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Joe Rogan Experience #1107 - Sam Harris & Maajid Nawaz

Sam Harris is a neuroscientist and author of the New York Times bestsellers, The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, and The Moral Landscape. Maajid Nawaz is a British activist, author, columnist, radio host and politician.

Joe RoganhostMaajid NawazguestSam Harrisguest
Apr 19, 20181h 58mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:02 – 0:48

    Sam brings Maajid on: why this conversation matters

    1. JR

      Four, three, two, one. Boom! And we're live. Gentlemen. Sam, Maajid, how are you?

    2. MN

      Good, thanks.

    3. JR

      Pleasure to meet you.

    4. MN

      Pleasure, Joe.

    5. JR

      Thanks for, uh, coming here.

    6. SH

      Yeah. I'm re- very happy to get you guys together. I mean, that was, uh ... I've been kind of looking to do this for at least two years, and finally it's arrived.

    7. JR

      What's been your ultimate goal? Like what was it ...

    8. SH

      Well, he ... I mean, Maajid is just a superstar that needs more exposure. I mean, he's like-

    9. MN

      Don't listen to that.

    10. SH

      He should be running half of civilization. I mean, uh, he's, he's really a, just a fantastically ethical-

    11. MN

      That's one of those quotable things you can put on the back of a book, isn't it?

    12. SH

      Yeah. (laughs)

    13. MN

      (laughs)

    14. JR

      It's a good one.

    15. MN

      You should be running half of civilization.

    16. JR

      Yeah, but you should, shouldn't put that one. It has to be on the back of the book for sure.

    17. MN

      (laughs)

    18. JR

      Definitely not on the front.

    19. SH

      (laughs)

    20. JR

      People read it and go, "Superstar? Who the fuck is this guy?"

    21. MN

      (laughs)

    22. SH

      I c- I can't blurb the book we wrote together, unfortunately, so ...

    23. JR

      Yeah.

    24. MN

      Yeah.

    25. JR

      That is an issue.

    26. MN

      You're too kind, Sam. Thank you. It's, uh, it's very generous of you.

  2. 0:48 – 3:24

    SPLC lawsuit and “listed on both sides”: terrorist watchlists vs. ‘anti-Muslim extremist’ label

    1. JR

      Um, are y- are you, are you suing the Southern Poverty Law Center?

    2. SH

      (laughs)

    3. JR

      Is that what's going on?

    4. MN

      Yeah. I, I, in fact have an update for everybody 'cause, uh, you know, we crowdfunded, uh, a lot of the early costs for the case against the Southern Poverty Law Center.

    5. JR

      What, what did they do? What is it, what is it based on?

    6. MN

      Yeah. Let me back up a bit.

    7. JR

      Please.

    8. MN

      Um, once upon a time, uh, yours truly, a British Muslim, uh, of Pakistani origin was listed in the United Kingdom on the Thomson Reuters World-Check database under a category red terrorism designation, while at the same time being listed across the Atlantic in the United States by the Southern P- Poverty Law Center as an anti-Muslim extremist. So I was both a Muslim terrorist and an anti-Muslim extremist according to two separate lists. And of course, that speaks to some of the polarization in our times, in how irrational this conversation around extremism, Islam integration, Muslims in the West has become. I sued Thomson Reuters World-Check, the database. This database is no joke. It's like HSBC and, and many, many other banks use this database, uh, for background checks on whether clients can have a bank account with them. So as a result of, for example, Thomson Reuters and their database, uh, Quilliam, which is a counter-extremism organization I founded 10 years ago, had its bank account shut down in the United States because of the Thomson Reuters World-Check database system that HSBC subscribes to. Anyway, we sued them. They paid damages. They issued an apology, and they, uh, uh, uh, re- took my name off this, uh, terrorism designation list they have on their World-Check database.

    9. SH

      Uh, Maajid, I think you ... Maybe you should back up further and just give the, your, kind of your short form bio in terms of wh- why would you ever be on a terrorist watch list.

    10. MN

      Sure. Sure. I- I- I'll do that.

    11. SH

      Yeah, sure.

    12. MN

      Um, but at the same time, the Southern Poverty Law Center had, had listed me, as I said, as an anti-Muslim extremist, so we are also, uh, taking legal action, uh, against them. And, um, I- I will get to your point, but I think ... just want to say that the ... I've just, uh, held a law firm on retainer, Clare Locke, and they were the ones that sued the Rolling Stone magazine for that college rape campus rape scandal.

    13. JR

      UVA?

    14. MN

      Yep, that's right.

    15. JR

      Yeah.

    16. MN

      Successfully got, uh, won that case. Clare Locke, which is, uh, an announcement made here exclusively with you, no one else knows this yet, we have retained Clare Locke. Uh, they are writing to the Southern Poverty Law Center as we speak. Um, I think they've got wind of it, the Southern Poverty Law Center. As of, I think either yesterday or the day before, they've removed the entire list that's been up there for two years.

    17. SH

      Oh, nice.

    18. MN

      They've removed the entire list, which also had Ayaan Hirsi Ali on it, um, and it's no longer available on their website.

  3. 3:24 – 7:12

    What SPLC cited as ‘evidence’: strip club, face-veil policy, shifting allegations

    1. JR

      Now, is their logic that if you're a critic of Islam, of radical fundamentalist Islam, that you are somehow or another a racist extremist?

