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and south african jazz and liberation -- the period of liberation movement between 1959 in 1975. expressly connected to scottsboro in the sense that she works out of my interest in the relationship between social, political and cultural movement. james miller, chairman of the american or the person at the hummer professor of english and author of, remembering aspera, published by princeton university press. thank you.

>> and now on booktv, irshad manji talks with daily beast columnist john avlon about islam in the united states of the next 10 years. this is about an hour and a half. [applause] >> it is a great pleasure to be here with you tonight. a dear friend, a brave soul and a terrific book. it is a great, important and timely conversation and is so great we are having it here. it's a simple dialog 10 years after 9/11. as you and i discussed many times, there is still, 10 years after 9/11, a struggle at home and abroad with freeman and fundamentalism and you are squarely on the side of freedom in a thank you for that in everything you do. [applause] it's amazing tenures after 9/11,

there's still a few topics that we tiptoe around more than islam in america. and does you experienced in your daily conversations online with people at home and abroad, the way this has become so polarized and i want you to talk a little bit about that because we seen the rise and politicization of islam and in retrospect, you think the immediate response of george bush or rudy giuliani and other people to protect down because they made it or declare that was not what was going on in this country. we seen a rise of islam. some people feel by hate, issues that distract. on the other side is paralyzing political correctness, that refuses to deal with the facts of the larger struggle, what's going on within islam and then islam is against the united states. talk about your place in that intersection. >> guest: so that's a

softball, right? will start with the easy ones first. i don't yet know what my place is in that intersection, except to say that when you thank me for being squarely on the side of freedom, i think you and god for allowing me to wind up in a society in which i can do that relatively safely without any exaggeration, every morning i wake up thinking all a bit as political refugees, my family and i were accepted onto the precious soil of canada by my country. i say in the "allah, liberty and love," we are literally handed our freedom along with their winter coats. we didn't fight for these freedoms. we didn't take up arms, teen chat on for them. they were gifted to us. and i tell you, dad is in part why i feel not just my right, but my responsibility to use

these freedoms in as constructive a way as they know how. but to use them lest they atrophy. so what is your role you bask in this interception? when i say use may freedoms constructively, i do believe that means reconciling my beloved faith of islam, which this gift of freedom, rather than believing that there has to be a showdown. i don't believe there has to. some on the left and some on the right to believe that. seeking the position that i do can be very difficult because it's not black-and-white. and yet, how do you convey the same message to the same audience, knowing that your audience is will be comprised of people who have very different values from one another. how do you convey that nuclear

message should be heard? i have not yet mastered. >> but she's done more than anybody else probably. is it bridgebuilder, as a place that the e-mails you've published, especially from young muslims in america and around the world, who are finding your were suspiciously sometimes to free translation center in your website because they can't get the books published at home and the way they want to hold onto their faith, which they love so much, director at what the modern world. i'd love to read one e-mail to start out with from a young man in the college of sharia within al-azhar deemed egypt. >> this is like the harvard of sunni islam. okay, we're talking a very, very elite university and it's called

sharia law. >> on setting up one of the greatest universities, that no one is using their mind or critical creative thinking. i can't say what i think, feel want about habeeb, jewish. if i say what i mean, he'll be accused of being a nonbeliever and my family will get hurt or my family will hurt me. let's talk about that. >> i deliberately did not print his name in the book because of course the environment in which he is at the college of sharia, and all at, he would very easily be found out. and again, god knows i would have a nice result. maybe nothing, that may be the opposite. but i loved the fact that he e-mailed anyway and he put his name in that e-mail.

