Islam and the Possibility of Peace | Mohammed Hijab | EP 209

50m read

·Nov 7, 2024

I understand that, and I'm not even saying that there's something exceptional in that regard about Islam. Although the rate at which it happened was quite remarkable, but still it presents us with a problem, doesn't it? I mean, everyone— it presents everyone with a problem. The problem is, well, for example, the problem is reconciling the idea of turning the other cheek with the idea of a just war, a defensive war, or an expansive war for that matter.

Of course, that issue is relevant to Islam because Islam exploded outward and produced the biggest empire the world had ever seen in the space of a few short centuries. So then you ask, well, what's the spirit? What is the spirit that animated that, and is that attributable to the Islamic doctrines themselves? I don't know the answer to that.

Now let me tell you the answer to that, okay? And this is what I want to tell you conclusively, and this will help build bridges, honestly. Because we can maintain the warlord thesis; we can maintain the expansionist thesis. But here's what I'll tell you: Islam has a capability to be expansive and it also has a capability of making peace treaties, and it does. It should do whatever is in its best interest, just like every country should do whatever's in its best interest.

[Music]

Hello everyone! I'm pleased today to have as my guest discussant Muhammad Hijab. This discussion has been postponed a number of times because of illness, and I'm very glad that we're able to do it today. I thank him for his patience in continuing to pursue this and being willing to talk to me despite I think being delayed three times, which is one more time than is unforgivable.

But in any case, Muhammad Hijab is an author, a student of comparative religion, and a philosopher of religion. He's the co-founder of Sapience Institute and is a researcher and instructor for that organization. He has a BA in politics and a master's degree in history. He's acquired a second master's in Islamic studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies. Hijab has also completed a third master's degree in applied theology from the University of Oxford, where he focused on the philosophy of religion in applied settings. He's now doing his PhD in the philosophy of religion on the contingency argument for God's existence.

Many people—I was looking a while back for people to talk about Islam with, and many people recommended that I talk to Muhammad Hijab. So I talked to Mustafa Akyol a couple of weeks ago; he's known more, I would say, on the liberal front. And so I'm very pleased to be able to talk to Muhammad Hijab today.

Thank you very much for joining me today; it's very good of you to put up with the delays.

No, no, no. Thank you for having me, honestly. It was a pleasure.

Well, so I'm going to ask some really basic questions because it's very difficult to understand another culture from the outside. And you also have, as an outsider, no idea how much you don't know about what you don't know. Even you're blind to your own ignorance. So I'm going to start with basic questions. I wouldn't say that I have a tangible understanding of Islam. I mean, I have some understanding of Christianity. I've been able to get the sense of Christianity at a reasonably deep level, I would say, at least compared to other things I know. And I've kind of felt the same way about certain aspects of Buddhism and Taoism. But as a religious system, a system of thought, Islam has remained relatively opaque to me, despite the fact that I've done a reasonable amount of historical reading.

So what do you think is absolutely core, as far as you're concerned, to practicing the Islamic faith?

Well, the first thing is I think we should start with the bare bones basics. The bare bones basics is first to say that we believe in God, and the kind of God we believe in is one God worthy of worship. In fact, the Quran makes a series of rational arguments for why we believe in the type of God that we believe in. For example, in chapter 52, verse 35 of the Quran, it says, "Were they created from nothing or by nothing, or were they themselves the creators of themselves? Did they create the heavens and the earth? They have no certainty."

In other words, the Quran is hinting here at the fact that it's impossible for something to come from nothing, and it's impossible also for something to give rise to itself. The universe, for example, if we take this as an example, couldn't have come from nothing, and it couldn't have created itself. It couldn't be self-generating or self-maintaining, and there can't be a world— in fact, the Quran would indicate there cannot be a world with only dependent things, things that require other things in order to exist ad infinitum.

So what is required outside of the series of dependent things is something which is independent, which all things depend upon and which itself depends upon nothing. This is what the Quran refers to as "asamat," or the idea of God being self-sufficient and independent—the idea of a prime mover. It's a prime mover argument.

Do you think it's a kind of prime mover? Why do you think that? Why do you think that the same argument that you put forward in relationship to the generation of the universe can't be put forward as an objection in relationship to God? You make a logical case that something can't come from nothing and something can't create itself, but philosophically, this isn't a religious critique; from a philosophical critique perspective, you just move the problem back one step. What advantages do you think there are to moving the problem back one step, or am I mischaracterizing it?

Well, I'll tell you what, Dr. Jordan Peterson. What you've said is very similar to what Richard Dawkins said in a debate with the then Archbishops of Canterbury. He made this argument in Oxford, and he said that if you look at the universe— well, if you're saying that God has made the universe in this way, then your God, who's more complicated— he would add this layer of complexity— yes, your God is more complicated and would require an even greater explanation.

Yeah, yeah.

So really interestingly, Anthony Kenny, who— he's an agnostic himself, a philosopher, an agnostic— he came in and he said, "Well, actually, take a look at this. You've got an electric razor which is made up of many different component parts, and you have a cut-throat razor which is made up of one part." He said although the electric razor is more complicated, it serves fewer functions than the cut-throat razor because the cut-throat razor can cut your throat and it can also cut an apple, for example.

