Sam Westrop: Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Middle East Forum’s regular webinar series. I’m joined today by Daniel Haqiqatjou, a leading Muslim commentator whom we have written about critically in the past. This webinar, however, is not supposed to be contentious but an honest and frank interview, a unique chance to hear from Mr. Haqiqatjou directly so that he might freely explain his views on our subject today, Islam versus liberalism.
Now, Mr. Haqiqatjou is the founder of Muslim Skeptic and the Alasna Institute. He reaches hundreds of thousands of subscribers and supporters across his various social media channels. Born in Houston, he studies physics, I’m sorry, he studied physics and philosophy at Harvard before going on to do a philosophy for his masters at Tufts. Now, Mr. Haqiqatjou will start with an introduction and then I’ll ask a few questions. We’ll also try to get to some questions from you, the audience. Please use the Q&A box at the bottom of your screen to submit those questions. Mr. Haqiqatjou, over to you.
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Daniel Haqiqatjou: Thank you, Sam, for the invitation. Just a little about myself. I’m the founder of muslimskeptic.com, I was born and raised in the suburbs of Houston, Texas, I consider myself a Texan. Currently, I live with my wife and four children in a typical American suburb just enjoying the warm weather with my family, grilling, going to the beach, teaching my boys how to play basketball. Meanwhile, Middle East Forum and Sam here have been writing article after article calling me a hardline Islamist. So, what is it that makes me an Islamist? As far as I can tell, I’m called an Islamist because I’m a Muslim and I disagree with liberal secularism. So, let’s talk about liberal secularism.
When I talk about liberalism in my work, I’m referring to philosophical liberalism which is a moral and technological project that aims to maximize individual freedom and equality. To be clear, when I say liberalism, I don’t mean left wing. When I refer to this philosophical liberalism, both the left and right wing are committed to philosophical liberalism, both the left and the right wing are committed to maximizing freedom and equality, they just have different perspectives on how best to achieve that. And even Middle East Forum, as a conservative outlet, is nonetheless philosophically liberal in this way. You are committed to spreading democratic values of freedom, women’s equal rights, religious freedom, gay rights, et cetera. The problem with liberalism is that it pursues maximizing freedom and equality at the expense of other important values like marriage, family, community, religious tradition and so forth.
The reality is that traditional institutions like marriage require some degree of lack of freedom and some degree of lack of equality, that is inevitable but it’s also intolerable to the liberal mind. A simple example is patriarchy. Patriarchy is a part of every traditional religion and culture and the scientific consensus is that patriarchy is something biologically rooted in human psychology. But patriarchy entails a lack of equality between the genders, it also requires certain gender roles and those limit people’s freedom of choice. And so, liberalism seeks to destroy patriarchy but that means destroying traditional life.
Liberalism sees no problem with that. If maximizing freedom and equality means getting rid of traditional ways of life, so be it. But the problem is human beings need patriarchy, otherwise, marriages dissolve. There is no successful model of marriage that does not involve patriarchy and the inequality and lack of freedom that comes with it. All the modern liberal models of marriage have been a complete failure. The entire notion of the family unit has collapsed in our times. Why is that? It is because marriage and family require inequality, they require a lack of freedom and all of this is biologically based.
Another example, religious practice also requires inequality. In all religions, for example, there are negative consequences for heresy or apostasy but this conflicts with the liberal notion of religious freedom so liberalism seeks to destroy this lack of freedom even though it means functionally destroying these religious traditions. So, there are countless examples. So, what does all of this have to do with Islam? Islam is the last remaining major religion that is holding on to traditional values, traditional institutions of marriage, family, community and religion. As such, it has been the target of unrelenting liberal attack for the past 250 years from colonialism until the neo colonial war on terror being waged today. Liberal discourse labels any opposition to its project as extremism. This is not new, liberal colonial powers shut down any opposition to their liberalizing project by labeling it radicalism, the same tactic has been accelerated with the current war on terror.
