Where Islamist Terrorism Really Comes From - Ed Husain

27:30And the solution is what we said in the 1920s. Islam is the solution. The Quran is our constitution. That's their slogan. Our greatest desire is jihad and our pathway is martyrdom. And they have this entire slogan, which mobilizes and allows ordinary people to think, oh, right, we actually have a solution that meets violence with violence. So in the West, they will say there's massive Islamophobia, a term that they helped create, by the way. So Islamophobia is their term. And now if there's homophobia, and if there's Islamophobia too. So if the Jewish people are complaining about anti-Semitism, well, we're going to complain and become victims of Islamophobia.

28:08And the way you confront that is by making Islam the solution, focusing on your Muslim identity and believing in jihad, and seeing the Quran as a constitution. So that's why they succeed, because their messaging is compelling. And it's a negative messaging. We're against all of these governments, remove all of these 56 Muslim nation states, remove Israel, remove America, and we'll have a much better state because we will give you Islam as a solution and ultimately we'll try and create paradise on earth. Now again, here's the other problem. For 1 ,400 years, open up any classical Muslim text. There's no reference to the Quran as the constitution because that denigrates and demeans holy texts.

28:46It's scripture. It's the word of God. It's not a political document. But that's what they've made it to be, and therefore it resonates with ordinary Muslims, most of whom sadly can't distinguish between Islam, the faith, and then this new thing that emerges and calls itself Islam too. So there's this blur between the faith and the political ideology that emerges under Marxist and Nazi influences, and that's why it resonates. It It also resonates because it's very modern. If you meet some of the elder Muslims in say Bukhara, you were talking about your visits to Central Asia. They're wispy bearded, long cap wearing, mystical, loving.

29:30Sure, they're socially conservative, but they're not gonna blow you up. Well, they never used to. But the Muslim Brotherhood types, they wear suits, they wear ties, they're often clean shaven, they're thoroughly modern. and they have this cancer of deep hatred for the Western fellow Muslims. You want to say something else? No, no, I find it very interesting because when you're talking about this, it triggered something in me, which is the Muslim Brotherhood. What's the one that Muhammad Ali was a part of? Nation of Islam. Nation of Islam. So when you're talking, it triggered something in me about is the Nation of Islam very similar to the Muslim Brotherhood?

30:09Is it based on their text? That's a great question. It's a great question because the Nation of Islam, while not based on their texts, drew inspiration from this movement in Africa, i.e. Egypt, that is separatist, that is confrontational. And they were obviously focused here in America, but the Nation of Islam took other positions. They believed that Elijah Muhammad was a prophet, and therefore, the prophet Muhammad was not the final prophet of God. So in creedal terms, they found themselves much further on the outside of global Muslim identity. But they did look at Egypt. But what I would hold up, I think, as a thought for us to all think about is the Nation of Islam produces someone like Malcolm X, you know, a household name in America to this day.

30:59All of my students look up to him, talk about him. But Malcolm X finds himself not only just in disagreement with the Nation of Islam, but he goes to Mecca and there is where he finds white people, black people, brown people side by side. And I think it's worth remembering that the radicalization agenda of both the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as the Nation of Islam, to your question, Francis, doesn't resonate in deepest Islamic old places such as Mecca, because Malcolm X thinks white people with blonde hair and blue eyes are literally the devil. And he wrote extensively about it, that they represent the devil and demonic impulses.

31:41He goes to Mecca and suddenly finds himself praying beside Bosnians, between Russian Muslims, Palestinian Muslims, many of whom are, you know, in his world white, and he can't make sense of it. How is it the devil is present? So he goes through this de-radicalization process, and he comes out of Mecca and returns here, and talks in Martin Luther King's terms that forgive your white brothers and sisters and work more closely with them, which is what the woke culture today won't allow us to embrace, because we've all got the original sin of being born white and straight. So Malcolm X is de-radicalized.

32:16And I think just as the Nation of Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood are rejected in Mecca, and there's a strong message, I think, for all of us in the West, if Mecca, the UAE, Egypt, and other Muslim countries can reject them and de-radicalize their population, what stops us in the West from saying, we too will reject what came out of Nazism and Marxism here in the West?

32:41Francis Foster:Ed, just talk about that part of it. By the way, what you're saying is something I've been banging on about since you informed and since my own travels and experiences with people from those countries, which is like, all I want is for Europe and America to treat this problem the way Muslim countries do. And I think we'd have a lot fewer problems. And I think it's an easy sell as well, right? Because so many people are afraid of like being bigoted or prejudiced. But if we all I ever say is why don't we just act towards this problem the way Muslim countries do? You know, I think it's a reasonable request.

33:12Yeah, but that's such a powerful request and it's a realistic request. And it also shows up the European far left for basically being in bed with the worst elements of the far right and Muslim countries, in this case, the Muslim Brotherhood. You were talking earlier about the red-green alliance, which helped the Iranian government today come into power, which helped Hamas come into power.

33:40Francis Foster:Let me come back to something else, which is you've repeatedly referenced influence from Nazism and Marxism. And I think this is a good opportunity to go back to the historical storytelling. 1928, it's founded. How do you get from that to then where we've got to today? Because it's a great question because it links to your earlier question. And by 1966, the Egyptian government, and you can fault the Egyptian government for a whole range of things, but you can't say they didn't understand the Muslim Brotherhood. Because Gamal Abdel Nasser, who was then the president, was part of the Muslim Brotherhood.

34:18Anwar Sadat, who they killed, was in regular conversations with both Hassan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutub. So they knew the beast they were dealing with. They were part of it. They turned against it. And they both took, Sadat especially, literally a bullet from members and affiliates, the wider affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood. In Sadat's case, we're making peace with Israel. But it is in the 60s when the Egyptians finally say, we've had enough of this movement. In the name of charity, in the name of education, in the name of religion, they basically want to turn Egyptian Muslims against each other and against their own government.

