Conflicted S3 E20: The West vs The Rest
Speakers: Thomas Small & Aimen Dean
Thomas: Aimen Dean, you're a sight for sore eyes. We are together in a recording studio, recording an episode of Conflicted for the first time in what, two years? Since before the pandemic, three years maybe.
Aimen: Absolutely, oh my God, you have no idea. I missed having you in front of me. Just looking at you as if we are sitting in a coffee shop as we always used to do.
Thomas: A coffee shop, you mean a steakhouse, Aimen. A steakhouse.
Aimen: Oh, oh my God. You bring back really delicious memories.
Thomas: Yes, dear listener, I'm not sure if you could tell, but since before the pandemic, Aimen and I have been recording this podcast remotely.
So, I've only seen Aimen's face on my laptop screen. So, this is a real treat, and we've reached the end of season three, Aimen, episode 20 of season three. It's been quite a journey.
Aimen: Oh my God, and what a wonderful journey it was.
Thomas: What a wonderful journey. And once again, the gods are on our side because yesterday, as of this recording, yesterday, The Queen of England, The Queen of Great Britain, The Queen of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, and the head of the Commonwealth, Queen Elizabeth II, passed away.
And of course, I don't mean to say that we revel in this or celebrating her death, not at all. But because, Aimen, you're such a passionate advocate for monarchy in the Middle East, at least, for us to be recording this episode in which we're going to explore as broadly as we can, the themes that we've covered this season of Conflicted, including monarchy — for this recording to have the pregnancy of the Queen's recent passing hanging over, it seems appropriate somehow.
Aimen: Indeed. It is the passing of an era for sure.
Thomas: Definitely a passing of an era, and the beginning of a new era, Charles III, the 40th Monarch, since the conqueror. 40 is quite a resonant number. Sadly, it often symbolizes completion. So, are we seeing the end of monarchy in Britain? Is Charles III going to be the last king of Great Britain?
Aimen: I sure hope not.
Thomas: Well, that's really up to history to decide. Another interesting thing, he has taken the name, the regnal name, Charles. There used to be some discussion about whether he would choose one of his other names, possibly, George, because Charles is a slightly cursed name, given what happened to the first King Charles. He lost his head to the Cromwellian revolutionaries.
Aimen: Yeah, but the second actually did quite well. He restored the monarchy.
Thomas: He did restore the monarchy or he was restored to the monarchy by parliament. And yet, the name Charles returns us to the era of Stuart Britain, to the 17th century, which is also weirdly appropriate, since when we get in this discussion today to early modernity, what modernity is, the impact it has had on the world; we are going to go to the 17th century. So, it's all connected Aimen. Conflicted is connected.
Aimen: Yes, Thomas, because if you see everything that we've been talking about for the past three years or more, really connected, and we demonstrated this, episode after episode.
Thomas: That's right. This is going to be a unique episode, dear listener. If you saw the lack of notes that I have, usually I have pages and pages of notes and ideas that I try to keep an eye on as we record.
My notes are much more threadbare this episode, it's going to be more conversational and experiment if you like. But if you've stuck with us this far, you'll stick with us forever.
Dear listener, Aimen, my dear friend, let's get into it.
Yes, we've reached the end of this season of Conflicted, at 20 episodes. It was a new departure for us. It allowed us to explore longer, more complex historical narratives, and to discuss and dissect a broader range of historical political, philosophical, and religious themes. How do you feel the season went, Aimen, are you happy with it?
Aimen: Very happy actually. The reaction of our listeners who we love and adore more than anything else, indicated to me that they were really emotionally and intellectually invested in this season.
Thomas: I think so, Aimen. And I certainly hope that you, dear listener, have enjoyed where we've taken you this season.
We set out to explore the so-called Clash of Civilizations. The idea that different parts of the world have been stamped or informed by something called a civilization, which is difficult to define because it's what? It's merely conceptual, almost spiritual, I don't know.
But civilization, this idea, something that characterizes a part of the world and its peoples, distinguishes them from the rest, gives them their sense of identity, their sense of in-groups and outgroups, and their sense of what's worth fighting to preserve.
