Ep 189. - Why Europe has a Muslim Problem? With Mehreen Khan
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Is the European Union a model for Muslim unity? Can the often fractious and politically weak Muslim world improve its regional strength and international standing by pooling economic and even political sovereignty and creating a zone of prosperity that harnesses talents and halts a brain drain to the West? Until 1924, the Muslim world came under a caliphate; many calling for a modern unity cite the EU as a model. But is the EU really something to aspire to? What binds the EU states is their unity, which is fracturing under the weight of what my guest today calls Euro Whiteness.
Today, many Muslims are being marginalised not just by EU nation states but in a larger sense by an EU that observes itself to be a paradise, protecting its borders from Eastern barbarians – the jungle, as Joseph Borel referred to the world outside.
To help us understand the EU, what it is, and what its failings are, I have the pleasure of speaking today to Mehreen Khan. Mehreen is the economics editor of the Times and she spent five years with the Financial Times as their Brussels Correspondent.
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Transcript: This is an AI generated transcript and may not reflect the actual conversation
Introduction
0:00
your whiteness as a civilizational identity where the other civilization is Islamic civilization Muslims have been wiped out of the story of modern Europe neutrality is a word that is
0:09
being used a lot as a stick to beat European Muslims up with there is something about what we are and what they are please define what a separatist is and he said anyone who believes
0:17
in the Sharia the nature of a Muslim is that you put God above the state what binds someone living in Morocco to someone in Malaysia well Islam how do you evaluate the media response
0:27
to Gaza for me gaza's all have been been a lot about the quiet Parts allow liberals in this country far more upset about brexit than they've ever been about 40 OD thousand people dying in
0:34
Gaza is the European Union a model for Muslim Unity can the often fractious and politically
0:44
weak Muslim World improve its Regional strength and international standing by pooling economic
0:50
and even political sovereignty and creating a zone of prosperity that harnesses the talents and hals
0:57
a brain drain to the West until 1924 the Muslim world came under a caliphate many calling for a
1:05
modern Unity site for EU as a model but is the EU really something to Aspire to what binds the
1:12
EU States is their Unity which is fracturing under the weight of what my guest today calls
1:18
Euro whiteness today many Muslims are being marginalized not just by EU nation states but
1:25
in a larger sense by an EU that observes itself to be a paradise protecting its borders from Eastern
1:32
barbarians the jungle as Joseph Burell referred to the outside world to help us understand the EU
1:39
what it is and what its failings are I have the pleasure of speaking today to Maran KH Maran is
1:45
the economics editor of the times and has spent 5 years with the financial times as their Brussels
1:51
correspondent in car salum and welcome to the muslum Salam thank you so much for having me
1:58
I'm a massive fan of the show where thank you it's really great to to have you on today and I I can't
2:03
think of anyone better to talk about the EU and what it stands for cuz I feel that many uh Muslims
2:09
I speak to especially from around the world who are looking at Muslim Unity or some form of pan Islamic Unity they sign the EU as an example uh so I want to sort of deconstruct understand
2:19
what the EU is about today uh with you now let's start with this idea of eural wiess um I know that
Euro whiteness
2:27
you've written a lot and said a lot about Euro whiteness and I suppose the EU or european antiy
2:33
towards Islam just talk a bit about that yeah I guess this is us speaking about the reality of
2:40
what I think European Union politics has become which is not a politics specific to Europe but I think it takes on a very specific no pun intended coloring and actually I have to give credit to
2:50
Hans kudani who is a friend and a colleague who really termed the phrase you're a whiteness he
2:55
wrote an essay about it and then a book which we you should all read which was out last year called Euro whiteness and Hans diagnoses something that he calls the civilizational turn in European
3:04
politics which is from perhaps around 2016 um 2017 moment so the migration crisis in Europe
3:12
is erupting there is a I think a a proliferation of thinking among European countries about what
3:19
kind of a continent they want to become and that's very much determined by the fact that they want to close Borders or they want to have tighter borders because the people coming in particularly during
3:28
that migration crisis are Brown Arabs from Syria people from Afghanistan um North Africa subsaharan
3:35
Africa people as far as where as Pakistan and India the economic migrants but they' all kind of lumped into this bigger non-white category so this is a moment where in the UK we'll remember
3:44
this summer very well because it's the summer of the brexit referendum where you have people like the Slovakian prime minister calling Muslims cockroaches vikor Orban still the prime minister
3:53
of Hungary talking about the fact that he doesn't want Muslims in his country the the moving of
3:59
people through Hungary into Germany to say that they wanted to sort of put this plague onto then considered to be the political enemy which is Angela Merkel in Germany so you see a lot of the
4:07
proliferation of dis thinking about migrants as a threat a threat to Europe not just in terms of the
4:13
hordes so the masses but something ideological is going on because Islam is often attached to this
4:19
quite a morphous group of people that are coming from all over the world they're often men they seem to be aggressive and rapacious and then if we fast forward a couple of years we hear stories
4:27
about refugees committing crimes and Germany the whole welcome culture that Merkel instituted then turns very sour and this is the reality we're now living in in 2024 where you know we don't
4:37
even pretend to have a welcome culture anymore so the closed borders element is very much consensus and it's it's true of the right it's true of the left it's true of the center and it's true of the
4:45
greens there's very few political constituencies or voices in Europe today that will argue for a
4:51
more open borders external open borders policy of course internally the EU is known for having
4:56
a more liberalized internal border structure and H cuses Euro whiteness because he correctly I think diagnoses the racial element to this and what I would what I try and do taking the concept
5:05
of Euro whiteness is to move it on a level because I think Islam plays a really really important role in developing Euro whiteness as truly a civilizational uh I guess paranoia
5:17
civilizational pain because whiteness in some senses is something that Europeans don't really think of themselves as they often don't really categorize themselves as Caucasian if you go to
5:26
Greece do you ask people if they're white they'd be like this is not a category recognize but there is something about there we now think of it as judeo-christian civilization and I think once you
5:35
start thinking in terms of what people say when they mean judeo-christian civilization then you have to think about Islam as the other and this is not something that started in 2016 this arguably
5:46
started with the foundation of what we think of as Europe where the first use of the word European
5:53
the first instance we have of the word European being used is actually by Sha Martell who is
5:59
battling the Moors or the hordes of French Muslims coming from uh then Muslim occup Muslim dominated
6:06
Spain uh and going to in the Battle of pitier and that's when European becomes a term that
6:11
is used to describe the people that are holding the Muslims back so sh marel is a European rather
6:16
than just a carolingian king and his armies are not just they're not fren at this point they're carolingians and they are fighting Muslims and they see themselves and that's the birth of where
6:25
Europe is so if we go back to the origins of the term Europe and where it sort of was born it was born through this hostile interaction between Muslims and non-muslims in this case Europeans
6:36
as they saw themselves Catholics essentially and this is something that I think we can trace
6:42
throughout the next a thousand years of European history that often the other the most the scariest
6:50
the the most Outsider other is the Muslim other because then not only do they represent racially
6:55
often a different skin tone they represent a parallel often conflictual ideological
7:02
inheritance about Islam that Europeans have always struggled to bring into their sense of Europe so
7:09
there are many examples of this the one that I like to use a lot is to think about how Muslims have been wiped out of the story of modern Europe which sort of seems to begin after the Middle Ages
7:19
into the Renaissance and there is a con concerted effort historically to not allow Muslims to be the
7:25