and he said at the end of that e-mail, i am going to be an imam and i will be proudly a performance and i will support you and i will support women. pretty good start. now, he's obviously young. he's a student. but i have to tell you that i don't think he is unrepresentative of the generation and the secular democrats really of the generation that began the uprising that have taken up so many of our headlines quite rightly fell over the last number of months. in may 2005, i was in cairo, found myself observing and then pulled into what was then the biggest demonstration against government authoritarianism. i'm not sure it's come i hung out with a bunch of democracy activist at a café, with a

number of them. and one of them particular stood out to me for this reason. she comes up as i know you from the international interviews you've done. thank you voter doing, but a need to ask you something very privately. i said sure. she says well, the thing is i fallen in love with a jewish man and i don't believe he needs to convert to islam and he doesn't believe he needs to convert to islam. and here i am sticking my neck out, putting my life on the line really to support a political change in my country. but what is more scary to me is talking to my parents about my love for the jewish man. and she asks me for advice. and this was part of a wave, i found, as e-mails coming to me by young muslims or non-muslims who had fallen in love with one another. >> what did she say what she asked for advice?

i set my god, look, give ye your e-mail address. i'm going to intouch review, but i also said to her, i can tell you you're not the first ones to ask me for advice on interfaith marriage and i'm sure you won't be the last. we talked about the fact that we now live in an age of mass migration, were muslims, for example are winding up in places like europe, either because they have nehr, their parents are immigrants or because they are going there for jobs in touch until recently go in there for jobs. they are encountering non-muslims and falling in love of course. so this is a red-hot 21st century issue. and because her question was part of the wave of questions i was kidding about this very phenomenon come i said to her i'd get back to ultimately take. the tears i did that. i realized after the 14th or 15th time i got this question,

that my e-mail and escaped back to say this is my interpretation of the quran wasn't going to cut it. because it's not than they need to convince. it's their elders. so it's a progressive imam here in america and i asked him to exercise. he says independent reasoning. and i asked him to exercise this tradition within islam to reinterpret the very first is in the koran that have traditionally been used to prohibit, especially women, for marrying outside the faith. he did that and he came up with a concise two-page defense from an islamic perspective of interfaith marriage. i posted it on my website in english. and here's the kicker. in only six months, it became such a popular download that i had to get it translated into 21 languages, including most of the european languages.

i said that's the kicker, but actually there's a further kicker to all of this. in 2007 i was lecturing in berlin. not about this issue particularly, but after everybody had gone, the young muslim women living in berlin approached me to say thank you for posting this interfaith marriage lesson and they say thank you install for trans writing it into turkish, german and aerobatic because we are at a marrying age now. our parents are putting the pressure on us to marry only muslim men coming you know, individuals who we mostly don't even know, let them know i'm shannon let alone lessing. in all three of these languages, they can't tell us that they've -- can't understand it. there's a linguistic excuse for than to simply dismiss it. in fact, they said the fact you've got 10 in a setback to

write this so i know that there is one theologian and likely more who is willing to marry us. he said that they know the difference for them. so it goes back to the e-mail that i got from this young man at another universe or the this is such an interesting time to be a reformist in the faith of islam. 10 years ago, before the technology is readily available, the translations on your own website and so forth, i could not have imagined having the kind of threat and impact with this work. i shudder to think what the next 10 years will hold. i can barely keep up with what is going on now. but now is the time to be doing and undergoing. >> the store you just told this to the heart of all life, liberty and love.

the trends that are driving, all the changes we are grappling with, all of us in arab societies in the tribes, which we need to transcend. that's a big idea. >> its willingness to speak truth to power within your own tribe, your community, you're a circle for the sake of a greater good. and by the way, that's not my language. that is robert f. kennedy's language. the reason he emphasized speaking truth and power within your community first and foremost is that is that despite the backlash will be most painful. it's one thing to stand up to the so-called other. whatever you've got from the other you can withstand, go back to year on and say look, look upon entering to stand up for a picket fence. i know where i belong. the moment you call out your own community stuff, they are injustices, dirt pieces of power

to the security blanket of instant blogging disappears. the mac that is the heart of what i think is going on in politics and geopolitics today. it's not pressure. the driving force of technology and globalization is making people transcend tribalism and people deeply committed to it are in a defensive crouch and they're lashing out because they knew deep in their hearts they are the wrong side of history. >> and i don't know that they do know they're in the wrong side of history, but i think dogmatists to know how insecure it all is for than. and this is why i have no problem saying that i am a faithful muslim, which is not the same thing as being a dogmatic muslim or a dogmatic christian or a dogmatic anything. he seems to me, john kum is secure enough to handle questions. faith never needs to be threatened by questions. dogma on the other hand, of any kind, is always threatened

