Transcript [00:00] So, I want to react to this interview, [00:01] this clip that I saw of Raymond Ibrahim. [00:04] Raymond Ibrahim is a historian. He's an [00:07] author. He specializes in Islamic [00:10] history. And he goes to the primary [00:12] sources. He speaks Arabic. He reads the [00:15] original texts. And what he says in this [00:17] clip is very important. But I also want [00:19] to add a layer to his argument that I [00:21] think makes it even more relevant [00:24] and [snorts] more powerful, um more [00:26] important for us to hear. [00:28] So, let's keep that in mind as we watch. [00:30] I'll stop the video at a couple places [00:32] to share my thoughts. Okay, so let's [00:35] head over to [00:37] Raymond now. [00:39] Here we go. [00:42] If you had to put forward a thesis about [00:45] how the West should think about Islam, [00:47] what would it be? The thesis would be [00:49] that Islam is um [00:51] not just another religion, it's an [00:53] entire coherent political system. A lot [00:57] of people are approaching Sharia, which [00:58] is usually loosely translated as Islamic [01:01] law. [01:02] And they're they have no problem [01:03] condemning it, a lot of Americans, you [01:04] know, Greg Abbott, Trump. Abbott said [01:07] like there's no room for Sharia in um in [01:09] Texas, for example. And that's all well [01:12] and good, but I think as people start [01:13] learning, well, guess what? Sharia and [01:16] Islam are inherently the same. You know, [01:18] one I call one Islam the descriptive [01:20] name of the religion, and Sharia is the [01:22] prescriptive application. So, that's I [01:26] guess that would be my ultimate thesis, [01:27] which is you know, you maybe you see [01:29] what Sharia is, maybe you don't like it, [01:30] maybe you find it incompatible with the [01:32] West, but guess what? That's not just [01:34] some weird accretion that some radicals [01:37] do. That is Islam. [01:39] All right. [01:41] Okay, this is super important. [01:43] Super, super important. [01:46] Um [01:47] and I want to make sure I want to make [01:49] sure this point uh is understood. He's [01:52] he's drawing a distinction that most [01:54] Western commentators just miss. Like he [01:57] he brings up like Greg Abbott [01:59] criticizing Sharia. When politicians say [02:01] we don't want Sharia in Texas, but they [02:03] think that they're criticizing [02:05] some [02:07] um [02:07] fringe interpretation uh or more radical [02:10] interpretation of a religion called [02:13] Islam. Right? Some sort of extremism [02:16] that has been grafted on to an otherwise [02:19] peaceful religion. [02:21] And as he says right at the beginning [02:22] there, Islam is a is a system of [02:25] governance. Okay? [02:27] He's saying something very fundamental. [02:29] He's saying that Sharia is Islam. It's [02:31] not separable from it. Islam as a [02:34] descriptor is the name of the religion, [02:36] Sharia is the practical governing [02:39] implementation. Islam means submission. [02:42] What are you submitting to? You're [02:44] submitting to the will of Allah. The [02:46] will of Allah is expressed in Sharia. [02:49] That's what Sharia is. It's literally [02:50] the implementation [02:52] of [02:53] Islam. [02:55] You can't accept one and reject the [02:58] other. They are the same thing. A good [03:00] way to understand this would be with a [03:02] comparison to Judaism. You could also [03:04] compare it to Christianity. [03:07] Jewish law, let's call it Halakha, is [03:10] extraordinarily detailed and [03:11] comprehensive. It governs diet, family [03:13] life, commerce, civil disputes, [03:15] everything. It's at least as [03:17] comprehensive as Sharia in its scope. [03:20] But, and this is critical, it's [03:22] explicitly and theologically limited, [03:26] bounded [03:28] in a very specific way. [03:30] It governs Jews. It makes no claim to [03:34] govern non-Jews. It has no aspiration of [03:37] governing non-Jews. [03:40] And this is very important because the [03:44] if if the only people it governs are the [03:46] people who want it and who choose it, [03:51] people who