How Islamophobia Got Even Worse

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1:01If you've paid attention to politics this summer, it is hard to ignore statements like this. Well, the one thing is we have jihadists being elected all over the place. We have this, whether it's communism, jihadism, it's a lot of friend of mine called up. He said, you know, really, you should use the word jihadist because that's what's happening.

1:24That's not what's happening, of course. But what is, is a series of victories by Muslim candidates in various elections. Abdullah al-Sayed in Michigan, Mayor Zoran Mamdani in New York. According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, there are more than 230 Muslim elected officials, including four Muslim Americans in Congress, the highest number ever. Which has led to all sorts of nasty statements, like that one in the Oval Office. So I called up Mehdi Hassan to talk about it. And in fact, this summer, the explosion in Islamophobia has reminded us that it's never been about terrorism. We want to say, oh, it's because of ISIS.

2:04It's because of 9-11. When in fact the data shows, and I've mentioned this before, Dalia Mogahed, who is a scholar on American public opinion and attitudes to Islam ex-Gallup, wrote a book about all this. She pointed out many years ago that the real correlation, the real spikes in Islamophobia happen not after terrorist attacks in this country. They happen in the run up to elections. Mehdi is the editor in chief of Zeteo News. She was studying the period in 2008 and 2012 when Barack Obama was running for election and then re-election. And we constantly heard about Barack Hussein Obama, man from Africa, et cetera, et cetera, son of a Muslim or secret Muslim.

2:44Now we have Abdul Al-Sayed, who's not a secret Muslim, who's actually a Muslim, whose family, whose father is also from Africa, from Egypt. And he's running for election. And the moment he wins a primary in Michigan, Lizzie, suddenly the National Senatorial Research Republican Committee, campaign committee, starts referring to him as Abdul Rahman Muhammad El-Sayed. They just got that middle name in there. Yeah. Got to get the full Muslim name out there. He's unlike Barack Obama. It's not just one middle name. He's got all three Muslim names. So this is very, very clearly correlated to the midterms coming up.

3:19And the Republican Party have used Islamophobia, used all forms of bigotry and racism over the years, but especially Islamophobia to gin up their base, to create wedge issues, to divide and rule, to fear monger, to distract and deflect from a failing war in Iran, from a failing economy at home. And I think, you know, the big question in November is, will it work? I don't know the answer to that question. It's going to be a very close race. But if he is defeated, and if it is partly because of Islamophobia, that's going to be a huge setback for America as a whole.

3:51Today on the show, what's behind our creeping, corrosive, Islamophobic summer? I'm Lizzie O 'Leary, in for Mary Harris, and you're listening to What Next? Stick around.

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6:18Immediately after the Michigan primary, we saw Senator Tommy Tuberville call Abdullah Syed a terrorist. Nancy Mace says every single Muslim holding public office in America, a threat to both national security and our republic. And then the president saying jihadists being elected all over the place. And I guess the big question is. does it work? Which is what you raised. And I wonder both what we have seen from the primaries that you think about this, and then as we move forward toward the midterms, what evidence do you see that this works? And what evidence do you see that voters can see through it?

6:59Yeah, it's a good question. I think obviously in the primary season, it hasn't worked in the sense that in the Democratic primaries where Republicans have come to play via AIPAC, because AIPAC now is basically a Republican front group in terms of who their donors are. It hasn't worked. You have Dari Elisa Avila-Chevalier winning in New York, who is Muslim. Right now, at the time we're speaking, last time I checked, Aisha Wahab was up in California in her primary in Eric Swalwell's old seat. She is Muslim, the daughter of Afghan immigrants. You know, Abdul El-Sayed won in Michigan, despite a very dirty campaign against him.

7:32So you have Muslim candidates winning all over the place. I mean, when we say winning, all over the place, there are, I think, four Muslims in Congress right now? Right. I mean, we're talking about a very small data set. We're talking about a minuscule number to begin with. And that number may go up from four or five to seven or eight come January 2027. That's obviously too much for the Islamophobes in this country. But yes, the big question is what happens in the general? And by the way, I should say in the primary season, Andy Ogles, perhaps the number one Islamophobic congressman in this country, and the fact that most of your listeners may never have heard of him, tells you about how mainstreamed and normalized Islamophobia is.

