and that's what we're
talking about. So the Islam presents, the the
the only major challenge for the Western Palestinian.
Yes. How do you feel then when you
see
Muslims,
attacking certain western notions from a western
another western
stance. Yeah. It's maddening because they're basically it's
basically suicide,
you know, intellectual suicide
because,
we don't realize
this is the use. Here we go again.
The use of Foucault and the use of
Postmodernism is
taking those things seriously. How much are you
constituted by modernity?
How much are you constituted
by the, by secularism? How much are you
constituted by these ideologies that are actually destroying
Islam inside of you? Right? You need to
be able to take stock of that. Do
you see it happening on both sides of
the US culture wars when Muslims Oh, a
100%. So, you know, for the left,
my hijab, my choice, that's not an Islamic
position. Like, that's the most ridiculous sort of
thing. I want to be. I want to
be. I want to
be. Yes.
That's a great, totally photobomb.
Yeah, so my hijab, my choice is an
entirely leftist, has nothing to do with Islam.
Like, like because the the argument is from
autonomy and we don't even recognize that autonomy
within within Islam. Like autonomy is not normative
in that sort of way, right, or valued
in that sort of way. So my hijab,
my my choice is a is a perfect,
illustration of of somebody who's trying to make
it they think that they're making an argument
for Islam or they're making it from a
what Statement might be fine, whatever, but it's
built on some assumptions out of the different
way. Wrong assumptions. It's like In some sort
of really basic choice, like like, yeah, you
choose to sin or not. You choose to
obey Allah or not. To you have Onto
yeah. Exactly. You have an ontological reason but
but, prescriptively you don't have a freedom. You
have to put it on. Like you have
to wear it and, you know, if it's
gonna be worth anything, it's gonna have to
be sincerity and stuff like that. But those
are such separate issues. Right? But then, yeah,
it happens on the right too. So then
you have people that, you know,
they try to say, you know, there's there
are some Muslims that believe that again that
the solution is to go back to classical
liberalism or to accept, you know, sort of
the the right sort of version of things
and that's also equally problematic.
Right? It's like,
you know,
going back towards ideas
of of, you know, that time before postmodernism.
Like, isn't gonna do us any any good
really. We're gonna just go back to
enlightenment values that, you know, really sort of
had Islam in its crosshairs and contradict Islam
in a fundamental way,
as well.
So would you say both of them are
situated in the secularist paradigm? Oh, a 100%.
They have to you know, that's even more
foundational
than liberalism. Even if they may present themselves
in Islamic
garban. Of course. That's the
because they present themselves in Islamic garban terminology.
Somebody might say, well, I'm not secularist. I'm
I'm saying from an Islamic point of view,
this is They don't understand what secularism is
because secularism is not a
separation or it's not an irreligiosity. It's not
a separation of society from religion. It's the
production of a new type of religion that
is manageable by liberal values and the and
the liberal state. Right? So that's precisely like,
you know, if you wanna look at other
religious communities, look at Vatican 2, look at
Catholicism after Vatican 2. Right? Vatican 2. It's
the council they had in the sixties where
they basically said that we're gonna abandon all
our traditional teachings and and do, you know,
update modernize ourselves, get get in line with
the times like, you know, progressive values and
social justice and all these meaningless empty signifiers
that basically just meant whatever people value at
the time, we're gonna now relate to our
tradition in a way that we're cherry picking
and selecting in order to conform to sort
of whatever is the the taste of the
day.
So that's secularism in in action right there.
You say that you're religious. You say that
you're Catholic. You say that you're you're quoting
the bible. You're quoting whatever but the way
that you're interacting with your tradition, your text
is not one of submission. It's not one
of ontological or epistemological
submission. You are manipulating it and you're putting
together a new narrative that nobody's ever before
that is actually in line with modern secular
liberal values. That is secularism in a nutshell.
So that's happening to us right now. Right?
