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Is Islam compatible with liberal democracy? Peter and French economist Ferghane Azihari follow the data where it leads.
See what Peter's been up to here.
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podcasts, Add Free, included with Prime. More than 50 percent of Muslims think that the
woman should obey to their husband, whereas it is only 5 percent in the whole French population.
More than 50 percent of Muslims think that Jews have too much power in politics, in economics,
in the media, against one quarter, one fifth of the population. If for whatever reason,
you want more immigrants in the country. Why don't you take in people from countries
that have a net contribution to the Treasury? Why don't you take in people from countries
that are going to make meaningful economic and social contributions and we are going to place a
moratorium on immigrants from other countries? I do not understand what is far right about that,
what is racist about that, if they're Vietnamese, how could it be racist? So I don't understand
what is the problem with that? I think that should give us courage, exposure to other people's
perspectives, moving us in a good direction. Is Islam compatible with democracy? I think that the
state of the Muslim world does not argue in favor of that idea. The Muslim world is made up of
disproportionate number of tyrannical regimes where freedom and equality are science fiction.
There is almost 1.9 billion Muslims in this world, only 3% of them live in countries which
are more democratic than the world average. Almost all Muslim societies rank in the bottom half
all rankings on gender equality and women rights. The vast majority of the most
persecuted minorities live also under Islamic rule. When you take Muslim societies, they are also
overrepresented on armed conflicts. The most deadliest terrorist organizations
is mainly composed of Muslim organizations. So I think that we can say that the Muslim world
display very high level of violence according to international standards. We can also say that
the Muslim world, the contribution to the Muslim world in the human progress, is below the world
average. For instance, the Muslim world is about one quarter of the world population and yet
Muslims gave only 1% of Nobel prizes in all kinds of categories. Would they give them that many?
1% is not in science, though. I think it breaks down by category, right?
In all categories, it's 1%. But we also have to decide that among these Nobel prizes, most of
them flee in the West to get a bit of life. Malala Yusufai, this Pakistani who fought in favor
of education for the girls and she had to move to the UK to be incredible. Her story is incredible.
So one of the things that I hear over and over again, and that's one of the reasons I want to have
a conversation with you, many reasons, but one is I hear from different sources that there is no
Islamism, there is just Islam. And there is no radical Islam, there is just Islam.
That seems to me to be false on the face of it, but I'm not an expert. I mean, I had a
crime, too, or I read the crime, I've studied this, I've immersed myself in this, but is that true?
Is there no, what does it, what's your take on that? When you take the history of the world,
Islam and the world Islamism in French, you realize that from the 18th century to the second half
of the 20th century, we used to say to use the world Islam and Islamism to describe the Muslim
religion and the political Islam. It was the same world. It is only from the 80s that we started
invented a kind of difference between Islam and Islamism because of the political
correctness, but there is no difference. I mean, the Islamists are people who just implement
the Islamic law and they implement in the rightful way. I mean, they are truly orthodox Muslims.
Hit the subscribe button to keep the videos coming. Thanks.
So what percentage, so I'm trying to figure this out for myself, like, it's the whole, it's the
famous concentric circles thing. Like you have the people in the middle who are hardcore, they want
to like murder everybody who's an infidel. Then you have the people on the next circle who don't
want to murder anyone, but they support the people. So you have these circles, like what percentage
of people, it can't be that many people because I've been riding on the paris subways and nobody's
tried to behead me. Of course, not Muslims in Europe or radical Muslims, but when you look at
the statistics, you can see that Muslims, unfortunately, are more sensitive than the average
to homophobic anti-Semitic prejudices, to sexist prejudices, for instance, in France,
more than 50% of Muslims think that the woman should obey to their husbands, whereas it is
only 5% in the whole French population. More than 50% of Muslims think that Jews have too much
power in politics, in the economics, in the media, against one quarter, one fifth of the population.