because dogma that definition is rigid and brittle and snaps under the spotlight of scrutiny. quite frankly my view at least, deserves to be questioned. >> i agree. let me ask you this because you're in a moment where we look at the work you're doing, the broader hope of the arab spring and the question of calling a new tradition to justify new directions. one of the most fascinating things in your book, with this forgotten tradition of tolerance within islam, all these leaders and thinkers in the culture that coexisted so beautifully with other cultures for so long, talk about that tradition, where it went in how it can be rediscovered. >> okay, so yet another easy one. >> sorry. >> a thousand years ago roughly speaking, islamic theorization lead in ingenuity and i don't think there's any mystery why. it's jihad, again the own

creative reasoning. in fact, the order of the day. we know that so much of what we at this part of the world take for granted as products of secular, european culture, in fact was started in believing muslims. when i see believing, they were driven not so much baked out as they wonder. so one of my heroes have been in islamic history is a philosopher and he was so much more than just a philosopher, but broadly speaking a philosopher after whom by the way someone wished his father remains the family rushdie. and well into the 1600s, italian universities, for example were for example were absolutely enthralled. and i make the point in the book that through him, all sorts of scientific experiments present

undertaken that ultimately lead to the craze we have in this part of the world with frankly science fiction. even john milton, the great english poet took a great deal of inspiration from innovations that lead and can be traced rackley back, still again transcended religious orders as well. how do we rediscover that? without putting too fine a point on it, that interface marriage blessing i just taught to bow, notice that the imam, my perch to reinterpret the use quran exercises the tradition, updates interpretations and all that exists. i am not talking about rewriting the koran. they are what they are. but interpretation is about trying meaning from those words and we can draw. in fact, i think we should draw new meaning for a brand-new

century, brittany pluralistic context in which the vast majority of us now live. among the just say one other thing if i may. why should we -- i mean, we can come but why should we? it really does go back to my abiding belief in allah, in one god, not god self-appointed ambassadors. he seems to me and i realize not everybody in this audience believes in god and i don't think god minds. but it seems to me that any deity, any creator worthy of worship doesn't manufacture widgets and autonomy. you create a worthy of worship produces individuals who give themselves permission to grow because that creature is not insecure. quite the opposite.

welcomes that growth, i believe because when we use our creativity, you pay tribute to the creativity of that which created us. >> so given all those dynamics, given that opportunity, that obligation to grow, your central core struggle is reformed communist reform islam, a reformation long overdue to make it thrive in the 21st century, in the modern world. that is the least soft question the whole world because of course there's nothing bigger than not struggle. that site is at the core of almost every issue we deal with in at least much of geopolitics. how do you feel that efforts to reform islam is going today? >> i read some of the comments underneath the article that you wrote for "the daily beast"

about "allah, liberty and love" and and a number of them said well, surely for courage, but i don't see anybody following. i don't see anybody taking up the struggle. she's a lone voice in the wilderness. if they read "allah, liberty and love," they would know that's completely true. and this is what gets underreported for many reasons, not the least of which is that i don't regret chess, it is what it is, it's just moves on the so-called saying wonderful things is simply not as as the bombings and beheadings. and i totally get that, but it must make the point that just because you are not reading about incipient reform movement within islam, does not mean it doesn't exist. you know, i recently came back from europe, where i was speaking with a growing network of reformist muslims.