Any Muslim who disagrees with the dictates of liberal secular modernity is branded an extremist who, at the very least, needs to be surveilled, whose travel should be restricted, who possibly needs to be detained, perhaps even tortured or extra judicially assassinated. All such actions by the liberal state are justified according to liberal logic because this Muslim has non-liberal beliefs and, therefore, poses a threat to the advancement of freedom, equality, and democracy. That’s on the level of the individual but the same logic applies to entire nations which, in the past, has been enforced through colonialism but now is enforced through international law and so called nation building. The idea is if we invade Iraq and Afghanistan, force them to send their daughters to college to study feminism and make sure they have elections every year, these Muslim countries will magically become bastions of liberal enlightenment like Sweden. This is the hoax that neocons have peddled for the past 20 years of so-called Mideast intervention.
Middle East Forum, of course, has played its part portraying as an extremist threat. Any Muslim who expresses illiberal views, Muslims such as myself are depicted as extremist threats for what? For our belief in Islam, for advocating for traditional values, for condemning the generose and the erosion of basic human institutions of marriage, family, belief in God and are speaking out against the destruction of all traditional life by liberal secular forces. That’s our great crime according to Middle East Forum. The funny thing is, according to the accelerating liberal project and it’s never ending pursuit of freedom, much of the Middle East Forum’s conservative readership are increasingly considered extremists themselves. Don’t believe that there are an infinite number of genders? You’re an extremist. Don’t believe that children should get sex change surgery? You’re an extremist. You want to teach certain politically incorrect verses of the Bible or Talmud? You’re an extremist.
This tactic of crying extremist has been used for over two centuries to shut down Muslims and the Middle East Forum has played its part in fanning those flames. The irony now is that the liberal project, nowadays, has accelerated to such an extent that conservatives themselves are being called extremists and are de-platformed and put on watch lists for not keeping up with the newest iterations of freedom and equality. In the fantasy world of Middle East Forum, the big existential threat to Americans are Muslims like me who, are any day now, going to ride in on camels to take over Washington, D.C. and establish a Sharia state. But in the real world, Americans have long realized that the real threat is the fact that they can’t get baby formula for their infants, the fact that they can’t get married, the fact that their children have all become hardcore atheists, that their sons are degenerates and their daughters are prostituting themselves on OnlyFans, that their lives have no meaning or purpose.
Those are the dangers of liberalism that I warn about in my advocacy as a so-called hardline Islamist. Westerners are correct when they worry about their civilization being destroyed but that is due to liberalism, not Islam. As a Muslim, I’m actually addressing the deep problems Americans are suffering from and offering solutions. Meanwhile, Middle East Forum distracts its readers with this imaginary Islamist boogeyman. So tell me, who is really the enemy of the West and its people?
Sam Westrop: Okay. Daniel, thank you. You gave quite a broad definition of liberalism at the beginning, pointing out that even the Middle East Forum is included in this more philosophical definition of the term. You then did switch to defining it, really, as progressivism or at least its excesses, its most obvious examples. You pointed to the gender obsession, certain views around atheism, religion, sexuality and so on. So, is liberalism everything you said it is or are you specifically focused here on the left? On the same progressivist that many conservatives, non-Muslim conservatives worry about too?
Daniel Haqiqatjou: No, it’s the same thing. You can’t get, for example, third wave or fourth wave feminism without second wave or first wave feminism. You can’t get the latest iterations of woke, progressive liberal politics without classical liberalism, without John Stuart Mill, without Alexis de Tocqueville, without all of these classical figures. It is one continuous project and it is a failure, I think, of certain modern figures within the alt-right or alt-light or Republicanism or whatever you want to call it to not recognize that the source of these problems, these societal problems, have deep roots with the liberal secular project.
Sam Westrop: Okay, okay. And you mentioned that you advocate for traditional values in lieu of this liberalism. Does that mean an Islamic State? You also mentioned apostasy and atheism. So, how would apostates and atheists fare under the division of society that you prefer?
Daniel Haqiqatjou: Yeah. So, I mean, the issue of what is the ideal. Obviously, I’m advocating for Islam as a solution and Islam is a complete way of life that touches on everything from individual decision making to individual values but also family values, marital values, societal values, economic law. All of these areas are covered under Sharia and Islamic law and including religious practices like worship, rituals and so forth. So, all of this is covered under Islamic Sharia and the ideal and the solution that’s being proposed here is that this model preserves marriage, it preserves family, it preserves and strengthens organic communities and belief in God. These are inherent human values, they’re biologically based, they’re very important and all people value them and Islam is a system and the best system for preserving this because it comes from the creator of human beings, God Almighty.