On homosexuality, for instance, almost two-third Muslims in France think that homosexuality
is a perversion, an abomination against 10% of non-believers. So, of course, not all Muslims
are authoritarians, terrorists, but they still are more sensitive than the average sensitive
to illiberal values. And the paradox is that people who reject the Islamicization of
Western European societies are labeled as a far-right, while actually Islam produced the most
illiberal social category on the political spectrum. Okay, so there's a lot there that you said,
that we, I could talk to you for hours. So, we were just in LA, Los Angeles, California,
Read and I, and we had a conversation with Raymond Ibrahim, and the two cameramen freaked out.
One left, the city had a fetus cat, and then we learned he was traumatized by the conversation,
and then the other guy came back and started asking questions. And one of the things he said,
and I hope you can speak directly to this, one of the things that he said is that Raymond Ibrahim's
claim that Muslims commit a disproportionate number of crimes in Europe, and I want to say to
the camera guy's credit. So, I'm very happy he did that, and I'm a huge proponent of him,
and I'm grateful that he did that. That said, he said that Raymond's claim that Muslims commit
a disproportionate number of crimes in Europe is just false. It's true, and fortunately, when
you look at the data, Muslims are, are represented in almost all criminal records, in prison,
there are estimations that between 20 and 60% of the population in prison are Muslims. We don't
have any official records, but they are kind of illegal in France. It's illegal in France to
collect religious data, but there are still people and researchers who try to investigate
this data. So, there are estimations between 20% and 60% in French prisons, and you,
this other representation, it also exists in England, in Belgium, in Germany, in the Netherlands,
in Scandinavian countries, in Denmark, in all western European societies. Unfortunately,
Muslims are overrepresented in crime statistics, and you cannot explain it with economic and
social factors, because even at the same level of economic stages, Muslims still are overrepresented
on criminal data. I was reading the other night, Jan Vanderbeek, I've gotten to know him a little
bit from Twitter, and I was reading Eric Kaufman's data on that, and it's the disparities are just
shocking to me. They're shocking. I think what bothers me about France,
and I don't speak French, at least I don't speak it very well,
miss you, but why do the people here, why is your government
forbid getting statistics about, like, why is that illegal? I don't get it.
It's a legacy from the Second World War, because of the fact that these statistics have been used
to persecute French Jews. There is a kind of trauma in France that this kind of statistics would
automatically lead to oppression of minorities, but the fact is that there is also
will to not see the reality, which multidis, is kind of an introduction.
You mentioned the far right. I've had 15, 20 people on the show, and I've asked them the same
question, and maybe you can help me understand this. Okay, let's say I have a basket right here.
It's a big basket, and I'm going to drop everything in the basket that the far right believes.
I'm going to drop everything. Every single thing someone on the far right
believes is going in that basket. Here's the basket. However, I'm taking one single thing out of
the basket, and I'm putting it in the trash, and that is immigration. Every single thing
remains in the basket, except immigration. What is left in the basket?
Well, nothing. I mean, thank you. You're an honest man. Finally, I mean, we're talking to an honest man.
It's the paradox. I mean, the far right is strictly is a movement against the Republic,
against democracy, against minority rights, and in France, when you look at the data as people
or more and more tolerant towards minorities, towards women rights. So the country has never been
as progressive and liberal on almost social issues, and it's good going into me.
Many economic issues as well, but of course taxation, hospitalization, but the only thing which
levels you far right in France is also the refusal of Islamization of the country.
Not just France though, right? West Europe? Yeah, that's fair. And the paradox is that
if there is one social category, which is truly sensitive to far right values today,
is unfortunately people coming from non-Western cultures, which are more authoritarian, more
homophobic, more sexist than the standards that we are used to in the Western societies.
