The Trouble with Islam Today | Irshad Manji | Talks at Google

Hello. Thank you, everyone, for making here today. It's my pleasure to introduce Irshad Manji. Irshad was born in Uganda and fled with her family in 1972 to Vancouver as a refugee from the regime of Idi Amin. When she was 24, she became the national affairs editorialist for the Ottawa Citizen and the youngest person to sit on the editorial board of a Canadian daily newspaper. Today. Irshad's columns appear frequently in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Times of London. As a social entrepreneur, Irshad founded Project Ishitad, an initiative to revive Islam's own tradition of critical thinking, debate and dissent type of discourse we value highly here at Google. She's also been a visiting fellow at Yale University's International Security Studies program. And recently, Oprah Winfrey honored Irshad with the first annual Chutzpah Award for audacity, nerve boldness and conviction. I hope you will listen with open minds to what Irshad has to say to us today and be prepared for a lively discussion following her words and videos. Please welcome Irshad.

Michael. Michael, I'm not going to let you go that quickly. Come back up here for a quick second. Okay, so there were two words in that introduction that we're going to. No, no, that's okay. That's okay. Because you know what? I can't expect you to know one of them, which is Ijtihad, which I will talk a little bit about later today. But the other one that actually has made its way into popular vernacular in America is chutzpah. There you are. Exactly. And he got it. He got it right away. Right? It was just a momentary flub. So let's give him another round of applause. Are we all right, you think? Okay, that was a hesitant. Yes. Well, first of all, good afternoon, everybody. And to the Muslims in the audience, Ramadan, Mubarak and salaam and alaykum. To the Jews in the audience. Shalom. And to the atheists in the audience, how the hell are you? It's a real pleasure to be here. I'm quite, quite excited about being here this afternoon. I flew in from Toronto this morning, actually. I want to offer up a disclaimer right up front. And not to make it an overly personal talk, but if I'm feeling a little bit woozy or you see me as a little bit slow on the uptake today, I'm going to chalk it up to being medicated, being drugged, because I had a fairly major surgery late last week and wasn't at all sure that I would be able to make it today. But obviously here I am, and feeling actually pretty good at the moment. And if I need to sit down at any point, you'll know why. But that's the disclaimer I wanted to offer this afternoon. I want to tell all of you, not just in this room, but even those who are joining us from Chicago, a story, a very different story, about Islam. And it's a story that you're not going to hear from mainstream media, but it's also a story you're not going to readily hear from mainstream Muslims. And in the course of telling this story, I also want to show why I believe Islam and innovation are eminently compatible and in fact, need to be that much more compatible if we are going to spread the good word, the gospel, if you will, of critical thinking and independent reasoning, and throughout more of the world. Let me begin that story by saying just a little bit more about myself so I can introduce myself properly, a bit more of my own story, if you will. As Michael mentioned, my family and I are refugees from IDI Amin's Uganda, small country in East Africa. We settled just outside of Vancouver in 1972, and I grew up attending two types of schools. The regular secular public school of most North American kids, and then on top of that, every Saturday for several hours at a stretch, the Islamic religious school known as the Madrasa. And that is where I regularly imbibed two major messages from my teacher. One was that women are inferior, and the other was that the Jews are treacherous, not to be trusted. Now, in both cases, I remember at a very young age asking a very simple question. Why? And I'll tell you why I even bothered to ask that question. Because what I was being told didn't match the reality on the ground. There was a huge cognitive dissonance, and I needed to understand whether what was being fed to me was theory, which has limited value, or reality, which is experience, hard experience. For example, when my madrasa teacher told us that the Jews worship mullah, not Allah, meaning money, not God, that they're all consumed with business, I said to myself, really? As in the real world? Because I looked