8:08He's been getting away with saying ridiculously bigoted things about Muslims for years, about all Muslims should get out of the country, etc, etc. He actually lost his primary to another MAGA guy, but a MAGA guy who wasn't running on as openly an Islamophobic platform as his in Tennessee. So one bit of good news there in the Republican primaries. So it is a big question mark as to whether it works in the general. Whether it works in the general or not, it's obviously poisoned our discourse. It's obviously made life much harder for Muslims in America. It's dangerous. In May of this year, two neo-Nazi teenagers walked into an Islamic center in San Diego and tried to massacre everyone there.

8:46They almost killed all 100 children who were in the Islamic school. Thankfully, two of the worshippers distracted the gunmen and saved those children's lives. They were killed. Three Muslim worshippers were killed that day. The vast majority of Republicans, Lizzie, said not a word about that attack. I remember calling out Ted Cruz. It's only because I shamed Ted Cruz, which is very hard to do because he doesn't have any shame. But it's only because I called him out on Twitter that he even condemned it. But most prominent Republicans didn't even say a word about that. I'm not sure even Donald Trump did.

9:12I'd have to go back and check. But that's how normalized it's become. How do you think the Democrats are handling this? Because I think that within the Democratic Party, there is a lot of nervousness and trepidation. And there are a lot of splits between, say, a Summer Lee on the left and, you know, your Senate leadership. And kind of how they try to position the Democratic Party here, they don't seem to have a great answer. No, I think the Democrats have a real problem on multiple levels. Number one, the Arab American and Muslim American communities in this country are still not happy about, obviously, the Democratic handling of Gaza, the complicity in the genocide from Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris.

9:53And you see that if you look at the 2024 vote in, say, Dearborn. Yes, you see that in many places. You see that anecdotally when you talk, when I talk to people, people are still very, very pissed off about the Dems. And you see that amongst a lot of activists who will point out, you know, OK, Republicans are openly Islamophobic, but Democrats have also played their own role in fanning the flames. I think there's two things going on here. Number one, there are a bunch of Democrats who are happy to fan the flames of Islamophobia. Liberals are not immune to bigotry. Let's just be very clear about that.

10:23And we've seen that time and again on both sides of the Atlantic, by the way. And I think you, you know, and by the way, when you had in Michigan, for example, Mallory McMurray, who a candidate I thought was a good candidate. I mean, my politics are close to Abdul Al-Seed, but I thought Mallory McMurray was a strong candidate, unlike Hayley Stevens, who I never thought was a strong candidate. But I think she tanked her campaign when she said Hassan Paikah, this Muslim Twitch streamer, who's not even a practicing observant Muslim, I think he'd be the first to admit, where she tried to equate him with Nick Fuentes, which is an insane thing to do.

10:52You don't have to agree with Hassan Piker on many things. He said many offensive things. But the idea that he's the equivalent of a neo-Nazi is absurd. And her campaign kind of went downhill after that. I don't know, causation or correlation. Hayley Stevens, on the eve of the primary, suggested Abdul Ased was blaming all of his problems on Jewish Americans. Abdul Ased never said a word about Jewish Americans, other than positive words. But it was an Islamophobic trope that all Muslims are secret anti-Semites. So Democrats have played a role in fanning some of these flames. A lot of the pro-Israel Democrats targeting Rashida Tlaib.

11:20Rashida Tlaib censured after Gaza. Insane that a bunch of white supremacists in the GOP have never been censured. Randy Fine, and we should talk about Randy Fine and Florian, never been censured by Congress for their bigotry. Democrats and Republicans play by very different rules. Indeed. And a bunch of Democrats happily signed up to condemn Rashida Tlaib for saying she wants equal rights for everyone living between the river and the sea. So there is a lot of history of Democrats indulging this bigotry. And then worse, I would say worse, is the Democrats who know better, but just can't be bothered to get into this fight.