choose it, who want it, [03:53] those are the people that it governs. [03:57] Then it's not seeking conquest. It's not [04:01] seeking governance of anyone else's [04:03] life. [04:04] Yes, Judaism has a concept in it called [04:07] the Noahide laws, [04:08] which are really just these seven basic [04:12] moral principles. That is what Judaism [04:14] seeks from all of humanity, but not as a [04:17] not as governance. It doesn't seek to [04:19] implement these things. [04:22] Judaism is not a universalist governing [04:25] project. It seeks to govern the Jewish [04:27] people in the in the Jewish homeland. [04:30] There are some laws that apply [04:32] uh outside the the Jewish homeland to [04:34] Jews only, and others that apply only in [04:38] the Jewish homeland, but that it it [04:40] seeks only to govern [04:42] only to govern the Jewish people. Now, [04:45] Christianity, similarly, and I want to [04:47] be precise here because this is [04:48] important. [04:50] Christianity theologically makes no [04:52] claim to govern. Yes, it's true the [04:55] Catholic Church accumulated enormous [04:58] temporal power at various points in [04:59] history. There were Crusader states and [05:02] papal kingdoms, [05:03] but that was an institutional overreach. [05:06] It wasn't theological doctrine. Okay? [05:08] Show me where in the Gospels, in the [05:10] Epistles, in the core theological [05:11] framework of Christianity that there's a [05:14] mandate to establish Christian [05:16] governance over non-Christians. Okay? [05:17] It's just not there. [05:19] Render unto Render unto Caesar, that [05:22] famous line, is in fact the opposite [05:24] impulse. [05:25] The Great Commission is about conversion [05:28] through preaching, not through conquest. [05:32] Islam is different at the source. From [05:34] the earliest texts, from Muhammad's own [05:36] political and military consolidation of [05:39] Arabia, [05:41] uh the theological and governmental are [05:44] fused. [05:46] The theological and the governmental. [05:49] They're inseparable. That's Ibrahim's [05:51] point. And it's well documented in the [05:54] primary sources. This is [05:57] it's key to understanding what Islam [05:58] actually is. What is the aspiration of [06:01] the {quote} faith? Its aspiration is [06:04] governance, and that's why it is a [06:06] political project as Ibrahim calls it. [06:08] That is not an epithet, it's not an [06:10] insult, and it's not false. [06:13] Okay? It is a governing project. We have [06:18] to be aware of that. [06:21] All right. So, when I'm reading the [06:23] stuff you write, when I hear you talk on [06:25] the internet, there feels like a sense [06:28] of a warning that you're giving the West [06:30] about Islam, that we're not taking it [06:32] seriously enough, something along those [06:34] lines. Does that feel fair? [06:35] >> From the very beginning of Islam in the [06:37] 7th century, after Muhammad dies and [06:39] Arabia is consolidated under the banner [06:41] of Islam, they go on the jihad, [06:43] according to Islamic teaching. [06:45] And in one century, from the death of [06:47] Muhammad, 632 to 732, they literally [06:50] have conquered three quarters of the [06:51] Christian world, which most people have [06:53] no idea about, okay? When people hear of [06:55] countries like Egypt and Syria or [06:57] Turkey, they just have in their mind [06:59] this vague idea that they were always [07:01] either Muslim or kind of Eastern. Yeah. [07:03] No, they were actually, if you went in [07:05] the 7th century, that was Christianity [07:07] was more ingrained in Egypt, in Turkey, [07:11] in Syria, in Morocco, Mauritania, and in [07:14] Tunisia, you know, the father of Western [07:16] theology, Augustine, he's from Tunisia. [07:19] He's a North African. He was a Berber. [07:21] Okay? And most of the the early fathers [07:23] were Egyptians and Syrians and so forth. [07:26] And uh you had five seas, five major [07:28] centers. One was Rome. The other four, [07:31] Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and [07:33] Constantinople, all got conquered by [07:35] Islam. So, it