around my multicultural, multiracial neighborhood just south of Vancouver, and I noticed something fascinating. All of the new business signs being put out were in Asian languages. Korean, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, not Hebrew, not Yiddish, Urdu. And even back then, I recall thinking to myself, wait a minute. Maybe the Jews aren't consumed with business any more than we Asians are. Well, that moment actually proved to be one of moral reckoning for me. Because it then led to probably the most seminal question of my entire life and one that has followed me to this very day. And that question is, what if I'm not being educated at the madrasa? What if I'm being indoctrinated? A crucial distinction, education versus indoctrination. Education unleashes the opportunity to use our minds critically. Indoctrination squelches the opportunity to think critically. And as I mentioned, that question, and thus that distinction has followed me to this very day. It seeped itself into my soul, into my conscience, and even into my professional life. It's probably the reason I decided I would have to become a journalist. And it led me ultimately to writing the book that has brought me to the attention of. Of the people who pulled together the author's program here at Google. And the book, as you know by now, is entitled the Trouble with Islam. A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith. I realize it's a title that rankles many, many Muslims. It wasn't chosen for that reason, but I stand by it for reasons I can give during the Q and A, if anybody is interested. But here's the point. What do I mean by the trouble with Islam today? In a word, I mean literalism. An unquestioning, uncritical, unthinking approach to faith. So unthinking that it actually degenerates faith. It turns faith into dogma. Faith, it seems to me, is secure enough to handle questions. Faith never needs to be threatened by questions. Whereas dogma of any kind, on the left, on the right, in religious communities, in ideological communities, from feminism to socialism, capitalism, dogma of any stripe is always threatened by questions because dogma, by definition, is brittle and rigid, and it snaps under the spotlight of scrutiny and therefore, at least in my view, deserves to be threatened by questions. Now, I want to acknowledge, as I do in my book, I want to acknowledge here today, every religion has its share of literalists. American Christianity has its evangelicals, some of whom still populate the White House. You know, many of them have left, but some are still there. Jews have their ultra orthodox. Buddhists, for God's sakes, have fundamentalists, though don't ask me how that one works. That may be another book for another author. And if I may inject some cheap Buddhist humor for another lifetime. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that chuckle. But the difference is that only within Islam today is literalism mainstream worldwide. Let me explain what I mean by that admittedly sweeping and loaded statement. We Muslims, even here in the west, are routinely Raised to believe that because the Qur' an, Islam scripture was revealed after the Torah and the Bible, it is the final and therefore perfect manifesto of God's will, not given to the ambiguities and inconsistencies and outright contradictions and God forbid, human editing like all of those other so called sacred texts. No, no. Even moderate Muslims believe an article of faith that the Qur' an is not like any other holy book. It is, if I can put it this way, God 3.0 and none shall come after it. Okay, so glad that one got a laugh at Google, because really guys, you know, you're a tough crowd. You're a tough crowd. I have to say, no matter how you slice it, this is a supremacy complex about scripture and it's a supremacy complex that is dangerous. Why do I say dangerous? For two reasons. First, this supremacy complex about the Qur' an disproportionately empowers the radical fringe in my faith, the violent jihadis. And notice that I call them a fringe that they are, but they are also disproportionately empowered. And this leads me to the second reason that the supremacy complex about the Qur' an is dangerous. It inhibits the reasonable center, the moderates, from asking hard questions about what happens when faith becomes dogma. You see, the jihadis, the violent jihadis are so expert at isolating passages in the Qur' an and then quoting them to support their violence, and the rest of us have just internalized this belief that we cannot question the holy and perfect text of the Qur'.

An.