How does this definition of civilization sound to you, Aimen? I ask because you are a devout Muslim and so, an heir or a member at least of Islamic civilization. And yet, 25 years ago, you took the decision to move to the West and join the Security Services here to help us defend or preserve our civilization, if that's what the war on terror was in fact, about.
Aimen: Well, remember, Thomas, I always believe in what? Human progress, collective human progress. And at that time, I thought that the West is leading that march towards human progress in terms of technology advancement and medicine.
And for me also, I really wanted to live in a place where there is a freedom of conscience and liberty in terms of formulating your own thoughts and thinking. So, this is one of the things I deeply enjoyed, and I treasured more than anything else.
Thomas: Well, once again, Aimen, it's always a surprise to me how our positions are the reverse of what is expected. You, Saudi born, Muslim, a champion of progress, a champion of freedom, a champion of technological prowess, and all those things.
I, the Californian, the Christian, much more skeptical of the West's claims to progress. We’ll get into that throughout this episode. I hope we don't end up fighting each other.
Aimen: There are chairs and the tables here.
Thomas: It wouldn't be fair to me. You've been trained by MI5 after all. It wouldn't be a fair fight.
Now, in the last episode, the one on Algeria, we said that we'd come full circle in terms of history. So, in season one, we started with 9/11. And by the Algeria episode, we reached the turn of the millennium. As the Algerian Civil War was winding down and a bevy of battle, hardened global jihadists cast around for a new battlefront to join.
Many of them went to Afghanistan and as you did, Aimen, swore allegiance to Osama bin Laden. Quite the story we've told, Aimen. My goodness.
Aimen: Oh, yes. Goodness. How we came full circle because in the end, this is why it's always called the cycle of history.
Thomas: It is amazing, history does seem to be cyclical. So, we started, it was 9/11. We went through the war on terror and the Arab Spring. And then we took a broader view at the whole era of American global hegemony; its ambitions, successes, and mainly, failures.
And then this season, the whole damn show, from the Bronze Age to the now, focusing on the transition, from traditional Islamic empires to modern middle Eastern nation states by way of European colonization and Cold War geopolitics.
So, yeah, full circle and my God, epic. When I think back to what we've accomplished, my brain goes to mush.
And in this episode, this final episode of season three, we're going to start by going full circle again, because Conflicted was at the outset, more than just history or political analysis. It was also Aimen, your story.
And over the past year, your story has taken a very unexpected and indeed, very disturbing turn, leading you to reach a fateful decision, a decision which I feel is directly connected to the broader questions we've been exploring about identity, about culture, and about the conflict between Western modernity and Islamic tradition.
Now, we don't have time to tell the whole story here, Aimen. Because what we want to focus on is how your recent experiences resonate with our season three themes.
But dear listener, if you want to know the details, honestly, go and listen to the interview that Aimen recently gave on a podcast called Blethered. We'll put a link to the episode in our episode notes.
But today, to get us started now, I think I can reveal, Aimen, what we've always kept secret here on Conflicted, which is that until recently, you and your family were living in Scotland.
Aimen: Yes, we were living just on the outskirts of the city of Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. And oh boy, from the beginning, actually, when I moved to the UK in the late nineties, I fell in love with Scotland.
Whenever MI5 and MI6 handlers wanted to do what they call a handler asset bonding experiences, Scotland was the destination because I loved nature. I loved the mountains, the valleys, the lakes, the rivers. I was always in awe of that country, and I fell in love with it from first sight.
And so, when I and my family moved back to the UK, we decided that Scotland is the destination. It never occurred to me that Scotland will be the place where my story, or at least my story in the West will take a dark turn.
Thomas: You move to Edinburgh with your family, you enroll your daughter in a school, a private school.
Aimen: St. George’s School for girls, in Edinburgh.
Thomas: She was what, four or something at the time? Very young. Now, before you enrolled your daughter in this school, you did disclose to the school, your past inside the Intelligence Services, is that right?
