Full Transcript for 9/11 and the World it Created

go like to America because he loved skating whatsoever, came into our classroom and yelled the WordPress Center blue. 00:04:58.800 --> 00:05:01.519 And I'm like, what on earth is he talking about? 00:05:01.680 --> 00:05:10.079 And I mean, there was no cell phones, like I mean, smartphones or internet and so forth, so I had no idea what he was talking about. 00:05:10.160 --> 00:05:12.639 And I'm like, okay, the guy is going crazy. 00:05:12.879 --> 00:05:31.439 And I went home and my parents had the news on, and I saw two towels blown, and the comments on television were quite wild, and mind you, we did not know yet what was going on. 00:05:32.319 --> 00:05:39.040 My first reaction, and again, I'm I'm I'm French Algerian of Muslim background. 00:05:39.600 --> 00:05:44.160 My first reaction was they are going to blame us. 00:05:44.480 --> 00:05:46.800 And I was terrified. 00:05:47.360 --> 00:05:50.000 And I'm like, what is going on in here? 00:05:50.160 --> 00:05:51.120 Why did they do that? 00:05:51.199 --> 00:05:54.240 What and and again, we we had no idea what was going on. 00:05:54.319 --> 00:06:10.959 It's like the world, and the next day in high school, we had a minute of silence, we had, you know, um the whole like process of trying to understand in what situation we were. 00:06:11.120 --> 00:06:13.360 And again, we were teenagers, okay? 00:06:14.480 --> 00:06:43.439 And I remember as like a personal fact, um, I was going on a holiday in Algeria, like I like we used to do, uh like I still do like every year, and one of my professors in high school, who is supposed to remain neutral, like we have a principle of neutrality towards civil servants in France, told me, I hope they are not going to slaughter you or you're not coming back as a terrorist. 00:06:47.759 --> 00:06:55.120 And that's where I knew that things were going to get worse. 00:06:55.279 --> 00:07:03.199 Because to answer your second question, I think, and I'm talking from a French perspective here, okay? 00:07:03.519 --> 00:07:13.839 So things might be different depending on where you are, uh, what is your culture, like if you're a multicultural country, how you deal with diversity, and so on and so forth. 00:07:14.720 --> 00:07:25.839 Um I think a country like mine, France, already had the ingredients for illiberalism. 00:07:26.079 --> 00:07:29.680 I mean, um, terrorist attacks are not something new, right? 00:07:29.839 --> 00:07:32.079 We had terrorist attack with Corsica, right? 00:07:32.160 --> 00:07:35.759 I don't know if those who remember, or the best country, etc. 00:07:37.120 --> 00:07:40.879 But we also have we have a post-colonial nation as well. 00:07:41.360 --> 00:07:56.639 And we have a history, especially with Algeria, regarding colonialism, the brutality, how terror was used on Muslims, like to control them, to steal their country, to rape their women. 00:07:57.199 --> 00:08:07.519 Um and at that moment, all of those elements gathered together to justify going further in being illiberal. 00:08:07.920 --> 00:08:09.759 So I think that's what happened. 00:08:10.079 --> 00:08:17.120 We think, we believe that we are a liberal country, but 9-11 just proved that maybe we never were. 00:08:17.279 --> 00:08:18.879 And are we a liberal democracy? 00:08:18.959 --> 00:08:20.079 I'm not that sure. 00:08:20.480 --> 00:08:30.639 I want to get back to this uh a little bit later on, Ray Sarah, about the fact about whether 9-11 uh served to catalyze a movement toward the post-liberal uh era. 00:08:30.879 --> 00:08:35.759 Uh Shahid, you and I were actually in the United States uh when it happened. 00:08:35.919 --> 00:08:37.360 What were things like for you? 00:08:37.840 --> 00:08:41.600 So I was working as an engineer in the San Francisco area. 00:08:41.840 --> 00:08:50.720 Um up until that point, I had spent a good part of my adult life trying to reconcile my identity. 00:08:51.279 --> 00:08:56.399 Both within my community, my American Muslim community, and society at large. 00:08:56.559 --> 00:09:07.519 So a lot of the work I'd done until then had to do with building bridges, had to do with um creating um uh a sense of identity within our communities. 00:09:07.679 --> 00:09:18.320 And so I felt like this is going to be my like lifelong kind of journey, and it was something I was very proud of and something that I was hoping would carry me for the rest of my life, and that would have an impact. 00:09:18.559 --> 00:09:28.000 And of course, when 9-11 happened, um obviously it it both interrupted that and accelerated it at the same time. 00:09:28.159 --> 00:09:31.440 Um, 9-11 hit me on multiple levels. 00:09:31.600 --> 00:09:33.600 First of all, it hit me on the identity level. 00:09:33.759 --> 00:09:35.600 What does this mean for Muslims in America? 00:09:35.679 --> 00:09:41.679 What does this mean for our journey to be included and to uh contribute to the society? 00:09:42.000 --> 00:10:09.679 Um it hit me on uh on a work level because uh I went from being an engineer uh in the dot-com days of Silicon Valley within 10 years, uh was a senior advisor in the Obama administration, uh working on many of the policies that affect uh affect both Muslim communities in America and abroad. 00:10:09.919 --> 00:10:30.240 Um and so uh and and then on a personal level, um, you know, uh our our mother worked in Washington DC at the State Department, and so for several hours we couldn't get a hold of her, and I mean I wasn't sure if plane number four was gonna hit another federal building where my mother worked. 00:10:30.480 --> 00:10:38.240 Um, and so you know, I I think it's safe to say that at every facet of my life it galvanized um my work. 00:10:38.720 --> 00:10:44.000 And it also, but I will, you know, my I don't want to, it's easy to talk about this in a real downer way. 00:10:44.080 --> 00:10:50.720 I do want to say it really galvanized in me the need to be positive about the reaction. 00:10:50.879 --> 00:10:52.639 How do we how

do we build bridges? 00:10:52.799 --> 00:10:55.519 How do we create uh freedom and liberty for people? 00:10:55.759 --> 00:11:03.519 How do we um how do we tackle hate in a way that doesn't marginalize people, doesn't securitize people, things like that. 00:11:03.759 --> 00:11:09.200 And so, you know, whether that had its desired effect, I'm sure we'll talk about in the rest of the hour. 00:11:09.440 --> 00:11:12.320 But I mean, it's just no other way to put it. 00:11:12.480 --> 00:11:17.279 I mean, it it it was a it was a very pitiful moment in everything that I was doing at the time. 00:11:17.600 --> 00:11:20.720 Yeah, I don't see it as a as a as a as a downward description. 00:11:20.879 --> 00:11:38.320 I mean, to me it seems like, and for for those of you who are old school like I am, um, when Lego didn't come all nicely packaged like IKEA, where you put something together but you just had uh an array of blocks, you were given a bunch of pieces and you had to reconstitute that into something. 00:11:38.480 --> 00:11:43.200 And maybe that's one of the assets that Gen X has is that we can we can go ahead and do that. 00:11:43.440 --> 00:11:44.639 And it was a challenge we relished. 00:11:45.039 --> 00:11:45.519 Exactly. 00:11:45.759 --> 00:11:48.879 When you said that you were building bridges, was that as an engineer or were you being metaphoric? 00:11:49.120 --> 00:11:49.360 Both. 00:11:50.399 --> 00:11:51.519 Just just just checking. 00:11:51.679 --> 00:11:56.639 Okay, Ambassador Rasul, Ibrahim, 9 September 11th for you. 00:11:58.159 --> 00:12:06.559 So I was at that moment the Western Cape provincial leader of the African National Congress. 00:12:07.279 --> 00:12:19.759 It was the one province that voted against Nelson Mandela, and I was campaigning to regain the province from those who had ruled during the apartheid era. 00:12:20.240 --> 00:12:31.200 So I remember exactly I was about a hundred, two hundred kilometers outside of Cape Town in a very dry, hot, rural area campaigning. 00:12:32.559 --> 00:12:37.440 And then the news came to say something's happening. 00:12:37.600 --> 00:12:46.720 We took the whole campaign team to a local garage, and it was unreal on the television. 00:12:47.840 --> 00:13:06.240 And I think for me it was fairly vivid because we had just by 2001 completed a major campaign against a local extremist group who operated in the name of Islam and Muslims. 00:13:07.440 --> 00:13:16.159 It was ironically the first reaction, not white right supremacists reacting against Nelson Mandela. 00:13:16.639 --> 00:13:32.320 It was actually from within the Muslim community that this group grew ostensibly to fight crime and drugs, but bombed anything that was American, including the planet Hollywood, which had major fatalities. 00:13:33.600 --> 00:13:48.399 And so as leader of the ANC, I in a sense had to take responsibility, and we had just about perfected what I call a five-spacer strategy against them that by 2001 was defeating them. 00:13:49.600 --> 00:14:18.639 And then, in the midst of all of this 911 erupts, and the mainstream of the Muslim community, like uh Rim Sarah, was hoping, please God, let this not be the small minority who had prosecuted this were praising Allah that at last we could pierce the armory of the superpower. 00:14:19.440 --> 00:14:26.799 And so Cape Town was a very contested space between those who praised and those who prayed. 00:14:28.000 --> 00:15:00.000 And we carried that through, and by 2005, Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson, Alistair Campbell were all in South Africa at the Progressive Governance Forums where center-left parties all came together, and President Tabumbek, who led the South African delegation, invited me along to share the idea of how there are other ways of defeating uh extremism and terrorism using the Cape Town example. 