And so, preserving this kind of system or establishing Islam, yes, it does mean a reduction in freedom and equality but this kind of reduction of freedom and inequality is necessary in order to preserve marriage, family, community, religious practice, belief in God. You cannot maintain belief in God if it’s possible for apostates or atheists to go around and insult God, to criticize God, to criticize the entire notion of belief. This is something that will destroy religious belief and fundamentally undermine it in society.
So, Islam, among other religions, including Christianity and Orthodox Judaism understands that there needs to be consequences and punishments or disincentives towards heresy, towards apostasy in order to maintain the value, the important value, of belief in God. If you don’t restrict people’s freedom, religious freedom, in that way then it leads to a much worse consequence in the loss of belief in God.
Sam Westrop: Okay. Muslim critics of yours, and you have quite a few from what I’ve read, refer to you and some of your like-minded people who I think you’ve worked with or who have supported you as the aph-right which I understand is a play on the Arabic word for brother, aph, but also the alt-right that’s a popular term to describe a certain section of the conservative right. Do you recognize that term? Do you think there is something to be said for the fact that a number of Muslim community leaders consider your rhetoric to be something in common with some of these alt-right figures we have today in American politics?
Daniel Haqiqatjou: Yeah, so they will say that a lot of what I’m calling to or muslimskeptic.com is calling to is Trumpian or is in line with someone like Jordan Peterson and the right wing. But like I said in the opening, I don’t view the right wing as really an alternative to liberalism and that includes much of the alt-right. I don’t think that they are alternatives, they’re just proposing different forms of liberalism. So, certain things that Donald Trump would say or Jordan Peterson would say or some of these alt-right figures would say, I will actually acknowledge that I agree with certain things that they say but I’ll also acknowledge that a lot of what they say, perhaps most of what they say, is also wrong. But I also acknowledge that with someone like Biden or Bernie Sanders, or any politician on the left.
So, my position has always been that I’m criticizing both the left and the right wing of politics because they’re different manifestations of the same underlying cancer. And are there certain figures within the alt-right or even the far right that critique modernity? Yes, there are certain figures like that but I don’t think that they’re providing a good solution and I don’t think that they are people that I would ally myself with or align with because there are also many of them proposing ethno nationalism which, as a Muslim, I completely reject. And also, a lot of this alt-right wants to praise Western civilization. And if you ask them what’s so great about Western civilization, they’ll talk about technocratic liberalism, they’ll say that we have all this technology, we have all of this human rights and freedom and democracy, women’s rights.
So, this is just liberalism, they’re just championing liberalism, they’re just reacting to some of the excesses of where liberalism has taken the world today and I think that they’re not providing a solution. Islam is a solution, it’s a coherent, cohesive system that has all of these benefits and all of these strengths. I think the alt-right, certain figures have recognized that and that’s why you see some of them delving into Christianity or actually proposing or trying to rediscover or recapture some of the Christianity within their heritage but, as far as I’m concerned, it’s very superficial reactionism.
Sam Westrop: Okay. And speaking of this ethno nationalism, you interviewed recently Mark Collett, a self-described White nationalist frequently referred to as a neo-Nazi in British media. I watched that debate, it was fascinating and he seemed to accept the idea of an Islamic Europe so long as it was White. That was certainly the implication of one of his sentences towards the end of that debate. So, based on what you just said, yes, they seem to currently be turning to Christianity, a lot of these figures on the so-called far right, but do you think there is potential for the far right or whatever you want to call them to regard Islam as a useful vehicle for their designs?
Daniel Haqiqatjou: Well, I think I can ask Middle East Forum the same question. Because you have funding ties to people like Tommy Robinson and these right wing affiliates in Europe and Middle East Forum, of course, supports the ethno state of Israel which includes many far right elements. So, a similar question can be asked of Middle East Forum. Do you consider the far right as a potential vehicle for your broader agenda? But the fact that I was in this debate with Mark Collett, he’s a White nationalist, yeah, we did have common ground on certain things but let me ask you this, Sam. Do you agree that marriage and family are valuable institutions that should be preserved?
Sam Westrop: I’m a forsaken atheist with my own views that may not represent the forum so I’m going to keep my personal ideas out of this but I would love to hear more from you.
Daniel Haqiqatjou: No. Even as an atheist, do you think that marriage and family are valuable?