After all, it is perfect. And therefore to openly challenge the violent jihadis is to challenge the Qur' an itself since they quote from the Quran and that's supposed to be off limits, questioning the Qur' an itself. Well, I wrote this book in order to show that in fact it is permissible to ask questions of the holy Qur'. An. And no, not because a spiky haired feminist, Canadian raised Muslim woman named Irshad Manji says so. Mullahs don't care what somebody who looks like me have to say. Younger Muslims care, but mullahs don't. I say that it is permissible to ask questions of the Quran because Islamic tradition tells us so. Islam has a glorious tradition of independent thinking and creative reasoning, debate and dissent. And it is known as Ijtihad. And I'm just gonna spell that word for all of you because sometimes it's easier to wrap your head around a new concept when you, when you can actually visualize the main word behind it. I J T I H A D Ijtad Islam's tradition of independent thinking. I realize of course, that this word sounds uncomfortably like jihad to many non Arab ears. And in fact it comes from the same root to struggle, which is what, by the way, jihad means not violent struggle, but struggle. But unlike any notion of violent struggle, Ijtihad is all about struggling with the mind to comprehend the complex and broader world. And far from being mere theory, Ijtihad has a track record. You know, in the early centuries of Islam, thanks to The Spirit of Ijtihad, 135 Schools of interpretation flourished in Muslim Spain. Scholars would teach their students to abandon, quote, expert opinion about the Qur' an, if their own conversations with the living, breathing Quran, not the straightforward and literal book, as if somehow it's dead, but the living, breathing, fluid Quran, if their own conversations with that came up with better evidence for their peaceful ideas. And in Cordoba, one of the most sophisticated cities in Muslim Spain, there were 70 libraries. Let me put this in perspective for you. That rivals the number of libraries in most cosmopolitan cities today. New York City, for example, at last Check, has about 77 branches of its public library. Well, guess what? The Islamic world had this a thousand years ago. And you know, so much of what we in this part of the world just assume is the product of secular European culture or even Judeo Christian culture was in fact shaped by believing Muslims. I'll give you a quick partial list because I think you folks on this campus would appreciate this. Muslims gave the world one of the first institutions of higher learning, at least in the West. It was known as the House of Wisdom and it sprang up in 9th century Baghdad. Muslims gave the world. I'll think you really love this mocha coffee. It's true. And you are welcome, Starbucks. Muslims gave the world an early version of the guitar. You'd never know it given how often mullahs say that music is haram or forbidden. Muslims even gave the world that ultra Spanish expression which has its root in the Arabic word. Anybody? Olay. Allah. See, the guy who laughs at my jokes is also the one who comes up with the right answer. I think I'm liking you. You're right. Olay comes from the Arabic word Allah. And I'm just going to sidetrack here for a quick minute because I have what I think is a funny story. But you guys will be the ultimate judges of that. I know about a year ago, well, Michael mentioned to you that I was a visiting fellow at Yale University. I gave a series of lectures at Yale and in One of those lectures, I said to the auditorium full of people, what Arabic word could you imagine the Spanish word ole coming from? Dead silence Ivy League university. All right, I said, fine. I'm going to give you guys a hint. And I looked heavenward and I cupped my hands out and I whispered, ole. More dead silence, punctuated this time by the shifting of bums in seats. There was a great deal of discomfort in the air. Obviously I said, fine, I'm going to kick it up a notch and give you one final hint. And I was about to drop to my knees, but thought better of it and just raised my head up and practically yelled ole. And some clown at the back of the auditorium yelled back, oil. So to mangle a Chinese proverb, you know, that you live in very interesting times when the word oil could be considered an Arabic word number one and then the Arabic word for God number two. But you know, I won't push the analogy too much further than that. Back to the point at hand, ladies and gentlemen, which is this. That I think the beauty of emphasizing Ijtihad Islam's tradition of independent thinking is that it is endemic to Islam itself. In other words, I'm not asking my fellow Muslims to import a foreign tradition or an alien virtue into the faith. Not at all. People like me, and there are many others like me, Ijtihadis, as we call ourselves, are reminding our fellow Muslims that Islam itself once offered and exhibited this glorious tradition of progressive pluralistic thinking and that there is no reason save for pure politics. We cannot have it again. And indeed we're arguing that we must have it again if we are going to update Islamic practices for the 21st century. And it's not just about rediscovering Ijtihad this mission that we're on, it's actually about something more than that. It's about popularizing it and democratizing this tradition so that as many people throughout the Muslim world, women especially, know that it is their God