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ad-free, included with Prime. That's interesting. It just I don't know why this didn't occur to me
before, but there's something called the iron law of woke projection, and it's basically you accuse
other people of the very thing that you yourself are doing. And accusing people of being in the far
right who want some reasonable restrictions on immigration and don't like illegal immigration,
it's basically many of the people, certainly not all, but a non-trivial number of the people
themselves are on the far right with these. Or at least the older conception of the far right,
which used to be against gays, against Jews, again. But I don't think those, correct me if I'm
wrong, I think that far right in Western Europe and in America or less so, but far right has been
used by the far left. And there's nothing else in the basket other than the people who want a
reform in the immigration policy. All right. And the thing that they want reform in the immigration
policy to save liberal and progressive values, that's the paradox. That is the paradox. They're not
against immigration because they are conservative. They are not against immigration because they
are xenophobic. They want to restrict. No, not at all. They want to restrict immigration because they
see that the kind of immigration we are facing today is an immigration which is far more conservative,
far more reactionary than the standards. And hostile to democratic values.
Yeah, exactly. So, you know, you've had some fiery debates with Hakeem and I had
Nicholas Monti on the show and they disagree to say the least. But there is one thing they
agreed on. One thing, as far as I could tell, that was all they agreed on. Vietnamese immigration
has been a net positive. Yeah, we have the people coming from ancient
Indochina, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, or immigrants which sometimes do better than the natives
on some statistics, for instance, in school. They are better than the natives. So it's not all
immigration which was a problem to our societies. It's it's a certain kind of immigration
especially from the most authoritarian regions in the world and the Muslim world is one that.
I just tweeted out recently a thought experiment. I think Charles Murray had tweeted it out.
And what happens if a society takes people from northern Asia and solely replaces the population
southern Asia or Muslim countries and basically was as a whole on the whole. Of course,
there are exceptions to this. But immigration from northern Asia is a net positive.
Southern is a mixed bag. We don't we don't know. But Islam Muslim countries is suicidal.
Well, there are poor records indeed in Western societies on average, of course.
Yeah, sure, sure. Always on average. But yes, they tend to be more authoritarian, more
illiberal than other groups of immigrants. They tend also to have less good results on economic.
And Eric Kaufman calls that net contributors to the treasury and net detractors.
Would a 5 million well-educated American whites move to Thailand? And then you can replace the
thought experiment with whatever country, with whatever values that you would like. So I guess
my question to you is, if for whatever reason you want more immigrants in the country,
what I do not understand is you now have extensive data. And I understand there are legal
problems with collecting some data in France. But they're not in other countries, Denmark,
the UK, depending on the data one one collects in the Netherlands.
Why don't you take in people from countries that have a net contribution to the treasury?
Why don't you take in people from countries that are going to make meaningful economic
and social contributions? And the opposite the flip side of that is, why don't you say,
listen, we know the people who have come to these countries by and large, their exceptions for sure,
by and large, that demographic is not done well. And for whatever reason we want more immigrants,
so we're going to take more Vietnamese, Japan is having its own population problem,
Korea is having its own population problem. But we are going to take immigrants from
certain countries and we are going to place a moratorium on immigrants from other countries.
I do not understand, what is far right about that? What is racist about that? If they're Vietnamese,
how could it be racist? Of course. So I don't understand, what is the problem with that?
I think the main reason we refuse to select, to implement a better selection among immigrants,
is that Europeans fear that they have more depth towards Muslim and African societies.
Because we've been told that we are responsible for the crimes of our ancestors, whereas
it's not the case of the immigrants. We've also been told that these societies were
paradise before the arrival of Europeans, and that the poverty is the force of Europeans,
whereas we all know that this is not true. We know that Muslim societies were not progressive
human rights, paradise before the arrival of Europeans. They were authoritarian regime,
they were slavery-based regimes too, and we tend to go to forget that. As we tend to forget that,
they were not able to abolish slavery on their own initiative, because the end of slavery in the
Muslim world, almost everything, to withstand colonial interventions. It was a French, for instance,
forced the Algerians to end the black slaves trade. It was the French who shut down the slave
markets in Morocco. It was the British who pressured the Ottoman Empire to also reduce and end
slavery. And these kind of things, we don't learn these kind of things in school. We only learn about
the bad things the West did to these kind of societies, and that's why there is still this kind of
guilt, this kind of white man guilt toward these societies. But you don't have white man guilt?
