Pod Insights Lex Fridman Podcast #411 – Omar Suleiman: Palestine, Gaza, Oct 7, Israel, Resistance, Faith & Islam About this episode Omar Suleiman is a Palestinian-American Muslim scholar, civil rights leader, and President of the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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Transcript: https://lexfridman.com/omar-suleiman-2-transcript
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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) – Introduction
(10:18) – Oct 7
(19:14) – Palestinian diaspora
(23:29) – Wael Al-Dahdouh
(38:21) – Violence
(1:01:59) – Biden and Trump
(1:15:11) – Ceasefire march
(1:25:24) – Benjamin Netanyahu
(1:32:26) – Houthi rebel attacks
(1:34:03) – Hostages
(1:40:23) – MLK Jr and Malcolm X
(1:53:04) – Palestinian refugees
(2:02:14) – Muhammad and Jesus
(2:13:07) – Al-Aqsa Mosque
(2:22:04) – Ramadan
(2:26:57) – Hope for the future
Transcript 22,294 words · 2 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Lex Fridman? The following is a conversation with Imam Dr. Omar Suleiman, his second time on the podcast. He is a Palestinian American, a Muslim scholar, a civil rights leader, president of the Yakin Institute for Islamic Research, and is one of the most influential Muslims in the world. Our previous conversation was focused on Islam. This time, the focus was on Gaza and Palestine. And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We've got Shopify for e-commerce, NetSuite for business management software, BetterHelp for mental health, Aidsleep for naps, and
0:43 Lex Fridman? AG1 for delicious health. Choose wisely, my friends. Also, if you want to work with our amazing team or just want to get in touch with me, go to lexfridman.com/contact. And now, onto the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I try to make these interesting, but friends, if you must skip them, please still check out our sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. This episode is brought to you by Shopify, a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere with a great-looking online store. I use it to sell merch, shirts. I use it to also go to other people's merch stores and buy it. Shopify enables me to wear a bunch of
1:27 Lex Fridman? stuff that I'm a fan of. Also, if we're talking about t-shirts, they do a lot, thousands of integrations and third-party apps, including on-demand printing for t-shirts. So you sell on Shopify, and then another company does the printing. I've had a few incredible artists contact me about sharing their art. First of all, I'm just grateful that artists exist in the world, that artists create.
2:02 Lex Fridman? It's not the easiest way to make money. In fact, it's nearly impossible to make money with art. And still they do, and still they persevere, and still they fight the odds, and still they long to create. And oftentimes, for no reason besides the act of creation itself, the beauty laden in the act of creation. The money doesn't matter, the fame doesn't matter, none of it matters. Just loving the process of going from the idea to the final thing. Now, I've just seen some incredible works of art. And a couple of artists have reached out, wanted to create some art.
2:43 Lex Fridman? And I'm always deeply, deeply honored by that. Anyway, I bring that up because maybe some of those arts will end up in a, on a T-shirt. So, and that T-shirt will be sold on Shopify. You can sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com/lex. That's all lowercase. Go to Shopify.com/lex to take your business to the next level today. This episode is also brought to you by NetSuite, an all-in-one cloud business management system. As the kids in the biz call it ERP system. Takes care of all the messy stuff. Everything from the financials to the HR, to the inventory and supply,
3:28 Lex Fridman? to the e-commerce and much, much more. You can check out Reddit, reviews on Reddit. And those people can sometimes be a little bit cranky. And when it comes to NetSuite, they're not cranky, they're positive. That's how you know NetSuite is legit. What, there's a lot of ways to know NetSuite is legit. That's, that's kind of like one of the perspectives. I often think about the stress, the drama, the complexities, the anxiety, the fears involved in running a company. You know, doing research at a university and then hosting a podcast. It's such a beautifully simple existence, especially in a close-knit team
4:13 Lex Fridman? where everybody likes each other, we're all inspired by each other. And I don't know.
4:21 Lex Fridman? To take a leap into the unknown of a startup is exciting and terrifying. And I think the terrifying part is not just the sexy things like product design and innovation and the actual engineering, but all the stuff that makes the company work. It feels like the little things, the details can matter a lot in defining the culture, how efficient the thing works, the machine of a company works, especially when it has to scale quickly. They asked me very nicely to mention that 37,000 companies
5:02 Lex Fridman? have upgraded to NetSuite by Oracle. And they asked me to say that NetSuite turned 25 this year. Download NetSuite's popular KPI checklist for free at netsuite.com/lex. That's netsuite.com/lex for your own KPI checklist.
5:21 Lex Fridman? This episode is also brought to you by BetterHelp, spelled H E L P, help. They figure out what you need to match you with a licensed therapist in under 48 hours. They got therapy for individuals. They got therapy for couples. The couples thing I recently found out, that's pretty cool. That's really cool. Anyway, the thing is easy, discreet, affordable, available worldwide. On their website, they have a counter of various kinds. I like numbers, especially when numbers go up. Number go up is a really exciting thing. I have to be honest. And the number I want to mention is 350 million, over 350 million messages, chat, phone, and
5:58 Lex Fridman? video sessions, over 34,000 licensed therapists, over 4.4 million people got help. Man, talk therapy can be an important part of getting your mind right. So BetterHelp is easy and accessible. So you should try it. It's a great, great, great first step. Check them out at betterhelp.com/lex and save on your first month. That's betterhelp.com/lex. This episode is brought to you by Asleep and its Pod 3 cover. You can control temperature with an app. It is such a fundamental part of a joyful existence at home for me. That's
6:42 Lex Fridman? the thing I look forward to when I'm traveling. That's the thing that makes you feel like I'm at home. I think more than probably anything else. It's just that process of either going to take a nap or going to sleep for the night. It's the cold bed, the ritual of it, the experience of it, the sensation of it. Cold bed with a warm blanket, the sleep world period is just a fascinating place. It really is a journey to another place. I do feel like I travel. I travel when I lay down and I'm reading a book and then I slowly get tired. And then just fade away.
7:24 Lex Fridman? But I'm not fading. I'm being teleported to another place, sometimes with a dream, sometimes with a calm nothingness. The book I was currently just yesterday reading, it's not something you can read for very long. It's tiny, is The Little Prince. And it just always makes me smile. I recommend it highly if you haven't. It's a kind of children's book, but deeper in meaning. It really reverberates through the years in its simplicity and its profundity of its simple message. Anyway, check it out and get special savings when you go to eightsleep.com/lex. This episode is also brought to you by AG1.
8:09 Lex Fridman? The thing I'm going to have in about 10 minutes. It's an all in one daily drink to support better health and peak performance. I've been getting back on the road. When I'm in Austin, Texas, you know, all through the winter, the temperature does dip sometimes, but really it can comfortably be at like 50 or 60, where you can just throw on a sweatshirt and still in shorts and just do a good 10, 8, 10, 12 miles, sometimes 5 miles, depending on what I'm feeling, like fast 5, slow 5, slow 12, slow 15. One of these days I should do like a double loop and do a marathon, just on a random Tuesday. Screw it.
8:50 Lex Fridman? I'm just gonna step outside at some 1:30 PM on a Tuesday and just go like Forrest Gump. And then when I do a full loop, it's gonna be about 12 miles. I'll do it again.
9:08 Lex Fridman? Just say, you know, you're supposed to be done with the run and you say, you know what, I can keep going. I can do this again. Still to this day, I've not run a marathon. I've run 48 miles. That's part of David Goggins' challenge, but that wasn't continuous miles. There's a lot of rest in between, but continuous 26 miles. I don't know, even 48 miles continuously. I don't know. Of course, your body is capable of much more than you realize. And I'm sure that is true for my body as well. Anyway, at the end of the run, I almost always include a nice AG1 drink. They'll give you one month's supply of fish oil when you sign up at drinkag1.com/lex.
9:53 Lex Fridman? This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Omar Suleiman.
10:18 Lex Fridman? What did you think, feel and pray for in the days that followed October 7?
10:25 Speaker 01 I think the first feeling was that there's going to be a lot of death and destruction in Gaza as a result, right? We always kind of see this where one Israeli casualty leads to hundreds of Palestinian casualties. Right? So it's a pretty familiar cycle in some ways, where there are daily transgressions against Palestinians in the West Bank and in Gaza. The checkpoints, the aggression on Masjid al-Aqsa, the settlements expanding, the stories of Palestinian death. And then you have rockets fired from Gaza.
11:09 Speaker 01 And that's when the Western press catches up and starts to cover it. Israel responds with hellfire missiles, white phosphorus bombs, and the casualties are wildly disproportionate. And so I think that, you know, I wasn't surprised. I prayed for the people that I knew were going to bear the brunt of this outbreak, but the outbreak was predictable.
11:37 Lex Fridman? You wrote a statement on October 9th. I was hoping to read it, if it's okay.
11:43 Speaker 01 Yeah, go ahead.
11:44 Lex Fridman? "Our Palestinian casualties are always your footnotes. The daily humiliation of occupation ignored. The aggression by settlers and soldiers alike on holy sites and souls. The annihilation of entire families that follows. The devastation of whatever scraps remain in the open-air prison of Gaza. Unsustainable and inhumane. So if you're waking up to a sudden interest in the region and want to know what's been happening, dig a bit deeper than two weeks and try to read beyond the headlines of a media that has been dehumanizing us for decades."
12:21 Speaker 01 Again, this was not surprising. This was very predictable. If you've been watching what's been unfolding before October 7th, 2021, Human Rights Watch puts out the report, "Threshold Reached: Israel Is An Apartheid State." Amnesty International, 2022, "The Crime Of Apartheid," showing how all of the legal determinations of apartheid have been reached. The occupation is only getting more aggressive. Shirin Abou-Akla, a Palestinian-American journalist, is shot dead in 2022 in front of the world. The United States says initially that if it is shown that Israel was complicit or that
13:06 Speaker 01 Israel carried out the execution, then there will be consequences. Of course, once it was shown that Israel was indeed responsible for the bullet that killed Shirin Abou-Akla, the United States did absolutely nothing. Shirin's funeral was attacked. The pallbearers were beaten. Her casket almost fell. And again, the world is watching. The aggression against worshippers in an aqsa is getting worse. You have the flag march, the Jerusalem flag march, where extremist settlers are let loose and wild on Palestinians by the thousands, chanting things like "Muhammad is dead,"
13:47 Speaker 01 "We're going to murder you Arabs," all with the protection of the state with Israeli soldiers. And throughout this time, it's like, something bad is going to happen, and then 2023 comes along. You had 13,000 settler units in 2023, a plan of 13,000 settler units, the most in the history of the occupation, the most racist and extremist government, Israeli government that you have ever had.
14:19 Speaker 01 And people don't realize that in 2023 alone, over 600 Palestinians had already been killed. It just doesn't make Western headlines. And so if you wonder why the American public sees this so much differently than the rest of the world, it's because American media shows the American public something so much different than what the rest of the world has shown. And so this was a pressure cooker. This was going to explode. It is extremely predictable. You've given people absolutely no hope. And so I, I think that as we're watching that, you know, it's important for us to actually
15:00 Speaker 01 interrogate the ignorance that people have of the Palestinian plight, the ignorance of the root causes of this violence, the ignorance of the occupation. And also ask yourselves, you know, why is it that Israel can violate every single international law on the books, have all these determinations, and the United States keeps on issuing these inconsequential statements while also at the same time funding these aggressions? So it's like, stop the settler violence. The United States will issue statement after statement. Stop the settler violence. Stop the incursions on Masjid Al-Aqsa.
15:46 Speaker 01 Stop violating the people in Jerusalem. Stop trying to wipe out the Palestinian people. Stop openly saying, you know, that there is no two-state solution, that we will never allow a Palestinian state to be established, but at the same time, here's your $3 billion check.
16:03 Speaker 01 And if the United Nations issues any sort of resolution against Israel, or if any international body tries to hold Israel accountable, the United States stands in the way of any accountability. It's important for us to ask why. And so I always tell people, read beyond the headlines. Even now, with the backdrop of a genocide, over 30,000 people have been killed. If you open the front page of most American mainstream sites, you will see stories about the hostages, the Israeli hostages. You will see stories about October 7th, but October 8th is missing, October 9th is missing, October 10th is missing. 100 days of genocide are missing.
16:45 Speaker 01 And you'll barely have a story that shows up every once in a while that, you know, is still very much so controlled by the Israeli propaganda machine. Because while Israel kills Palestinian journalists, it also makes sure that American journalists are only able to tell a certain story. They're only able to see Gaza from a certain perspective. They're only able to speak about Gaza from a certain perspective. And this is well documented, that they have to review their media tapes with Israel before they can publicize them. And so this is state propaganda at this point. The mainstream media and the United States government are in lockstep, telling a very skewed story.
17:30 Speaker 01 And that is leading to a greater sense of frustration. And I think the American public has been wronged as well by not knowing what's happening.
17:38 Lex Fridman? So you mentioned settlements. So to you, this is bigger than Gaza. It is the West Bank, it is the Palestinian people broadly.