    2. MN

      Uh, that ... So that's pretty much what they've said. If you criticize Islam, um, Ayaan and myself who have come from within the community-

    3. JR

      Yeah.

    4. MN

      ... who've had that experience, that somehow that makes us anti-Muslim. Um, th- there are a number of logical errors involved in that logical leap that they've made.

    5. JR

      Do they have any distinction? Is there, is there anything that they write that sort of points to why they would say that?

    6. MN

      Uh, one of them, honestly, the reasons they listed, one of them was that I had a, a bachelor party in a strip club a year before I got married.

    7. JR

      W- that makes you an anti-Muslim extremist?

    8. MN

      That was one of the reasons listed.

    9. JR

      Why? (laughs) Oh, the, the 9/11 hijack- jackers weren't at the strip cl- strip club on 9/11, right?

    10. MN

      (laughs) Sorry. (laughs) That was ...

    11. JR

      So th- that w- that, that real- they really listed that?

    12. MN

      They actually listed that, which is part of the reason why we can prove malice, because what has that got to do with anything?

    13. JR

      That's-

    14. MN

      Uh, it's a-

    15. JR

      But that doesn't ... Yeah. That doesn't make any sense.

    16. MN

      Yeah. Uh-

    17. JR

      So that was th- that was a primary reason?

    18. MN

      It was one of the three main reasons they originally listed.

    19. JR

      What are the other two?

    20. MN

      And another one was a- again, false. Uh, they claimed that I had called for the criminalization of the face veil for Muslim women in the West, which wasn't true. I had called for a policy to be adopted where in banks and airports where you're not allowed to wear a motorcycle helmet, you also shouldn't be allowed to cover your ha- face in the name of religion. Which is very different to calling for the criminalization per se of the face veil. That's like saying you're not allowed to wear a motorcycle helmet in a bank, so I believe in the criminalization of motorcycle helmets. It's just absurd.

    21. JR

      Right. (laughs) Yeah, it's ridiculous.

    22. MN

      Um, so it was a mischaracterization of my, um, opinion. The article-

    23. JR

      So that's two.

    24. MN

      Yep. And the other one, uh, they, uh, th- the reason they ... I can't even remember, 'cause they kept changing their reasons. The actual website has been, um ... we've got the archive and, and it's been ... they've been changing it each time people have been pointing out the stupidity of their allegations.

    25. JR

      So why do they ex- what is the Southern Poverty Law Center's-

    26. SH

      Well, I mean, this is a painful irony because if you roll back the clock now, you know, 20 or some odd years, their reasons to exist were great. I mean, th- this was the, the flagship organization that was suing the KKK and-

    27. MN

      Mm-hmm.

    28. SH

      ... you know, Sovereign Citizens and just the, the far right, you know, white nationalist, Christian nationalist movements in the US. And in, in some cases, to great effect. And their, and their concern obviously about, you know, extremist hate groups in the US was totally valid. And I mean, it was, it became ... I mean, now, now that we see how morally confused they are, people have been shining a light on them, and they, they've, they're this bloated organization that's been taking in way too much money. And they're, I mean, it's not ... it, it suffers from other-... signs of, of, uh, corruption or, or conflicts of interest. But back in the day, you know, Morris Dees was, you know, bringing the KKK to court and bankrupting their various chapters, and that all ... that looked fantastic. And now, the social justice warrior, moral panic, uh, moral stupidity virus has gotten into their brains, and they can't differentiate someone like Maajid from a right-wing Christian neo-Nazi, uh, uh, hater of Islam, right? Or hater of, of, of-

    29. MN

      Mm-hmm.

    30. SH

      ... you know, people from the Middle East. Uh, and, and so it is with Ayaan Hirsi Ali. And now, the... ironically, you're off the website, now I'm on it. I think I'm on it in a, in a far more transitory way. But the, the, the article that was written about my podcast with Charles Murray by Vox hit the Southern Poverty Law Center hate watch page. And so there you had articles about neo-Nazi groups, articles about the Austin bomber, and then me and, and my podcast with Charles Murray.

  4. 7:12 – 11:16

    Maajid’s origin story: racism in the UK, Bosnia, and joining Hizb ut-Tahrir

    1. MN

      The reason why you were on the list in the UK in, in the first place had to do with your actual background. Mm, mm, mm. So, so I was born and raised in Essex in the United Kingdom, and I came of age in what I now refer to as the bad old days of racism in the United Kingdom. Much has changed since then for the good. But in those days, uh, there were, uh, serious, um, (smacks lips) uh, uh, uh, cases of violent racism that I faced. Uh, hammer attacks, machete attacks by actual neo-Nazis. I mean, I've grown up... This is the irony of this Southern Poverty Law Center listing. I've grown up fighting neo-Nazis on the streets, and they've been attacking me with hammers and machetes because of the color of my skin. And you got a bunch of white guys in Alabama, uh, designating me in the same breath as they would designate, designate these neo-Nazis. But that ... when I grew up and having that experience being, um, falsely arrested by Essex Police on a number of occasions, profiled while the genocide in Bosnia was unfolding against Muslims in Bosnia. Um, I often say to an American audience when I'm speaking about this, we are now here with you on the West Coast in this beautiful new studio you have. Congratulations.

    2. SH

      Thank you.