I'm not. I don't have. But my fellow citizens, I think it explains a lot of things on our difficulty
to build a rational debate on the way to behave with the societies and the way to regulate
immigration better. Yeah, it's interesting. So you think that's a question of guilt-related
colonialism. Of course. What seems absurd to me, because you're a young guy, I mean, I'm not even,
I'm 59, I'm significant a little older than you. I know it's absurd, but it's the official speech,
I mean, since the end of the colonial era empires. Yeah, so it's a way to think about your society
to drag it into the toilet. I mean, it's totally insane to me. Yeah. So I-
And this kind of guilt, I remind, it doesn't concern there's most of the societies which I've also
poor recourse on human rights in history, and they don't have the same feeding on their- about
their own past. Yeah, and they also have, I mean, you know, it was lingering in the back of my mind,
the women are treated different in jury proceedings, and there's there are chronic injunctions and
stories about that. They're treated differently in terms of inheritance, what they inherit.
Which is, look, I'm not a Muslim, I'm an atheist, so if I'm not
making any hegemonic claim for how people should, I mean, I think the whole thing is nonsense anyway,
but I just think that people in the West and the left in particular, they just need to be honest
about it. And I- it's utterly baffling to me why these people are simply not honest about it,
about that when you look at survey after survey, like you said about Muslim perceptions of homosexual,
And again, not every Muslim, but about homosexuality.
They're pretty horrific.
Okay.
Just be honest about it.
Just be honest that this is happening.
And all countries, well, homosexuality
is sentenced to death or Muslims.
Except Uganda.
I think that people should be honest about that.
Queers for Palestine.
Yeah, chicken for KFC.
Yeah, yeah.
So one thing, one thing that I've learned.
But if they're not honest, it's also because they're afraid.
It's very costly to take this kind of truth.
I think you received the Tibaud de Montréal,
we who has a kind of a police and support
because it's telling the truth on these problems.
And there's also a kind of fear on the whole political spectrum
because people know that you have a lot to lose
if you tell this kind of truth.
You can be at best excluded from the social and public debate.
And at worst, you can be threatened and killed
as we saw that radical party.
Of course it's a bit petty.
At the journalist of Charlie Hebdo.
And then this young teenager called Mila,
which was threatened because she insulted the Muslim,
the god of Muslims.
She had to leave to be exfiltrated from the school system
because the French state was not able to protect her
from radical Muslims in her environment.
So that's, according to me, it also explains why a lot of people,
there is a huge difference between what people say is in private
and what do they say in public.
Yeah, and I thank you for the things you've said off camera
are the same that you've said on camera.
We've had people here who've said one thing off camera,
another on and look, as much as I'm a fan of honesty,
I understand that wanting to not live a life
by having a police escort with you and just remaining silent,
I get it, I like I legitimately get it,
especially when the stakes are high.
And we've had people on who've not wanted to be on video
for fear that they'd be murdered,
which is kind of intense to me.
So you think that's the reason one of the things I found here
is that people are just not being honest about the nature
that collectively as a society and not being honest
about the nature of the problems,
you're not being honest about the lack of upward mobility
for people, you don't call them slums,
but the lack of upward mobility for people
who are poor, many of whom are Muslim.
And the lack of general honesty,
you think that that's because of fear.
Yes, I think so.
I think it's because of fear,
I think it's because of this guilt we talked about,
but many fear, fear is a powerful force
which explains a lot of things in Western societies.
So the fear is coming from, it seems, two places.
Again, correct me if I'm wrong.
One place is the physical fear of being murdered
by radical Muslims.
And the other fear, which I've found,
we've had people haven't liked the fact
that I've interviewed certain people
and now they won't come on the show.
They won't talk to me.
They won't talk to me because I've interviewed people
they don't like, but I would argue
that's more reason to talk to me.
It's a kind of P.O. fresh oil, of course.
But they're afraid.
Yeah, they'll fray down.
It's the same reason.
And they're afraid that if they talk to me,
or if they talk to some, but you do.
It would lead people to love of them as a far right.
And it's a kind of social death.
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But you debated how Kim, you've debated him.