00:15:00.080 --> 00:15:12.000 And I remember him calling me over to the table with sat with Tony Blair, and he said, if you want to have a sensible, sustainable way of fighting uh extremism, speak to Ibrahim. 00:15:12.960 --> 00:15:20.399 A year later, John Prescott invited me uh to London, and uh we were able to share this kind of strategy. 00:15:20.559 --> 00:15:31.759 So I think that for me it was a moment in the middle of fighting uh something as a self-conscious Muslim leader of the ANC. 00:15:32.799 --> 00:15:37.440 And then after um 7-7. 00:15:38.480 --> 00:15:39.200 Is it 7-7? 00:15:40.000 --> 00:15:43.919 You know, uh shockingly it's the same in both countries at 7-7. 00:15:44.399 --> 00:15:44.720 7-7. 00:15:46.639 --> 00:15:55.120 So after 7-7, I found myself in Down Street trying to share that because they didn't take up the invitation uh for a few years. 00:15:55.840 --> 00:15:58.720 And then they remembered let us um do this. 00:15:58.960 --> 00:16:21.039 So so so so so for me, the things were practical in South African terms, uh, but theoretical in terms of having to make sense of what we did that was different, rather than the lashing out of the counter-extremism that followed a very dustardly extremism. 00:16:21.279 --> 00:16:34.879 And so we needed a way out of this, but I think we came to Britain a little bit too late after the at the 7-7, but I think that um but that explains where I found myself in the midst of 9-1-1. 00:16:35.360 --> 00:16:37.279 And and it is about finding oneself. 00:16:37.440 --> 00:16:51.759 I mean, not only uh spatially where you were, but I mean, Shahid, as you said, I mean, you found yourself uh and and how it uh uh tracked a course for uh and a path uh for for your for yourself. 00:16:52.000 --> 00:16:55.600 I imagine that you it was probably about before 6 a.m. 00:16:55.759 --> 00:16:58.080 in San Francisco, so you may not have seen it live? 00:16:58.480 --> 00:17:04.720 No, uh I I was watching it pretty early, so not the very first one, but um the second one for sure. 00:17:05.279 --> 00:17:06.480 The second one that hit, yeah. 00:17:06.720 --> 00:17:28.319 Uh I

mean I remember it was uh it was early on in the uh um in September, I think it was shortly after the Labor Day bank holiday weekend, and I just returned from ironically um the largest gathering of Muslim Americans at the Islamic Society of North America conference, um, where I I clearly was not uh uh I was not dialed in. 00:17:28.400 --> 00:17:40.880 Uh but I remember the feeling there of the solidarity that Muslims felt, uh, maybe even a bit of complacency that here we are in numbers, there's strength in numbers, and uh, and dare I say security in numbers. 00:17:40.960 --> 00:18:00.559 Uh and I remember uh my usual ritual was to wake up, make a cup of tea, and uh I remember sitting down on uh on the on the uh couch with my at the time eldest daughter, uh who was about three and a half, sitting on the knee and on the other hand balancing my my cup of tea. 00:18:00.880 --> 00:18:11.359 And as they broke from uh just I think coming back from an advertisement break, they showed uh some smoldering coming out of the the first tower. 00:18:11.680 --> 00:18:23.279 And my first reaction was um that oh, maybe a traffic helicopter or a small plane hit the uh had the uh the twin tower because it didn't look like a conventional fire. 00:18:23.599 --> 00:18:29.759 Uh and then 17 minutes later at three past nine um Eastern time, the second tower hit. 00:18:29.839 --> 00:18:40.880 And I remember feeling that jolt, and luckily, in case you're worried, neither the cup of tea nor the child was jettisoned from from from my lap. 00:18:41.119 --> 00:18:46.079 But I remember you remember these interesting details about the day. 00:18:46.400 --> 00:18:53.920 The one that I remember is that I used to have one of those uh cordless phones, which you put on the jack. 00:18:54.000 --> 00:18:55.119 I mean, now with mobile phones. 00:18:55.279 --> 00:18:56.880 Does anyone still have one of those phones? 00:18:57.119 --> 00:18:57.440 Yes. 00:18:58.160 --> 00:18:59.920 Okay, so we still have some traditional phones? 00:19:00.480 --> 00:19:00.640 Okay. 00:19:01.039 --> 00:19:08.160 Um I remember it was the first time in the history of owning that phone that the battery died. 00:19:08.799 --> 00:19:26.960 Because it was off its cradle the entire day, because phone calls were coming both from uh family and friends locally, nationally, uh, roommates from university that I hadn't spoken to in probably years calling to check in, are you okay? 00:19:27.200 --> 00:19:35.440 I think because everybody intuitively knew and dreaded the same thing that we dreaded, please don't let this be. 00:19:35.519 --> 00:19:37.839 And this is a terrible word to use, us. 00:19:38.880 --> 00:19:54.799 The fact that the framing of so much regarding the Muslim community up to that point had already made it as an us or them to demonize the Muslim community as either terrorists or potential terrorists. 00:19:54.880 --> 00:19:58.559 And this went back into the 1990s, the Oklahoma City bombing. 00:19:58.720 --> 00:20:02.799 Did Jose Padilla, who was Hispanic, was he Muslim? 00:20:02.960 --> 00:20:07.359 Uh, or if now that they found out he was Hispanic, uh, maybe he converted. 00:20:07.519 --> 00:20:16.960 There was always an effort to try to link this to uh to uh to Muslims, in part maybe because of 1993, as you said, Paul, uh the first attack. 00:20:17.119 --> 00:20:21.119 And as the cliche goes, I don't think anything was really ever the same. 00:20:21.440 --> 00:20:35.279 And there's nothing more powerful than looking at an image on screen with that sense of dread and looking at a three and a half-year-old child and wondering what's the future going to uh fold here, because we just didn't know. 00:20:35.519 --> 00:20:38.799 And every time someone called me, they asked, What's gonna happen? 00:20:38.960 --> 00:20:46.079 And to say I don't know was probably more frightening than to say that there was something that I could analyze out of this. 00:20:46.160 --> 00:20:48.000 And this is before I became an academic. 00:20:48.160 --> 00:20:53.680 I was a lawyer, uh, and as far as how 9-11 changed it, it changed everything. 00:20:53.839 --> 00:21:11.680 Uh, I started getting invited to give talks very in a in a very informal way, and someone gave me some very sage advice, uh, and uh but before they gave that advice, uh I started to think about the distortions in the narrative. 00:21:11.839 --> 00:21:16.799 And I said the only way that we can correct this is to have better data. 00:21:17.039 --> 00:21:22.640 And so, not knowing anything from anything, I decided we need a think tank. 00:21:22.880 --> 00:21:32.640 And so I came up with the idea for a think tank that looked at the Muslim American experience, didn't really care about number one, what was happening in foreign policy. 00:21:32.799 --> 00:21:35.839 This was not going to solve the issue of Palestine or Kashmir. 00:21:36.000 --> 00:21:41.039 It was also on the domestic front not going to make a determination about whether McDonald's was halal. 00:21:41.519 --> 00:21:47.759 This was going to focus on the social and domestic um policies uh regarding Muslim Americans. 00:21:47.839 --> 00:21:56.480 And so the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding came together with$500, and uh myself and two friends, we didn't know what we were doing. 00:21:56.640 --> 00:21:59.519 And fortunately, 25 years on ISPU. 00:22:00.160 --> 00:22:15.680 Is still there as the leading voice on providing resources and data about the Muslim American community so people can disagree with them uh with the data, but they cannot challenge the methodology because it's it's it's sound. 00:22:15.839 --> 00:22:23.759 Uh and someone gave me the advice I said you either are going to be a lawyer full-time or you're gonna do this full-time, you cannot do both. 00:22:23.920 --> 00:22:31.839 And so I took the plunge into academics uh because I felt that was more closely aligned to the work that I sought to do. 00:22:32.000 -->

00:22:37.359 And yeah, I mean, September 11th in that sense really changed uh changed everything. 00:22:37.519 --> 00:22:48.319 And perhaps included in that, and I'd like to ask the question uh to you as well, it also signaled the end of innocence in a very explicit way. 00:22:48.559 --> 00:23:02.000 Paul, I mean, did did you find that with the world, uh I know sometimes this is this this seems almost hyperbole, but did the world shift on its access on September the 11th, and how did you uh how did you feel that, if so? 00:23:02.400 --> 00:23:03.839 I suppose it shook on its access. 00:23:04.079 --> 00:23:04.240 Okay. 00:23:04.559 --> 00:23:06.799 I mean, the Bradford situation I think is significant. 00:23:06.960 --> 00:23:12.000 Bradford had had some major problems, including riots, uh essentially roast riots. 00:23:12.160 --> 00:23:30.000 And when you had the Otoshi attack in uh Madrid, which I think had killed over a hundred people and caused huge damage, there was a real concern among local politicians, but particularly local faith leaders, that we might get the same sort of thing in Britain and what would be the impact on Brantford. 00:23:30.400 --> 00:23:43.680 But one of the things that did happen, which turned out to be quite positive, was that the basically the mosque leadership and the bishop came together and basically convened a group of specialists to discuss this. 00:23:43.759 --> 00:23:48.480 And I went along, they wanted to know was a Tosh and Margaret and what might happen in Britain? 