given right to think for themselves. Now, in order to get there, I'll tell you that I and a group of reform minded Muslims have started something called Project Ijtihad. And this is a campaign literally to restore critical thinking to the practice of Islam. And the way it all came about actually was not an initiative that I came up with. I would not have had the imagination to do that. I must tell you. What happened was immediately after my book came out, in English, of course, because of the burst of international publicity, it received my email inbox overflowed with messages from Young Muslims in the Arab world asking me a question. When are you going to get this book translated into Arabic so that we can share these ideas with our friends, whom they assured me were hungry for honest conversation about Islam since they live lives of daily censorship, both in their households and in their societies. And my standard answer to them was, come on, name one Arab publisher that'll have the guts to translate this book, let alone circulate it. What? Are you kidding me? And most of these kids, to their credit, wrote back to say, well, so what, Irshad? I mean, you're right, but so what? You get the book translated into Arabic, you then post that translation on your website. And when we can download it free of charge as a PDF, right? They were young but not born yesterday. You know what I'm saying? When we can read it as a PDF, that means that we will be able to read it in privacy and therefore safety. Something we wouldn't have if we were carrying a physical copy of the book around with us. And that in turn means we will create the opportunities to share these ideas with our friends. I love their logic. You know, the privilege I have in this part of the world to use my voice can then be exercised to help others find their voices. If that isn't a quintessential example of global interdependence, I don't know what is. But did it work? Nice. In theory, did it work? I took their advice, got the book translated, got it posted, and only two days after the full Arabic posting went up, I received the first of what are now countless emails, this time from a young man in Jordan who said, now that we've got the book in a language we can understand, I'm going to start an underground discussion club based on your ideas. And he assured me it's going to be a very popular club because I'm a very popular guy. Oh yeah, especially with the girls, he pointed out. And I wrote back to say, happy to be of service to your love life, my brother. Clearly this is what the Almighty has put me on the earth to do. But you know, it's the way he ended his email that truly did steal my heart. He said, I want to work with you for the day when we can turn this underground discussion club into a visible above the ground phenomenon, because that is when the Usama bin Ladens of this world will know they don't represent me or my friends. Well, how representative was this young man? In May of 2006, I was in Cairo for the first time in my life, kept a low Profile. Or so I thought. And I was amazed by how many young Muslim men, and not just women, women, approached me. It must have been the hair to say thank you for posting your book online. I'm reading it, my friends are reading it, and it's now making the rounds in the democracy movement. As a matter of fact, only about three months ago, unexpectedly, completely out of the blue, I received an email from a New York Times Magazine writer doing a story about honor crimes in the Middle East. She was asking for an interview, but in the course of her pitch to me, I guess she said, did you know that your book is being downloaded and circulated in Arabic among youth in the underground now? I didn't know because I hear from them a lot, but I wanted to know how she knew. She told me she had spent the last six months in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, and she kept running into this circumstance. So how representative was this young man from Jordan? It turns out. Quite. And we can actually quantify it. In just over a year, there have been more than 250,000 downloads of the Arabic translation alone and counting. And that intranet strategy of posting the book for free online has actually been so successful that it's convinced me to get the book translated into two other languages in which it can't readily or easily be found in the Muslim world. One is Urdu, for the country of Pakistan, where, I should point out to you, in all honesty, the book has been published. But the first week that it was carried by booksellers, the Ulema, the theologians issued a fatwa against all of the booksellers carrying a copy of this. And so most of them cleared it off their shelves. That's why it can't readily be found in Pakistan, even though it's published there. So it's now translated and posted free of charge in Urdu on my site. And the other language, of course, has to be Farsi, Persian for the country of Iran, where you won't be surprised to hear the book is banned outright. You might, however, be surprised to hear that in the very liberal, at least by Middle east standards, liberal country of the United Arab Emirates, my website is banned outright. So, you know, I mean, we're talking censorship at various levels here. Well, just to get back to Urdu and Farsi, in just over six months, more than 90,000 downloads of each so far. Clearly, there is a deep hunger among the emerging generation of Muslims for ideas like this.