Well, he also called me far right.
They do.
You see the video.
He don't want to answer the arguments I was producing
on the poor record in the Muslim world.
And it's also strange because he was also one
of the most infamous person on these issues.
And he was one of the first person to produce
data, who showed that there was a significant part
of the Muslim population, which was against French liberal values.
Fascinating.
I keep hearing that he's the most articulate person
on the other side.
I hope he's not.
It's interesting.
I'll let you be the judge of the conversation.
And again, I'm grateful.
I'm totally sincerely.
I'm grateful for people to come on
and who have differences of opinion.
And I really am an outsider to the country.
I'm still trying to figure out what's true, what's going on.
There is a, I just had a conversation
with someone in the Trump administration just last night.
And he said, where are you?
And I told him I'm in Paris and he's like, it's lost.
I don't think it is.
I think we still have a short window,
but it's true that we lost a lot of time
because of this PR BS and that kind of stuff.
And we have to wake up fast.
Otherwise, it's going to be lost soon.
So I want to talk about solutions in a bit.
But before I do that, are you familiar with a guy
by the name of Krauss?
He did the IFOP study.
Of course.
And he received major blowback from just data
in statistics and evidence.
Stating things that everyone knows,
that some population are more sensitive
than the average to illiberal values
are more reluctant to criticize religion,
more reluctant to accept human rights,
more reluctant to women rights.
So this kind of data, we have this information
during these last 30 years.
So that's not new.
But every time there is a Paul Institute
which produced these new data,
he's always ladle us far right to shut him down.
So I'm going to give you my opinion
and you tell me what you think about this.
I think truth is a far right concept.
I think it's become a far right concept.
I think when we had Nicholas Monti on the show,
when people criticize his work,
it's never, it's factually incorrect.
It's, you shouldn't say that.
You shouldn't say that that disrupts social equilibrium.
It disrupts equality.
It disrupts the social order.
So is it truth?
Do you see the framing of this as truth
or the pursuit of truth as a right-wing idea?
I hope it's not because if we don't get
bipartisan consensus on this kind of issue,
I think it's lost.
So I don't think that we should give up
the, on the idea to convince people on the left.
There are a lot of issues
which are trans bit bipartisan in France
and I think immigration and Islam
have to become one of them.
Okay, so we know it's maybe colonialism.
That's a lot of it's fear, physical fear
and it has ignorance as well.
I mean, the general culture has also weakened
and we don't want to get informed
on the situation, on the Muslim world.
So people are between fear and ignorance,
but I think that this is evil
because we can cure, it's not incredible.
So what is the solution?
We must of course control our borders better.
As I'm concerned, I also believe in education
to free Muslims from their own religion.
I've been educated in a Muslim family,
I'm not Muslim anymore because I also believe
in the power of rationality.
We have to stop talking to Muslims
as they were tried,
cannot heard the rational scientific truth
about their superstition.
We have to convince them that this superstition
is not a good belief and it's bad,
it's evil, it's produce despair
and tyranny everywhere it is in power.
So I think it's not lost,
but we have to stop being hypocritical
and start telling the truth on this subject.
The truth being honest about the nature of the problem
and there's a lot of dishonesty going about.
I remember when I was in college, I traveled around Europe
and when you went from country to country,
they looked at your passport, they looked at your,
like that was a huge pain in the ass.
Nobody wants to go back to that.
But you're also...
The good part is also to have a European immigration policy.
So there's two options.
If the European Union refused to better control the borders,
we would have, it would be necessary to end the Shengen area
and we will go back to national borders.
It would be a shame.
I think so.
Just for traffic commerce tourism.
I mean, that would be, it would be a huge loss.
So I think that the better alternative
is a European immigration policy,
but there's still people are more and more aware
of the need of a European immigration policy
and we are trying to negotiate with other countries
to relocate people who are not supposed to be there.
We are trying to negotiate with regimes
to help the European forces to control their own borders
to prevent illegal immigrants to cross the Mediterranean Sea.
So there are some solutions
which are actually discussed
as within the European official institutions.
