I'm Chris Hedges welcome to on contact
today we discuss Islam and the modern
world with the Islamic scholar Sheikh
Hamza Yusuf if a 9/11 event happened
today we would not see the type of
responses that we saw there won't be any
flowers at the mosques uncon do
liberalism Lister's patriot or truth is
not a socialite in these four states for
topi and the ideology of neoliberalism
of polls on max Chris Hedges
Islamic jihadist like the Christian
Right are religious heretics they are
far more in common with each other than
they do with Co believers they each
sanctify violence they see evil as
embodied in other races they must
exterminate they believe any action that
brings them closer to paradise on earth
no matter how cruel or barbaric is
justified they have been vomited up from
the wreckage of predatory global
capitalism and Empire which has cast
millions of the young adrift they find
in their fundamentalist beliefs a
sanctification of their rage and
victimhood becoming a Christian warrior
a jihadist a champion of an absolute and
pure ideal is an intoxicating conversion
that lifts believers out of profound
despair these converts create a binary
universe divided between good and evil
they believe they are anointed to change
history by destroying power structures
around them they embrace a hyper
masculine violence as a cleansing agent
for the world's contaminants including
those people who belong to other belief
systems races and cultures they are our
new fascists RT correspondent onion
Peron Bell examines the rise of
Islamophobia in the u.s. since 9/11 in
2014 hate crimes in the United States
decreased by 8% that was a case across
the board for all demographics
except Muslims in 2014
hate crimes against Muslims rose by 14
percent However hate crimes targeting
the Muslim community haven't always been
so common in the year 2000 they made up
about 1.9 percent of hate crimes
motivated by religion while anti-semitic
attacks made up the majority and while
fortunately over the years the rate of
anti-semitic attacks have fallen the
number of hate crimes motivated by
hatred of Muslims has risen to 16 point
one percent of all religiously motivated
hate crimes but it's not just the fact
that overall hate crimes are on the rise
indeed perhaps more concerning is the
fact that according to polls the overall
sentiment in the United States towards
Muslims is negative according to a Pew
poll this year half of all Americans
believe some Muslims are anti-american
and while 50% of them still say that
they would like the candidates the
presidential candidates to be careful
when talking about religion forty
presented them do say that they'd like
the candidates to be critical in blunt
when talking about Islam meanwhile the
candidates aren't shying away from doing
so
with both Donald Trump and Hillary
Clinton characterizing attacks like the
Orlando nightclub shooting earlier this
year as radical Islamism a study by
Georgetown University this year
concluded as the campaign season has
contributed to a rise in the law
Islamophobic attacks in 2015 and beyond
tracing the increase to a surge in
Islamophobic rhetoric in September of
2015
spearheaded by Republican nominee Donald
Trump but it's the media to the report
concludes that while Western media often
portrays Muslims as the perpetrators of
violence in an increasingly hostile
political atmosphere in reality
the victims Sheikh Hamza Yusuf is
America's most important Islamic scholar
he is the president of Zaytuna College
located in Berkeley California he is
also an advisor to Stanford University's
program in Islamic studies and the
center for Islamic studies at Berkeley's
graduate theological Union Sheikh Hamza
is the author of seven books including
agenda to change our condition and
prayer of the oppressed thank you thank
you I had just read this article that I
mentioned to you by jacek I it's an
excerpt from his book confronting
fascism discussion documents for
militant movement on the web it's called
a shock of recognition and he makes a
very convincing case that the vacuum the
both the spiritual and economic vacuum
that is sweeping across the globe
because of neoliberalism and
globalization is giving birth to a new
fascism and he includes in his analysis
these Islamic groups or let's call them
so-called Islamic groups I would call
them heretics such as Isis al-qaeda well
I think that fascism as you know has a
broad spectrum of meaning but if we use
it to mean the idea of people that
believe that force is the only way in
which an argument is truly made yeah
there's a famous statement about
Mussolini that he got the trains to run
on time for the first time in Italy and
the way he did it was by killing the the
engineers if they didn't actually get
there on time and and so it's also the
conflation of a an economic system a
corporate system the corporatization of
governments and so which was Malini's
original vision right so I think there
are definitely fascistic elements that
have emerged in the Muslim world but a
lot of it is is from first of all
massive suppression over many decades
with incredibly brutal governments that
were fascistic by nature and so like the
purple tyrant when