inheritors of Greco Roman civilization because while Europe is in the Dark Ages Muslims were very much not in the Dark Ages and by saying that we only had a Renaissance because we were allowed
7:35
to access Plato and Aristotle through the Arabic translations once you wipe that intermediary out
7:41
you create a version of History which basically starts with Greek starts with Greece then goes
7:46
to Rome then there's this terrible thing in the middle called the Middle Ages and plague and then suddenly we have a Renaissance and so you miss out this whole 3 or 400 year history which is that the
7:57
inheritors of that Greco Roman civilization what actually the Muslims who then helped create the seeds for the Renaissance the enlightenment etc etc so there are many examples of which I think
8:06
Muslims have been written out of the history of modern Europe and if we take it all the way into the 20th century I argue that you're a whiteness or whatever we want to call this thicker concept
8:14
which includes Islam is still a litus test for what it means to be European can the concept of European ever be expanded enough to include Muslims were born in European countries who know
8:25
no other country than Europe who speak European languages whose children will be born in Europe whose generationally are rooted in this continent are we ever going to have a version of what it
8:33
means to be European that includes Muslims and right now Muslims are still the litus test for
8:39
what it means to be European we're still kind of outside the schema and that's really interesting when we talk about the European Union when theories put together uh thoughts about the
Neutrality and Hijab ban
8:49
European Union we we always designate the ter liberal to European Union the European Union has
8:56
moved on its religious Parts its animosity with the least was a thing of the past we've now moved
9:01
into a more secular age uh where uh liberalism or at least a a a sort of form of neutral neutrality
9:10
that that comes from Modern ideology can embrace all cultures and religions you sort of suggest
9:16
that actually a lot of that is still winto tressed yeah neutrality is a super important word and I'm
9:22
really glad to use it because it allows we kind of Branch into the legal concept of what europeanness is and neutrality is a word that is been used a lot as a stick a legal stick to beat European
9:32
Muslims up with because we go back to 2016 a lot of things happened in that summer of course the brexit referendum the migration crisis but there were also an important judgment from the European
9:39
court of justice which was asked to rule on two cases about women Muslim women wearing the hijab
9:45
in their workplaces and the court was asked to judge whether it was valid for the employers of said women to ask them to remove the hijab because it wasn't part of their work uniform
9:56
and the court decided that the employers were within their right to ask the women to remove their hijabs because the hijab actually violates a concept of neutrality and neutrality means not
10:08
having any they would call conspicuous shows of religious belief and a hijab in the eyes of a
10:15
a judge sitting on a European Court in court of justice board is something that is egregious and conspicuous and therefore not neutral now if we use that precedent which is super important and
10:24
has been developed in in recent years to justify hijab bands all over Europe if we say new what does neutral mean do you have to be white do you have to be a Protestant do you have
10:32
to be a Catholic do you have to be secular if your concept of neutrality is based on a certain historicized version of what Europeans have been then there is no room for Muslims in
10:41
there and once you set that legal precedent and we can talk about how islamophobia was women of
10:47
mainly Muslim Muslim women who are really face the sharpest edges of institutionalized islamophobia in Europe if if the hijab is not considered to be a neutral symbol then where does that leave
10:57
Muslims in the workplace where does that leave them in school whether does that leave them in public institutions as civil servants as people serving in the police force just as Citizens if
11:05
they're considered to be nonneutral and these are issues that I think Muslims should gra we
11:11
should be grappling with these things because they are kind of happening in the background as stealth and they have massive implications for our lived reality in Europe and again I think
11:20
there is a disjunct between how much education there is about these things so neutrality is a concept that has been used to define europeanness in a way that is already I excludes basic basic
11:31
manifestations of muslimness because a hijab is a very basic manifestation of muslimness and is
11:37
it is these visible signs of muslimness that are being you know really becoming the litmus test as I said for definitions of European I said in the introduction that you were the Ft uh Brussels
11:47
correspondent and um uh you experience Brussels bureaucrats and it structure firstand like what
11:55
was your firstand experience what you witness of of that this Euro whiteness so it's um so I
12:01
arrived in 2017 so just after uh brexit brexit was a long running process a year after the referendum
12:07
where the UK was deciding what it wanted to do and uh I often found examples of what we now call Euro
12:14
whiteness in the weirdest most parochial silly things and one of the first ones I speak about
12:19
was covering a meeting of the European heads of state and these things are very boring they go on for a long time and you're sort of stuck in a room and you just chatting to people and an official
12:28
comes up to me and he tells me this funny story about some sort of leaflets they're producing for the summit and he said oh one of the worst things one of the biggest fights we ever had in
12:36
the European Council was about the color of the of of the sort of paraphernalia that we put out on social media or our press releases and I was like what do you mean he was like yeah so like
12:45
some countries wanted it to be green and this caused a huge uproar and I was like why he was like because green is not our color our color is BL blue and I'm like who's our and who's they and
12:55
who's we and he's like you know Europe Europe's color is blue and green is the color of Islam and
13:00
I was like wait what and then I thought what green is the color of Islam Saudi Arabian flag Pakistan
13:07
the East is is is been embodied in green and the blue as your lovely table here shows or you know
13:13
even here is is what white is what europeanness is about and I was like that is one of the strangest
13:18
things I've ever seen but the fact that this is still felt this self identification of what
13:24
europeanist looks like through the odd things like colors shows me that there is something way more I
13:30
don't want to say Sinister but some something deeper going on that it's just not just about islamophobia being the fact that we don't like brown people because they're terrorists or because
13:38
their religion is violent there is something about what we are and what they are and those two things are distinct and different and they manifest themselves in the most City ways including what
13:46
choice you choose to put out your social media uh you know tweets about XYZ meeting of a heads
13:52
of state I remember a few years back when you were at the Ft uh there was this incident where you had
13:58
written an article Liv about the uh the the French and their treatment of Muslims and some of the
14:04
legislation that was at that time going through uh their legislative Chambers and uh the article was
14:11
was taken down and uh I think at the behest of the French government and then ma macron P Pen's own
14:17
opad tell me a little bit about that like what what happened there yes so that I think it was almost exactly four years ago as we're recording because I know almost coincided with the last us
14:26
election um but this actually I wrote to piece at what now we would consider to be a very early turn
14:32
in macon's government and we now know that this was a turn because it then became the Tipping Point which explains a lot about what's happening in France legislatively over the last couple of
14:41
years and that's because the French president was in Brussels and he left a meeting early to give a speech which in itself is not remarkable and the speech was about separatism and I thought
14:49
oh that's interesting he's going to give a speech about like why the corsicans want to secede from the French State these are like the you know like annoying sort of parts of like the weird French
14:57
State you have some people that want to secede from the state but actually he attached the notion of separatism to Muslims and I thought wow okay so there was this move from this liberal modern
15:07
young president who when he was first elected was more open to the ideas of of of Muslims becoming
15:14
an integral part of France and then three years later because of terrorist attacks and Sh ABDO and and the murder of Samuel Pati a teacher in France you saw this clear shift from nakon
15:26
which was then two years before an election it's 2020 and in 2022 there's a presidential election and I thought okay he's doing the classic thing of like finding the Muslim enemies and actually
15:35
creating this entire new separate definition of a crime something called separatism that Muslims