    3. MN

      Um, and imagine a genocide was unfolding on the East Coast against a, a group of people with whom you identified, and even if it's just on a human level, human beings. But, you know, even within that, a community identification would impact you in a way. For example, if you defined yourself as, uh, Jewish and there was a genocide against Jews on the other side of this very continent, of this very country, how it would impact you on, on the West Coast. Um, well, Sarajevo, Sarajevo from London, it takes us less time to fly from London to Bosnia than it does from New York to LA. And so it really had a profound impact on Muslims across Europe when that genocide was unfolding and, and things were never the same again. It radicalized an entire generation. Of course, ideology had a lot to do with that, but the anger originally came from the genocide. So at the age of 16, what with the, the domestic racism and the, uh, uh, situation in, in Bosnia unfolding as it did, I joined, uh, Hizb ut-Tahrir, which is a, uh, uh, a non-terrorist, still legal in America and in Britain and across Europe, uh, Islamist organization. It was the first of the global Islamist organizations that aspired to resurrect the notion of a caliphate, uh, which we've subsequently seen to a great damaging effect in the form of ISIS's caliphate. Um, and, uh, their method of coming to power was by infiltrating militaries in Muslim majority countries, uh, recruiting army officers, and then instigating military coups. Whether that be in Turkey, in Pakistan, in Egypt, these are the countries they, they targeted. Um, and their aim would be to then, through the military coup, set up this caliphate, which would then be an expansionist caliphate, uh, and would conquer the world. I mean, that's ... It sounds crazy. That's what they believe, and that's what they're very, very serious and intent on bringing about. And now people, when I say that, believe me, 'cause they've seen the ISIS experiment unfold. But I joined a group that sought to do that, um, through non-terroristic means, (smacks lips) at the age of 16. I ended, ended up on the leadership of that organization in the UK, uh, ended up co-founding that group in Pakistan in 1999, where I went ... I left the UK, went to Pakistan, um, was among the first, the vanguard of British Pakistani members that went out there to set the group up. Uh, there've been about three or four, uh, coup plots in Pakistan since, and army officers have been arrested for being members of this group and, and many of them still in jail. Um, I spent a year in Pakistan, went back, um, while studying for my degree in the University of London. Uh, would fly Monday ... uh, would fly on Saturdays and Sundays to Copenhagen in Denmark. I co-founded the Danish Pakistani chapter of this group. And then the third year of my degree, 'cause I was doing law and Arabic, um, uh, resulted in me having to go to an Arab country for the language year. And so I chose Egypt. And, uh, a day before the 9/11 attacks in 2001, I ended up in Egypt. I went to Alexandria, enrolled in the University of Alexandria to study for the year of, uh, Arabic language, which was the third year of my degree. Um, of course, 9/11 happened and the climate changed. The security climate changed all over the world, something we didn't know about nor predicted.

  5. 11:16 – 16:11

    Egypt: arrest, torture, imprisonment, and the path out of extremism

    1. MN

      And on the 1st of, uh, um, April 2002, my house in Alexandria was raided by the Egyptian State Security. I was blindfolded. My hands were tied behind my back. I was then driven through the desert into Cairo to the dungeon of the State Security headquarters, um, in a building known as, uh, as, uh, Al Jihaz, which was the main headquarters of Aman al-Dawlah, this internal state security. Uh, we were held in the dungeons there for four days, and they electrocuted, um, most of the prisoners that they had there. Um, tortured them, interrogated them. On the fourth day, I was taken to a, a prison known as Mazrah Tora, uh, in Cairo, um, put into solitary confinement for about three and a half months, then charged, eventually sentenced to five years as a political prisoner under the Egyptian Emergency Law, um, and served my full sentence there in Egypt. Uh, eventually left prison in 2006 and returned to the UK.

    2. SH

      So, so did, did Amnesty In- International get you out at all? Or, or did they just-

    3. MN

      No. They only cam-

    4. SH

      ... took an interest in you when you were coming out?

    5. MN

      So they campaigned for my release, and-

    6. SH

      Right.

    7. MN

      ... uh, nobody got me out because I had to finish my full prison sentence.

    8. SH

      Right.