Sam Westrop: Of course. Of course, I do.
Daniel Haqiqatjou: Yeah, so we have some common ground here, right? Does that make me a neocon or sympathetic to the Middle East Forum or does it make you an Islamist sympathizer just because you agree with me on the value of marriage and family? So, I think that question answers itself. But when it comes to Mark Collett, I don’t want to seem like I’m dodging the question, why did I engage with him? I’m willing to engage with people that are attacking Islam, whether they’re Christians, whether they’re from the far right, whether the far left, Hindutva, Middle East Forum, whoever. I’m open to talking with people and I want to rebut their claims. So, that’s just part of my advocacy and my work.
But with Mark Collett, did I agree with him on White nationalism or any kind of racism? No. I actually was giving arguments against that particular view. All I said in that conversation, we came to the common ground that marriage and certain traditional institutions, religious practices are valuable. And I’ll say it again, I agree with Mark Collett, the White nationalist, on those things. But when it comes to White nationalism, that is completely contrary to Islam, any type of ethno nationalism is contrary to Islam and we can’t be allies on that basis. But if it’s about traditional values and fighting and resisting liberalism in favor of a traditional way of life, then I see anyone as a potential ally, whether Christian, Jew, right wing, left wing, anyone. Even use, Sam.
Sam Westrop: Let me ask a few questions from the audience and then I’ll get back to just wrapping up with one or two questions of my own. An anonymous question, so I’m not sure who asks, doesn’t killing in the name of God for apostasy, for example, undermine belief in God and promote atheism?
Daniel Haqiqatjou: No. No, it doesn’t. That’s like saying does killing murderers and killing people who commit heinous crimes and punishing them, doesn’t that promote murder? Doesn’t that promote killing? No. Punishing criminals and those who violate norms and values in order to deter criminal behavior, to deter something that is disruptive, destabilizing, this is found in every religion and every legal system. Yeah, even within … Look, I’m in Texas, we still have the death penalty. People who commit heinous crimes are punished with the death penalty, even capital punishment. It’s a superficial argument to say that, “Oh, well, Texas is not in favor of preserving life because they have capital punishment,” that doesn’t make sense. They are deterring future murders, future crimes.
Now, on the issue of apostasy, I think I explained that very briefly, I can go into more depth but, on my channel and muslimskeptic.com, we have a lot of information on this apostasy rule within Islamic law and I believe it’s completely irrationally justified and even an atheist can understand that it has a rationalistic basis. Even at the end of the day, if you don’t agree with that and you believe in complete religious freedom, you can still appreciate that there is a basis for it for someone who wants to preserve belief in God, who wants to preserve traditional religious institutions, it does have a rational basis and I’m perfectly happy to defend that.
Sam Westrop: And then just to be explicit, this wasn’t in our list of questions or from the audience, so feel free to ignore. You would expand, then, the death penalty to apostasy if you are seeking a more idealistic state?
Daniel Haqiqatjou: Yes, I would criminalize blasphemy as I go further, not just apostasy but even blasphemy. I would completely criminalize insulting, for example, Jesus Christ, insulting the Virgin Mary, insulting the Hebrew Bible, insulting any of these what are called Abrahamic values and prophets and figures. This is blasphemy in Islam and it should be completely illegal and the fact that it is allowed to run rampant within the West is the cause of rising atheism and the extinction of these religions, those things are very tied. And when I have conversations with Christians, conservative Christians or even liberal Christians, Atheists, they always bring up this apostasy point and I try to get them to understand that things are connected. They’re allowing just complete blasphemy to run rampant, apostasy to run rampant where someone apostatizes and then goes on a campaign to undermine religion, this is something that’s very dangerous to belief in God and, insofar as you value belief in God, you have to deter it.
And this is why it’s something that is found in all religions, including Christianity, including Judaism, they punished heretics, they punished apostates different times in history. Those are traditional practices and it has a rational basis. Liberalism says no, the most important thing is freedom, everyone should have the freedom of choice, of individual choice no matter what, even if it means that no one on earth believes in God anymore and there’s no such thing as religion then, it doesn’t matter as long as people have freedom of choice. I find that to be extremism, I find that to be very unhinged but it comes from this classical liberal understanding of freedom of speech which comes from theists and atheists who had no commitment to Christianity or any kind of tradition.
