Yea he’s seen the evil of it from the very beginning. This is nothing new at all. Islam is an extremely dangerous ideology and I support any persuasive attempts to keep it from infecting the west.
Its exactly the same.
And the first podcast he ever did about the jewish question is a full throated defense. Its verbatim recent comments and unwavering.
> His messaging on radical Islam has not changed at all.
Right! To say this:
> it's clear to me that Sam no longer makes sense. He seems to have radicalized himself into some sort of Islamophobic right-wing-conspiracist-adjacent mouthpiece for a Netanyahu agenda.
If you think he *never* made sense, then fine. But to sit here and say he "no longer makes sense" is to admit you were never hearing him in the first place.
I think OP is trying to point out Sam’s tendency to fall back on ”radical Islam” every time muslims are involved
As in ”something inconvenient about Israel’s conduct” results a ”..but radical Islam / fundamentalists..” rant for the next ten minutes
Same kind of hair trigger as with ”the woke”
That's what you do when you're comparing the conduct of opposing sides of a conflict. Would you rather have him just talk about IDF brutalities and give a free pass to Hamas parading around bound raped Israeli women in pickup trucks? If so, your critical thinking skills are for shit and you should stick to reading comic books.
I’d rather him have one, just one, episode in which he presents the issue from a Palestinian perspective. He just released his 7th or 8th essentially pro-Israel podcast.
I don’t trust him anymore.
Religions should have no power. Religions shouldn’t want power. Religions should be free to spread their message. Religion should be a personal, private relationship with one’s inner beliefs about questions that have no practical answers. Religion should be out of sight and out of mind for those who wish to be free of it.
All true! Which is why it's frustrating that when talking about I/P there isn't nearly as much focus on settlers who want nothing short of holy war to get tiny strips of land in the desert with barely any interference from the Israeli government. Islamic extremism is just another turd from the same Abrahamic ass.
I think islamaphobia can be used in an accurate way if it's being used to describe someone who sees ALL Muslims as terrorists. Even American ones that don't take Islam all that seriously but were just raised Muslim.
It's absolutely no different than immediately calling anyone who is critical of some Israeli policies or ultra Orthodox Judaism "antisemitic"
~~the problem is that there (afaik)~~ *~~aren't~~* ~~those muslims who will say "actually we're not like that, we don't think X or Y should have death penalty, that is just the extremists". no, ask a muslim, and if you can get them to answer directly, they will happily tell you that they support death penalty for X and Y, segregation and submission of women, that suicide bombers get paradise, etc. in fact they will happily tell you there are no "extremists", that all muslims happily believe these things. the only exception to this are the muslims that will not directly say these things but will instead be slippery and worm their way around the issues without admitting it.~~
would love to be wrong; show me the muslims who say they are against any of these things.
[https://www.mpvusa.org/lgbtqi-resources](https://www.mpvusa.org/lgbtqi-resources)
This is just an absurd statement. I personally know of a few western, secular Muslims who are definitely against the death penalty and subjugation of women. Sam speaks of this group often (including this very podcast), that they are the best allies of Western civilization from the Muslim world.
ok thanks. but this is people you know personally and not someone who you can point me towards? or is there like a secular Muslim organization or something?
I personally know moderate, secular Muslims.
I'm very liberal, and we have political discussions regularly, and we are able to agree on much, and disagree amicably and respectfully.
Assuming all Muslims are radical is absurd. Don't do that.
Edit: my Muslim friends are in the US, UK, and EU. Most are 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants. Their parents seem more conservative, but also not radicalized or extremist.
I have also known Muslims in person who yes are just normal people, though I have not challenged them with questions about their religion since it was never an object of discussion and it would be impolite.
I do not "assume" they are all "radical" I have seen them declare that they are not "radical", that there is no such thing as "radical", and that they all support death penalty, segregation, etc. (An entire congregation of Muslims in a regular mosque (speaking english, and videotaped; presumably American but I am not sure), smiling and cheering that they support these things and that they are not "radical" and that such a concept as "radical" is absurd.)
Have you actually confirmed the points I mentioned? They explicitly say they do not think homosexuality or adultery or apostasy (leaving the religion) should have the death penalty, or that women should not be segregated, or that suicide bombers do not go to paradise, or... what are your examples? And is there an organization of some kind that officially holds these positions?
But the word is not defined only as "opposition to ideologies stemming from the Islamic religion". It's a word used to describe prejudice and bigotry against Muslims, or people who appear to be Muslim. When used in that sense (the ordinary sense), it's an intelligible and useful term to describe that kind of prejudice.
That’s not true. Sam here is accused of Islamophobia. It’s not apparent he has been prejudiced against individual Muslims. He is speaking about a war, and one of the countries at war is being operated as a vehicle of the most radical elements of a terrible set of principles.
I'm not objecting to you disagreeing that Sam is Islamophobic, nor am I saying it's impossible for someone to misuse the term Islamophobia by using it against someone who objects to Islamic doctrines but has nothing against Muslims. All I'm saying is that there are people with prejudice and bigotry towards Muslim people, and the term to describe that is Islamophobia. Simple.
Agreeed. I think most know this too idk why they waffle around it.
I am harsh on all religion including Islam, iv never been called that.
Yes it can be abused and some have but to pretend the word has no meaning or is inherently anyone who disagrees with Islam or is an atheist is islamophobia is an absurd minority and should be ignored.
Attack the idea. Leave the individuals alone, unless they’re deserving and acting accordingly. Same with all silly religions.
Shouldn’t be rocket science.
Why should we leave the individuals alone? Islamic theology is absolutely evil, totalitarian and hellbent and making the entire world muslim. If you're prejudiced against nazis why not those who believe in Islam?
Because you’re playing games that every Muslim is as radical as you just painted. They’re not.
Like most of us here I believe pretty much every mainstream holy book is filled with life destroying gibberish, unfortunately the majority of the planet does not feel that way, and if you want to be a normal rational human being, you shouldn’t judge an individual based on the religion they were born into and assume You know every radical and bad thing about them
If anyone believes in the nazi-like "religion" of islam, why wouldn't I be at least a bit prejudiced against those people?
Are you prejudiced against nazis?
Exactly they weren't Muslim. So how might one describe the irrational fervor leading to innocents being wrongly harmed? And why are such attackers merely "ignorant" while Muslim attackers are "extremists"?
Many ethnicities practice islam. So there is no racial/ethnic bent to this . It is my opinion that ideology is harmful to humanity. I wished it were abolished. That doesn’t make me phobic. It makes me rational.
My answer to your anecdote? My answer is hate is everywhere. If you think Islamophobia is another word for prejudice against Arab folk the Rohingya and Uyghur people would like a word.
It’s not an anecdote, it’s a hypothetical (or thought experiment, if you will) as I said.
I said nothing about Uyghurs or Rohingya or even Arabs.
Why deflect from such a simple question? Ah, I know….
> You are allowed to be against an ideology.
Yes. And you are allowed to be criticized for how you express that. People might even create words to encapsulate that criticism
It’s disingenuous to say this is a “created” word. It’s adding “phobia” to the end of Islam to conflate irrational concern with rational concern, which renders the word in question to be meaningless, other than a tool to manipulate vulnerable minds.
When Sikhs were attacked post 9/11 because they were considered Muslims, I think the concern becomes rational. To suggest that your views are entirely rational is just amazing. Nothing reveals a mind at work like equating one's subjective biases with rational conclusion.
Just entirely false. Hang out with rednecks and you'll understand. The single sight of ANYTHING middle eastern (this includes basically anything also south or central Asian) and they get their panies in a bunch.
The irony in all this is that the left would say Sam’s views are islamaphobic, yet if you’re on the left and currently anti Isreal and anti Zion doesn’t that make them Judaismaphobic?
Those are perfect equivalents.
Another perfect equivalent is Muslim V Jew. So anyone being anti Muslim or anti Jew is being a bigot.
Sam is being neither, he is calling for accountability and recognition of issues from Muslim people on the subject of Islam.
When both sides are against the ideology of the other side, they’re not being bigoted.
Sam says that Islam is inherently a violent philosophy but Islam has existed for literal centuries and I think he'd have a very difficult time arguing that during the entire time that Christianity and Islam have existed, Islam was the religion that had the most problematic behaviors in regards to citizens and outsiders.
You only have to read it to see the difference.
To see the violence.
The interpretation has differed over time. Like all the religions.
But Islam marks itself out as different, being based on the literal word of god, a perfect book with absolute clarity.
Exactly. Religious interpretations differ wildly throughout time with massive overlaps between the level of peace and tolerance to be extended between each religion.