    9. MN

      Um, but a- what changed me and, and led to me to be the man that sits before you today is, you're right, Sam, uh, uh, Amnesty's, uh, adoption of me and, and, and a few others in the case as prisoners of conscience, and they took the very brave and bold step, now looking back at it, because keep in mind the context here, th- this is Bush was president, Tony Blair was prime minister, and we were in the thick of the war on terror. We were in the middle of it. And Amnesty, Amnesty comes along and says, "We disagree with everything this guy stands for, but they don't believe in using violence to bring their caliphate about, and so we will defend their right to say stupid things, and they shouldn't be in prison. They certainly shouldn't have been tortured for it." So, um, Amnesty adopted us as prisoners of conscience. And I was 24 years old at the time, by the way, so everything I've just described to you happened to me up until the age of 24 when I was imprisoned. And it was the first time in my relatively young life, I'm 40 now, right? And, uh, I had never been defended by any mainstream, pillar of mainstream society in that way before. Nobody had spoken out for me, and that had a, a real huge kind of emotional impact on my psyche. Um, I've said in my, um, autobiography that where the heart leads, the mind can follow. And so I was now willing to consider alternatives because of Amnesty's work campaigning for me. And so I spent the next four years in prison, uh, reading, uh, rereading Orwell, uh, every one of his, uh, books, reading Tolkien, reading classic English literature, studying Islamic theology, really trying to understand the world around me. Um, and I had four years to do so, and I spent four years debating and discussing with, um, pretty much the founders of Egypt's main jihadist organizations who were in jail with me in the same prison, including the assassins or the former president, Anwar El-Sadat, who had been killed in 1981 because of his peace deal with Israel. And his assassins were in jail with me and they'd been in prison longer than I'd been alive. And so they had some collective years of wisdom between them, and most of those jihadist prisoners I was in jail with had over the course of those years two decades and more, changed their views and reformed. They were still conservative religious Muslims, something which I'm not, um, and I never... I don't claim to be in my, in my work at the moment. Um, but they were still religious Muslims, but they were no longer, um, extremists and they were no longer what I call Islamists, people that sought to implement their version of Islam over society. And so they, uh... in four years of constant debate and discussion with them, um, people that I knew had more wisdom than me, they've been in jail for longer than I'd been alive. Um, I, my views began slowly changing. I read a lot of the books they wrote about changing their own views and why they changed. And, uh, upon my release, uh, I, I, I eventually, a good few months after my release, I, I had to leave the organization because I no longer believed in an ideology that I was once prepared to die for.

    10. JR

      That is fascinating that the shift came about in jail speaking with assassins.

    11. MN

      Yeah. Among many others, yeah.

    12. JR

      That... I mean, that is really incredible. You would think that most people think that when someone goes to jail, usually whatever criminality that they have in them is cemented.

    13. MN

      Yeah.

    14. JR

      It's... and hardened.

    15. MN

      Yeah. I'm, I, I don't know why mine is an exceptional case because most people, you're right, whether you look at Sayyid Qutb, who's known as the founding father of modern day jihadism, he started off like me, a non-terrorist Islamist, but in Egypt's jails, in fact, the very jail I was held in, he was tortured and he ended up becoming the godfather of modern day terrorism, um, through his book Milestones or Ma'alim at-Tariq, Ma'alim fi't-Tariq in Arabic. And yet that... i- in my case, for whatever reason, you know, it... I kind of went that bit further to question everything I believed in, um, but that's not normal. M- in most cases when you torture people in jail, i- it ends up hardening and ossifying that ideology and people become as angry as, you know, they become the monster that they were seeking to defeat.

  6. 16:11 – 24:45

    Building Quilliam: a ‘Muslim response’ to extremism and the cost of being misbranded

    1. JR

      So you get out of jail, what do you do then?

    2. MN

      So I, I, uh, left the group in 2007, and by 2008 in January, so I finished my degree, I had one year left of my undergraduate degree. I, I graduated, I did my master's at the London School of Economics in political theory. And while doing the master's, set up Quilliam. And Quilliam, uh, we, we bill as the world's first counter-extremism organization. It was meant to be, uh, we believe it is, bringing us back to the SPLC's (laughs) allegation, a Muslim response to extremism from people that have lived it and been through it. Um, my co-founders were Islamists themselves who changed like me, uh, Muslims born and raised, uh, come from the community to have a community-based response, a Muslim response to this growing problem of extremism. And this was 10 years ago, and of course, ISIS emerged since then, only demonstrating why this kind of response was needed. And so for the Southern Poverty Law Center to designate somebody with my background, with that trajectory, with somebody who was prepared to die for this cause, um, uh, uh, and s- somebody who wanted to address these problems as a Muslim, uh, to call for reform for the good of my communities as opposed to against them. You know, at the end of the day, it can only benefit Muslim communities if extremism is put back in its box. Um, for them to then list someone like me as an anti-Muslim extremist, it, it just really does, I think, shine a light on the true absurdity of the situation we find ourselves in.

    3. JR

      Uh, absurdity and the, the lack of real investigation or backing up their claims with actual facts-

    4. MN

      Yeah.

    5. JR

      ... and information, and that brings me to your story with Charles Murray and Vox and-

    6. MN

      Yeah.

    7. JR

      ... Ezra Klein that-

    8. SH

      Well, well, let's linger here for a moment.

    9. MN

      Sure.

    10. SH

      It's, it's the same problem, but not only is it a lack of investigation, but when it gets pointed out, I mean, I forgot the, the guy's name at the SPLC who was quarterbacking this, but it wasn't Morris Dees, but it was someone high up. Mark Potok or-

    11. MN

      Uh, uh, the, the, the CEO, uh, something Cohen I think is the, the, the, uh...

    12. SH

      I for- it's... yeah, I thought it was Mark Potok. Anyways, he's listed in the... he's named in The Atlantic article that first put this on our radar, but he... they just double down. I mean, the, the, the error cannot be pointed out clearly enough.... to trigger an- I mean, mu- much less an apology, a, uh, a- any m- modulation of, of the claim. They just, people just double down in the face of, uh, uh, uh, obvious counter-evidence. And that's, it's, it's just not about a sincere engagement with the problem. And there's, and there's this, and there's so many variables here that make it, make it a really toxic environment. But one is that the l- the, the locus of concern is never the individual. It is the group, it's the tribe. And so you can s- it, it's like, uh, uh, they'll sacrifice any number of individuals to make the political case they wanna make. Uh, so they, they don't, they're completely unrepentant when they're shown to get it wrong. And so in, in your case and in Ayaan's case, it's just such a gr- it's such a, a grievous moral lapse because not only is it, is the attack on you illegitimate, it actually raises your se- your security concerns.