17:47 Speaker 01 Absolutely. You can't disconnect Gaza from Palestine. You can't disconnect the West Bank from Palestine. You can't disconnect Jerusalem from Palestine. And you can't disconnect the very human story from the political plight. You interviewed Mohamed Al-Kurt, you met him. What did the world do when it saw the images of the Quds household being taken over by a guy from Brooklyn or Long Island who just shows up and lays claim to their home? What did the world do when American settlers suddenly decided they could walk into historic Palestinian homes and throw people out of their homes? What did the world do? And so, yes, this is
18:32 Speaker 01 very much so connected to the broader issue of Palestinian existence. If you realize here, we are erased in peace and we are erased in war. In peace, it's the Abraham Accords, agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbors, which is supposedly to solve the Palestinian problem. The Palestinians are absent from their own fate, from discussions about their own fate. In war, it's the Israel-Hamas war. It's Israel and Gaza. Where are the Palestinian people? The millions of Palestinian people that have either been removed from their land or are being tormented on their land? Where are they in this discussion?
19:14 Lex Fridman? What are the Palestinians in the diaspora feeling?
19:20 Speaker 01 I think deeply frustrated, a great sense of anger, sadness. Every single Palestinian right now knows someone that's been killed. Every single Palestinian is a part of a story of displacement or destruction. Every single Palestinian has a relative that's either missing a limb or a loved one. Every single Palestinian in the world is traumatized by this. And in some ways, being outside of Palestine, being away from it all, hurts even more. Because you see your people being killed and starved and brutalized and slaughtered. And you can't do anything about it.
20:06 Speaker 01 And the people around you are justifying that slaughter. If you turn on a TV or if you open a mainstream news site, these sites are justifying your slaughter. And people are being killed over there because they look like me, because they're Palestinian like I'm Palestinian. And so we're watching this in diaspora with agony. We can't go, we can't, we can't heal our loved ones. We can't comfort the people that are there. I recently spoke to a doctor who's lost seventy five relatives, seventy five relatives in Gaza. And he's a medical doctor. And all he wants to do is get in there and just use his medical expertise to help his people. And he can't.
20:52 Speaker 01 And so we're watching it from afar. But our hearts are there. They are in the buildings that are being destroyed. They're in the hospitals that are being bombed. They are there and they are with the people.
21:05 Lex Fridman? You're somebody who's always rushed into the midst of a crisis. So what does it feel like on a personal level to not be able to do that here? To go to Gaza to help?
21:19 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's, it's really hard. I mean, when any group of people are killed,
21:29 Speaker 01 my instinct, and I think a lot of people, is to go there to help, whether it's a natural disaster or especially after an incident of terror.
21:39 Speaker 01 Wherever it is, right? It's rush there and do the best that you can to help people get through it.
21:47 Speaker 01 So it's been
21:50 Speaker 01 extremely hard to watch this from afar and feel like I can't do anything about it. And so that's why instead I think that most of us are driven to continue to be the voice of the voiceless. And I always say that if they've made them faceless, they can't make us voiceless. They have reduced our casualties in Palestine to a number. The number is hundreds.
22:17 Speaker 01 A day, over thirty thousand people, we're averaging ten thousand people a month. The fact that they've been turned into faceless numbers with no stories, with no humanity, makes it that much more important for us to tell their stories here. And to remind the world that you've lost your humanity if you can watch this unfold and not even have the decency to call for a ceasefire. I mean, that's the, that's where we've reached, that's how low it is right now. Calling for a ceasefire has now become radical. So we have to remind the world that if you're okay with the demolition of an entire town or a city, or whatever it is that you want to call Gaza,
23:02 Speaker 01 because it wasn't always the Gaza Strip. But if you're okay with this, and you're okay with this casualty count every single day, it's not just them who are being killed, it's your hearts that are dying. And I think that when I look back to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and I mentioned this, he wrote about Vietnam, he said that if America was to succumb to its spiritual death, the autopsy would read Vietnam. I would say that it would read Gaza now.
23:30 Lex Fridman? Speaking of the people, the faces, the voices, one of the people you've talked about, you've posted about, you've written about is Wal al-Dahdouh, him being hospitalized. He's a Palestinian journalist and bureau chief of Al Jazeera in Gaza City. What can you tell me about this man?
23:49 Speaker 01 If Wal al-Dahdouh wasn't Palestinian, he'd be on the cover of Time Magazine right now. He would be the most celebrated journalist in the world. Wal al-Dahdouh is from Gaza. He has been in Israeli prisons. He has been under Israeli airstrikes. He has seen the worst of the occupation before he's seen the worst of the genocide. While on TV, I mean, and this is, this is insane when you think about it. We have over a hundred journalists now, right? That's more than any conflict in history that have been killed. And there is sufficient evidence by international watchdogs that this is intentional, that journalists have been killed intentionally.
24:31 Speaker 01 But then their families, Wal was reporting on TV when an airstrike hits his wife, two kids, and a grandchild.
24:42 Speaker 01 He goes to the scene and he said this, you know, you never expect as a journalist to be the subject of the story. Suddenly, the camera is on him mourning over his dead wife and kids and grandkid.
24:57 Speaker 01 And he's saying, he even says it in Arabic, he says, "They're taking it out on our children. They're taking it out on our children."
25:06 Speaker 01 You know, I've heard this from multiple people that I've had relatives targeted that, "I wish it was me instead."
25:13 Speaker 01 He gets back on camera the same day because he feels a responsibility to continue to cover the lives of the people of Gaza. He understands that his story, as devastating as it is, is not unique in regards to the people of Gaza. That there are many people whose families have been killed in airstrikes. All 2 million people have been traumatized in some way. And so he gets back on camera, tells the story again. And then he is targeted himself.
25:46 Speaker 01 His arm struck, his cameraman, Samir Abu Deqah, dies in front of him. He bleeds out. Wal watches him bleed out for hours. And while any aid workers try to reach them in the building that they were in, snipers would shoot all of those that were rushing to Samir. So he watches his cameraman and one of his best friends bleed out to death. Wal goes to the hospital, his arm is wrapped up, gets treatment. He's back on camera the next day. A few weeks later,
26:20 Speaker 01 another child is killed again with his friend in a car. So this was a targeted airstrike, his son is driving. And his son and his best friend are hit in an airstrike. Wal leads the funeral prayer, is back on camera again and speaks with such dignity, with such compassion. You know, one of the things that... Always gets to me as a Palestinian, right? And as a Muslim too, is that we are portrayed to be these beasts and savages. Tell me a man that would be put through what Waal was put through and still stand on that,
27:01 Speaker 01 on that pulpit and in front of the world with such dignity, with such grace, continues to tell the story. Waal has become a hero to many of us and he would be a hero in a world that wasn't anti Palestinian. And unfortunately, Waal has not only lost his family, he's not only lost much of his own existence, but Waal is part of the greater story of Erasure. So even though he's telling the story of the people of Gaza and he is the story of the people of Gaza, most people will never learn about Waal al-Dahdouh.
27:43 Lex Fridman? You have posted videos and written about what is happening in Gaza since October 7th. What has been happening there? The individual stories and the broader impact on the 2 million people there?
27:55 Speaker 01 Gaza has been described as the world's largest open air prison. Unemployment, blockaded from all directions, no airport, regular added restrictions placed even on their ability to fish. So every aspect of Gaza's life has been under occupation. I would argue that it's an injustice to even call it an open air prison because inmates are not bombed in prisons routinely by the most sophisticated weapons in the world. Regular bombardment of Gaza. Every single person in Gaza has lived through multiple rounds of bombardment.
28:39 Speaker 01 It is deeply distressing. You know, I remember in 2021, there was an image that I will never forget of children having to go back to school after the bombardment of 2021. And next to them, they would have the empty chairs and the posters of the child that used to sit in that chair. I think what encapsulates it most for me.
29:10 Speaker 01 An image that I grew up with was the image of Mohammed Ad-Dura, who was in his father's lap over 20 years ago. And his father was begging for Israel to spare his child. And Mohammed was murdered in his lap. And you know what happened this last round? His other kids were murdered. So Mohammed's brothers were murdered. And his father's been on the run. Every single person in Gaza has witnessed multiple wars, has witnessed the greatest suffocation of occupation, has even had their diets restricted, and has suffered under Israel's state policy, which is called mowing the lawn. And everyone should look this up.
29:53 Speaker 01 This is what Israeli ministers refer to as routine bombardment of Gaza, mowing the lawn, which shows you that before they called us animals, they considered us insects. And unfortunately, the casualty counts get higher and higher every time, and people become more and more desperate, more and more helpless. Gaza has been, unfortunately, the worst manifestation of anti-Palestinian bigotry. Sorry, I mean, 60% of the population is a refugee population. What that means, and people do need to understand this, is that people move to Gaza from other parts of occupied territory to find refuge.
30:35 Speaker 01 And we're practically living on top of each other. There are people that are in the Gaza Strip that know that they had homes right beyond that apartheid wall. And those homes were stolen from them, and they can't even enter that territory anymore. And they know that on the other side of that wall, there's life. On the other side of that wall, there's opportunity. On the other side of that wall, you have a passport. You have an airport. You have the ability to travel. You have the ability to export and import. You can dream. But behind that wall, you are to live until the next airstrike. You are to live until Israel mows the lawn again and hope that you're not part of the grass. That's what Gaza has been all of these years.
31:20 Lex Fridman? So pragmatically and psychologically, it's very difficult to flourish. When you're just waiting for more bombardment.
31:28 Speaker 01 Because you know that it's around the corner. You always know when you live in Gaza that it's only a matter of time before the next bombs drop. You know, if you're in Gaza, that
31:40 Speaker 01 you are waiting for your death.
31:43 Speaker 01 People dream about going out in the world and pursuing education. People dream about going out in the world and pursuing economic opportunity. In Gaza, your idea of opportunity is an opportunity to see the next year. That has been the case. And so when we talk about, you know, this not existing in a vacuum. If people only hear about Gaza on October 7th, that is, that is a major part of the problem. And that is, again, part of the problem of our ignorance and our apathy. Right? Why is it that the plight of the people of Gaza is not brought up until an attack happens on Israel?
32:27 Lex Fridman? I've gotten a chance to witness a destroyed school in Ukraine.
32:35 Lex Fridman? It's something that
32:38 Lex Fridman? is really difficult to see.
32:40 Speaker 01 You have over 100 destroyed mosques. Every university in Gaza has been demolished. We're seeing TikTok videos of Israeli soldiers laughing and singing as they press a button. And we see the demolition of every single university in Gaza. Schools have been reduced to rubble. There's a cultural genocide as well. I want you to think about what you saw in Ukraine. Look, imagine coming back to school in Gaza in some destroyed building. You're missing legs. You're missing arms. You have white phosphorus burns. If you've ever seen what white phosphorus does to a person, there's a reason why it's a war crime. You have white phosphorus burns.
33:23 Speaker 01 Your mom's dead, your dad's dead, all of your uncles and aunts are dead. All of your siblings are dead. Somehow you got pulled out of the rubble.
33:31 Speaker 01 You know, in my own family, my father's in-laws, my father remarried after my mother passed away. And they're in Gaza. All of them were killed in an airstrike, except for an elderly aunt who somehow made it out of the rubble a day later. If you're a child that's been pulled out of the rubble, what are you going to grow up with? I mean, what are you supposed to feel? What are you supposed to think?
33:58 Speaker 01 And then you have, you know,
34:01 Speaker 01 racist commentators that say they could have turned that into a Singapore. You know, the Palestinians are the authors of their own destruction. Because if they wanted to, they could have turned this into a place of prosperity. But they keep on bringing destruction upon themselves. So at the root of this is a bigotry. And again, this idea that Palestinians are savages, they're animals. And the only way to deal with them is to continuously mow the lawn, while simultaneously expanding the occupation and erasing anything that was ever called Palestine, and any human being that was ever called a Palestinian.
34:41 Lex Fridman? So those kids growing up in Gaza now, to you, they have almost no choice but to have hatred for Israel?
34:52 Speaker 01 It's human. I mean, look, any child that is under that type of oppression is going to hate their oppressor. I don't care who you are, I don't care what you are. But here's my problem with how that gets brought up.
35:09 Speaker 01 You're talking about the future of the security of Israel. Even some people that speak about it, seemingly from a place of being well-meaning, that say the only way that Israel can have its security is to stop killing Palestinians. And so the future of Israel depends upon Palestinians not hating Israel so much. And so we've got to stop tormenting these people so that they don't grow up to want to torment us. You've already decided then whose life is worth more than the other. And so instead of talking about the future of Israeli lives, why don't you talk about the present of Palestinian lives? Instead of talking about whether or not your state will be secure in the future, Talk to me about why you're killing children now.
35:53 Speaker 01 Two thirds of the 30,000 civilians are women and children. And so we can't talk about what these children are going to grow up with. We should talk about whether or not these children are going to grow up in the first place. And that should be what dominates our conscience right now. And what drives our policies and what drives our emotions right now.
36:17 Lex Fridman? So when I had a conversation with Elon Musk, he suggested that what Israel should do is conspicuous acts of kindness. So do as much positive
36:30 Lex Fridman? things in Gaza as possible. On a basic individual human level and at a policy level at every level. What do you think about that?
36:38 Speaker 01 I mean, you don't pass out candy in a concentration camp. You end the occupation. And so there has to be a solution that is beyond merely acts of kindness. At the end of the day, if you're occupying a people,
36:53 Speaker 01 you have to remove that occupation. Apartheid is not dealt with by acts of kindness on the part of the occupying power. Apartheid is dealt with by ending apartheid. And so there has to be a level of accountability. It's not just acts of kindness. It's not just treating the people with more dignity. It's giving them the ability to pursue their own dignity. There's a reason why it's called Palestinian self determination. The United States likes to use it in all of its inconsequential statements that we need Palestinian self determination too. But the United States also voted against 138 states in the United Nations to allow for Palestinian self determination.