00:23:48.640 --> 00:23:50.240 I said, yes, you must pursue that. 00:23:50.319 --> 00:23:52.240 So a few months between them. 00:23:52.480 --> 00:24:00.720 And essentially what they tried to do, working with the youth communities, with the police and the rest, was to, in a way, be prepared for it. 00:24:00.880 --> 00:24:08.559 Uh and so the police actually, people will disagree a bit on this, but they tried to ensure that the mosques were secure, they weren't attacked. 00:24:08.799 --> 00:24:16.400 Um, given the state of tension within Bradford, um, people here may differ on this because most people here are from the Bradford area. 00:24:16.640 --> 00:24:19.279 Bradford came through it relatively well. 00:24:19.599 --> 00:24:24.799 Um that was basically far-sighted thinking by faith leaders, which I think was useful. 00:24:24.960 --> 00:24:29.759 Um, more generally, it's such it's so difficult to say. 00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:37.680 Um, I mean, I think the the grim thing was that it was so easy uh to build up a new threat, a new menace. 00:24:37.839 --> 00:24:43.759 And I would say that the late 1990s have been a pretty poor time for military-industrial complexes. 00:24:43.920 --> 00:24:46.160 They're even losing some of their money. 00:24:46.319 --> 00:24:57.119 And I think to that extent, although 9-11 was a particularly different sort of attack, um, it was it was in a way, I have to say this rather crudely, welcome because here was a real enemy again. 00:24:57.279 --> 00:25:00.640 Um I think that had a big effect under the surface. 00:25:00.799 --> 00:25:07.599 It's not something you would say in public, but the reality was it gave a new lease of life to military-industrial complexes in the West. 00:25:08.079 --> 00:25:08.799 Very much so. 00:25:08.960 --> 00:25:29.119 Um Reem, uh you were at an age where uh you're making that transition into adulthood, and the the notion of a transition of a sense of innocence uh is is made crystallized by by something like September 11th. 00:25:29.279 --> 00:25:31.279 Did it serve as a catalyst for you? 00:25:31.440 --> 00:25:43.200 Because I mean, after all, given your demographics, there are challenges that I imagine you're already having to experience uh regarding Islamophobia, bigotry in uh in France. 00:25:43.440 --> 00:25:55.920 How did uh uh September 11th uh then affect your sense of maybe the innocence of youth is no longer uh uh a luxury to have or a burden to have? 00:25:56.079 --> 00:25:57.440 Is this an opportunity? 00:25:57.599 --> 00:26:03.359 Is this um is this now having to switch gears uh maybe prematurely? 00:26:04.480 --> 00:26:17.680 It's a very interesting question because I think innocence is a luxury that I and again I'm talking about my personal experience, that I never truly experienced. 00:26:17.839 --> 00:26:37.279 I I wish I had really, but um I think for the case of France and my experience, uh what changed like before and after 9-11 was before it was more basic anti-Arab racism. 00:26:38.000 --> 00:26:38.640 Right? 00:26:39.119 --> 00:26:45.200 Uh one of the first racist remarks I had was in primary school, and of course I don't blame the kid who said that to me. 00:26:45.279 --> 00:26:46.559 It's the parents, right? 00:26:47.359 --> 00:26:51.119 Um you are disgusting, not enough white. 00:26:51.200 --> 00:26:56.000 Uh we need to put you in a laundry machine to get you whiter. 00:26:57.519 --> 00:26:59.200 It's a basic comment. 00:26:59.920 --> 00:27:04.640 Um, and again, I'm not complaining, it's part of the experience, it may be who I am today. 00:27:04.720 --> 00:27:07.519 I don't blame anyone, that's the way it was. 00:27:07.839 --> 00:27:10.960 Uh it was harder when it came from adults. 00:27:11.279 --> 00:27:13.440 But again, I'm I'm kind of a rebel. 00:27:13.759 --> 00:27:17.039 Um, that's probably the covet side of my personality. 00:27:17.920 --> 00:27:23.200 But um it was more anti-racist, uh anti-Arab racism. 00:27:23.440 --> 00:27:27.599 After 9-11, it sounds that we discovered the Muslims. 00:27:27.920 --> 00:27:36.000 And it switched immediately to you as a person with a certain religion might be a threat. 00:27:36.240 --> 00:27:41.279 So the kind of remarks I had was you're not really French, which I am. 00:27:41.440 --> 00:27:43.119 I was born and raised there, right? 00:27:43.279 --> 00:27:44.240 It's my country. 00:27:44.480 --> 00:27:45.440 It's my country. 00:27:45.599 --> 00:27:47.839 Nobody is going

to take that away from me. 00:27:48.000 --> 00:27:49.119 I'm French. 00:27:49.599 --> 00:27:59.839 And uh the exhaustion of having to prove every time that you are part of this country, which I don't do anymore. 00:27:59.920 --> 00:28:01.759 Actually, I can be whoever I am. 00:28:01.839 --> 00:28:03.440 And I'm proud of who I am. 00:28:03.680 --> 00:28:11.599 And clearly, I mean, I think, and obviously I'm doing some basic psychology here, and I'm not a psychologist, okay? 00:28:11.759 --> 00:28:17.759 Um, but I think it clearly shaped my path as an academic leader. 00:28:17.920 --> 00:28:24.000 I mean, do I regret to not go to business law instead of human rights law? 00:28:24.160 --> 00:28:25.680 Maybe, but actually not. 00:28:26.000 --> 00:28:34.319 Because in the end, maybe that experience allowed me to try to find solution for today's world, and that's okay. 00:28:34.480 --> 00:28:35.839 It should not happen to anyone. 00:28:35.920 --> 00:28:39.359 And I hope that future generations won't have to face this. 00:28:40.079 --> 00:28:43.440 It will get worse before it gets better, unfortunately. 00:28:43.680 --> 00:28:44.720 But you know what? 00:28:44.880 --> 00:28:53.920 The very fact that I am in front of you today means that things are slowly changing. 00:28:54.559 --> 00:29:09.359 And uh regarding the the past, clearly, like the narrative has been switched in a way to make you um guilty until proven innocent. 00:29:09.599 --> 00:29:14.160 And even when you are innocent, you're still guilty just because. 00:29:14.720 --> 00:29:23.119 Because the state decided so, because the media decided so, because pundits, I mean now pundits, decided so. 00:29:23.440 --> 00:29:25.279 Today social media decided so. 00:29:25.359 --> 00:29:29.519 The algorithm decided decide now that you are guilty. 00:29:30.160 --> 00:29:37.359 And the exertion of always having to prove that you are innocent, and and I don't do that anymore. 00:29:37.519 --> 00:29:39.519 If you think I'm guilty, fair enough. 00:29:39.680 --> 00:29:40.480 Have fun. 00:29:41.599 --> 00:29:54.000 But I believe that we are lucky enough to have the, and I'm talking as a legal scholar now, to have the legal tools to find that. 00:29:54.400 --> 00:29:56.400 I truly believe in human rights. 00:29:56.559 --> 00:30:00.720 The difference is that I believe that human rights should apply to everyone. 00:30:00.880 --> 00:30:05.359 With a distinction, whether you're white, Asian, whatsoever. 00:30:05.440 --> 00:30:07.119 Like I honestly don't care. 00:30:07.440 --> 00:30:17.680 But selective, like choosing to apply human rights when convenient, when it's glamorous and sexy because fans can heal the human rights, yeah, it's cool on paper. 00:30:17.920 --> 00:30:20.799 The reality is like we don't apply what we preach for. 00:30:21.359 --> 00:30:24.960 And that has been my compass ever since. 00:30:25.119 --> 00:30:30.319 And I will fight for it until my last day on this earth. 00:30:37.920 --> 00:31:00.240

Shahid, I mean, I I know so many Muslim Americans that for them the sense of innocence was shattered because they would find themselves in the line at the grocery store, at work, in school, and all of a sudden they were being called upon to become an expert in Islamic law, theology, philosophy, anthropology, history, politics, culture. 00:31:01.119 --> 00:31:14.480 Everything was now being refracted through this lens of Islam, and they were expected to give answers, which of course suggests that uh the questions weren't being answered properly in other spaces. 00:31:14.640 --> 00:31:15.759 How did you find out time? 00:31:16.400 --> 00:31:22.880 So, um, first of all, I agree with everything that my colleague here said, but I also think I want to take it a step further. 00:31:23.039 --> 00:31:24.640 You said loss of innocence. 00:31:24.880 --> 00:31:27.680 Um I prefer it as a loss of complacency. 00:31:28.480 --> 00:31:40.000 Um and part of the reason is this um this binary that you're talking about, where you're constantly asked a question that you can never answer satisfactorily, so you're asked it again and again and again, we have to break out of this binary. 00:31:40.079 --> 00:31:44.559 And this is something that I was trying to do from day one uh after this happened. 00:31:44.720 --> 00:31:52.400 Um, first of all, within the Muslim community, if you consistently see yourself as a victim, you rob yourself of agency, right? 00:31:52.960 --> 00:31:59.680 And unless we look at the situation and say, what can we do collectively? 00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:03.039 Um, then all we're doing is pointing fingers at each other. 00:32:03.119 --> 00:32:07.440 And that happened a lot, that happened all the way until when I finally entered government, right? 00:32:07.599 --> 00:32:11.599 I had a pretty much a clean slate to work on this issue, right? 00:32:12.000 --> 00:32:23.519 Um, and very quickly I told uh the people that I worked with, um, and I reported to, I was two levels down from the sec from Secretary Clinton. 00:32:23.680 --> 00:32:31.039 And so I would regularly brief her, I would regularly brief the president, and the the points that I would make is are are as follows. 