Aimen: I disclosed to them fully in the interest of transparency, that I used to work for the UK Intelligence Services and that it involved aspects of counterterrorism. So, I have a public profile, I even told them that there is a book, there is a podcast. So, it's all out there.
Now, I understood from other channels that the school did reach out to the UK Security Services, also known as MI5, through the prevent channel, which they have with the Security Services.
And they asked if there is any threat related to my daughter attending the school. The answer came back from the Security Services in early 2020 that, “You can enroll his daughter, we keep an eye on things. And if there is any change in the threat assessment, we will let you know.”
Thomas: And having received those assurances from the Security Services, the school admitted your daughter.
And from what I understand, things were basically okay until at the time of the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. So, that's last September 2021 — gosh, almost a year ago. It's amazing. So much has happened to you in that year.
So, as part of the anniversary, commemorations of 9/11, you participated in a documentary film series on British television, which I guess some of the parents of students at the school in Edinburgh saw and grew alarmed. They thought, “What, we recognize this guy. He was a terrorist,” or whatever they thought.
Aimen: It said there many times that I was actually a spy inside these organizations, including Al Qaeda. And the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of 9/11 was important in terms of understanding what really happened.
For them to be alarmed, okay, I understand, that okay, “We know this guy, oh, he used to be a spy inside these organizations. Oh, he used to be part of them before.” That I understand, if they are going to be alarmed, somewhat.
But what I did not understand after that was the school leadership reaction towards me and more horrifically, towards my daughter.
Thomas: So, the head teacher of the school called you and your wife in for a meeting after these parents raised their concerns, following the documentary films, how did that meeting go? What did she say?
Aimen: From the beginning, she told me don't expect a welcome in Scotland. Scottish people can't comprehend complex issues. This is not London. Edinburgh people are conservative with a small C.
Thomas: And the implication being what, that because you are a former spy, you should be … I don't really understand, what was she essentially accusing you of being?
Aimen: She was focusing all the time from the beginning that I am in her eyes, a former terrorist, because in a later meeting, she told me to my face, “You are Al-Qaeda, and this is scaring other parents.”
I remember I was thinking, “You said you are …” he didn't say you were. And for me, that accusation by Alexandra Hems (that is her name) that I am Al-Qaeda rather than saying that, “Oh, but your past involvement with Al-Qaeda as a spy for the UK Intelligence Services is scary.” But of course, she can't justify that.
So, unfortunately, from the beginning, she viewed me as an outsider, forget about me. If she wanted to make my life difficult, I have a crocodile skin. It is my five-year-old daughter. For any parent, the first year is the most memorable year. It's the year that you always remember.
And unfortunately, for the rest of my life, as well as that of my wife, we will always remember our daughter's first year as a year that turned ugly and sour. Yeah.
Thomas: So, the upshot of this first meeting was that you were asked to drop your daughter off later than the other kids and pick her up after the other kids, so that you would not encounter any parents at the school. You conceded to the request, although I don't suppose you were happy about it.
Aimen: I conceded because of the blackmail she used. She said to me and to my wife in that meeting that, “Oh, I accepted this admission of your daughter against my better judgment. I don't want to think about it again.” In other word, that if you don't accept, then the consequence of that will be that you can take your daughter and go somewhere else.
So, for eight months, I completely complied with the school's request. I brought my daughter 20/25 minutes after other parents would have supposedly, dropped their kids and left, and I would come and pick her up 30 minutes after the end of school.
Thomas: Now, listeners might think, well, that doesn't sound so bad. But I think the truth is Aimen, this was very disruptive, especially to your daughter’s experience of school, to arrive after everyone else, to miss those first sort of 30 minutes of the day, when you mingle with your friends, when you line up, when you do all of those things.
And then to be waiting around while everyone else is being picked up, she was made to feel like she didn't belong.
Aimen: Well, look, for the first several weeks, I always told her that it's happening because you're special. You don't need to line up, you don't need to attend assembly, even though the lining up and the assembly and the music and the singing in the morning is part of the school ethos. She bought it for the first month or two, but you met my daughter, Thomas.