34:53We're going to ban them. At that point, large numbers of these newly urbanized doctors and engineers start to move out of Egypt, some expelled, some welcomed out of hospitality and kindness of the Arabian Peninsula countries. And they go to the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and to some extent, small numbers of them also go to Bahrain. And there they begin to radicalize a new generation of native peoples. But many of these Egyptians who were rejected from institutions, especially universities in Egypt, surprise, surprise, want to come to universities in the UK and in the US. So they end up, because they're now political refugees and they're persecuted, some of the best institutions in the US and in the UK welcome the Muslim Brotherhood and say, you know, here's a funding mechanism, you know, please set up whatever institutions you want to set up here, but you're now American citizens and British citizens.

35:57Meanwhile, from the Arab countries, both the Egyptians, but more recently, and I think more directly and consistently and strategically, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the President of the United Arab Emirates, and Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, both have been consistently raising this agenda from Barack Obama here as the president in those days to David Cameron, to Boris Johnson, to Theresa May, to Liz Truss, and now with the current British Prime Minister, whose name escapes me. Keir Starmer. Keir Starmer. Keir Starmer. So here in New York is just so irrelevant.

36:38You just don't think about it. I mean, he's very charismatic. Yes. somehow that has been lost in the rest of the world. But so with Keir Starmer and his cohort, Yvette Cooper and others. And the response is always twofold. One, that they're not a terrorist organization. And two, we know better. To which the Emiratis and the Saudis and the Egyptians feel offended and refer to this long history that these guys start off, as they did, by the way, in Gaza, which is an excellent example. Ahmad Yassin goes to Gaza and in 1971 starts a charity. So why would the Israelis oppose a charity? Why would the Brits oppose various charitable organizations functioning in the UK?

37:25Similarly in the US, same model, they run charities. So Ahmad Yassin throughout the 70s runs charities and then he expands into running a few mosques and a few schools, a few universities. and he's just like a provider of welfare where the state has failed. Why would you be opposed to him? But within 15 years, he had created an entire network of teachers, doctors, medical practitioners, and dependent families on him, ranging in the hundreds of thousands. And then boom, in the late 80s, Hamas. So now you have a paramilitary wing, which is something the Muslim Brotherhood has, a paramilitary wing, much like the Waffen-SS the Nazis had.

38:05So he now has a paramilitary wing. That was Hamas. That's how it was born in the late 80s. We are seeing the same thing across the West. So this is where the UAE and Bahrain and to some extent now the Jordanians, the Kuwaitis, the Egyptians have been lobbying Western governments, government to government, saying, what you're all saying is a charitable organization. The model is that in Gaza, they then become terrorists. In Egypt, they became terrorists. In our countries, they did exactly the same thing. So Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed and others went to universities with these extreme Muslim Brotherhood people.

38:39And they've seen, we've seen this movie before, and we're warning you this is what's going on in the West. So you've got to shut this operation down, because from here you are giving them platforms, media platforms, social media platforms with which they're radicalizing our populations against us and the wider Muslim world. And yes, they're anti-Semitic too, and yes, they support Hamas and terrorism too, to which the intelligence agencies, and I've got to be blunt, and I can do that because we're here in America where we don't have to fear and knock on the door, that our intelligence agencies basically quietly message, and this is MI6 and others, that this is a chatter inside government, that having these guys here, the Muslim Brotherhood and its various supporters, gives us leverage against Arab governments because we can say to them, if you do A, B, and C, we will unleash these dogs with greater amplification here against you.

39:35So do you want the barking of the brotherhood dogs to increase? Or if you want us to work on a range of sensitive issues, let's kind of balance it out. So it's very cynical... Well, hold on.

39:47Francis Foster:Sorry to jump in. You're saying something I think is quite extraordinary, which is that the government of Britain and the intelligence services of Britain are fostering and allowing this extremism to flourish in Britain because it gives them leverage in their dealings with Arab countries? Yes, yes. That's extraordinarily irresponsible and dangerous, isn't it? That's a statement of fact. And the first individual to highlight this was, and she's no friend of mine, but we've got to be honest, and highlight her scholarship on this, was Melanie Phillips in her book Londonistan. She highlights this danger.

40:27Subsequently, Michael Goves highlighted it. Subsequently, several recent ministers in the Home Office who left their posts after the last general election have confirmed this in private conversations. But all of this is backed up by our intelligence agencies by basically saying, we don't think the Muslim Brotherhood and the various Arab opposition parties inside these countries are terrorist, and we can't ban them because they're not terrorist organizations yet. yet. So we don't have the evidence. And nor, by the way, do we have the resources to go and find out what they're really after, because we've got 40 ,000 plus Al-Qaeda supporting terrorists, real terrorists.

41:05We can't go further down and investigate what is basically an intelligence asset for us, having these groups here, the Bahraini opposition, the Emirati opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood from Egypt. They're all Muslim Brotherhood people. They call themselves human rights activists, but they're all Muslim Brotherhood people that are an intelligence asset for the British government to leverage against our allies in the Arabian Peninsula. It's a complicated and dirty game, I'm afraid, but that's where we are. You know how at the beginning of every year, people say, this is a year things change. Then by February, everything looks the same.

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43:49It's suicidal because they thought they could contain it. Our government thought it would be just a group of guys sat in North London smoking in Edgware Road. But what happened, and you're absolutely right, it's suicidal because these guys didn't just stick around in Edgware Road. they went out onto campuses and started radicalizing and recruiting a new generation of British born and raised Muslims. And now we're on generation three, whereas the intelligence agencies thought that they would be just nice local assets they could use to bully the Emiratis, bully the Saudis, bully the Jordanians, bully the Kuwaitis, bully the Bahrainis.

44:23But now this beast is out of control, exactly as those countries have told us, that they've seen this movie before. You start with charity and schools and mosques, and it becomes a suicide mission. And that's what's happened. 7-7 was a direct outcome of that, that these guys then think, guess what? We're going to now take hostage the British government and its foreign policy. We're now going to take hostage Keir Starmer and his foreign policy in relation to Iran and what we're seeing play out in the Middle East. So what the British government and intelligence agencies thought was an asset against Arab governments and disregarded Arab government's advice has now turned on the British government itself.

45:04How can they be so naive? Did they not see the way that this was started, the way it spread through the Muslim world, the chaos and misery that they created, the terrorism? When was the last time we met the average British civil servant? No disrespect intended. But these are simple folk. They come out of the shires. They want to have a respectable life. They pursue what's called lines of least resistance, where there's no controversy. They don't go into government to be accused of being racist, Islamophobic. So what we're discussing, I like to think we're all free people in a free country, freely exploring ideas.