00:32:31.359 --> 00:32:52.240 One is if you continue to securitize this group of people in the hope that you're going to make yourself safer, all you're doing is reinforcing that divide, and you're not giving them a chance to have their own agency to work on whatever issues they have in their communities as a peer, not as someone to look down on, not as someone to lecture, but as a peer. 00:32:52.480 --> 00:33:08.319 And then the bigger lesson, which frankly nobody in government got when I was there and still hasn't gotten, is there is a direct correlation between a people's freedom and their propensity to take on violence as a means to express their political will. 00:33:08.480 --> 00:33:09.839 A direct correlation. 00:33:10.000 --> 00:33:14.799 So if you want a population to be non-violent, give them freedom. 00:33:15.119 --> 00:33:17.599 Facilitate that freedom, facilitate liberty. 00:33:17.759 --> 00:33:22.319 It's a direct correlation, and no one can deny it, yet no one did anything about it. 00:33:22.480 --> 00:33:33.279 And so I prefer, uh both within government service and outside of government, to try to create a dialogue or a conversation where what are we collectively going to do about this? 00:33:33.440 --> 00:33:38.799 None of neither of us are led off the hook, but neither of us are solely to blame. 00:33:38.960 --> 00:33:39.279 Right? 00:33:39.440 --> 00:33:49.519 There's a collective, you know, this is the thing, is like every action, 9-11 proved to everyone that everyone has the ability to influence to kind of influence everyone else. 00:33:49.680 --> 00:33:52.000 We are interconnected in ways we never imagined. 00:33:52.079 --> 00:33:56.880 And of course, that's only increased in the last 25 years with social media, et cetera. 00:33:57.200 --> 00:34:05.599 And so that means that we cannot, you know, if if one side is hurting, the other side is gonna feel a ramification of that, and vice versa. 00:34:05.839 --> 00:34:12.400 So, how do we create a global community where we acknowledge each other's pain, we acknowledge each other's trauma? 00:34:12.559 --> 00:34:13.039 What do they say? 00:34:13.119 --> 00:34:24.000 Like traumatized people, traumatized people, which is exactly, you know, you had traumatized people doing 9-11, then you had traumatized people from 9-11 going to Iraq and so forth. 00:34:24.159 --> 00:34:25.360 And it and it creates a cycle. 00:34:25.440 --> 00:34:28.000 And that cycle in many ways is still continuing to this day. 00:34:28.079 --> 00:34:29.599 And we see we see it, we see it now. 00:34:29.679 --> 00:34:31.440 So, how are we gonna break that cycle? 00:34:31.599 --> 00:34:40.880 And the only way we're gonna do it is to talk to each other as equals uh uh and value each other as equals and break beyond the cycle. 00:34:41.199 --> 00:34:47.199 And you saw these these kinds of oversimplified uh rhetorical statements being made. 00:34:47.280 --> 00:34:52.239 I mean, uh Bush says they hate us for our freedoms, uh completely obnoxious. 00:34:52.320 --> 00:35:04.800 And then you see responses coming from, well, Islam is a religion of peace, uh as as a as a defensive statement, which which was uh woefully inadequate, or trying to say, well, it was disrespectful, frankly. 00:35:05.039 --> 00:35:05.519 It was disrespectful. 00:35:05.679 --> 00:35:09.440 I mean, you can't look at an audience and say Islam is peace when they're seeing burning towers behind you. 00:35:09.679 --> 00:35:10.960 You're insulting their intelligence. 00:35:11.280 --> 00:35:14.880 Or or worse, trying to uh externalize them saying, well, they're not really Muslim. 00:35:14.960 --> 00:35:19.360 I mean, even though they're stating that they did this in in the in the name of uh of Islam. 00:35:19.599 --> 00:35:32.480 Uh

Ibrahim, I mean, I'm not going to ask you about uh the loss of uh complacency because I mean you you come from an era of apartheid, and uh and so there really was no innocence uh that that could be there. 00:35:32.639 --> 00:35:40.000 But I'd like to I'd like to pick up on a point that um that that Shahid is alluding to, and that is when does history begin? 00:35:40.320 --> 00:35:55.280 Uh this this absence of contextuality, that you couldn't talk about what was America's involvement in the world that happened prior to September 11th from the standpoint of causation. 00:35:55.519 --> 00:36:06.159 Uh, that somehow the other Muslims were these actors who spontaneously decide one day that they're going to go ahead and attack America without anything that happened before. 00:36:06.400 --> 00:36:21.679 And you've had experience uh with, I uh assume, similarly on the narrative regarding Gaza, that you have probably had to experience people saying, don't talk about October 6th, don't talk about anything that happened before. 00:36:21.920 --> 00:36:35.199 How do you see 9-11, and I don't think 9-11 is alone in that, but framing this picture of causation having its uh its its limit on the on the start end? 00:36:35.760 --> 00:36:50.880 No, thanks very much um for that question, and I do want to speak about it in transitional terms as opposed to transition from innocence to uh quote William Blake experience or loss of innocence. 00:36:52.159 --> 00:36:57.199 I think, you know, the Canadian-born American economist Professor J.K. 00:36:57.280 --> 00:37:07.199 Galbraith has this really rich quotation in which he says, the more uncertain people are, the more dogmatic they become. 00:37:08.320 --> 00:37:16.960 I think it is the transition from an age of uncertainty to an age of extremism and counter-extremism. 00:37:17.280 --> 00:37:25.360 911, as Professor Rogers have said, is not the first in that transition, but it is the most spectacular. 00:37:26.719 --> 00:37:31.679 And so to understand the age of uncertainty, you've got to contextualize it. 00:37:31.840 --> 00:37:41.440 You've got to ask what were the 50 years before 911 that created the age of uncertainty? 00:37:41.760 --> 00:37:59.199 And I've looked at the last 70 years, and I have a theory called 70 by 70, that the last 70 years may have involved Muslims either by virtue of what they've done or what was done unto them in 70% of the conflicts since World War II. 00:37:59.440 --> 00:38:07.760 And we just have to look at 1947, the establishment of the state of Israel, and everything right up to a genocide. 00:38:08.000 --> 00:38:19.599 You've then got to look 1948, uh 1947, the partition, the independence of India, and the partition and the bloody partitions, Pakistan and then Pakistan and Bangladesh. 00:38:20.400 --> 00:38:28.480 1948, the establishment of the State of Israel, right up till today, Intifadas, Arab-Israeli wars, genocide. 00:38:29.039 --> 00:38:43.360 Then you've got to look 1953, the coup d'etat against Mussaddeg, the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and the current war that we are in today. 00:38:43.599 --> 00:39:03.199 We can go to 1962 and the process of decolonization in Algeria and the installation of the colonization of strong men that rule by the Muhabharat and Diktat and the conditions in the Arab world that lead to this. 00:39:03.760 --> 00:39:35.920 Then you've got to look at Afghanistan 1, 2, 3, with the Soviet Union and the arming of the Mujahideen, the influx of 40,000 Arab volunteers into the fight against the Soviet Union, the Charlie Wilson arming of those Mujahideen, the fundraising for them in the United States, and then the withdrawal of the United States, and what do you do with those 40,000 people, and they become Al-Qaeda? 00:39:38.159 --> 00:39:39.920 Armed by the West. 00:39:42.000 --> 00:39:45.840 And suddenly, Aman, what's his name? 00:39:46.079 --> 00:39:51.039 Al-Zawahiri al-Zawahiri now declares we've been abandoned. 00:39:51.760 --> 00:39:56.559 We're here in the Toro Boro Mountains, let's concentrate on the far enemy. 00:39:57.840 --> 00:40:01.840 And Project One of the Far Enemy is 911. 00:40:02.480 --> 00:40:09.679 Let's no longer attack around us, let's attack the far enemy, and that leads us to 911. 00:40:10.800 --> 00:40:22.880 Um Cook, the former Foreign Secretary of the USS, we made a monumental miscalculation in the arming of that 40,000 people. 00:40:23.199 --> 00:40:24.480 He admits it. 00:40:25.119 --> 00:40:30.000 Almost to the day, 10th of July 2005. 00:40:30.719 --> 00:40:31.920 He admits that. 00:40:32.239 --> 00:40:37.039 So that is the context that produces 911. 00:40:38.000 --> 00:40:40.320 We understand it, we don't condone it. 00:40:41.440 --> 00:40:45.119 Because any loss of life needs to be condemned. 00:40:47.119 --> 00:40:57.119 But understanding it allows us the ability to deal with it in a way that doesn't now invite a counter-extremism, because that's what happens. 00:40:57.199 --> 00:41:03.519 You've got the informal ragtag extremism from the Toro Bora Mountains, from the Raqqa Desert, etc. 00:41:03.920 --> 00:41:16.719 And then you've got the mainstreamed extremism from Ten Downing Street, from the White House, in parties all over Europe and so forth. 00:41:17.039 --> 00:41:20.400 And in the Arab heartlands. 00:41:21.440 --> 00:41:23.920 And so that's what creates this. 00:41:24.079 --> 00:41:31.199 And so we're dealing with a blowback of all of that. 00:41:31.519 --> 00:41:36.159 That comes, and this really, and and then we don't have an adult in the room. 00:41:36.880 --> 00:41:43.840 And so instead, Europeans and Americans are asked to trade liberty for security. 00:41:44.480 --> 00:41:48.800 And so we now agree, okay, let's get the CIA to watch all of us. 00:41:49.679 --> 00:41:51.199 As long as we're secure. 00:41:51.840 --> 00:42:00.719 Let's incarcerate, let's surveil every mosque every Friday and put the imams under pressure to report any suspicious behavior.