Thomas: She's an angel. There's no question.
Aimen: And a smart angel for that.
Thomas: She's very clever. Yeah.
Aimen: She didn't buy it for the rest of the year, and she knew something was wrong.
Thomas: This story doesn't end there. You had complied with this request. You were dropping her off later, picking her up later, but it didn't prevent the parents or at least some parents in the school from continuing to cause trouble.
Aimen: Well, from the beginning, Thomas, I knew this wasn't about security because there were other measures that could have been taken to ensure security.
However, what happened to confirm the fact that it wasn't about security was that unfortunately, some of those bigoted parents were waiting for me and my daughter to arrive at the school gate, looking at us with smug, self-satisfied looks, staring at us as if, “Okay, good. Now, you know your place.”
Thomas: And these parents weren't entirely unknown to you, because they were the parents of your daughter's fellow students. And you were on a WhatsApp group with those parents. So, just in case there was an emergency, so that the parents could communicate with each other.
And things sort of came to a head when your patience wore thin, with the treatment you were receiving both from the school and from the parents and you said something.
Aimen: Indeed, because after eight months of full compliance, the school went even further, when they refused admission for our autistic son to join the nursery. Instead of just stopping at refusing, the admission, the deputy head teacher of the school, as well as the head of the junior and nursery school, told us to our face in that meeting, myself and my wife, in April this year, “We have a radical solution for you. What is holding you back here in Edinburgh? Why don't you consider leaving the country? The Middle East offer excellent institutions for a child like yours.”
This is why I just looked at them and I thought, “Okay, my son needs me right now, we need to go.” So, I asked my wife to just wrap up the meeting and just go, we don't want to listen to this anymore. And we left. It is a jailable offense to tell someone to just pack up and leave, go home.
Thomas: I suppose technically, it is a hate crime.
Aimen: Funny thing is that they even in the subsequent writings between us and the school, they never denied these remarks. All they said is that we don't believe they were discriminatory remarks.
This is when I decided to let the parents on the WhatsApp group know that this is happening. We were told that there were two people who raised a complaint, although they never told us who, we have no idea.
So, I said that two ugly racist faces; why did I say ugly racist faces? Because these people were pulling ugly faces at me and my daughter.
Thomas: Clearly, the treatment that you and your family had been receiving by these people really touched a sensitive spot in any person. But had you ever received this treatment? Had you ever been treated like a second-class citizen anywhere? You’re Aimen Dean, you're not a second-class citizen.
Aimen: I never asked for respect. I just asked to be ignored and that's it. That's all I wanted. Just say good morning and good evening, and that's it. Don't go out of your way to show either respect or disrespect. That's it.
Thomas: So, you tell these parents in the WhatsApp group or you call them ugly racist faces.
Aimen: Yes, I call them ugly racist faces. And then I said, don't pop open those cheap bottles of prosecco yet, you messed with the wrong person. So, now, because I said, you messed with the wrong person, they screamed “Violence, violence!”
And so, they rushed to the head teacher of the school in order to say, “Now, that's it. We finally elicited the reaction that we always wanted, whenever we gave him these looks every morning,” that's what they wanted. They wanted violence from me, but there was no violence.
When I say you messed with the wrong person, you messed with Aimen Dean, because I am not only well-connected, but also, I can use every legal means at my disposal to get justice for my daughter.
Thomas: Well, these fools, they didn't really realize the extent to which they were in fact, breaking the law in this treatment.
Aimen: Yes.
Thomas: Now, the school certainly didn't know that because they sent you a very strongly worded email, following these parents revealing that you had said these things on the WhatsApp group.
Aimen: Indeed, actually, it's not just only a strong-worded email. In fact, an official letter barring me from the school premises, and by effect, expelling my daughter because I am the only driver in the household.
And we have an autistic son, a three-year-old autistic son at home who we can't just take every morning, put him in the car, drive him, you know 30 minutes to his sister's school. And then come back again and do it and repeat the process again. It's too much for him.
So, the last seven weeks of the school year, my daughter missed three and a half of them because of the school policy, not to allow me to drop my daughter.