45:39They can't have this conversation. They're terrified of saying what you've just said, that this is suicidal, because it would be seen as questioning the policies of their older bosses that brought them into this job and now potentially appearing Islamophobic to their Muslim colleagues. and worse, having to admit that the government has made mistakes and therefore do something about this problem, which is to start identifying the Muslim Brotherhood's influence on now almost two million plus Muslims, some of whom are Muslim Brotherhood ideologues, are now in the government, are now in the House of Lords, are in the House of Commons, are in the British media space, and this cancer is spreading.

46:23But the government, if it admits what you've just asked them, Francis, to admit, that this is a disastrous policy. It means, A, they're responsible, and B, they must do something about it. Safer to say, this is complicated. But there must be a point where, look, eventually you've got to address what's actually happening.

46:41Francis Foster:This is why I disagree with you, and this is the point I was going to make. You say there must come a point, but the point has come the other way. I mean, we saw this in some ways, the Jeffrey Epstein scandal was actually very helpful, because one of the things that happened is Peter Mandelson, who was implicated in a weird relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, that caused Wes Streeting, the health secretary, to, for some reason, release his private communications with Peter Mandelson, in which we saw that they talk openly in private about the fact that they can't get elected in certain seats without pandering to the Muslim vote.

47:21Francis Foster:So what you have now actually is a set of incentives that actually drive them in the opposite direction, as exactly you're saying. They've created a problem that now determines how they behave politically. And far from having an incentive to admit what the problem is, on the contrary, they will pander more as this problem gets worse. And I just want to, but surely there's not a human element, Ed, where you look at the bombings of the Ariana Grande concert in 2017, and you see the bodies of little girls getting carried out, is there not a part of you that just goes, no more? Is there not simple human decency?

48:01That's where you deploy MI5, and you put greater resources in monitoring the terrorist or the physical violence threat, and that would be their response. We've allocated more resources, We've put the PREVENT program into place, and that's where the human element comes in. But the bigger strategic piece is that you've intentionally fostered and fed this beast, and now you've radicalized Muslim populations in at least 45 to 50 constituencies in northern parts of England. And I tried to do this in my last book, Among the Mosques, warn what's going on inside these communities. and the feedback, the negative media campaigning attacks from major Islamist organizations in the UK, Labour MPs very reluctant to have this conversation.

48:50And now what we're seeing is that the human response is, you know, again, in the spirit of being free and not censored, the human response seems to be political parties that are breaking away from the Tory party, reform and several others that are saying enough is enough, which is a dangerous response because it means maybe on the left we will see what you call the red-green alliance, the far-left greens with the far-right Islamists coming together to combat what's going on on the right of the Tory party, which is not what you want in the country. But all of this comes from that Egyptian moment in the 1920s is the spiraling effect, the snowball effect of the power of ideas and the nature of identity and the moment in which we find ourselves.

49:39And that's, you know, it's not complicated to say we've got to go back to that pluralist space of classical liberalism where we live and let live, but we are loyal to our nation states and a set of ideals that allowed all of us, all three of us, to come together here as free people in a free country.

49:57Francis Foster:And coming back a little bit to the history, what is the nature of the links between German Nazism and the Muslim Brotherhood? Yeah, again, see, that's a fantastic question. And most people won't ask that because they don't want to go into their thought space which says, all right, the Muslim Brotherhood has connections to Nazism. And it does. The connections are as follows. Hassan al-Banna, the founder, his brother was called Abdurrahman al-Banna. And Abd al-Rahman was in regular contact with Haj Amin al-Husseini, who was then the Mufti of Jerusalem. And Haj Amin al-Husseini, as the Mufti of Jerusalem, went and met Adolf Hitler, supported the Nazi movement, disseminated Mein Kampf, and made sure that he made several broadcasts through prominent Arab platforms to ensure that Arabs were supporting the German Nazis and against the Brits and the French for colonial reasons.

50:56But it goes worse and it goes further than that. At this point, you could say, you know what, they made the wrong call. There was a war against Britain. They were British imperial or colonized subjects and they wanted to be against it and they backed the wrong horse, the Germans. But it's actually more sinister and deeper than that. And it's to do with the following, that Haj Amin al-Husseini supports the Nazis' anti-Jewish platform. And he argues that Jewish people have no right to settle in Jerusalem. So he is behind the Holocaust and supportive of the Holocaust. And I've met his grandfamily, grandchildren in New York, sorry, in Jerusalem, and we've had this conversation.

51:37So what I'm saying isn't just concocted. concocted, it's historically proven and it's known in the family that the mistake was made to support the Holocaust. So that connection to the Palestinian radical Mufti via the brother of Hassan al-Banna then leads to them inviting him to come and settle in Egypt, but worse, a leading Nazi, Von Ellis, is also then invited, his name became Omar Amin in Arabic, to convert and come and settle in Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood's protection. Those are two direct connections of the Muslim Brotherhood to living, physical Nazi supporters and the entire movement supporting the Nazis.

52:21But the real connection is ideological and geographical. In other words, what was going on in neighboring Palestine at the time, they openly support the expulsion of Jewish people and Jewish people settling in Palestine. And then the Muslim Brotherhood declared jihad on the state of Israel, and they go and fight in that jihad against the state of Israel because of their earlier Nazi leanings that we cannot have Jews settling in Israel. We must remove them. We must complete the job that Adolf Hitler had started. And the second point, which is the more ideological point, is just as the Nazis believed in a supremacy, they believe in a supremacy of just their type of Muslim Islamist.

53:04just as the Nazis said we want to create a thousand-year Reich for Germans and for Europe led out of Germany. They believe in a thousand-year caliphate led out of Egypt, led by Egyptians, not the Meccans, the original Muslims, but the Egyptians. And just as the Nazis believed in using violence and being an expansionist, they believe in the same thing. And we've already mentioned the Jew hatred, you know, on which they have the supremacist standing. But here is the real issue, I think, that we've got to bear in mind so we don't kind of make mistakes as we're thinking about this, that just as the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood was sympathizing with the Nazis, aligning with the Nazis, becoming under Nazi influences, and giving protection to Nazis inside Egypt, you had in Mecca, in the Arabian Peninsula, and that's why I'm obsessed with the Arabian Peninsula, because it is the home of Islam.