00:42:00.880 --> 00:42:02.960 That's what 911 produced. 00:42:04.079 --> 00:42:10.079 Let's proscribe certain activities from happening. 00:42:10.239 --> 00:42:12.880 So we trade liberty for security. 00:42:13.760 --> 00:42:20.000 And so before you securitize and give weapons and all of those, you make that trade-off. 00:42:20.239 --> 00:42:22.639 And that's the reality of what we live in. 00:42:22.719 --> 00:42:33.920 And once you trade off a liberty, it's very difficult to get it back unless you have an anti-apartheid striker like we had, where we took, we were able to take it back in South Africa imperfectly, but we took it back. 00:42:34.159 --> 00:42:40.400 Others, when they incrementally give it away, there's no incremental or sudden return of those liberties. 00:42:40.559 --> 00:42:42.639 You just become used to it. 00:42:42.960 --> 00:42:45.440 And then you live with impunity. 00:42:45.920 --> 00:43:10.880 And so, in a very real sense, and I end on this, in a very real sense, the transition that 911 spectacularly announced to the world was the transition when uncertainty in the breasts of millions of Muslims were exploited by a few thousand who were able to unleash in our name. 00:43:12.239 --> 00:43:14.480 And sometimes with our silence. 00:43:15.199 --> 00:43:18.800 And our mealy-mouth protestations. 00:43:20.159 --> 00:43:26.559 And the protestations are mealy-mouthed precisely because we all understand the pain. 00:43:27.360 --> 00:43:29.519 We are like the deer caught in the headline. 00:43:30.800 --> 00:43:44.960 I understand the pain, I understand what was done unto us, but do I have the definition of justice that makes me stand up against my own as well? 00:43:45.119 --> 00:43:48.639 And that I think is the transition in the Muslim community. 00:43:49.039 --> 00:43:52.639 So you have that kind of self surveillance, self restraint. 00:43:52.880 --> 00:43:59.760 I mean the fact that Imams uh cannot talk about anything political uh in their Friday sermon less than. 00:44:00.159 --> 00:44:02.559 They come under a certain level of scrutiny. 00:44:02.800 --> 00:44:12.880 And for those who believe that these measures were either temporary or only focused on one community, it has metastasized, and we're all under this. 00:44:12.960 --> 00:44:20.960 I mean, saying see it, say it sorted has become sort of a mantra every time I'm in uh in the UK. 00:44:21.039 --> 00:44:23.199 And similarly, we have those things in the US. 00:44:23.280 --> 00:44:27.840 I don't think we've ever gone below orange level of threat in the US. 00:44:27.920 --> 00:44:30.559 We we have just simply become accustomed to it. 00:44:30.719 --> 00:44:39.199 Or if they draw back now 20 years on from Richard Reed and his uh shoes, now we can keep our shoes on at the airport. 00:44:39.360 --> 00:44:43.280 Somehow or the other we feel uh a sense of victory that this has happened. 00:44:43.360 --> 00:45:02.960 But Ibrahim, you know, you mentioned 1979, and something else uh that happens in 1979 is of course the start of uh American intervention in Afghanistan with the uh the supplying of weapons to the Mujahideen, a term which actually the Americans coined uh to describe the Afghan freedom fighters against the Soviet army that was there. 00:45:03.119 --> 00:45:14.079 And it was frustrating when uh in 2001, when the US withdrew, to hear American media saying, oh, well, the the US has been there now for 20 years. 00:45:14.239 --> 00:45:17.039 I said, no, mate, they've been there for 42 years. 00:45:17.280 --> 00:45:20.639 So there needs to be a bit more accuracy that's provided. 00:45:20.800 --> 00:45:44.079 But there is then, Paul, this this idea that there were wars of opportunism when it came to uh the closing overs of the Soviet uh of the Cold War, uh, to what may be arguably said, at least going after the right enemy that was in uh in Afghanistan with Al-Qaeda, albeit going after the Taliban was uh seemed to be uh extra. 00:45:44.800 --> 00:45:59.519 But then we find after 9-11 there are still these wars of folly, these wars of choice, whether it is Iraq in uh in 2003, uh, whether it is Iran as of February the 28th. 00:45:59.760 --> 00:46:03.360 Have we really learned anything from uh 9-11? 00:46:03.440 --> 00:46:19.599 Uh, and and especially the the the early period after that, when it came to the idea of power, when it came to the idea of how do we see ourselves, uh, whether from a standpoint of confidence uh and security, and how do we project these things outwardly? 00:46:20.000 --> 00:46:23.199 I don't think we've really learned so very much at all. 00:46:23.440 --> 00:46:33.360 Uh certainly if you look at all the other conflicts that have carried on, and the way so many of them continue in different forms that often aren't even reported. 00:46:33.519 --> 00:46:44.239 If you take obviously Iraq, one of the major aims of the Iraq War was to help the process of really controlling Iran. 00:46:44.639 --> 00:46:57.119 Uh, you know, with all the American bases in Afghanistan and the bases in the Western Gulf states and Iraq as well, then essentially you wouldn't have to worry about Iran because it would behave itself. 00:46:57.280 --> 00:47:02.000 And instead, of course, Iran came out of the first few years of the Iraq War much stronger. 00:47:02.079 --> 00:47:03.679 It increased its influence. 00:47:04.000 --> 00:47:07.119 And I don't think this was even recognized at the time. 00:47:07.360 --> 00:47:23.039 Part of the reason for the failure, I think, is one has to remember that within the United States, you have the project on the New American Century at the end of the previous century, and essentially that was really going to be, if you look, moving into the golden age for the United States. 00:47:23.199 --> 00:47:39.679 And this is why, in many ways, the first few months of the Bush administration, with all the neoconservatives coming in and the assertive realists coming in positions of real power, then

essentially it was almost like sort of heading at a huge rate and then suddenly being whipped from under you. 00:47:39.840 --> 00:47:46.960 And 9-11 was a much bigger impact among that settlers society, than I think we realize. 00:47:47.360 --> 00:47:53.519 And of course, this is one of the reasons why the whole idea of responding with force is the way to do it. 00:47:53.679 --> 00:48:04.719 Now, the fact that the kind of responses that was done obviously in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Libya, and many other places, you use the term lidism. 00:48:04.880 --> 00:48:10.400 You're keeping the lid on things really by the use of force and not looking at the underlying problems. 00:48:10.559 --> 00:48:12.639 But the underlying problems are still there. 00:48:13.119 --> 00:48:18.559 For this reason, we've made very little progress in terms of the underlying reasons. 00:48:18.639 --> 00:48:25.119 We're much more now in an era of revolts from the margins in many different ways, in many different forms. 00:48:25.440 --> 00:48:27.119 We've not learned very much at all. 00:48:27.280 --> 00:48:30.960 I think that's also a failure of people like me and peace researchers. 00:48:31.119 --> 00:48:34.400 We've not really pushed it hard enough, what we were thinking. 00:48:34.639 --> 00:48:37.920 And as a result of that, I think you know what you do pay a cost. 00:48:38.239 --> 00:48:41.199 Because as we look now, that may be changing. 00:48:41.280 --> 00:49:01.599 Uh, you look at the, I know we're trespassing on other areas of the festival, but if you look at the beginnings of collapse of support for Israel in the United States and other things like that, I think people are in a sense waking up to the way the system as a whole isn't working as expected. 00:49:01.760 --> 00:49:07.920 Uh so we're in an era where in some ways there's considerable possibilities to think things new. 00:49:08.159 --> 00:49:20.400 But against that, very strong pressures uh from, we use the term establishment, call it what you will, very much stronger pressures to actually maintain the way we're going and not think things out. 00:49:20.559 --> 00:49:26.480 And it seems to me that that's going to be the intellectual battle, which is going to be crucial in the next five years or so. 00:49:27.599 --> 00:49:32.159 Reem Sarah, you just heard, I mean, this idea about the system not working. 00:49:32.400 --> 00:49:37.119 From a legal perspective, it seems as though after 9-11 there were two possibilities. 00:49:37.440 --> 00:49:57.440 One is to uh pass legislation, which many countries did, uh, France, the UK, US, and so many others, uh, leading to greater securitization, greater surveillance, legitimizing it, and somehow the other finding constitutional uh impramatter for it. 00:49:57.760 --> 00:50:04.960 And then there's the other approach, which is just simply ignore and circumvent the laws. 00:50:05.280 --> 00:50:15.920 Which do you think defines the way that countries see themselves when it comes to their relationship to the legal and the judicial now after 9-11? 00:50:16.159 --> 00:50:26.960 Because I I mean I I have I have an understanding in America, and maybe it's just because of this president, as far as what what he chooses to follow and what he doesn't, but how do you see this through the legal lens? 00:50:29.679 --> 00:50:35.679 I think Ibrahim is starting to talk about it, about the securitization basically of freedom. 