37:34 Speaker 01 Self determination means I get to pursue my own course of worth. I get to pursue my own happiness. I don't have to depend on the benevolence of my occupier. And when my occupier feels like, you know, throwing me a few more crumbs, it has to end. There has to be a point now where the world says this is not sustainable. It's not just about ending the present genocide. A ceasefire is the bare minimum. I think any decent human being. Would be calling for a ceasefire right now, but at some point you cease occupation, you cease apartheid, because what led to the ability of Israel to carry out a genocide without any accountability was that the global arena has permitted it to do so,
38:18 Speaker 01 largely due to American obstruction of justice. Is violence an effective method of resistance? So, the framework that I would propose is that
38:35 Speaker 01 Dr. King mentioned that peace is not the absence of violence, it's the presence of justice. And so occupation and apartheid are violence even in their most benevolent manifestations.
38:52 Speaker 01 The default of occupation is that it is unjustified. The default of apartheid is that it is unjustified and it must be dealt with. The default of resistance to occupation and apartheid is that it is justified, but there can be transgressions even in resisting occupation and apartheid, right? And I come to this from an Islamic perspective. My moral framework is Islam. The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, was outraged when he saw a woman or a child that was dead from the other side, the side of his persecutors. And so, yes, you know, we have a saying as Muslims that they are not our teachers.
39:35 Speaker 01 Our oppressors are not our teachers. But the concept of resistance to occupation, it is morally justified, it is justified by international law. Any occupied people have the right to defend themselves. We talk about Israel's right to defend itself. Israel is the occupier. Any occupied people by international law have the right to defend themselves.
40:02 Speaker 01 And any occupation is unjustified and illegal. And so that's where I start from. That's the point that I come to this with. I think that the problem is, is that the Palestinians are told, find better ways to resist. And then they are demonized when they try to find any other way to resist. You know, if you go back a few years ago, you had the Great Return March. People in Gaza marched to the wall in what was one of the most inspiring protests or demonstrations that I had ever seen. Marched to the wall, nonviolent protest. And snipers took out their legs.
40:45 Speaker 01 AP actually documented that Israeli snipers had knee counts. Where you had an Israeli soldier that would say, I took out 45 knees. They actually had to register a scroll of knee counts. And so you have all these kids in Gaza walking around without legs now because they were targeted by snipers when they marched to the wall. We're told to find methods of nonviolent resistance. But when we boycott, when we launch, you know, boycotts around the world in response to this transgression, in response to this ongoing oppression that the world powers have shown either the inability or the unwillingness to rein in, we're told that that's antisemitic, even though it is based on the South African method
41:29 Speaker 01 of bringing an end to the apartheid regime there. So don't respond with violence. Don't respond nonviolently. Don't protest. Don't try to use people power in the face of global impotence at the political level. Instead, let's just keep talking about the two-state solution. And while talking about the two-state solution, if you were to look at a map.
41:54 Speaker 01 Under every single Israeli regime, conservative or liberal, whatever it is, the settlements have expanded. More Palestinian land has disappeared. More Palestinians have been dispossessed. More Palestinians have been killed. And so we have these little pieces of land that keep on shrinking. And Jerusalem keeps disappearing. And there is aggression, whether Palestinians are resisting or not. But then we're told, "Why can't you people just pursue peace? Why can't you just believe in a better way?" All along, we're hearing Israeli ministers become far more radical and open about their intentions to wipe us off the face of the earth. And that is actually their policy. It's not just slogans.
42:39 Speaker 01 It's not fringe elements. Actual Israeli ministers, starting from the prime minister himself, who has executed a policy of the removal of all Palestinian lands and Palestinian lives. And then we're told, "Peace, peace, peace, peace." And it is awfully ugly when you use the language of peace to suffocate the work of justice. You know, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., one of his early sermons was something along the lines of "When Peace Is Obnoxious." "When Peace Is Obnoxious." It was in the 1950s, around the Montgomery bus boycott. And he talked about how this obsession with the language of peace is usually used to try to keep people in status quo and make them complacent with their miserable situation.
43:24 Speaker 01 That has been the story of the Palestinian people, that they've been told that if you do things differently, then you will find peace. But everything the Palestinians have tried, inside and outside, has been met with repression. The most violent forms of it, there in Gaza and beyond. And so, look, I start from the place of wanting to see peace. I want to see a situation in which no innocent people lose their lives.
43:57 Speaker 01 But we have to analyze the situation with some justice, with some fairness. What would any group of people do in this situation? That doesn't mean that you hope for hell. That means that you analyze the existing circumstances of hell, which was life in Gaza even before October 7.
44:16 Lex Fridman? That said, you did talk about wala akhtakdu and dignity.
44:22 Lex Fridman? And you mentioned transgressions. So there is places where violence can go too far.
44:28 Speaker 01 Absolutely. So violence, again, the point is, is that you, you ask yourself why we've been silent about the violence all of this time. And you know what? When people say, well, what about this? What about that? My response is this. What I would love to see is effective international bodies of justice being able to rein in any party that has committed an act of aggression or committed an act of injustice and hold them accountable. Any reasonable human being would say, yeah, you know what? There should be effective international bodies that can rein in parties that can't be reined in domestically, that could stop the violence, that could assign blame properly,
45:13 Speaker 01 and then have methods of accountability. The problem is, is that Israel has been made invincible in the international arena because of the United States. And then we wonder why there's such a rise in global anti-American sentiment. It's not because of American freedom. It's because America is directly participating, the United States government is directly participating in the worst genocide that we have ever seen in our lives. Right? Playing out on screen.
45:42 Speaker 01 You know, on social media. And we can't do anything about it. So I think that the point is, is that we need those international bodies. We need methods of effective accountability. And I would love to see blame properly assigned. And anyone that kills any innocent human being, take into account, anyone that is guilty of a war crime, take into account. We have to ask ourselves, why is it that Israel has violated over 63 United Nations resolutions, has expanded its occupation, has killed over 600 Palestinians before October 7? Why is it that Israel cannot be held accountable? And so when you talk about, you know, words that get thrown around.
46:24 Speaker 01 You know, that are used to justify violence against more innocent people. You know, when I'm asked about terrorism, is it only terrorism if it's a non-state actor? If someone's sitting inside a room, you know, of suits and can press a button and terrorize thousands of people and murder innocent people with no consequences? How is that not terrorism? So if terrorism is only to be assigned to non-state actors, then it's a word without function. In fact, it's a word that justifies more terror that has then reigned upon innocent populations. We have to have moral consistency. Children should not be killed.
47:08 Speaker 01 Noncombatants should not be targeted. We can all agree upon that. Why aren't there proper investigative bodies and then proper international bodies of accountability then? That can execute their findings in a way that makes the world a better place, in a way that actually brings about more peace. And so, you know, I think this is where we're at right now. And this is the frustration and this is the place that the Palestinians have been left.
47:34 Lex Fridman? So to you, violence becomes terrorism when women and children, noncombatants, are killed, no matter who is doing the killing?
47:44 Speaker 01 Absolutely.
47:46 Speaker 01 Absolutely.
47:49 Lex Fridman? In America,
47:52 Lex Fridman? for you, for other Palestinians, other Muslims in your community, what has all of this been like?
48:02 Speaker 01 It feels like there's a return to some of the days after 9/11, the dehumanization, the feeling of complete disregard for our humanity at the level of government, at the level of media.
48:20 Speaker 01 Feeling of an increase in surveillance, the feeling in an increase in bigotry.
48:26 Speaker 01 People are losing their jobs.
48:30 Speaker 01 And people are being berated on campuses and grocery stores and people are being killed. You know, I went to the funeral of a six year old boy who was killed directly due to anti Palestinian propaganda. And so I think that a lot of us are feeling a return to that, but we also refuse to be cornered into a position where we are told to perpetually condemn acts of violence and not speak about the violence that's committed against us here or abroad.
49:06 Lex Fridman? Can you tell the story of this boy, Wadi Al Fayyam? He's a six year old Palestinian American boy who was stabbed 26 times in his home in Plainfield Township, Illinois. It was found to be a hate crime motivated by Islamophobia. And
49:26 Lex Fridman? the attacker said, you Muslims must die.
49:32 Speaker 01 So before Wadi was killed, Wadi was killed on a Saturday. It was the immediate Saturday after October 7th. I remember on Friday,
49:43 Speaker 01 uh, media starts to reach out to every Imam in the country, every Muslim leader in the country and say, what are you going to do about this global day of jihad? What are you going to do about the global day of jihad? It's like, what are you talking about? It's like, well, Hamas has called for a global day of jihad. So how are you going to stop Muslims from attacking people? All right, so it's Friday and I'm like, well, this is the first I'm hearing from you. And I remember responding to a local reporter. Most people I just ignored, I responded to a local reporter. I said, I've got people in my community that have already lost 10, 15 relatives at that point. Now it's 2030. And you haven't said a word. And now you're reaching out to me about the potential violence of Muslims in America. This is great. This is just like 9 11, right?
50:28 Speaker 01 What are you going to do to restrain you angry Muslims from responding to what's happening overseas and responding to the call of a global day of jihad? Guess what? That night.
50:42 Speaker 01 This man takes out a military knife and attacks a six-year-old boy. A six-year-old Palestinian boy. By the way, it gets worse the more details that you know. And I recently had a chance to go and speak to his mom. Cause she was in the hospital when I was there for the funeral, so I had a chance to visit her.
51:01 Speaker 01 Not too long ago. And she was attacked also. She was attacked first. It was actually their landlord. So Hanan, the mother, was at home with Wadiar, six-year-old boy. Landlord comes in and with absolutely no emotion, just charges at her. Starts with her. She was able to fight him off. Stabbed her initially seven or eight times with a military-grade knife. She fought him off.
51:31 Speaker 01 Escaped to call 911.
51:35 Speaker 01 And while she's calling 911, she hears Wadiar. Wadiar ran up to the man. Calling him Uncle Joe. Because the landlord prior to that had been kind to them. Used to give Wadiar toys. Wadiar had an infectious, beautiful smile. Every picture you see of that kid. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful smile. And so Wadiar runs up to him, says Uncle Joe. He runs up to him to give him a hug, even though he's carrying a military-grade knife with blood on it. Cause Wadiar doesn't believe that harm can come to him from that man. And Hanan didn't think that he would do anything to her kid.
52:18 Speaker 01 Even in that fit of rage, the last thing that she says she heard was, oh, no.
52:24 Speaker 01 You know, Wadiar says, oh, no. And then he starts to stab him 26 times, says, you Muslims must die.
52:35 Speaker 01 Usually in a scene like that, police are hesitant to classify something as a hate crime. It was classified as a hate crime the very same day.
52:45 Speaker 01 The thing is, is that who's complicit in that hate crime? What filled that man's head? For him to believe that he was doing an act of good by murdering a six-year-old Palestinian boy?
52:56 Speaker 01 And in reality,
52:59 Speaker 01 Uncle Joe was motivated by President Joe Biden, who repeated a debunked report that there were forty beheaded Israeli babies. And he said, I saw forty beheaded Israeli babies. The White House walked it back afterwards in a statement that no one reads because it was factually false. But
53:22 Speaker 01 Uncle Joe heard it and had been binge watching media about these violent Palestinians. And suddenly the propaganda overcame his own humanity and what he knew of that family. And he went in and ruined their lives. And you know, now, you know, just like any, any mom, you know, she hasn't moved a thing. His bike is still in the same place it was. Toys are still in the same place. She's left with this great void, this great emptiness. If that was the only crime, it would be enough to wake this country up and say, oh, no, this is not where we need to go. Oh, no. Right? The last thing she heard him say was, oh, no.
54:05 Speaker 01 If that was it. And I got the news, by the way, when I was ironically at a protest. We were protesting on Saturday downtown Dallas. And I started getting all these texts about what happened in Chicago. Oh, no. Right? Like,
54:23 Speaker 01 no Muslims attacked anyone. Media was in a frenzy over the global day of jihad. I got called by national news outlets and local news outlets. What are you gonna do about Muslims? That are gonna turn into monsters and start killing people in the streets? Next thing we know, we have a dead six-year-old Palestinian boy. Went to his funeral.
54:45 Speaker 01 And that's kind of speaks to the proximity part of things.
54:51 Speaker 01 Yeah, it felt like stepping into Gaza, right? For a moment, it didn't feel like America. Didn't feel like America. Felt like stepping into Gaza. His casket was wrapped in a Palestinian flag. There was not just sadness at his funeral, but a deep sense of anger. At the funeral, some of his family members shouted out, "Joe Biden, you did this. Joe Biden, you did this." And, you know, I remember the next day, it was right after the funeral, looking at the front page of CNN. And the story of Wadiyyat was buried
55:33 Speaker 01 in the last, in the last section. And it was right over all these meaningless ads. And I thought to myself, that's it? Like, if this was, if this was an Arab man, let's be real, let's be honest here. If this was a Palestinian landlord that stabbed a six-year-old Jewish boy to death, this would have gotten more attention. It would have been the front page of the news. And rightfully so, people would have grieved over the insanity of stabbing a six-year-old boy 26 times. Wadiyyat became an afterthought the very next day. And so it's an extension of the bigotry, an extension of the racism.