And this is now when I thought that's it. I will hand this matter now to a higher authority because I have full faith in the system here, that in the end, I'll be able to get justice from my daughter, but the damage was done, Thomas. The damage was done, because I was treated as if I was a convicted criminal.
When I had a phone call with a general in the Security Services of one of the GCC countries, he is a friend. He is someone who held my daughter when she was a baby and know my family very well.
And when I told them what happened, he said, “You and your family pack your bags and you come here right away, right now because we are your people, Aimen. They were never your people. We are your people.”
Thomas: Aimen, I remember when you first told me what you were going through. And when you first said this thing that this general had said, and it's like a kind of gong. It carries this tremendous weight, it breaks my heart. It raises so many questions.
It's like on the one hand, there you are in Edinburgh, you're being met with British citizens telling you, “Try, though you you'll never be one of us.”
And then you turn to an Arabian, a friend who says, “Aimen, they're right. You'll never be one of them.” And there you are in the middle, it's heartbreaking.
Aimen: I never thought Thomas that after three years of doing this podcast with you, that I would be going through some of the themes on a personal level that we discussed about the Clash of Civilizations, about identity, about belonging.
My wife, after the school told us to consider leaving the country. When we were driving back home, she looked at me and she said, “Aimen, do we belong here?” And I said to her, “Not according to quite few people lately.”
Thomas: So, in the end, you have decided to leave Britain and return to Arabia.
Aimen: Full circle.
Thomas: You've decided to leave the West and return home, if that's the right word.
Aimen: I thought I was home, I really thought I was home.
Thomas: You thought you'd made your home in the West. That hasn't turned out to be true. This unexpected turn of events must have given you a few dark nights of the soul.
Have you been asking yourself, was I wrong to spy for the West? Was I wrong to think I could harmonize my own Arab Islamic heritage with the modern West and its values? Have these questions been attacking you in the night, Aimen?
Aimen: I never regretted ever, every act I did in order to save lives and dismantle terror organizations, there is no question that I will ever regret it.
However, the question of trying to harmonize that Arab Muslim identity with Western modernity is a question that I am still struggling with at the moment.
Thomas: Gosh, Aimen, what a story, what a terrible thing to have gone through. It really upsets me.
But I do think we can use what you've gone through and the decision you've taken as a sort of prism through which to explore bigger questions. For example, I want to talk about the reasons why your past, your past associated with Al-Qaeda was responded to in this way, with this mixture of fear and contempt.
Because, I'm not saying that it surprises me, but I just think, for example, I don't think people would've treated you this way if you'd been a former IRA member. I think that there is something in all of this, which is related to what's called Islamophobia.
And I want to talk about Islamophobia. I think Islamophobia at its root, is something very, very profound and very, very meaningful. It casts real light on Western people. But Aimen, I'll start by asking you, what do you think Islamophobia is at its root, especially now that you have so palpably experienced it?
Aimen: I think in my opinion, it is always the fear of Islam as it is perceived rather than Islam as it is practiced. And the idea that there is one homogenous threat out there that is going to be taking over the rest of the world.
And therefore, there is always that fear of it, just like the fear of communism in the past, for example, just like the fear of a disease that is going to spread around.
So, for me, whenever I see people feeling the fear of Islam and Muslims, I would rather sometimes tell them, guys, if only Muslims were as organized and united as you might think, then yes, you might have a reason to fear. If only you know how divided, how not so homogenous they are, they are so disparate in their differences.
They don’t have any unity whatsoever, whether unity of purpose, unity of faith, unity of even daily rituals. They argue every Ramadhan about whether it is today or tomorrow.
Thomas: You’re right, Aimen. Islam is certainly more disunited than Islamophobes think. But I'm not really sure that's the point because I think what maybe subconsciously actually scares the West about Islam, isn't something fictional, I think it's something real.
I think that it is the thing that unites Muslims powerfully that scares the West, which is to say faith.
Aimen: Are you saying because the West started to turn its back on faith, that they fear those who are still faithful?