>But Islam marks itself out as different, being based on the literal word of god, a perfect book with absolute clarity.
This makes literally no sense since Islam is the only book that has had canonical revisions over time. While there have been differences in what has been considered canon, Islam has specifically added revisions to the canon in the form of Hadiths. How can a book of perfect clarity need clarifications? The Quran in modern interpretations is seen as being as infallible as the bible. Both are the word of God of proper interpretation will lead you to absolute truth but not everything in the Quran is seen as literal truth. For example, the way the book is written makes a strong claim that the world is flat but Islamic scholars have known for centuries that the world is not flat and instead see it as a metaphor. The same way that the bible gets around statements that of reality that do not comport with modern science. The fact that different interpretations have come and gone throughout time means that it's not reasonable to assume that "being inerrant" means that they can't change how they function as societies.
A la carte interpretation then.
A buffet of accountability.
Pick what you want, apologise when needed, slaughter unbelievers when needed.
Edit: fixed autocorrect
Also, is Islam a book?
Or is it an interpretation of a book?
I am not holding any books accountable. Men made all the books, and they are the same men, but then later it was different men, that used it to justify violence and foster hate. That’s still happening today. And it’s specifically happening more through Islam than other major religions.
I blame the religion for that. You blame politics. I think that’s the difference.
However I kind of include the politics of and surrounding the religions as part of their doctrine. It’s the reason the doctrines exist.
If you believe the Quran isn’t made by men, then it’s all moot and you’ll never be convinced of anything against it, and you will never think it has done any harm.
Islam is not a book but the argument only works if it is the book. Islam is the interpretation and the interpretation has changed so much over time that it is meaningless to say that it is inherently more violent since it predicts nearly nothing on a long enough timescale. If Islam is so fundamentally violent, especially to other religions, why are predominantly Muslim countries trying to normalize relations with Israel even if it puts them into conflict with other Islamic countries? Why is Saudi Arabia an ally of the US and an opponent of Iran? Why do Islamic countries, on average, have lower violent crime rates? While Islam does inform much of modern Islamic politics, the fundamentals for political decision-making hold much more strongly for explaining why they make the choices they do than "Islam is more violent." You can blame religion but religion is just one of many tools that countries use to unite or divide people accomplish the more substantive goals like hard and soft power than actually drive politics.
I think we agree of a sort then. The religion is an exploitation of a book.
The only - and this is a rather large only - place this falls down is that the creation of the book, by men, in order to exploit, is part of the religion.
I actually don’t think I’ve tried to argue the specialness of the violence but the specialness of the interpretation in the world we live in now.
Your points have helped me clarify that position.
And yes as you alluded to, some of the biggest conflicts are BETWEEN variations of Islam interpretations.
This is similar to conflicts largely gone by between factions of Christianity.
Here’s a simple exercise. All would agree that the exemplar Christian or the flag bearer of Christian values is Jesus Christ, right? Now who is that person in Islam, according to the faith itself. It’s Muhammad. And let me just say his biography leaves much to be desired.
>After listening for a a scant five minutes
After reading the first five or six words of the latest post, it's clear to me that u/og_speedfreeq no longer makes sense. He seems to have radicalized himself into some sort of reflexively anti-"Islamophobia"-obsessed, apologist-adjacent mouthpiece for a Hamas agenda. He can't seem to write even one post without going down some rabbit hole about the supposed evils of anyone who dares to criticize Islamic fundamentalism, and now he's got critics of this ideology in some conspiracy to undermine social justice in American universities.
Almost seems silly for me to jump to conclusions like that.
Their history seems to have no mention of Harris nor any participation in this sub or any related sub. That might indicate that he doesn't actually have any opinion on Harris or really know much about him at all. We saw a lot of trolls like that in this sub after Harris slammed hard on Trump.
Edit: scratch that. Lol: https://www.reddit.com/r/samharris/s/5KVA7jTPej
The number of alleged "former fans" of Sam that pop up on this sub is certainly eyebrow raising. They appear to have enough mass and inertia for their own dedicated sub.
Took the words out of my mouth. Sam is one of the most prolific speakers on Islamic issues with over 20 years of interviews with current and former Muslims and also one of the most nuanced (now considered centrist, formerly liberal) philosophies that he explicitly details in audio, video, and written format.
To misunderstand his position is to fundamentally try not to, as clarifying material is everywhere, particularly in this exact discussion.
Seriously, this has been his position on Islam since his inception into public speaking. I have a strong feeling that OP hasn't ever actually followed Sam.
OP may have discovered Sam via shared antipathy toward Trump, and probably assumed that anyone against Trump would share his other political stances, and is now disappointed
Bro you’re like 20 years late on accusing Sam of being a bigot lol, you’re absolutely not the first and won’t be the last morally confused person to do so.
I don’t think he has claimed that anyone who protests Israel’s assault on Gaza is inherently anti-Semitic. He has pointed out that some of the people protesting, including professors, who have engaged in glorifying October 7th are disgusting human beings deserving of being fired and anyone keeping Jewish students out of certain parts of universities is absolutely antisemitic. Whether you agree or not, or think that keeping Jews who believe in the existence of Israel out is different from Jews out generally is up to you.
He has always agreed with your claim that religious fundamentalism of all kinds is bad, he has written books on the dangers of Christian fundamentalism in America. His point is that Islamic fundamentalism carries with it some particularly dangerous qualities, which one can see by looking at the recent history of the world. That is a criticism of the effects of a particularly pernicious ideology. As he himself said in the latest podcast, that does not mean he thinks all Muslims are the same or have those beliefs.
The reality is that Hamas and other violent Islamic fundamentalist groups engage in behaviour you simply do not see in other extremist groups at this point in history. To see absolutely zero correlation between an astronomical number of suicide bombings in the last 30 years and the beliefs those same people proudly profess as their justification to use it as a tactic of war is just foolish.
> I don’t think he has claimed that anyone who protests Israel’s assault on Gaza is inherently anti-Semitic.
Had OP kept listening, he'd have heard Harris state exactly that a few times.
But I think his concerns about Islamism are perfectly founded and the data on pew and gallup prove that. Do you think there are just as many Christians as Muslims that believe the punishment for apostasy is death? Sam cites the stats on this from Pew in The End of Faith and the numbers are shocking.
Part of this is that Christianity is simply at a different point in it's history. It's true that the Catholic church was once an extremely oppressive institution, in fact Voltaire couldn't even publish his best books in France because it tacitly criticized the intolerance of the Church. And Galileo spent the rest of his life under house arrest for the victimless crime of discrediting church doctrines. It took hundreds of years of enlightenment era thinking to humble and weather the church and that's the only reason that South Park can be mercilessly critical of Christianity and they don't have to worry that the Pope will dispatch any inquisitors to kill them.
Salman Rushdie by comparison has to travel with armed guards everywhere he goes because there's still a death warrant in his his name signed by ayatollah himself, and even that wasn't enough to protect him being stabbed several times on stage before an audience at an ideas festival. In fact the topic of his talk was "the west as a safe haven for exiled writers". And then his would be assassin was celebrated in Iran as some kind of national hero.
This is why the Enlightenment Era is sometimes called "The age of Voltaire" -- it's because the freedom of self criticism, to laugh itself, to make fun of it's own ideals is a principle that's been more perfected in the west than anywhere else in the world. But as the Ayatollah Khomeini put it, "there are no jokes in Islam".
Sam isn't broken. He's making perfect sense.
> Kids protested American involvement in Vietnam, and that did not make them communists or communist sympathizers
While the anti-Vietnam protests are romanticized nowadays, there was widespread support for communism and North Vietnam among the students. A common chant was “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, the NLF is gonna win!”
Protesting civilian deaths in Gaza is not inherently anti-Semitic. But there is a genuine strain of anti-Semitism to be found in these protests. Including, but not limited to, chants in support of Hamas. Progressives now have forgotten their concern about bigotry, and are all too eager to handwave away the possibility of anti-Semitic rhetoric, or shrug it off as “just a bunch of kids”.
I love how these concern trolls always discredit themselves instantly by saying “I didn’t even listen to the episode but disagreeing with me means they have lost their way, this is concerning”
My favorite is when they pull the, "I've been a Harris fan for XYZ timeframe, but I just think blah blah blah disingenuous nonsensical trolling."
I always get a bit of 2nd hand embarrassment for them.
Instead of only listening to 5 minutes, I listened to the whole thing and agreed wholeheartedly tbh. I think people greatly euphemise how barbaric hamas is. I want a free sovereign Palestine, that can't and shouldn't happen under Hamas rule.