11:49You know, they all line about the only thing that is necessary for evil to succeed. Give me an example. I'll give you a very good example. Hakeem Jeffries, just this week, came out and condemned Dan Bilzerian, who is this right-wing internet personality, far right, who ran in the Republican primary in Florida against Randy Fine, this Islamophobic bigot, sitting congressman. And he put out this Nazi ad, this kind of pro-Hitler ad. And a bunch of Democrats jumped up to say, this is wrong, As we should say, it is wrong. It's horrific to see what the Republican Party these days is indulging in in terms of Nazism.

12:20But interestingly, and a lot of people notice this, as did I, they didn't say a word about Randy Fine. It would have been nice if Hakeem Jeffries could have said, you know what, what Dan Bilzerian put out is anti-Semitic and he's running against a guy who's Islamophobic. This idea that there needs to be a hierarchy when it comes to condemning bigotry. I would like to see people to say anti-Semitism is wrong and Islamophobia is wrong, not one or the other. And people pointed out to me that, oh, Hakeem Jeffries condemned Randy Fine in the past. Great, in the past, one time. But the fact is, there are a bunch of card-carrying anti-Muslim bigots in Congress right now.

12:51And the Democrats are off on AWOL when they're saying bigoted things. It takes a lot for Democratic leadership to come out and condemn Republican Islamophobes in the same way that they're happy to condemn some rando DSA activist or some rando pro-Palestine student on campus holding a placard. Then Chuck Schumer and Josh Gottheimer and all a bunch of Richie Torres will take to the barricades. But when it's sitting members of Congress saying absolutely Islamophobic things, when it's the president of the United States putting out a picture of Abdul Seid and his wife in a hijab saying that's not a vision of America, where is the Democratic Party leadership then?

13:25So this is one of the things I wanted to examine with you, because I think it's possible that some of our younger audience might not remember what it was like 25 years ago or even 23 years ago in the run up to the Iraq war. where I think certainly most Democrats as well felt like anything they said that criticized Islamophobia was somehow, and I know this sounds insane saying it, but I just want to take people back to that moment, was somehow some tacit support for al-Qaeda, was somehow some tacit support for Saddam Hussein. And I wonder how much you think the shadow of that experience has poisoned American politics now.

14:14It's definitely poisoned it. I mean, we're coming up to the 25th anniversary at Zeteo. We're thinking about how we're going to cover that anniversary. And obviously, this will be part of it. That legacy of Islamophobia, the crackdown on civil rights, the rise in racism, them and us. I think, you know, as you said earlier, Democrats play by different rules. They're constantly on defense. They're constantly apologizing, constantly trying to justify. And it was a sense of, yeah, there was partly that. It was also the sense that we want to look tough on national security, which means we need to be tough on this issue.

14:45Everybody was wearing their flag pin. Yeah. And look, Barack Obama was infamously, especially in Muslim communities, remembered as the drone president, killed a lot of people with drone strikes. But people forget what he did at home. I mean, this was a man who was accused of being a Muslim, whose father was a Muslim. And yet, I mean, here's a stat for people who may not know this. He was president for eight years. He never stepped foot into a mosque in America until his last year in office. During one of his rallies, his team famously removed two women in headscarves from sitting behind him. So, you know, there was a constant sense of we cannot be seen, especially with a candidate who has a Muslim middle name to be seen as being pro-Muslim.

15:19I'll always remember when Barack Obama, I think it was 2008 or 2012, I can't remember which were the election campaigns, But on the campaign website, they had a section called like smears, like FAQs, like responses, rebuttals to smears. And one of them was, is Barack Obama a Muslim? Interesting that you put that in the smears section. In the smears section. So, you know, this idea and Colin Powell, actually, it was left to Colin Powell. If we're going to go down memory lane, the late Colin Powell, who I'll never forgive for her art. But one good thing he did was he went on Meet the Press when Obama was running in 08.