And we're the last sort of community that's
resisting and we have the stuff to beat
it, but we have to be aware. We
have to be self aware. And, like, things
like my hijab, my choice or other things
like that, that is the very way in
which secularism plays out. So you you you
kind of we were talking the the kind
of left
or or liberal. I know the different things,
but like a liberal,
my job, my choice thing. Yeah. Just for
maybe for balance. Yeah. There's something on the
right one to attack maybe so people can
see not attack, but highlight maybe certain popular
statements or sentiments
that maybe people don't realize that they're built
on
still still built on modernist or secularist foundations.
Yeah. Maybe like an I don't know. Trying
to think because I'm I'm responding to left
all the time these days. And so, like,
it's like, you know, the the nadir is
there's a a small group of people who
are who are consumed by the right. But,
maybe like the the rise of kind of
some
I was gonna say, like, yeah. Oh, yeah.
That's that's that's a good that's that's that's
a good thing. Yeah. So, like, the anti
feminism. Right? So you the all the sort
of, you know, fake post, you know, machoism
and and stuff like that. Like, a lot
of that stuff is,
is is very crude. And I don't even
know that I the the thing why I
didn't think of that I think is I
wouldn't even necessarily situate that on the right.
I don't even see how that necessarily fits
in with with what is traditionally thought of
as conservativism or or the or the right.
It is literally just a reaction. But it
is a it is a good demonstration to
show at least culturally within the culture wars,
the cultural right, Like, this sort of,
let's go into red pill stuff. Right? It's
like red pill, for example,
is found is the vast majority of it
is found on evolutionary biology.
Right, which is very, very anti Islam. Right?
So you've got guys that are, like,
women. They only value, like, you know, top
g's and, like, you know, like high value
men and you've gotta, like, you gotta work
on your game and you've gotta, like, show
them who's and, like, all this sort of,
like, strategizing.
What's the ontological
or anthropological assumption behind that interaction? Right? You're
saying it it it sets it up in
sort of an adversarial
and a competitive sort of way. So if
I'm trying to attract a female which is
the scarce resources again. Exactly. It's the same
exact yeah. No. That's that's actually a really
good example. Yeah. Exactly. So it's basically scarcity
resources, competitors.
I need to basically either conquer you or
trick you in order to bait bait or
or, you know, dominate you in some sort
of way in order to reproduce with you,
which is crazy, you know.
And it's not again, that's founded in evolutionary
biology. This entire idea that of of sort
of what the human being is and what
human life is that completely
negates the possibility of an afterlife, of God,
of, morality, these sorts of things. Whereas the
prophet said it's half your deen.
Getting married is half your deen. Right? And
that, you know, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in
the Quran said that we made you into
pairs so that you would find peace with
one another. What where's the peace and sort
of, you know, I have to constantly outsmart
and yeah. No. I have to thwart my
wife and, like, this, you know, constantly sort
of like work against them this way. That's
not an Islamic paradigm. Competing with other men?
Yeah. Or competing with other men and things
like that. It's it's not an Islamic paradigm.
Right? So we end up this is what
the thing. If you're not grounded, you're gonna
end up just swinging to the other extreme.
Yeah. You know, you're going to be just
as un Islamic in the other direction. Right?
We really need to construct and reconstruct and
remind people what is the Islamic world view,
what is Islamic epistemology,
what is the Islamic idea of what a
human being is, you know, of what *
is, of what, you know, all these things,
so that they don't get blown away in
the culture wars. Yeah.
How do we do that? How do we
how do we what are your plans? So
your what's your your role in your team
there? That's basically my my, mission statement, my,
my basic my mandate, like, for joining is
to to do this work. Right? I I
deconstruct and I reconstruct. So I'm supposed to
deconstruct,
everything that is anti Islamic in the culture
wars and stuff like that, modern ideologies. And
I'm supposed to reconstruct and present
and convince
the Islamic worldview and how it's different, distinguish
it.
And so the first step we took in
that is a podcast called Dog Man Disrupted.
So it's, you know, long form hour to
2 hour conversation with folks.