was a long constant war [07:38] that went on literally uh for over a [07:39] millennium, okay? Century after century. [07:41] Whenever Muslims could, obviously there [07:43] were times when it was an ebb and flow [07:45] and due to the vicissitudes of [07:46] circumstances and Muslims weren't strong [07:48] enough, they wouldn't attack. But [07:50] >> [snorts] [07:50] >> any such time that they were strong, [07:52] they conquered. So, I just told you I [07:54] gave you the date 732, one century, [07:56] because that's the Battle of Tours, and [07:58] that's where Islam is finally stopped in [07:59] the center of France. Spain has now been [08:02] conquered. All of North Africa has been [08:03] conquered. The greater Middle East has [08:05] been conquered. And then later, Turkey [08:08] gets conquered, which is one of the most [08:09] ancient Christian regions. That's where [08:11] St. Paul sent many of his letters. It [08:13] features in the Book of Revelation. [08:15] There was a long constant war and [08:17] annexation of Christian territories by [08:19] Islam historically, just as a fact. And [08:22] why did they do it? So, even if you find [08:24] a historian who is willing to talk about [08:26] this, they'll give them their national [08:28] names, okay? They'll talk about the Arab [08:30] conquest. They'll talk about the the [08:31] Moors in Spain. They'll talk about the [08:34] Turks, and they'll talk about the Tatars [08:36] and the Mongols. They'll call them [08:38] Saracens. [08:39] And when you hear it that way, as I did [08:41] in college, [08:43] you're prone to just think, okay, these [08:45] are different warring groups, just like [08:46] in Europe. The French and the English [08:48] are warring. It's not There's no [08:49] ideological component necessarily. [08:52] But if you dig into the sources as I [08:53] have, the primary sources, including [08:55] from the Muslim sources, they see [08:57] themselves not necessarily as Turks or [08:59] Arabs, but as Muslims first and [09:00] foremost. [09:01] And their rationale for war on whoever, [09:05] let's say Christians, is you're an [09:07] infidel. And uh you know, that's the [09:09] rule of Islam, and we have to attack you [09:11] and give you the three choices, convert, [09:13] die, or pay tribute and be a [09:14] second-class citizen, etc., etc. And so, [09:16] my point is it was a long constant [09:18] massive war that went on, that swallowed [09:21] up most of the Christian West, okay? You [09:24] know, we call [09:26] Okay, this is huge. This is a absolutely [09:30] huge, huge point. [09:34] So, what he's doing here, he's stripping [09:35] away the national labels that historians [09:38] use. And [09:40] it it it's so important that we do this [09:44] because as he explains, calling when we [09:46] study history and we call it the Arab [09:48] conquest or we talk about the Moors and [09:50] the Saracens and the Turks and the [09:52] Tatars, we think about it as these [09:54] different historical nations and [09:56] different groups and different [09:58] we lose the continuity of it. [10:01] That's the point. [10:03] And what he's doing here is he's forcing [10:05] us, he's saying call them all Muslims [10:08] cuz that's how they identified [10:09] themselves. Look at the common [10:11] ideological thread and when you read the [10:13] primary sources as he has, [10:16] the actors themselves don't primarily [10:18] identify as Saracens or Arabs or Turks, [10:20] etc. They identify as Muslims. [10:24] And the justification for war is [10:26] theological. It's not ethnic or [10:28] national. [10:31] It's the Jihad. [10:33] And here's where I want to add something [10:34] that he doesn't talk about in this clip. [10:39] So when we talk about the Ottoman [10:41] Empire, [10:43] the Ottoman Empire that existed for 400 [10:46] years from the from the [10:48] the early 1500s to the early 20th [10:50] century. [10:54] He doesn't say this in this clip, but [10:56] the [10:58] the Ottoman Empire, [11:00] which was the caliphate, [11:02] it was the last continuous institutional [11:05] expression of the Muslim project. [11:08] The