    13. MN

      Mm-hmm.

    14. SH

      And it, it, uh, it becomes a reference point for journalists who are confused, who can't follow the plot or don't have the time to, to fact-check everything. Uh, uh, it makes you radioactive from the point of view of mainstream journalists because either they, they go to the Southern Po- Poverty L- L- L- Law Center site to figure out who's worth talking to, and they see a page, uh, where you're listed as a anti-Muslim extremist along with people who bear very little resemblance to you ideologically because there are probably a few people on there who, who could be described as anti-Muslim extremists. And, you know, the, here are the 10 people you don't need to talk to on, uh, about this problem. Whereas you're actually, uh, one of the most valuable voices, I mean, objectively, uh, uh, one of the most valuable voices, but probably, uh, you know, I can probably count on two fingers, you know, uh, you know, anyone who would rival your voice on this topic.

    15. MN

      I-

    16. SH

      Uh, so it's, it's just mind-boggling.

    17. MN

      I- it's very difficult- Try to keep this mic closer to your chin. Yeah. It's very difficult. You, you, you can swing it toward you, if you want to.

    18. SH

      Yeah, I can swing it to ... So it's very difficult because, um, I can't ex- I can't fully explain to anybody what it feels like to have lived an entire life, from roughly the age of 14, being consumed by this issue of Muslims in the West and this question. And originally getting it, answering it in one way, and then still being consumed by the topic, answering it in a different way, as I now do. I can't describe to anybody how much emotionally the toll that it takes to have your whole life, h- have defined your whole life by trying to answer this question. And because you care for it, because this is a question that c- concerns you. When I joined the Islamist group I did, I was wrong and adopted some really nefarious ideas, but did so because I gave a damn and cared for a genocide that I saw unfolding and desperately wanted a solution. So even when I became an Islamist, I did so out of care and love and concern for what I believed was my community under attack. So to have a bunch of people come along and say that I am anti the very community that I've, uh, believe of, I have fought for all my life, you know, and have def- and my life has been consumed and defined by this, it really is taking the one thing away from somebody that they have ... I mean, uh, (laughs) I went to jail for this thing. Yeah.

    19. MN

      I have ... People have died in front of my eyes from their torture wounds in prison because of this thing. To have someone completely ignorant in that way to, to, to deprive me of having the, of being able to claim that I have stood for my community, but by instead saying that I'm anti that community, it really does kind of make you feel like crap, Joe. (laughs)

    20. SH

      When, when did this start happening, this mo- the moral panic that you've constantly discussed and the, these, the flippant sort of accusations without real, any real, s- solid, objective reasoning behind calling someone like you or Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who's the victim of female genital mutilation, to say that she's an anti-Muslim, is l- that, that she's Islamophobic, is-

    21. MN

      Mm-hmm. Yeah.

    22. SH

      It seems to me it's almost insane. But it seems to me to be prevalent. This is something that is a, it's, it's a common sentiment today that I don't recall ever seeing anything like this one or two decades ago.

    23. MN

      Yeah.

    24. SH

      Uh- I, I have no ... You might have a better sense-

    25. MN

      Go for it.

    26. SH

      ... than I do, but I, I, I don't, uh, it, it's become increasingly salient to me just because I've been doing this work for better or worse and colliding with these people more and more. But, uh, it, it's, it's definitely an export from some trends in intellectual life that go back, you know, 50 years or more. I mean, they, so what postmodernism did-

    27. MN

      Mm-hmm.

    28. SH

      And I mean, you can go back further than that. It's just that there, there's a, there's a, a framework, a k- a kind of pseudo-intellectual framework where facts can't be talked about as facts. They're, they're intrinsically political. They intrinsically c- convey power disparities. Um, you know, science is just a tool of power sort of thinking. And this goes back a ways, but it is, i- i- it's now seemingly ascendant on the left in a way that is, is f- just fairly bewildering, but-

    29. MN

      But it seems to be only two subjects, gender and race. Those are the ones that get ...

    30. SH

      Those are the big ones. I, I think it's, I'm sure we could find more if we take a minute to think about it, but they're, those are, those are, uh, those certainly dwarf every other subject. Yeah.

  7. 24:45 – 31:39

    From confrontation to collaboration: the first Sam–Maajid clash and the ‘principle of charity’

    1. MN

      So I, uh, there, there was a lot of this stuff, this, um, this, um, paranoia, this sort of, uh, irrational approach to this conversation that Sam suffered from. And when, when, when I first met him, uh, I met Sam (laughs) in New York-

    2. SH

      Mm-hmm.

    3. MN

      ... at the Intelligence Squared debate that he ... That, so Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Douglas Murray, who I believe you've had-

    4. SH

      Yes.

    5. MN

      ... on this podcast, were on one side of a, a debate. I was on the other side of this debate, and the motion that we were debating was, Islam is a religion of peace. I was back then arguing, um, what half of my true belief is because I actually don't believe it's a religion of peace or war. It's just a religion that is interpreted in different ways. But I had to pick a side. And so I picked that side in defending the motion. And, and Ayaan and, and Douglas were on the other side. And there was a, there was a dinner afterwards for the speakers and Sam was there. I imagine you were there as Ayaan's guest.

