Joining us now, the authors of Islam and the future of tolerance, a dialogue, Sam Harris and Majid Nuaz. Uh Sam, I want you to tell the story about how this book began with a bit of an argument between you two and how you came then to agree to do this book. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you, Lawrence. Happy to be here. Um uh well, yeah, we had an inospicious first meeting. I was at a debate where I was just in the audience. Majid was debating a friend of mine Ayan Hers Ali who I I know you know and he had taken the the opposing side in the debate where he he was more or less arguing that Islam was a religion of peace and he was I think he will admit unnaturally constrained by the the terms of the motion of the debate there. And I um at the end there was a dinner for the presenters and the and the other participants and Ayon asked me if there was anything I thought I needed to say in response to the debate. And so I um I directed a question at Majid. And we were sitting maybe, you know, 50 feet apart in a in a restaurant with, you know, 75 people or so listening to us. And I said, you know, Majid, why can't you just be honest with us in this room and we're not we're not being taped now. Uh is your view of how to move Islam forward simply pretending that it's a religion of peace when it's clearly not a religion of peace? And as you might imagine, things broke down rather starkly there. It was a very kind of high testosterone apish moment. and he said, you know, are you calling me a liar? And that just, you know, then the the crowd rescued us and it was probably good we weren't sitting at the same table, but I saw at a certain point a a a basis for further conversation with him and reached out to him and and this book is the result. And it's um I think readers uh will agree, I hope they'll agree, that it was it was a very productive conversation. Uh it it really is and and it's it's such a a uh quick read because it is really this conversation that you're having with each other. Uh measured I I your uh answer to Sam about this is complex and actually in effect takes an entire book. Uh but but but it it was uh to paraphrase that it is not a religion of peace. It is not a religion of war. It is a religion. uh which is something uh someone I I had 12 years of Catholic education and I completely got that and I I I feel that there's a there seems to be a necessary amount of religious education uh required almost to be able to participate in these discussions. Yes. Um thank you for having me as well Lawrence. It's it's it's a pleasure to be here and hello again Sam good to be on with you. Um I I agree with you uh in that summary there. I I think that especially in your introduction, the point you made, uh what the the challenge we're facing today is that there are plenty of people on the politically correct side of this debate who are prepared uh to take the view that it's not a religion uh of war. Uh the problem is at the same time what they're not prepared to do and what I wish they were prepared to do more of is to recognize that though it may not be a religion of war, it's also not a religion of peace. And ultimately the the the correct conclusion is not to say that Islam has nothing to do with the Taliban actions that you quite correctly documented and highlighted uh the the the glaring absence of any reference in the New York Times article to the fact that Islam is used as justification for the Taliban's actions. I think the correct answer is not to say it's got nothing to do with Islam just as the correct answer is not to say that it's got everything to do with Islam. The correct answer in my opinion as a Muslim uh as somebody who spent uh all of my life up until now consumed and I use that word deliberately consumed by this debate I think the correct answer is to say it has something to do with Islam and that something is the connection between belief and action. It's the connection between one's interpretation of scripture what one believes scripture is saying to what one believes they must do. And for too long, those on the politically correct correct side, on the liberal side of this debate, which is my tribe, I'm a I'm a liberal. In fact, I ran for parliament as a liberal democrat candidate in Britain, where for some reason too scared to actually make that connection and to say there is something here to do with Islam as well as uh the many other factors that cause radicalization such as maybe foreign policy or grievances, but Islam also has a role. And Majid, I just want to clarify for the audience, you yourself have a a radical Islamic history. you went through that period if you could just quickly summarize that for us. Exactly. And that's what I meant by somebody who's been consumed by this for most of my life. I speak fluent Arabic, fluent or do I spent 13 years on the leadership in fact of an Islamist organization for which I was sentenced to 5 years in prison for my uh role in attempting to incite Egyptians against the uh Hosni Mubarak regime in Egypt. I was never a member of a terrorist organization. Nevertheless, I was a member of an extreme Islamist organization. And I make those distinctions in my dialogue with Sam in the book. Uh Sam, I found those distinctions especially clarifying uh that and let's talk about them now. We you you two agreed that a jihadist is someone who is trying to impose uh Islamic rule by violence and an Islamist is someone who would like to see Islamic rule uh but in in say in in a otherwise civil society but does not want to go to a violent uh level. And then there are these other interesting gradations that we that are talked about in the book uh conservative Muslim, moderate Muslim, liberal Muslim and and those terms are being thrown around today uh without an agreement on what they mean. Yeah. Yeah. That was a very clarifying part of our conversation. So just to to further clarify that we're talking about the problem of Islamism, the problem of political Islam, and a subset of Islamists are jihadists who are willing to use immediate violence to impose their agenda. And and the the crucial issue here is as Majid pointed out that the link between ideas and behavior which is just uh denied across the board on what we're calling the the regressive left side of the political spectrum and those people who just followed Nam Chsky off the edge of the world and believe that everything that that is happening in the Muslim world is the result of US foreign policy. There are no monsters in the world apart from ourselves or those we've made. We