15:42
in France are going to be accused of and the difficulty with this accusation is very hard to say that you're not a separatist it's hard to falsify the fact that you're not guilty of
15:50
this crime and I noticed this because when I wrote the piece and lots of French diplomats were quite
15:56
angry one of them called me up and he said you know I said to him Ambassador or Mr Diplomat I was
16:02
very polite I said please define what a separatist is to me right and he said anyone who believes in
16:08
the Sharia and I said well you have deliberately cast a net which includes every single person who identifies as a Muslim he said and and and and then when I knew that the net was that wide I
16:17
was like okay so this is a very broad degree of like pseudo- criminal activity that Muslims are going to be accused of because the nature of a Muslim is that you put God above the State
16:27
nature of being a religious person is you put God above the state and macron was saying this is not acceptable and so I wrote a piece before there was any legislation that's saying that if
16:35
you cast this net this wide you are capturing the entirety of muslimness in France rather than what
16:41
you want to capture which I think is violence real criminality what you would Define as real
16:46
extremism and what your government ministers are talking about is halal food the hijab polygamy
16:53
shisha lounges and this all sounded to me just like muslimness and you claim that you want to
16:58
attack islamism but you if your definition just means Muslim then we have a problem so the piece
17:04
was written I think it was up for about five or six hours it was up long enough for people to call me up to tell me they didn't like it which you itself with how the process should work right you
17:12
read the piece you don't like it and you complain that's fine it was taken down at the behest of the editor I cannot tell you whether she was put under pressure by the French government all I know is
17:20
the French government was very very angry about it and they were angry enough that the president had then wrote a repost to my piece which no longer existed on the ft's website where sadly he
17:30
indulged in exactly the same kind of dog whistling and criminalization of Muslims that is so common
17:35
in France and went unchallenged so he made a series of claims in that piece including this idea that Muslim children from the age of three or four are are taught to hate the values of the Republic
17:45
this is a bit like when I hear American or Israeli politicians say that Palestinians are taught to
17:51
hate us from the from a young age that they are inculcated in the values that are anti-public anti- French or anti-American or anti-israeli these are very very dangerous claims they are
18:02
part of a dehumanization process and sadly like that entire experience showed to me that you know
18:08
calling out what is just overt islamophobia which is done for political reasons as it was done for that macron government is seems to be still Beyond The Pale there is a certain degree to which people
18:18
who because they are liberal or Progressive or pro- european accusing them of racism is a stick
18:23
too far and a bit like the old meme the accusation of racism seems to be worse than the racism itself
European Islam?
18:29
in that piece you mentioned something like that U um we don't need governments a government R
18:36
to make Islam French or British or German um do you feel that uh these European governments are
18:44
trying to establish I suppose a a national form of Islam explain that to me yeah so the Instinct
18:51
after the things like terrorist attacks often in in countries where the state is big and present like France and Belgium where I was based is that okay so there's all these what they think of as a
19:00
barent forms of Islam so what we need to do is create Belgian Islam or French Islam so that means we'll set up an Institute called the French Institute for Islam where we will have state um
19:10
trained or certified imams and we will have a certain version of Islam which says if you are Muslim you put the state before God these are Highly Questionable things I'm not endorsing them
19:20
this is the way that you're think about it you believe that l or or secularism is a value that is more important than whatever your religion may tell you and you you have to denounce all of these
19:29
things and you have to endorse all of these things to make France compatible with the values of the Republic and this is a genuine thing so there were talks about how to find the money for these
19:39
projects uh France right now I think of January 1 2024 is only having french instituted or French
19:45
certified imams in French mosques and so because the state is so big in France the state can
19:50
achieve a lot there is a a centralization there's a centralizing Instinct that is then applied as
19:56
it is to the Health Service or to transport or to defense well of course we can just do this with religion and for me this is painly ridiculous not just because I'm Muslim but probably also CU
20:05
I'm British and I'm like this is not how this is not how religion works you cannot create by Fiat
20:11
whatever institutionalized religion you want and it also reminded me in much more Sinister circumstances the way the French and other Colonial Powers behaved when they were colonial
20:20
rulers over Muslim countries where they had inst where they had colonially approved versions of
20:25
Islam or colonially certified imams and OS who they would go then go out to use to co control and
20:31
Co as populations and and sorry to dwell on this article but it was I think it was a fascinating piece in in the title you can still read it by the way because nothing can ever be deleted from
Secularism – France’s religion
20:40
the internet that's I found it the other day and I when I Googled it and and the title was France's dangerous religion of secularism so that was quite a you know quite a courageous phrasing I suppose I
20:50
think that wasn't the initial ft article I think that might have been somebody else's version of it but ultimately that was what I was saying right yes and and so what what makes secular
20:58
and the religion in France one the one thing that I've already just sort of said and I think
21:04
I made an unceremonious comparison between macron someone like the Taliban which obviously would have annoyed all the right people I think but the idea that you use the state as an instrument of
21:14
control to have mandated and approved forms of religion and clearly non-approved versions of
21:19
religion this is what we see is the centralizing Instinct of some of the worst parts of what I think islamism has become this idea that this is correct this is not correct and we prosecute
21:29
and I guess it's really important for the listeners to understand that secularism
21:34
probably doesn't capture what the French mean when they say l it is very historically specific
21:40
and I think it's very historically contingent on the French State's relationship with the super powerful Catholic Church at the turn of the century and this process by which they defanged
21:48
the Catholic Church they robbed it of its wealth they often removed the Catholics off the priests so that the clothing was a massive part of how to how to assert the identity of a secular French
21:58
state against the most powerful religion of the day which is Catholicism and my argument has always been is that LE is all well and good but it was about a power struggle between a
22:07
very powerful institutional religion and a very powerful state in France today you have a very
22:14
powerful State and the people that are the subject or the victims of the laic Crusade let's call it
22:20
that are disempowered often weak not politically represented low socially mobile lwi income group
22:28
groups of people which are French Muslims who are discriminated against in the labor market they're discriminated against when they want housing they're discriminated against in schools they're
22:35
discriminated against socially and racially this is not a powerful institutional religion that you're fighting it's a bunch of millions of Muslim people who are Des who are desperate
22:44
scattered across the country and often form the lowest rungs of society now do you want to use
22:50
the full force of the state as you did against the Catholic Church on these people it makes no sense to me as a power struggle and I know that you're political scientists and power is super important
22:57
to understand conflict and that's when I tell people in France and nobody really likes to hear
23:02
this but you have to understand the concept of Le how do you apply it in a multi-racial multi-religious postcolonial 21st century country that is France this is not the 19th century it's
23:13
not 20th century this is not about a rich Catholic Church this is about people that have almost no
23:19
real sense of mobilized political power and it the asymmetry is so Stark to me that I find it
23:26
ridiculous that we talk about the LA Principle as it applied in the early 20th century as it should
23:31
apply in the 21st century Muslims should not they should not be weaponized against Muslims it's not for them it wasn't designed for them brilant so let's talk about the EU model as I said at the
What is EU?