Sam Westrop: Mm-hmm. Now, a significant portion of your time is spent discussing Muslim community figures who, and this is my inference so please correct me if my interpretation is wrong, who you believe have embraced progressivism so tightly that they’ve radicalized their own children into believing some of its core tenets. So, you focused on groups like cleric such as Omar Suleiman, politicians such as Ilhan Omar, people who have rather elusive rhetoric on subjects such as homosexuality and other progressivist causes. Do you believe these Muslim leaders that you focus on have genuinely embraced progressivism or these left wing ideals or do you think this is a tactic, a façade, something with which they hope to advance their own ideas eventually? In other words, is it a vehicle for their own designs?
Daniel Haqiqatjou: To be honest, if we read Middle East Forum, you guys complain a lot about figures like Ilhan Omar or Omar Suleiman, other liberalized Muslims who have embraced progressivism and they don’t acknowledge certain illiberal aspects of the faith such as the penalty for apostasy and so forth. But honestly, it’s this iron-fisted suppression of illiberal beliefs that pushes many Muslims and other religions, Christians and Jews, Hindus even, Buddhists to liberalize their traditional religious teachings and become progressives. So, Middle East Forum wants to attack and has attacked these liberal Muslims for being dishonest about Islam but you’re also the ones who are constantly attacking any Muslim with illiberal beliefs as an extremist threat or potential terrorist who should be surveilled or put in prison or deported so there’s a hypocrisy, I think, in that approach.
But to answer your question, do I think that Ilhan Omar or Rashida Tlaib are these sleeper agents who are just pretending to be progressive so that they can rise the ranks of American power, until one day, they’re going to drop the facade and they’re going to make the entire US a hardcore Sharia state? No, I don’t think that that’s what’s happening at all. I think that they’re actually, someone like Ilhan Omar, is progressive. I’d like to see where Ilhan Omar has ever suggested or Rashida Tlaib ever suggested any kind of allegiance or affiliation with Islamic politics. I think she would be repulsed by that, she is definitely someone who would hate me or hates me. And the question is non-germane because we’ve already had a Muslim president, right? Barack Hussein. So, he’s already infiltrated. We’ve already infiltrated the highest ranks of the nation.
Sam Westrop: Okay, okay. Point taken. But then, take someone like Omar Suleiman who was very devoted, a prominent man of God, a cleric, an imam. You, I think, forced him to apologize publicly for he took part in some anti-immigration policy protest against the Trump administration and took part in some, I think, you’ve described it as a pagan ritual. So, what about him? Does he genuinely believe in some of these progressivist ideas or, for him, is it a facade?
Daniel Haqiqatjou: I really don’t know. I don’t know what he actually believes. And I make this a point when criticizing certain figures, I’ll say that, “Look, I don’t know what is in their heart,” clearly, someone like Omar Suleiman who’s being attacked constantly as being this terror insider or an extremist. So, over the years, some people, just because of the constant pressure, they may buckle under the pressure and they start not expressing their actual views or maybe they become genuine progressives. And it’s not just Omar Suleiman, many Christian pastors, Christianity itself, any Christian followers of Middle East Forum will recognize that, within the Christian church or within the synagogues, you find this liberalizing, progressive streak and it’s unfortunate. But the problem, the cause of it, we have to look at the roots, it’s this liberalism and it’s any attack on any expression that contradicts liberalism, that’s the source of it.
So, Omar Suleiman, yeah, I criticize him. I think that the best interpretation is that he thinks, “Look, we are being very practical right now as a Muslim community, we want to survive because there’s all of this pressure on the Muslim community. We’re just trying to keep our heads above water and sometimes you have to compromise in order to do that. We have to find allies anywhere we can find them and we have to be pragmatic.” I think that’s his mentality and the best interpretation of it but it’s not for this purpose of being a sleeper cell and wanting to take over America. I think he really feels like he is a proud, liberal American or a proud Democrat or whatever, I think that’s actually what he thinks of it. But I think he’s just mistaken, I think that he’s just made the wrong calculation and he’s compromising Islam in a way that’s going to lead to the erasure of Islam for the next generation of American Muslims. That’s my critique.
Sam Westrop: Okay. Now, we’ve got a little over time but, if all right with you, Daniel, I just have two more questions. If you don’t mind staying a few more.