It's a fallacy to assume that just because something is complicated or that something has many features and attributes, that that thing itself requires an explanation. In fact, if we had an infinite regress of such explanations, obviously that would lead to a kind of absurdity. So even well-meaning atheists and agnostics in the field realize the redundancy in the philosophy and the argument that is put forward by the likes of Richard Dawkins, who said that kind of thing.

I would also add to that one point, the argument from composition, which is usually a corollary to the composite to the contingency argument, usually is made in the following way: that everything that is made of parts is contingent, that the universe or, say, a multiverse is made up of parts. Therefore, a universe, or the universe, and all the multiverse is contingent. The parts that we are talking about neurologically are things that can be attached and detached.

So that doesn't apply to God. Classical season doesn't say that God is made of parts the same way as human beings are or as universes are or multiverses are. In fact, the Quran hints at this itself. It says that the one who created you and composed you and configured you in any form that he wished— he put you together.

The fact that you have such configuration in the universe indicates that the fact that you have an external sorting agent has particularized the universe in a certain way and that has composed the universe in a certain way. The argument really is that things which are made of attachable and detachable parts, that those things are contingent— that doesn't apply to God on any theistic paradigm.

Now what we would say, though— sorry to kind of drag this on a little bit— is that this would disqualify something like the Trinity from being true. In fact, the Quran— this is the Islamic position— is vehement in its opposition towards a triune God. For example, in chapter 23, verse 91, it says that God hasn't taken a son and he doesn't have any gods with him. If that had been the case, each god would have taken what he has created and they would have tried to dominate one another.

The idea therefore that there can be more than one all-powerful entity is an inconceivable and unintelligible idea from the Islamic paradigm. So it's seen as problematic, to say the least, or conceptually impossible to say even more to suggest that something like a Trinity can be true when it's talking about, for example, Mary and Jesus. It says something very simple yet: anytime that both of them used to eat food. So in other words, the impossibility of something limited like Jesus, a man, being God at the same time being unlimited because the definition of God is that he's unlimited.

Do you think that there's a divine spark in human beings?

No, but we don't think there's any kind of divinity at all. Islam is categorical about this because the way we define divinity is extremely strict. We say that the divine attributes of God are specific only to God.

So what's the characteristic element of the human relationship with God?

So what's the central— what's the central structure of value within the human being that makes them worthy of respect, say, in the sight of God or worthy of value in the sight of God?

The Quran says we have dignified the child of Adam. So we do believe in something called human exceptionalism. We do believe that human beings have been specialized or specified among all other things in creation to have free will, for example, to have a personal relationship with God, to have a loving relationship with God. People don't realize this, especially from the Christian tradition, but one of the names of God from the Islamic tradition is that he's the loving one, "al-Wadud," in Arabic, in the Quran as well. So we believe that the relationship that a human being should have with God is a loving relationship, but it's one of submission.

This is the main thing. Islam doesn't mean peace; Islam actually means submission. Islam comes from the root Arabic "salam," and what it means is submission. And really what the picture is in the Islamic cosmology is that everything in the universe is submitting to God. Everything. The laws of nature have been placed there by the lawmaker, which is God.

And so we, as human beings, are volitional. We do believe in free will, but we also believe in a theological compatibilism. A kind of predetermination is actually one of our pillars of faith to believe in that. So in that sense, we have to voluntarily submit to God in the same way that everything else in creation is.

What does that submission mean? What that means is that all the prophets and messengers came before time. So this is the meta-narrative of Islam: Abraham came, Moses came, Jesus came, and all of them came with exactly the same message. And that message is to worship— to believe in one God and to worship only one God. And to do that, you have to follow guidance.

Each and every single one of those messengers— they came with, we believe in our narrative— they came with two things effectively. They came with a message, which is to worship God, meaning to submit to His laws, and also with some kind of evidence space to suggest that they are prophets.

Some of these stories would have been known, obviously; you've done a biblical series, so I know you're very aware of those stories. We have very similar stories, like in Moses, Abraham, Jesus, but they are slightly different. Those stories are slightly different; in fact, sometimes radically different, especially considering some New Testament kind of narratives.

The thread that joins or the flesh that joins all of these kind of messengers and prophets is that they all came with one fundamental message, which is to believe in one God, worship one God. We believe that the prophet— hang on, I'm still not understanding this exactly.

Okay, I'm not sure what you mean by belief. The way you laid that out was, in some sense, propositional, right? You made a logical argument for the existence of God, but you take the existence of God as given, in some sense, to begin with because of your faith, and then you provide your belief with a rational argument.

But it wasn't derived from a rational argument. So when you talk about belief, do you mean belief in a set of propositions about the nature of God? And if you do or don't, what do you believe, and how would you separate that belief from what you term as worship?

Right, so actually there's one thing that ought to be known: that in Islamic theology, we believe in something called the "fitra," which is an innate instinct to believing in God.

Now, I'm not sure if you're aware of the work—

Why bother with the propositional arguments then? To me, they just seem like a side venture.

You know, some scholars have said that in Islam—

Okay, no, no. In fact, some modern-day philosophers of religion have that kind of a stance, like Alvin Plantinga. He seems quite agnostic about the other thing.

I mean, we can— the thing is what we're saying is it would be committing something like the naturalistic fallacy to suggest that just because something is the case, or there is— or maybe it's just because something is the case that I ought to— that it ought to be the case.