Thomas: It's a question that lies at the heart of everything we've been discussing this season. What is the Clash of Civilizations between Western modernity and in this case, traditional Islam; what is modernity, Aimen? This is the question.
And I think that at root, modernity is the loss of faith and its replacement with many, many other things that have been ratified and absolutized, which sort of never satisfy.
We have never actually fully replaced faith and we fear it. It haunts us as Westerners, and we see Muslims as sort of, intractably devoted to faith and we hate it.
Aimen: In a sense, I agree with you. I've been noticing what I would call the rise of the identity crisis in the West.
You see in the Arab/Muslim world setting, even among Christian Arabs and among other communities of faith within the Arab and Muslim world, you will notice that you have four pillars of identity. You have the faith identity, the national/political identity. You have the regional/tribal identity, and then you have the ethnic/linguistic identity.
So, for example, I can say in a tribal way, I am Durani. From an ethnic linguistic way, I am an Arab. I'm a proud Saudi/Bahraini so, I am a GCC. But also, at the same time, I am British. So, you have that conflict there. And at the same time, this is where the faith identity come; I am a Muslim. So, I identify as a Muslim, as an Arab, as s Durani. So, I'm comfortable in my skin.
However, I've noticed that millions upon millions of people in the West are not comfortable, not only in their skin, but any skin at all, to the point where personal preferences such as food sometime could define them. They will adopt even food preferences as a definition of who they are as an identity.
So, if someone decide to eat vegetables only, they will decide to call themselves a vegan, and they were shout it from the rooftops. So, there is something right about what you say, that there is actually identity crisis.
Thomas: Well, there's certainly an identity crisis. It really resonates with me when you say that you are a Muslim and that is a pillar of your identity. I say that because it is in fact, a pillar of my identity that I am a Christian. Even when I say that though, it makes my skin creep.
Aimen: Yes, you are not comfortable in it, why?
Thomas: No, I'm not comfortable in it.
Aimen: Why?
Thomas: Because I'm afraid that when people, especially my fellow Westerners, if you like, when they hear me say that, they're going to have all of these profoundly negative associations with what that means. They're going to think badly of me.
Aimen: But why is it that I don't fear telling others that I'm a Muslim and I'm an Arab? And I also believe in modernity and I also believe in Western values of freedom of conscience. And yet you can't, what is it? Why is it there?
Thomas: Why indeed, Aimen, this is the interesting question. Now, I have been pondering this question over the last couple of weeks. And I came across a really interesting book called The Theological Origins of Modernity by a writer called Michael Allen Gillespie, Gillespie. I don’t know how to pronounce it — Michael Allen Gillespie.
There's a quote here. I'd like to read it. I think that it's germane. “Ours,” he writes, “Is a visual age, and in the last 20 years, two images have shaped our understanding of the times in which we live. The first was the fall of the Berlin Wall and the second, the collapse of the World Trade Center Towers.”
Now, I'm just going to stop the quote there, Aimen. Conflicted began with 9/11 and has in various ways, explored modern Middle Eastern history, modern global history with an eye to explaining or uncovering the patterns, the continuities, the meaning that underlies all of that history.
So, yeah, he says two primary images; the fall of the Twin Towers of 9/11, i.e., what we started Conflicted with, and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the end of the Cold War i.e., inaugurating, the age we discussed in season two and which we've continued to discuss up to now, because we're living in it, an age where American liberal hegemony is being fiercely contested.
So, when I read this paragraph, I thought, “Okay, I'm on, I'm on board, this is so amazing.”
So, he goes on:
“These structures (i.e., the World Trade Center and the Berlin Wall) were not mere artifacts. They were also symbols, deeply embedded in the public psyche.
The first was the symbol of totalitarianism and the Cold War confrontation between a free and an enslaved world. The second, a symbol of a liberal world unified by the forces of globalization.
The fall of the Berlin Wall gave rise to a belief in a liberal future of peace and prosperity that revived a faith in human progress, that the catastrophic events of the first part of the 20th century had almost extinguished.