    6. SH

      Yeah, yeah.

    7. MN

      Um, and (laughs) so it's my fault.

    8. SH

      That went well, yeah.

    9. MN

      I didn't know who he was, um, and Ayaan and I were locked in conversation, post-debate conversation. And, uh, uh, Ayaan invited Sam to, to have his say. And she said, "I wanna hear what Sam Harris has to say." And so, Sam-

    10. SH

      So, but, uh, the context is relevant. So we're at ... So we ... They've had a, a pub- have you seen these Intelligence Squared debates that are ... They're very well-produced online. I, I don't know that they're televised anywhere, but they're online. They're, they, they get a great theater in Manhattan and, you know, it's an audience of maybe a thousand people and they ... And John Donvan, the, the journalist, uh, is the, the impresario. And, but then this, this was a dinner afterwards for the organizers and the participants be- and there, there were maybe 70 people in a, you know, the, the back room of a restaurant. And Maajid and I were not at the same table, uh, thankfully.

    11. MN

      Yeah.

    12. SH

      We were like 50 feet away from each other, but facing each other. And, uh, so he was at the table with Ayaan and the other speakers and at one point, the, they're ... Everyone's getting debriefed about how this went and Ayaan says, "Well, uh, Sam Harris is here. I'd like to, to hear what he has to say about the debate." And so I look at Maajid-

    13. MN

      Yeah.

    14. SH

      ... and he's okay. He's at least 50 feet away from me. And, um, uh, I mean, did you want me to say what I said to you at this point?

    15. MN

      Yeah, yeah. Go for it. Yeah, please. Yeah.

    16. SH

      Okay, good. (laughs) So, I mean, so, so he had, uh, made moves in this debate that I considered intellectually dishonest. And, and, I mean, he ... 'cause he's, he's playing a game, and this is not a real conversation. This is a formal, uh, uh, academic-style debate where, you know, his job is not to leave his view open to influence by the other discussants. He's, he's making a case, um, uh, and I didn't know it at the time, but he felt unnaturally constrained by the format of the debate. He had to argue that Islam is a religion of peace and some of the moves he made there I, I thought were dishonest. And so I said, um, uh, "Maajid," uh, and I remember this more or less verbatim because w- we talked about it and we've since, you know, transcribed it into a book. But, um, I said, "Maajid, y- you know, everyone in this room recognizes that you have the hardest job in the world and we're all very glad that you're doing it. You have to, uh, somehow convince the next generation of Muslims that Islam really is a religion of peace and that jihad is just an inner spiritual struggle, and that the, uh, the martyrs don't get 72 virgins in paradise and all the rest." And so my question, uh, for you is, uh, is this ... Do you really believe th- that, that this is the case now or do you, do you think that pretending that it is the c- that is the case is the method by which you will make it the case? That if you just pr- pretend long enough and hard enough that it'll become so?

    17. MN

      And the extra line here was, "And can you just be honest with us in the privacy of this room?"

    18. SH

      Yeah, yeah. So b- I fi- uh, uh, my final sentence was-

    19. MN

      (clears throat)

    20. SH

      "And, you know, y- you know, we're not on ... We're not televised now. Can you just be honest with us here?" And, uh, so the ... (laughs)

    21. MN

      So I responded immediately and said, "Are you calling me a liar?" And, uh ...

    22. SH

      So now there's like 70 ... We have now 70 people and I'm, like, into my second gin and tonic.

    23. MN

      (laughs)

    24. SH

      (laughs) And, and he's giving me the, the sort of, you know, Middle Eastern stare down across, ac- acro- acro- you know, and so it's like-

    25. MN

      And he repeated it. He said, "No, no, I'm asking you just here that ... Where there's no cameras, can you just be honest with us?" And I said, "Are you calling me a liar?" And it didn't go too well at all. The entire ... Everyone on the table kinda went quiet and, uh, and I didn't know who this guy was. I, I, I (laughs) never met him and, and I should've known who he was. And, uh, and, and then I think somebody, uh, very tactfully changed the conversation and just completely veered off this. And I've, I'd never ... And I never spoke to him again for another, what was it?

    26. SH

      Couple of years, yeah.

    27. MN

      Couple of years. I'd n- we'd never crossed paths since then. And the reason I bring this up is that I was one of those guys that didn't want to entertain a conversation with Sam, uh, based upon the defensiveness when it came to this topic. And, and I think that actually it's important to say that to people that ... 'Cause you asked him a question about the Charles Murray situation. A lot of people, rather than actually wanting to engage with someone on the substance of their ideas, that I think in the climate we're in today, they're engaging with people based upon their, on their feelings.

    28. SH

      Yeah.

    29. MN

      And those feelings are valid, of course. Everyone has the right to their feelings, but we've gotta try as hard as we can to detach those feelings from ... Because that's clearly not what the ... You know, if ... The principle of charity means you lend the person that you're speaking to the best possible interpretation of what they're saying and, and, and allow them to clarify what they mean as opposed to you putting into their mouths what, what they mean and telling them what they mean. I learned that, you know, 'cause then two years later, he reaches out to me and he says, "I think we can try again. You know, d- are you willing to have a conversation with me?" And, and I hadn't originally remembered it was the same guy. (laughs) So-

    30. SH

      Oh, that's funny. I got my foot in the door just because you didn't know who I was.