this network didn't exist three years ago, okay? now these people, these individuals who are earlier working in their own silos in isolation are actually coming together to recognize, number one, that they are not allowed in number two, to see how they can support one another. if ever we needed any sort of tangible evidence that voices like mine are not above, look only again to the secular democrat, who over years, not overnight, over years, which means persistence and commitment , instigated the so-called arab spring. they are the ones who brought other sectors of egyptian and largely speaking, north african and middle eastern society to these uprisings. so why no voices like mine are not alone. but i also know, john, in an

open and pluralistic society, like america, like canada, like much of western europe and australia, people like me have class that so many others don't yet. and that is one of the reasons i wanted to make sure to reflect the voices we typically don't hear it "allah, liberty and love" because they deserve to be amplified so that you can see that there is real hope, not merely theoretical hope. >> technology is allowing folks to shrink the distance come to start communicating. what are some of the countries you have seen these networks bonding together, not the arab spring is health, but reform of islam. >> let's go to europe. why europe? that's not the muslim world. well au contraire. again, the fact that there is so much muslim migration in europe, from sweden to norway, to

denmark, germany, france, belgium, holland, i mean, italy. the fact that there are young -- i am going to say because it's true, european people who happen to be muslim, who love their faith, but who defined themselves first and foremost as europeans because being in a slump, they insist and i agree should not be a contradiction with being muslim. and what i find so fascinating is that what we in this country would call liberal, which in europe means something very different, but let's say again for the sake of argument, progressives, people who believe in their humanitarian ascent they are moving society forward, i have found in these reformists have found that in fact, a lot

of the pushback of calling themselves europeans come from people who defined themselves as progressives because many of the self defined progressives believe that it is their multicultural duty to attach these young muslim europeans to the cultures of the parents and the so-called old world because when we do that, we are paying tribute to the roots of these young people, when in fact many of these young people say hey, that's my parents culture. that's not my culture. i have no less than you are. so it's not just the right thing that challenges the ability and capacity of young muslim and appearance to integrate. you certainly get that. but make no mistake, you get this feel good, and gui, multiculturalism that in the way

of pack is, it's not the idea that's the problem. it is the way it is practiced, that winds up becoming a very strange and hydrate hello with the right wing. and it didn't, you know, people on the opposite end of the right need to look at themselves as well and see whether they are advancing the cause of integration as opposed to assimilation. >> let me ask you about one of the other major topics and a whole chapter in your book, which is modern muslims, so-called moderate muslims. and you really take them to task for not unequivocally condemning the violence committed in their faith's name. a lot of the work i do, the writing i do i'm proud to be a centrist and i talk about the vital center. and yet there is a major gestation with those folks fighting for reform, trying to

reconcile differences, that fighting for progress and people i spoke a a difference, let's try to diminish the conflict and ignored the moral conflict of our time. that context, on the one hand you have this real experience has been a bigger criminal than osama bin laden and her mother's mosque. >> when my mother was very listening to the sermon on the quip had been given. >> to think an awkward moment? the self-described moderate muslims, some who have moved into the west, who are unwilling to coyly condemn violence committed in their faith's name. >> said john, it is not so much the so-called moderate muslims do not clearly condemn. they learn to clearly condemn. public opinion has pushed them to do that. that is not the issue. the issue i find is actually twofold. one is that moderate muslims

usually don't acknowledge the role that religious inspiration plays in the very violence that is committed in religion. for example, when major that's all malika signed in fort hood texas opened fire on his fellow soldiers, now this is key, not the fact he was muslim. put that aside. that he was shouting god is great. as the history of this, this is what is important. clearly there is some religious inspiration that has driven him to this crime. but the first thing that we heard out of the mouths of organizations, you know, that claim to represent moderate muslims who is no, no, don't misunderstand. islam has nothing to do with this. now, i put myself in the shoes of a non-muslim american and for that matter, some muslim

americans. and i can imagine why many of them and say, wait a minute, here is this guy with the word a law -- allah dripping off his lips and you tell me islam has nothing to do with this. i am confused. and when you ask those questions, moderate muslims in my experience and in the experience of many of the reformist muslims with whom i've been in conversation and can put up wall and say, you enough about. they're not allowed to ask those questions. respect me, which is a euphemism for don't challenge me and don't make me uncomfortable. so i believe this is the finishing flourish in that argument here. i believe that if moderate muslims were willing to hear the question and to address the questions honestly, that actually suspicion among many