Hitting on these specific issues, exploring them. But
then from those conversations, we're gonna make a
shorter video series, like, maybe, like, 3 to
8 minute videos,
called think again where it's going to
focus in on these sort of discursive,
interventions.
Right? These these, you know, slogans even like
my hijab, my choice, and things like that
to try to deconstruct what are the the
philosophical ideas under this, why they contradict Islam,
and what does Islam say instead.
And then after that gets going, the plan
is to even reduce that further down to
smaller content, 30 minute 30 seconds, 60 seconds.
Right? To be able to really try to
go for reach
and try to even construct new terminology.
Right? We need new terminology in order to
fight this battle because part of the the
terms that we use affect the way that
we think about things.
Talking about Islam as a religion
doesn't indicate whether it's true or not. Right?
Talking about it as the Haqq, Right? Like,
it's an entirely different thing. You know?
Talking about
so we know we have we have this
running list of untranslatables.
Yeah. So I'm trying to see. Yes. We
don't translate, for example, Iman Yes. Dean. Right.
We try not to, though. We don't use,
like, faith and religion and No. They're not
the same thing. So, yeah, we're probably gonna
try and build once you build enough of
these things, probably,
have some kind of page somewhere that we
you you can take your time express some
of those things. Yeah. For that. Until then,
you know, we we have to try and
use our own,
timbers. Timnaries is very. It is. I mean,
look at the difference between calling someone a
sodom ite, right, versus calling someone a homosexual.
Like, that is a classic example of how
the shift has happened,
to in in
against our favor. Right? It's put us in
a position where we're on a losing playing
field. Right? And so if we are going
to,
if we're going to win, we have to
come up with a new vocabulary. You know?
I'm not sure that we can return to
the old vocabulary. Maybe we can. Maybe we
can't. I don't know. But we can come
up with new terms that are going to
be able to do that work for us.
So,
so you're talking about,
as you said, example, sort of my homosexual,
like, I think, has a really nice
statement where he said, you know, the the
tracking the the creation of sexuality
Yeah. And the invention of sexuality in in,
you know, England.
It went from a temporal adoration to species
and
became unsocial.
And
I wish we always try to
warn Muslims, don't
try to critique
LGBT ideology and and and and and and
and and so forth from within their, Yeah.
Paradigm because they're fighting one hand and one
way back. Yeah. This this paradigm, this term
discourse only allows 2 characters. Mhmm. Number 1,
the enlightened ally. Number 2, the bigoted, you
know, harmful.
So what do you say to I mean,
this is happening in in schools in the
US right now.
Pride Month, for example,
you know, if somebody's
and doesn't wanna, you know, sign a card
or wear rainbow face paint, whatever, at work,
What how would you say they you know,
at the moment, they talk almost they they're
given, an allowed
set of terminologies
Yes. That they're or or or an episteme
that they're allowed to express a disagreement within.
Yeah. It's not an Islamic one. Yes. So
how would so they end up becoming maybe
copying right them Christian or whatever,
kind of attacks. What would you say to
Muslim parents? Or from your perspective in the
US, what do you say? Muslim is coming,
asking you about why can't Muslim take find
this x y zed at work or in
in school? Yeah. It's an extremely important,
question, and that's part of the idea behind
the whole navigating differences document that we tried
to give people a thing that they could
just take and hand to somebody that they
didn't have to make that argument themselves because
it is tricky business.
Actually, I was having conversations with groups both
in the US and in in Canada for
what's the the most effective discourse to use
when trying to carve out the space. And
there's a lot of disagreement
and each one has pros and cons. Nothing's
perfect. Some people are trying to focus on
parental rights and that has pros and cons.
Right? Because that obviously
a It's like you're a minority, we're a
minority. I think obviously that's demonstrated that
that loses. That's a losing strategy. I don't
think that's a way forward. Other people have
said, said, well, let's go to Islamophobia. That's
what they did in Canada. They're trying to
report these incidents that are happening as Islamophobic
incidents. I'm also not satisfied with that. I
think that has other problems. It's basically
further
fortifying
the homophobia discourse, you know, by saying that
somebody
disagrees with, you know, Islam that they're homophobic
or something like that is like something someone
disagrees with, you know,
the * that they're that they're homophobic. I
don't I also don't like, you know,
reentrenching that discourse.