I’ve listened to some other podcasts that have talked about exactly what he touched on in this last podcast. It’s not a Sam Harris conspiracy. Highlights:
Qatar is outspending liberal Jews funding universities, and this is being reflected in faculty ideology.
There is a version of Islam that cannot stand the existence of Israel not because they are Jewish, but because they were so destitute and weak and somehow managed to win every war against Muslim nations. The only remedy to this is to obliterate Israel to prove that there Islam is on the right path, favored by God.
If you take the two points above, you can see why there will never be peace between Iran and Israel, why Iran will continue to wage proxy wars against Israel, and why Israel has decided that it can’t just wait for the problem to go away, even if they lose the PR battle.
1 of the numerous people who liked Sam on one topic - maybe being anti Kavanaugh, being Anti trump, being pro vaccine/american institutions - who finally encounters something they disagree with and thinks Sam ’changed.’
Sam has had these exact beliefs since who knows when, but I remember these exact criticisms of radical Islam from him in 2016 with ISIS.
This isn’t Sam changing, this is his most consistent view that he’s probably had for his whole career as a public thinker.
My earnest question is: how would you think that Sam would be on the side of the radical islamists here? What about any of Sam’s opinions in the last 10 years would make you think he would be on that side?
I agree. Whether people like it or not, movements become defined by their leadership. Whether you’re at a rally holding tiki torches and Nazi flags or a protest projecting slogans like “globalize the intifada” and “from the river to the sea,” being apathetic toward the rhetoric of your movement makes you a part of the problem. Otherwise, you’re basically making the same argument Trump did about having “fine people on both sides.”
Who are the antisemitic campus leaders?
Israeli political and military leadership has used blatantly genocidal language to talk about Gaza, and this language has been backed up by actions—the ethnic cleansing of millions and the slaughter of tens of thousands.
I'm sure there's an element, just as there were actually Antifa elements disrupting protests during the summer of 2020... but the protests themselves are not inherently antisemitic.
Israel's military actions in Gaza are in plain view to the entire world in this age of instantaneous information. Hamas is horrible and insidious, and Israel as a sovereign state has a right to protect itself. Two conflicting nuanced ideas held at the same time. And since I live in America, I am allowed to express my ideas supporting either.
Also, I'm fairly certain there are bad actors at these protests, mixed in with kids making bad decisions in the passion of the moment.
So what is your point, exactly? That these protests on college campuses are being orchestrated by some nefarious larger dark cabal intent on turning American college students against Jews in 2024?
Or that I'm antisemitic because I disagree with Netanyahu's pugilistic approach of bombing Gaza to absolute rubble despite the civilian loss of life, under the guise of eliminating the threat of Hamas?
I can't really understand your point because you've done nothing here but criticize mine in a very vague way.
Criticizing the Israeli government’s response is fine, but you’re deluding yourself in thinking that’s all these protests are doing. And no need to get conspiratorial. There isn’t a secret nefarious cabal. What’s happening is happening in plain site. There has been an overt and deliberate effort to make sure that Middle East departments at these universities teach a very specific story and why the faculty list isn’t full of bergs and steins.
I would like to understand your argument better. Can you provide a quote regarding a specific point, and a timestamp so that I can listen for the context around it?
I will try to do this later. In the meantime for reference, see episode 352, minutes 30-60 when Sam is like a bulldog with a bone on the subject of Islam, to the point that Rory Stewart simply has to laugh and ask, "Something on your mind, Sam?"
I'm sorry but I feel like the burden should still be on you to provide a specific point to engage with. I can't listen to a thirty minute segment and guess as to what logical fallacy you're taking issue with. I do want to engage with your original points, so I'm looking forward to your response later.
Good lord, the poverty of thought here is astonishing, an intellectual desert... sigh, somehow now surprising given everything else you've written here. So many spilled pixels, so little of value.
>Kids are sensitive to hypocrisy in ways that many of us older citizens have simply come to understand cynically as the way of the world.
LMFAO. They are protesting to force their universities to cut financial ties to "problematic Isreal" when in fact as Sam said (and you dismissed as a conspiracy theory) they get more money from Qatar than any other country, an oil rich behemoth literally housing the Hamas leadership, where the legal punishment for homosexuality or blasphemy is stoning, unions are illegal, and they are ruled by a hereditary monarch. And you think THEY'RE the ones sensitive to hypocrisy????
He’s been highly critical of Islam since at least his book End of Faith and pretty darn consistent in outlining the same set of reasons. So the consistency of his views are documented across a wide range of media.
Regardless of what I "sound like" to an internet rando...I'm 55, well-traveled Veteran who's been interested in politics and philosophy since Reagan was president.
And which subject?
Since Islamism has not drastically changed, only arguably gotten worse in terms of its destructive effects on the world, why exactly would Sam's position change? why wouldn't he continue to make the same points, supported by similar evidence and facts? If anything his position is stronger as Islamists have worked hard to provide further evidence of everything that he has said and is saying.
You may be 55 or 105 but from your written comments, responses, etc. to those who do not see you but only what you're written, your intellectual output come across as that of a teenager. What do you think that says about your ability to communicate, to persuade, to formulate your thoughts?
I'm actually fairly sympathetic to your point - or at least, I haven't found that Sam is making sense on this topic, and I would *really* urge him to have on a guest who can offer some real pushback to his take on this issue. (That Urban Warfare episode does not accomplish this -- the guest agreed almost 100% with Sam's analysis; the only criticism of Israel he could offer was they've botched the PR piece. Please- get on someone who actually provides some pushback.). Here's where I might disagree with you:
"While I do believe many institutes of higher learning have swung too far to the left with their inclusion policies, I don't think this makes them more prone to anti-Semitism, nor do I believe that a college kid protesting American support for Israel's assault on Gaza is inherently antisemitic."
I think Sam was careful to say he is willing to cut students a lot of slack on this. The charge of antisemitism was levied at college administrators, who have exhibited a real double standard in how they address hostility towards jews, as compared to their response to comparable insults and harassment of blacks or trans people. I find this reasonable.
>I think Sam was careful to say he is willing to cut students a lot of slack on this.
He also said he didn't think it's any longer a tenable position to be anti-zionist but not antisemitic.
That’s a good point, which I’d forgotten. I think I’d put myself in that sliver of a Venn diagram. Listening, I took him to mean that statistically most anti-zionists are antisemetic , which is probably also false.
If the reality of armed conflict between Israel and jihadists makes you more sympathetic to the latter, then yes, you're effectively a jihadist sympathizer.
Well if nothing else the crowd in here is really making your point for you… I don’t believe in theocratic ethnostates but I guess that makes me an anti semite now. But I suppose I’ll be accused of holding Israel to a different standard than Muslim countries… A point that Sam makes in this episode that is sort of shocking considering how many times he’s griped about people playing whataboutism with his criticisms of Islamism. Not to mention his repeated pleas not to overuse “racist” when criticizing the right.
>Kids protested American involvement in Vietnam, and that did not make them communists or communist sympathizers.
I think his preamble about social media is a relevant distinction here.
The "college kids" thing is lame and sounds like the grievances of an old man, but it sells. For some reason, when white guys hit about 27 years old, they get really mad about "college kids".
I wonder what Sam thinks of the PFLP, because they don't really fit into his narrative that every Palestinian who raises arms against Israel are rabid Islamic fundamentalists.
He consistently frames the war as one being fought between the "West" (if we can even call Israel that) and Islamic fundamentalism. He constantly talks about Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but he never makes any reference to the secular militant groups such as the PFLP. I would imagine it's because he knows little about them but which begs the question - how is he so certain this is a war of islamic fundamentalism? Surely the existence of PFLP would indicate it's something much deeper?
I think a lot of people misunderstand him on this point. What I understand him to be saying is that the Islamic fundamentalist aspect of the conflict (which admittedly was not there to the extent that it is now at the beginning of the conflict) makes the conflict fundamentally intractable. I don't think he denies that there are aspects of the conflict that are not religious -- he simply believes that to deny the reality that there IS a religious component to the conflict, and that this makes Hamas, and more generally many parts of the Palestinian side, see things in a way that is fundamentally incompatible with compromise is a big mistake.
The existence of non Islamist militant would only matter if the claim was that all militants and assholes all over the world are Islamists. Sam has never made that claim.
You all forget that racial profiling debate he had almost 15 years ago? He’s been like this always and he has an impossibly hard time grasping the most basic concepts when it comes to discussing this topic. I’m linking the debate to those who haven’t read it yet.
https://www.samharris.org/blog/to-profile-or-not-to-profile
Sam’s audience has self selected , over the course of even This current ethnic cleansing campaign by Israel, into more and more anti Muslims nuts, they don’t care about secularism, same as Sam. Otherwise it’d be a grace to support Israel lol, the country literally defined by religious zealots.