non-muslim americans with lower because then come in many non-muslim women americans is a great, i get to have a discussion with you about this. i don't get to have a discussion about you, what do you have to hide? and no, what are you afraid of? and that raises defenses all over. the other pointing me to make about moderate muslims because effector two problems. one is the usually don't acknowledge the religious plays. the other problem is that i find moderate muslims are so consumed with their muslim identity and the purity of the muslim identity, but they wind up playing the game of identity politics, meaning that you don't define yourself and for all that you are, do you define yourself for being the other, okay, so

the moment something is active you that makes you uncomfortable, and makes you and come as a muslim he immediately take offense to it and you decide that your humanity is being challenged, whereas, the reality is that disagreeing with one another's ideas does not mean denying one another. so those two barriers need to be addressed very squarely. and the irony here is it's not going to happen without a lot of defense is going. but we have to be willing to confront them and pull out the political gains. >> and you write a lot in the book about the interplay. as you said earlier, these well-intentioned politically correct progressives and that's empowering that behavior, make it more difficult to have an honest dialogue, when the right thing to do is take that leap of

faith to have an honest conversation. >> obliges a leap of faith because manufacture the right phrase. but when you challenge me as a non-muslim, if you challenge me about my spirit shall a religious belief, my take is you actually have faith in my capacity to think critically. you are treating me as an equal. you are treating the a peer. you are not treating me as a child. that is respect, whereas on so many university campuses today, it is the very fear of being challenged that has corrupted this notion of respect. so the walker's upcoming hand goes out. you're not even allowed to ask me a question and i will define not as respecting me. that's reducing me to something much less than i'm actually capable of. >> so in that spirit, let's bring that to the 10th anniversary of 9/11, those

conversations we don't have enough he cared we have a growing, thriving muslim immigrant population come up with something very different that it happened at the same time the population is growing and there's a religious component, normally in traditional waves of immigration, it would be a question of generation integrationist dynamics are at work to do. but of course this wave of immigration coincided with an attack on a country committed by people saying they were acting in the name. >> and that's the key. we can put that aside it is that they did this in the name of islam. so i'm glad she phrased it that way because it's absolutely important. so the question so many people have, it has reduced our ability to have an honest conversation about real questions, integration and that is the largest that we will fall to a more perfect union, but what are the stumbling blocks? when it concerns people a lot

and sometimes they see an ugly days is, is the islamic faith compatible with democracy? sharia law compatible? how can that work out in the united states of america goes forward? >> welcome welcome pushback on this point, but i believe the islamic faith and sharia law are not the same thing. for me it certainly is. and also, let me just make the point that again in this country, there is a sword as sharia reaction. and i get that in nature that. sharia isn't one thing. sharia can be defined in many, many ways and can be defined quite namely in believing i'm not making the case for sharia. please, i'm not making the case for that. and a secularist myself come the meaning that they very much believe in the separation of organized religion and organize politics. but my point simply is that it's

more nuanced than the my god sharia types would have us believe. now, how then -- how can islam be reconciled with the democracy and constitution of a gun in this part of the world? one of the things i point out in "allah, liberty and love" in every area of is that there are plenty of passages in the quran that actually support freedom of conscience, freedom of thought and freedom of expression. and what i find so interesting is that conservatives, both muslim and not those funds often say to me, is a liberal, you are just been it. that's true. i have been selective. but how are you not been selective when you ignore the freedom friendly passages that occur on? you see, again it's all in the interpretation. i hope for you very briefly that

the case i make is not theoretical. it is for why allah, god, not rabbis are priests or ministers, but god. why god is compatible, why allah is compatible. if i have to believe in one god, then they also believe that god has the full and final truth. not me, not you and nobody in this audience has the full and final truth, which means we need to accept that we've got limited knowledge, which in turn makes it a spiritual obligation to contribute to society in which we can disagree with one another in peace and with stability. why? anything less means were playing on and not in a monotheistic state is the real sin if you can put it that way. so the beauty here are the upshot is that believe in one

god, quite happily so, to defend human liberty. >> and that becomes the bigger question in the larger pollution, there is this idea out of many one, but ultimately we do transcend all our tribal differences and come together. and that is -- i think that's the promise of americans being fulfilled every day. the question becomes the new look at the ways that the different generations, of muslim americans here in the united states and you see those teenage girls who talk about in the book, whose freedom is being in some cases viciously restrained by brothers and fathers who feel they are protecting the child's honor, to some broader degree of faith that the culture will work because you point out individuals make decisions, cultures don't. but that america will work, that if overtime but but can reason and talk together, that that