56:18 Speaker 01 And there's so much that happens after that. There's the terrible stabbing of Detroit synagogue president Samantha Wall. And it's horrible. She was stabbed in her driveway. Immediately, front page of all the news outlets. Immediately, it's the main news story. And immediately, the implications are, there go the Muslims. The Palestinians have lost their minds. The Muslims have, they are who we thought they were. Right? That's what it is. They are who we thought they were. They went and they stabbed a synagogue president. It turned out it wasn't a hate crime, although it's an awful crime. It turned out it wasn't a hate crime. Wadiyyat is an afterthought. And people reached out to me afterwards. Expressing condolences.
57:02 Speaker 01 And I responded to them, those who have justified the genocide in Gaza, but that were somehow offering condolences for Wadiya, privately, of course. You know, by the way, if a Muslim would have committed that crime, every single Muslim leader would have had press in front of their door to condemn that crime. We would have all been made complicit. Had people reach out to me, say, "I'm sorry about what happened with Wadiya. It's terrible. You know, I saw you at the funeral praying for you." My response was, "What's the difference between Wadiya and a boy in Gaza? What's the difference between me and Wadiya? I'm a Palestinian child. My parents made it out of Palestine. I was born in this country.
57:44 Speaker 01 If I didn't have the opportunity to grow up here and to become the person that I became, you would have been justifying my murder right now. You would have been okay with my genocide. You would have been giving the talking points to the press to erase me. But you feel sorry because Wadiya was killed." And I think this is when we say that anti-Palestinian bigotry is an extension of Islamophobia. If a mosque gets targeted here, people rightfully rush to protect that mosque and say, "This is horrible and it shouldn't happen." But when you have an Israeli soldier bombing a mosque and laughing like a maniac on video and it's going viral on TikTok and there's no way to rein that in and you don't have a word of condemnation about it, in fact, you are standing in the way of a ceasefire,
58:29 Speaker 01 then you're a hypocrite. There's no way around it. You are a hypocrite. What's the difference between a mosque here and a mosque there? What's the difference between a Palestinian life here and a Palestinian life there? If you're okay with me being murdered there, don't say that you care about my life here." And so that hypocrisy has been laid bare. We have said multiple times, "Masks are falling. Masks are falling." People that we thought were decent people somehow have found it in themselves to justify a genocide.
59:00 Speaker 01 There is no shortage at this point of videos. And again, when you, you know, I could have made the excuse for you maybe in the first few weeks. You know, that you hadn't seen enough. But with all social media suppression across all platforms, there isn't a single platform that hasn't suppressed Palestinian voices. With all that suppression, there are enough videos at this point of children whose heads have been blown off, of children walking around without limbs, of parents carrying their, their kids in bags, not body bags. I mean grocery bags, because they don't even have body bags and screaming out and saying, why are you doing this to me? Make it stop. And you come back and you tell the person Hamas's fault.
59:45 Speaker 01 Where is your humanity? Where is your sense of decency? Isn't that the logic of the so-called terrorism that you condemn? Yeah, you can wipe out entire populations. You should have talked to Hamas. Hamas's fault. All the kids in the West Bank, all like, where does this end? So what's your, what, what are your moral boundaries here? Right? So if, if that's the logic that you're okay with, then in that case, when there's a mass shooter in a school in the United States, just bomb the whole school. In fact, bomb the whole town if you can't find the mass shooter. You know, where does this end for you? Right? And so when I say people have lost their humanity, they're killing us overseas, but their hearts are dying. People have lost their humanity.
1:00:29 Speaker 01 They've lost any sense of morality and their moral boundaries. And being there and, and, I mean, participating in his funeral, it was, it was anger. I'm not used to that. I'm not used to that. You know, I'm, I'm an Imam. I pastor to people. I went to Christchurch and that was the worst I'd ever seen before, where 50 Muslims were killed by a white supremacist. And he murdered them with such callousness. And I remember being at those funerals. And yeah, I mean, there was anger, but it was just profound sadness because at least the rest of the world could all come out in one voice and say, that's wrong.
1:01:12 Speaker 01 Now, most of the world sees what's happening in Gaza and says, "This is disgusting." Most of the world sees this and says, "This is a genocide." But we happen to live in this bubble here where we're constantly being told, "We did this to ourselves." And that's the same logic that led to our initial expulsion, 1948. What was the crime of those 700,000 Palestinians that were driven out of their home in 1948? What did they do? They didn't do, they did not commit the Holocaust. They didn't have a mass murder of Jews at their hands. What did they do? What crime were they paying for?
1:01:51 Speaker 01 And so, it's been the consistent theme. This is the story of our people, not since October 7th. This is the story of our people for the last 75 years.
1:01:59 Lex Fridman? There is a deep geopolitical connection between the United States and that part of the world. What is the role of US politicians in all of this?
1:02:10 Speaker 01 You know, James Baldwin wrote about how Israel was created as an extension of United States policy to be a colonial entity at the gates of the Middle East and to function essentially as a military base out there and as a means of extending its policy, you know, throughout the Middle East. And it has functioned as such. The United States is not an honest peace broker. It never has been an honest peace broker. The United States has never shown any meaningful inclination towards peace, has guarded and protected Israel from international accountability,
1:02:55 Speaker 01 has made Israel invincible. The United States is not just responsible at the governmental level for...
1:03:03 Speaker 01 The genocide, it's responsible for letting it get to this point in the first place. We have funded that arsenal. We've given them the most sophisticated weapons in the world to test on the most desperate population in the world. We've given them the weapons.
1:03:25 Speaker 01 It's been bipartisan. We have issued at most inconsequential statements of condemnation. But at the same time, stopped any international body of law from actually holding it accountable. So the United States, at this point, unfortunately, has rightfully lost all credibility. It should remove itself
1:03:49 Speaker 01 from this because it is not an honest peace broker. I think Americans are probably sick of us paying for wars in general. I think Americans are probably sick of our tax dollars going to funding a genocide while we have a rise of homelessness and income disparity here in the United States. I think that Americans probably don't like that we're making ourselves so deeply unpopular in the world because of Israel's actions. So in the immediate moment, make this stop. The United States could have had a ceasefire a long time ago. The United States could have ended this genocide right away.
1:04:34 Speaker 01 The reason why this is continuing is because of US foreign policy. And in the process of Joe Biden talking about managing this crisis and talking about making things better, there have only been more bills that have come out of Congress. In fact, he's bypassed Congress to fund the arsenal to keep replenishing the arsenal. Stop paying for weapons. Stop paying for someone else's war crimes. Stop protecting another country as it commits these war crimes. And if you can't be an honest peace broker, get out of the process.
1:05:07 Lex Fridman? So there's money that you just mentioned and bills, and then there's rhetoric, which you also criticized, that he spoke about the beheaded babies and things of that nature. So where has Joe Biden fallen short?
1:05:22 Speaker 01 We need another podcast. That's going to take a few hours to talk about where Joe Biden has failed. For one, the first time he seemed to find the word Palestinian in his vocabulary was when he accused the Palestinians of lying about the death toll in Gaza. And then that turned out to also be false. In fact, the numbers that were coming out of the Gaza Health Ministry, according to multiple international bodies, have been underreporting Palestinian casualty counts. Israeli intelligence has said that the civilian count or the death toll is actually higher than what's been coming out of the Gaza Health Ministry. So he's failed on that front. He has failed to speak to Palestinian humanity. He has spoken
1:06:05 Speaker 01 with deep passion and concern, as has Anthony Blinken, about, you know, the devastation in Israel and the way that people are feeling in Israel, and has shown nothing of that sort towards Palestinians. We don't want the rhetoric. We really don't want the rhetoric. You know, when people say, call for a ceasefire, the United States has had an opportunity and has an opportunity to really walk back and reflect on its entire policy towards Israel-Palestine. This is a moment of reflection. This is a moment of restoration, if you want it to
1:06:48 Speaker 01 be, right? And to think about what we've enabled in the first place. He's shown absolutely no real empathy.
1:06:59 Speaker 01 I think that he is under great delusion and thinking that the Muslim community or people of conscience are going to forgive this, are going to forget this come November. You can't tell us that, well, at least I don't have the Trump Muslim ban while also carrying out a genocide primarily against Muslims and think that the Muslims are still going to vote for you. And so we will make him hear us at the polls. And any politician for Congress or otherwise, that has not called for a ceasefire, that has been a part of this dehumanization, we will make sure that we see support for them in any way as a community. It's only right.
1:07:41 Lex Fridman? So Biden has lost or is losing the hearts and the support of the Muslim Palestinian people and Muslim people in America.
1:07:50 Speaker 01 I don't know if he ever had the hearts of the Muslim community, to be honest with you. I mean, I personally was never a Joe Biden fan. I think a lot of people felt the same. You know, this country unfortunately leads to the, the way that our political system is built is that you're always voting for the lesser of the two evils. That's always the way that is. It's analyzing which evil is lesser, right? And when people say, if you vote for Donald Trump, and I'm not planning to vote for Donald Trump either, but if you don't vote for Joe Biden, right, if you don't vote for Joe Biden, right, then you are destroying democracy. I'm like a democracy that's given us a choice between Donald Trump and Joe Biden is already a failed democracy. And so he, he never had the hearts and minds of the Muslim
1:08:29 Speaker 01 community. People always saw past his rhetoric. He always has had a terrible disposition towards Palestine. He's always had a terrible disposition towards the Muslim world. You know, his segregationist past comes out sometimes when he starts talking about the Muslim world and you can hear the racism in his voice and you can hear the way that he talks about Palestinian life in such devalued fashion. So he lost us a long time ago, but he's definitely not getting us back after this in any way. And I can't speak for all Muslims, but I think that come November,
1:09:10 Speaker 01 he and all of those politicians, especially in swing states, that have turned their backs on the Muslim community. And not just the Muslim community, by the way. Sixty seven percent of this country wants a ceasefire. Three fourths of Democratic voters want a ceasefire. Half of Republican voters want a ceasefire. Right, it's not just the Muslim community. This is not some radical opinion to call for a ceasefire. And every single politician that has refused to hear us is going to pay a price at the polls, as they should. That doesn't mean that we're under any illusion that the other side promises us anything better. In fact, it feels like Republicans have simply rushed to out-race us the Democrats,
1:09:52 Speaker 01 to outpace them in terms of talking about how they're going to be more unapologetic in supporting Israel unconditionally. Right, like, it's been pathetic.
1:10:06 Speaker 01 But something has to change. And I think that Americans of conscience have to look at how this failed political system has hurt people here and abroad and talk about how to transcend that with just more humanity. Again, when you have sixty seven percent of the American public that wants a ceasefire, but only a handful of congressmen out of over five hundred can muster up the courage in the face of these super PACs to say that, you know, we should stop the genocide. Right, and it's like, what are you asking for here? You're asking for the genocide to stop. You're asking for Israeli hostages to be brought home. You're asking for Palestinian prisoners to be released. You're asking for peace and to start carving the path out to end this once and for all.
1:10:52 Speaker 01 Right, in the most ambiguous way possible, by the way, because there aren't many radical American politicians. All right, it's the way that the system is. In the most ambiguous, bare way possible. And you can't even bring yourself to do that. This is already a failed democracy then, all the while, again. You know, it always boggles my mind. If you're from the America First crew, what's America First about funneling billions and billions and billions of dollars to Israel while it carries out this genocide? While people are starving here? And if you're part of the Human Rights Crew and, you know, Progressive Crew, it's, you know, they have a term called Progressive Except Palestine, right? P E P, Progressive Except Palestine. Where are all your notions of social justice?
1:11:36 Speaker 01 You talk about policing here, but you don't talk about who trains our police departments in many major cities and the type of brutality that's being carried out there. You talk about human rights at the border here, but you don't talk about the assault on people at the border there. You talk about all of these things here, but you somehow use the exact same framings against the people there. So it's, it's exposed, I think, the moral bankruptcy of both political polar opposites that exist in this country right now. And hopefully evoked a greater societal sentiment. Say, this is ridiculous. You know, one of the things that is happening is that more people are getting their news
1:12:20 Speaker 01 outside of legacy media outlets. You can't hide that many dead babies anymore. You just can't. More people have woken up to the Palestinian plight now than ever before. More people are outraged that this has been our American foreign policy all throughout, you know, Democratic and Republican administrations. This is what we've been paying for? This is what we've been excusing? And Israeli leaders literally spit in the faces of whoever the American president is and says, yeah, we don't care what they tell us to do. You know, American leadership says, we're pushing Israel to minimize the casualties, to, to get less indiscriminate with its bombing,
1:13:02 Speaker 01 to manage the crisis, get a few more humanitarian corridors in, to make sure that Gaza is not evacuated and not ethnically cleansed, to make sure Palestinians can come back. And Netanyahu comes on TV and says, "From the river to the sea." How ironic is that? "From the river to the sea," and that is his policy. "We're going to make sure that Israel controls from the river to the sea, and we're going to push Palestinians into Sinai, and Muslim countries need to take them in." You have Israeli ministers, national defense ministers, saying, you know, things openly, right? Like, "We want to thin out the population, i.e. ethnic cleansing. We want to remove people."
1:13:43 Speaker 01 And the Muslim world needs to step up and take in these refugees, right? And the American administration, you know, or the American president says, and the American secretary of state says, "You know, we're talking to them, and we're making sure that that's not going to happen. And if one of their ministers says something, Blinken maybe tweets out something about how that's not going to happen, but then it happens anyway, and then we still write them the checks." So I think most of the American public is probably going to get sick of this at some point. And just people of decency and people of conscience are going to say, "Yeah, this is not something we want to be a part of anymore."