So why do you think literalism is so popular? I mean, it's not just popular in Islam, it's also popular among fundamentalists.

In this country, you're right to point out that literalism is on the rise around the world and in various faith traditions. And I think at the end of the day there are many reasons for that. But at the end of the day, a huge reason is globalization. And the fact that so many people feel that their stability and their certainty about life is thrown off kilter. So much about their lives is in chaos because of economic unknowns and there's mass migration. People literally don't know where their homes are anymore or where their identity is anymore. And in that kind of an uncertain environment, it's human nature to look for certainty and look for what becomes rigidity. Religion, not necessarily faith, but religion easily lends itself to that. And so no wonder, for example, even in Israel, you see the ultra orthodox, their influence in national politics is very much on the rise. So I think globalization is a huge part of it. But if you have a different thought about why that is, I'd love to know. Now let me just say one other thing that is not to suggest that there is sort of equivalency of literalism in all of the religions. As I pointed out in my formal remarks. I do believe, for reasons that I tried to at least give a hint about and certainly try to back up in my book, that Islam today, not historically, but today, suffers from much more literalism which has become mainstream than do the other major faith traditions. And those reasons are quite, you know, not necessarily about globalization, but very much again, specific to Islam itself, which I encourage you to read in the book. I'm sorry, do I want that video to be running in the background? Probably not for the purposes of the Q and A. So thank you for pointing that out. My mother thanks you too. Given my security situation.

Thank you for coming today and for your courage regarding Ijtihad. Wonderful Is the idea behind it that with that a reformation, if you will, that we've seen in the other major religions. As a Christian, you know, Christianity has a very violent past that through reformation we've worked through. And is the idea that with Ijtihad, that with discussion and faith based groups that actually study the Koran and discuss it, that that sort of reformation will come that might bring about a more peaceful, I don't know, what is the ultimate goal for you, your ideal scenario, what would you like to see there?

I can, bottom line, how I would define a reformation and more importantly, by the way, a liberal reformation of Islam. Because I want to say again, as a historian, it's important to be accurate to the degree that we're capable of being so that Islam has undergone several conservative reformations in its history. But when I say conservative, what I mean by that is that these reformations have taken the practices of Islam further and further back to the seventh century, to the point where we actually have something of a 7th century tribal time warp that we need to pull as Muslims, Islam out of and update the practices of the faith for the 21st century. The beauty is that Islam as a, as a faith very much lends itself to that possibility. You know, most people don't know this, but there are three times as many verses in the Qur' an calling on us to think and analyze and reflect than verses that tell us what is absolutely right or wrong on that basis alone. Reinterpretation is more than a possibility in Islam. It is we Muslims who must have the courage to, you know, to engage in the practice of reinterpretation. And so the bottom line of any reformation, I believe, is that all Muslims, you know, but I emphasize, especially women, since they take the brunt of illiteracy in the Muslim world. All Muslims, especially women, know of their God given right to think for themselves. And finally, let me say this much more you mentioned as a preamble to your question, maybe it's about faith based groups sort of studying the Qur'. An. Look, I don't even think that we need to have such a solitary kind of approach to it. I kept emphasizing in my formal remarks this approach of asking questions out loud. It sounds deceptively simple, but I emphasize the word deceptively because this is exactly what I did with Dr. Al Hindi. I just asked him some very basic questions. Questions that frankly you could have asked him any journalist or citizen, if they had that kind of access and as you say, a little bit of courage could have asked him. It didn't take a theologian to come up with my questions and yet notice that he crumbled under the weight of those questions. My point simply is that asking questions out loud can in fact bust monopolies on interpretation. And I'm not interested in dishonoring anybody. I'm interested in reminding the self appointed ambassadors of God that they are indeed one, self appointed and two, that they are only in their view, ambassadors of God. They are not God. So let a thousand flowers bloom. Let a thousand interpretations compete with each other for oxygen. It's not about eliminating fundamentalism. It's about reminding the fundamentalists that theirs are not the only voices that count. I don't know how far this is true, but it seems like Every religion today that is increasing in numbers involves some amount of dogma. They employ dogma to increase the, the numbers and to recruit. It's a recruiting tool. So to a certain extent it's a self fulfilling thing that if you try to destroy dogma, then it just has a visceral reaction against you. Well, it's a very interesting point you make. And the point being, for those who may not have heard it at the back, given how effective a recruiting tool dogma is, if you try to destroy it, you're only going to incur a backlash. Perhaps. But I think the key here is the how. How do you try to undermine dogma? I'm not doing it by leaving Islam, declaring myself an atheist, which I am not in any event, and saying, you know, Islam is unreformable, Islam is backward. But I want to, you know, I want to encourage Muslims to reform. There are some dissidents in the world of Islam who have done that. And I'm a pluralist. I defend their right to take whatever peaceful approach they want, but that's not effective. A much more effective approach, as long as it's sincere, which in my case it is, is in fact to remain within the faith and to emphasize those traditions within the faith that lend themselves to reinterpretation. And I'm finding, sir, that by doing so, younger Muslims are feeling a lot more comfortable and a lot more self assured that they can be at one and the same time faithful and thoughtful. And in that sense, yeah, we're undermining dogma, but we're doing it in a way that is respectful of the faith itself.