15:47And he said, people say Obama's a Muslim. And everyone says, oh, he's not a Muslim. And Colin Powell said, but so what if he was? And I think that was the line that needed to come out from Democrats. It never did. It was always, well, he's not a Muslim, as if that's a bad thing. And people praise John McCain. You'll remember this, Lizzie. Oh, yes. People always praise John McCain because a woman in a rally said, oh, he's an Arab and he's a terrorist. And he said, no, ma 'am, he's not an Arab. He's a good family man. And people praise McCain for that. I'm the only one who says, no, no, that wasn't a good response.

16:13Because McCain implied that if he was an Arab, he would be bad. What did that do to the generation of Muslims and Muslims aspiring to higher office who were coming up in that moment? I mean, my own colleague Ayman Ismail has written so much about his childhood in the shadow of that moment. But I wonder what kind of effect that has on a young Abdullah Syed, a young, you know, a young Mamdani. Like, what do they see? Well, obviously, if you read the New York Post, a young Mamdani was actually plotting 9-11 at nine years old or whatever he was. They want to link him to the attacks. That in itself is grossly Islamophobic.

16:51The response to a Muslim mayor of New York 25 years on is a kind of exhibit A or B in the list of Islamophobic stuff we've seen this summer. Look, I didn't live in the US post 9-11. I traveled here a lot at the time because I had a lot of family here at the time. And I remember it being bad, but not as bad as it is now. And Asma Khalid, formerly of NPR now at the BBC, just wrote an essay for The Atlantic this week. in which she makes this point. She said growing up in Indiana in a small town, being the only Muslim community, she remembers it being bad, but it's worse now. And I think people need to, non-Muslims in America, liberals, centrists, Democrats, whoever you want to call, really need to listen to their Muslim neighbors and friends saying this, which is, if you think it was bad after 9-11, it's worse now.

17:29And it was bad after 9-11. So just think about how worse it is now. Because after 9-11, there was a war on terror. Muslims were profiled. Muslims were stopped to airports. Muslims were detained. Muslims were held without trial, et cetera, et cetera. And you had Islamophobia. But you know what was different? And I'm going to have to go take a shower after saying this. You had a president, George W. Bush, who at least went to a mosque four days after 9-11 and he said, Islam is peace. We're not at war with Islam. Islam is not the enemy. Yeah. Can anyone tell me with a straight face that God forbid there was a terrorist attack by Muslims tomorrow in America?

17:59You think Donald Trump's going to a mosque to say Islam is peace? We'll be right back after the break.

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19:27This is the moment, baby. This is the moment we separate the dogs from the boys. and if you ask me, I only got one question. Do you got that dog in you? Because it's never about the winners or the losers, but it is about the difference between those brave enough to put some action on the game and those who just want to watch from the sidelines eating off-brand pizza rolls. So sit down, lock in those picks, and trust that ow! dog in you. Underdog. At least you're dog. Terms may apply. Do you lay this at Trump's feet? No, I don't lay it at Trump's feet. Trump is the logical consequence of everything that we saw.

20:05That's why I'm saying I'm not praising George Bush. George Bush said horrific things to Muslim communities at home and abroad. But at least rhetorically, the door wasn't as open to Islamophobia as it is today. You didn't have sitting members of Congress even after 9-11 saying, if I have to choose between a Muslim and a dog, I'll pick a dog, which is what Randy Fine said earlier this year. So this is where we are today. We're in a much, you know, people have been much more red-pilled, much more radicalized on the right. White supremacy and racism has been much more mainstreamed. Islamophobia has taken much more root.

20:34And by the way, none of this is organic. Millions of dollars have been spent on making Islam the boogeyman, on demonizing Muslims in terms of think tanks and fake studies and all these pundits and obviously lobbying and campaign races. I mean, my friend Wujahat Ali, many years ago for the Center of American Progress co-authored a report called Fear Inc., where he just traced how much money goes into right wing think tanks to gin up fear of Islam. And you see that now, by the way, to go back to your earlier question about now and then and whether it's the shadow of 9-11. Right now, it's the shadow of October the 7th.