The collapse of the Twin Towers by contrast kindled the fear of a rampant new fanaticism that threatened our lives and civilization in an especially insidious way.
When the wall came down, the future seemed to stretch out before us like a broad highway leading to a modern world united by commerce, the free exchange of ideas, and the proliferation of liberal government.
This was to be the age of globalization, but a globalization that was conceived as the spread of Western values and institutions to the rest of the world. Science and technology would establish a realm of peace and prosperity in which human freedom could be finally and fully realized.
With the destruction of the World Trade Center, globalization suddenly appeared in a new light, not as a one-way street to modernity, but as a complex and confusing intersection of paved roads, dark alleys, and mountain pathways.
As a result, we ceased to look forward to a new golden age and glanced instead over our shoulders and sideways into the out of the way places we imagined to be filled with dark figures, waiting to attack us.”
Now, Aimen let's call a spade, a spade here. Those dark figures waiting to attack us, Westerners, were Muslims. For Westerners, Muslims are what? Ghosts from our own deep past, from the world of faith that we left behind.
I'm not saying that Muslim terrorists today, Islamic global jihadists, as we've been talking about; Al-Qaeda, ISIS, I'm not saying that they truly represent true Islam. That's not what I'm saying at all. But I'm also saying that our fear of Islam goes beyond our fear of being attacked by terrorists.
It is a fear of Islam and we tell ourselves that's because Islam subjugates women, Islam is inherently violent. Islam is a political religion, but the truth is it's because Islam holds up a mirror to that thing inside of ourselves that we don't have, a confident faith.
Aimen: You said exactly what my wife said before, can you believe it? The reason why the West sometime hate Islam is because Islam is holding a mirror in the face of the West.
Thomas: I hate to bang on about this, Aimen, but it's like literally it is the question that motivates me and has motivated me for 25 years.
I mentioned briefly in the last episode on Algeria, that my own road to Orthodox Christianity, which is an Eastern form of Christianity, whose own history of development was largely independent of Western European developments. My road to Orthodox Christianity was via a profound interest in Islam, a profound inspiration that Islam gave me.
And I'd like to explore what it was that in Islam illuminated me to truths about my own civilization, my own culture that I had never noticed, despite having been nominally, an evangelical Christian for 20 years, up to that point.
Aimen: I'm an awe of what you just said. What is intriguing Thomas, is that even though the West is going through the phase of having this fear of Islam, whether rational or irrational, and I think it's both, actually, it's a mix of both — it is ironic that the Muslim world itself is going through a civil war, intellectual and military, political.
Islam itself is tearing itself apart over the question of how to exist and coexist with modernity in the 21st century.
Thomas: You say this is ironic, but for me, this isn't ironic at all, because do you know what happens, Aimen, when modernity comes to a traditional civilization? Look at the 16th and 17th centuries, man. Look at what Europeans did to themselves for generations, the slaughter, the unimaginable brutality of the wars as they're called of religion.
Although, I don't think that's a fair name for them at all. They were the wars of modernity stamping itself on a traditional civilization that was laid open like a victim to this new and rather Luciferian movement, which was going to reshape the world in its own image. And on the way, Mountains of Skulls, that's okay.
Anyone who knows history knows that the transition from tradition to modernity is drenched in blood. Now, and I think this is important because — and I’ll forgive-
Aimen: Not necessarily Japan, look at Japan. They modernize without the need for massive bloodshed.
Thomas: Aimen, ask the Koreans, ask the Chinese, ask the Indonesians, ask the Malays, ask them how Japan's transition into modernity went. Modernity came to Japan with a beast. We have this strange unwillingness to fully embrace what modernity means.
For example, here's another quote — forgive me, dear listener, but I'm a bit animated now. I was thinking to myself, what are we going to talk about in this episode? What are we going to talk about?
And I was listening to a podcast and the podcaster was interviewing someone called Steve McIntosh. I'd never heard of him. He works for something called the Institute for Cultural Evolution.