I have a question about just the connection between the video and getting that video to convey your message.

Okay.

As we saw the video you had edited in certain overlays that kind of, I wouldn't say told us what was going on, but maybe set the tone a little bit. Right. And as the video went through, the audience response at times was sometimes aghast, like, what's going on? And sometimes it was chuckling. Right. I think we here in this room laugh because we know who that person is and, and we have no respect for him. Now if you put this in front of a person that might have some respect for him, is chuckling the response you want? I mean, what is the response you want? Because the people you're trying to convince are people who actually might respect him potentially. You want a different response from these people not laughing. Right.

You know, again, you've also raised a really interesting point. Who would be the audience for A video like this. And I have to tell you that I'm not so certain that the people who respect the Al Hindis of this world are the audience for something like this because quite frankly, I don't think I'm the right messenger for them. The real audience for both the message of Ijtihad and of this video are those reform minded Muslims who exist in droves but who are too afraid to speak publicly and to express themselves and their minds openly. And what I want to show through this video video is just how possible it is to undermine that kind of certainty and that kind of dogma by simply asking questions out loud. One of the biggest pushbacks that I get from young Muslims is that Irshad, you know, maybe because you graduated with honors from university, you know, you are self assured in spreading this message, but I don't have the credibility. Who am I? I'm not a Scarlet and I keep hearing that I'm not a scholar, I'm not a scholar, I'm not a scholar. But I point out to them, you know, that so many of the people who call themselves or who pawn themselves off as scholars and have done so successfully enough to convince these kids that they have authority, they too don't have any more education than these kids do, but they've got a whole lot more confidence. And you know, there are scholarly papers that point out that Ijtihad, far from being the bailiwick of elites, has traditionally been the responsibility and right of ordinary Muslims. So really we as Muslims, I believe, need to reclaim that tradition. And nobody is saying that anyone's going to become a jurist or a lawyer or a mufti or an imam as a result of this. We are simply saying that God is the final authority. And therefore while we are here on this earth, we as human beings, and especially as Muslims, Muslims need to embrace our limited knowledge. And that's why we've got to hash it out, we've got to debate it, we've got to have dissent rather than again allowing authority of the kind that he has to degenerate into authoritarianism, which is the abuse of authority. And that's exactly what happens when we, anybody, Muslims or otherwise, submit uncritically to the exercise of authority.

Hi. So after googling your name about an hour before the presentation, I expected to come here and like be offended or like antagonized given the amount of like anti or Shadmanji stuff on the web. But actually I think I agree with almost everything you say that Islam does need a movement to reinterpret the verses and to, you know, get away from the literalism that a lot of the mullahs and the jihadis use. But one thing I think I don't know, but I want to ask you is one thing I think we have to be careful of is that it is part of the core Islamic faith to treat the Quran as a direct word of God.