he's crushed the one that crushes him
becomes the tyrant let me go back
because pre 1948 you had very strong
Democratic movements right throughout
the Muslim world in countries like Syria
Lebanon and then with the rise of the
State of Israel where you saw massive
ethnic cleansing and the theft of lands
of Palestinians this is a country
Palestine of course that from the 7th
century to 1948 at been Muslim it gave
credence to the proto-fascist
militaristic anti-democratic
force it was the best thing that ever
happened to those forces I would totally
agree and I think that the the the
tragedy in in the Arab world is that
they they were very inspired by America
and and I think many Arabs really had
this bright future looking looking
forward even Iran with with Musa Dagh
yeah and and the D you know getting rid
of the British influence and the
colonial influences so they saw America
as this anti colonial force in the world
the Wilsonian dream of a new world order
where the this sovereignty of the people
would become realized and that's the
tragedy because most day in 1953 who you
as you correctly point out was I think
he worshipped Thomas Jefferson right was
udderly betrayed right by the Americans
on the CIA Roosevelt kismet Kermit
Roosevelt occur right how the Shahs men
right all on behalf of British portray
so I think that from that point of view
there there's been an unrequited love
affair with American I think 9/11 sealed
the deal because I just was with an
Egyptian taxi driver who said you know I
asked him were you here during 9/11 he
said yeah and I said what do you think
it was well he said in Lebanon we say
hit me so I can beat the crap out of you
and so it becomes an excuse really to
to brutalize people that really had
nothing to do with anything
yeah one of the tragedies that I've seen
throughout the Muslim world is the
assault against traditional Sufi Islam
right and I think it's fairly well
documented that Wahhabi ism which has
fed ideologically many of these
movements we see and of course with
Saudi money was certainly at its
inception promoted by Western interests
I think during the Ottoman Empire the
British stoked Wahhabi ISM as a way to
fight against sufi influence and and and
of course the current ruling Saudi
family has embraced it we saw with the
oil deals in the early 1930s you know
even to the point of American oil
companies paying for the publication of
a hobbyist literature and because of the
financial resources this has poisoned
much of the religious discourse I think
you would agree throughout not only the
Muslim world but even beyond well I
think what's happened the the I think
the traditionalist what we've called the
traditionalists which certainly Sufism
was a large part of classical Islamic
tradition the traditionals have never
dealt with the fact that they ossified
into a very sterile tradition with a lot
it was no longer a living tradition you
know Catholicism they they differentiate
between tradition and traditionalism the
tradition is the the living faith of the
dead traditionalism is the dead faith of
the living and in many ways they are
this is what happened and so there were
reactions to that what's called
Wahhabism they don't like to be called
Wahabis but what's called Wahhabism was
actually a type of protestant reformist
movement in in arabia that eventually
allied with
political force the answer dude and so
the religious and the political became
allied in this and and because of the
petrol dollars they were able to spread
a very different type of Islam that most
of the Muslim world was comfortable with
but a couple of things that I have to
say and I think that's really important
the the the scholars the of the Saudi
Arabian Kingdom have consistently been
against suicide bombing and this is not
true of the Sunni scholars generally
that they have consistently there is no
Saudi scholar outside of the heretical
ones even within their own tradition
suicide ISM is prohibited it's
prohibited in Islam and and and and they
are the only ones that that really stuck
to that other than some Sufis generally
didn't but most of the the the Sunni
scholarship I felt completely sold out
on that issue and and if you read their
foot was it's all emotional there's no
rational argument it's all about
Palestine and this is our only way I
have a friend who says what Osama bin
London who had no religious legitimacy
over just training at all and so I mean
you know the devil's game at Dreyfus is
bright which is very important book and
and I would argue there's a few bills we
should say what that is the devil's game
art is about how America really funded
Islamic fundamentalism because they were
so worried about Russian influence in
the region and and we're talking about
the war in Afghanistan many many plays
there's a lot of proxy wars and then
there's also a lot of other stuff going
on but if you really want to take it
back I think you have to go back to
David Fromm khun's the peace to end all
peas and and recognize that World War
one never ended right and that the
Middle East was a front if they eat you
know it was the Middle Eastern Front
during world war on Iraq was a big part