So in order to prove the— or it's a demonstrative proof for those who are in what we call "shak" or "doubt." But the truth is, as you've mentioned and as in the literature, like for example, Justin Barrett has this in his cognitive psychology literature, I'm not sure if you've come across his stuff, but basically—

Yeah.

Basically what he says is that we have an innate— his words exactly— "receptivity to believing in God." In 2011, the Oxford Anthropological Society, they've done a huge study of 32,000 children, and what they found was that children innately and intuitively, instinctively, have a belief of a higher power of some sort.

Now they are born with that belief, and in fact, in one of the papers in Justin Barrett's book, he literally mentions the "fitra" or the Islamic theological concept of an instinct in believing in God.

What's his last name? Barrett? How do you spell that?

I think double R, double T, I believe. Justin Barrett.

Okay, that's useful.

Yeah, well, it just strikes me that the problem with debating people like Richard Dawkins about the existence of God is that he will formulate the argument in propositional terms and then force the person, so to speak. I don't imply any malice on his part, but as soon as you accept that the battle is to be won on propositional grounds, you've already accepted a certain definition of God and I think you lose the argument instantly.

I think the argument for instinct— something like that is much more powerful because one of the things I'm led to wonder when you laid out your argument is, well, what purpose does belief in God serve, or your faith in God, let's say?

And I think belief— see, it's also really interesting to try to distinguish between belief in something and faith in something. Like if you have— imagine you have faith in the good, and so how do you demonstrate that?

Well, you believe that good is more powerful than evil. You believe that you should act in a manner that's appropriate to the good, and so then you act that way— and that's the faith; the faith is demonstrated in the actions.

Yes, but it's not exactly propositional, and partly because I would say if you look at good and evil, for example, it's not that easy to make the case that good is more dominant or more powerful than evil, all things considered in human affairs. Now, I think it is, but you know what I mean— you can't make a compelling propositional case that that's absolutely true.

But you can reflect your faith in your actions.

The thing is, you mentioned Richard Dawkins. I wrote, as part of the Sapience Institute, we wrote a small booklet called "The Scientific Delusions of the New Atheists," and we refuted him on this kind of thing. If you read the "God Delusion," he literally spends five pages of hundreds talking about the cosmological argument and I think two talking about the teleological argument, or the fine-tuning.

I do think that not much work has been done by new atheists— new atheists meaning like, you know, the four horsemen or whatever— in trying to actually tackle these arguments. Sometimes when they're on debates with other philosophers of religion, I don't think they— from my perspective at least— they don't actually provide a satisfactory defense.

Yeah, well, the instinct argument is an interesting one because, yeah, it seems to me that part of the— and this is why I was pressing you to some degree on the issue of the definition of worship, is that I don't see much difference between the instinct to worship and the instinct to imitate, and I do believe that there's compelling evidence— psychological and biological— that we human beings have a remarkably strong instinct to imitate.

And the question is, well, what is it that we're oriented to imitate? And I think we're— like if you look at the developmental psychology literature, for example, it seems quite— it seems to be the case that if a child has an intact nervous system and they have one or two good models around them, that they'll be drawn towards those good models and imitate them and develop quite healthily, even under rather stressful circumstances.

That instinct to imitate also underlies phenomena like the experience of awe and the experience of charisma, and that charisma, you know, has an effect on attentional function and on the proclivity to behave. And so I think the propositionalized arguments deliver the religious ideas over to the propositional camp, and that's dominated already by scientists in many ways. It's a losing battle. I don't think it's the right one.

So worship— you just— so, okay, so one thing the West and Islam agree on, although I think Islam is part of the West, by the way, because we're all people of the book.

I mean the triune God in the Christian sense is still subordinate to a higher order unity, and so there is a powerful movement towards monotheism in Judaism and Christianity and Islam, and that seems to be a point of some agreement.

We're also— all three societies are also people who've made a decision collectively in some mysterious manner that a book should sit at the basis of culture—a specific book that's been aggregated in a strange way, in a mysterious way. And so we also agree on that, and so that's, you know, that's a starting place, at least.

And obviously there's been a lot of interpenetration of ideas between Islam and Judaism and Christianity. I mean the prophets in Islam are the same prophets that go through the three major Western monotheistic religions.

Yes.

And so that's a fair bit of commonality, yes. So that's a good place to start building bridges.

Okay, so Islam is stringently monotheistic and then the submission idea— what exactly? I mean, God is ineffable in a sense. And so what does submission mean exactly, right? And how is that related to worship, and how is that related to the good, let's say, on a practical level?

Right, so I think what you said before— there was a point you made about finding faith through action, and I think that we would strongly agree with that. And that's what we believe— our definition of faith is what you basically believe in the heart, say on the tongue, and do with your actions. That's like a definition of faith.

Faith for us, or "iman,"— the idea of "iman" in terms of the good— now there are different conceptions in Islam of the good, but the main thing is we believe that God is good, quite similar to what Christians believe, and therefore He wants good for human beings.

And that the injunctions of God are also good. In terms of submission— and this is extremely important here— submission can only be done through revelation. That is our position. The position is that submission is actually impossible without guidance, and the guidance we believe obviously is the Quran.

But we also acknowledge— we also acknowledge the Torah, the original Torah that was sent to Moses, and the original Injil, or the Gospel that was sent to Jesus. But what we have is— we can call it a doctrine of "tahrif," which means corruption.