21:06Let's just be very clear about that. A lot of the Islamophobia we're seeing today is a way of protecting the Israeli government. And you know how we know that? Because Benjamin Netanyahu says the same thing. He just went on a podcast last week and he said, oh, Britain's got so many Muslims. It's going to be the Islamic Republic of Britain. It's going to be the first Islamic Republic with nukes. Britain. First of all, you're an idiot. Pakistan already has nukes. But number two, you're a racist. If I went on TV and talked about Jews taking over Britain, the Jewish Republic of Britain, you would rightly call me an anti-Semite.

21:33So Benjamin Netanyahu is very clear and the Israeli government is very clear and their supporters in the West are very clear that they want to make Islamophobia a wedge issue. And there's a leaked report from a study that was done for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs last year that DropSite News reported on. People go read it. And one of the slides makes it very clear that talking about the threat of radical Islam is a very good way of refocusing the debate around Israel, Gaza and Hamas. Well, do you think this is because American attitudes on Israel and Israeli leadership, I should say, have changed so much?

22:03I mean, Pew just had some polling this summer. 62 % of U.S. adults hold an unfavorable view of the Israeli government. That is a big jump from 51 % in 2019. I'm guessing you do not think these things are kind of happening independent of one another. Not at all. I think this is part of a PR strategy from pro-Israel folks who say, how do we manage to restore Israel's image? We can't defend Israel because everyone's seen them do a genocide on their phones. So what do we do? We talk about the enemy that we need to scare Americans about. We need to remind them about radical Islam. We need to get out the old post 9-11 playbook about jihadists under your bed.

22:37And that's why you have Donald Trump talking about jihadists. Donald Trump wasn't talking about jihadists six months ago. He talks about a lot of things. He was not talking about this stuff. By the way, Donald Trump loves Muslims abroad. Can I just point to that? Muslim rulers. He loves the prime minister of Turkey. He loves the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. He even went to Malaysia where Mahathir Mohammed is a very critical of Israel. But, you know, he got a rose roses and a red carpet on the runway and people singing. He loved it. So he loves going to kind of Muslim countries and getting fetid.

23:03It's the Muslims at home that he has a problem with, obviously, because, you know, I'm sorry, the issue is Palestine. And that is a number. That is a reason why a lot of people not just on the right, but I mentioned some of the Democrats, But someone like Richie Torres, why they are so keen to fan the flames of this stuff and promote Islamophobic bigots, because it does tie in with a PR campaign that says we're losing this other battle. And unfortunately, that's part of it. And that's why we've seen such an explosion of Islamophobia in recent months. And that's why, again, when we talk about what I said at the start, if this is correlated to elections and the rise of elections, we see Muslim candidates winning races on platforms that are critical.

23:41By the way, not just Muslim candidates, also non-Muslims, Claire Valdez and Angie Nixon in Florida. We're seeing many people run on anti-APAC, anti-Israel campaigns. But the Muslim ones doing it make for easier targets. It's much easier for Mike Rogers, a white man in Michigan, to run a nice Islamophobic campaign against Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan. So I just saw you on your show interview the authors of a new book about AIPAC. And in that conversation, I noticed that you were careful to ask both of them if they were Jewish and they are. And I think this is this big tension in the Democratic Party and on the left of making sure that criticizing Israel is not seen as anti-Semitic.

24:24And I would say people do that with varying degrees of success. And the party does not know how to thread that needle. Oh, 100 percent. I agree with that. And that is a real issue because on the one hand. And there are legit anti-Semites as well. Yes. Well, on the one hand, the pro-Israel side have weaponized anti-Semitism and are undermining the very important struggle against anti-Semitism. I've said this all the time. When you're accusing Miss Rachel of being an anti-Semite, the whole word has no meaning anymore. The word has no meaning anymore. A YouTube kids content creator who says, let's not have children die in Gaza.