process of assimilation and integration will occur with the muslim american community is as if every other? >> at coming to sa. i don't think i could to continue this work if i didn't. but make no mistake, it's not a matter of waiting on now. every change requires he was more curl which to speak out whenever i want them to shut up. they bring you back to the defining lenses through which a view in "allah, liberty and love" that muslims like me have in front of us and non-muslims had to link arms with us, it's the modern u.s. civil rights unit. you know, martin luther king junior come if you haven't read lately his letter from a birmingham jail, please do. refresh your memory about this awesome document because one of the sections that he deserted in the document is devoted to moderate christians. and he points out that in times

of moral crisis in the of course was referring to christianity in the 1960s come in times of moral crisis, moderation is important. so he was exhorting moderate christians to be so tepid and timid about the need to have segregation. he was calling them out on their own hypocrisy. and if you apply that analysis to what is happening within the culture of honor that is frankly colonized the faith of islam, the culture of honor in which a young woman -- i told this story in "allah, liberty and love." a young woman 18 years old, most fun, living right here in new york e-mails manic desperation. she's on the verge of suicide, but she can't commit suicide because she knows she's going to

go to if she does. so she is literally in this limbo in which she says i'm going to go anyway and if i tell myself i'm going to go for sure and faster. and she says, i don't know what to do. and she's answered e-mail by saying you think that because i live in new york, i would have freedom. she ends up for e-mail saying no. the back story to this is that she is growing up, with her parents culture, which comes from southeast asia. and once again name the country because i don't want her being found out. but her parents are trying to marry her off to a muslim man from that country, they don't know who that person is and

doesn't want to go there. she doesn't know how to tell her parents that she really is something different than what they're used to. and so she's asking me to talk to her parents. i say i'm not clear enough to show up at their door. call me what you love, but i do ask refinements, what'll you do to help her. by the way, speaking of moral courage, though i won't tell you what country are carrots come from, she insisted i use her real name, real first name. and she said, people need to hear the story as it is not just in pakistan and it's not just in bangladesh and it's not just in libya with the culture of honor, collective honor protect your family's honor comes into play. it's also right here in the united states, within our own muslim community.

that noticed that i talk about culture. it is true. culture is not religion. there is such a thing as tribal culture of honor, which by the way propped up u.s. -- propped up slavery in the united states many years ago. that too was a culture of honor. so you apply the analysis to what is going on. it's true it is not the same of islam, but that is nice to say in theory, the reality is that there are times when a muslim father and again the stories told in my book, a muslim father of a canadian girl, who happens to be muslim and refuses to wear the headscarf come up with his hands the koran, a religious document and swears that he will kill his daughter the next time she refuses to wear the key job. and he kills her. you can tell me all you want,

but that is culture. great, tell that to the dead girl. if we are going to say is muslims culture is culture, faith is faith, we bloody well should act. >> let me ask you a final question before we take questions. is the role of women's emancipation in changing that culture. you make apparently the distinction between faith and culture in this too often corrupted by hate. what role does increasing women's rights, women's education have been changing that culture from within? >> women, i believe, are the key, but i am not the kind of person who says i've never been the kind of feminist he says give them all the power and the world will change for good. no, women are people, too. we too can be corrupted by power

because at the end of the day, we are still individuals and we are still human beings. so obviously a fairer distribution of power is needed. but make no mistake it is needed. and they think it is now become more acceptable and liberal and progressive circles to make that point. there is a time a few years ago when again he would be called a self pitying muslim or an islamist foe of oregon a birthright when you make the point that women themselves within the world of islam are rising up, you know, to reclaim the very rights that the koran interpreted in a certain way. it is more acceptable to do that now. for this i am very grateful. but make no mistake that it's all good in theory. let's see whether the rule for example, that women have so arduously played in the uprisings in egypt and libya now

pan out in the way that men are willing to share power or not, with women as new, political regimes and systems are put together. >> that's a big idea. before we take questions, i want to read my favorite quote from the book because it's all about an individual taking a stand of moral courage, as a way of creating new possibilities and ultimately healing the definitions that i think are destroying our country, it hasn't so much conflict in our culture at home and abroad. you say people who act on moral courage, who always encounter disapproval, to have more courage is to challenge conformity in their own tribe, ideological or professional and to do so for a more universal good. doesn't get any better than that. thank you for everything.