So what we believe is that what happens is, with these books, you've had basically corruption happen to them. So we don't know what is part of that book and what is not part of that book; we don't know exactly what Jesus said and what isn't, because there is no clear chain of narration back to Jesus Christ.

But going back to the point of submission— submission is to follow the prophets, all of them, because a Muslim cannot be a Muslim unless they believe in, revere, love, and respect all of the prophets, including Jesus, Moses, Abraham, and all of them, follow all of them in their way.

And once again, we believe that they were divinely inspired. So, and there is evidence that all of these prophets come with— and I think I was on that point, I was telling you that the differentiating factor between the prophet Muhammad and the rest of the prophets is we believe whereas all of the other prophets came for their people in their time, we believe that Muhammad came for all people and all times.

That's certainly what Christians say about Christ, yes, but in the Bible you'll find some verses that are saying, "I've only been sent for the lost sheep of Israel." So there's some tension. You see something like the rise of a universalism, a spirit of universalism that surpasses fundamental tribalism, even of a religious sort.

But there seems to be a struggle that takes place in the Gospel in some sense, conceptually, between this reversion to something that's more tribal and something that's genuinely universal. But I think the universalist spirit wins out quite clearly. In other words, Christianity wouldn't be an evangelizing religion; it's designed to try to bring everybody.

Because— to account also for the tension— it's largely because of the tension between Paul and James, and a lot of modern-day Christianity is based on Pauline interpretations rather than— kind of— James was very much a man of the law himself. He didn't believe that the law was abrogated. In fact, there's huge tension, obviously, in the Bible between both those two men, and obviously there's historical reasons for that as well.

But what we will say is we would say that there are clear verses in the Bible, like for example, we point to Isaiah 42:11, where that indicates a new prophet that's going to come.

In fact, Isaiah 42:11 in particular is extremely important because it even specifies the region. It says it will be sent to the people of Kedar, and the people of Kedar, as in Genesis, Kedar was the son of Ishmael. And basically from him is the lineage of Muhammad, or the Arabs, if you like.

And so it is a whole discussion in the whole of Isaiah 42 about a new prophet going to come, and he is going to come to the people of Kedar, and the people will be rejoicing on the mountaintops.

In fact, the name of a mountain in Medina, which is present-day Saudi Arabia, is mentioned, which is the Mount of Salah. And so we would say that actually Muhammad was a continuation of Jesus Christ, and that Jesus Christ as a prophet, also in the Bible, doesn't say that there's not going to be another prophet after me.

And so there's no reasonable reason for us to think at all— I think Christ actually said that the believers would be able to do the things he did and more. So there's actually a prophecy of a multitude of prophets in some sense, which would perhaps be a consequence of taking the fundamental doctrine, the spiritual doctrine of Christianity seriously.

Yes, I mean, as we said, interpretation— in many ways— we are all followers of Christ, and that's another point of commonality. Like we see the Messiah, Jesus Christ, as a man who had done wonders and miracles and signs, as the Bible states.

We believe that he was immaculately conceived. We believe that he cured the blind, he raised the dead with God's permission. We believe all— like most things that you'll find we actually believe in those things. There's huge commonalities between Islam and Christianity from that perspective.

The major difference is we would say that it's not intelligible or conceivable or pardonable to believe any human being with a date of birth could ever be called God. And this is where we kind of diverge from the Christian mainstream.

Yeah, so okay. So let me tell you about some things I've been thinking about in relationship to that. Well, you know that Nietzsche announced the death of God in the late 1800s, and you know what the consequences of that being have been, at least to some degree. And of course, Dostoevsky was talking about exactly the same things at pretty much exactly the same time.

But the philosopher of religion, Eliade, in his historical investigations indicated that the death of God is something that has happened to many cultures in many places over many times. It's not a unique event in, let's say, Western history.

And his explanation for that, at least in part, was that as there's a movement towards unification under a monotheistic umbrella, let's say, which is perhaps a precondition for the union of diverse people, one of the consequences of that is that that central unifying value becomes so abstracted, because it has to cover such a multiplicity, it becomes so abstracted that it flies away— in some he called that "Deus Absconditus," if I remember correctly.

Is that the idea of the spirit just flies away because it no longer has an attachment to the world? And one of the ways that Christianity solved that, if you think about it from a psychological perspective, was by insisting upon the presence of God in a canonic form, right, in an emptied form, in a partially emptied form in the person of Christ, in a particular place at a particular time.

And it's a variant of the prophetic idea, although taken to its absolute extreme. The prophetic idea is that there are people who are marked out in history, marked out by God, by their relationship with what's highest in some spectacular manner.

So I guess one of the things I would say about the Islamic resistance to the idea of the divinity of Christ is that there is an emphasis in Islam on the special status of certain prophets and their particular special relationship with God, which seems to elevate them above other men in some important sense.

And so drawing a line precisely between that claim and the claim of divinity incarnate is not an easy matter.

So, well, I would actually disagree with that. I think there's a clear distinction in the Quran between the prophets and ordinary men, and this is actually one of the clearest distinctions.

Because is there a clear distinction between the prophets and some spark of divinity inside those men?

Yes.

So what do we define as a spark of divinity?