Muslim project, what he's describing [11:10] here. Remember, Islam seeks conquest and [11:13] it seeks to bring the world under the [11:15] governance of Islam. [11:17] And that governance of Islam is meant to [11:19] have a caliph who governs the entire [11:22] world or the entire Muslim world, [11:23] whatever's conquered. The caliphate, the [11:26] Ottoman Empire was the caliphate. It [11:28] fell in 1924. [11:31] It was abolished by Ataturk who was a [11:33] secularist reformer in Turkey. [11:37] And [11:39] while we think that that's a good thing, [11:41] become more Western, become more open, [11:42] and a lot of the [11:44] the the Ottoman Empire, the Arab these [11:47] Arab countries which were then taken [11:49] over briefly by the French and the [11:51] British, [11:52] then became somewhat secular states. [11:55] That's an aberration. [11:57] It's not like they these societies went [11:58] through the enlightenment and everything [12:00] that the that Europe went through to [12:02] become modern societies. They did not. [12:05] The Ottoman Empire fell in 1924. [12:09] And that meant that for the first time [12:10] in 13 centuries, there was no more [12:13] caliph. There was no more caliphate. [12:16] There was no political religious [12:17] authority claiming to lead the Muslim [12:19] world. And only 4 years later, 1928, [12:22] Hassan al-Banna founds an organization [12:25] that you've all heard of called the [12:26] Muslim Brotherhood. He founds it in [12:29] Egypt. [12:31] So that's basically immediate. There's a [12:33] it's a direct response. It's direct [12:36] organizational response to what they [12:39] viewed, what many Muslims viewed as a [12:41] catastrophe, the fall of the caliphate. [12:45] If you're a Muslim and you believe in [12:46] the Islamic project, you believe that [12:48] Sharia should rule the earth. And [12:50] there's this massive caliphate that [12:52] governs huge swaths of the of [12:55] of uh of of the earth. [12:58] And then it falls apart and there's no [13:00] more Muslim governance. It's a [13:01] catastrophe. And Hassan al-Banna founds [13:03] the Muslim Brotherhood and he framed the [13:06] mission of the Muslim Brotherhood as the [13:07] revival and restoration of the [13:10] caliphate. That's what it seeks to do. [13:12] So the project [13:14] of of Islam did not end in 1924. [13:19] It went into retreat. It reorganized. It [13:21] found a new institutional form. [13:24] But that's what it is. [13:27] So I can't stress this enough. When we [13:28] say that Islam is is a [13:31] is a political movement, that's not an [13:34] insult. It's not an epithet. It's [13:37] literally in the definition of what this [13:42] faith or what this ideology seeks. This [13:45] what it wants. Going back to what I said [13:46] about Judaism and Christianity, it seeks [13:49] governance. That makes it political. [13:52] You know, we call it the West because it [13:55] West of what? Well, West [13:57] it it was when we think of the West it [13:59] now it has its own kind of connotation. [14:01] But historically in the medieval era it [14:03] was it was West because it was the [14:05] westernmost portion of Christianity that [14:07] didn't get conquered. [14:08] Okay, it was the final appendage, [14:10] Europe. [14:11] And there was a constant warfare, [14:12] constant struggle that went on, you [14:14] know, Islamic pirates would go as far as [14:16] Iceland in the 16th century for raids [14:19] and they would come back with loads of [14:20] slaves. [14:21] America's first war, most people are [14:23] unaware, [14:24] as a nation following independence from [14:26] Britain was with Muslims who were again [14:29] again using the same logic. And it's [14:31] interesting because it comes out in the [14:32] writings of Thomas Jefferson, [14:34] um you know, this paragon of [14:36] enlightenment who had of course [14:37] obviously forgotten about those Muslims [14:40] and didn't really understand what was [14:41] going on, but [14:43] they were enslaving American sailors in [14:45] their vessels. They would raid the [14:46] pirates, Muslim pirates from