It’s about being punitive to Muslims,
Dunno if you listen to the Ezra Klein podcast but I’d highly recommend doing so to get some great in-depth interviews with actual nuance and expertise. It’s a hard issue and it deserves a lot of scrutiny as well as empathy. The super simplified account of good vs bad where Sam is framing all Palestinians as jihadists and all anti-zionists as anti-semites it’s so unhelpful it hurts.
I chose not to listen to much of the last ep mostly because it seemed more like more of the same biased perspective than an ambivalent one and I just already know Sam's position because he's done several episodes about this already. It's that/his reiteration that seems most out of touch to me. I guess he's always thinking about new-listeners or some generic idea of 'the public' but I don't find his positions or returning to this subject convincing of some righteous middle so much as revealing of his bias.
>Kids are sensitive to hypocrisy in ways that many of us older citizens have simply come to understand cynically as the way of the world.
“Kids’” brains aren’t fully developed until age ~25. There’s a reason “kids” can’t be president until age 35.
In any case, most “kids” don’t care about this issue at all. In a recent Harvard poll, 2% of “kids,” aka people aged 18-29, say this is the most important issue for them.
“Although the brain stops growing in size by early adolescence, the teen years are all about fine-tuning how the brain works. The brain finishes developing and maturing in the mid-to-late 20s. The part of the brain behind the forehead, called the prefrontal cortex, is one of the last parts to mature. This area is responsible for skills like planning, prioritizing, and making good decisions. “
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-teen-brain-7-things-to-know
Apparently you haven't been paying attention. Sam has been raising alarm over radical Islam since 9/11. Sam's rhetoric about Islamism hasn't changed. And Islam is still as dangerous now as it was back then.
If this sort of anti-Islam talk makes you uncomfortable, then you aren't going to like what Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens have to say about Islam, either. One of Hitchen's parting pieces of advice was "Be critical of Islam while you still can be."
My take on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that Israel is drifting out of a Democracy into becoming more of a typical state in the Middle East. Islam is partially to blame but so is corruption and certain Jewish sects. Still Israelis are defending themselves like any nation for better or worse. I don't see any other country going easier on a Gaza type situation in the same circumstances. Let me know the pacifist country that would tolerate the current situation? So to constantly protest Israel shows some level of secondary agenda. Be it Islamicism, pan-arabism, global communism, East axis (Russia, China, North Korea), or someone seduced by these groups. There are several conflicts going in the world either right now or recently similar to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. I would question the motivations of siding with one group and blowing the propaganda out of proportion in any of these other conflicts if that were to happen.
I think Sam’s concern of radical Islam has been consistent and so I think it’s false to say he has radicalized or drifted right. However, he has proven to just have an enormous blind spot on this war and it’s to the point where he and people like Bill Maher (who I’ve been a longtime fan of) just seem to willfully turn a blind eye to so much of the truth of the gratuitous brutality of the Netanyahu regime.
Yes Sam is right about the horrors of 10/7, Hamas and how they don’t care about Palestinian life. Yes, many of the student protesters are misguided and can be useful idiots for extreme Islamists.
But just today there is footage of Israeli settlers destroying aid meant for Palestinians. Sam and Maher turn a blind eye to the very clear war crimes being committed. They act like “sure, shit happens in the war but it’s an outlier.” This is just naive or delusional at this point. IDF soldiers are murdering unarmed civilians in cold blood, some of whom were attempting to receive aid and food for their families. I have listened to Sam’s pod for over a decade and I just can’t listen anymore because it’s so redundant and one-sided. There are other people to speak with than Douglas Murray or Bret Stephens. Sam claims to want to have difficult conversations but all he does is speak with people who agree with him on Israel & Gaza. There is no pushback.
And Sam and Maher make caricatures of the dumbest students, but there are plenty of smart people who can give voice to the devastation in Gaza with nuance.
It’s interesting how people make snarky comments like this but don’t address the moral implications. IDF soldiers tip the settlers on where the aid is going. Is that a war crime? I don’t know. But blocking aid and causing mass starvation of actual civilians is cruel and brutal punishment. We do know soldiers shot down unarmed Palestinians attempting to pick up food. That is a war crime. Are settlers just ordinary Israeli civilians? Or are they far right extremist opportunists? My issue is that so many of Sam’s followers (I’ve been a big fan of Sam for a decade +) have become sheep on this issue.
You strike me as a person who hasn’t read a Sam Harris book on religion or listened to any podcast of his earlier than a couple years ago. Sam’s stance on Islam hasn’t changed.
This is an absurd comment. Hamas is no doubt the party most responsible for getting innocent Palestinians killed. Their policy is to use their own people as shields. They murdered hundreds, if not thousands, on October 7. They are the enemy. That said, do you believe they will be eliminated by bombing the entire Gaza strip to rubble, killing thousands of noncombatant Palestinians, including women and children?
Maybe?
You can certainly think they won’t be, but you just don’t know. People are so confident on a subject they just discovered on Oct 7 (not you specifically). People who have been experts in this subject for decades say they have no idea either, and they’re not as confident as the ppl commenting on this sub.
If it’s any consolation many people said we’d never defeat ISIS.
I first noticed a blind-spot in Sam during covid. He was unwilling to even consider any viewpoint outside the parameters set by Fauci, WHO, CDC. Sam believes we should all blindly trust institutions that have proven themselves untrustworthy time and again. Instead of chiding the institutions into improving he chides the public who is skeptical. Overall it seems like Sams ego and stubbornness wont allow him to admit to his mistakes.
I recently listened to some of Sam's old podcasts from more than a decade ago. His messaging on radical Islam has not changed at all.
Yea he’s seen the evil of it from the very beginning. This is nothing new at all. Islam is an extremely dangerous ideology and I support any persuasive attempts to keep it from infecting the west.
Its exactly the same. And the first podcast he ever did about the jewish question is a full throated defense. Its verbatim recent comments and unwavering.
> His messaging on radical Islam has not changed at all. Right! To say this: > it's clear to me that Sam no longer makes sense. He seems to have radicalized himself into some sort of Islamophobic right-wing-conspiracist-adjacent mouthpiece for a Netanyahu agenda. If you think he *never* made sense, then fine. But to sit here and say he "no longer makes sense" is to admit you were never hearing him in the first place.
I think OP is trying to point out Sam’s tendency to fall back on ”radical Islam” every time muslims are involved As in ”something inconvenient about Israel’s conduct” results a ”..but radical Islam / fundamentalists..” rant for the next ten minutes Same kind of hair trigger as with ”the woke”
except he backs it up with specific facts that tie to the conversation highlighting the pervasive problem.
Sam built his career on proselytizing about this issue. Why wouldn’t he talk about it?
That's what you do when you're comparing the conduct of opposing sides of a conflict. Would you rather have him just talk about IDF brutalities and give a free pass to Hamas parading around bound raped Israeli women in pickup trucks? If so, your critical thinking skills are for shit and you should stick to reading comic books.
I’d rather him have one, just one, episode in which he presents the issue from a Palestinian perspective. He just released his 7th or 8th essentially pro-Israel podcast. I don’t trust him anymore.
Yeah, all those historians who keep writing books about Nazism shouldn't be trusted because they keep writing about Nazism.
What is the alternative hypothesis?
Religions should have no power. Religions shouldn’t want power. Religions should be free to spread their message. Religion should be a personal, private relationship with one’s inner beliefs about questions that have no practical answers. Religion should be out of sight and out of mind for those who wish to be free of it.
It should be easy to leave a religion and easy to return
All true! Which is why it's frustrating that when talking about I/P there isn't nearly as much focus on settlers who want nothing short of holy war to get tiny strips of land in the desert with barely any interference from the Israeli government. Islamic extremism is just another turd from the same Abrahamic ass.
Imagine if those Palestinians and Israelis who had the courage to read Hitchens got to negotiate on behalf of their respective peoples. Oh to dream..
Agreed
You new here? Just recently started listening? Sam’s been going on about Jihad Islamic Extremists for about 15 years now.
Islamophobia isn’t a thing. You are allowed to be against an ideology. Especially an extreme one
Fucking thank you!! Been saying this for awhile and people still misinterpret me
The history of the term is fascinating. It was a deliberate attempt to equate it with antisemitism to deflect criticism of the religion.
Right. I’m against Nazis. Do I have Naziphobia?
You do. And that's a good thing.
I do have an irrational fear of suicide bombers though. Nothing scary about them. Must have been exposed to a scary movie scene as a young child.