23:41
very beginning um there are some in the Muslim world who see the the par state in Muslim world
23:47
and the just the disintegration of many of the states and and the weakness of our economies
23:52
the brain drain from from Pakistan vades India to uh to to Western States Nigeria African countries
24:01
um and the feeling is that we need some form of Muslim unity and often the EU is cited as a
24:08
model I think we've had speakers on on M platform they cited the EU as a model for for for Muslim Unity before we talk about the model bit let's just talk about what the EU is and what it is
24:18
it's like you know you're you're somebody who's very knowledgeable about the EU and its fun and
24:23
its institutions just give us a a basic appraisal and a basic understanding what the EU is yes it's
24:31
difficult to ascribe a certain identity to what the EU is in political science terms as a unit of analysis because it's very much a mish mash of stuff but if we just think about it historically
24:41
the European Union is a postwar political project which has elements of supernational
24:47
ism so the creation of authorities primarily a system of law that exists above its constituent
24:53
member states but those member states also have a lot of powers that we know nation states have like taxing people and spending money as they decide to do so it's a strange halfway house
25:03
between supranational body that has a lot of federal powers but and then some that where is
25:08
almost absent and at very basic level there are 27 countries that are called member states inside
25:14
the European Union then you have these I guess institutions of the European Union themselves which is the European commission often known as an executive and a European Parliament which was
25:23
created a little bit later on in the' 70s as a kind of democratic Wing to sort of legitimize the whole thing because obviously we need people to votee and we need them to feel like there is
25:31
some democratic model to this and there's often a hierarchy with these institutions but often it's the member states who call themselves the Council of Europe the European Council then you
25:40
probably put the commission under there which has the power to propose legislation and then I think the parliament is probably the weakest part of that its job is to also has it has part in the
25:47
legislative process so it approves legislation but it doesn't have the power to initiate and I guess
25:53
most people in this country we're speaking about knew about the European Union probably on July the 6 2016 when we decided we no longer wanted to be part of it and there were many reasons for
26:02
that so I guess the other extreme of a political supernational body that perhaps more people are
26:09
aware of is the United States and in some sense the United States is the complete version of what
26:14
the European Union should be so in the kind of Pokemon evolution world uh and maybe the European
26:19
Union is like the Pikachu and the middle stages the United States and then who knows what the last stage is but that's where you have a strong Federal central government and you have states 50
26:28
of them um and actually the central government has much more fiscal and financial power to decide to raise taxes on behalf of all of the states and to do spending on behalf of all of the states whereas
26:36
say Hungary and Poland for example or Sweden and Denmark they are opting in and out of different
26:42
parts of the European Union as they wish and then I should probably ask one final clarification is that within the European Union there's an even smaller more concentrated and integrated body of
26:53
the Euro Zone and these are the now 20 countries that actually share a currency between themselves
26:58
which means they share a central bank they all use the euro so when you go on holiday there you don't need to change your money and that's I guess a more integrated version of the European Union
27:08
a more kind of concentric Circle where these countries are tied by the fact that they have a common currency which means they have a common monetary policy me a common perception of the EU
EU Ideology
27:18
is said it is an economic Union and it brings together and so I suppose there is an appeal to it in the Mustang world where economically at least many of these states are stuttering are not
27:28
uh progressing as as as well as they should be um is there an ideological component of the EU yes I
27:35
mean it's very difficult to think of the EU and as many people I think are tempted to as purely a technocratic project because the technocrats are driven by a certain Vision or ideal of what
27:46
they would like and this began in the 1940s in the 1950s with a coal and steel Union so you
27:52
would have a couple of countries only six of the founding member states decided that when it came to coal and steel they were going to be common Union this has now been expanded to
27:59
what we call the single Market as a whole so inside the European Union you have a single Market where Goods cross borders freely you have a customs Union which mean all of those countries
28:09
when you do trade deal with another country they imply a common tariff now to keep this
28:14
whole thing together you need lots and lots and lots of law lots of regulations lots of
28:20
common rules and everyone has to agree to them but let's go back to the ideology why would you want to create a single Market why would you want to create a liberalized unit of economic unit like
28:30
a single Market why would you want to have a customs Union it's basically based on a very rudimentary neoliberal idea about how to create prosperity and growth through low regulations
28:40
through the free movement of people through the free movement of capital and it's a bit odd
28:45
because often when you think about the European Union and you think about people that opposed it thater is one that comes to mind and thater is a traditionally very right-wing figure inside the
28:53
European Union but what thater did was that she was opposed to lot of the political integration which she was uncomfortable as a sovereigntist she didn't want to give away so much but she said if
29:02
I'm going to give it away then I want an economic project that looks a lot like the economic project I'm trying to create a home and that is about for her it was about lowering wages through creations
29:12
of mobile labor markets if you're in Spain and you have an economic crisis you can go to Germany and then even if You' got PhD work as a waiter in Germany because that's how it's supposed to
29:21
work it's kind of Economics balancing structure and it is neoliberal and it's worth pointing out that when the UK decided to join for example in the' 70s we had a referendum in this country
29:30
and it was people on the left that were the Euros Skeptics of the day because as people of the left
29:35
they wanted things like higher workers protection they didn't want massive liberalization raise to the bottom regulation they thought the single Market Market would be bad for workers and good
29:44
for Capital people like Tony Ben was some of the most eloquent uh leftist Euros Skeptics so there
29:50
is an ideological component and the ideological battle was one in which I think the right neol
29:56
right leaning neoliberal rules in Centrist one and that's why we have the single Market the way it's constructed that's why we have the trade sort of arrangements as they are constructed and
30:06
importantly things like Thatcher and and the struggle on the left um and and Christopher
30:12
Bon who I think is one of the best political analyzers of the European Union everyone should read his little book called Short History short introduction to the European Union it's a penguin
30:20
book he describes the things like in the UK we were really struggling to have workers rights
30:26
implemented in UK law and of from the left saw the European Union as a way to get these things done through the back door so there's always been ideology involved and that is still true to this
30:35
day I talked about the European Parliament where there's a left party there's a center left party there's a right party there's a far right party there are liberals and they all kind of contest
30:43
amongst each other about what they think the European Union should be but I think with a very limited scope where nobody really questions the viability of the project as such they just sort
30:51
of quibbling about what kind of regulations they want so you it's very difficult to take politics and big ideology out of the Europe Union which was created at a postwar era where the Triumph
31:02
of neoliberalism so we're talking about the ' 80s really with thater and Reagan were Supreme and in many ways the one European Union encapsulates the Triumph of those values which is why people on