1:14:17 Lex Fridman? Do you think there's something that Donald Trump can do to help move this in the right direction?
1:14:27 Speaker 01 Trump's first words were about how he's going to be worse on this, right? So he talked about how he's going to deport people, revoke visas of, you know, students that are part of these pro-Palestinian rallies.
1:14:44 Lex Fridman? Also, the focus was on the rallies versus what's going on abroad.
1:14:49 Speaker 01 Yeah, but look, we had a Donald Trump presidency. He moved the embassy to Jerusalem. He was not better on this. Unfortunately, this is a bipartisan problem. And so, again, we're under no illusion here. Like, we're not looking to Donald Trump as a savior here. But we are going to penalize Joe Biden. And that's, you know, I can't speak for everybody, but I think that that's where a lot of our minds are at right now.
1:15:11 Lex Fridman? You spoke at the November 4th demonstration in Washington called the Free Palestine March. It had a lot of people, several hundred thousand people there. What do you remember from that experience?
1:15:24 Speaker 01 Well, the first thing I remember is that there was no news coverage of it. So 400,000 people march on DC, one of the largest marches in history. It was nowhere to be found in mainstream media coverage, whereas when the Stand with Israel rally happened, between the 300,000 strong Palestine rally and the 400,000 strong Palestine rally, there was a Stand with Israel rally where congressmen were bussed from Congress to speak at that rally, Democrats and Republicans and high-profile celebrities. And it was, you know, livestreamed across multiple places. I mean, I have to say this, the ICJ, if that wasn't the greatest display of media bias
1:16:07 Speaker 01 in the domain of United States mainstream media, then I don't know what is. They livestreamed the Israeli defense on multiple news outlets, defending itself against the case for genocide, and completely omitted the South African presentation of the crimes of Israel the day before. So what I remember first and foremost about the protests is that they were nowhere to be found on mainstream media, which was expected. But what I also remember from the actual day of and from all of the pro-Palestine rallies is that I have never seen a more multi-faith, more diverse group of people consistently coming out for Palestine against the genocide in Gaza that I have this time around.
1:16:52 Speaker 01 And I think that has been the experience all around. There's been a pronounced Jewish presence, Jewish Voice for Peace, If Not Now, other anti-Zionist Jewish groups, groups that are against the genocide, against the occupation, former Israeli soldiers even, you know, that have been showing up at these protests. There's been a pronounced presence from Native American groups, indigenous groups, all across the board, right? Christians, Jews, Muslims.
1:17:23 Speaker 01 I've never seen more diversity at these rallies than I've seen this time around, which I think is a sign of where things are going. And if you look at the under thirty-five opinion polls, it's very clear that there's a generational gap here, that the country is moving into a more coherent direction and understanding what has been happening over there. And people from all backgrounds are standing up to it now.
1:17:49 Lex Fridman? What do you think about the protests on campus against Israel?
1:17:55 Speaker 01 Every protest I've been to has had the exact same tenor, has had the exact same messaging, but you always have that idiot or two that shows up with a sign. And no one knows who that idiot is, ironically. Never comes with anybody else. Always shows up somehow in the middle of the protest and puts up a sign that says something completely contrary to the messaging of the protests. And all the cameras shift towards that guy. I see it every single time. But the overwhelming tenor of all of these protests has been consistent. It's been calling for freedom. It's been calling for liberation. It's been calling for an end to the genocide, a ceasefire, an end to the occupation, and an end to the apartheid.
1:18:40 Speaker 01 I will tell you what many people are not seeing. Columbia University, two IDF soldiers, former IDF soldiers spraying Palestinian protesters with skunk water, which is what the IDF uses on Palestinian protesters and sometimes on worshippers on their way to Masjid Al-Aqsa, which has multiple health repercussions. And so I was reading about how one of the students that was sprayed on campus at Columbia, Palestinian student.
1:19:14 Speaker 01 You know, has showered at this point of us doing this podcast 11 times, cannot get the smell out of her, has suffered all sorts of health issues as a result of being sprayed. Again, people are not seeing the other side here. People are not seeing what we've had to deal with at these protests, right? The open bigotry, and I want you to think about this, by the way. People go and serve in the IDF and then come back to the United States or the United Kingdom, and they're not stigmatized for participating in apartheid policies or participating in a genocide. How am I supposed to feel as a Palestinian, knowing that this guy right next to me participated in murdering my relatives in Gaza?
1:19:57 Speaker 01 Right? And has open reign to say what he wants to say or do what he wants to do. And so we haven't seen the other side of that as well. But I'd recommend to anyone that's talking about, you know, pro-Palestine protests to actually go see one. If you go to the protests, you listen to what's being said, and you don't just capture, I mean, you got 400,000 people.
1:20:20 Speaker 01 Don't just go try to find, you're gonna find four stupid people at 400, at a protest of 400,000 people, right? Because the protest scene is always messy. But I think that this is a sign of the outrage and the anger and the frustration that many students have about being silenced, again, in the media, in academic settings. Professors are losing their jobs. Students are having their faces put on trucks, being doxxed. These shady watch lists that get put out, I'm on a few of them as well, and I just don't care anymore, right? But you got these shady watch lists. People are losing their, their jobs at law firms.
1:21:04 Speaker 01 They're losing all of their future opportunities, young Palestinian students, because of something that they tweeted that's been taken out of context 10 years ago. Right? When they were 17 years old. It's ridiculous. And so I think that, you know, we have to, we have to listen to the overwhelming majority of voices of people that are demonstrating for justice, not demonstrating against anyone, but demonstrating for people. Again, there's a large pronounced Jewish presence at every single pro-Palestine march. In fact, if you look at the organizations, the groups that have taken over Capitol Hill and, you know,
1:21:46 Speaker 01 train stations, it's been if not now, not, not in our name, never again means for anyone, right? It's been Jewish groups, many Jewish anti-occupation groups that have been at the forefront. And I think that that's where we have to pay attention to the beauty of how diverse this movement for Free Palestine has actually been.
1:22:08 Lex Fridman? So the average sentiment is anti-occupation, not anti-Semitic?
1:22:15 Speaker 01 It's incredibly lazy, incredibly lazy to say that anti-Zionism or that anti-occupation is anti-Semitic. First and foremost, the Palestinians are a Semitic people. That's number one. Number two, look, I'm proud of my community. My community has stood against antisemitism in this country. The Muslim community has been at the forefront of condemning antisemitism. We have stood in front of synagogues. We have stood with the Jewish community when the Jewish community is attacked. This is about occupation. This is a story of a colonial entity that has driven us out of our homes and has done so in such a way
1:22:56 Speaker 01 that has forced us to try to be the voice of a people that are being exterminated overseas right now. This is not an antisemitic movement. This is a pro-freedom movement.
1:23:10 Lex Fridman? Do you think the protests ever go too far?
1:23:14 Speaker 01 The protest scene is a messy scene. And so, again, you're gonna have sometimes that odd speaker, or people get carried away in their emotions. And yes, sometimes people chant things or do things that are contrary to the protests. It's pretty unfair when you judge the entire protest movement by some of these incidents that have happened at protests. And you don't pay attention to what they're protesting about in the first place, which is a genocide. Right now, everything is secondary to ending a genocide that is ongoing. In the course of this discussion, it's not an exaggeration to say that at least thirty, forty people would have been killed just over the last few hours because we're averaging one hundred thirty-five to one hundred fifty a day. So
1:23:59 Speaker 01 everything else is secondary to that. This is where we all need to be right now as people of conscience. How do we stop this? Because every single day is deeply costly.
1:24:09 Lex Fridman? Do you think there has been a rise of antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate in the US?
1:24:16 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think that's factual. Look, antisemitism is always to be condemned. It's wrong. It's something that, as a Muslim community and as people of conscience, we have always taken a stand against. Jewish people should not be attacked for being Jewish people here or anywhere else. Synagogues should be protected. And if a person is attacked for being Jewish, we will be the first to go and to stand with them and to reject that attack on them.
1:24:48 Speaker 01 And there has been, as I said, an inspiring, pronounced Jewish presence in the movement to end the occupation. And so, we're being morally consistent here. As far as the rise in Islamophobia, it is felt. It's underreported. And it is,
1:25:07 Speaker 01 you know, part of the same framing that has led to the devastation of our people overseas. So there's a rise in Islamophobia. There is a rise in antisemitism. There's a rise in hatred. All of that is true, but there's also an ongoing genocide, and that should be our priority right now to end.
1:25:24 Lex Fridman? I think we spoke last time about a year ago.
1:25:30 Lex Fridman? How is your view on Benjamin Netanyahu evolve over time?
1:25:35 Speaker 01 Benjamin Netanyahu has committed himself to the erasure of Palestinian people and Palestinian symbols and Palestinian land from the very beginning of his political career. This is who he has been. We just haven't been listening to him. He campaigned on bigotry and racism and on the promise that there would never be a Palestinian state. He campaigned on the promise that Gaza would be wiped out. He campaigned by saying, "The Arabs are rushing to the polls. We need to make sure that they don't infect our policy." He has always been this person. This has always been his policy.
1:26:17 Speaker 01 He has always indicated that genocide and ethnic cleansing is where he wants to go. So he's simply manifesting what his message has always been. And anyone that ignores that is being disingenuous. You can find statements from Benjamin Netanyahu in the 80s, 90s, 2000s. You can find him talking about this prior to October 7th and after October 7th. He's definitely doing this now to save his political career. I think he wants to drive this as long as he possibly can because he knows that his days in office are numbered. But let's also ask ourselves, why is it that Benjamin Netanyahu was able to rise to power in the first place?
1:27:00 Speaker 01 Right? There is something deeply troubling about the fact that his messaging ever resonated and what the prospects are for peace if Benjamin Netanyahu is able to rise with such pronounced hateful messaging.
1:27:15 Lex Fridman? So the claim that security of Israel is the primary concern is...
1:27:21 Lex Fridman? You're saying a dishonest claim.
1:27:23 Speaker 01 I think he's trying to secure his seat in office. He knows his days are numbered. This is not about Israel. This isn't about the hostages for him. This isn't about anything but Benjamin Netanyahu. He is a narcissist. He's a tyrant. He is despised around the world. And I think even amongst Israelis, I think there's a deep hatred for him. I think the hostages' families know that he doesn't care about the families or about the hostages, but he's driving a political agenda that doesn't care about people. Not Palestinian people or otherwise. However, the problem of the occupation is not Benjamin Netanyahu.
1:28:06 Speaker 01 The problem of the occupation is the occupation. Yair Lapid was the progressive, moderate alternative, and he drove just as bigoted of an agenda against the Palestinian people as possible. So to the Palestinian that's living in Gaza or the Palestinian in the West Bank, whoever's sitting in that seat has meant the exact same thing to them. But Benjamin Netanyahu is certainly, I think, the loudest bigot that we have seen, you know, in that seat.
1:28:38 Lex Fridman? Do you think Israel has the right to defend its borders?
1:28:42 Speaker 01 I think Israel has a responsibility to protect those that it occupies. I think you have to ask that question differently. You know, Noor Arakat wrote a tremendous article on this from a legal perspective. You know, when you talk about Israel defending itself, Israel is bound to occupation law. This is the problem all along. You know, when John Kerry said, of course, the US is great sometimes at issuing inconsequential statements that Israel has to choose whether or not it wants to be a Jewish or a democratic state, be a Jewish or a democratic state, but it can't be both. Israel wants to occupy and deny and at the same time not be held to the standards of being
1:29:25 Speaker 01 an occupier, but be treated as if it's some normal state. Those borders were drawn across occupied land and have been expanding into Palestinian territory and people have been thrown out of their homes systematically and transgressed upon even to the in the places that they fled to, which is Gaza, right? So when you talk about Israel having a right to defend itself, you should be talking about Israel's duty to protect everyone under its occupation, either lift the occupation or protect everyone under your occupation. Where are your borders, right? What what is your responsibility? Who are you protecting? And I think that it speaks to the fact that Israeli policy considers Palestinians to be animals.
1:30:10 Speaker 01 They say as much and they do as much. I've spoken about James Baldwin and James Baldwin talked about this pious silence surrounding Israel that we're supposed to pretend like it's just another state, you know, and ignore how it came into being and what it functions as. And I think that pious silence has to be broken. You know, I remember Jon Stewart, when he had The Daily Show several years ago and he talked about this policy of, you know, we have to defend ourselves. And if if someone was attacking your home, what would you do? And the response was, well, why are you forcing people into a closet? So you force people into this desperate situation.
1:30:54 Speaker 01 You you drive them out of their homes, claim their homes. And then say that you're defending yourself against them. The default is that an occupied people have a right to defend themselves. The occupier is obligated to those that they occupy.
1:31:12 Lex Fridman? Can you speak to this term occupation in Gaza?
1:31:18 Lex Fridman? Because the people that say it is not an occupation, say that Israeli troops have been pulled out from there before October 7th for many years.
1:31:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:31:29 Lex Fridman? And to you, it still is a de facto occupation.
1:31:33 Speaker 01 Israel doesn't get to set the terms and then define them. It is an occupation according to any legal standard, international legal standard. Israel controls the movement of everyone in Gaza. It controls the air and the seas. It controls the ability to import or export. The people that live in Gaza and the people that live in the West Bank, the Palestinians have had their identity stolen from them. So there's the freedom of movement. There is the freedom of thriving. There is self-determination. All of that has been stolen from the people of Gaza. There's no airport in Gaza.