Well, I would say it's partly what gives people charisma, although it's not always that. It's also partly what marked these men out as being prophets. I mean, it's what we look at when we say, "That man is great, that's a great man, that was a great person, that was a great deed."

Well, yes, yes, fair enough. But I would say also embodied virtue, and it's embodied virtue that is in some sense reflective of the action of the highest value operating at a local scale.

Yeah, so that's exactly what we believe. We believe in the doctrine of infallibility. So we believe that all prophets basically did the best thing possible for human beings, and this is something about all the prophets.

And obviously, if that wasn't the case, they wouldn't— they wouldn't be sufficient guides for us in terms of humanity. So if that's what you mean by a spark of divinity, I don't think there's a point of resistance.

Yeah, well, these things are hard to sort out, right, the terminology, and that's part of the complexity of these sorts of discussions. For us, divinity is basically having the attributes of God.

So once again, since we know God through his attributes, from that perspective, that human beings cannot possess the fullness of the attributes of God.

If you want, I can respond. That seems like a perfectly reasonable perspective. I mean, you know, we're all limited, infallible creatures, and we'd be fools not to see that the attributes of God— how are they knowable? Is that only through relationship with the book, or does that also have an experiential element, as far as you're concerned?

So what I can do, in fact, is I can recite for you a couple of verses from the Quran, because what we believe is they have divine qualities themselves. The Quran itself has divine qualities.

So we believe, number one, it's a cure. We believe there's a physic— it's actually a physical cure as well as a spiritual cure. We believe that it's a guidance. We believe that it's something which will literally put you in a psychological state of ease.

So in a sense, what it will do hopefully, you know, will have an effect on you which is physiological, maybe psychological. And in a sense, it's like giving you something to taste rather than just explaining what it tastes like, you know?

And so that's why I feel—

How do you know when that's appropriate and when it's not?

It's— I mean, you obviously don't do all that—

Well, but I don't mean that, no. But that's why I asked the question. It's obviously you're making distinctions. You're not— you're not doing what you just did with—

What it is, I want to give you the full Islamic experience, you see?

Yeah, okay, okay.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, okay.

Part of it is to let you hear what the Quran sounds like, so you can kind of— if you hear it, maybe you go somewhere to a Muslim country and you hear that in the background. Or you may be even walking down— I don't know, you're from Alberta, is it?

Yes.

Yes, amazing. You know that?

Yeah, I think you've mentioned it before. I've been to Edmonton, actually, in Canada. There's a Muslim community there. Maybe you'll hear it in someone driving, and, "Oh, I remember that. I know what that is."

So it's just—

Okay, to gain—

Maybe—

Why did that make you smile?

Because I— because that would make me happy. I mean, quite openly and honestly, because we want the best. I mean, to be honest with you, if you want to be totally honest, yeah.

Now that's what I'm hoping for.

Yeah, all right. Why are you asking me that?

Because before we started the show, I mean, one of our— not objectives, but one of our hopes, okay, is that people embrace Islam and become Muslims.

Yes, Islam is an evangelizing religion. It's a religion which aims literally to enter every home. There is actually a prophetic saying that says that Islam will enter every home. Not necessarily meaning everyone will become Muslim, but it will enter every home in some way, shape, or form.

You mean like what's happening right now with this podcast?

There you have it, you see? It's part of it.

No, there's a series of predictions that the Prophet makes, and this is part of the evidence package we believe.

Okay, so you also talked about the fact— you know, when we started just before we started this, that part of the reason that you're talking with me is that you hope to build bridges.

So this gets down to some— and I want to return to the fundamental attributes of Islamic belief. I don't want to let that part of the conversation lag, but, you know, Christianity is also an evangelizing religion, and yes, Christians hope the same thing.

Yes, so well, you know, what that has caused and is still causing, and so we have to contend with this all of us that are alive now. And so we have two evangelizing religions. They're both fundamentally monotheistic; they emerge from a tradition that's quite similar. There's many things that they have in common. But the border between them has been rife with conflict for a very long time, and that has not ended.

And it's become more distributed and so forth. But one of the things about Islam, I would say, that frightens the West, especially in the modern world, is that it appears that it's difficult for religions that aren't Islam in Islamic countries to manage to maintain themselves to any degree whatsoever.

And now look, I understand— I have said that with a certain understanding also in mind when I look at this from a psychological or an anthropological perspective. I also see that as human societies have come together and organized themselves in ever-increasing sized groups, that the necessity for an emergent monotheism as a uniting factor might be crucial.

And it's clearly the case that the emergence of Islam united diverse people. And in that union, there is a kind of peace. That's the definition of union, and how much strife and force and conflict and catastrophe had to attend that unification is a matter of debate.

We don't know how these things can be managed. We don't know how to manage them any better, but we're still stuck with this problem. Now we have two fundamental monotheisms that are head to head.

Now, I know that's oversimplification, and hypothetically, we're both motivated by the desire for something approximating peace, yeah?

And so, and we want to build bridges, and that's why you and I are talking.

Yes, but I don't know what to do with the mutual evangelical— what would you say— impulse. Like, my sense is Christians turn to— you know, "You’re a problem; you can fix yourself. You do that and the other things are going to sort themselves out of their own accord." And I do believe that, and I actually believe that that message is, in some sense, centrally Christian.