So correct me if I'm wrong,
but one thing that I've seen in country, after country,
after country in Western Europe, not in Eastern Europe,
is that there's a disconnect between the average citizens,
what they want and the people in power.
There's a disconnect on immigration,
on Islamic immigration.
There's a disconnect, there's a gap.
Why does that, you wouldn't think that that would exist
in democratic societies,
that the leaders would reflect the opinion of the people,
but that's clearly not true.
Well, it's worse than that,
because when you talk to our leaders in private,
sometimes they agree with the situation,
but they are also afraid.
I mean, look at what Donald Trump said
about the risk of civilisation or erasure of Europe.
And a lot of European leaders on the left
and on the right said things,
so which was almost the same
when the French former socialist president
warned about the fact that France is on the verge of partition,
because there were too much immigrants,
which are not supposed to be there.
He was basically saying the same thing,
same thing of Trump.
When Angela Merkel said that multiculturalism,
multiculturalism is a failure,
she was also stating the same thing.
So there is a kind of double speech
within European officials in private.
They will talk like we are talking now,
but probably because of the fact they are afraid,
because of the political correctness,
they have another speech and other discourse.
So we are dying because this kind of absurd situation,
we are dying from this kind of dishonesty towards ourselves.
Yeah, I love that.
I love that.
So as an outsider, I found that to be 100% true
in these conversations.
And I don't know, what's that guy's name in Tibo?
What?
Tibo de Montréal?
Yeah.
So Tibo, which is his last name?
De Montréal.
Somebody asked me, somebody asked me,
what are you going to do to solve this problem?
And of course, I said you have to be honest about it.
But get that guy in office.
I agree.
You put that guy in office and 50% of your problems are gone.
You still have to figure out the very serious problem
you have of a lack of economic competitiveness,
of a lack of social mobility for young people,
particularly young people in poor underserved communities.
You still have to figure out the whole 10 of the 10 top AI
companies in the world are in China or the US.
And Macron just recently put out a tweet
about how much France spends on its tech industries and its AI.
And Google spends more, one US company
spends more than 90 minutes than the whole budget of France.
So there are problems here.
And if you're not going to be honest about them.
But Islam, I think, is a more urgent problem
than economic issues, because economic crisis can be solved.
When you have countries which doesn't exist anymore,
it is harder to go back.
For instance, in Argentina, Javier Millei
is implementing reforms.
And hopefully he'll try to write inflation down.
Exactly.
Part civil servants.
He is managing to resurrect Argentina
because the countries do exist.
But if your country doesn't exist anymore,
it is a far more difficult to implement this kind of reform.
So I'm wondering if you could give Americans some advice.
American citizens, American policy makers,
what can we learn from the mistakes France has made?
What can we learn?
What would you like to tell Americans?
On economic issues, on social issues, on everything.
Anything you want.
I'm thinking about Islamic issues,
but anything you want, economic issues, honesty, NATO,
and anything that you want, or you're
comfortable in your area of expertise.
I think Americans need to be aware that the free market
system is better than our economic system,
because we heard a lot for a comparison
between America and Europe.
And sometimes I hear some American politicians
taking France as an economic model.
The fact is that we have a poor record
during these last 50 years.
We have a very poor economic growth,
because we have two big governments.
So I think that there is a listen to learn from that.
An immigration issue.
I think that Americans need to be aware
that it is important to keep a country united
on core values.
Otherwise, the country is fucked up, essentially, basically.
Yeah.
Is there anything I can talk to you for hours?
Is there anything I should have asked you that I didn't ask you?
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I think whether we ask the most important questions,
I think, no, it's OK.
OK.
Is there anything you want to ask me?
It's OK to say no.
Are you optimistic about the fate of Europe?
No.
You're not.
No, I think it's over.
You're totally done.
There's nothing you can do about it.
I hope you're wrong.
I think you're wrong.
I hope you're wrong, too.
I want to be wrong.
I think there's still a window that we have to move fast.
Otherwise, you will be right.
Yeah, I mean, I think the solutions are known by large.