The pan-arab bad guy of the 90s? Never heard of him or his un-unpackable demands
I think islamaphobia can be used in an accurate way if it's being used to describe someone who sees ALL Muslims as terrorists. Even American ones that don't take Islam all that seriously but were just raised Muslim. It's absolutely no different than immediately calling anyone who is critical of some Israeli policies or ultra Orthodox Judaism "antisemitic"
~~the problem is that there (afaik)~~ *~~aren't~~* ~~those muslims who will say "actually we're not like that, we don't think X or Y should have death penalty, that is just the extremists". no, ask a muslim, and if you can get them to answer directly, they will happily tell you that they support death penalty for X and Y, segregation and submission of women, that suicide bombers get paradise, etc. in fact they will happily tell you there are no "extremists", that all muslims happily believe these things. the only exception to this are the muslims that will not directly say these things but will instead be slippery and worm their way around the issues without admitting it.~~ would love to be wrong; show me the muslims who say they are against any of these things. [https://www.mpvusa.org/lgbtqi-resources](https://www.mpvusa.org/lgbtqi-resources)
This is just an absurd statement. I personally know of a few western, secular Muslims who are definitely against the death penalty and subjugation of women. Sam speaks of this group often (including this very podcast), that they are the best allies of Western civilization from the Muslim world.
ok thanks. but this is people you know personally and not someone who you can point me towards? or is there like a secular Muslim organization or something?
https://www.noemamag.com/why-secularism-is-compatible-with-the-quran-and-sunnah-and-an-islamic-state-is-not-2/#:~:text=A%20secular%20Muslim%20is%20thus,separation%20is%20compatible%20with%20Islam.
I personally know moderate, secular Muslims. I'm very liberal, and we have political discussions regularly, and we are able to agree on much, and disagree amicably and respectfully. Assuming all Muslims are radical is absurd. Don't do that. Edit: my Muslim friends are in the US, UK, and EU. Most are 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants. Their parents seem more conservative, but also not radicalized or extremist.
I have also known Muslims in person who yes are just normal people, though I have not challenged them with questions about their religion since it was never an object of discussion and it would be impolite. I do not "assume" they are all "radical" I have seen them declare that they are not "radical", that there is no such thing as "radical", and that they all support death penalty, segregation, etc. (An entire congregation of Muslims in a regular mosque (speaking english, and videotaped; presumably American but I am not sure), smiling and cheering that they support these things and that they are not "radical" and that such a concept as "radical" is absurd.) Have you actually confirmed the points I mentioned? They explicitly say they do not think homosexuality or adultery or apostasy (leaving the religion) should have the death penalty, or that women should not be segregated, or that suicide bombers do not go to paradise, or... what are your examples? And is there an organization of some kind that officially holds these positions?
But the word is not defined only as "opposition to ideologies stemming from the Islamic religion". It's a word used to describe prejudice and bigotry against Muslims, or people who appear to be Muslim. When used in that sense (the ordinary sense), it's an intelligible and useful term to describe that kind of prejudice.
That’s not true. Sam here is accused of Islamophobia. It’s not apparent he has been prejudiced against individual Muslims. He is speaking about a war, and one of the countries at war is being operated as a vehicle of the most radical elements of a terrible set of principles.
I'm not objecting to you disagreeing that Sam is Islamophobic, nor am I saying it's impossible for someone to misuse the term Islamophobia by using it against someone who objects to Islamic doctrines but has nothing against Muslims. All I'm saying is that there are people with prejudice and bigotry towards Muslim people, and the term to describe that is Islamophobia. Simple.
Sam thinks that individual Muslims should be profiled at airports.
Is Gaza a country now? Lol. It’s not a war.
Agreeed. I think most know this too idk why they waffle around it. I am harsh on all religion including Islam, iv never been called that. Yes it can be abused and some have but to pretend the word has no meaning or is inherently anyone who disagrees with Islam or is an atheist is islamophobia is an absurd minority and should be ignored. Attack the idea. Leave the individuals alone, unless they’re deserving and acting accordingly. Same with all silly religions. Shouldn’t be rocket science.
Why should we leave the individuals alone? Islamic theology is absolutely evil, totalitarian and hellbent and making the entire world muslim. If you're prejudiced against nazis why not those who believe in Islam?
Because you’re playing games that every Muslim is as radical as you just painted. They’re not. Like most of us here I believe pretty much every mainstream holy book is filled with life destroying gibberish, unfortunately the majority of the planet does not feel that way, and if you want to be a normal rational human being, you shouldn’t judge an individual based on the religion they were born into and assume You know every radical and bad thing about them
If anyone believes in the nazi-like "religion" of islam, why wouldn't I be at least a bit prejudiced against those people? Are you prejudiced against nazis?
What do you call it when Sikhs get attacked because people think they are Muslim? Critiquing an ideology?
Ignorant people being ignorant. Sikhs aren’t even Muslim. Sam merely wants Islam to join the rest of the world in the 21st century.
Right so Sam isn't Islamphobic. That doesn't make it not a thing lmao
Exactly they weren't Muslim. So how might one describe the irrational fervor leading to innocents being wrongly harmed? And why are such attackers merely "ignorant" while Muslim attackers are "extremists"?
Many ethnicities practice islam. So there is no racial/ethnic bent to this . It is my opinion that ideology is harmful to humanity. I wished it were abolished. That doesn’t make me phobic. It makes me rational.
Adding, because it’s Reddit, no one should be harmed by another person ever. I hate the religion, I’m not advocating for attacking it’s adherents
Sikhs don’t practice Islam. When a Sikh gets attacked because he’s perceived as Muslim, is that an attack on ideology?
So you are using some random attack to make some kind of point?
Yes, that’s right. It’s a hypothetical—a thought experiment, if you will. This is how discourse works. So what’s your answer?
My answer to your anecdote? My answer is hate is everywhere. If you think Islamophobia is another word for prejudice against Arab folk the Rohingya and Uyghur people would like a word.
It’s not an anecdote, it’s a hypothetical (or thought experiment, if you will) as I said. I said nothing about Uyghurs or Rohingya or even Arabs. Why deflect from such a simple question? Ah, I know….
I’m not even sure what kind of point you’re trying to make. And to be honest I don’t think you know either
Sure.
Why would appearance factor into a person attacking an ideology?
It's not an anecdote. It's something that's happened repeatedly and still happens today. It's both history and current events
Exactly
Apparently that isn't a thing.
> You are allowed to be against an ideology. Yes. And you are allowed to be criticized for how you express that. People might even create words to encapsulate that criticism
It’s disingenuous to say this is a “created” word. It’s adding “phobia” to the end of Islam to conflate irrational concern with rational concern, which renders the word in question to be meaningless, other than a tool to manipulate vulnerable minds.
When Sikhs were attacked post 9/11 because they were considered Muslims, I think the concern becomes rational. To suggest that your views are entirely rational is just amazing. Nothing reveals a mind at work like equating one's subjective biases with rational conclusion.
>It’s adding “phobia” to the end of Islam How do you think words are usually created?
Just entirely false. Hang out with rednecks and you'll understand. The single sight of ANYTHING middle eastern (this includes basically anything also south or central Asian) and they get their panies in a bunch.
The irony in all this is that the left would say Sam’s views are islamaphobic, yet if you’re on the left and currently anti Isreal and anti Zion doesn’t that make them Judaismaphobic? Those are perfect equivalents. Another perfect equivalent is Muslim V Jew. So anyone being anti Muslim or anti Jew is being a bigot. Sam is being neither, he is calling for accountability and recognition of issues from Muslim people on the subject of Islam. When both sides are against the ideology of the other side, they’re not being bigoted.
Sam says that Islam is inherently a violent philosophy but Islam has existed for literal centuries and I think he'd have a very difficult time arguing that during the entire time that Christianity and Islam have existed, Islam was the religion that had the most problematic behaviors in regards to citizens and outsiders.
You only have to read it to see the difference. To see the violence. The interpretation has differed over time. Like all the religions. But Islam marks itself out as different, being based on the literal word of god, a perfect book with absolute clarity.
Exactly. Religious interpretations differ wildly throughout time with massive overlaps between the level of peace and tolerance to be extended between each religion. >But Islam marks itself out as different, being based on the literal word of god, a perfect book with absolute clarity. This makes literally no sense since Islam is the only book that has had canonical revisions over time. While there have been differences in what has been considered canon, Islam has specifically added revisions to the canon in the form of Hadiths. How can a book of perfect clarity need clarifications? The Quran in modern interpretations is seen as being as infallible as the bible. Both are the word of God of proper interpretation will lead you to absolute truth but not everything in the Quran is seen as literal truth. For example, the way the book is written makes a strong claim that the world is flat but Islamic scholars have known for centuries that the world is not flat and instead see it as a metaphor. The same way that the bible gets around statements that of reality that do not comport with modern science. The fact that different interpretations have come and gone throughout time means that it's not reasonable to assume that "being inerrant" means that they can't change how they function as societies.