31:11
the Left To This Day still have really gripes about the operation of the European Union but it's interesting the labor party for example here in the UK although they didn't explicitly
The Left
31:21
come out in favor of the EU I know that Colin has historically been very um skeptical of the
31:26
EU but at least much on the labor left many on the labor left were very proe and were calling
31:31
for a reversal of brexit so why is the change why do the left today have F laor of a wide Embrace
31:39
of the the event they did have back in the 70s J and Ben and here that's really really good
31:44
question and it's also helps us tell the story of what's happened to the modern left in this country
31:49
probably in the '90s definitely with the new labor era so we have a move into the center a move into
31:55
favoring technocracy and bureaucracy over policies and this other weird thing that happens which
32:00
I've always grappled with which is that being Progressive became something that is attached
32:06
to the European Union so it became to say that you're Progressive why exactly is there anything
32:12
really in the way the European Union operates that would mean that as a person who is Progressive on the left socially or culturally you would attach yourself to the European Union so there's a really
32:22
kind of shallow version of cosmopolitanism that I would say that the European Union is uh
32:28
is held up as because you have 27 people from 27 different countries all living in this political
32:34
Block in harmony that shows a degree of cosmopolitanism that is the that is the destruction of nationalism of throwing away the shackles of your national identity and identifying
32:43
yourself with something that is Europe so maybe on the shallow level if you're Progressive you're saying oh that's good this looks like the more hate to say even Multicultural version of Europe
32:53
that me as somebody on the left or whoever you are would be attracted to so there's that and we can pick that AP because I think there's so many holds in what I've just said there and we can go
33:02
back to your whiteness as a reason why that's not true and then there's the sense in which because
33:07
the the left or social Democrats of Europe which is people like the labor party in the UK the SPD
33:12
in Germany um pasok in Greece um left parties and the new left the Third Way left of the '90s was
33:20
one that embraced the market it embraced Market structures it embraced free market capitalism
33:26
it embraced things like free movement of Labor it also embraced and this often meant High degrees of migration because people are moving around all the time and it also something we haven't mentioned
33:35
at all already is the role that central banks play in creating economic Prosperity so the role of the
33:40
government is not so much to decide the economy because we've privatized everything the fiscal
33:46
policy plays a role but globalization means that governments are not that powerful anymore so we we gave a lot of the power technocratic power to our central banks there's one right behind
33:54
us right now the bank of England and their job is actually to fine-tune the econ and to create Prosperity so there's a lot of Delegation being done here globalization means that we can't really
34:02
control a lot of the bigger things like migration um the central monetary policy means that we have to give that power back to control inflation to the central banks and our jobs as governments
34:11
is just to kind of fine tune and to produce you know enough of the right taxes and enough of the
34:16
right spending to create Prosperity so there is a ideological hollowing out of the left which means
34:22
that it becomes perfect for the modern European Union to absolve and that's why the left or left Euros skepticism really dies out from the '90s and the 2000s onwards and you mentioned Corbin
34:31
who's very much a relic of an older left who now is a bit of a historical anomaly because he represents a completely different left tradition which always saw the dominance of capital that
34:40
the single Market represented as something that would hurt workers the EU is this ideological
EU Success
34:45
block that of course many in the Muslim World hate it as some sort of economic success to so is it is
34:50
the European Union is successful we that many see it in this that's a really really big question and
34:56
it depends which part of Europe you're standing so if I was in Poland in the early '90s thinking
35:03
about what the postcommunist Poland look like a postcommunist state these countries and I'm going
35:09
to it just includes central eastern Europe I'm going to make a broad kind of characterization when these countries fell out of the Communist block they had to undergo incredibly painful
35:20
forms of liberalization which is huge amounts of deflation in the country so the cutting of workers wages the idea that they had to be part part of the market economy which meant letting
35:30
companies come in and invest and therefore set their own standards about what they wanted to do but ultimately that very painful process meant that they were eligible to join the European Union
35:38
then once they became part of the single Market you do see metrics like just GDP GDP per capita
35:44
really shooting up in these countries so there is a process by which very very poor countries were forced to converge to the Richer ones and that gap between the poor and the rich does narrow that's
35:54
true but what if you're a really rich country one of the founding member states either Italy
35:59
France Belgium the Netherlands these are the founding member states of the European Union
36:05
their this convergence process has stopped because they've stopped getting richer and the ones that were catching up with them have done a lot of the catch-up growth and so there's a narrow there's a
36:13
narrowness of it but is France getting richer is it performing economically better than Germany or other countries no and there's many reasons why but maybe there is diminishing returns to
36:23
the membership of the European Union there is incompleteness about the single market so we've got to where we have a single Market of goods but you can't really sell Services across the European
36:31
Union there's no real common banking system across the European Union you know that if you lived in Belgium and you want to go to France you have to get a new bank account you know there there are
36:39
all these kind of frictions that still exist so that is why it's a half complete political project
36:44
but I think for Muslims and I'm going to just you know really just confine myself to the secular analysis of what I think the European Union is and what Muslims what they would like to do they
36:53
can take their own lessons from it but I can see the appeal as a poor Muslim Nation understanding
36:58
that there are very other Rich Muslim nations and you want a piece of that pile you want to be able to share in that level of prosperity and maybe creating a structure where you're bound to these
37:08
countries to some degree is a way to create a convergence process within the Muslim world
37:14
now these things all happen over time and they're very very complicated but I can definitely see The Superficial appeal of being a poorer Muslim State and thinking well we need to converge to the level
37:25
of the UAE or we need to converge to the level levels of Saudi Arabia or Indonesia or Malaysia or slightly more wealthier countries or even turkey and maybe we need to do that through the creation
37:35
of these Market structures I will also warn though with every there's no free lunch of course this
37:40
economics we're talking about the countries I've just mentioned that convered they have suffered massively in terms of brain drain so once you're part of this Union where there is single movement
37:49
of Labor if you're in a poor country where you're earning $5 a day for the plumbing that you do but
37:54
you can move to Germany and earn $50 a day for the same work you're going to do that so there
37:59
is there is a there are many many consequences for being bound into these types of structures that's very true I mean I suppose the thing to say about the European Union because you
Binding structures
38:08
mentioned there are um the European Union is not a federal uh structure uh a federal organization
38:14
although there are many people within the EU that would like it to be uh more federalized and become more like the United States um maybe one of the things that inhibit uh that federalization
38:27
is just the fact that these nation states are very proud and and you know substantial nation states
38:33