53:56It's where it was born, and I find Muslims there much more interesting than Muslims in other parts of the world for a whole range of reasons. But just there, the Sharif of Mecca, who is a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, who's governing Mecca, at the same time, the true Arab, the real Arab in Mecca, in the Arabian Peninsula, is in discussions with Chaim Weitzman, the head of the World Zionist Organization, saying to him, Jewish people are welcome to come back to the region. You are from this region. You're from us. You're among us. Come back. And let's build a civilization together. And that was going on at the same time as the Nazism in Egypt, but the Arabian Peninsula, which didn't come under occupation and had a kind of freer, more authentic expression of Islam, welcomes the Jewish people back.

54:41You can see the correspondence between Weizmann and the Sharif of Mecca. What then happens in 1919 with the peace agreement in France complicates matters, and then, you know, there's a turn against Zionism. But before we get to that point, we have to accept and admit that there are two narratives here. There's the Muslim Brotherhood narrative of being Nazi sympathizers, and there's the Arabian narrative of the Sharif of Mecca that is welcoming Jewish people back to the region. And I think where we're seeing the Abraham Accords and what's going on in the UAE is that narrative being amplified, that these are people from us.

55:17They're welcome back to the region. And what we have to find is a way how Palestinians and Israelis learn to live side by side together. But that is not what the Muslim Brotherhood's Nazis wanted. They wanted the German agenda of obliteration, of killings, and therefore the participating in the 1947 war led by the Muslim Brotherhood, where they cross borders and go and fight the Jewish population that's trying to settle in then Palestine, now Israel. At Farmers, our honesty is contagious.

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56:22Correct. Correct. It's going back to a glorious past when things were greater. When there was a great German identity, then the Germans were great. Hitler's project was that. We are victims of the economic crisis. We are victims of the migrants controlling everything. We are victims of Americanization. Muslim Brothers say the same thing. We're victims. We've got to go back to the glorious days as they imagine them to be and you have the solution and you have the final solution yeah that's a great point i hadn't thought about that the solution yeah that's a great point the final solution is what the nazis called it the the muslim brotherhood calls it al-islam huwa al-hal islam is the solution al-hal the solution the only solution um one of the beauties i find about the quran is that doesn't talk in this total terms for example the quran always says you know we guide you to a straight path.

57:18Again and again, you know, it's the indefinite article, a straight path. The Muslim Brotherhood goes for the path, the solution that's totalitarian, maximalist. It's a great point, the solution and the final solution. Because there'll be a lot of people who are listening to this, Ed, who in the UK mainly or in other countries as well, and they'll be like, Ed, you're making great points, but why is it a lot of Muslim people in the UK don't come out and openly criticise and condemn this ideology? Because the moment they do, you will have members of the House of Lords now, at least eight members of parliament now, large sections of the British media, as well as people in mosques condemn.

58:04The potential of someone coming up and taking a voice against the Muslim Brotherhood's ideologues in Britain. You'll be attacked as being a sellout. You'll be attacked as being, you know, all kinds of racial terms are used. And then, and I speak from personal experience, they sue you, they come after your assets, they target your family members, you become a pariah. and inside mosques you're lampooned as being against the community again, the Muslim community, which I just think is total nonsense because why should I be, again from personal experience, why do I feel much more at home now among Muslims here in America or among Muslims in today's Egypt, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Turkey, Kuwait, you know, countries I visit, totally at home, because of this position against the Muslim Brotherhood.

59:00But the moment I'm in the UK and I criticize the Muslim Brotherhood, suddenly, you know, online and physically I have fingers pointing at me saying, you're a sellout. I mean, what am I selling out to? UK is my country, the West is my inheritance, and our Arab friends are both family and allies of us, and Islam is our inheritance. And what am I selling out to? because the political ideology is so deeply ingrained. It's also the victimhood point you made earlier, Francis, that we can only vote Labour or Green. And to be totally blunt, it's a racism of low expectations. This is your place. Know your place and stick to it.

59:45This is who you vote for. This is your narrative. This is what we expect you to say. This is who you must protest against. these are the riots that you must participate in. If you defy any of that, how dare you? We will call you a sellout, and we will call you a government stooge. And that's the kind of pathetic, ugly, low, shambolic, flawed language that's thrown around, rather than dealing with ideas and the consequences of the Muslim Brotherhood ideology, both in the UK and further afield. But I'd go further than that, and I'd say that the ideologues of the Muslim Brotherhood, many of whom dominate Muslim discourse in the UK, don't want to see a Britain that is free, don't want to see that a Britain that upholds this classical liberal inheritance, want to see a Britain that is weak, and, you know, Keir Starmer's Britain.

1:00:35They are happier with a Britain that will not take positions on Iran's nuclear program. They are happier with a Britain that will not condemn Hamas and will not participate and attempts to obliterate Hamas, they are happier with a Britain that is at odds with the United States of America and at odds with other powers that are taking a different direction. So I just think it's, you know, people may not articulate it in such terms, but that's the impulse and that's the feeling. Choosing to spend an hour or two listening to a serious conversation rather than scrolling a feed of hot takes says something about how a person thinks.

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1:02:18Francis Foster:And you yourself are obviously an example of something that I think anyone who's paying attention will see, which is, you know, in your book Among the Mosques, you went around mosques around Britain and you reported effectively what you heard and saw there. And many of the things you saw were positive and you also reported on the things that you saw were negative and now you live in America. And this seems to happen to basically anyone who says anything critical about this issue, they end up moving to another country. Because you feel yourself out of place. You feel yourself that you no longer welcome Constantine.

1:02:54And I remember a journalist from the BBC phoning me saying, you know, that they read Among the Mosques and they want to discuss it. Would I come on? And I said, sure, anything to amplify where Britain is heading, because I'm genuinely worried about partitions. I'm worried about entire areas saying, oh, this is only a Muslim area. You know, you who are not Muslim can't enter. And I'm genuinely worried about the prospects of this becoming an armed conflict in parts. I mean, 15, 20 years from now, that's where we're heading. So that was the conclusion. And yet, among the mosques as a book could not be discussed on the BBC because a very prominent Muslim broadcaster vetoed the interview saying, I won't interview him because what he's going to be saying brings harm to the Muslim community.