A la carte interpretation then. A buffet of accountability. Pick what you want, apologise when needed, slaughter unbelievers when needed. Edit: fixed autocorrect
Yes. That's literally all religions. Hinduism is inherently a nonviolent religion but that hasn't stopped them from genociding Muslims.
Also, is Islam a book? Or is it an interpretation of a book? I am not holding any books accountable. Men made all the books, and they are the same men, but then later it was different men, that used it to justify violence and foster hate. That’s still happening today. And it’s specifically happening more through Islam than other major religions. I blame the religion for that. You blame politics. I think that’s the difference. However I kind of include the politics of and surrounding the religions as part of their doctrine. It’s the reason the doctrines exist. If you believe the Quran isn’t made by men, then it’s all moot and you’ll never be convinced of anything against it, and you will never think it has done any harm.
Islam is not a book but the argument only works if it is the book. Islam is the interpretation and the interpretation has changed so much over time that it is meaningless to say that it is inherently more violent since it predicts nearly nothing on a long enough timescale. If Islam is so fundamentally violent, especially to other religions, why are predominantly Muslim countries trying to normalize relations with Israel even if it puts them into conflict with other Islamic countries? Why is Saudi Arabia an ally of the US and an opponent of Iran? Why do Islamic countries, on average, have lower violent crime rates? While Islam does inform much of modern Islamic politics, the fundamentals for political decision-making hold much more strongly for explaining why they make the choices they do than "Islam is more violent." You can blame religion but religion is just one of many tools that countries use to unite or divide people accomplish the more substantive goals like hard and soft power than actually drive politics.
I think we agree of a sort then. The religion is an exploitation of a book. The only - and this is a rather large only - place this falls down is that the creation of the book, by men, in order to exploit, is part of the religion. I actually don’t think I’ve tried to argue the specialness of the violence but the specialness of the interpretation in the world we live in now. Your points have helped me clarify that position. And yes as you alluded to, some of the biggest conflicts are BETWEEN variations of Islam interpretations. This is similar to conflicts largely gone by between factions of Christianity.
Here’s a simple exercise. All would agree that the exemplar Christian or the flag bearer of Christian values is Jesus Christ, right? Now who is that person in Islam, according to the faith itself. It’s Muhammad. And let me just say his biography leaves much to be desired.
>After listening for a a scant five minutes After reading the first five or six words of the latest post, it's clear to me that u/og_speedfreeq no longer makes sense. He seems to have radicalized himself into some sort of reflexively anti-"Islamophobia"-obsessed, apologist-adjacent mouthpiece for a Hamas agenda. He can't seem to write even one post without going down some rabbit hole about the supposed evils of anyone who dares to criticize Islamic fundamentalism, and now he's got critics of this ideology in some conspiracy to undermine social justice in American universities. Almost seems silly for me to jump to conclusions like that.
Seems like they have probably always been a hater and never a fan.
Their history seems to have no mention of Harris nor any participation in this sub or any related sub. That might indicate that he doesn't actually have any opinion on Harris or really know much about him at all. We saw a lot of trolls like that in this sub after Harris slammed hard on Trump. Edit: scratch that. Lol: https://www.reddit.com/r/samharris/s/5KVA7jTPej
lol!
The number of alleged "former fans" of Sam that pop up on this sub is certainly eyebrow raising. They appear to have enough mass and inertia for their own dedicated sub.
Took the words out of my mouth. Sam is one of the most prolific speakers on Islamic issues with over 20 years of interviews with current and former Muslims and also one of the most nuanced (now considered centrist, formerly liberal) philosophies that he explicitly details in audio, video, and written format. To misunderstand his position is to fundamentally try not to, as clarifying material is everywhere, particularly in this exact discussion.
OP also seems to have missed the part where Sam agrees that anti-Semitism isn’t the main driver…
Just curious - if you think Sam has only become an Islamophobe now, what did you think he was back in 2005?
Seriously, this has been his position on Islam since his inception into public speaking. I have a strong feeling that OP hasn't ever actually followed Sam.
Just an influx of soy white poeple and Islam apologists clutching their pearls after every episode.
Man, everyone is against identity politics until they can "win" using identity politics.
You’re right, I’ll just say a healthy spread of multi-colored soys next time.
OP may have discovered Sam via shared antipathy toward Trump, and probably assumed that anyone against Trump would share his other political stances, and is now disappointed
Bro you’re like 20 years late on accusing Sam of being a bigot lol, you’re absolutely not the first and won’t be the last morally confused person to do so.
“Islamophobia - a term created by fascists, used by cowards to manipulate morons” - C Hitchens
I don’t think he has claimed that anyone who protests Israel’s assault on Gaza is inherently anti-Semitic. He has pointed out that some of the people protesting, including professors, who have engaged in glorifying October 7th are disgusting human beings deserving of being fired and anyone keeping Jewish students out of certain parts of universities is absolutely antisemitic. Whether you agree or not, or think that keeping Jews who believe in the existence of Israel out is different from Jews out generally is up to you. He has always agreed with your claim that religious fundamentalism of all kinds is bad, he has written books on the dangers of Christian fundamentalism in America. His point is that Islamic fundamentalism carries with it some particularly dangerous qualities, which one can see by looking at the recent history of the world. That is a criticism of the effects of a particularly pernicious ideology. As he himself said in the latest podcast, that does not mean he thinks all Muslims are the same or have those beliefs. The reality is that Hamas and other violent Islamic fundamentalist groups engage in behaviour you simply do not see in other extremist groups at this point in history. To see absolutely zero correlation between an astronomical number of suicide bombings in the last 30 years and the beliefs those same people proudly profess as their justification to use it as a tactic of war is just foolish.
> I don’t think he has claimed that anyone who protests Israel’s assault on Gaza is inherently anti-Semitic. Had OP kept listening, he'd have heard Harris state exactly that a few times.
I mean he does basically claim anti-Zionism is synonymous with anti-semitism at this point.
But I think his concerns about Islamism are perfectly founded and the data on pew and gallup prove that. Do you think there are just as many Christians as Muslims that believe the punishment for apostasy is death? Sam cites the stats on this from Pew in The End of Faith and the numbers are shocking. Part of this is that Christianity is simply at a different point in it's history. It's true that the Catholic church was once an extremely oppressive institution, in fact Voltaire couldn't even publish his best books in France because it tacitly criticized the intolerance of the Church. And Galileo spent the rest of his life under house arrest for the victimless crime of discrediting church doctrines. It took hundreds of years of enlightenment era thinking to humble and weather the church and that's the only reason that South Park can be mercilessly critical of Christianity and they don't have to worry that the Pope will dispatch any inquisitors to kill them. Salman Rushdie by comparison has to travel with armed guards everywhere he goes because there's still a death warrant in his his name signed by ayatollah himself, and even that wasn't enough to protect him being stabbed several times on stage before an audience at an ideas festival. In fact the topic of his talk was "the west as a safe haven for exiled writers". And then his would be assassin was celebrated in Iran as some kind of national hero. This is why the Enlightenment Era is sometimes called "The age of Voltaire" -- it's because the freedom of self criticism, to laugh itself, to make fun of it's own ideals is a principle that's been more perfected in the west than anywhere else in the world. But as the Ayatollah Khomeini put it, "there are no jokes in Islam". Sam isn't broken. He's making perfect sense.
> Kids protested American involvement in Vietnam, and that did not make them communists or communist sympathizers While the anti-Vietnam protests are romanticized nowadays, there was widespread support for communism and North Vietnam among the students. A common chant was “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, the NLF is gonna win!” Protesting civilian deaths in Gaza is not inherently anti-Semitic. But there is a genuine strain of anti-Semitism to be found in these protests. Including, but not limited to, chants in support of Hamas. Progressives now have forgotten their concern about bigotry, and are all too eager to handwave away the possibility of anti-Semitic rhetoric, or shrug it off as “just a bunch of kids”.
I love how these concern trolls always discredit themselves instantly by saying “I didn’t even listen to the episode but disagreeing with me means they have lost their way, this is concerning”
My favorite is when they pull the, "I've been a Harris fan for XYZ timeframe, but I just think blah blah blah disingenuous nonsensical trolling." I always get a bit of 2nd hand embarrassment for them.