What you should do.
I think you have to curb legal and illegal immigration.
I think you have to stop regulating yourself to death.
I think you have to adopt more economic competitiveness.
You have to give people in underserved areas,
not fake hope, not Ersatz hope, but real hope
that they can improve their life situation.
They can buy a house.
You know, one of the problems with immigration, in general,
is that it places that I heard, this is not my idea.
Peter Tiel said this.
It's kind of like attacks on young people,
people who want to get married and start families,
because they can't afford houses.
People have to be able to afford living.
They need to live.
They need an economic future about which
they're hopeful and feel comfortable.
I think there are some positive things
like European nuclear energy in France, et cetera.
But I also think you have to,
as long as you maintain a culture
that you won't talk to people if they disagree with you
and then you'll smear them as far right,
you'll never solve your problems.
I agree.
As long as you maintain a culture in which
any discussion of facts and evidence is considered right wing,
you'll never improve your situation.
As long as you maintain a culture in which you lie
or you fail to collect data about a source
of the people in prisons, that's insane.
The only way to fix a problem is to be honest about it.
So I don't see people being honest about it.
I don't see you limiting Islamic immigration,
particularly young, unskilled Muslim men.
That is the main area.
So I think you're toast.
I just don't see any way out of it
unless you're willing to be honest
and no one's willing to be, look,
it's one thing to not talk to somebody
who's on the quote unquote far right.
You don't want to talk to Le Pen, whatever, okay.
But to not talk to somebody who talks to them,
that's another level of like never solving your problem
because you won't even have a conversation
with someone who's having conversation with people.
Okay, so that's your fuck.
There's nothing at that point, that's it.
That's your, that's your, just, you're just done.
Because you need, like you said,
before democratic institutions and policy,
you need a kind of clash, you know,
you need a viable left wing that's not in crazy land.
You need a viable right wing that's not in crazy land.
And they need to, that's what the polity does.
That's the vox popular.
That's the voice of the people.
They come and they engage and they debate.
But if you're not even willing to have that conversation,
what are you gonna do about it?
You're not willing to be honest about the crime statistics
for Muslim, what are you gonna do about it?
So I don't know, I'm, I'm very passionate about it.
I agree, but I think that's things are improving.
I myself wrote a book on Islam, which is,
Where can people find that?
In France, well, in every library.
Is it in English too?
Not yet, but I'm trying to find a translator to,
okay, to get an editor.
But tell us real quick about your book before we end.
Well, it's a book which is criticizing the record
of the Muslim word, the fact that the Muslim work
lag behind national standards.
And the fact that the solution going to me
is to just give up this religion,
which brings nothing good in our world.
And I think that the world will be a better place
when people will just give up this religion.
So this is the idea I'm supporting.
And actually, in the French media,
I'm quite, listen, really.
Oh, things are improving.
In the French, the term legacy media,
in the legacy media.
Actually.
So you're invited on the legacy media at a time.
Yes, I am.
You would never be invited on the legacy media in the US.
That would never happen.
And yeah, I love that.
I'd love to see you on there.
I would.
I don't think the BBC would ever have you on there in Britain.
Someone like Ayanya Shiali or someone Ruzzi,
they are also well-respected intellectuals in the US.
They are telling also the same thing.
Rusty is a little different after his,
when people try to kill him.
Yeah, of course.
And that's the other thing.
When I've done a few events with Ayanya,
and I've gone, she's become a friend,
her husband's a friend.
And when we go to these events backstage, it's crazy.
I mean, it's like there's policemen everywhere.
She has a special, we were just in Austin, Texas.
And she debated Michael Sharmer and Adam Krola
and Ross DuPont.
And those guys were laughing, which is funny,
because they're on opposite sides of the debate.
And they're talking in one room,
but she was in another room.
The special security had to be walled off.
So there are, yeah, the problems aren't unique to France.
Anyway, thank you so much.
I really appreciate it.
And I wish you the best of luck.
I wish you the same luck.
Thank you.
Conversations with Peter Boghossian