1:03:42And so I find that approach to be troubling. you put the community above your country. And that's not the way of being Muslim. Your loyalty is to your nation state, and you put the country first, and then you put whatever community you belong to. And we belong to multiple communities, plural. As a professor here at Georgetown and Columbia, I have my kind of academic community, but I have other book communities. And sure, my faith community is central to that, but it's not my first line of public defense. So that's why I think what's going on in Britain is really worrying, that you can't take a position on this without being cast as an outsider in your own so-called community, which bolsters the problem.

1:04:25Francis Foster:And I think you say it bolsters the problem. I also think it bolsters the response too, because what you end up having is, I think the truth is, nobody wants to say it out loud, but much of the anti-immigration sentiment in Europe is not actually about immigration at all. I mean, no one complains about Ukrainians. No one complains about Hong Kongers. No one really seems to care about that. There is a hardening against Islam in Europe. That's undeniable, I think. And I think it's probably partly because people who articulate the point of view that you articulate can't exist and be heard there. And so what we hear from are the people who have a Muslim Brotherhood-style extremist worldview.

1:05:08Yeah, and therefore, there's a response to that. The response is, the ordinary people are sick and tired across the UK of being told that your kids in a school full of Muslims can't draw human images because it's somehow forbidden. That in parts of the NHS that you've got to cover your arms and if you're a nurse you can't show parts because it's frowned upon. The postman is a Muslim postman. The bank is dominated by Muslim clerks. The Uber drivers are all Muslims. And parts of Dewsbury and Oldham and Manchester and Keithley and East London and Luton, these are prominent parts of the UK. They've changed.

1:05:53They've changed beyond recognition. My ancestors came originally from Yemen to India. From India, my father came to the UK in 1953. he didn't want to come and see a UK changed. He came to the UK for what it was, and he wanted to see the UK retain its own identity with its pluralism and its beautiful countryside. My friends now, both family in Yemen, family in Saudi Arabia, family in the UAE, are all terrified of coming to those parts of the UK and terrified of going to London because they no longer feel safe. So this concern about immigration, both legal and illegal, that then consolidates Islamism, isn't just a concern shared by ordinary British folk in pubs and where else.

1:06:37It's just lots of Muslims and others are feeling the same problem, that this is not the country that we want for our children. Someone showed the image of the Prophet Muhammad from Charlie Hebdo magazine as an illustration, as a teaching point, and that poor teacher has been in hiding for the last five years. And how is that possible that showing a news agenda, a news item, leads to a pupil talking about it at home in passing and then their parents organise mass demonstrations? The problem now is worse than it is in Pakistan. So I was just going to say, and one of the interesting things about that, the school is called Batley Grammar School, for those people who want to research it, is the education union refused to support him or get involved in any way, which just demonstrates the culture of fear.

1:07:26That's tens of thousands of members represented by this union, and that will just spread further and further in the years to come. But I don't mean to be monocausal, but this is an effect, and the cause here is the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology of separatism, of confrontation, of supremacism, of not wanting to integrate, of not wanting to be loyal to the nation states, and interpreting the Sharia to be different from, for example, one of the greatest Muslim scholars of our age, two come to mind. One is Sheikh Abdullah bin Bayya, who's the Mufti of the United Arab Emirates, who's a prominent French-speaking, philosophically inclined jurist.

1:08:09And then there is a younger Muslim scholar called Dr. Muhammad bin Abdul Kareem Al-Isa, leader of the Muslim World League, heads up 57 Muslim countries out of Mecca. Now, Sheikh Abdul Kareem Al-Isa has again and again talked about the importance of respecting Auschwitz. He's been to Auschwitz. He's talked about the importance of Muslims recognizing the Holocaust and moving away from the extremism that the Muslim Brotherhood enforces on us. If more Muslim schools and Muslims were to embrace the worldview of Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul Kareem Al-Isa or Sheikh bin Bayya, who talks about the Sharia in the following terms, He says that wherever the Sharia There's basically freedom of conscience Freedom to worship Freedom to own property That you're physically secure And you know who your family members are You know, you have a They call it nasab in Arabic That's Sharia By that definition We already have Sharia in England We don't need to be wanting to change laws And wanting to change the customs The Arabs have a beautiful approach We call it urf You know, the customs of a country You don't change it You maintain the customs and traditions And culture of a country which is Urf.

1:09:16You don't drink alcohol, okay, go and have an orange juice in the pub. But however hard it must be for some Muslims to accept, we have to recognize the flexibility within Islam that there was a Muslim interpretation that drinking, you know, Ibn Sina, famously a great Muslim medical practitioner and philosopher, used to drink. And some of the Muslims say that is Ibn Sina's position. I'm not saying we should go and drink, but I'm just saying that flexibility exist. The Ottomans were famous on spirits. To this day, you go to Turkey, even at the highest levels of the so-called Islamist government, people are drinking spirits.

1:09:56So there's a beer drinking culture in mainstream Turkey to this day. So why do British Muslims have to snigger and dismiss either Ibn Sina or the Turks or a more flexible approach to Islam from Sheikh Bin Bayya or Sheikh Abdul Karim Al-Isa and other big luminaries in the Muslim world and say, we are going to do what's been working in the villages of Pakistan. And we're going to impose the villages of Pakistan on the rest of the country. And with that, we're going to bring the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and further radicalise our younger generation. And that's the worst combination you've got there, the remotest parts of Pakistan combined with the extremism of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

1:10:35Well, that's a very interesting point because as I'm listening to you talk, Ed, the ideology obviously is the main part, But it's also, we need to discuss the cultural element of this. For instance, we saw with grooming gangs, it's predominantly a cultural phenomenon. So how much of this is ideology and how much of this is cultures that we've imported from places like Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc.? Yeah, the grooming gang thing just beggars belief and I just don't understand it. I really don't. But I'll say two things. When I was in some of those towns in the north in Rotherham and parts of Manchester, and I met well-meaning white working class people that had seen their young daughters, nieces, taken away and groomed and then used as sex objects, they would raise that with me.