[applause] >> let's take some questions. [applause] >> let's take some questions from the audience of them also from the twitter verse because we already have some really good ones. >> just so you know who this is coming up to the podium, director of the program have one here called the moral courage product. and so again he will be our tweet gavin will interject every so often with a question from the twitter verse and from facebook i think as well. okay great. >> rate. yes, sir. stand up and please take the microphone. >> you mention, irshad, that a thousand years ago there was this sort of openness in exchange and desperation. a book about new york city tax about how the dutch influence, commitment that exist at that time in the netherlands was

different from colonies in the kind of witchhunt trials and so on. how is that lost a dozen years ago? are there lessons for us in america who kind of treasure openness and diversity and so forth quite >> such a great question. thank you for that. very briefly, the tradition that preeminence, the preeminence of each had critical thinking in islam was lost for a purer, political reasons. not spiritual enough theological reasons. again, bottom line is there is much going on within the vast islamic empire, roughly a thousand years ago. because there were different denominations popping up in different interpretations, the colonists, the state senate time based in bag dad decided that in

order to keep the empire together, we need to crack down on these various interpretations. again, keep the empire together. it's a political motive, not a spiritual one. so the crackdowns began an amazing philosophers and many others, but just as an example, were threatened with death and sometimes put to death. he himself suffered his demise under very, very suspicious circumstances. and because these great thinkers no longer had the option if they want to save their own minds, no longer had the option to ask questions, what happened was the unity seem to be confused with uniformity. and for reasons i explained in my previous book, the trouble with islam today, that problem has persisted for hundreds of

years, very much come with some exceptions of course, history is not linear, but enough exceptions that the dominant theme has been the narrowing of the gates are not problem has followed is muslims to this very day. and i do think there is a huge lesson here and probably several to be learned by america or one of them and again i don't want to sound like a liberal flake when i say this. i may be a flake and i may be a liberal, but i hope i'm not the two together, they don't make your own judgments and sure in the spirit had. but americans are to realize that part of, in fact, a huge part of what the world still loves about this country. in fact, when i go to europe to this very base, i tell you there is no exception to the rule is going to give you right now. at least one young muslim person and often more in my i.d. and

quietly say to me, take me back to the united states. we bring me back with you? by the way, during the bush administration i challenge them. i would say what? to save the featured act at guantánamo? they would often say to me coming out of there and just, but that's not really america. in america, i can be so much more than i am told they be here in europe. so understand that was so much of the world still loves about this country is precisely the second and third chance this, the effort perfecting union and that union come the unity should not be completed with uniformity. >> take another.

>> one of the most -- one of the mus massacre money as debates in islam recently is of course the debate about the so-called ground zero loss and of course while i would say the highest voices in that debate, maybe not the most productive dialogue. could you comment on what would have been an alternative to the loud voices be heard quite >> rate, thank you. well, i think the conversation, the so-called ground zero mosque is not going away anytime soon. the conversation can become a conversation rather than a series of dogmatic monologue. but i think that the only way to get to the point of it being constructive is when individuals stopped merely reacting to those who take an opposing view, stopped emotionally invest in themselves and hanging the other

person's view and to take a step back and take a deep breath and look within and ask themselves, and i opposing or supporting this mosque project on merit? how do i know what i'm supporting or opposing? what questions to my asking about it? one of the suggestions i say it "allah, liberty and love" is ask the five nines website of the mosque woman come through? because if the answer will be the factor that side, you know that segregation is going on. and if you think is a liberal that by supporting something like that you are actually opposing liberalism, that's pretty kooky. but there other questions to ask as well. you know, at the fat 90s to front this mosque project and