Daniel Haqiqatjou: Please. Sure, of course.
Sam Westrop: Let me take one from the audience then I’ll ask my own. One, again, an anonymous question and it says, “What are your views on capitalism? It has its roots in the very classical liberalism you condemn.” The implicit following question, I guess, being what would an economic system look like in the society you would prefer?
Daniel Haqiqatjou: I think in certain respects, if you look at Islamic law, it seems to have certain aspects of free market enterprise and maybe more of a libertarian-seeming policy in terms of allowing trade and having not very many restrictions, very low taxing or even no taxes. But the big problem for Islam with capitalism is what’s called riba or usury and this is something that, arguably, capitalism cannot exist without this concept of usury or this practice of usury and usurious loans and capital funding and so forth. So, this is actually the problem or, I think, the main conflict between capitalism and Islam and traditional religion also. Christianity has been, certain sects of Christianity, against usury, same with Judaism.
I think these religions have recognized … Because, as a Muslim, we believe that all these religions, Christianity and Judaism on particular, have their own texts and their revelation from God and God has identified and has told humanity that this is a practice that is destructive, it is evil and it will lead to all kinds of pain and suffering, which it does, that we see throughout history and in the world today and that’s why they banned it. But as far as free market and being able to conduct your business without the force of the states to limit certain practices, then that is found in Islam.
Sam Westrop: Okay. And the last question from me. Over the past decade, a lot of clerics who would have once openly described themselves as Salafi are no longer doing so, publicly sometimes rejecting the term. I’m particularly thinking of people like Esea Kati on this point. I wonder, what do you think of yourself as? Do you embrace a particular movement or sector? And just to accompany that, I noticed you work quite closely with clerics from the Deobandi movement these days which is, for our listeners, the South Asian Islamic movement set up in the 19th century whose offshoots, of course, include the Taliban. What do you identify as and do you think deobandism offers a more authentic version of Islam?
Daniel Haqiqatjou: Yeah, I would say that it’s interesting to ask a question about sect. I’m not going to try to judge your intention with the question but this kind of questioning about Salafi versus traditionalism versus Deobandi, just as an intellectual history of it, it’s coming straight from RAND, the RAND playbook and Cheryl Bernard. So, the RAND strategy has been, and this is the strategy that a lot of think tanks and policy strategists have taken is that, we want to get traditionalist Muslims on one side and we want to split them up strategically from Salafis on the other side and we don’t want them to unite together under the banner of conservative Sunni Islamic teachings. We want them to be fighting each other and, ideally, we want one side, the traditionalists, to ally with the reformers, Muslim reformers or Muslim secularists who are backed by the West and who support Western policy points.
But as far as Muslim Skeptic is concerned, we acknowledge that there are important differences between Salafis, Deobandis, traditionalists, et cetera, but the similarities are much, much deeper and the only people who really want to split these groups up are people like RAND or Middle East Forum or different brands of neocons. So, this is our perspective on muslimskeptic.com, we’re not trying to say there are no differences between the two strains but they’re Sunni, they are Sunni, orthodox and they care about pre-modern expressions and teachings of Islam as it’s been practiced for 1,400 years and that’s what unites me and other Sunnis, orthodox conservative Sunnis.
The history of this term Salafi, actually, it’s really interesting because it seems to be more recent, maybe the last 10, 15 years, that the word Salafi has been showing up amongst neocons and the term used to be terrorist or terrorist sympathizer or Islamist then it became Wahhabi then become Salafi. So, basically, it’s come to mean anyone who is an conservative, orthodox Sunni Muslim is being labeled as a Salafi or anyone who teaches or believes that Quran and Hadith are important, this is a Salafi Wahhabi Islamist. But I consider myself a Sunni, an orthodox conservative Sunni and, if that’s your definition of what a Salafi is, then, yeah, I’m a Salafi. That-
Sam Westrop: Do you mind if I ask which madhhab, which school of jurisprudence – Fiqh?
Daniel Haqiqatjou: I’ve studied the Hanbali School of Fiqh, I’ve also studied the Hanafi School of Fiqh, those are the madhhabs. Yeah, those are the things I’ve studied.
Sam Westrop: Interesting. We’ve gone very much over time, Mr. Haqiqatjou, thank you so much for your answers and for your conversation today.
