oh mm hm. mm mm. and welcome to worlds of heart just a few years ago. the threat of religious specifically islamic fundamentalism was deemed by many countries as one of the top security threats providing a pre tactical ballooning defense budgets and fueling to use less war on terror. that following the compet 19 pandemic, and especially the clash between russia and the west in an over you plane. when hardly hear is about it anymore, is it no longer an issue? well, to discuss it, i'm now joined by who st. tom on senior professor in the department of political

science at the university of the we stayed in south africa. professor solomon has a great to talk to you. thank you very much for finding the time. well, thanks for having me. now i heard you say in an interview last year that in a couple of years we will no longer hear about islamic fundamentalism. and it seems that your forecast has realized they had on schedule because one can barely see these issue mentioned, even in professional publications. lotto on demand media, how is it possible that it became such a non issue after being such a huge issue only a couple of years ago? well, i would maybe say that i'm not so categorically that it's the end. i think it comes in waves and i think that one form of the mentalism feeds another and i think that what essentially happened was when they did come to power, for example, in egypt, if you take the one on muslim in the muslim brotherhood and you have

a disastrous year empower for various reasons, but in my view, chip turner, any region is not a template for governance. i myself am a practicing muslim and i read micron every night. but it's not a textbook in terms of how to govern the country or how to economically kickstart a country. and i think the numerous failures have resulted in ordinary people having we look an examination, but by no means easy over, right? we have just seen, for example, where the americans have cut to deal with a 30 bond in terms of doha and bond come to power. and if they tried to motivate the stones, then you have the slummy state, a son coming in and occupying those positions that they have to decently done so. so i think it comes in and ways. but i also think that the contradictions in terms

of islamism, as well as the thing is in government, has basically resulted in them not being as attractive as before. i remember when this issue was still a fashionable topic. there was a lot of discussion about the separation of the state and religion and whether it's possible in, in the muslim countries, was it's really about islam as or any ontological underpinnings, as opposed to simply politics. because if we look at how fluid this is you, how quickly disappeared from public awareness or public concern. it seems that it was to a large extent, that discussion to large extent was driven by politics and just bonding. but politics of the day, the manipulations of the day. no, absolutely not. many of these individuals in my view make use of islam the same as a political vehicle as a form of mobilization by myself and all in favor of secular state.

because i think that it's something which came out of the 2009 uprisings in terms of iran. we're iranian clarity. we're actually questioning the proximity between faith and state. believing death is that the faith itself becomes tarnished by its politicize ation. because even since all politics is dirty, okay? and i think that the ease in the muslim world and attempt by people not to do it in a western style, but to actually look at the koran and so forth. we look at it. and actually us, if you can actually have the separation of powers. and what i find very interesting is when we talk to, when i went to my right to to your improvement of sunday school,

i was just stored sharia. but would you be slumming law but not understanding that it's far more complex than that. so for example, you have see also, okay and fear cities, personal morality, right? i'm not going to a touch, alcohol would fall under death. but fiance is about the public good. and the role of the state is fundamentally to promote c, r said the public good. the interesting thing about public good is that it's not defined by the koran. ok? it's not scriptures there. so for example, whether you are a can s of you here because i think any region comes not only with personal beliefs, but a certain view of the world, certain definitions of good and bad, including what's good and that's the collective for the society. so is it really possible to fully separate those things?

because if you are a practicing authentically practicing a muslim a christian, you have a certain notion of what your society supposed to be. i'm sure you can influence that through indirect means through voting for your volunteering work, but it will still have some influence on the shape of the say that you live in or am i wrong here? look on muslims are very tiny minority in south africa. ok. at the mosque where we'll ship. um right next to my mosque, there's a bottle store and a pop. okay. now, it's up to me, right? in terms of my personal morality, in terms of my personal religious beliefs to walk into the mosque as opposed to the pump and to have an alcoholic drink. okay. i have friends of mine who do frequent at the pop. i entered