whereas in the Muslim world I mean you know the the his of nation T is is far less uh of a of a
38:39
feature and uh many of the Muslims do you see them ter ideologically at least to be to have
38:44
lots of commonality so couldn't maybe the European Union has failed in Europe because of the strength
38:50
of the Nations St but in the Muslim world where there are more commonalities a structure like
38:55
that would actually work far more favorably or far more in their favor I mean how would you answer that they're very that's a very good point and they're very so let's do a kind of exercise in
39:05
the pros and cons of why European Union works and it doesn't work and why the I guess the merits of what Muslims have and the things that they lack so let's go to this this point about what binds
39:15
us as an um so what binds someone who lives in Finland with someone who lives in Portugal another
39:21
weather not the food not the language not even the religion not even a common history in terms of you
39:27
know fighting Wars and thinking of yourself the thing that binds a Portuguese person and a Finnish person is that they're part of a structure or a contiguous geographical body called Europe and
39:38
they're both members of this political institution called the European Union but that's pre shallow level of unity but what binds someone living in Morocco to someone in Malaysia well Islam and
39:49
often Sunni Islam if we're going to even narrow it down and I think for a secular person listening to
39:54
this they were like what does that mean actually it means a lot we know means a lot cuz we feel it we all feel it we feel it when we're in these countries the N the fact that Islam binds us is
40:04
something that is very very strong and stronger I would say than the ties That Binds a Finnish person to a Portuguese person which I think in this cultural sense of what it of commonality and
40:12
unity is weak in that sense so that in that sense we have something going for us then what do we not
40:18
what does the European Union really have going for it that we don't I think one is this really important factor of the geographical contiguity of the continent so we take Britain and irland we are
40:28
islands of as such but we were geographically part of the same sort of space we inhabit the same time
40:33
zones Etc and that kind of seamlessness of borders is really important to making the economics of it
40:40
work it does mean that people can hop over borders it means that you can go get a job D driving a car and that makes Europe feel close even if you're in Portugal and you drive to Germany what is the can
40:50
you do that between a North African State and a Gulf State no there's a big geographical Gap
40:57
so to make the economics work there is a certain inescapable geography that we'll have to that we
41:02
will have to kind of ameliorate and it's hard to think of how that does get ameliorated so they have that then there's the other sense in which I think these European countries are bound by
41:11
a common trauma and that you have to go back to the the first and the second world wars and the idea that nationalism was the thing that created those Wars and if we want to quell that violenc
41:21
se then there is a degree to which we have to supersede this nationalism and that is still felt in p Portugal and Finland who were you know still thinking about the similar common common
41:32
threats be through fascism of different forms so they have a unique kind of trauma or inherited
41:38
trauma of the post-war era that they have Muslim countries our history is a little bit different
41:43
our relationships let's be honest the the I guess the the real touch point for our common history is the osas and H how various Muslim Now call them Nations their relationship with
41:53
the dissolution of that Empire some of whom it was a completely traumatic event and for others it was a massive Liber Li Liberation so we have less of that common history to deal on
42:01
because our picture is much more mixed in the in the 19th and and 20th centuries and then I guess
42:08
the I think the thing that you really touched on is the really good point that as Muslims we are
42:13
still a little bit uncomfortable with thinking of ourselves as Nations or separate Nations uh we might think of ourselves as tribes even but it's much more to say that the thing that really
42:23
the identity I hold most close to me is the fact that I'm Pakistani I know that's true for a lot of
42:28
people but ultimately we know that even that is a very new notion before 1947 no one would have said that the thing that they care most about is the fact that they're Pakistan so we have
42:35
this this different kind of relationship with the nation state and that's why I think and it's worth
42:41
bringing the us into this example because if we want to think about the ultimate flexibility of
42:47
an identity which where sovereignty can be both shared but also closely held the US is the is the
42:57
most complete Federal example of it and I say that because the US's relationship with the state
43:03
or Americans the way that they feel about the state is perhaps slightly closer to the way that
43:09
Muslims would be more comfortable with so I've spoken about countries where the state is super important France is one of them where there is a Long Reach of the state into your behavior into
43:19
controlling what you do into criminalizing you or saying this is the Constitution this is what you should do I think I think Muslims a traditionally our political history is that we've had had a much
43:27
more flexible relationship with these types of authority and you see this in America of course there's an argument that the reason Muslims might flourish more in America because it's much more of
43:35
a political system that is conducive to how Islam thinks about the state than they do in Europe where the state very much is the policeman it is you know the it is the Big Brother etc etc so
43:46
maybe that's more of a relevant example and you're probably going to tell me all the reasons why you think the US is not an appropriate example but I think in terms of just that relationship of what
43:56
it means to be a city in a country where you have a state Tunisia but you're also the citizen of a
44:01
broader Federal Authority the United States or in this case the new caliphate I think they make it work more because their states are less present in their lives and any kind of future Muslim Unity
44:13
or body or political structure would have to have this relationship where you do not feel the strong
44:18
hand of that Federal Authority that much because I think that offends our S I think offends lots of people's sense of muslimness the idea that you're getting policed uh as a citizen so there are pros
44:30
and cons to these things but I think the the eu's common shared political trauma of the 20th
44:35
century and the fact that it's a geographically continuous body on things that it really has
44:40
going in its favor and these are the things that really keep the European Union together despite all the incredible challenges that they've we've been speaking around the idea of Euro whiteness
Europeanness vs Muslimness
44:50
fittting to thism if if the European United States you gave the example Portugal and Finland and have
44:55
interv of desperate people and they had very little in common how much is is this an overt
45:01
project to bind European citizens together in a way defining them against a threat from East
45:08
a threat from Islam yeah this is the kind of negative identity point and I think negative identity does a lot more work in Europe than positive identity and my argument is that part of
45:17
the negative identity is the way that you define what being European is is by making a definition
45:22
of what European is not and the contiguous geographical body thing is really important because what's not in Europe North Africa actually Morocco and Spain are closer to each other than
45:31
Spain is to Germany right geographically this is just a hop there is there isn't no distance there
45:37
but why can Morocco never be considered part of Europe we know why it's a Muslim State this has
45:43
clearly been on show throughout the early 2000s with the very very painful talks about whether
45:48
turkey should be part of the European Union and a clear rejection from then Angela Merkel Chancellor Nicholas Sosi French president who just said the quiet part low and they said we can't do
45:59
it it's a Muslim country they're currently very long conversations about Albania becoming an
46:05
accession country to European Union let's be honest Ukraine is going to get there before Albania why is Albania not going to get there because it's a Muslim majority country so as
46:12