00:50:35.840 --> 00:50:41.519 I I think indeed we haven't learned anything from 9-11. 00:50:41.679 --> 00:50:44.960 If anything, but faith is okay. 00:50:45.760 --> 00:50:47.360 I think we can be digging. 00:50:48.400 --> 00:50:50.480 I think we hate freedoms actually. 00:50:51.039 --> 00:51:02.239 Because if you want to fight what terrorist, whoever the terrorist is, mindset, you would defend freedom. 00:51:02.480 --> 00:51:09.519 You would make sure that freedom, civil liberties are overprotected. 00:51:09.840 --> 00:51:31.599 What we did in Europe especially, I'm talking about France, but it's not just my country, we secretated, we we made, we we made freedoms, freedom should be the principle, and the exception to freedom, like public order, like the restriction to freedom should be the exception. 00:51:31.840 --> 00:51:33.519 Today it's the other way around. 00:51:33.840 --> 00:51:38.159 Restrictions to freedom are the principle. 00:51:38.960 --> 00:51:43.920 Freedom seems to be, I mean, not seems to be, are the exception. 00:51:44.320 --> 00:51:45.760 So take France. 00:51:46.800 --> 00:51:50.800 Since 1918, it started before 9-11. 00:51:51.679 --> 00:52:01.519 I won't go through history, uh, limitation on the wearing of the headscarf for school girls in public schools, a low pass, 2004. 00:52:02.320 --> 00:52:08.480 Then we had uh fast forward, 9-11 happened. 00:52:08.880 --> 00:52:15.039 All of a sudden, in no time, a whole security apparatus was created. 00:52:15.679 --> 00:52:20.960 And by the way, we already had the ingredients, we just didn't make the recipe just yet. 00:52:21.440 --> 00:52:26.559 State of emergency laws, for example, which again are supposed to be exceptional. 00:52:26.880 --> 00:52:30.719 9-11 did not lead France to create emergency laws. 00:52:30.800 --> 00:52:35.360 You know when French emergency laws were made, emerged from? 00:52:36.000 --> 00:52:36.880 Algeria. 00:52:40.480 --> 00:52:44.719 Then it was applied in New Caledonia during the first riots. 00:52:46.320 --> 00:52:59.760 And these laws, so France basically kept all the ingredients it had, and 9-11 was the key to open the doors to go freestyle. 00:53:01.360 --> 00:53:08.639 Surveillance on everyone justified by public order that nobody defines, by the way. 00:53:08.719 --> 00:53:14.480 I mean, we have an idea in law what is public order, but public order includes dignity in French law. 00:53:15.840 --> 00:53:17.920 Define me that legally, what is dignity? 00:53:18.079 --> 00:53:22.639 Living together is a matter of

public order now, right? 00:53:23.519 --> 00:53:30.960 So, what we did is that we took the freedom, transformed them into a security issue. 00:53:31.760 --> 00:53:36.639 So Muslim women's bodies became a matter of security. 00:53:36.880 --> 00:53:38.960 We are going to free women. 00:53:41.920 --> 00:53:43.199 But be careful. 00:53:44.079 --> 00:53:46.880 Muslims might be the guinea pigs, right? 00:53:47.440 --> 00:53:48.880 But those are tests. 00:53:49.119 --> 00:54:13.440 And right now, what we are witnessing in the past decades, those tests made, like this lab where everything was created, like the civilian state, the securitization of the state, um, identity politics becoming a security issue, national identity becoming a security issue, sovereignty becoming a security issue, immigration becoming a security issue. 00:54:14.559 --> 00:54:16.239 It now applied to everyone. 00:54:17.840 --> 00:54:20.719 They go after one group, you show you next. 00:54:22.639 --> 00:54:23.599 You next. 00:54:23.840 --> 00:54:25.760 And we are witnessing that now. 00:54:25.920 --> 00:54:27.760 Look at protest, for example. 00:54:28.320 --> 00:54:28.880 Right? 00:54:29.199 --> 00:54:31.440 We are talking about surveillance of mosques. 00:54:31.519 --> 00:54:35.599 Um, every single mosque in France isn't a civilian, okay? 00:54:35.920 --> 00:54:37.280 Every single one of them. 00:54:37.599 --> 00:54:39.920 It's actually a joke at this moment. 00:54:42.000 --> 00:54:44.239 But you know who else isn't there civilians? 00:54:45.119 --> 00:54:46.159 We are all men. 00:54:47.760 --> 00:54:48.960 I mean, I'm sorry. 00:54:49.119 --> 00:54:51.679 Uh your passport is a way to survey you as well. 00:54:51.760 --> 00:54:52.880 Every time you cross a border. 00:54:52.960 --> 00:54:54.719 And yes, I mean, of course we need security. 00:54:54.800 --> 00:54:59.760 Don't get me wrong, I'm not about like I mean, security is a serious issue. 00:54:59.840 --> 00:55:04.800 I'm not taking I'm not talking about removing security and that's it's it's silly. 00:55:05.119 --> 00:55:06.960 There are issues that need to be addressed. 00:55:07.119 --> 00:55:09.440 Of course, terrorism needs to be addressed. 00:55:09.760 --> 00:55:15.199 But if you take it seriously, you take it by abiding by the rule of law and its principles. 00:55:15.360 --> 00:55:21.599 And if we pretend to be liberal democracies, maybe in the first place we need to abide by its core principles. 00:55:22.320 --> 00:55:25.039 Liberal democracies like freedom. 00:55:26.159 --> 00:55:37.280 And there is one thing that maybe terrorists won is how the people they accept, so us did exactly what they wanted us to do. 00:55:37.760 --> 00:55:39.760 We fell into that trap. 00:55:39.920 --> 00:55:44.239 And we keep digging and look at the state we are going through now. 00:55:45.119 --> 00:55:51.519 We I mean, I'm not exaggerating when I say, and of course, I'm not comparing to the bad comparison of so on. 00:55:51.679 --> 00:55:54.639 Of course, every situation is different. 00:55:54.800 --> 00:56:03.280 But how is it, how the tools we are using are that different from the very authoritarian states we are invading? 00:56:04.159 --> 00:56:05.519 So I think that's a that's a great point. 00:56:05.599 --> 00:56:06.960 Actually, um, before I come to you, Shah. 00:56:07.440 --> 00:56:07.519 Yeah. 00:56:07.840 --> 00:56:20.559 No, I just want to actually link up to what um Rim Sara is saying, because that urban terror that I described unfolding in South Africa in the era of Nelson Mandela. 00:56:21.599 --> 00:56:35.840 We went to Nelson Mandela and said, should we invoke a state of emergency and should we mobilize the military to defend this because it's affecting tourism, it's affecting security, all of those kind of things? 00:56:36.159 --> 00:56:37.760 His reply was very simple. 00:56:39.519 --> 00:56:47.199 He said we need to invoke the state of emergency and we need to bring in the army. 00:56:48.079 --> 00:56:50.719 The constitution that we celebrate has failed. 00:56:53.519 --> 00:57:00.079 If we can't find constitutional means to deal with this, we have failed as a nation. 00:57:01.519 --> 00:57:05.280 And therefore, come back to me with a new solution. 00:57:06.639 --> 00:57:17.360 And we went back and we said, Madiba, we suggest the closing of five spaces for these urban terror because we really had to be creative. 00:57:18.320 --> 00:57:19.280 He said, What are they? 00:57:20.239 --> 00:57:24.239 I said the first one is let's close the theological spaces. 00:57:24.719 --> 00:57:27.920 Let's take theological permission away from them. 00:57:28.239 --> 00:57:41.760 And we had one Friday sermon across the country read out that declared such extremism, Kamiya Kaljahiliya, the extremism from the age of ignorance, it is forbidden. 00:57:43.039 --> 00:57:45.840 That changed the mass mobilization aspect. 00:57:47.679 --> 00:57:49.679 The second one is the social space. 00:57:50.480 --> 00:57:54.000 What are the concerns of people and how do we show? 00:57:54.079 --> 00:58:02.159 And so if drugs and gangs were the concern, the ostensible concerns, how did we mobilize the police against the gangs and the drugs? 00:58:02.960 --> 00:58:05.280 The third one was the financial space. 00:58:05.440 --> 00:58:06.880 Where do they get their money from? 00:58:07.119 --> 00:58:21.920 We went to the vice president of Iran, where foundations were giving money to foundations there, and we said, this is what you are funding, and they stopped it, and suddenly the maneuvering space reduced. 00:58:22.960 --> 00:58:25.440 The fourth one was the operational space. 00:58:25.679 --> 00:58:28.320 So if you wanted to march, you can march. 00:58:28.400 --> 00:58:36.719 It's your right to march, we will not stop it, but you don't have the right to bear arms and cover your faces with a scarf so that you can get away with impunity. 00:58:36.880 --> 00:58:39.679 And so we dealt with those kind of