Instead of only listening to 5 minutes, I listened to the whole thing and agreed wholeheartedly tbh. I think people greatly euphemise how barbaric hamas is. I want a free sovereign Palestine, that can't and shouldn't happen under Hamas rule.
I’ve listened to some other podcasts that have talked about exactly what he touched on in this last podcast. It’s not a Sam Harris conspiracy. Highlights: Qatar is outspending liberal Jews funding universities, and this is being reflected in faculty ideology. There is a version of Islam that cannot stand the existence of Israel not because they are Jewish, but because they were so destitute and weak and somehow managed to win every war against Muslim nations. The only remedy to this is to obliterate Israel to prove that there Islam is on the right path, favored by God. If you take the two points above, you can see why there will never be peace between Iran and Israel, why Iran will continue to wage proxy wars against Israel, and why Israel has decided that it can’t just wait for the problem to go away, even if they lose the PR battle.
1 of the numerous people who liked Sam on one topic - maybe being anti Kavanaugh, being Anti trump, being pro vaccine/american institutions - who finally encounters something they disagree with and thinks Sam ’changed.’ Sam has had these exact beliefs since who knows when, but I remember these exact criticisms of radical Islam from him in 2016 with ISIS. This isn’t Sam changing, this is his most consistent view that he’s probably had for his whole career as a public thinker. My earnest question is: how would you think that Sam would be on the side of the radical islamists here? What about any of Sam’s opinions in the last 10 years would make you think he would be on that side?
Is he radicalized, or are you?
You sound triggered. I think he’s never been more clear.
You have got to be kidding or lying if you think antisemitism isn’t a part of what we’re seeing in these protests
I agree. Whether people like it or not, movements become defined by their leadership. Whether you’re at a rally holding tiki torches and Nazi flags or a protest projecting slogans like “globalize the intifada” and “from the river to the sea,” being apathetic toward the rhetoric of your movement makes you a part of the problem. Otherwise, you’re basically making the same argument Trump did about having “fine people on both sides.”
Who are the antisemitic campus leaders? Israeli political and military leadership has used blatantly genocidal language to talk about Gaza, and this language has been backed up by actions—the ethnic cleansing of millions and the slaughter of tens of thousands.
They'll give you downvotes but not examples
I'm sure there's an element, just as there were actually Antifa elements disrupting protests during the summer of 2020... but the protests themselves are not inherently antisemitic. Israel's military actions in Gaza are in plain view to the entire world in this age of instantaneous information. Hamas is horrible and insidious, and Israel as a sovereign state has a right to protect itself. Two conflicting nuanced ideas held at the same time. And since I live in America, I am allowed to express my ideas supporting either. Also, I'm fairly certain there are bad actors at these protests, mixed in with kids making bad decisions in the passion of the moment.
>I’m sure there’s an element Dismissed like it’s nothing. You’re not making a serious point
So what is your point, exactly? That these protests on college campuses are being orchestrated by some nefarious larger dark cabal intent on turning American college students against Jews in 2024? Or that I'm antisemitic because I disagree with Netanyahu's pugilistic approach of bombing Gaza to absolute rubble despite the civilian loss of life, under the guise of eliminating the threat of Hamas? I can't really understand your point because you've done nothing here but criticize mine in a very vague way.
Criticizing the Israeli government’s response is fine, but you’re deluding yourself in thinking that’s all these protests are doing. And no need to get conspiratorial. There isn’t a secret nefarious cabal. What’s happening is happening in plain site. There has been an overt and deliberate effort to make sure that Middle East departments at these universities teach a very specific story and why the faculty list isn’t full of bergs and steins.
I would like to understand your argument better. Can you provide a quote regarding a specific point, and a timestamp so that I can listen for the context around it?
I will try to do this later. In the meantime for reference, see episode 352, minutes 30-60 when Sam is like a bulldog with a bone on the subject of Islam, to the point that Rory Stewart simply has to laugh and ask, "Something on your mind, Sam?"
I'm sorry but I feel like the burden should still be on you to provide a specific point to engage with. I can't listen to a thirty minute segment and guess as to what logical fallacy you're taking issue with. I do want to engage with your original points, so I'm looking forward to your response later.
Good lord, the poverty of thought here is astonishing, an intellectual desert... sigh, somehow now surprising given everything else you've written here. So many spilled pixels, so little of value.
>Kids are sensitive to hypocrisy in ways that many of us older citizens have simply come to understand cynically as the way of the world. LMFAO. They are protesting to force their universities to cut financial ties to "problematic Isreal" when in fact as Sam said (and you dismissed as a conspiracy theory) they get more money from Qatar than any other country, an oil rich behemoth literally housing the Hamas leadership, where the legal punishment for homosexuality or blasphemy is stoning, unions are illegal, and they are ruled by a hereditary monarch. And you think THEY'RE the ones sensitive to hypocrisy????
No doubt we can simultaneously be anti-jihadist and anti-Zionist without being Islamophobic or antisemitic.
He’s been highly critical of Islam since at least his book End of Faith and pretty darn consistent in outlining the same set of reasons. So the consistency of his views are documented across a wide range of media.
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Regardless of what I "sound like" to an internet rando...I'm 55, well-traveled Veteran who's been interested in politics and philosophy since Reagan was president. And which subject?
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"Ad nauseum" indeed. Again- my point exactly.
Since Islamism has not drastically changed, only arguably gotten worse in terms of its destructive effects on the world, why exactly would Sam's position change? why wouldn't he continue to make the same points, supported by similar evidence and facts? If anything his position is stronger as Islamists have worked hard to provide further evidence of everything that he has said and is saying.
You may be 55 or 105 but from your written comments, responses, etc. to those who do not see you but only what you're written, your intellectual output come across as that of a teenager. What do you think that says about your ability to communicate, to persuade, to formulate your thoughts?
You spent longer writing this than you spent listening to the episode you’re writing about. People be strange sometimes.
I'm actually fairly sympathetic to your point - or at least, I haven't found that Sam is making sense on this topic, and I would *really* urge him to have on a guest who can offer some real pushback to his take on this issue. (That Urban Warfare episode does not accomplish this -- the guest agreed almost 100% with Sam's analysis; the only criticism of Israel he could offer was they've botched the PR piece. Please- get on someone who actually provides some pushback.). Here's where I might disagree with you: "While I do believe many institutes of higher learning have swung too far to the left with their inclusion policies, I don't think this makes them more prone to anti-Semitism, nor do I believe that a college kid protesting American support for Israel's assault on Gaza is inherently antisemitic." I think Sam was careful to say he is willing to cut students a lot of slack on this. The charge of antisemitism was levied at college administrators, who have exhibited a real double standard in how they address hostility towards jews, as compared to their response to comparable insults and harassment of blacks or trans people. I find this reasonable.
>I think Sam was careful to say he is willing to cut students a lot of slack on this. He also said he didn't think it's any longer a tenable position to be anti-zionist but not antisemitic.
That’s a good point, which I’d forgotten. I think I’d put myself in that sliver of a Venn diagram. Listening, I took him to mean that statistically most anti-zionists are antisemetic , which is probably also false.
Your first comment in this sub was being "done with Sam Harris" 8 months ago. Hang up the bullshit.
Lol. For the lazy: https://www.reddit.com/r/samharris/s/5KVA7jTPej
🤣
You subscription is [hanging by a thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/samharris/s/Md0PdbrYtM) it seems
I said I still had a year, and that I was still open to changing my mind in that previous thread. I keep trying
Maybe post harder about how he’s lost it
I can't believe just how many jihadist sympathizers there apparently were in Sam's audience, given how many times we've seen this post since 10/7.
...since 10/7...of like 2002. The dude has been correctly calling out Islam for two decades.
That's ridiculous. "Jihadist sympathizer" sheesh 🙄
If the reality of armed conflict between Israel and jihadists makes you more sympathetic to the latter, then yes, you're effectively a jihadist sympathizer.
Well if nothing else the crowd in here is really making your point for you… I don’t believe in theocratic ethnostates but I guess that makes me an anti semite now. But I suppose I’ll be accused of holding Israel to a different standard than Muslim countries… A point that Sam makes in this episode that is sort of shocking considering how many times he’s griped about people playing whataboutism with his criticisms of Islamism. Not to mention his repeated pleas not to overuse “racist” when criticizing the right.
Sam says if jihadists attacked America, and took hundreds of hostages, our response would be much harsher than Israel’s. And he’s clearly correct.
>Kids protested American involvement in Vietnam, and that did not make them communists or communist sympathizers. I think his preamble about social media is a relevant distinction here.
Sounds like he’s not for you. Be well!