soon as you start thinking about expanding the actual political union that is a European Union to other countries muslimness becomes perhaps the most crucial variable in determining whether
46:23
or not they've got a chance or not and this is important because the European Union has managed to actually expand its definition of Europe to other religions and the one that is most that
46:32
is most important is is Orthodox Christianity now Orthodox Christianity was always considered to be
46:38
a kind of exotic Eastern branch of Christianity that wasn't really Christianity for Protestants
46:43
and Catholics they thought these guys were some kind of weird relic of like you know um hybrid
46:49
sort of form of religiosity that real Christians like orth the Orthodox people were not considered to be European but we have managed to expand the definition of europeanness to Orthodox
46:58
Christianity and I'm arguing that it will never really be able to truly accommodate Islam in that
47:04
definition that's where EUR whiteness comes in for me I guess we're we're talking about whiteness but I want to expand it from race I'm not just talking about race here I'm really talking about
47:11
EUR whiteness as a civilizational identity where the other civilization is Islamic civilization and
47:17
that also helps explain to us why Europe doesn't just have a problem with turkey or Morocco it
47:22
has a problem with the Muslims inside Europe the European Muslims because we are somehow still seen
47:28
to be part of a different civilization and how many generations do we have to go through how many
47:35
how many generations of Muslims have to be born in Europe for us to actually be considered European and I don't know the answer to that yet does this uh civilization with turn this Euro wiess had
EU on Gaza
47:44
anything to do with what we've seen from European Union in the last year over Gaza and get her we've
47:51
just seen Sten that to St by still B the line but she's actually been even far stronger and strided
47:56
against the Palestinians when maybe some of the American politicians have been you know' had to strike a slightly more um moderate tone um like what accounts for uh this this um hypocrisy almost
48:09
where it certainly is hypocrisy over gazel so I think ironically the the reason that the European Union has been so cack-handed about the Gaza issue is because it's descended back into their
48:20
nationalisms so everything we've talking about this idea of construing a European identity of feeling European actually when it comes down to the Crux of many issues the pavian response of
48:31
people is is based on their nationality so you mentioned Ur I would argue that Ursula V Deion
48:36
acts the way she does about Israel because she's German it has absolutely nothing to do with her as
48:42
a European commission president or the fact that she's representing Europe because she's not she's doing it because those are her German instincts her German Instinct meant you jump on a plane you
48:51
go to Israel after October the 7th and you do you know glad H handing with Israeli political leaders
48:57
and you claim to be doing it on behalf of the European Union but you're doing it because you're German and we know this because Ireland Spain Belgium these are traditional countries
49:05
that have always had strong slightly stronger Pro Palestinian constituencies are now acting
49:10
in a ways that break away from the way the German commission president wants to talk about uh Palestine or Gaza and or how the uh well the entire German political establishment
49:20
uh the nordics would never really been that invested in these issue and the countries that care the most care the most because of their National inheritances or their own experiences of
49:28
colonialism in the cases of Ireland or Spain and their historical ties to parts of the Middle East
49:34
so they're actually behaving just as countries again that's why it's a mess that's why you know you mentioned Joseph Burell at the beginning I I would arguably say he's the only person that's
49:42
come out of this entire diplomatic shambles with any sort of credit because he's Spanish right so
49:50
in in that sense there are so many levels of you know in which you have to diagnose why people say
49:55
the way they do and often it's their nationality that you just come back to as the thing that is driving their approaches to foreign policy F I never thought of it like that um actually on
Media on Gaza
50:04
the gazer issue you're you're a journalist you worke for a mainstream paper you know we've had uh independent journalists on this program for some time and they all decried how the
50:13
mainstream press have almost um uh silence or have have a have a view towards Gaza which is
50:20
uh which is whitewashing this genocide of this Slaughter um like you know you're something who
50:25
still works within the mainstream prent how how do you evaluate the media response to carer I
50:32
think the last year has been really important so when I had my little scuffle with nakon which to
50:38
be honest in hindsight was pretty great um it was it exposed to me some of the things that I thought about the media that were no longer true I was like you know 911 was a long time ago you
50:47
know maybe we've learned something about how to write about Muslims because when you hire Muslims hopefully that changes the way they you provideed more Nuance coverage or at least the
50:54
lenses through which You' report to your readers is uh less not Prejudice but just ignorant and I
51:01
think the last that macron moment exposed to me that basic very little progress has been
51:06
made and and a lot of the diversity thing is is just a Visage it's just a way to say that we're
51:13
doing right things without substantive cultural change in newspapers and then with Gaza I mean this thing has just been accelerated by 100x the fact that yes West journalists can't get into Gaza
51:24
we should be complaining about this every single day on every single front page of every newspaper we should have a hole in the story that should have been from Gaza but we're not allowed to
51:31
go to Gaza but so we should say that this is why there is a blankness in our coverage right this
51:36
is this is not a murder this has been forced by the fact that we can't get access to these places
51:42
and if we are telling our readers upfront in a transparent way that we can't tell you what's going on Gaza because we're not allowed to go into Gaza because the Israeli authorities that
51:50
control the region will not let Western germanist in for us to do our reporting that in itself will be such a powerful message to actually show some transparency about our coverage right
52:00
why is that not happening I don't think it's a particularly controversial thing to do I think many newspapers would do this we are campaigning many newspapers campaign they have campaigns to
52:08
say we want to bring back a journalist who's been arrested by Putin or is is been captured by a foreign government we create campaigns for things that we think are important that people
52:17
should care about why can't Western journalists have any mobilization to really bring this to
52:23
light and I know it has been happening it has been happening at individual levels particularly journalists in Britain who've signed petitions and put campaigns out there but we should just be more
52:31
honest with our readers we can't tell you what's going on we don't know instead of just saying here's all of our reporting about what's going on in Israel right now here's how Israel is behaving
52:39
eternally here's the protest that going on inside Israel here's what Netanyahu said here's what this ministry said here's how the US has responded we have this incredibly one-sided version of coverage
52:47
because we just can't get people to do the boots on the ground why are we not condemning the fact that Gaza has been the most bloodiest most clearly the most bloody episode for any journalism in the
52:58
world the number of journalists that have been killed this is a kind of it's a profession where
53:03
there is a sense of unity that you have with other journalists because we understand the risk that you go through but all of a sudden that kind of unity Falls away and so for me gaza's all
53:11
been been a lot about the quiet Parts allowed right and we know this because when there were
53:17
refugees from terrible conflict in Ukraine they are welcomed when they come from Syria Afghanistan
53:22
we're told that there's no place for these people the immediate reaction to the what was happening in Gaza were often like oh I hope this doesn't create another Refugee crisis because that would
53:30
be really politically inconvenient for everyone having to fight an election in 2024 these are the instincts of the people that run the media and our politicians and it is it shows me that you