  8. 31:39 – 34:14

    Social media as accelerant: Twitter addiction, outrage cycles, and “torpedoing” a vacation

    1. MN

      Is that why you deleted Twitter? (laughs)

    2. SH

      Well, I, yeah, yeah. It's off my phone, yes. Um-

    3. MN

      So you haven't deleted your account, have you? Just-

    4. SH

      No, I'm still on Twitter, but I, I, I will, uh, based on this recent episode, I will use it differently.

    5. MN

      I am fascinated by people and their struggles with social media.

    6. SH

      Yeah.

    7. MN

      With like, de- detaching from it, reattaching from it, getting addicted to it. I mean, I know so many people that will look at their Twitter at like 1:00 in the morning before they go to bed and something pisses them off and then they can't sleep.

    8. SH

      Yeah.

    9. MN

      Wow.

    10. SH

      Oh, yeah.

    11. MN

      It's really common.

    12. SH

      I, I was not ... I, I, I, I don't consider myself someone who had a, a, a real pathology with it. I mean, I was, you know, I, I have, I don't know, 6,000 tweets or 7,000 tweets over the course of, over the many years. Um, so I'm not, I was not tweeting that much. I was not even looking that much. I was, I was fairly, uh, disengaged and I've never used Facebook as a, I've never ... I just use Facebook as kind of a publishing channel. I never engage with comments. But I was looking enough and it, it was, I mean, one, it was clearly making me a worse person. I mean, I just, it was, I was, I was reacting to stuff that I didn't need to react to. And it was amplifying certain m- uh, criticisms and, and voices which need not have been amplified. And in this, in this last case, it just turned a, I mean, it just, it created a, a, a huge kind of a, a, a explosion in my life. I was in the middle of a vacation, which I basically torpedoed because of what I saw on Twitter. I mean, it was just, it was like the, the perfect infomercial for why you don't wanna be engaged with social media.

    13. MN

      You torpedoed your vacation how?

    14. SH

      Well, so I'm in the middle of like, the first vacation I've taken with my family for, in a very long time. It was at le- at least a year. And-

    15. MN

      Wow.

    16. SH

      ... and we're, uh, so, uh, we're, you know, we're on Hawaii and just like, I'm supposed to put everything down to be the best father and husband I can be, right? And, and that was my intention. That's what was ha- happening. Uh, it happened for a good solid 24 hours.

    17. MN

      (laughs)

    18. SH

      (laughs) And, and then I pick up my phone and I see that, that Reza Aslan and Glenn Greenwald and Ezra Klein had all attacked me in the space of an hour.

    19. MN

      Oh, no.

    20. SH

      Right? And so now, there's like n- it's goes out to millions of people who have-

    21. MN

      And is this over the, what he was also, was asking about the Charles Murray thing?

    22. SH

      Yeah.

    23. MN

      Was it-

    24. SH

      Well, I, truth is I can't even see what I, I, I didn't look at what Greenwald had done. Um, he was circulating somebody's video about me, how I'm, I think I'm a racist in that video. Uh, uh, Reza Aslan blocks me, so I can't even see what ... He attacks me by name, but he blocks me so that-

    25. MN

      (laughs)

    26. SH

      ... so I can't even see what his, his ex- or-

    27. MN

      That's hilarious. (laughs)

  9. 34:14 – 1:09:05

    Charles Murray, Vox, and Ezra Klein: why some topics become ‘undiscussable’

    1. SH

      Yeah. But, uh, so I, I, but I just saw the, the aftermath of that, you know, lots of stu- you know, lots of notifications coming to me with both of us tagged. Um, and then Ezra published this ... I mean, I supp- I suppose I should back up, uh, however painfully to, to describe what happened here. But, so I had Charles Murray on my podcast a year ago, and Charles Murray is this, this, um, social scientist who, uh, published The Bell Curve back in the '90s, which it was a, a book about IQ and, and success in, in Western societies like our own. And, um, uh, it's a book where he worries a lot about the cognitive stratification of society. We have a society that is selecting more and more for a narrow band of, of talents that are, is very w- fairly well captured by what we call IQ. And there, it, it's a kind of winner take all situation where people are really, you know, uh, uh, 500 years ago, if you had a, a very high IQ and you're, you're just pushing a plow next to your neighbor, you had no real advantage. But now you can start a hedge fund or you can start a software company. And we're, we're seeing the, this, this real, uh, shocking disparity in, in, uh, good fortune really. Uh, so, uh, he wrote this book. It had a chapter on race, which talked about the disparities in, in, in, uh, racial, uh, groups. Uh-

    2. MN

      The statistically observed disparities.

    3. SH

      Right.

    4. MN

      Yeah.

    5. SH

      And, uh, the claim about the source of those disparities was by, even the standards of the time, but certainly the, the standards of today, an incredibly tepid, mealy-mouthed, just hand waving. It was not this, you know, here comes the Third Reich declaration of, of white supremacy. It was undoubtedly there are environmental and genetic reasons for this and we don't understand them. You know, it was, it was just like a, a ... To, to think that it's one or the other, we're not in a position to know, uh, what the mix is of, of, of in- influences now. Um, and that is, uh, virtually any honest scientist's take on the matter. Um, and to certainly today, I mean, it's, it's only become more so. Uh, but that went off like a nuclear bomb. I mean, that was just s- that was such a, um, uh, I mean, it's, it's the most, um-... I, so, and at the time, I never read the book. I just thought this had to be-

    6. JR

      Hmm.