Barbary. [14:49] And Adams, John Adams and Jefferson met [14:51] with one of the ambassadors from Barbary [14:54] and basically say And we have the [14:55] existing letter [14:57] where where Jefferson wrote a letter to [14:59] Congress saying what happened in the [15:00] meeting. [15:01] And he says, "We told him, look, can't [15:02] we just be friends? We have nothing [15:04] against you. You can do your religion. [15:06] Let's let's engage in trade. Let's help [15:08] each other." And then Jefferson writes, [15:10] "And the man answered us and said, 'It's [15:12] in our Quran. You're the enemy. You're [15:14] the infidel. We must wage war on you, [15:16] etc. etc. Okay?" [15:18] So I tell you all that by way to answer [15:20] your question about the warning. Okay? [15:22] So this has been going on for [15:24] over a millennium. This being we are [15:26] ideologically driven. We are going to [15:28] wage warfare to conquer the infidel. [15:30] >> Right. And we've have conquered. [15:34] All right. That's the end of the clip. [15:38] Let me pull that down. [15:41] >> [sighs] [15:43] >> So [15:44] you know, what strikes me about [15:46] what he just said there [15:49] is the [15:52] is the consistency across centuries. [15:54] Right? You have these Barbary pirates [15:58] who are telling Jefferson and Adams, [16:01] "We're going to wage war against you. [16:02] You're the infidel." [16:05] Right? The Barbary ambassador tells [16:07] Jefferson that it's in the Quran. [16:09] "We're obligated to wage war on you." [16:13] Right? [16:13] There's no grievance here. [16:17] You know, when people in the West [16:20] have all these theories about why the [16:22] why the Muslim world is angry at the [16:24] West or why you know, why are they [16:25] against us? Oh, it's cuz of cuz of [16:27] Israel or it's because of Western uh [16:30] permissiveness or Western imperialism or [16:33] you know, all these reasons that are [16:35] given, these that are [16:38] that these assumptions that are made by [16:40] people in the West about why it is that [16:43] these Islamic societies hate the West. [16:47] They've been saying the same thing for [16:49] centuries and centuries. [16:52] There's no list of political demands [16:54] that the Barbary pirates had for [16:55] Jefferson and Adams. [16:57] There was no negotiation about territory [16:59] or trade disputes. The justification is [17:01] purely theological and universal. [17:04] "You exist outside Islam [17:07] and that makes you the enemy and we are [17:09] obligated by the Quran to wage war [17:10] against you." That's what they said [17:12] then. [17:13] We have to understand that this is a [17:15] these societies did not go through the [17:17] enlightenment. They did not change their [17:19] thinking along the way. They had a [17:21] caliphate. The caliphate ended in 1924. [17:26] And then they went underground and built [17:28] an organization to try to restore it. [17:32] So the Muslim Brotherhood produces a [17:34] thinker named Sayyid Qutb. [17:37] Sayyid Qutb provides the intellectual [17:39] framework that directly feeds into the [17:41] creation of al-Qaeda, [17:45] of ISIS. [17:46] Osama bin Laden explicitly cites the [17:49] theological tradition that Raymond [17:52] Ibrahim is describing. ISIS in 2014 [17:55] didn't just commit acts of terrorism. [17:58] They declared a caliphate. [18:01] We think of these things as isolated [18:03] political situations because we [18:06] Westerners tend to think of history, [18:08] especially modern history, as [18:10] compartmentalized. There's these sort of [18:12] sections of it. [18:14] And we don't necessarily pay attention [18:17] to that flow of history, that sweep of [18:19] history. And certainly in the Middle [18:21] East and in the in Islamic society, [18:24] there is a direct flow, a direct a [18:26] direct sweep of history. And it's a very [18:28] unbroken chain. They have this caliphate [18:31] and this Islamic project to kill the [18:33] infidel and take over and rule as far as [18:36] they can get to. [18:39] 1928 is a is a catastrophe for them. It [18:42] that's the aberration where