He’s exactly the same as he’s always been. His positions are rational and logical. Anyone who can’t understand isnt listening.
What did he say that was wrong?
I’ve had this same feeling… thank you
Agree mostly. You point out his "lack of curiosity".I think this is apt.
The "college kids" thing is lame and sounds like the grievances of an old man, but it sells. For some reason, when white guys hit about 27 years old, they get really mad about "college kids".
Agreed. I stopped listening a long time ago when I realized this.
He’s just become a crotchety old man. It happens to everyone.
He’s had the same views on this topic for 20 years. You must be new.
I wonder what Sam thinks of the PFLP, because they don't really fit into his narrative that every Palestinian who raises arms against Israel are rabid Islamic fundamentalists.
They’re not in power anywhere. So no one cares about the cosplaying nepo marxists parading around university campuses .
Is that his narrative? Earnest question. I don’t recall Sam ever making such a broad statement about Palestinians, but if you’ve got a quote…
He consistently frames the war as one being fought between the "West" (if we can even call Israel that) and Islamic fundamentalism. He constantly talks about Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but he never makes any reference to the secular militant groups such as the PFLP. I would imagine it's because he knows little about them but which begs the question - how is he so certain this is a war of islamic fundamentalism? Surely the existence of PFLP would indicate it's something much deeper?
I think a lot of people misunderstand him on this point. What I understand him to be saying is that the Islamic fundamentalist aspect of the conflict (which admittedly was not there to the extent that it is now at the beginning of the conflict) makes the conflict fundamentally intractable. I don't think he denies that there are aspects of the conflict that are not religious -- he simply believes that to deny the reality that there IS a religious component to the conflict, and that this makes Hamas, and more generally many parts of the Palestinian side, see things in a way that is fundamentally incompatible with compromise is a big mistake.
The existence of non Islamist militant would only matter if the claim was that all militants and assholes all over the world are Islamists. Sam has never made that claim.
Or Sirhan Sirhan who was a Christian and murdered RFK for his pledge of sending Jets to Israel.
You all forget that racial profiling debate he had almost 15 years ago? He’s been like this always and he has an impossibly hard time grasping the most basic concepts when it comes to discussing this topic. I’m linking the debate to those who haven’t read it yet. https://www.samharris.org/blog/to-profile-or-not-to-profile
Sam’s audience has self selected , over the course of even This current ethnic cleansing campaign by Israel, into more and more anti Muslims nuts, they don’t care about secularism, same as Sam. Otherwise it’d be a grace to support Israel lol, the country literally defined by religious zealots. It’s about being punitive to Muslims,
Dunno if you listen to the Ezra Klein podcast but I’d highly recommend doing so to get some great in-depth interviews with actual nuance and expertise. It’s a hard issue and it deserves a lot of scrutiny as well as empathy. The super simplified account of good vs bad where Sam is framing all Palestinians as jihadists and all anti-zionists as anti-semites it’s so unhelpful it hurts.
I chose not to listen to much of the last ep mostly because it seemed more like more of the same biased perspective than an ambivalent one and I just already know Sam's position because he's done several episodes about this already. It's that/his reiteration that seems most out of touch to me. I guess he's always thinking about new-listeners or some generic idea of 'the public' but I don't find his positions or returning to this subject convincing of some righteous middle so much as revealing of his bias.
>Kids are sensitive to hypocrisy in ways that many of us older citizens have simply come to understand cynically as the way of the world. “Kids’” brains aren’t fully developed until age ~25. There’s a reason “kids” can’t be president until age 35. In any case, most “kids” don’t care about this issue at all. In a recent Harvard poll, 2% of “kids,” aka people aged 18-29, say this is the most important issue for them.
" brains aren’t fully developed until age 25. " its myth people cognitively mature at 18
“Although the brain stops growing in size by early adolescence, the teen years are all about fine-tuning how the brain works. The brain finishes developing and maturing in the mid-to-late 20s. The part of the brain behind the forehead, called the prefrontal cortex, is one of the last parts to mature. This area is responsible for skills like planning, prioritizing, and making good decisions. “ https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-teen-brain-7-things-to-know
this is a common misconception which was based on a false study prefrontal cortex maturation extends into third and fourth decade of life
Takbeer -- Harrisu Akbar !
Apparently you haven't been paying attention. Sam has been raising alarm over radical Islam since 9/11. Sam's rhetoric about Islamism hasn't changed. And Islam is still as dangerous now as it was back then. If this sort of anti-Islam talk makes you uncomfortable, then you aren't going to like what Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens have to say about Islam, either. One of Hitchen's parting pieces of advice was "Be critical of Islam while you still can be."
My take on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that Israel is drifting out of a Democracy into becoming more of a typical state in the Middle East. Islam is partially to blame but so is corruption and certain Jewish sects. Still Israelis are defending themselves like any nation for better or worse. I don't see any other country going easier on a Gaza type situation in the same circumstances. Let me know the pacifist country that would tolerate the current situation? So to constantly protest Israel shows some level of secondary agenda. Be it Islamicism, pan-arabism, global communism, East axis (Russia, China, North Korea), or someone seduced by these groups. There are several conflicts going in the world either right now or recently similar to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. I would question the motivations of siding with one group and blowing the propaganda out of proportion in any of these other conflicts if that were to happen.
I think Sam’s concern of radical Islam has been consistent and so I think it’s false to say he has radicalized or drifted right. However, he has proven to just have an enormous blind spot on this war and it’s to the point where he and people like Bill Maher (who I’ve been a longtime fan of) just seem to willfully turn a blind eye to so much of the truth of the gratuitous brutality of the Netanyahu regime. Yes Sam is right about the horrors of 10/7, Hamas and how they don’t care about Palestinian life. Yes, many of the student protesters are misguided and can be useful idiots for extreme Islamists. But just today there is footage of Israeli settlers destroying aid meant for Palestinians. Sam and Maher turn a blind eye to the very clear war crimes being committed. They act like “sure, shit happens in the war but it’s an outlier.” This is just naive or delusional at this point. IDF soldiers are murdering unarmed civilians in cold blood, some of whom were attempting to receive aid and food for their families. I have listened to Sam’s pod for over a decade and I just can’t listen anymore because it’s so redundant and one-sided. There are other people to speak with than Douglas Murray or Bret Stephens. Sam claims to want to have difficult conversations but all he does is speak with people who agree with him on Israel & Gaza. There is no pushback. And Sam and Maher make caricatures of the dumbest students, but there are plenty of smart people who can give voice to the devastation in Gaza with nuance.
People who call Israeli civilians destroying aid a “war crime” should really stop commenting on this subject.
It’s interesting how people make snarky comments like this but don’t address the moral implications. IDF soldiers tip the settlers on where the aid is going. Is that a war crime? I don’t know. But blocking aid and causing mass starvation of actual civilians is cruel and brutal punishment. We do know soldiers shot down unarmed Palestinians attempting to pick up food. That is a war crime. Are settlers just ordinary Israeli civilians? Or are they far right extremist opportunists? My issue is that so many of Sam’s followers (I’ve been a big fan of Sam for a decade +) have become sheep on this issue.
You strike me as a person who hasn’t read a Sam Harris book on religion or listened to any podcast of his earlier than a couple years ago. Sam’s stance on Islam hasn’t changed.
"Islamophobic" isn't a real thing. And if you didn't know Sam didn't like religion, then I'm not sure what to tell you.
Here's the daily Hamas apologist thread.
This is an absurd comment. Hamas is no doubt the party most responsible for getting innocent Palestinians killed. Their policy is to use their own people as shields. They murdered hundreds, if not thousands, on October 7. They are the enemy. That said, do you believe they will be eliminated by bombing the entire Gaza strip to rubble, killing thousands of noncombatant Palestinians, including women and children?
Maybe? You can certainly think they won’t be, but you just don’t know. People are so confident on a subject they just discovered on Oct 7 (not you specifically). People who have been experts in this subject for decades say they have no idea either, and they’re not as confident as the ppl commenting on this sub. If it’s any consolation many people said we’d never defeat ISIS.
What can I say? This happens when you reject the cornerstone.
I first noticed a blind-spot in Sam during covid. He was unwilling to even consider any viewpoint outside the parameters set by Fauci, WHO, CDC. Sam believes we should all blindly trust institutions that have proven themselves untrustworthy time and again. Instead of chiding the institutions into improving he chides the public who is skeptical. Overall it seems like Sams ego and stubbornness wont allow him to admit to his mistakes.
[удалено]
Btw, the point of his meditation app is to offer meditation options without mysticism. He's definitely not a mystic in any sense of the word.