One of the things that I'm interested in
exploring the possibility of and I don't know,
you know, I haven't fully thought through how
effective it would be, but native Americans have
rallied around this idea of epistemic sovereignty
and sacred teachings.
And I think that that might have a
lot of potential for us because it
doesn't it shifts the terrain from an identity
game
into, about, like, who I am, which the
response for non Muslims is, well, there's this
other Muslim that's fine with it or there's
this other Muslim who's gay. Right? That's the
the next move for them
to
reinserting the the teachings in there and anchoring
us in the in in the teachings. And
that way if we're able to sort of
bridge that gap and say there is no
separating us from our teachings. And if you
try to separate us from our teachings, you're
actually doing some sort of violence upon us.
You're harming us. You know? You're whatever. You're
bigoted.
That to me, that's the most promising sort
of discourse that I've seen so far when
it comes to,
you know, managing all the different sort of
avenues by which we're getting slaughtered by this
thing.
Yeah.
So I mean, did you manage to insert
some of these things into the the the
statement?
No. I was not involved in the crafting
of the wording of the statement myself. So
I was only a signatory.
But when it comes to one thing that
I'm a little bit more involved in is
the is
the the stuff going on in Montgomery County,
Maryland. So we're
there's, like, a WhatsApp group with 400 messages
a day where we're constantly sort of brainstorming
about
how this is gonna happen, what discourse we're
gonna use, what media outlets, you know,
you know,
who to work with and who not to
work with. Like, what are the the parameters
of a coalition?
There's other people that are trying to
undermine and sabotage
us. Right? This is the coalition of virtue,
by the way. So I'm a little bit
more involved in Yeah. I know. The coalition
of virtue is is basically the group on
the ground in Montgomery County, Maryland that is
pushing back against the imposition of the school
board with their LGBTQ,
curriculum.
It the premise of it is that it
is a faith based coalition of values.
Right? So they're trying to be broad enough
to incorporate
believing Christians and and Jews and other people
who,
are not pleased with this. Now,
there's been sort of an incrementalist approach so
far. Like, the first step has kind of
been to say, well, you took away parental
choice to opt out. Now
technically speaking that's not meaningful because they've put
it in every subject so there's nothing to
opt out of. But
to take away parental choice and opt out
is also bad. So the the the strategy
now for for, you know, that most people
have agreed to is to try to reinstate
the ability to opt out and then work
on corralling all LGBTQ education into one subject.
Therefore, opt out is meaningful.
Right? And the the fear is that if
you switch that process and do it in
the reverse, then that won't work and they
won't accept it. So, you know, all I
know is best.
I'm more there there are lawyers involved and
they they sued the school board and and
stuff like that. I'm not a lawyer. I
don't know the legality of it. I'm more
interested in the discourse and the ideology.
You know,
do anything else could be in contempt of
court by talking about Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Revealing
any the best.
You know, secret game plan. Yeah. Yeah. Screw
up while we're watching. Yeah. But,
yeah, I it's it's it's always very interesting
looking at,
how different
Muslim
groups and organizations
kind of, try to formulate a a a
response from their own
from their own paradigm, really. This video is
something similar. You you remember the maybe Iranian
news burning on kind of
a protest? Yeah. Very much so. That was,
you know, in the news around as well.
But the way it was framed was, you
know,
they hear some beta parents
protesting against something as neutral as education. Right.
Learning to simple facts. The idea was that
we were trying to push those. These aren't
just neutral facts. What you're teaching, what you're
imposing is, what they're against is proselytizing
Yes.
You know, certain beliefs
and and and and values and cultural norms
of 1 people over another people. I'm not
a bit of children, no less. Yeah.