24:59If you're calling her an anti-Semite, the word has no meaning. That's one issue on one side. And then on the other side, you say, there are critics of Israel, both on the left and the right, who do cross the line into anti-Semitism, especially on the right. Although we ignore them because we're obsessed with the left. And we already talked about Dan Bilzerian earlier. He would say, I'm just a critic of Israel. But he ran an ad that was pro-Hitler. We've seen this with many people. I've seen, you know, I've met so many people who now love Nick Fuentes. I'm talking about brown and black people. I'm talking about non-white people.

25:27And you say to them, but he's a Holocaust fan. He's on the far right. He's a kind of Nazi apologist. And they'll say, oh, no, but he speaks out against Israel and AIPAC. And this is the problem now, is you've left, because the mainstream politicians have left a massive lane empty, you do get the Nick Fuentes and even the Candace Owens and others kind of taking up the flag to fight against Israel. And you're like, I don't really want to be on the same side of those people because my objection to Israel is maybe not the same reason they object to Israel. I object to Israel because of international law and human rights and because I want Palestinians to help to condemnation.

25:56There are other people out there who object to Israel because it's Jewish. And I think that is a real problem right now. And I would lay the blame firmly at the square feet of mainstream politicians who left this vacuum, if our entire political leadership on both sides of the divide, if our entire media just sits silently as our ally carries out a genocide with our weapons, and yeah, you're going to open the door to people on the fringes flying the flag of opposition to that. Do you think Americans can see that? See what? See how complicated this is and see that, you know, anti-Zionism doth not equal anti-Semitism, that some of this space is taken up by a Nick Fuentes, that this is, you know, not a simple one-word answer situation.

26:43I think the debate over what's happening in Gaza and West Bank is actually very simple. I think when people say it's complicated, it's not. It's very simple. I do think the debate over how we talk about Israel and Judaism and Jews— Yeah, that's kind of more what I'm getting at. That is complicated. Yes, for sure. Because it's so intertwined. So for example, I spend my entire life, my entire career, you can go back 15 years. I wrote a piece for the New Statesman in 2011 about antisemitism, the Muslim community. I've written extensively about antisemitism on the left and how we need to distinguish between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.

27:18I spend my life saying, let us not blame Jewish people or Jewish institutions for what Israel is doing. I am horrified when there are instances of, you know, people who claim to be pro-Palestine attacking a synagogue or defacing a synagogue. So that's my position. I've been consistent on it for over 15 years. And yet, what do I do when every mainstream Jewish organization in America, or almost everyone, comes out and blindly defends Israel and what Israel's doing? Or, for example, suggests that if you criticize Israel, you are attacking Jews because Israel is very much part of being Jewish, which is I hear all the time from people.

27:51I'm told, you don't know what you're talking about. We pray for Zion in every way. And it becomes very, It's very hard to mean and then to explain to people on the left or in the Muslim community, well, you need to separate them out because they're saying to me, hold on, they don't want to be separated out. So it becomes really, really awkward when you have synagogues hosting real estate sales in Israel and in the occupied territories. I mean, that depends on the synagogue. It depends on the age group. Of course. Of course. I'm not making you swoops out. No, I know you're not. To go back to your point about it becomes very muddy.

28:16And for people like me, we're still sticking to our I'm keeping Israel separate from Jews and Judaism. But, you know, for example, in the UK, the chief rabbi of the UK, his son serves in the Israeli military. He said he referred to the Israeli military as our boys or our heroes. You're British. Why are you talking in that way? That's not helpful for the chief rabbi of the UK, a British citizen, to be talking about a foreign country in that way. So it becomes really, really complicated. And when people tell me, well, actually, you can't criticize Zionism without criticizing Judaism, as many people have told me, that becomes a problem.

28:46Because I need to be able to criticize a political ideology. This might sound strange, but I wanted to ask you about your experience on the online debate series Jubilee. The one you went on was one progressive versus 20 far right conservatives. You've written about this experience. But I wonder if that experience changed in any way how you think about changing minds. And if you feel like you have some successful way of changing the mind of an Islamophobe. So a couple of things on that. Number one, it's interesting you should mention Jubilee because they were all far-right folks. And yet I had four claims that day.