    7. SH

      ... just racist, poisonous-

    8. Of course, Charles Murray would be vilified for, for that observation.

    9. And he, he's been vilified ever since. And ever since, you know, I, I've ignored him and-

    10. JR

      Wasn't he deplatformed and assaulted recently?

    11. SH

      Yeah. So that's what happened.

    12. JR

      Yeah.

    13. SH

      So, so he went to Middlebury to give a talk, you know, 20, uh, some odd years, 25 years after he wrote this book. And-

    14. Oh, by the way, he's also listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Uh-

    15. Oh.

    16. And so that, that, that's what contributed to the deplatforming and the violent protest against him at Middlebury.

    17. JR

      What's crazy is the whole thing is a propaganda for the superiority of the Asian race, and everyone's missing that. (laughs)

    18. SH

      Yeah, yeah. Tha- that's the flip side of it. Yeah.

    19. Yeah. (laughs) They're all talking about white supremacy. It says-

    20. JR

      Asians are actually the ones that-

    21. SH

      Far and above.

    22. JR

      Yeah.

    23. SH

      I mean, that's basically what his book proved. And, you know, they're suing Harvard now. There's a-

    24. JR

      Right.

    25. SH

      ... group of Asian students that are su- suing Harvard because they're discriminated against-

    26. JR

      (laughs)

    27. SH

      ... because they're required to have higher scores-

    28. JR

      Yeah.

    29. SH

      ... because they're assumed to be smarter.

    30. JR

      Wow.

  10. 1:09:05 – 1:11:43

    Publishing the emails and the asymmetry of audiences: logic-tracking vs. political point-scoring

    1. SH

      Well, to bring this full circle back to me sitting at the pool, destroy- about to destroy my vacation on Twitter.

    2. MN

      (laughs)

    3. JR

      So how long did you spend working on this article? D-

    4. SH

      Well, no. The thing ... So again, this was, this was like-

    5. MN

      Your wife must have hated you, man. (laughs)

    6. SH

      Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, brutal.

    7. JR

      How bad? How much was she mad at you?

    8. SH

      Um, well, uh, it ... uh, it was kind of the perfect storm, but there were, there were a few things that, that, um, relieved the pressure. One is there was another family from our school, so they're like my, my daughter had a friend.

    9. JR

      Oh.

    10. SH

      There was another couple-

    11. JR

      That's nice.

    12. SH

      ... that we, that my wife could socialize with. And having another couple there forced me to sort of put on my social face at dinner and, and, and it, I mean, it's not, it's not-

    13. MN

      While you're itching to look at your tweet feed. (laughs)

    14. SH

      Yes. But, but the thing is-

    15. JR

      (laughs)

    16. SH

      ... it's actually not-

    17. MN

      You ever have that feeling? It's horrible.

    18. JR

      Yeah, yeah. "I don't really wanna be here. I wanna look at my-"

    19. SH

      Yeah. (laughs)

    20. MN

      That's so horrible. (laughs)

    21. SH

      But it's ... I mean, it, it's, it's not. I mean, to s- to, to say it, to describe it that way as putting on your social face, it, it actually changes your psychology. I mean, like if you have, if you, if you have to drop your problem in order to be a normal sane person with people you don't know all that well, you're actually a happier, more normal person. If it had just been me and my wife at dinner while I'm dealing with this blowup, I would just, you know, it just never would have ... the cloud wouldn't, wouldn't have left. So anyway, um, I, uh, I was try- so I was trying not to engage, and so I didn't wanna have to write anything new to deal with this, the, this, uh, what I viewed as just a, an egregious attack on, on my, uh, intellectual and moral integrity. Uh, and so when I saw this article from Klein, um, I realized I had this email exchange with him, uh, at the end of which I said, "Listen, if you, if you continue to slander me," this had, had been like a year previously because there had been this-

    22. MN

      This is the exchange he released.

    23. SH

      I, I released this e-

    24. MN

      You released it. Right, okay, yeah.

    25. SH

      So, so I said ... but I said at the end of this exchange, "If you continue to slander me and if you misrepresent the reasons why we didn't do a podcast," because we, uh, we had, had talked publicly about maybe sorting this out on a podcast a year ago, but I, I found the exchange with him by email so ... in such bad faith, I found him so evasive and dishonest and a- and, you know, just plain ideological ping pong, as you said, uh, and not actually engaging my points, um, that I said, "Listen, if you, if you lie about this and you keep slandering me, I'm just gonna pu- publish this email because, because I think the world should see how you operate as a journalist and as an editor." Uh, like he had, he had declined to publish a far more mainstream opinion defending me and Murray in, in Vox. I mean, he ... it was just, it was, it was, it was truly, you know, slanderous and misleading everything he's published on this topic, and he has a huge platform d- to, by which to do it. So-

    26. JR

      Which I enjoy.

    27. SH

      Yeah. (laughs)

    28. JR

      I really like Vox.

    29. SH

      Oh, yeah, no. I mean, if I ... uh, yeah. I've, I've read Vox with pleasure as well. But it, it is, it, it, you know ... once you see how the sausage gets made on many of these things-

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