So and then, you know, that so so
this is the I think this is, you
know, something we need to explore, you know,
more and and and and popularize because half
of the the majority of the the battle
is to get
the
the, you know, white western male or whatever
that you you mentioned. Get him to realize
his own,
you know, assumptions. Yeah. That they're not universal
true truths about life. Mhmm. They are something
that he completely accidentally inherited. Mhmm. Because he
was born and took good places. Something he's
he inherited from his forefathers.
Right? And it's not something that he imposed,
on us.
So speaking of I mean, I don't I
don't know. I know you've kind of time's
running away with us. I just wanted to
get your views about, you know, something similar
to
what you've been talking about here, but I
mean, before in regards to in regards to
feminism and and your Sure. You know, exposure
to
feminist discourse.
So there's a huge people don't understand that
there's a huge difference between feminism in the
academy and feminism on the ground. And if
people understood feminism in the academy, they'd realize
how dangerous it is.
But the problem is that discursively, what feminism
has done is very clever just like other
movements have been very clever is that they've
managed to claim responsibility for every good thing
done for women anywhere.
So it's actually very difficult to detect what's
wrong with feminism if you're looking at the
goods that it promises to obtain.
Right? It even, like, goes so, like, you
know,
morally amorphous to say, it's like, well, we
can be international feminists and intersectional feminists and,
like, you know, support women's upliftment, whatever that
might mean in the Muslim world versus the
Western world versus whatever. So if you're looking
at it from that angle, it's tricky and
at first it doesn't look
problematic, but we'll get back to that. But
where it is much more obviously problematic is
if you look at what is feminism trying
respond to? What is the other of feminism
which is patriarchy?
Okay. So patriarchy is understood as, and this
is like on the books and it's in
the popular culture, as something that is a
universal and trans historical category. Right? So, by
universal we mean across all places and by
trans historical mean all times. Right? So that
women's oppression
is structural. Meaning, it's not just like they
say that racism is systemic as opposed to
an individual,
prejudice.
They're saying that
patriarchy is the structural oppression of women by
men
all throughout history,
all across places,
everywhere. So women being oppressed is because of
the patriarchy. It's not because of the individual
moral, you know, status of, of individuals.
Because of, you know, the system
happening to somebody No. No. No. It's it's
structurally about men being in power and making
decisions about women. Like that is the patriarchy
and that is what is responsible
for women's oppression.
So that is
obviously and flagrantly un Islamic, right? If you
look at the the society that the prophet
Muhammad was sent to, right? And obviously he
was sent to everybody but he was initially
sent to, you know, his immediate community. There
was oppression against women, widespread oppression against women.
We all know.
What was the source and cause of that
oppression for women?
Was it patriarchy?
If it was patriarchy,
why wasn't patriarchy corrected?
Why didn't
Allah send down the prophet
with something to fight the patriarchy? Kind of
an anachronism, isn't it? It's extremely anachronism, which
is why we have to particular type You're
holding you're holding
a history the history of every every people's
ransom to
the, you know, the analysis of what the
ideas
are. So
the,
ideas of, you know, why he can discover.
Yeah. No. Exactly. Exactly. Which which they'll no.
No. They'll pretend that it's not that, and
that's where you get intersectional feminism and third
world feminism and whatever. But that's what it
is at the end of the day. Right?
No matter whatever window dressing they put on
it. But that's not the least of its
problems. Right? The big thing is, what is
responsible
responsible for the oppression of women? That's what
you have to answer. And is it structural?
Is it always structural?
Is there no moral element to it? Because
the stakes are huge. Is there an either
one?
Say again? Structural or moral?
Is what? Sorry.
Can can it be structural and moral? Yes.
Well, that's the point. So I the idea
of the patriarchy is that it's primarily,
if not entirely structural,
which means that a man can not cannot
be just,
cannot represent women
if he is in power. He needs to
let go of his power in order for
women to have power then justice will be
done. That's the claim of feminism.