Right.

So the challenge is how do we interpret the word of God without forgetting a single verse in a way that we feel makes sense in a modern society or any society?

Right.

The Quran has to be timeless if it's from God. Right?

Presumably. Right. Right.

Okay, so my question for you in particular is how do you reconcile. So while googling your name, it sounded like you support LGBT movements within the Muslim community. How do you reconcile that with what's seemingly in the Koran? And do you feel that those verses don't apply or apply to a particular time period or.

Okay, I'm going to answer that generally and then transition to a more specific answer to your more specific question about gay and lesbian Muslims.

Okay, sure.

The more general questions sort of question is, you know, if as Muslims, we are to accept the Quran as the word of God, you can't work around that, Irshad. You got to work within that. So how do you do that in a way that, you know, still allows for reinterpretation? And for me, the answer is both simple but not simplistic. I mentioned to the woman at the side here that, you know, the Qur' an contains three times as many verses asking us to think and reflect and analyze, then verses that tell us what is possible perennially or timelessly, right or wrong. That alone suggests that there is plenty of wiggle room, plenty of ambiguity within the Qur'. An. And indeed, if we are going to take it literally as the direct word of God, then just looking at the fact that there are three times as many of those verses, the verses about thinking than verses about uncritically swallowing what is in there, is the basis on which I would suggest there is more than enough room for reinterpretation and so much more room that it might even be a responsibility and not just a right. One other thing I'll quickly say about that, again, most Muslims don't know, never mind non Muslims, only about 10% of the Quran is legalities. Everything else is about the use of one's moral filter and one's ethics. So again, that puts the onus on us as individuals to use our minds and equally importantly, our consciences to derive from the Quran. What we believe is right for our lives. We're not God. I'm not God. You're not God. I can't impose my values on you, nor you on me, but I can decide for myself what is right for my life. And that is the spirit, not the letter or the legal mechanism of ijtihad, but the spirit of ijtihad that I'm talking about. Now, you became just that much more provocative in your question by raising LGBT as in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered Muslims, and that. No, no, no, no, no. It's good. I love it. I love it. And you were asking, you know, I mean, can you respect what the Quran seemingly. I love the fact that you use the word seemingly says about gay and lesbian or about homosexuality. Can you, you know, respect what the Quran seemingly says about that and still advocate for the rights of so called, of gay and lesbian Muslims? And the answer for me is yes. And by the way, not because. Well, I mean, ultimately you're asking about whether in Islam that could even be considered a right to be openly gay or lesbian. Right, okay, sure. We'll move away from the word rights and just talk about whether it can even exist, whether it can even be accepted. Accepted, perhaps. Is that by Muslims. Understood. Understood. Okay. And again, you know, while the. The word seemingly is very important here because much like in biblical scholarship, in Quranic scholarship, there is now an emerging series of voices saying that those verses that are supposed to oppose homosexuality, in fact aren't talking about homosexuality at all. They're talking about male. On male power abuses and rapes and murders in the context of violence, not in the context of, you know, consenting relationships between, you know, adult men or adult women. Even if you put that aside, I have argued on my website, which I again invite you to check out, that there is of plenty, plenty of ambiguity within the Qur' an about even the issue of homosexuality. Yeah, I know the story that suggests that homosexuality is, you know, is forbidden. But there are also plenty of verses in the Quran that promote diversity. For example, the Quran states that God creates whom he will and that God has not made anybody in vain, and that everything God creates is excellent. Now, if God is, you know, the most authoritative, if God has unmatched and unparalleled powers, why would he make gay and lesbian people as if they were a mistake? He knew what he was doing when he made them. And some of my Muslim critics say, yeah, well, you know, he also made straight people Irshad. And I say yes. And that's part of that plan of diversity. That the Quran very much supports. I'm not saying I'm right and by the way, nor am I saying that Muslims must accept homose sexuality. No, who the hell am I to say that I'm not God. But I am saying that there is enough wiggle room within the Qur' an that only on the day of judgment can we know what the truth is. And in the meantime, you know, we've got the opportunities to debate this with each other. And that is what the Qur' an not just allows us, but encourages us to do. And that's what it's about. It's about debate. It's not about replacing one certainty with another.