1:11:28And I put it in the book because my job isn't to filter, my job is to actually tell what I saw up there. My publishers said we can't put this in the book because it's too explosive, it's too dangerous, it'll be interpreted as racist. So that was taken out of Among the Mosques because the publishing elite in London thought that was just too insensitive, although that's what was discussed by people I met in some of those towns. The second point is, and again I know viewers in London will have, or the UK more widely will have a kind of instinctive bad feeling in saying this, but we have to be true to what's true.

1:12:12When I raised this with imams in mosques, there was one particular imam at a mosque in Bradford who said to me that local police officer had asked him to raise this issue in the congregation and say, taxi drivers or Uber drivers, if you are giving a lift to a young girl, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, late at night after she's drunk, don't make a move on her, don't disrespect her, take her home, treat her as a child, and asking the imam to say all of that. The Imam said, I can't say that. And then the police's request was, well, why not? Because it's kind of safety and health issue and child protection issues.

1:13:00He said, because most of my congregation who are drivers and security guards have repeatedly said to me that these girls are hitting on them, that these girls wear miniskirts, that these girls are drunk and these girls want the companionship of these men late at night. and therefore if I'm seen to be siding with the girls against my congregation, my own job is at risk. And I just thought that was, you know, yes, sure it's weak, sure it's flawed, sure it's irrational, sure it's illogical, but the fact that he couldn't say it, nor could the authorities protect him for saying it, and the fear that he had from his drivers, but also the justification from the drivers, they're asking for it.

1:13:40Those are my only two observations. I mean, I just don't understand that culture enough to be able to say how you could, as a father of two daughters, you know, how can you get yourself into that sick position? You know, I have students, you know, who are now 18 to 21, 25. You just see them as daughters and children, you know, you just don't. So I can't get into that head, I'm afraid, to be able to answer that question.

1:14:03Francis Foster:Well, what it does raise is the issue we've been tiptoeing around this entire time, which is the big debate that I outlined at the beginning, and it's raging in the Muslim world as much as in Europe and increasingly in the United States, which is, is there a difference between Islam and Islamism? And you've laid out the case that the difference is vast, actually, and the overwhelming majority of Muslims don't subscribe to this view. There's been huge battles. And, you know, one of the things people always say, kind of from a woke perspective is, well, it's not a Muslim problem because, look, most of the victims of Islamic terrorism are Muslim.

1:14:42Francis Foster:And you explain why, because they're actually resisting this ideology. There are also other people who will say, well, Gadzai is a good example, for example. He's a former guest of the show and he's a very smart man who will say, well, and I think Douglas, who you referred to as a former friend. I hope that relationship isn't entirely severed, but you know, we won't get into that, who will say, well, was Muhammad an Islamist or was he a moderate Muslim? You know, he was a warlord, he took slaves, he married the wives of the people that he killed, etc. And so, is someone following his example and some of the verses in the Quran that advocate for violence, that advocate for these things, Is he a true Muslim or is he perverting the faith of Islam?

1:15:36Francis Foster:And that seems to me the really central part of this discussion, because obviously if you take that view, then in a country with a large Muslim population, what do you do? Likewise, if you take the view that you're advocating for, then it immediately creates a whole different set of policy prescriptions. So what do you say to people who say, well, someone who follows the example and the words of the Prophet Muhammad is not going to end up in your position. They're going to end up in the Muslim Brotherhood position. Yeah, that's a great question. And if I make it the liberty of saying next time we meet, I should have a book out on this very subject.

1:16:15Francis Foster:Look forward to it. Because my next book is focused on the life of the Prophet and tackling these very, very important and consequential questions that you put forth. So allow us to leave the details of tackling this head on. I'm not shying away from it because I think it's very, very important. And we've got to understand that in its time, in its context, and make our own decisions. But I say this, there's nothing that all of the scholarly references I gave you, whether it's Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul Karim Al-Isa or Sheikh bin Bayya, or Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed of the UAE, or Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed of the UAE, who's pioneered in recent years this debate in diplomatic and public intellectual circles, or indeed the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman.

1:17:03Notice how they're all called Mohammed. And, you know, I go by Ed, but that's short for Mohammed too. So I like to think that all of us and most Muslims around the world, our life and my defense of classical liberalism and pluralism is motivated entirely by the life of the Prophet Muhammad. There's nothing I say or I believe or I do takes away from my allegiance to understanding him and his loyalty to understanding Moses, Jesus, and so on. But again, as I say, we should discuss this at greater depth and greater detail once the next book comes out, which is focused on this crux.

1:17:39Francis Foster:And we will, but can you give us a little bit here? Because, I mean, like I say, the Prophet Muhammad was a warlord. Is that fair? I take issue with the term. I think he was fighting defensive wars. I think he took the Jesus approach for 10 years of his life in Mecca. He was persecuted. His followers were killed. He was tortured. His family members were expelled into Abyssinia, and he didn't respond. And then Then he moved to Medina. Again he's not violent. And then the tribes in Mecca, and there were 14 major Jewish tribes, of which two Jewish tribes turn against him, ally themselves with the pagans of Mecca, and they mount an attack, an attempt to assassinate him, to kill him.

1:18:30And by then he'd survived 12 different assassination attempts. So forgive me if I justify the fact that he then said, we're going to fight back. after years of not fighting back we're not a passive people if we're attacked we fight back and that was his response he said we will fight back and when he fights back he warns his people don't poison a whale don't kill women don't kill children don't take down palm trees fight those who fight you and that's a verse in the Quran fight them wherever you find them attacking you don't attack innocents so there are rules of engagement So I just don't think calling him a warlord or Gad Saad's argument are actually fully reflective of the truth.

1:19:14And for people like Gad Saad, I say that these are people who don't take their Judaism or their Shabbat seriously. They have a problem with their Judaism, and I think there's some projection going on there that, you know, Judaism, Zionism, you know, Jewishness, Shabbat, it's all the same. So we'll just apply this mangled, mixed up approach to other faiths and say, they're just behaving like Moses and they're just wrong. I disagree with that worldview. And it's going to get complicated, and we might have a very big disagreement on this issue, but I think we've got to discuss this. So every condition that the Prophet Muhammad gave for whether it's fighting or whether it's marrying, and I also don't think he married Aisha, and she wasn't seven, she wasn't nine.