And so if you look at the oppression
that women suffered in Arabia in the 7th
century, right, women came to the prophet
to complain about oppression that was happening even
after Islam started to be spread. Right? What
did the prophet do? It's not a feminist
point. People, you know, don't understand these things
they mean. They'll say, oh, well, they were
able to complain directly to the prophet and
this is feminism. This is not feminism. Feminisms
would say that the prophet had to vacate
power and let a woman take over Or
at the very least, feminism would say that
the prophet would have to appoint women to
positions of power so that they will be
represented
so that then they could have justice done
by them.
Feminism precludes the possibility that men can justly
represent and rule over women. Is that all
feminism? Yes.
It is. There's other differences if you get
into * positive versus, you know, like like
like, you know, the folks who are against
* positivism or even abortion or other stuff.
There's various different strains and controversies within feminism.
But this is a a a lowest common
denominator of feminism, the patriarchy, and the conception
of the patriarchy. Right? The patriarchy is a,
again, a universal
transist transhistorical
and even, like, ubiquitous, we could even say.
Can someone be a feminist
and
still,
and think of the patriarchy as not necessarily
that
No. I don't think so. I don't think
so. I think that is the that's why
I I wanna draw the attention away from
the goods that feminism supposedly promises because that's
murkier terrain,
and focus on what feminism claims to be
correcting, which is the patriarchy.
The idea of the patriarchy is un Islamic.
Right?
Men can rule over women justly. It is
a function of morality. It is a function
of the tazkiyatan nef's of purifying the soul,
of relating to your lord and of being
just. Right? Which is why, you know, the
traditionally men have been rulers, men have been
rulers of the or leaders of the household.
They've been leader political leaders. They've been, you
know, societal leaders. That is all based on
the premise that men can
rule just the emotion the notion of leaders.
What a leader means is a heavily
heavily drawn from the Western activist team because
I I you know?
Well, we're we're discussing this the other day
with Sheikhaith and as well, and I'm like,
somehow we're doing to to just about some
kind of skills for leadership. Now he said,
be careful of the word leadership because
it's from a very distinct
it happens to be a corporate kind of
a business That's true. And
based background in terms of
you know? And and he was thinking, we
need to think of a way in which,
we can express this, still learn some lessons
about these qualities,
but not fall into this
this mold,
right,
of a leader is excellent because, yeah,
this type of leader or or, you know,
like a ruler, for example, of a tribe
or a country or whatever.
Yeah.
A woman shouldn't, you know, aspire to be
that Yes. From the Islamic pattern.
But does that mean she's not supposed to
be have some kind of leadership policy leading
Of course. Individual. Right?
Is that the problem? So you're thinking Of
course. So you're thinking it's not about lead
it's not about the position. Yes. It should
be about
other values like taking responsibility
Yeah. Being accountable Yes. You know, and getting
things done
and stewardship. Mhmm. Right? So even that is
just kinda popping to my head there.
Yeah.
Everything
is just probably this language and where we're
living. Yeah. No. The terms the terms set
set us up. Yeah. Kind of,
swimming against the tide. I know. Yeah. Definitely.
No. I mean, that's a good point. That's
a good point.
But the idea still stands about, you know,
about patriarchy is the problem. Now there's there's
there are other there are issues with what
feminism claims to be good as well, but
they're not as readily apparent.
Because when it comes to the, you know,
basically feminism ran into the problem very quickly
that it can't possibly
it doesn't have a coherent sense of what
is good.
Right?
Because it you can't
find a universal good outside of religion. Right?
So outside of faith. It's not
anchored or tethered. It's not anchored or tethered.
And so that's why, you know, is is
it the feminist position to take the veil
off in Iran and put it on in
France?
Right? That's sort of the, you know, the
consequence of this, you know, not having a
coherent constructive idea of what is good. Right?
What is the good that that that feminism
is supposedly achieving for women? Right? Women differ
themselves. They disagree. Like, there are women who
are pro abortion, women that are against abortion
in the United States, and there are women
that are They just say choice then. There
we go. Well, that's that's how they solve
that tension. They solve that tension from going
away from a substantive good and going to
a procedural good. So saying, okay. We can't
stay coherent and say that this is what's
good and this is what's right,
you know, when it comes to the results
and the the concrete substance. So let's go
to procedure. As long as women choose it,
then it's good. Well, that's also problematic. Like,
because, again, we get back to what is
choice and Foucault would be laughing here because
he was saying it's like, well, how do
you account for,
internalized patriarchy
according to them? Right? We don't agree with
the idea of patriarchy as they understand it,
but Foucault would say internalize patriarchy. You have
women choosing it. Women choose to stay in
abusive relationships.