1:32:16 Speaker 01 That was destroyed by Israel as well. It is an occupation at every level and by any meaningful legal determination.
1:32:26 Lex Fridman? What do you think about Yemen's Houthi rebels attacking Israel in response to October 7th? And then the United States and the UK initiating bombing of multiple targets in Yemen in response to that?
1:32:42 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think that it's clear that the United States cares more about its shipping lanes than it does about Palestinian lives. And that actually has proved it. Look, I do not support the Houthis as Houthis or their policies in general. But if you look at what has transpired and what they have said, they're attacking these ships in response to the occupation or in response to the genocide and saying that they will continue to do so to stop business as usual until a ceasefire is reached. They have not killed anyone, right? They have seized ships. They have blocked the lanes. But they have said that-
1:33:27 Speaker 01 If a ceasefire happens, they will cease their activity. So instead of the United States trying to get a ceasefire through, the United States decided, let's go bomb Yemen too. You know, let's, let's spend more money on weapons and killing innocent people, which shows you exactly where our policy always leads itself to, unfortunately. So I think that most reasonable people would say that the problem is not with Yemeni rebels attacking ships. The problem is with Israel attacking innocent Palestinian lives.
1:34:03 Lex Fridman? You mentioned paying respects to the legacy of EBJ, Eddie Bernice Johnson, and remembering Palestinian child prisoners. Can you explain?
1:34:15 Speaker 01 So Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson was one of the few co-sponsors of a bill that has been on the floor of Congress for years, initially sponsored by Congresswoman Betty McCullum to penalize Israel for its detention of child prisoners. Thousands of children arbitrarily detained, put in military courts, solitary confinement, and yes, sexual violence that's been documented by human rights organizations against them. And there have been no repercussions. So I want you to think about this, you know, just the thought of conditioning aid to Israel, you know, so that it doesn't indiscriminately bomb entire populations,
1:35:01 Speaker 01 has not been able to find any home in mainstream American politics. For years, just trying to stop Israel from picking up children and throwing them into military prisons, where they disappear for decades at times, has not found any thrust in mainstream American politics. Whereas any resolution that is pro-Israel will make it past both chambers relatively quickly.
1:35:31 Speaker 01 When people talk about Israeli hostages, and then talk about Palestinian prisoners, there's already a problem with that framing.
1:35:40 Speaker 01 First of all, all 2.2 million people in Gaza are hostages. Every Palestinian that lives under occupation is a hostage. But all of those prisoners that have been picked up, women, children, innocent people with absolutely no process of making sure that they're treated right, or given fair trials, or even given a communication line with their families, or with any government to help them, is absolutely criminal. All of those prisoners are also hostages. And when you are already proposed this idea that there are Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners,
1:36:23 Speaker 01 you're already implying that one group is complicit in their own devastation, whereas another group has had devastation visited upon them entirely out of their own doing. And so it's important for people to learn about children prisoners, who are indeed hostages to an apartheid system. And even what happened during that four-day truce, which all of us hoped would be extended and become permanent, where 150 Palestinian prisoners were released, Israel just went and picked up another 135 in the West Bank and threw them in prisons. That's what I mean when I say you're not addressing the root of the problem.
1:37:07 Speaker 01 The root of the problem is the occupation. The root of the problem is the apartheid. The root of the problem is the desperation that then drives the creation of all sorts of circumstances that will only further lead to the devastation of everyone, right? If you don't solve that problem, and at the root of that problem is the dehumanization of the Palestinian, because no one is raising alarms for those Palestinian hostages in Israeli military prisons. No one's putting up their pictures, and no one's talking about who they are and their human stories, and the violence that's been wreaked against them at every level. So if you don't solve... Not just the root of occupation,
1:37:52 Speaker 01 but also the dehumanization that drives the occupation, which is unfortunately so pervasive right now in the discourse. Then you're going to continue to have this gap in how the world sees the plight of the Palestinians and how unfortunately, the American public sees the problem of the Palestinians.
1:38:11 Lex Fridman? And to you, big peace agreements like
1:38:15 Lex Fridman? of the like of Abraham Accords should include Palestine.
1:38:20 Speaker 01 Abraham Accords is nothing but an agreement in which you slap the name of Abraham on arms deals. In exchange for countries being able to undertake their own unholy pursuits, they use one of the holiest names in history and continue to erase the main victims of this atrocity. And so the Abraham Accords are an insult to humanity, an insult to the Palestinians, and an insult to the name of Abraham.
1:38:52 Lex Fridman? But do you think something like that, agreements of that nature, of that scale could be made that include the Palestinian people and that would actually have make progress?
1:39:04 Speaker 01 If they're honest to the plight of the Palestinians, if they are honest to the roots of the problem, absolutely. Look, again, peace is sought, but peace cannot be used to silence. The entire peace process has, you know, been hung over the Palestinians all of these years, while settlements continue to expand and their situation only continues to get worse. Is Israel really going to remove the 700,000, 800,000 settlers? Right? And suddenly changes tune on a two-state solution? Benjamin Netanyahu is saying right now, and he's speaking to unfortunately, what is clearly a majority of the Israeli public,
1:39:49 Speaker 01 that there will never be a Palestinian state. So these peace talks cannot be used to suffocate all of the work of justice and bringing Israel to accountability. The world has to act when they see apartheid. The world has to act when they see occupation. If the world fails to bring Israel to a place of accountability, then a few countries that have their own agendas cannot put forth anything meaningful for the victims of Israel being the Palestinian people.
1:40:22 Lex Fridman? There's a lot of questions I want to ask you about the nature of resistance and what is the proper way to resist. What is the practical, pragmatic, effective ways of resisting? So one example that is often brought up is the difference between MLK and Malcolm X. One emphasized nonviolent resistance, the other emphasized any means necessary resistance. Which do you side with in general and in this particular case of what has happened over the past 100-plus days?
1:41:00 Speaker 01 So in general, that framing relies on a sanitization of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and a vilification of Malcolm X that a lot of people do put forth and present as two polar opposites in how they approach the plight of black people in America and resisting racism here in America. When I taught a course at Southern Methodist University on MLK and Malcolm X and Islam and the Civil Rights Movement, what I'd often do is I'd give my students a set of quotes and I would say, "Assign this to Malcolm or Martin," and they'd always get it wrong. So you can find quotes from MLK and breaking the silence, and especially when he took
1:41:45 Speaker 01 a stand against the Vietnam War, that sound so radical when you compare them to the image of MLK. And Malcolm is, of course, turned into this militant, angry Muslim who just wanted violence and was seeking chaos here in the United States. So let's be clear about something here, that Malcolm
1:42:09 Speaker 01 Never himself was part of any violence. Malcolm never did anything violent. Malcolm found it hypocritical to commit the oppressed people to nonviolence while not restraining the oppressor from its violence. And I agree with Malcolm. It is absolutely hypocritical to focus your attention and your energy on the oppressed people and committing them to nonviolence while not directing your attention to the oppressor. When you have such asymmetry, when you have a clear aggressor and aggressed upon, you have a clear colonial entity and a clear colonized people. You focus your energy on restraining the colonial power.
1:42:51 Speaker 01 You focus your energy on restraining the oppressor, not the oppressed. And so that was Malcolm's point. And it's clear in his messaging throughout his religious growth. Because of course Malcolm did evolve as a person. But Malcolm found it deeply hypocritical to commit the oppressed to nonviolence. Malcolm also had a deep understanding of the way that brutality here, state violence in the United States was connected to its state violence abroad. And American imperialism as a whole. Malcolm was the first to speak on Vietnam, the first major African-American leader to speak on Vietnam. Martin followed. Malcolm also went to Gaza in 1964.
1:43:35 Speaker 01 1964, went to Khan Yunis, which is now under heavy bombardment. And Malcolm penned an essay on Zionism and connected Zionism to American imperialism and the broader implications of America's foreign policy. So Martin and Malcolm, if you look at them in the capacity of what's happening right now, where I would say you can find something that is deeply profound. James Cone wrote a book called Malcolm and Martin: Dreams and Nightmares. And he wrote something profound to the effect that Martin tried to liberate white people from their own racism.
1:44:16 Speaker 01 Whereas Malcolm tried to liberate black people from the effects of that racism on them. And so they both played a deeply important role. Self-determination.
1:44:27 Speaker 01 Is crucial to maintain the fuel of a movement. And I think one of the things that probably deeply frustrates those that have sought the erasure of Palestine is that Palestinian consciousness has only continued to grow after 75 years. Palestinians in diaspora and Palestinians within occupied territory all are deeply rooted in their Palestinian identity and existence, and they're not going away. So I think that that's where the function is important of this. Whereas those that are complicit in the oppression need to be liberated from their own oppression, you know, and liberated from what they're participating in. Most Americans that I talk to
1:45:12 Speaker 01 that have absolutely no idea about what's going on, when they come to hear just a few stories of the plight of the Palestinian people and the types of brutality that we have encountered, wake up to this and say, oh, my God, this is what my tax dollars go to? This is what I'm a part of, right? So we have to liberate people across the board from being oppressors or from being oppressed.
1:45:37 Lex Fridman? What do you think about the seeming fact that majority of Palestinians support the October 7th attacks?
1:45:45 Speaker 01 You have to see the world, their world, through their eyes. You can't try to see their world through your eyes. If you live under occupation, you're routinely harassed at Israeli checkpoints. The occupation is expanding into your territory. You're meeting families, you know, regularly that have been thrown out of their homes and that are looking for a new place in the shrinking territory. You deal with routine airstrikes. You have no way to get out. You have no way to grow. You don't even have a passport. Your education is subpar. Your standards of living are lower than the rest of the world.
1:46:29 Speaker 01 And all you hear from the other side, which dominates the discourse and dominates every element of your existence, are promises of erasure, of complete erasure.
1:46:42 Speaker 01 13,000 people I mentioned, 2023, 13,000 new settlement units being advanced. If that happened anywhere, right, just think about what that means, right? When you clear out a village or two.
1:46:59 Speaker 01 And it's not that big of a territory, right? When you know that that's happening and when you have been subjected to that. Anyone that claims to be supporting you or uplifting you from that state of misery is going to have sympathy, whether you agree with their mission or their methods or not. It's human, it is human. That if anyone says that they are going to get you out of this misery and inflict pain on those who have given you a life of pain and promised you a future of pain. You're going to have sympathy to that group, whether you agree with them or not. I think that the question also has to be asked. What about the Israeli public?
1:47:41 Speaker 01 Israel holds all of the power in that region, holds all of the power over that territory, is able to dominate the expansion of its own territory and diminish any Palestinian territory, is able to place restrictions whenever it wants on Palestinian movement, trying to get to their holy sites or otherwise, whether it's Mas'ul-Aqsa or the Holy Sepulchre or the Church of Nativity, right?
1:48:07 Speaker 01 The majority of the Israeli public before October 7th, unfortunately, according to all polls, favors a non-democratic regime, the end of a two-state solution, does not care about the plight of Palestinian people, the majority of the Israeli public. Why is that? And what does that mean for Palestinians, right? Especially now, after this genocide. The vast majority of the Israeli public does not favor a ceasefire, right?
1:48:38 Speaker 01 What are we supposed to do when we see mainstream media coming out of Israel, pop culture, TikTok videos that only speak to a greater desire to eliminate the Palestinian people, right? So, anyone that says that they are going to support your plight, whether you agree with their mission or their methods, is going to resonate with that child that has grown up in those desperate circumstances. You know, Bassem Youssef had an interview with Piers Morgan, and he was talking about this. I mean, he literally gave it a human, a human story. If you're a child that's grown up, you've lost limbs, your parents are dead, your friends
1:49:21 Speaker 01 are dead, you have been made a refugee two or three times already, you have no future in sight. And then someone comes to you and says, "I'm going to help you, and I'm going to fight back on your behalf." Of course, it's going to resonate. It's human, right? And so, I think that it's important for us to see the world through their eyes, rather than try to see the world through our eyes.
1:49:45 Lex Fridman? So, as Malcolm X did, you're calling for highlighting the asymmetry in violence and asymmetry in moral reasoning.
1:49:56 Speaker 01 Absolutely. It's important. You're not going to be able to solve this problem unless you're able to do that. And so, when Malcolm said that if you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out six inches, that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound, and you're not even willing to acknowledge that the knife is there yet. Those that don't acknowledge what is determined now by any international human rights organization, even Israeli human rights organization, Betislam and others, to be apartheid, a state of apartheid
1:50:33 Speaker 01 and a state of occupation, and now an unfolding genocide, you know, are not partners for peace.
1:50:45 Lex Fridman? It just hurts me to think
1:50:48 Lex Fridman? how long it takes to heal.
1:50:53 Lex Fridman? Even if the healing begins now with a knife metaphor,
1:51:00 Lex Fridman? it's just going to be generations because people don't forget when your father and mother were murdered or somebody that you know in your family was killed. They don't forget.
1:51:14 Speaker 01 Look, I think the point is, is that we have to come to terms with the fact that
1:51:24 Speaker 01 the trauma of the past
1:51:27 Speaker 01 does not justify the murder of the present. And the fear of the future does not justify the murder of the present. The urgency of the world right now should be entirely focused on ending this atrocity that unfortunately, the world has become so complacent with. Again, prior to October 7th, this status quo was not acceptable. And there was no means in sight in the global arena to rein this in, to make Israel more accountable, to stop this.