1:19:56The evidence suggests that she was much older. And I go through all of this, and I'm researching this as we speak. So I just don't think that those caricatures against the Prophet and therefore by extension saying two billion Muslims are somehow supporters of that kind of figure who is described in the Quran as mercy unto mankind. I mean, his wife is Jewish. Safiya, one of his wives, is Jewish. So he has a son called Ibrahim named after Abraham. And so there are hundreds of examples to the contrary. So you don't have to agree with me, but you can say that there is another interpretation and that there is another way of being.

1:20:37And I think that's hard to refute. And for people like Gad Saad and Douglas Murray, if they want to conflate Islam and Islamism, that's their prerogative. But, and in a free world, they're able to do that. But the danger in that is you end up making two billion innocent Muslims, your enemies. We make the threat much bigger than it actually is. and we take on 57 Muslim nation states and say, you're all part of the problem. Whereas, as we discussed during this conversation, it's actually the Emiratis and others who are the spearhead to saying, the West has a problem with the Muslim Brotherhood, and we've got to deal with the problem of what it is.

1:21:12Islamism, Muslim Brotherhood ideology, from Al-Qaeda to Hamas and the Brotherhood included, and not ordinary Muslims that include, you know, you take a pick of ordinary Muslims, I don't know, Nadia Hussain, the household baker, two prominent football players, Mo Salah, and others. I just think it's up to us to be sensible about this.

1:21:38Francis Foster:Yeah, I think it's really important. And I'm only asking this question for the same reason that you articulated earlier, which is we have to be true about what's true. And I'm putting to you, I am very much actually on your side. I grew up in Uzbekistan for part of my life. I'm familiar... and you know, Soviet Muslim countries are a little bit different, but you know, you go there and you see the extremism isn't tolerated there. And so they don't have a problem. Now they... I mean, the advantage a lot of Muslim countries have is they are authoritarian regimes. So they can be pretty hard line about things like freedom of speech.

1:22:10Francis Foster:For example, they don't have freedom of speech. If you want to preach extremism in a mosque, you're not going to be allowed to do that. Yeah, but we've tried democracy in Gaza, in Iran, Tunisia, even in Kuwait, the result was always the Muslim Brotherhood. And that's why I think countries such as the UAE and others that, A, I wouldn't classify as authoritarian, but B, that want to open up their countries more to a classically liberal place, want to see the Muslim Brotherhood problem gone. Germany could not hold its elections for as long as there was an active Nazi party. That party had to be banned.

1:22:43And now we have free and fair elections in Germany. I think the same applies. We've got to remove the Muslim Brotherhood threat, which is being encouraged in the West, And they then say to Arab and Muslim countries, well, why don't you have elections and why don't you have the central...

1:22:56Francis Foster:I'm not saying the UAE needs to become a democracy tomorrow. What I'm saying is that this issue is easier to deal with in a non-democratic country. But the problem for us in the West is we now have a significant population of Islamists. Yes. And we are democracies. Yes. And that makes us uniquely vulnerable to this problem because we cannot take, by our standards, fairly drastic measures that seem to be required to deal with this problem. Do you see what I'm saying? I do and I don't. I do in European countries. And I think it's, I agree, it's going to be tough. But if we don't deal with it now, it's going to be tougher.

1:23:36Right. Impossible, some might say. Yeah. If it's impossible, then Europe's finished.

1:23:41Francis Foster:Yeah. To save Europe, we've got to deal with this. and I don't agree with you because I see here in the US a greater willingness to address this problem. Whatever misgivings we may have about the Trump administration, it's actively gone out, studied the problems, consulted experts and identified the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization now in multiple jurisdictions in Sudan and elsewhere, but it will also target the Muslim Brotherhood and its operations in Texas and in Florida and it may move to other parts of the country. So what's the difference between the US and the UK? It's one of political will.

1:24:17No. Go ahead.

1:24:19Francis Foster:It's population size, amount of land, the types of Muslims that you have here are different. You have a much more middle class Muslim population. I can agree with all that, sure. Okay, that's fair. So all these things really, really matter. And even so, as we sit here recording this, this episode will go out sometime after we've recorded. In the time that we've been here on this trip, there have been a significant number of Islamist terrorist attacks in the United States. They're not being covered by the national media in the way that I certainly think they should be. But the point I'm trying to make to you is you have a much better environment for dealing with this issue and nonetheless you have a giant problem and it will grow.

1:25:03It may, oh, I hope it won't grow. Well, why wouldn't it grow? Because I think to part of your point, American Muslims are much more integrated. They're much more patriotic. It's easier to be loyal to the constitution. I mean, in the UK, what are we supposed to be loyal to? Yes, this is a huge problem. The Englishness problem, which you write about in your book. You know, so there is this, you know, how do you become English? What are British? Right, here, anyway. I mean, you've dealt with this, right? The Englishness versus Britishness debate that keeps coming up. Whereas here, it's actually easier, you know?

1:25:35So that, I think, is a massive bonus on the side of this country. I also think, and I say this as someone who loves England, I just think there's a cynicism in the UK when it comes to liberty or freedom or defence of the realm or the greatness of British history or the potential for what the country can become again. And you see that written all over Keir Starmer's face, right? He's just never quite sure as to what to say and looks like a rabbit caught in the headlines constantly. That doesn't exist here. There's an openness. And, you know, so I don't want to give examples of individuals who talked about this, but the point is that there is an optimism and an openness and a willingness to accept others.

1:26:19For those of us who are English speakers by birth, we're at home here. I hope you both feel like that when you're on the streets of New York or further afield. In a way, we just don't in the parts of our own country because of this cynicism and division. So I just think the U.S. isn't, let's not name him, but a prominent U.K. left-leaning media commentator came to America too. And he went to pray at the Houses of Congress. And while he was on Friday prayers, he met American Muslims who were in the CIA and who were in the Pentagon. and as a leftist person born and raised in the UK, he just couldn't make sense of that.