53:40
know I I became a journalist not because I looked at this industry and thought wow this is a super amazing fourth estate and I would love to be hold part of holding power to account no I grew up in
53:50
911 in the UK and I saw the incredibly poisonous narratives that were created around one Muslims
53:56
refugees Asylum seekers in this country by newspapers and I realize that these people these these institutions have a massive role to play in the way that we think about the world and
54:05
sadly once you're inside those institutions you realize that 20 years on from 9/11 really has that
54:11
much changed you know does representation really change that much we can try but you know it's it's
54:17
it's it's really difficult and you know a lot of people decry the fact that people don't read newspapers anymore I'm not crying too many tears about that I think should all read the economics
54:27
pages of the times but otherwise you know there is a the market has responded let's put it that way one last question youen across Europe we've got the rise of the of islamophobic parties and it
Islamophobia and Optimism
54:36
seems like these far-right parties are attaching themselves very radically to this Euro whiteness
54:41
idea at least to this cultural superiority um that we thought had had disappeared from from eurus uh
54:50
many parties are winning elections based on on sort of anti on an anti-islamic ticket even here
54:55
in Britain you've got K be better how the leader of the conservative party and you know she has you
55:01
know record suggesting and that you know things about Muslims which are quite outrageous um and I
55:08
I would imagine even I would suggest that even the labor party has has not come out strongly against
55:14
islamophobia as it would have say 20 or 30 years ago because I I suppose there may be a currency
55:20
in in The Wider public or at least there's a base there that they need to appeal to I what Prospect
55:26
you see for for Muslims across Europe Britain across Europe with the rise of of this fright
55:33
so you've identified a lot of things one is the right and how it's kind of infected the center and the people who would consider themselves not to be on the right and often um you know
55:41
we all make political choices about who we want to sort of target with our advocacy and with me I've always kind of gone for the Liberals right because with the right and we will all experience
55:49
this this is a degree of honesty I completely Shameless of course about what they say about Muslims and how they feel about Islam and their civilization but there's a degree to which you
55:58
understand what you're dealing with you understand the the way that they make your argumentation it's that Center that I have always been somebody that I'm more interested in understanding what
56:07
happens there right so I mean the Malik who rides for the guardian who I think is one of the most incredible kind of political voices we have in this country or writing in English about
56:16
these issues as D knows this really well that when when this lowlevel islamophobia going on so when
56:21
Boris Johnson talks about people um when ladies wearing the burer or the European Union is Bunning
56:26
the hijab uh in workplaces etc etc there's a kind of liberal shrug and they're like we've got other
56:32
things to worry about like brexit people liberals in this country far more upet about brexit than they' have ever been about 40 or thousand people dying in gasa I'll just leave that with you right
56:42
the level of emotional angst that they've carried towards that rupture is more than they could ever muster for genocidal activities and other parts well so those are political choices but then the
56:53
riots happen in the UK and then all of a sudden all the good people the Liberals come out and said oh we need to defend our communities and we need to it has to it gets to the point of an absolute
57:02
extreme where the good people your allies then they suddenly emerge and they want to show you solidarity and they all want to say I'm so sorry about what's happening are you and your family
57:11
okay and I'm like where were you where were you before where were you before the 10 15 20 steps
57:17
that we took to the point that then you actually have rights in this country because people so feel so much racial anxiety about Muslims and I think so you ask me about what do I feel
57:26
about the prospects of Muslims I'm actually really optimistic about the prospects of Muslims possibly
57:32
because I feel like it's almost an obligation of my face to have a degree of optimism about about
57:39
despite all the challenges we go through I feel like there is a moral incumbency to think that there is good I think what Muslims are undergoing is a evolution in in the racism that we are is
57:50
being attached to us and I guess in the' 80s or before the the racism that my parents had
57:55
to undergo my grandparents is that they were newcomers in a country that didn't understand them and didn't know anything about them so we were aliens right and now we attracted the kind
58:04
of racism of the other and now the racism we get is slightly more upm Market because we're becoming
58:12
a bit more middle class we're becoming a little bit more prominent in public life you have this
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amazing podcast we have people in positions of political power people in corporate authorities we
58:23
are integrating and becoming part of Destruction becoming more visible so we attract the racism
58:28
that is now more existential so now if you think about the riots or what motivated the riots is
58:33
this idea that we are taking over as such that our faith is becoming popular more people have
58:39
converted to Islam in the last couple of years uh even more so after Gaza I mean the numbers are difficult to quantify but at least anecdotally you can see this um there is a power in the message
58:49
and that means that we're we're attracting this existential a angst from the majority or whatever the white Community is which is a bit like what I think our Jewish cousins have had to face for
58:58
a long time that with success reads A resentment so there is an evolution in some of the the trends
59:03
that we're facing that in and of itself weirdly enough is a sign of success to some degree right
59:08
the racism I will attract will be a different nature than when this podcast goes out people will send me emails about how terrible I am but that my grandfather never got that because he wasn't
59:17
able to be public or have a voice in that sense he was just a laborer that was taking someone's job so in some senses you know this is a byproduct of the fact that I think we're okay that I think that
59:28
because we're visible and because we're vocal and because people understand that maybe Islam is is kind of becoming everywhere or bi osmosis or they're seeing it around and you can argue whether
59:38
it's a shallow or substantive version of Islam but it is there maybe that is triggering something existential in people that means that we have to face more of it so in some senses I'm I'm really
59:47
bullish I have to confine myself to the fact that I think I'm talking about Britain really and kind of the Anglo world I I couldn't probably say the same for like my brothers and sisters in France
59:58
where I think the lived reality of their lives the Hostile environments that created for them and the their real difficulties in mobilizing the way that we can potentially in the UK it's much
1:00:08
harder for them so I wouldn't really I wouldn't extend a lot of my diagnosis to other parts of
1:00:14
Europe where I think it's much much harder because their muslimness in and of itself is being something that is being criminalized and so I think we should show a lot more solidarity
1:00:24
and I think we should understand a lot more what's happening in these countries that are very close to us I mean we all go on holiday in Europe there are mus there are Muslims in these
1:00:31
countries and they they really face political ANS that we don't have here so that's not to be
1:00:37
complacent about what's happening in Britain but I think it's worth just pointing out the differences because there are some places where our brothers and sisters have it much worse than
1:00:43
we do but overall I'm always going to be choosing to be more optimistic than not Marin KH I think
1:00:48
that was a really great conversation jazak thank you very much for your time
1:00:56
please remember to subscribe to our social media and YouTube channels and head over to our website thinking muslim.com to sign up to my Weekly Newsletter jaak
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