things. 00:58:39.840 --> 00:58:46.800 That when people's faces are in the in the floodlights, they are more inhibited from doing things that are wrong. 00:58:46.960 --> 00:58:49.280 And then the legal judicial space. 00:59:12.079 --> 00:59:29.679 But he was sure that the people in whose name these people were acting would recoil if they heard exactly the details of how they killed that child, how they defined collateral damage, how they stood up to theological scrutiny. 00:59:30.239 --> 00:59:40.719 And the moment we were able to do that, we suddenly found that this was the beginning of the death of an extremist movement in Cape Town. 00:59:40.880 --> 00:59:48.639 I share that because I'm saying in response to Professor Rogers' assertion that we haven't learned. 00:59:48.960 --> 00:59:53.920 I'm just putting it in there that there are different ways of dealing with it in case we want to learn. 00:59:54.800 --> 01:00:00.079 Reem Sarah, you mentioned uh the the idea of the guinea pig, the Muslim being the guinea pig. 01:00:00.400 --> 01:00:01.679 Which is an aktimoron, eh? 01:00:02.079 --> 01:00:03.679 A Muslim guinea pig. 01:00:05.440 --> 01:00:06.480 He's not wrong. 01:00:08.480 --> 01:00:14.000 You know, this is the this is the the the point in the uh in the program where the dad jokes start coming up. 01:00:16.079 --> 01:00:20.880 Shahid, I I would like to maybe use the metaphor of the canaries in the coal mine. 01:00:21.840 --> 01:00:24.800 Also because I'm a big fan of the band the police, right? 01:00:25.280 --> 01:00:30.320 But Reem Sarah mentioned the rule of law. 01:00:30.559 --> 01:00:35.920 In the last 25 years since 9-11, the rule of law is not exactly being upheld by Western democracies. 01:00:36.159 --> 01:00:40.320 Neither is democracy itself, which was becoming more illiberal. 01:00:40.559 --> 01:00:46.000 Market economies are now more regulated than ever before, especially with tariff kings. 01:00:46.239 --> 01:00:51.519 Uh, secular space is starting to yield to religious extremism, not just Muslims. 01:00:51.840 --> 01:00:57.360 And the open and uh discursive public space is now highly regulated. 01:00:58.000 --> 01:01:09.039 Do you think 9-11 is the canary in the coal mine of the liberal project, in fact, being, as Paul said before, shaking at its axis? 01:01:09.440 --> 01:01:15.280 So I tend to be an optimist when it comes to the discourse of what happened since 9-11. 01:01:15.360 --> 01:01:19.199 Um, sometimes maybe naively so, but I don't think so. 01:01:19.440 --> 01:01:25.280 Um this assertion that we haven't learned anything is partially true. 01:01:25.519 --> 01:01:29.440 Um as you go up toward the top of the pyramid, it's absolutely true. 01:01:29.679 --> 01:01:38.000 Um the one thing I learned by being in government is that the higher you go, these people are no smarter or dumber than you are, and frankly, sometimes they're dumber. 01:01:38.159 --> 01:01:40.880 And I've seen it with my own eyes in every single place. 01:01:41.119 --> 01:01:44.480 So whatever laws you have on the and this is being optimistic. 01:01:45.599 --> 01:01:47.199 I'm getting to the optimistic way. 01:01:47.280 --> 01:01:48.480 I'm getting to the optimistic way. 01:01:48.800 --> 01:01:51.519 Um because here's here's where the optimism comes in. 01:01:51.760 --> 01:02:01.599 When you finally realize that whatever rules you have on the books, they only make sense if there are the people who are in charge of those laws are applying them. 01:02:01.840 --> 01:02:15.840 You go, you go to the top and you see this old guard that's you know influenced by politics of several decades ago, influenced by these grandiose dreams, Project of New American Century, all that stuff. 01:02:16.800 --> 01:02:20.480 And then and you realize that, yes, they haven't learned anything. 01:02:20.639 --> 01:02:24.800 But what's the one big thing that's happened between 9-11 and now? 01:02:25.039 --> 01:02:35.360 It has been the democratization of the media, the democratization of business, the democratization of political power and how it's represented. 01:02:35.599 --> 01:02:37.119 All of these things have happened. 01:02:37.199 --> 01:02:41.280 And it and what's really interesting about that is you see this in the last couple of years. 01:02:41.519 --> 01:02:52.079 The traditional structures of power that reinforce these dumb decisions of keeping the cycle going are finally starting to realize that they don't have the power they thought they did. 01:02:52.639 --> 01:02:58.559 That owning a media company and trying to control what it says, guess what? 01:02:58.719 --> 01:03:00.480 The people route around you. 01:03:00.719 --> 01:03:01.199 Right? 01:03:01.519 --> 01:03:04.000 Trying to control elections, guess what? 01:03:04.159 --> 01:03:06.239 The people find a way to go around you. 01:03:06.400 --> 01:03:09.519 And we're seeing this happen in America in very big ways. 01:03:09.840 --> 01:03:18.000 Trying to control the narrative with these prepared talking points which reinforce that power structure, the public isn't buying it anymore. 01:03:18.639 --> 01:03:30.480 And and the the the the the structures of power that are so used to that old system and are not bothered by unlimited bloodshed and unlimited exertion of power, don't know what else to do. 01:03:30.719 --> 01:03:34.480 You know, when you're a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, and they don't know what to do. 01:03:34.719 --> 01:03:37.280 And so this is why I'm optimistic, right? 01:03:37.519 --> 01:03:40.079 It doesn't matter how in America, it doesn't matter. 01:03:40.159 --> 01:03:44.719 You can throw$50 million against Mamdani and he will still win. 01:03:44.880 --> 01:03:57.199 You can throw$30 million against, you know, uh uh uh all these uh politicians that have been elected that are bucking that trend, political money means nothing anymore. 01:03:57.440 --> 01:03:57.840 Why? 01:03:58.159 --> 01:04:01.760 Because the people are not

receptive to that anymore. 01:04:01.920 --> 01:04:06.960 They they understand what media uh to trust and what media not to trust. 01:04:07.119 --> 01:04:13.199 They're perfectly willing to follow a Twitch streamer versus a talking head on CNN. 01:04:13.440 --> 01:04:32.079 And so this is a unique moment in time where people can overturn this old system, go back to a values-based system, go back to uh a human rights-based system, and start proving by example because the last refuge of these people in power is don't trust them, they're gonna ruin everything. 01:04:32.239 --> 01:04:38.480 And the minute one or two of them get into power and they prove the other otherwise, the whole House of Cards collapses. 01:04:38.800 --> 01:04:41.840 And and this is just the way systems work. 01:04:42.079 --> 01:04:44.880 When people wake up and they have agency. 01:04:44.960 --> 01:04:46.800 And I believe that's happening everywhere now. 01:04:46.960 --> 01:04:51.360 It should have happened 10 years ago, it should have happened 20 years ago, whatever, it's here now. 01:04:51.519 --> 01:04:53.519 And we have to make sure that it continues. 01:04:53.679 --> 01:05:04.320 And what you're seeing is the is the is the last dying gasp of an attempt of a group of people who are so used to being in power uh to hold on to that power. 01:05:04.480 --> 01:05:07.119 And they are losing by any metric. 01:05:07.440 --> 01:05:10.559 And so this is why I think I continue to be optimistic. 01:05:10.880 --> 01:05:12.880 And I think that's a great place to end. 01:05:13.039 --> 01:05:21.679 I mean, I think the takeaway then from what you're saying and all of you're saying is that the end of complacency means the beginning of agency. 01:05:22.000 --> 01:05:31.119 So uh whether it's in in Britain, I mean in America with people like Mamdani or even here in the UK with Count Binface, uh, we all have a future. 01:05:31.360 --> 01:05:35.599 Um I could I'm so sorry uh because of how engaging this conversation was. 01:05:35.760 --> 01:05:37.760 I think we have time for two questions. 01:05:38.000 --> 01:05:49.119 So uh Lauren's got the mic, we've got yes, one question up there, um uh young lady, and uh one more question if anyone wants to or just want to ask two questions by yourself. 01:05:50.880 --> 01:05:52.559 Hi, can you hear me? 01:05:53.039 --> 01:05:53.679 Can you hear me? 01:05:53.840 --> 01:05:54.079 Yep. 01:05:54.960 --> 01:05:59.599 Okay, so as an educator of young people. 01:06:02.400 --> 01:06:15.599 I I agree with everything you said, and actually before this we were in the I think UNA run and Kerbal Ancy Algebraism talk, which we we attended, and actually a lot of this came up in our discussions. 01:06:16.960 --> 01:06:23.760 But what you haven't mentioned is where education falls into all of this. 01:06:24.880 --> 01:06:30.719 You're all right, and I suppose you're all looking at it through the lens of being an adult. 01:06:33.840 --> 01:06:36.960 How do you approach this through the lens of a child? 01:06:37.920 --> 01:06:52.159 How do you educate and create unapologetic young people who also have to manage the trauma of the past and the present? 01:06:54.960 --> 01:06:56.719 Okay, thank you for the question. 01:06:56.880 --> 01:06:59.280 Um let's go ahead and we'll go around. 01:06:59.360 --> 01:07:01.519 Um Ibrahim, did you want a good story? 01:07:03.360 --> 01:07:16.559 I think I think that I'd love to bring my children up as unapologetic set of identities. 01:07:17.119 --> 01:07:31.280 So I'd like my children to be South African, I'd like them to be Muslim, I'd like them to be of Malay origin, and I'd love them to support Liverpool. 01:07:33.440 --> 01:07:34.559 Check, please. 01:07:37.280 --> 01:07:41.840 So those are the identities I'd love them to be unapologetic about. 