1:52:02 Speaker 01 I do believe in the power of healing. I do believe in the power of growth. I, I do believe that we have seen ugly episodes of history before that have been rectified. I also believe in the heart of my people. I believe that the Palestinian people are people of resistance. They're people of resilience. They're people of courage. And they're people of benevolence and magnanimity. And there are people who have been made to grow under the worst of circumstances. I don't see in, in the hearts of young Palestinians that have been tormented.
1:52:46 Speaker 01 I don't see darkness. I see light. I see the ability to still laugh and find joy despite everything that's happened. And so I think that the urgency right now just has to be towards ensuring that they have a life, that they're not being killed anymore.
1:53:04 Lex Fridman? I was wondering if you can comment on a
1:53:08 Lex Fridman? idea and a notion that comes up often in conversations about this.
1:53:15 Lex Fridman? Of why can't other nations in the region take in Palestinian refugees?
1:53:23 Speaker 01 So I think that we have to tackle what's implied by that at multiple levels. And I actually want to walk back, you know, I was listening to Nikki Haley when she said in one of her interviews, you know, and why is it that you think no one wants to take the Palestinians in? And she had like this deeply disturbing laugh to it. Or Ben Shapiro, when he said Israelis like to build and Arabs like to bomb crap and live in their sewage. Or, you know, why is it that no one wants to govern the Palestinians? Suggesting that Palestinians are ungovernable and
1:54:03 Speaker 01 not fit to bring into your countries. And that's why they're being turned away. You know, who else faced that bigotry? Jews trying to escape the Holocaust. 1939, 300,000 Germans applied for refuge here in the United States. I think only about 10,000 were allowed in. And we also turned away ships of Jews that were seeking refuge here in the United States. On what basis? That they were a national security threat and could not be trusted. They could not be taken in. That's the same bigotry that's driving this.
1:54:44 Speaker 01 And I want you to think about it, you know, from that perspective, how deeply offensive that is. When you have millions of Palestinians in diaspora, where have Palestinians caused trouble? Where they've gone? Everywhere Palestinians are, they have overcome significant hurdles to become scientists and doctors and to grow themselves and to grow the places that they're in. Where have Palestinians that have been displaced all over the world caused issues for people? Right? So it's both racist and factually incorrect. That's not the right question that should be asked. The question that should be asked are, why are these people driven from their homes?
1:55:28 Speaker 01 Not why won't other people around them open their homes to them? And so I'll just share with you that even on a personal level, you know, it's really interesting because uh uh sometimes on on Twitter or wherever it is, it'll be like, go back home, right? Why don't you go back home? And I'm sitting there thinking to myself like, sure, you know, my parents were driven from their homes. Yeah, sure. I was born in this country as a consequence of bad policy. Now, I embrace my complicated identity in that regard. And I hope to be productive as an American, but I am a Palestinian. And Palestinians in diaspora that have been fortunate enough
1:56:14 Speaker 01 to have the ability to build and to overcome circumstances should not be an excuse for eliminating the Palestinians that remain in their homes under that torment. So this bigotry is not new. Unfortunately, its manifestation is ugly. And you know, we have to push back on it whenever it shows itself, no matter who it's being spoken about.
1:56:41 Speaker 01 How difficult has it been for people in Gaza to flee? I mean, they're blockaded from all directions. There is nowhere for people in Gaza to go. They cannot get out. And you know, the reality is, is that they don't want to leave. They do not want to leave. The Palestinian people want to live in their land and their homes. And to continue to produce, you know, uh, an extension of the beautiful culture and legacy that was handed to them. They don't want to leave. In fact, those that have fled for whatever reason or have been able to get out for medical treatment or because they have some sort of citizenship
1:57:26 Speaker 01 in other countries, all they're talking about is going back and rebuilding. You can't bomb Palestine out of our hearts. You cannot starve Palestine out of our hearts. I think that's a critical mistake that Israel is making. And it thinks that if it destroys Gaza enough, if it wipes out all the buildings, that people will never want to come back. We don't want to go anywhere as a Palestinian people. You know, in a way that would remove us from our homes.
1:57:59 Lex Fridman? The Palestinian people are proud people.
1:58:02 Speaker 01 Yeah, you've met a lot of them, right? When you sat with Mohammed of Qurder people in East Jerusalem, what those people have been subjected to, you know, the harassment. I think about the tenacity and the character that it takes to still try to walk back into your home after an intruder has been brought in by the state that's sitting in your living room that is pushing you around and you're saying, I'm not leaving my home. This is literally what's been happening in East Jerusalem. And we're not going anywhere. I think those of us that are in diaspora, Palestine is not leaving our hearts. And those of us that are still there are not leaving their land.
1:58:48 Speaker 01 And the world has to make the occupier more accountable, not tell the occupied how to cope.
1:58:54 Lex Fridman? Do you ever imagine that if your family did not flee and you are now living in, in, say, in Gaza, what you would be doing?
1:59:07 Speaker 01 I think about
1:59:11 Speaker 01 what could have been all the time.
1:59:15 Speaker 01 You know, I actually mentioned this in the first DC protest
1:59:20 Speaker 01 that I remember getting a notification, a news notification,
1:59:25 Speaker 01 just prior to October with my name in it, you know? So I always get these notifications, right? If my name's been mentioned in an article. And so, oh, your name's been mentioned in an article. And it was a 16 year old, Omar Suleiman, who was murdered in the West Bank. He literally had my name.
1:59:43 Speaker 01 Held up his picture. And I realized that could have been me. So I think of why God chose me to not be there.
1:59:54 Speaker 01 And hopefully him choosing all of us that are not there to be for those that are still there, to be their voices. I'm grateful, and I'm also in pain. I'm grateful for the opportunity to be able to speak on their behalf, but I'm also guilty that they have to bear the brunt of this evil hatred that unfortunately displaced our parents in the first place.
2:00:26 Lex Fridman? You mentioned that Palestinians invoke the plight of indigenous people like Native Americans. What works and doesn't work about this analogy?
2:00:35 Speaker 01 So I think that there's a powerful connection between the Palestinian people and the indigenous in this land and in other places that have been wronged. We are living here in the United States on stolen lands that is drenched in the blood of the natives and that was built upon with the blood, sweat, and labor of enslaved Africans that were brought from overseas. It's a great evil that we have to reckon with constantly. And so I think that's the power of solidarity. And you know, if you look in Canada and you look in places like Australia, there has been a refocus on the crimes against the indigenous of those places.
2:01:20 Speaker 01 I think that what makes the Palestinian plight deeply painful and maybe where the analogy even doesn't do justice is that from the river to the sea is less than 500 times what the United States is in terms of land. It's not that big of a piece of land. And so the original lie was a land without a people for a people without a land. And the problem was that there were people on that land that were forcibly removed. So I think that the sheer size, right? We're talking about a tiny piece of land and a lot of people that
2:02:04 Speaker 01 were removed forcibly from their land and that continue to be brutalized under those miserable conditions.
2:02:15 Lex Fridman? Why is Palestine a special place, a holy land?
2:02:22 Speaker 01 It's the land of prophets. It is a land that holds deep significance, obviously, to Jews, Christians and Muslims. It's the land of Abraham, peace be upon him. It is the land that has such a rich history to it that connects multiple peoples in multiple ways. It's precious. I think that history, while it tells the story of tragedy and struggle over that piece of land, also tells a beautiful story of sanctity.
2:02:54 Lex Fridman? So you mentioned Abraham, prophets. Prophet Muhammad is deeply venerated in Islam, obviously, but other prophets are as well. Jesus being one of them.
2:03:08 Lex Fridman? What are the similarities and differences in the teachings from these two prophets?
2:03:16 Speaker 01 Well, Islam refers to this idea of submission to one God and attaining peace in the process, and refers to the way of life that prophets have all come with, which is this idea of monotheism and serving that one God in the way that he commands you to serve him. So to us, as it says in the Quran, that we do not distinguish between the prophets. All of the prophets came with one message, one mission.
2:03:48 Speaker 01 There's a coherence in the creed. There is a beauty in the foundation of what would become the legislation of each of those prophets. And we see them all as siblings in prophethood. And so we say Abraham, peace be upon him. We say Jesus, peace be upon him. We say Moses, peace be upon him. We say Muhammad, peace be upon him. We believe that Moses came to confirm what came from Abraham. Jesus came to confirm what came from Moses. Muhammad came to confirm what came from Jesus. They upheld the same message. God did not change over time, nor did the centrality of his message of monotheism change over time. And so to us, it's one beautiful house.
2:04:32 Speaker 01 There's a saying from the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, where he describes the house of prophethood, each prophet being a brick, and him simply being the last brick of a beautiful house. And so, we love the prophets of God, and we believe that they each came with the legislation that was necessary for the time, but with the same message.
2:04:53 Lex Fridman? So the message is fundamentally the same. Is there a difference in emphasis? For example, the emphasis on love with Jesus.
2:05:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, you know, this is, it's like when you talk about MLK and Malcolm to an extent. Except there was actually some difference, right, between MLK and Malcolm.
2:05:09 Lex Fridman? Yes.
2:05:10 Speaker 01 You know, I just think that the difference is exaggerated between them. But I don't think that Moses didn't emphasize love, but Jesus emphasized love, and then Muhammad didn't emphasize love, peace be upon them all. I think that they each emphasized
2:05:25 Speaker 01 the same attributes and names of God and ways of knowing God. But there were, of course, changes within legislation, changes within the divine law. But the divine spirit remained the same. And so, I don't see them as being counter to each other, nor do I see that any prophet betrayed the message that came before them. I think they're all part of the same beautiful message, that we have to be at harmony with our Creator and that we turn towards Him for our guidance and that when we do so, we establish a greater existence here on earth. And so, I think that that's something
2:06:10 Speaker 01 that's consistent throughout the message of all the prophets.
2:06:13 Lex Fridman? You have been longtime friends with and had amazing conversations with people of other faiths,
2:06:22 Lex Fridman? Christian.
2:06:24 Lex Fridman? Jewish, how has the events of October 7th and the days after affected this in the United States, your ability to have interfaith conversations, connections, relationships, friendships?
2:06:39 Speaker 01 Complicated, very complicated. And it's not just Muslims and Jews, it's also Christian Zionists. Christian Zionism is at the root of the problem, in my opinion, especially when we talk about what drives America's unshakable, unconditional commitment to Israel. It's devastating, I think, to Palestinian Christians in particular, when Israel can bomb some of the oldest churches of Christianity in Gaza and kill Palestinian Christians, and Palestinian Christians are barred from going to the Holy Supplicar or to their places of worship in Bethlehem or Jerusalem, and Christians here in the United States turn
2:07:24 Speaker 01 their back on them. I think that it is particularly outrageous. So, it's complicated. Look, I expect more from people in the face of a genocide. We don't have to agree on all the particulars, but we can agree that what is happening is morally outrageous. And so I think that I've had a few people that have reached out and said, "I want to say something, but I can't." And I've had to respond with, "That's not good enough." So I think that we have a problem. And instead of focusing on that problem, I'd like to focus on the more morally consistent
2:08:08 Speaker 01 voices across faiths that have risen to the moment, rather than those that have failed.
2:08:13 Lex Fridman? So you wish more rabbis would be able to have a conversation like we're having today, and also not a lot to be seen as them turning their back on their religion?
2:08:27 Speaker 01 Rabbis, pastors, again, it's not just Jewish leadership, it's also Christian leadership. I think that it's important for those that have claimed to be allies in the fight against Islamophobia to see that you cannot be opposed to Islamophobia while also extending anti-Palestinian bigotry.
2:08:51 Lex Fridman? Yeah, one of the things, since we last spoke, I got to meet a lot of Palestinian Christians, including in West Bank, and that was fascinating, and those are beautiful people.
2:09:02 Speaker 01 I think people should watch Reverend Unduris Haak's sermon on Christmas, Jesus in the Rubble. It was deeply profound. You know, I had a chance to speak to Mitri Rahab from the Lutheran Church there as well. No, they're devastated. You know, it was eye-opening to many people here when Justin Amish, who was a Republican congressman, right? Palestinian Christian Republican congressman posted about his own family dying in one of the church bombings.
2:09:34 Speaker 01 So it's strange, strange times, and I think that it shows that the philosophy of hate that drives this terrible policy
2:09:49 Speaker 01 is secular at its root and not religious.
2:09:52 Lex Fridman? One of the criticisms of Islam
2:09:57 Lex Fridman? points to specific verses of the Quran,
2:10:01 Lex Fridman? and the criticism being that it is not a religion of peace. Can you speak to that?
2:10:07 Speaker 01 So objectively speaking, if you were to take the verses of the Quran about violence and compare them just from a purely percentage-based comparison to the New Testament and the Old Testament, you would find less verses about war in the Quran than the Old Testament or the New Testament. And there are plenty of studies to speak to that. Deeper than that, contextualizing the birth of Islam, the revelation of the Quran, which was over 23 years, in response to deep persecution of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, makes it very clear that none of those verses are what they've been made out to be. If Muslims believed that they had to kill people wherever they are,
2:10:52 Speaker 01 mankind would not exist. There are 2 billion of us, right? If we believed that we were called by the Quran to hurt people and to kill people simply for being non-believers, right, it would...