created the mujaheden. We created al Qaeda. We broke Iraq and therefore ISIS emerged. Uh the the Charlie Abdo cartoonists were murdered because France teaches treats its Muslim population so badly. I mean this is pure massochism and delusion. There are a set of very illiberal ideas. We're talking about theocracy. We're talking about people who are opposed to gender equality, to gay rights, to free speech above all. I mean the freedom that guarantees all of our intellectual and moral advances. And uh we have people on the left who will blame we have cartoonists who get murdered. Liberal cartoonists get murdered for for drawing cartoons and people on the left line up to blame the cartoonists for their insensitivity. That's how far this this rot has spread into the just driven us into these preposterous moral stances. And that's why I think this conversation I had with Majus was was so valuable to me because he really alone among among all the people I have interacted with could clarify these issues from the point of someone who has who has this lived experience. And yet that hasn't stopped liberals from from deriding him as an uncle Tom or a a porch monkey or a native informant. I mean these are these are words that have come from liberal journalists. It's it's it's quite an incredible situation we're in. All right, we have to take a break here. Uh, when we come back, I want to ask you about something President Obama said today. He said that we will stay in Afghanistan until the Taliban agrees uh to a peace settlement with the Afghan government. Does that mean we are there forever? We'll be right back. [Music] By now, it should be clear to the Taliban and all who oppose Afghanistan's progress, the only real way to achieve the full draw down of US and foreign troops from Afghanistan is through a lasting political settlement with the Afghan government. Back with us, Sam Harris and Majid Noise. Majid, uh, how long will it take to get the Taliban to enter a peace agreement, a real one, with the Afghan government? Well, you know, Lawrence, until and unless President Obama and other leaders across the world can recognize that we're not dealing with uh just a military problem. We're not dealing with uh just a legal problem, and we're certainly not dealing with just a political problem. But in fact, what we have at our uh hands here is an uh fully blown ideological insurgency. I call the ideology Islamism as distinct from the religion of Islam. U until we recognize that, we I'm afraid we will be there forever because we've been here before. uh all of us uh your viewers, yourself and uh the American people will remember when President Obama uh killed uh bin Laden and declared that al-Qaeda had been dealt with before uh his second term. And you know, I was on US networks during those days warning everyone uh that actually, you know, this is uh one head of the hydra that's been uh decapitated and many more heads will grow on this monster because actually what that's what happens when you're dealing with an ideological insurgency. when you kill the leaders, uh when you fight them, when you ban them, more emerge until uh we render the Islamist ideology as unattractive as Soviet communism, as Stalinism has become today. And and and and actually the problem is we can't even name the ideology in our political lexicon these days. Sam Harris, I wanted to get your reaction to uh Ben Carson saying that he would not vote for a Muslim for president. He doesn't think we should have a Muslim president. So, do you believe that uh Islam is consistent with the Constitution? Uh, no. I don't I do not I I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that. Well, the problem with that statement, I mean, Ben went on to clarify it a little bit and I he walked it back and it's it certainly in the final analysis seemed less bigoted than it than it first came out. But the problem with Ben Carson is that he is a a Bible thumping Christian demagogue himself. He's somebody who thinks that Charles Dar Darwin came up with the theory of evolution because he was led there by Satan. I mean, this this is not a a rational uh point of view on on world events or on science or any any other topic of of great importance. So, um, you know, Ben Carson worries me, but but I think it's a, um, uh, it's understandable that he views the world that way because he is a is a kind of Christian literalist. Ma Magaj, you probably have not been able to see, uh, much of our presidential debates here, but if you were allowed one question at one of our presidential debates, what would that be? Uh, would it be a question at the Republican or the Democrat? Let's say the Republican Let's say the Republican debate. Well, well, in which case I would certainly focus on uh both uh Trump's apparent acquiescence at a member of his uh audience in one of his debates uh when somebody suggested that Muslims need to be dealt with across America and Ben Carson's comments that you've just referred to. For me, look, the issue is very clear and Sam and I uh agreed with this in our dialogue. The issue, the challenge, the problem is certainly not Muslim Americans. In fact, you know, and it's worthwhile mentioning uh uh the American public uh is less likely to vote for atheists uh than they are for for Muslim uh for a Muslim president. So, in fact, both those groups face incredible degrees of discrimination. But they are not the problem. The problem is those who politicize uh their view of religion. The problem are those Islamists that we name. And I'd like to make that very clear in the form of a question to either Trump or or Ben Carson and present liberal Muslims as an example of of of people that could be incredibly good uh uh presidents of the United States if they were ever given that opportunity. And what what about the Democrats? What would you raise with them? I think with the Democrats it would be a question of of foreign policy to be frank. As I hinted at earlier, I'm incredibly let down, I feel, by the approach to the Middle East, the approach to the growth of jihadism as a subset of the Islamist ideology in the Middle East. Uh I I think I'd suggest to them to take a lead uh from Prime Minister Cameron, who uh has overcome what I've come to rephrase as the Voldemort effect in his uh overcoming the fear of naming the Islamist ideology. Uh and I I would suggest to the Democrats that they should uh take a leave from his book. Sam Harris and Majid Noaz, thank you both very much for joining us tonight. Really appreciate it. The book is Islam and the future of tolerance.