a pop and i'll never cook. it's not the role of the state in my view to dictate personal morality because fundamentally then you getting to the relationship and how you define that relationship between your personal beliefs own. ah, and, and god. um. so i think that the state needs to stay away from home from that. of course, there are certain things in terms of the public good, which needs to be regulated and, and so forth. but it should be good consensus around those issues, right? so so, so for example, i'm, you did this a widespread existence of pornography, but you can say that collectively we have us as we, as a society, he's took the poster child pornography. now i'm going back to you are the use of religion and politics. i heard you say before that one cannot understand the emergence of vocal her. i'm in

a g area without understanding marina nationalism or one cannot understand the taliban without looking deeply into the past and national. and i wonder how significant are the differences between those various forces and how they seek to mobilize in utilize. 9 islam do they borrow from each other, do they use the same tactics, or they tend to be more or less grassroots. i've been studying political islam since 1998, and i can tell you that there is no over can command in control and so on. even where you have a fraction of boca her on becoming part of the slumming state and so they tend to be driven by local dynamics and, and local grievances, right? so for example, if you take nigeria or 27 percent of the population is living in poverty in the south. but in the muslim north,

it's 72 percent. ok. and then when you add to that socio economic divine i, identity politics. we, you have a canoe, he nationalism seeking to revive the pre colonial antonucci empire because they has a good feel aggrieved. this same dynamic is happening with osha bob in terms of somalia. we 70 percent of the fighters for osha bob. come from one class the ron winkler, and that is because of feelings of political exclusion. in terms of northern molly, the issue of truck eggs and the search for an independent as a one homeland which did spec at least 500 years of all of these kind of dynamics fuel it. and instead of focusing just issues on count insurgency and

better intelligence and so on. in my view, it's about addressing those grievances and it's about good governance, effective governance, and so on. and i one thing as a practicing muslim because muslims like to think about themselves as one people as the despite the fact that as you said, there is a huge diversity and dynamism, i think, within islam and how they interpret the religion in how they practice it. how do you see is what i mean, there's even such, such a unified concept as islam in this year of globalized communications is the concept of whom i feel realistic. is it something that the muslims can aspire to as opposed to, you know, being a soldier about, you know, simply as of muslim, while i find it appealing my heart for him as appealing, my mind tells me it's not realizable. i mean,

a go back to the fact that 3 of the 4 colleagues, you know, the 1st will call you were killed, you know, i mean, it was right be, and those divisions are right at the right at the outset. i mean, if you take the current situation in terms of yemen, you know where muslims are killing. ah, you know, it's, she, i versus sunni, is this, it's that, and all of these dynamics i, i mean, in all practical purposes people might use did, sadly, so well, professor sell, i'm or we have to take a short break right now, but we will be back to the discussion in just a few moments. ah, [000:00:00;00]

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the mm. the welcome back to the department who said on senior professor in the department of political science at the university of the free state in south africa, professor solomon before they break. unfortunately discussing b, b and of the concept of oma. and i also heard you say that you believe that muslim countries are becoming more secular, increasingly more secular, even though if you look into statistics as long as still the world class is growing religion. and you know, many of the, many of those countries have a fairly young population. there have large, fairly large birth rates. what makes you believe that? predominantly muslim countries are becoming more secular. right. and what do you

mean actually by the killer secularization, you know, well, you are fundamentally talking about what has been term called the true toleration. so right. first of all i there was an interesting study basically pointing out that is no country which is in the world which is fully secular. ok. so for example, if you take the queen of england, you know, she's the head of the church, right off and so forth. and i mean, you see the same in terms of american politics, right? we do have a christian, right, playing a more political role and so forth. but, but increasingly in, when you look at surveys being conducted in terms of the world value surveys. if you look at the b, b, c, r o, b, the arab barometer and for the show more and more people in the muslim

world, questioning the, the, a prominent role in terms of the clergy in terms of islamic norms as determined by the state. so when you talk about religiously minded people, there's your more orthodox interpretation, interpretation of collegiate and your more modern interpretation of religion. more and more young people would you see more and more women not wanting to cover their heads in l. g area, you find a lot more people not wishing too fast during ramadan. are we talking about people abandoning that beliefs? belief systems altogether or rather look perhaps the decline of the political role of those religious dogma. once you are seeing is a decline of the political roll, the decline off the slum ism ok, and you see it in terms of various political parties trying to reinvent themselves