Women choose to do horrible things. There's no
way to actually morally critique or evaluate these
decisions. If you make it if you accept
that, then you you you have to deal
with the problem of infantilizing,
you know, someone else Exactly. Say that, you
know, I know what's better for you than
you. Exactly. Agency versus infantilizing versus all these
sorts of things. It gets muddy. It's gets
it it gets, you know, it it's very
thin and it's very,
incoherent.
Okay. So it's not that, you know, feminism,
so feminism is is un Islamic on both
ends. Whether the the bad that it's supposed
to be fighting against, which is the patriarchy,
which is an un Islamic concept,
and also the good that it purports to
be able to do. But again, what makes
it slippery and appealing is that it claims
responsibility
for every good ever done for women. Right?
And so you and this is where you're
saying historical anachronism.
They'll look into the past and say, Khadijah
was a feminist and Aisha was a feminist.
And, you know, everybody who you know, there
were women who were anti suffragists.
You know, that's a fascinating thing to look
into. There were women that were against women
getting the the ability to vote. Won't call
it the freedom because that's again language.
Right?
And it's really interesting to look into the
reasoning why. Like that stuff is dead and,
you know, buried but,
they're basically like, we want to protect the
the household sphere. We don't want it to
become a political sphere. We want our sort
of separation to to be maintained. They almost
view the separation as a protection in some
sort of way, which has merit to it.
The whole notion of, you know, seeing empowerment
as effectively imitating a man and and everything.
Well, that's another problem. Expecting the man maybe
to
Yes. No. That's another problem is that, you
know, basically, if there is any substantive good
that feminism has called for, it's basically defined
success
as what
success is purported to be for men. But
surely, if it's something so murky and watered
down and so, you know, ain't no fuss,
could there be a strategy of just saying,
okay, take it to its conclusion.
Therefore, feminism is so un undefined and and
and and, I mean, this is a term.
So it it ceases to have any any
value for anyone. Sure. And there are those
who have done that. Like, people who debate,
like, you know, the feminists and stuff like
that. They they often use that as, as
a critique. And there's a valid
critique. Why feminism? We can get women's rights.
We can, you know, that's why I think,
you know, there's a book out there, women's
rights without feminism or something like that. Like,
feminism becomes useless. If you're telling me that
I can't really I don't really have any
idea of what good is,
right, then why do I need it? Oh,
why can't I get it with this? If
you define it as something so
that can be defined from some different angle
Yes. I mean, you could you could perceive
with someone being
absolutely horrible to women and saying I'm fem
Yeah. No. I mean, it would be justifiable,
honestly.
You know? So anyway
And And if we identify as women, then
that's a whole
That's
a topic for another conversation. But, yeah, I
look forward to reading some of your articles.
You promise to, you know, send send me
some stuff and stuff. Definitely. Yeah. And we
have something for Yakin Institute coming out within
the next month on perennialism, which is gonna
be the first the first article for them.
Gonna be doing the, the academic style papers
on the. Yes. And send, some of the
light stuff for
you to
make, you know, direct people towards,
for, you know, for the for the,
academic stuff inshallah. Yes, madam. There's a lot
of work to do. Don't forget. So I'm
trying to see Of course not. Have you.
We'll we'll be seeing you see more of
you inshallah. Inshallah. I hope so. I wanna
I'll let you k. Actually, I gotta catch
my flight. Catch catch your man flight from
you inshallah.
So yeah.
Are you are you? Bikini. Bikini. Yep.
All the Italians in the UK. Assalamu alaikum.
I know you're out there. Italian converts.
Yeah.
Forget about it.
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