suddenly the [18:44] secularists take over and these [18:46] Westerners come in and they chop up the [18:48] Ottoman Empire and they institute these [18:50] secular governments. [18:52] Some of them are [18:53] sort of colonized by the French and the [18:55] British. That's all an aberration. [19:01] These guys, ISIS and al-Qaeda, are [19:02] consciously [19:05] and explicitly closing the loop that was [19:07] opened when Ataturk abolished the [19:09] caliphate in 1924. They're bringing it [19:12] back. [19:13] That is what they are trying to do. [19:16] This is the through line. Medieval [19:18] conquest, Ottoman consolidation, [19:21] right? Medieval conquest of the [19:23] Christian world, [19:25] destroying Christian communities all [19:26] across the Middle East. And that was a [19:28] great point he made. When we think of [19:29] Middle Eastern countries as like, "Oh, [19:31] they're Islamic. They're non-Christian." [19:32] We think [19:34] Christian world in our mind equates with [19:36] Europe. And what he's saying is that [19:38] whoa, that's only the case because the [19:40] Muslims [19:41] waged Jihad across the Middle East and [19:44] North Africa and and and and Turkey and [19:48] they took over all these countries [19:52] that were Christian nations. [19:54] So, the Ottomans consolidated 1924, [19:58] it collapses. In between that, there's [19:59] again, there's no enlightenment, there's [20:01] no [20:02] there's no intellectual progress like we [20:04] have in the West that we think we think [20:06] of modernity as a different world, as a [20:08] different mindset, but it's not for [20:10] them. That's what I'm trying to get [20:11] across here. [20:13] Cuz in right away after the after the [20:15] Ottoman collapse, the Brotherhood gets [20:16] founded. [20:17] Qutb, Al-Qaeda, ISIS, the ideological [20:20] project is identical. Hasn't changed at [20:23] all. They better weapons. Hasn't changed [20:26] at all. The goals are identical. [20:29] The theological justification is [20:31] identical. [20:33] It's all the same. [20:36] The [20:37] what Raymond Ibrahim is giving us in [20:39] this clip is not a conspiracy theory. [20:41] Understand that. This isn't [20:42] Islamophobia. [20:44] He's a historian. This is historically [20:47] documented [20:49] This is a historically documented [20:51] argument [20:53] that he's making. It's rooted in primary [20:55] sources, in the words of the Muslims [20:58] throughout the ages themselves across 14 [21:01] centuries. And the Western mistake, and [21:04] it's embedded in that in those words, 14 [21:06] centuries, Westerners don't think of a [21:08] sweep of history like that. They think [21:10] of ancient history, a thousand years [21:12] ago. That's it's like not relevant to [21:13] our time. It it you're talking about [21:15] some ancient world that doesn't really [21:16] exist. That's how Westerners think, but [21:18] it's not how Muslims think. [21:22] The Western mistake, and it is a [21:24] terrible mistake, it is a catastrophic [21:26] mistake, is to treat each manifestation [21:29] of this Muslim project [21:32] as a separate phenomenon. Like ISIS is [21:34] this is this situation that happened [21:37] that we and that, you know, we dealt [21:38] with or are dealing with. And the Muslim [21:40] Brotherhood is this organization that [21:41] we're dealing with. And the medieval [21:43] conquests [21:45] are just ancient history that don't have [21:46] relevance. [21:48] But they're not separate things. They're [21:49] all They're all part of the same [21:52] continuum. They're all chapters in the [21:55] same book. This project has not ended. [21:57] It was paused. It was reorganized. It [22:00] adapted to circumstances. [22:03] But the theological core, the goals [22:06] that Islam is not a private faith, but a [22:09] governing project with universal [22:12] governing ambitions, that has never [22:14] changed. [22:16] Not in the 7th century, not in 1928, [22:19] not today. And Raymond Ibrahim's [22:22] contribution is to make you see that. [22:25] So, that once you see it, [22:27] you know it. [22:30] Thanks for watching.