. so if you take tunisia as an example, right, they came out of the muslim brotherhood, the another. ok? and then you have rashid, the new cheat, the needle of it, trying to reinvent themselves and, and saying just like you have the christian democratic union in germany. we, we see ourselves in that kind of political party, but there's also other, more so, you know, there is the rise of civil islam where you, we don't involve yourself in politics, but you involve yourself in terms of charity and so on. and there's post islamism, which basically started off in 1900 ninety's in egypt with the our 3rd party as an alternative to the muslim brotherhood to basically look for an inclusive religiosity. you know, i'm a big fan of psychologist carl young, who discovered that the collect unconscious reach

a sort of phenomenon that is usually referred to in traditional religions as god. and i think this is something that is now considered to be an objective fact. i know that their department starting this phenomenon and harper in the columbia university at young himself. i wrote a lot about the, the interplay between religions and the collective psyche and the role of religion . the important role of religion that they, they served in, you know, providing the sense of newman as the sense of purpose, the sense of meaning for the people. and he actually argued that, you know, for any creed to stay alive to god, what however they had defined whichever names that given they have to stay alive. people have to relate to them authentically. and if we look at the data for islam and the spread of islam, it's clear that it's more vital, more vibrant than many of the other. let's say christian denominations. what do you think provides for the sustainability of islam as a creed, as a sort of

a school of thought or the school of believes? you know, as personally as a young person growing up i, i grew up in the muslim household, but at the same time i was in contact with christians and jews and hindus and buddhists, and so on. and i sort of experimented with all of these different weights and it was only in my early thirties when i sort of, we returned to salamis. i can put it to you that way. but i see that one of the reasons driving the go of the swan is the failure of secular politics. right? and people assume that if you roots for somebody who is waving the christians or who's speaking in religious term, that the person will be less corrupt. that the person understand that he has a responsibility, she has

a responsibility to actually list off the community and so forth. so i think that what's driving the growth of the sloane in many cases it's is the failure of secular politics in across the muslim world to actually make good their promises in some form. and at the same time, the disenchantment of islamism is when they behave in the same corrupt manner as being secular predisposes shall. i also heard you make 2 very interesting points. one is that there is a need to move away from the western centric understanding of democracy as an ideal government for everybody, including the predominantly muslim countries. and the 2nd one is the need within the muslim societies to of all, into more authentic way into more inclusive, perhaps more democratic way of governance. so let's think that one by one starting

with the western model as an ideal for all. why is it not appealing to you? look, i think that the western models, you know, when you look at it, when you look at us elections in particular, if you look at the 1000000000 spent, if you look at the kind of catch phrases, you know, make america great again. oh, make america great. what does it mean, what does it mean in practice? and i think that often democracy like that, appeals to the lowest common denominator using my own country. we have a number of political parties which are preparing for the 2024 elections. and it's about attacks and for him this is so you have to rise in a full be violence. and so on general terms of trump's america, let's blame the mexicans for of our problems ministration, blaming the chinese and the russians for a problem. you know,

and i think they either need to have so i understand what appealing terms of slot is to have a virtuous nieto. i'm not sure how you choose that particularly lead to help you know beforehand that the person is committed to. let's say the social contract, you choose the people around that leader who are competent enough to deliver. you know, um, you know, when the muslim brotherhood was running egypt for that year. i mean, they chose people because they were, they were ostensibly pious. they are, they are, they are 5 prayers a day, but that doesn't necessarily make an excellent engineer. good muffin doesn't make your good administrator. absolutely. absolutely. and um, so, so, so, and them, and that's one of the reasons that i've been pushing. certainly for the

secularisation of our faith and the separation between mosque and the state and so on. but i also think that the ease of me in the muslim world, that when you talk about democracy, it's not western style democracy and so forth. but because of the spread of islam that you could, it could pointed out earlier on, it has to be authentic and has to be flicked. the traditions the cultures of the people. and the other thing is very important. the just in passing, i would say this. it in, it is imperative not to enforce it because if you allow us to develop yeah, you allowed to develop denti korean so on. and one of the issues which i've been working on quite a bit, if you go back to the rise of liberal democracy, ah, it wouldn't have been possible without an industrial revolution. right? or because you needed a middle class with those kind of values. and the problem in terms of much of the muslim world, i mean it's, it's,