2:11:06 Speaker 01 Not make for a sustainable world. So Islam is not violent. And I think that the history of Muslims also bears witness to that. The history of Islam is a history of contribution, is a history of building, is a history of medicine and science and math. And of course, Muslims have sometimes fallen short of Islamic standards in the past and in the present. But if you look at the overall history of Islam and the history of the Muslim community, that's not the case. And when you look at the present, you know, Muslim community around the world,
2:11:49 Speaker 01 Muslims do not account for a greater proportion of violence than other faith communities. And again, the word terrorist is a functionless and meaningless word because to me, it's no less violent if it's commanded by a head of state or by a government than by a non-state actor. So Muslims do not account for a greater portion of violence now, nor have they accounted for a greater portion of violence in the past.
2:12:16 Lex Fridman? Why do you think these narratives have taken hold in present discourse, at least in the United States?
2:12:21 Speaker 01 Because they allow for greater violence against the Muslim community domestically and abroad. The United States has launched wars against primarily Muslim countries, right? And has a particularly violent foreign policy towards the Muslim world. And the Muslim community here in the United States has dealt with, unfortunately, multiple aggressive iterations of programs of suppression and surveillance under Republican and Democratic administrations. And so there's a convenience to that Islamophobia. There's a convenience to that framing of the Muslim community that also distracts from other forms of violence that are deeply pervasive and present, including the ones that are committed by the government itself.
2:13:07 Lex Fridman? If it's okay, you've mentioned Al-Aqsa Mosque a couple of times. I would love it if you can describe why it is such an important place, a holy place for Muslims in general, but also for this particular crisis that we have been speaking about today.
2:13:27 Speaker 01 So Muslims honor the history of all of the prophets, right? So all of the prophets that have walked in that place, all of the prophets that have worshipped in that place, all of that makes it sacred, right? So it's not separated for Muslims from, you know, post Muhammad, peace be upon him, versus prior to Muhammad, peace be upon him, in terms of the sanctity of that place. So we honor it. And Masjid Al-Aqsa in particular is the place where the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, leads the other prophets in prayer in the night of what's known as Al-Asraul Me'raj, the night journey of the Prophet, peace be upon him, and then he ascends to the heavens and back. And it's also the first Qibla,
2:14:11 Speaker 01 which is the first place of direction of prayer for us. So before Muslims faced Mecca in prayer for the first half of Islam, they actually faced towards Jerusalem in their prayer. It was our direction of prayer, and it remained a fundamental part of our faith. A fundamental holy sanctuary. There are three sanctuaries in Islam: Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem. And Masjid Al-Aqsa is precious to us. And so you can imagine then the pain of watching, you know, innocent Palestinian worshippers being stomped on by Israeli soldiers or skunk water being sprayed on people as they're trying to walk in or, you know,
2:14:53 Speaker 01 tear gassing taking place in the nights of Ramadan in that place. The restrictions on people that live right next to it and that cannot pray in it due to the certain classification of Palestinian that they've been given or the age, right? Because generally speaking, if you're younger, you're not allowed to go to Masjid Al-Aqsa, even if you live within the occupied territories. So it's tough to watch such a sacred place with such an ugly occupation.
2:15:24 Speaker 01 But I'll also say this, that the sanctity of a human being, the sanctity of just one person is greater than the sanctity of any place of worship to us. So the sanctity of one individual in Gaza or one individual in Jerusalem is greater to us than the sanctity of a place of worship. But it is all certainly interconnected.
2:15:43 Lex Fridman? That's a really powerful idea. The value of a human being is greater than even the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
2:15:54 Lex Fridman? So that's a foundational idea for Islam?
2:15:56 Speaker 01 The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, says to the Kaaba itself
2:16:04 Speaker 01 that the value of a believer's dignity and honor is greater than the value of the structure itself. And so when I see a person in Gaza aggressed upon, when I see one wa ala dahduh, when I see one child, that's greater to me than even Al-Aqsa. But Al-Aqsa is at the heart of who we are as well. And it's certainly at the heart of the Palestinian cause. It's a place of prophets and it's a place that should be treated prophetically.
2:16:39 Lex Fridman? You mentioned to me that since October 7th, a lot of young people in the United States and in general have been showing interest in Islam. First of all, can you explain what you've been seeing and experiencing in terms of that trend?
2:16:54 Speaker 01 Yeah, we have Quran TikTok trends where you had a few people that went on camera and said, you know, I'm reading the Quran for the first time. And I think that that's the beauty of the faith of the people of Gaza, the beauty of their resilience. You know, when you're looking at these people living what's hell on earth, but they're seeking paradise outside and they're able to still be inspired towards words of faith and determination and certainty. You're like, what is their secret, right? What are they reading? What are they on that allows them to still face this brutality with such grace, right? I mean, they're not shouting profanities, they're not shouting,
2:17:39 Speaker 01 you know, words of emptiness or despair. But rather, they are pouring out their hearts that are full of faith for the world to see. And I think that a lot of people have seen that and said, what is that? And so, you know, we've had multiple people come to the mosque. I've never seen more people become Muslim in my life, but not just that, but gaining appreciation for Islam. Like, what type of an engineering is there, you know, that that allows for people to have that type of faith? So people are opening the Quran for the first time. People are asking questions about Islam in a way that shows that they're inspired, even though they're heartbroken by what they're seeing.
2:18:23 Lex Fridman? What's a good way to get introduced to Islam? The faith, the spiritual experience of it?
2:18:31 Speaker 01 Well, I think, look, you go to, you know, our websites, you go to whyislam.org, you go to, you come to Yaqeen's website, yaqeenistu.org, you go to multiple Islamic websites to get those questions answered. But there's nothing like going to a mosque. There's nothing like actually going to a mosque and meeting Muslims and asking questions. And I tell people, like, you have to step out of your comfort zone and go there and let your world be complicated a bit.
2:19:07 Speaker 01 Experience it, listen to the sermon, meet people from different backgrounds and ask questions. Muslims love to be asked, by the way, about their faith because they're so sick of hearing other people talk about it. So Muslims love to be asked about their faith. Palestinians love to be asked about Palestine because they're so sick of other people talking about it. So ask questions and you will have them answered. But there's nothing like a physical connection, there's nothing like a human connection. So definitely try to reach out to your local Islamic organizations and meet people.
2:19:40 Lex Fridman? How difficult is it to convert to Islam?
2:19:43 Speaker 01 Takes 20 seconds, man.
2:19:48 Lex Fridman? What's involved? Simple enough.
2:19:50 Speaker 01 You testify to the one, there's no pool, there's no baptism. Like, I often joke with people, I'm like, alright, we got the pool in the back, we're gonna do the baptism now. You know, it's literally testifying to the oneness of God and testifying that Muhammad is his final messenger. And so, that's called the Shahada. And when you testify to the oneness of God and to the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, being his final prophet, you are accepting what's known as the six articles of faith. Six articles of faith are belief in one God, belief in the angels, belief in the messengers. So, you can't be a Muslim without believing in Jesus, or Moses, or Abraham, or Muhammad.
2:20:34 Speaker 01 To believe in the messages that God has spoken to humanity through divine revelation. The Quran being the last revelation. To believe in the day of judgment and to believe in divine decree and predestination. So, those are six articles of faith. So, when you testify to the oneness of God and to the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, being the final messenger, that's called the Shahada. You embrace the package of those articles of faith, that's the implication. Then you learn the prayers, learn to fast on Ramadan. You give what's known as Zakah, the mandatory charity, 2.5% of your retained earnings.
2:21:17 Speaker 01 And Hajj, which is the pilgrimage to Mecca, if you can. So, that's the growth part, the journey. You know, once a person takes the testimony, they then grow. It's really interesting because we always have those people that convert to Islam like a week before Ramadan, or even a day before Ramadan. So, you're Muslim and you gotta fast the next day. You know, and that's always a challenging experience for people, but a fulfilling experience for many people when they embrace Islam at that point. And again, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's simple. And I think that the beauty of Islam to many people is in its simplicity.
2:21:56 Speaker 01 One God, one humanity, one body of prophets, and one community.
2:22:04 Lex Fridman? Because for you, as a Palestinian American, this year, the Ramadan.
2:22:14 Lex Fridman? Perhaps would be especially difficult spiritually. What
2:22:24 Lex Fridman? what are you anticipating? What do you think is the difference this year?
2:22:31 Speaker 01 I hope, I hope and pray that we have a ceasefire before Ramadan. I hope that at that point, we're rebuilding Gaza, talking about rebuilding Gaza.
2:22:42 Speaker 01 And helping people that have been damaged in so many different ways. I hope that Ramadan is turning a corner.
2:22:54 Speaker 01 Every Ramadan, the aggression against the Palestinian people seems to grow. So we're usually dealing with, you know, last 10 nights of Ramadan. And then the incursions on Mas' al-Aqsa really sour it for the entire Muslim world, right? Because you're watching worshippers being assaulted in one of the holiest places in the world. And at the same time, you're trying to find your deep connection, your own deep holy connection, right? In Ramadan, this time we're going in. And if this is still ongoing,
2:23:28 Speaker 01 we're dealing with a continued genocide. So I think that the mood has been somber in the community. The mood has been different from anything I've ever seen before. So I anticipate this Ramadan would be different from anything we've ever seen before. I think the focus will continue to be on Gaza and on either stopping the aggression on Gaza or beginning the rebuilding of Gaza.
2:23:54 Lex Fridman? So general heaviness permeates just your prayers and your thoughts throughout this?
2:24:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, look, every sermon I've given since October 7th has had to have some inclusion of this because it's what's on everyone's hearts and minds.
2:24:11 Speaker 01 We also have people in our communities that have lost 20, 30, 40 people, right? In our midst. It's not the same.
2:24:21 Speaker 01 You know, if we start to have refugees or people that escape for medical treatment or that are able to get out through Egypt and join their families.
2:24:32 Speaker 01 You know, it's becoming more real, right? It's becoming more personal for people. So I think that Ramadan will surround both in terms of messaging as well as community. The, uh, the pain of the moment with a prayer for hope and healing.
2:24:50 Lex Fridman? Not to put you on the spot, but in your sermons, in your private life, what is a passage in the Quran that is one you find yourself returning too often?
2:25:05 Speaker 01 You know, the part of the Quran, I get asked this question that resonates with me most, usually has to do with what is heaviest for me at the moment. Uh, there's a verse in the chapter of Mary, um, a part of the verse, "Your Lord does not forget." Your Lord does not forget. And so, you know, as you see what's transpiring right now, our hope is not in creation, our hope is in our Creator. And our hope is not in this life, our hope is in the afterlife.
2:25:45 Speaker 01 And so that verse deeply resonates because I think that, you know, many of us often wonder, how are they going to rebuild? How are they going to get past this? And we know that God has a way of restoring everything. God will restore everything, if not in this life, then in the next.
2:26:09 Lex Fridman? So there's an eternal flame of hope that burns there.
2:26:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, and the people of Gaza have it. The people of Gaza have it, you know? You can be more easily deluded by this material world if you're hostage to it. But the people of Gaza have never been deluded by the material world because they never really had it. They've always been attached to a greater idea, to a greater place. And so it is part of the secret ingredient that they have, right? That they believe in something greater than this. And so you can't survive hell on earth unless you believe in paradise outside of it.
2:26:57 Lex Fridman? When you look far into the future, 20, 30, 40 years from now, we're doing another podcast in 80s and 90 years old.
2:27:09 Lex Fridman? What do you hope to see in the Middle East? What do you hope to see? Change in the Middle East and the United States as a people, as a set of policies, cultures, nations?
2:27:24 Speaker 01 I think that the nation-state model and nationalism are becoming so unsustainable just with the growth of refugee populations, desperate refugee populations, the rise of unfortunately fanaticism and fascism in different parts of the world, climate, you know, and all that that presents to us in terms of displacement. We're going to have to figure out how to function as a world rather than as nations and states.
2:28:04 Speaker 01 We're going to have to figure out how to not see everyone outside of our borders as threats and people that are different from us within our borders as threats. We're going to have to start seeing people as people. And so my hope would be that we would have made people uncomfortable enough to transcend some of the barriers in their hearts, some of the barriers that we have in the world that don't allow us to see other people as people. And then that drives horrific policies towards people that are so distant from us.
2:28:44 Lex Fridman? You have been fearless in walking through the fire.
2:28:49 Lex Fridman? What gives you strength psychologically to keep going? To speak out, but just also maintain optimism and a hope for the future?
2:28:59 Speaker 01 I don't believe that anyone gives me success or causes me failure without the permission of God. I don't seek fuel from anyone else. I don't seek hope from anyone else. I believe in a Creator that has a greater plan, and I want to be a greater part of that plan. And I'm inspired by the resilience of the people of Gaza. I'm inspired by the resilience of my parents and our grandparents and Palestinians around the world that have refused to succumb to their erasure, that have refused to give up.
2:29:43 Speaker 01 And so, we have both the energy that we need, and we have the examples that we need. The energy is from above. The examples are all around us.
2:29:51 Lex Fridman? Well, Omar Imam, this is a huge honor to once again speak with you. And I just want to say thank you, not just for this, but for many private notes you have sent me of kindness and support and love through some of the low points, for as silly as they are for me personally. So, it's just great to be able to call you a friend and to be able to have you in my corner. I'm forever grateful to you for that.
2:30:24 Speaker 01 I appreciate it. Thank you so much.
2:30:26 Lex Fridman? And thank you for talking today. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Omar Suliman. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some words from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. "We shall overcome, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
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