1:27:02How is it? You're in the CIA and you're in the Pentagon. You serve this country and how could you be Muslim? Because for this leftist guy from England, being Muslim was a political identity that I've got to be anti-American and I've got to fight American soldiers and I can't possibly be in the CIA because that's my arch enemy. But hundreds of Muslims are in the CIA and thousands serve the armed forces here. And I think that's the success story. And, you know, thousands are in the FBI and elsewhere, which we just don't have in the UK to be able to point to. And I think the Americans, you know, the non-establishment of religion cause makes it the Islamist project just doesn't take off because you're never going to establish your Islamism in this country.

1:27:42They just don't want religion at state level. They want it at individual level. And I also think, to your point, Americans are stronger in dealing with this. you know, they will kill you. They will take out guns. They will fight you in a way that I just think in England we're much more reluctant.

1:28:02Francis Foster:Traditional home security only alerts you after a break-in and that's too late. SimpliSafe is changing that. Stop. This is SimpliSafe. Police are on the way. We don't just alert. We stop crime before it starts. SimpliSafe. Plan starting around a dollar a day. Save 50 % on your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com slash spotify or with promo code spotify. Outdoor deterrence requires a SimpliSafe active guard outdoor protection plan starting at$49.99 a month. Visit simplisafe.com slash licenses for alarm license information. Tennessee 2012. So here's a question. Let's say Keir Starmer calls you up tomorrow and goes, Ed, I want you to be the czar to tackle this problem.

1:28:42What policies would you implement that would actually help deal with this? Real world solutions. Okay, firstly, Keir Starmer won't do that. It's a thought experiment. We're in the realm of fantasy. You're allowed three dragons to deal with this problem as well. But to return to the realm of reality where the problem is growing, if we're looking at three issues, then the first would be to map the mosques because on current trajectories, about 20 % of Britain's mosques are controlled by Islamists. if we're defining Islamists as I did now, kind of based on their interpretation of Sharia and their definition for a state and their separatism, 20 % of mosques.

1:29:27So you map the mosques and you remove the leadership. You confiscate the property. You put in place from other mosques that are much more moderate, control of those mosques, which sends a serious signal to Muslims in the UK, as happened in Germany, as happened in Austria. So we have precedent that just because you're a charitable organization doesn't mean we can't confiscate property because it's advocating Nazism, Jew hatred, removal of the British government, and supporting terrorism abroad, right? So that should not be complicated. That's the first thing we should be doing, the mosques. Secondly, there are 50 % of the existing mosques that support blasphemy laws.

1:30:06In other words, you can't insult the Prophet Muhammad in the way that you just asked me a question. Now, I might have had an internal reaction that was uncomfortable because that's not how I see my prophet. But you're free and at total liberty to ask that question however you wish to. And I am at liberty to defend it. And that's the limit. You can't ask for my killing, I can't ask for your killing. That's the liberal consensus that we have. But in 50 % of the mosques, there is this attitude of, you can't insult the prophet. If we do, we will kill you. And that's why this teacher in battle is under hiding.

1:30:39Those mosques, whether we impose higher taxes, or whether we remove the imams or whether we prosecute the leaders of those mosques have got to be confronted as though this is not the attitude in 50 % of our mosques in the UK that we will tolerate. And these are not Islamist mosques, but this is a wider creeping problem that also leads to terrorism. And if I said this in the UK, I would have physical attacks on my well-being or just even highlighting this threat because I'd be betraying community secrets. But not in small... And the third and the final one, which we've been touching on repeatedly, is that Muslim Brotherhood offshoots, banks, there are two banks associated with them, not major banks, but small, localised banks, charity organisations, schools, television platforms, individuals have all got to be identified, prosecuted, shut down, banned, their bank accounts suspended, the charitable status removed.

1:31:39You know, make life hard enough so that a younger, and this is going to take 10 to 15 years, the younger Muslims see that is not our pathway. Now, we don't want to be on the receiving end of being up against our own country, our own civilization, the lands that have given us birth and protected us. Right now, if you're a Muslim Brotherhood ideologue, and if you're in those categories of the mosque leaders that I mentioned, you're a hero. You're organizing weekly protests. You're part of a global network. You have a message against America, a message against Israel, a message against your own government.

1:32:13And guess what? You've got the far left with you on the protests every weekend. You're not paying a price. And as long as those sectors are not paying a price, the problem continues to increase. Ed, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show. Thank you so much. Thank you, Francis. This has been a really important conversation. Final question is always the same. What's the one thing that we're not talking about that we really should be? In my head, I've been thinking about this just because I've been reading lots of Nietzsche, hence that point on willpower, having the political will.

1:32:46Nietzsche touches on this, Hegel's obsessed with this, and the Germans try to identify, but we in the kind of more empirical way of looking at the world don't, which is understanding the spirit, understanding souls, And why is there a spirit-led impulse to this arrogance? Why is there a spirit that says, we must be superior, we must be better, we must confront? And why is there a spirit or a temperament that's much more conciliatory, that's much more peaceful, which I think was the prophet spirit, which is much more given to coexistence versus... So that part, call it psychology, call it the psyche, we don't touch on because we're not comfortable discussing it, and there's no way of us measuring it, so we don't go there.

1:33:30But I think behind everything we're discussing is a certain spirit of how are we to be, is a certain psyche. And I see this in Arabia, you know, with some of the Shuul or the leaders of the Arabian countries. You see that they're not just looking at you as an individual, they're actually assessing your psychological state of being, and they're able to x-ray us as individuals and what's going on in our minds in a way that when we talk to one another, we don't. We're kind of judging each other by what we're saying and what we're doing rather than what we're feeling and what we're being. I think that's something we don't talk about often.

1:34:08How do we elevate our sense of... The closest, I think, is empathy. It's a weak closeness, but it's an attempt at answering your tough question, Francis. Ed, it's been an absolute pleasure. Make sure to join us on Substack where we carry on the conversation and you get to ask Ed your questions. Do you think that the Muslim Brotherhood has already infiltrated government? Without doubt. Two individuals come to my mind right now. And how do you know that, Ed, that they're connected to the Muslim Brotherhood? Because the two individuals I'm referencing, I knew them when I was with the Muslim Brotherhood.

1:34:42Francis Foster:Wow.

1:34:55We'll be right back.