29:27I went to make, it was a two and a half hour debate. I had to make four arguments and it was immigration. It was crime. It was Trump is anti-constitution. And they came and shouted at me on all those things, especially immigration. They were super racist. My fourth claim was Trump is doing ethnic cleansing in Gaza. The majority of the people in that room refused to get up and debate me because they agreed with me because they are far-right fans of Nick Fuentes and Groypers. And they hate Israel. In fact, one of them who did come to debate with me said, well, it's not Trump's fault. He's controlled by a religious group.

29:55And I said, which group is that? You know which one. And there were people making horrific anti-Semitic remarks both on and off air. And I walked out of that recording thinking to myself, Jonathan Greenback and the ADL spend their entire life monitoring random students on New York campuses. Meanwhile, OG anti-Semitism is alive and well on the right with this young generation of groupers and neo-Nazis, many of whom are going off to work for Republican congressmen in their offices. And nothing is said by mainstream Jewish organizations about what I would argue is a much bigger threat to Jewish life in America, which is the resurgence of neo-Nazism.

30:28So that's one thing I took away from that recording. It was shocking just how anti-Semitic these people were. And I can't even tell you about some of the remarks they said off camera. And then number two, in terms of changing minds, look, I wrote a book about debating called Win Every Argument. And the first chapter is about know your audience. And the first thing I say in that book is when I go out to debate people, you're not trying to change the mind of your opponent. Most of the time, that's impossible. You're trying to change the minds of an audience, a third party, and a quote-unquote neutral or dispassionate group of people who may be watching in a hall, in a room, on TV, online.

30:59And I think that for me is why I did Jubilee. I didn't go into any illusions I was going to change any MAGA person's mind. But my goal was not them. My goal was the 17 million people or something insane who've watched on YouTube, many of whom are young people. When I go on college campuses now, people do not know me from Zatea or Al Jazeera or MSNBC. Oh, you're the guy from Jubilee. They know you from YouTube. Young people all watch Jubilee, apparently. And I only found this out from my kids, which is why I did it. So that's why I did it. And of those 17 million people who watched on YouTube, if I got through to even 0.1 % of them, that's a lot of people.

31:32So that's why I did it. Before I let you go, is there one thing that you want non-Muslim Americans to have in their minds this summer and as we go into the midterms? I think the number one thing to say is something Ben Affleck said to Bill Maher many, many years ago when Bill Maher was still, as he still does, his Islamophobic shtick, which is the vast majority of Muslims in this country are not political activists, are not obsessed with Israel, are not obsessed with American foreign policy, are not obsessed with anything political or religious. The vast majority of Muslim Americans want to go to work, eat their sandwiches, take their kids to school, watch sports, live normal lives.

32:13And I think the more we otherize this community, the more we treat them as just some kind of political or national security problem, the more dangerous it becomes. And the other point I would make, just linked to that, which is we are, I've said this before and I'll say it again, we are the canaries in the coal mine, right? You think, oh, it's just the Muslims. Well, who do you think they're coming for after the Muslims? They're coming for black people. They're coming for Jewish people. They're coming for gay people. Like all of us minorities, we're all in this together. Mehdi Hassan, thank you so much for coming on.

32:40Thank you. Mehdi Hassan is the editor-in-chief and CEO of Zeteo News. And that is the show. What Next is produced by Rob Gunther, Evan Campbell, Madeline Thames-Ducharm, and Patrick Fort. Paige Osborne is the senior supervising producer for What Next and What Next TVD. Mia Lobel is the executive producer of podcasts here at Slate. And Ben Richmond is the senior director of podcast operations. I'm Lizzie O 'Leary, in for Mary Harris. You can go yell at me on Blue Sky. I'm at Lizzie O 'Reilly. Thank you so much for listening. Talk to you soon.

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