https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=0BGYf3SLPBk
So you contrast an Islamic attitude towards women with a Western attitude towards women. So do we say that that’s a contrast between the Islamic attitude towards women and the Judeo-Christian attitude towards women? Is it reasonable to make that a religious issue? And or what do you think about that? I mean, is this is it? Yeah, it is a religious issue. It’s a cultural issue. It’s a also an issue of not only generating and being the motto behind modernity and constantly modernizing, which is what Western societies are constantly doing. And then obviously the religious component for me when I analyze the leadership of Islam is the disappointment with modernity and the rejection of that. And again, that is why I think about it. What are they rejecting? Do you think and that we’ve accepted? What are the differences that it enables the emergence of the idea that women could be equal or that they are equal and that they should be that that equality should be fostered and treasured and developed? What’s the difference? I mean, I’m not expecting you necessarily to know the answer to that, but but it is the issue. Yeah. Well, the issue is when you study the narrative that the radical Muslims preach and propagate, there is this deep disappointment that Islam is no longer the dominant force of the globe. And the answer that they give to that question is because they strayed away from the pure doctrine and the behavior of the prophet, especially when he was in Medina and he had become so powerful, he had conquered not only Arabia, but then went beyond. And then his disciples went to almost every continent and they were dominant. Then what went wrong? And I think people like Bertrand Russell and others have tried to give the answer that they came late to the game of modernity and then had these debates about, well, if we want to move forward and catch up with the West, whom they looked down on, then we have to become like them. That was the attempt that Kemal Ataturk made in Turkey. But then another force, a retrograde force, these are our modern Islamists, said, no, that is actually the wrong answer. We have to make them submit to us. And when I say they reject modernity, they like the gadgets and the nuclear weapons and that sort of modern stuff that makes them feel dominant or strong. But when it comes to adopting attitudes such as liberating women, they recoil from that. Absolutely, they recoil from that because they think that’s what’s going to take them apart. That’s looking like them or running your societies according to this that’s time machine that the West does. They think that that’s all empty, looking at the clock all the time. So there are aspects about the West that they admire and want to incorporate, but the end goal is that it is not their goal to adopt some of these Western values. But a lot of people are voting with their feet. There are people who are poor, dispossessed, subjected to all sorts of violence, who want to come to the West and start all over again. And those are the people we are talking about. And I think to give those people a chance to actually become a part of modernity and modern society is to assimilate them. And the way to do it is just by admitting that some of these, the voting with the feet says it all. Well, you know, the classic response to that, the classic criticism of that perspective would be that those dispossessed people wouldn’t have had to vote with their feet if the West hadn’t engaged in its colonial mission and devastated the economic opportunities of two-thirds of the globe while elevating themselves to positions of unearned superiority. And of course, there’s no shortage of evidence for that, if that’s the evidence that you choose to look at. And sorting that all out seems to be impossibly difficult. The West is guilty for all the crimes that have been committed in its name. And many of those crimes were real. And so, we don’t know how to uphold what we have of value, well, simultaneously atoning for our past sins, maybe even the ways I would say we could at least admit that our past sins were the failure of our, the failure to live up to our values rather than the values themselves. But that’s certainly not, it’s certainly not the case that everyone’s going to agree to that. It’s a real mystery why the idea of equality between the genders or equality between men in general came about. You know, to me, it seems to have a deep rooting in the idea of the universal soul and the intrinsic value of each person and the intrinsic value of each person’s capacity for speech and creative production. I think that’s a deeply Judeo-Christian idea. Its roots go deeper than that. I don’t understand. I don’t know if there is an Islamic equivalent. I think first of all, just by telling only one side of the story, the story of what is making a lot of people in the West feel guilty and that they feel that they have to atone for the colonization, the slavery, the segregation, all of these well-documented terrible things that Western societies have engaged in. That is one side of the story, but there’s one side of the story. That is one side of the story, but there’s also another side of the story. The other side of the story is that it is Westerners who took the initiative among humanity to change all of that, to end slavery, to end segregation, to aspire for equality. If you’re going to tell the story, then it’s better to tell both sides of the story. Now, for the people who tell only the negative side of the story, who are toppling statues and saying the only way to redeem Westerners is for them to destroy everything and start all over again. I think even with those, aside from the obvious nihilism, the let’s just destroy stuff, and the selective telling of the story, there’s also an element of superiority in there. An element of, sorry, an element of? Of superiority or supremacy, because only whites and Westerners are held responsible for bad things they did in the past or do today. Do you mean about bad things that happened altogether, or specifically the bad things that were perpetrated by Europeans? I mean, it’s certainly the case that slavery was a human universal. It’s not something unique to European society by any stretch of the imagination. And so was colonialism. And so was and is segregation still to this day? Take a continent like India, where the caste system is still vibrant and healthy. Or take any of the Arab countries where people with my skin color are still regarded as slaves. So I think if you want to, if you want to litigate history and all the things that were done bad by human beings, selecting only whites, and especially white men and saying only they have to forever atone for their sins is in itself an expression of supremacy, because holding the Arabs and holding the Chinese and the Chinese right now are engaged in a genocide against the Uyghur people. We have reports of them forcibly sterilizing women. Why can’t we hold them to the same moral standard that we are holding ourselves? So you think it’s inappropriately colonialist for white Europeans to attribute universal human guilt to themselves. It’s an expression of supremacy. It’s an expression of only we can meet those high, very high standards, not the rest of humanity. They are all victims in one way or the other. Or we just take it for granted. They just can’t do it. You know, the Chinese and their violations of human rights, why even address it? They don’t know how to do it. So we only do see where there’s the nihilism, there’s the selective telling of the story. But like deep down, when you read this stuff over and over again, it is like, actually, what you’re saying is you can hold those standards to yourself, but not to me. Well, I’ve never heard that argument before. It’s extremely interesting and very darkly comical.