of that World War two is a direct result
of the firs I treaty that the
humiliation of the German people you
would not have had Hitler in the rise of
Hitler without the the collapse of the
the Deutschmark because of the vehement
republic and and the incredible
humiliation that was that was they were
faced with great when we come back we'll
hear more from Islamic scholar Sheikh
Hamza Yusuf welcome back to on contact
we'll continue our conversation with
Islamic scholar and president of Zaytuna
College Sheikh Hamza Yusuf let's talk
about what's been happening to
disenfranchised Muslim youth both in
Europe and the banlieues of France where
people are mostly North African Muslims
five million segregated I been to those
banlieues the city dekap Mill and others
the French prisons are filled with North
African disproportionately with North
African Muslims in the way that our
prisons are filled with poor people of
color the racism is overt in countries
like Belgium despair loss of hope and
this is also true in huge swathes of the
Muslim world itself which has not been
exempt from predatory capitalism and one
of the things you once said to me that I
think is true having spent a lot of time
the Middle East is that so many of the
people who are seduced by this ideology
have a kind of loss of identity or
struggle but they also don't come out of
religious backgrounds yeah you will you
will almost never find a religiously
educated and if they are their
autodidact or they've come out of an
extremist tradition already if you can
call it a tradition you will not find
the mattresses which are always being
blamed for producing these people in the
Metro says these are the Islamic school
the Islamic many of them in countries
like Pakistan right funded by the South
what some of them yeah certainly but but
many of them are still traditional
schools like I studied in a Methodist
and it was a resilient logic and
rhetoric and things like that this was
in Mauritania in
and Morocco but if you look you know
Europe is is very different from the
United States Europe the the immigration
to Europe or was the result of the of
the after-effects of World War two
because they brought in a lot of Muslims
to rebuild Europe Europe was devastated
as you know London was aerial
bombardment Liverpool so they brought in
a lot of their you know the colonial the
people's to do all the labor and work so
these were not educated people whereas
in the United States immigration has
been put it was a cold war immigration
and so that it was the brain drain from
the Muslim world so many of the most
highly skilled and educated Muslims came
to America that's why we have so many
doctors and engineers and and so they're
very different communities the American
community Muslim community is actually
doing quite well and immediately
economically and so and many of them
feel very comfortable here they feel
Frank enfranchise because the the in
America you can you can come to America
and you can become an American in about
five years and then generally most
Americans I mean we have a lot of racism
but most Americans accept the immigrant
traditionally I mean we've got a lot of
anti-immigrant rhetoric right now for
for many reasons so I think they're very
different but in Europe you're dealing
with profoundly disenfranchised people
that have never been allowed to become
French they've never been allowed to
become English they don't feel English
they don't feel French and so with the
racism
let me just add there that when you know
they go back to Algeria or Tunisia and
they may have been born there and left
as a they don't feel out theree this is
this is this is exactly it they the
identity is in crises
right and so the third group which is
the extremist group come join us and be
part of this Brotherhood it's like a
gang and when you have in the African
American inner cities a gang is
membership and so many of the African
American youth or Hispanic youth are
pulled into the or skinheads white some
disenfranchised white youth that are
pulled into the the white gang mentality
and of course if we look at
the history of many of the people who
have carried out acts of terrorism in
Europe they come out of a petty and
often petty petty general contest
exactly criminal class I I have said the
same thing the same thing is true here
many of these people we have a large
conversion rate in prisons and if those
people aren't nurtured and cared for
because they've grown up in very
difficult situations and if they're
given a rhetoric of rage if they're
given a divinely legitimized version of
reality that other rises all of these
people they can become an incredibly
dangerous force and and that's happened
but again I want to point out that when
you look at the numbers these are very
small numbers it's so exaggerated we
have 15,000 people die every year from
low tire pressure in America and and the
numbers of people have gone overseas
from America you're looking at less than
a thousand people if you look at the
overall Muslim community it's probably
close to 10 million with the children
this a very insignificant number and yet
it's blown out of with the wit let's
talk about that because it has been