left under very mysterious circumstances. in fact, john huston investigative reporting about all of that. he has pointed out or he did at the time that this project will be based on the jewish community center model. really? because solomon reschke has spoken at many community centers and sign-up at ground zero? he's not going to be indicted. i know because i've talked to the people who are behind it. well, if you've got a comment from you have to make it into the microphone. so you know, rather than simply taking positions because i want to kick off the crusader on the other side, that is just a battle of dogma. that gets us nowhere except deeper into the mud. ask questions. ask them out loud, where they

can actually become useful to society and not just to your own inter-dialogue. >> i've got a question from the twitter verse. >> i have a question here. is there anything non-muslims can do to encourage moderate muslims to take a greater profile in the world? >> it seems to me non-muslims are doing plenty to encourage moderate muslims, but moderate muslims are not the people who need to be encouraged. as reformist. we stumbled over this which make the distinction between extremists and moderates. let us not put energy into making distinction between reformist and moderates. and i would say that yes, there's plenty non-muslims can do. but what i would want to emphasize first and foremost is pleased to read if you're coming from a human rights perspective and not from the perspective of -- in islam.

i tell you, non-muslims who think that reforming muslims means checking islam, wiping it off the face of the earth, are no allies of mine. so when you come from the perspective of universal human rights, that is to say that everybody on god's green earth, regardless of what religion or ethnicity or community they've been born into, every individual deserves a basic set of rights, such as freedom from violence and freedom of conscience. then, you can actually link arms with reformist muslims then you need to identify who the real reformers are versus moderates. so, ask a muslim. ask a muslim neighbor if this is a conversation that i hope you can develop the moral courage to get into. you know, when you say that islam means peace, do you think islam in theory or islam in the

way that its practice? because if you mean islam in theory, that's cool. but let's talk about islam in this. why is that, for example, that the vast majority of muslims who have been tortured, murdered, or imprisoned in the last 50 years and certainly this study is an arabic language studies back up the point about the last 10 years, in particular. why is that the vast majority of muslims who have been subject to this treatment are subjected to fellow muslims? what is up with that? okay, the reactions of the muslims within the non-muslims engage will be very important because again, it defenses go up right away and you're not allowed to engage, you know that something other than reform mindedness is going on. but it's also very, very important when you are told, because you will be told you're

stationed in in islam a phobia, very important. i get these tips in the book as well because it's really a how-to for both progressive muslims unprogressive non-muslims that if you are fearful, you'd be running away from this conversation. he wouldn't be sticking around to try and press the other person to engage in it. so again, you don't need to freeze in that moment, okay? to recognize that are. the stakes are universality of human rights and reflect on the tips that i could do in the book so you will be prepared for what one would think should be and are very legitimate conversations in a pluralistic society and that you do take a moral courage to watch it. >> earlier we got a tweet tickets to tensions and questions. why your pictures, drives a profit mohammed -- why such

trudges steve to print them? the whole danish cartoon is an example of those questions and efficiency should be able to ask. >> let me just say at the risk of offending and you know i don't worry too much about that. when the whole danish cartoon crisis happened, i needed to get the new classes anyway, so i deliberately tried danish frames. they are very, very funky. i was just a little signal of my solidarity for danish muslims and not just non-muslims, who in the country of denmark are working for freedom of expression. now, about the notion that images of the prophet bahamas are not allowed, first of all that is not true in a sect of islam known as the shia islam. you can even look this up on the internet. there are plenty and they are there on the internet, plenty of

images of what shia muslims have imagined the prophet mohammed to look like. this is not coffee-table within shia islam. the shia islam is a minority sect. the majority sect, the majority nomination of sunni islam. about 90% is sunni. and because the sudanese does the centuries ago, part of the closing of jihads decided that we do not want to risk the prophet mohammed becoming an idol since there is only one god, you are not allowed to create images of the prophet lest he become an idol. the irony is that in trying to start images of the prophet mohammed, actually muslims have put the profit on a pedestal and that turned them into an idol. so again, all kinds of paradoxes going on in the name of a