it is poor in relation to the population size. so the key to real rise, these liberal values. and when i talk a little values, i'm talking about issues of tolerance and acceptance of eco 70 and plurality and dissidence. i think should meet east to have this economic revolution which empowers the course of the pool so that they can also share in this vision. i think that when you have a huge gap between which and poor it drives fundamentalism, can i also ask you about that? the efforts on the part of predominantly muslim states to reform themselves and i would love for example, to focus on the, on the goals states, which i think luckily for them happened to be here at the time when they need to change social contract game because they were allowed a certain,

paste it in time to do that. and like, let's say libya or syria, which i would claim were sort of ambushed by the west and very vulnerable social time for themselves. how do you see those efforts you're far away from both? let's say that all safe and iran, which also, you would agree, needs to be attentive to the social and religious dynamics or under currents within society. how do you think are dealing with it? so i'm in south africa, but i'm not that far from the gulf states because the gulf states have been exercised, the influence, the studio charities to the mosques and the sermons, and so on coming from saudi arabia, iran, turkey, and so on across. yeah. and i, i think that 1st of all, if you take the gold states, you are talking both very few citizens and some of the state. so i to, with much of the population being expatriate. i think that the,

i think with the price of oil was down and, and there was much more tension in the society. okay. but as it has gone up, no, i think the rules make use of oil well to buy off descent. on the one hand, the eas attempts to transfer the society, but to be honest with you, it is, i'm not sure how successful they are, and i'm not sure how far they are going to go. but so you can't, for example, how the situation will you now show yourself to be progressive by allowing women to drive. but then you take a dissident like jamal shogi and you saw him into pieces in the eastern concert. right? and these are the contradictions in my view. ah, unless you have that inclusive a t and not family run apologies and economies and so on. could there to be a chance can authentic islam. and i know what i'm going to say,

it's very controversial. but i think many of the gulf states the leadership have to commit clinical suicide in, in other words, the families, the moving from the step to step back. and i don't, i mean islam doesn't allow some extent to choose between their own religion and their own family. and this is an interesting choice. and of course is that it's the family doesn't the, such as the family, it's about political privilege. it's about economic world. and so on, and will they do? so i don't think so. and at the moment they are buying off the fins and they are running out of state. but at the same time supposedly have openness because you can watch netflix and stuff like that. and i don't think you probably americanizing the politics giving people some flash

of things to be paraded, but at the root of it, leaving them still in a disempowered state, dependent on, on the powers of being it. i agree, it's an absolute mirage, and i don't think it's sustainable. and you would recall that when, when people were slew, focusing on alternative energy sources and so on. and when the oil price was down there, contradictions in the society, just escalated to. right. but i think that it's sort of settling down, but i don't think it's permanent. and i think they are facing particular crisis also on the environmental front. and you also have people who have been educated and so on and who are now challenging that you know, you have a middle class emerging which is not necessarily linked to the state or what you, family, dentistry use and,

and who are finding it hard to necessarily open up the process, but not the gulf states. i mean, if you look at the power of the military, you know, for example, in the countries likes to don and in egypt and, and the, and the possibilities of actually opening up that economy that own so that civil military relations also needs to be challenged. but now be a fine line as well, cuz it's not so easy for me as an academic in south africa saying this because the, the other aspect of the fine line is do you want chaos to iraq? so how do you manage that change professor? so when it's always, always difficult, it's been difficult for any ally and what distinguishes a great leader ultimate being used to manage those difficulties and conflicting prayers and in real time, rather than relying on on money to to by that time anyway,

we have to leave it there i really appreciate your time with us today. thank you very much for that. thank you for having me. and thank you for watching coffee theory. again. it was a part ah with mm ah ah

. ah, the death toll light. it says heavy shelling by ukrainian force is continues on done yet. city a warning, disturbing images followed. several people are killed in the attacks including a 10 year old girl in almost 10 years. as a war correspondent, i have never seen how crazy. these are t reports from a chemical warehouse destroyed vibe, ukrainian army in the loop, ganske republican region now under the full control of russian forces. a