It's like, "Look to yourself and be the example, and that's the best way of, let's say, convincing other people if that's what you're interested in." It's also the only real effective way of bringing peace.

I am not sure— look, I'm a traditionalist Muslim, okay? Which means I'm orthodox. I'm not a liberal at all. In fact, I oppose liberalism, to be quite honest with you, in the sense I criticize it. I don't think it's the truth with a capital T.

So a lot of Enlightenment ideas I oppose them openly, right? And so, I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who is a traditionalist Muslim. By that I mean I stick to the Quran and the Sunnah, which is the prophetic sayings and the jurisprudential tradition derived from those two sources and other sources as well.

But this is a traditionalist perspective which I think represents the majority. Here's what I will say: the first order of business, Jordan Peterson, Dr. Jordan Peterson, is for us, I think, to acknowledge that both religions have a capability of peace.

Okay? This is extremely important. And that requires education. So, I'm just going to be honest with you. Like, for example, the warlord comment that you made— okay, about the prophet, I think that is part of the problem, I have to be honest.

Because, yeah, I want to get to that, Dr. Jordan, where here's the thing: I don't see you as some kind of enemy of Islam. I genuinely don't. I think—

I see that, and I don't want to be either. I have lots of people in the Islamic world who are listening to what I'm doing and watching and being supportive of it.

This is proven.

And here's what I'll say to you now: I can tell you that as a matter of fact, my close friends and traditionalist Muslims listen to you. I mean, that's for sure.

In fact, they love it.

You think they'd have something better to do?

No, no, no— because a lot of your views kind of coalesce with the Islamic viewpoints, especially on, like, the nuclear family, on alcohol. I know you've done your PhD on alcohol, actually; your thesis on, obviously Islam is one of the only religions in the world that bans alcohol completely and drugs and stuff.

Going back to the point, like we said, we want to build bridges and we said we want to understand each other.

And I think what you said there is important. We do have two evangelizing religions, but we have to look at the character and the life story of the prophet.

Because with the prophet Muhammad, here's two things that we have to look at. Number one, there was the Meccan period, and I'm sure you're aware of that period.

The prophet Muhammad was, you know, first of all, he was an orphan, and then he got married to a woman at the age of 25. Her name was Khadija; she was actually his boss.

And then after that, you know, he said that he received revelation at the age of 40 in the— in the mountain— in the cave, sorry. And then after that, there was a time of persecution.

And then after that, he went— he went to different places. He went to Ta'if, which is a place outside of Mecca. He went to Al-Hazrat, who are two clans, two tribes, and what it was is that he was trying to get support for his project, or the monotheistic project, because he was being boycotted, et cetera.

He eventually got it from Hazrat, these two tribes, because they actually believed in the religion of Islam, and this is documented, like without a shadow of a doubt. This is what happened.

And then—

Is this in the Medina period that you're speaking out?

So this is actually technically the Meccan period.

Okay, still the Meccan period, yes.

Right before Medina literally was established, because Medina is the— it was called after the prophet, because Medina just literally means "the city" in Arabic. It was called the-ah-ter before, and then they changed it into Madina to Nabi, like the city of the prophet.

And so that's why it was kind of called Medina after that. In that time period, so you've got 13 years of Meccan— the vast majority, I'm not going to say at all, but the vast majority of wars that took place— in fact, all of the wars that took place before the conquest of Mecca were defensive.

So the pagan Arabs went to Medina and tried to siege it, and all of these are names of wars. In fact, according to one scholar, there were 19 such wars in 10 years, so that's almost an average of two wars every year.

For me, I see that actually as evidence for the prophet because the prophet was actually fighting in these wars. He wasn't just, you know, throwing people around telling them to fight for him; he was fighting in them.

And there were defensive wars. So in that time period, what happened was— I'll give you a question—

Okay, so let me interject something there because that's very— that's a very hard thing for me to get straight in my mind.

Yes.

Now, I would say that and the division in Islam that occurred almost immediately upon Muhammad's death and which has not been rectified to this day— quite the contrary, that's also, you know, that's a problem for everyone.

It's a problem for Muslims; it's a problem for Christians; it's a problem for everyone. And it's a problem that could really get out of hand.

Now, it's not like I don't know that the Protestants and the Catholics were at each other's throats for, you know, hundreds of years. So, but that's not the issue at the moment.

So now in Islam, there's a tremendous emphasis on Christ's doctrines as well, and there isn't any evidence that Christ himself took part in, let's say, wars.

It's hard— let me—

Okay, well, if you analyze Christ as an archetype, when he comes back in his second coming, he is going to dominate the world.

And one can say, well, that's not the historical Christ.

But when we're looking at him in the way— and that's a reasonable objection, and I see it— his martial element— and I don't think it's reasonable to use the archetypal representation as an argument against the historical reality.

And look, I'm not saying to you that I know that what Muhammad did was wrong. That isn't what I'm saying. I'm saying that I don't understand how participation in those defense of wars, let's say, but then that was also followed by a tremendous explosion of Islamic expansion right at Europe's doors.

And so that was also followed by the severance of the Islamic faith into two major categories and internecine conflict there. And so there's that stream of armed conflict activity.

I think that you're right— respectfully, I don't think you're getting the history fully right here because—

Well, okay, yep, that's fine.