01:07:42.960 --> 01:07:54.320 And in inculcating that, I need to show them how they are the best that South Africa has produced, not the worst. 01:07:55.199 --> 01:08:13.920 I'd like them to be the finest example of what it means to be Muslim and to embody the full array of the intents of Islam, not the details, not get lost in the subtext and the pretexts of Islam, but to live in the context with the text. 01:08:15.199 --> 01:08:25.760 I'd love them to have the finest cuisine that comes from their culture and to enjoy their football as long as Liverpool wins. 01:08:26.239 --> 01:08:31.119 The point of the matter is I also need to understand that there's a shadow side. 01:08:31.600 --> 01:08:38.159 I need to prepare them for a hostile world that is not going to take their credentials at face value. 01:08:38.560 --> 01:08:50.319 I need to prepare them in the same way that African Americans have adult conversations with their young boys in their rites of passage to say, this is what you do when the police confronts you. 01:08:50.640 --> 01:08:52.880 Keep your hands on the steering wheel. 01:08:53.039 --> 01:08:55.600 Don't reach for anything until they ask you. 01:08:55.840 --> 01:08:58.319 Ask permission to take out your license. 01:08:58.720 --> 01:09:08.159 We need to find the equivalence of that because we want to have wholesome children, but we also want our children to be street-wise. 01:09:09.279 --> 01:09:12.479 It's the kind of upbringing I had under apartheid. 01:09:12.560 --> 01:09:25.760 I was proudly who I was, but I was always aware that I was the black other, the Muslim other in South Africa, and I needed to carry the shadow and the light with me. 01:09:25.920 --> 01:09:26.800 Let me leave it there. 01:09:26.960 --> 01:09:27.279 Thank you. 01:09:31.119 --> 01:09:38.479 For better or for worse, young people today are exposed to the ills of the world way earlier than my generation. 01:09:39.039 --> 01:09:49.520 Like I was a happy-go-lucky teenager until I went my first day at University of California, Berkeley, and I saw the shanty towns built to protest apartheid, and I was like, what's this apartheid? 01:09:49.920 -->

01:09:52.000 And then, of course, that began. 01:09:52.319 --> 01:09:59.119 My children have been politicized by what they see on their phones from the minute they got phones. 01:09:59.439 --> 01:10:12.159 And and I think the challenge for education is we have to we have to ramp up earlier the uh teaching people to be critical thinkers, teaching people how to sort through information. 01:10:12.319 --> 01:10:17.920 You know, each successive generation gets more skeptical about what they read online, and that's good. 01:10:18.159 --> 01:10:20.399 My generation was like, oh, I won a lottery. 01:10:20.479 --> 01:10:21.279 This is great. 01:10:21.439 --> 01:10:28.960 Um but my kids' generation is very, very, they understand that people are trying to game them, and they're navigating that really well. 01:10:29.119 --> 01:10:31.359 I think future generations will be becoming even better than that. 01:10:31.520 --> 01:10:54.880 But but in terms of education, it's the skill to be able to process the flood of information they're getting, um, teach them that they do have a moral core and moral agency, and that it is okay for them to have opinions about that, and discuss it and debate it with their parents, and develop that way earlier than maybe I would have liked, but this is the world that they're in now, and that's how we have to prepare them for this world. 01:10:55.359 --> 01:10:55.680 Thank you. 01:10:55.760 --> 01:10:56.960 Uh Sarah. 01:10:57.600 --> 01:10:58.560 I won't do any. 01:10:58.800 --> 01:11:00.000 Uh can you hear me? 01:11:00.319 --> 01:11:00.479 Okay. 01:11:00.880 --> 01:11:06.960 I won't do any football metaphors because I'm from Toulouse, the kingdom of rugby, and we beat England so many times. 01:11:07.199 --> 01:11:08.159 But I see that. 01:11:09.760 --> 01:11:15.039 No, um kids need like to be like rugby players. 01:11:15.439 --> 01:11:31.199 Uh my point being, it's not going to be easy, but contrary maybe to my generation, and maybe the one after as well, we are far more interconnected globally than we used to be. 01:11:31.920 --> 01:11:33.760 And I think that's key. 01:11:34.319 --> 01:11:38.319 Make sure, I mean, not you personally, right? 01:11:38.560 --> 01:11:48.239 I mean global view, general view, that your kids have a taste of every single taste of diversity it exists. 01:11:48.479 --> 01:11:50.800 Critical thinking for me is key. 01:11:51.199 --> 01:11:57.279 Like we need to teach critical thinking from kindergarten, if I may exaggerate. 01:11:58.000 --> 01:11:58.880 Challenge. 01:11:59.279 --> 01:12:00.479 Challenge power. 01:12:00.720 --> 01:12:01.680 Question it. 01:12:02.319 --> 01:12:03.600 Ask questions. 01:12:04.239 --> 01:12:05.680 Never stop, yeah. 01:12:06.560 --> 01:12:09.680 Never stop a kid to ask questions. 01:12:09.920 --> 01:12:12.319 Even the most uncomfortable ones. 01:12:13.680 --> 01:12:17.520 And like I said, we are a globalized world now. 01:12:17.920 --> 01:12:30.800 And I think that's also what the um elite, whatever you think the elite is, fears is that they are losing this control. 01:12:31.439 --> 01:12:37.680 And I think kids now are not having it, so rugby player, just go for it, take it. 01:12:37.840 --> 01:12:39.199 And I I have faith. 01:12:39.359 --> 01:12:44.399 I want to have faith because I think this is the generation that you that is going to save us, really. 01:12:44.560 --> 01:12:45.840 And it's not gonna be easy. 01:12:45.920 --> 01:12:48.319 I don't want to be like Princess Unicorn, right? 01:12:48.880 --> 01:12:53.359 But focus on critical thinking from a very young age. 01:12:53.600 --> 01:12:56.399 That is what is going to save us, really. 01:12:57.039 --> 01:12:59.279 I may be wrong, but that's my take. 01:12:59.600 --> 01:13:01.760 Well, they're not gonna save us with their music taste. 01:13:01.920 --> 01:13:05.920 Um that was your dad's joke. 01:13:06.319 --> 01:13:08.000 No, I'm dead serious. 01:13:08.640 --> 01:13:09.760 There was no joke. 01:13:10.560 --> 01:13:22.800 I think just two things, very much to endorse the emphasis on critical thinking, and also it's not so much having confidence in your own abilities, but having confidence in your own potential. 01:13:23.039 --> 01:13:24.720 And that's the crucial thing. 01:13:24.960 --> 01:13:35.439 If you can people have the confidence in their own potential, recognize they can make mistakes in the rest, but they're capable of this, and I think that really parallels uh the critical thinking. 01:13:35.600 --> 01:13:41.760 Get those two together, and I think we're on the potential to be more optimistic, which we do need to be at present. 01:13:42.319 --> 01:13:47.600 I I'm an educator too, so if you'll permit me, uh, to me, I look at my own daughters. 01:13:47.760 --> 01:13:52.159 Two of them were alive but not really aware or conscious about 9-11. 01:13:52.399 --> 01:13:55.600 The youngest uh was born after uh 9-11. 01:13:56.000 --> 01:14:03.680 I constantly struggle with the gaps that are part of our formal education when it comes to what's on the curriculum. 01:14:03.920 --> 01:14:15.760 I know, for example, in the in the UK, partition and Indian independence is not on the on the curriculum, neither is uh that little war you lost to the uh you know us in 1776. 01:14:15.920 --> 01:14:16.800 But that's okay. 01:14:16.960 --> 01:14:19.199 Uh but then how is that filled up? 01:14:19.439 --> 01:14:31.199 Do you demand that the school put that on the curriculum, knowing possibly that there will be biases and prejudices and distortions, or do you just simply accept it and then go ahead and fill the role? 01:14:31.359 --> 01:14:41.119 You mentioned that this is about the kids, but it's really also about the adults and what kind of responsibility they have and what resources they can provide to the kids as well. 01:14:41.279 --> 01:14:50.399 I mean, I remember my youngest, uh, I don't know where she gets the snark, at the age of uh 10, she said, uh, hey Baba, do you have any books uh on Palestine? 01:14:50.560 --> 01:14:56.800 And my personal library at home is about 5,200 books, probably about 150 having to do with Palestine. 01:14:56.960 --> 01:14:58.640 I said, Yeah, go downstairs and grab it. 01:14:58.720 --> 01:15:00.960 She said, Yeah, it's easier to watch a TikTok. 01:15:01.119 --> 01:15:05.840 And I said, that explains everything, and it explains her. 01:15:05.920 --> 01:15:15.199 And so I met the challenge by going on TikTok and finding what I would call gateways for her to then please come down and look at the books. 01:15:15.520 --> 01:15:20.079 Thank you so much for being a part of such a robust and attentive audience. 01:15:20.159 --> 01:15:26.159 Thank you, Ibrahim Rasul, thank you, Shahidamanla, thank you, Reem Sarah Alowi, thank you, Paul Rogers. 01:15:26.319 --> 01:15:31.520 We hope you enjoy the rest of your time here at uh the Bradford Literature Festival today and tomorrow. 01:15:31.680 --> 01:15:32.960 Again, thank you for being here. 01:15:33.119 --> 01:15:34.239 And thank you, Sadiqan. 01:15:34.560 --> 01:15:35.199 Yeah, thank you.