What's that?

And I'll hang out afterwards for one on one, five on one.

So I have actually two comments to make. First of all, I'm an atheist, but I think I could have made a much better argument for this guy's position than he did. I don't think he was a worthy opponent for you, but nevertheless, all right.

I'll try to find a better one next time I'm on a suit with.

Some way to go. All right. Second of all, I guess I'd just like to put in a note of support about your comment. You made one question earlier about the audience of this, of this kind of message by sharing an anecdote. So at some point I was in Cairo with my Muslim, relatively moderate Muslim father, who is. He has a PhD from the Imperial College in London. So he's by no means, you know, by no means uneducated. He happens to live perhaps two miles away from where Nagib Mahfouz used to live.

Nobel laureate, Egyptian novelist, now deceased very recently actually, and was stabbed at the age of 80 by Muslim fundamentalists who took offense at something that he had written as a work of fiction more than 40 years before beforehand. He was stabbed 40 years later.

And a very allegorical work of fiction. So it was really sort of a slant, backwards interpretation of something that he wrote.

Right.

But nevertheless, at some point I was noticing that it was rather sad that precisely what you've mentioned happened. And you know, saying, well, you know, isn't it nasty that now he has to have a police presence outside his house, et cetera, et cetera, because he wrote a freaking book, come on. And my dad said, you know, yeah, but you know what? He's a son of a gun agnostic, you know, he had it coming. And so I guess on some level, I think if some of what you say can reach people like him and change his Mind in that juncture, you've at least gotten part of the way and then you can make the rest of the way to, you know, the people who are following the unworthy person that you just spoke to.

So in other words, you agree with me that the audience for this video ought to be reform minded Muslims who do not yet have the inner fortitude to speak their minds freely.

Exactly.

We've got to show them that it is possible, through very simple question asking, to bust monopolies of interpretation.

Precisely because if you, I mean if you are brought up under the circumstances where you believe that for thinking the wrong thing, your, your blood is halal, essentially you are likely to, to suffer a dearth of imagination of some sort.

And who wouldn't as an act of self preservation.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And I think that if that were to change, that is the first and most important thing.

Right, right. Well, thank you for that. And I know, Michael, that was the last question, if you would afford me the privilege of having the last question, which is simply this, I don't want to lose sight of why I came here today, which is to seek your input in how to release this video in a way that will make the broadest public impact, by which I mean an impact not just on Muslims who of course are the key audience, but also on non Muslims who want to be able to support reform minded Muslims but may themselves be scared to do so. And scared not of violence but of worrying about, you know, with their own liberal politics that, ooh, maybe it's none of my business and I shouldn't be involved in this and I don't want to be called a racist for doing so. I just want to say to the non Muslims in this audience, to today, that reform minded Muslims actually do need your support. As long as of course it's coming from the right intention, as we say in Islam, the right niyat, an intention to support universal human rights. Because when you recognize the voices of reform minded Muslims, you are automatically sending a signal to the conservative elements in the Muslim world that again, they are no longer the only game in town, that they are now going to have to compete with other voices that are equally authentic. And previous to that, they've been able, the conservatives have been able to get away with this argument that they're the pure ones, they are the only legitimate voices, they're the only ones that represent Islam, not even represent Islam well, simply represent Islam. Reform minded Muslims are increasingly speaking up and we too represent a certain set of interpretations within Islam. And when non Muslims recognize this the frame of the story changes and now the conservatives have no choice but to debate us because they know that according to a huge other group of the world, we now exist. So please know it is your business to be involved in the liberal reformation of Muslims. Thank you all very much.