Cool. The wars in Jamal and Safin, that the wars between Shia and Sunni— or what would then be— it's not really between Sunni because, quite frankly, Shi'ism had not been established then.

But the wars of the companions— how many people died in those wars? Do we have any numbers for that?

Maximum, we can say. But it's fair— look, fair enough, man, and it's not like— it's not Christian. It's not like Christianity hasn't been rife with internecine conflict.

Yes.

But the fact is, it was almost immediately after Muhammad's death that this fracturing took place among the people that were closely allied with him, and it was a bloody fracturing, and it isn't obvious that it's been rectified.

How bloody was it?

Well, how bloody does it have to be? You know, it doesn't take much.

Okay, well, let's be honest; let's be fair.

Yeah.

With the wars that took place 30 to 40 years— and it wasn't immediately after, because you said that in the video, the day he died— that's wrong.

It didn't happen the day he died; it happened four years after. It happened 30 to 40 years after.

And how long— how many members of Muhammad's immediate family survived during that 30 years?

My understanding was that most of his immediate family died in armed conflict.

Relatives, family died in his own lifetime, yes.

Well, I'm not speaking of them, but I'm speaking of what happened after his death.

That's right, because—

Okay, look, first fact: Muhammad, Sallallahu, all of his children died in his life, okay, except for one.

So most of the members of his immediate family and his wife died; Khadijah died, his uncle Abu Talib died, his other uncle Hamza died— they all died within his lifetime either due to illness or due to some other cause— war, for example, like one of the defensive wars— Hamza died.

And by the way, Muhammad forgave his killer, and that's something which goes against the warlord thesis because when he then conquered Mecca— when he conquered Mecca, he was actually— no fighting, I'm not sure if you know this.

It's called Fat— when he went into and conquered Mecca, he didn't fight anybody. It was no fighting. There were a few people that were exempted, but he actually quoted what Joseph quoted to his brothers in the Quran, in chapter three, by Alek, that "no blame is on you today."

And so, this, by the way, is a bedrock example of forgiveness in Islam, because these were people that were persecuting him for 13 years. These are people that killed his uncle— like I said, there's one person called Washi who literally killed his uncle and mutilated his body.

And he said to Washi, "I forgive you, but I can't see your face because of how— how," he said, "can you keep your face away from me? Because I can't— psychologically I can't believe my face."

But I do forgive you, he said.

So he forgave people that killed his own family members, and this was after he attempted a treaty with the pagans called Hudaybiyyah.

And so they broke the treaty, and that's what initiated the conquest of Mecca, which was not a conquest that was fighting.

Now, if you compare this— because I think the comparison— if there's any comparison that can be or should be made, it's the— it's Jesus' second coming with Muhammad in the Medinan period, not in the Meccan period.

In the Meccan period, both were being persecuted— Jesus in his life and Muhammad in his— in the Meccan period.

But Jesus, when he comes back, he will then get authority and he will be, I— he will be ruling with the iron scepter, according to the Bible.

He will be crushing his enemies, as it says in Corinthians, under his— humbling his enemies under his foot, and killing and violent stuff.

So, in fact, I will actually argue today that the New Testament representation of Jesus Christ in his second coming is way more violent than Muhammad's conquests in the— in Medina.

Okay, well, look— I said— I wasn't trying to make the case— I wasn't trying to make the case that what happened in Mecca or Medina was wrong.

Like, so let me explain that a little bit. So Christian Europe fought a defensive war against the Nazis.

It isn't obvious that that was wrong.

I don't think that was— I wouldn't say that's defensive.

Well, okay, fine. But I understand the concept of defense of war. America— when America got involved in World War II, it was not under immediate threat by Germany.

And they colonized it, and here's the thing: it caught— it overtook Western Germany.

You see, here's the thing: the term warlord that you use with the prophet, you've never used with Harry Truman, you've never used with Roosevelt; you've never used with Winston Churchill, all of which conquered countries literally in wars.

Because I feel like there is a bias there, and you actually have never used it with anybody else aside from the prophet Muhammad in your public output, and I think that's unjustifiable.

I think that you have biblical prophets like Moses, you have biblical prophets like Joshua— you have Jesus in his second coming— all of which were warrior prophets, and you've only used the term "warlord" with the prophet Muhammad. I think that is unjustifiable.

I think if we— what is it that makes— what makes someone a warlord in your— then if it's conquering lands, then Harry Truman is a warlord, then, you know, and so on and so forth.

In fact, I guess that's a real tough question, isn't it? What makes a warlord and what makes it just war?

It's not like any of us have the precise answers to that. I think that's what partly what we're trying to hash out.

The definitions of the word warlord— the definition of the word lord, according to Collins, is that someone who acquires force by aggressivity and violence.

You push back on me, so I'll push back on you to some degree.

Okay, well it's certainly the case that the expansion of the Islamic empire was accomplished by a tremendous amount of war-like activity.

And that wasn't defensive. Now look, I understand, I have said that with a certain understanding also in mind. When I look at this from a psychological or an anthropological perspective, I also see that as human societies have come together and organized themselves in ever-increasing sized groups— that the necessity for an emergent monotheism as a uniting factor might be crucial.

And it's clearly the case that the emergence of Islam united diverse people.

And in that union, there is a kind of peace— that's the definition of union.

And how much strife and force and conflict and catastrophe had to attend that unification is a matter of debate.

We don't know how these things can be managed. We don't know how to manage them any better. But we're still stuck with this problem.

Now we have two fundamental monotheisms that are head to head.

Now I know that's an oversimplification, and hypothetically, we're both motivated by the desire for something approximating peace.

And so, and we want to build bridges, and that's why you and I are talking.

Yes, but I don't know what to do with the mutual evangelical— what would you say— impulse.

Like, my sense is Christians turn to— you know, "You're a problem; you can fix yourself. You do that, and the other things are going to sort themselves out of their own accord."

And I do believe that, and I actually believe that that message is, in some sense, centrally Christian.

It's like, "Look to yourself and be the example, and that's the best way of, let's say, convincing other people if that's what you're interested in."

It's also the only real effective way of bringing peace.

I'm not sure— look, I'm a traditionalist Muslim, okay?

Which means I'm orthodox. I'm not a liberal at all. In fact, I oppose liberalism to be quite honest with you, in the sense I criticize it. I don't think it's the truth with the capital T.

So a lot of Enlightenment ideas— I oppose them openly, right?

And so— I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who is a traditionalist Muslim.

By that I mean I stick to the Quran and the Sunnah, which is the prophetic sayings and the jurisprudential tradition derived from those two sources— and other sources as well.

But this is a traditionalist perspective which I think represents the majority.

Here's what I will say: the first order of business, Jordan Peterson, Dr. Jordan Peterson, is for us, I think, to acknowledge that both religions have a capability of peace.

Okay? This is extremely important, and that requires education. So I'm just going to be honest with you.

Like, for example, the warlord comment that you made— okay, about the prophet, I think that is part of the problem, I have to be honest.

Because—

Yeah, I want to get to that, Dr. Jordan, where here's the thing: I don't see you as some kind of enemy of Islam.

I genuinely don't. I think—

I see that, and I don't want to be either.

I have lots of people in the Islamic world who are listening to what I'm doing and watching and being supportive of it.

This is blood.

And here's what I'll say to you now: I can tell you that as a matter of fact, my close friends and traditionalist Muslims listen to you. I mean, that's for sure.

In fact, they love it.

You think they'd have something better to do?

Going back to the point— like we said, we want to build bridges and we said we want to understand each other.

And I think what you said there is important. We do have two evangelizing religions, but we have to look at the character and the life story of the prophet.

Because with the prophet Muhammad, here's two things that we have to look at. Number one, there was the Meccan period, and I'm sure you're aware of that period.

The prophet Muhammad was, you know, first of all, he was an orphan, and then he got married to a woman at the age of 25. Her name was Khadija; she was actually his boss, and then after that, you know, he said that he received revelation at the age of 40 in the mountain in the cave, sorry.

Then after that, there was a time of persecution. And then after that, he went to different places. He went to Ta'if, which is a place outside of Mecca.

He went to Al-Hazrat, who are two clans, two tribes, and what it was is that he was trying to get support for his project, or the monotheistic project.

Because he was being boycotted, et cetera. He eventually got it from Hazrat, these two tribes, because they actually believed in the religion of Islam, and this is documented like without a shadow of a doubt that this is what happened.

And then—

Is this in the Medina period that you're speaking out?

So this is actually technically the Meccan period, still the Meccan period, yes.

Right before Medina literally was established. Because Medina is the— it was called after the prophet, because Medina just literally means "the city" in Arabic.

It was called the Ether before, and then they changed it into Madina to Nabi, like the city of the prophet. And so that's why it was kind of called Medina after that.

In that time period, so you've got 13 years of Meccan— the vast majority, I'm not going to say at all, but the vast majority of wars that took place— in fact, all of the wars that took place before the conquest of Mecca were defensive.

So the pagan Arabs went to Medina and tried to siege it, and all of these are names of wars and in fact there was, according to one scholar, there were 19 such wars in 10 years.

So that's almost an average of two wars every year.

And there were defensive wars.

So in that time period, what happened was— I'll give you a question—

Okay, so let me interject something there because that's very— that's a very hard thing for me to get straight in my mind.

Yes.

It's a problem for Muslims; it's a problem for Christians; it's a problem for everyone.

And it's a problem that could really get out of hand. Now, it's not like I don't know that the Protestants and the Catholics were at each other's throats for, you know, hundreds of years.

So, but that's not the issue at the moment.

So now in Islam, there's a tremendous emphasis on Christ's doctrines as well, and there isn't any evidence that Christ himself took part in, let's say, wars.

It's hard— let me—

Okay, well, if you analyze Christ as an archetype, when he comes back in his second coming, he is going to dominate the world.

And one can say, well, that's not the historical Christ.

And so that was also followed by the severance of the Islamic faith into two major categories and internecine conflict there.

And so there's that stream of armed conflict activity.

I think that you're right— respectfully, I don't think you're getting the history fully right here because—

Well, okay, yep, that's fine.

Cool.

The wars in Jamal and Safin, that the wars between Shia and Sunni— or what would then be— it's not really between Sunni because, quite frankly, Shi'ism had not been established then.

But the wars of the companions— how many people died in those wars? Do we have any numbers for that?

Maximum, we can say. But it's fair— look, fair enough, man, and it's not like— it's not Christian.

It's not like Christianity hasn't been rife with internecine conflict.