This is what he said. And I thought this was perfect. A perfect summary of what the average person thinks about Western civilization. He says:
“During the enlightenment 300 years ago, we see the emergence of a new kind of culture, which is best known as modernity; the classical liberal values that liberate the cultures that adopt this modernist frame from the restraints of the religious civilizations that dominated human history for thousands of years before the emergence of modernity.
So, when we think about what is modernity, it's lots of things. It's science, it's classical liberal values, it's economic development, it's all these things. But what makes it cohere as a culture that can deliver prosperity and liberty is what's best understood as a worldview. And it contrasts with the previous religious worldview.
The conflict between modernity and tradition can still be found in most of the developed world in various forms. But the conflict is more virulent in the Islamic world, where anti-modernism from below, from the traditional realm has been particularly strong as a cultural force.
What is it about an Islamic society that makes them resist modernity? Even though there could be an authentically homegrown Islamic modernity. As we see in Indonesia, as we saw in Turkey before their current prime minister took them backwards.
The challenges of this Islamic civilization to accommodate modernity and to grow its own version of it, are complicated by the fact that if we analyze these historical currents and we see that the places where modernity is most successful is where the traditional underlying culture is most successful.
And so, the best way to foster a homegrown Islamic modernity and liberalism would be ironically, perhaps to emphasize the good parts of the Islamic religion and encourage its own reformation.”
Now, that was a mouthful, Aimen. But I was listening to this man now, September, 2022, articulating an imperialist Western hegemonic worldview and Muslims are just intractable because they won't give in. They have to be forced to, they need a reformation. They need to become liberal like us.
But Aimen, I was thinking they need a reformation, what do people think has been going on in the Middle East for the last 200 years? What do people think underlies all the conflict, all the violence, all of the chaos we've been covering on Conflicted?
Aimen: Well, if you want my take on what he said, I agree with about maybe 50, 60% of what he said, and I will tell you why, because-
Thomas: I can't believe it, you traitor.
Aimen: I agree with lots of what he said in the sense that first of all, Islam, in fact, started as a modernizing religion, and a modernizing political movement. And actually, it is a faith that embraced the wisdom of other civilizations. It incorporated Indian mathematics and medicine, Persian administration and poetry.
Thomas: I have to stop you right there, Aimen.
Aimen: Why?
Thomas: Because modern civilization does not incorporate the wisdom of the past. It defines itself by standing athwart the past and charting something entirely new.
Aimen: Impossible.
Thomas: This is the opposite of Islam. Islam holds itself as the latest, possibly the last instantiation of ancient wisdom that has come from heaven time and again, it's the opposite of modernity.
Aimen: It is not the opposite of modernity. In order to build something, you need foundations. And this is why the Prophet Muhammad himself said, “Al-Hikmatu dallat ul-Mu’min.” That wisdom is the property of the believer wherever he finds it, it is his. That is what he said.
Thomas: I know he said that. I know, I think that's a wise saying, but that's not what modernity says. Literally, modernity says there can-
Aimen: Yeah, you have to smash everything behind.
Thomas: There can be no wisdom in anything that came before modernity. That's what modernity says.
Aimen: But I reject that.
Thomas: Of course, you do. But that's what I mean. I don't really understand how can you say Islam is a modern religion? It's the opposite of a modern religion. Muslims mind the past for wisdom. They synthesized past wisdom into a new, amazing whole, remarkable achievement.
Aimen: And this is what I said, it’s incorporating. It's all about incorporating. They took the zero from the Indians and look what they did with it. They took the Greek classics and look what they did with it and how they incorporated all of that into Muslim philosophy. And then they built their own philosophy, on top of that.
What I'm saying is Muslim civilization took the wisdom of the past and forged out of it, the pathway towards modernity. And this is why engineering, science, technology, astronomy — all of these things developed because of the fact that you have to build on what came before you.
You cannot build a boat and then sail into the sunset without cutting down some trees that were there for God knows how many decades or centuries before. At the end of the day, you need to cut down the trees, fashion wood out of them into a boat. And then from there, you sail, that is the only way you can do that.
Now, Islam proved that it can do that in the past and Islam can again, incorporate aspects (not all of it), but aspects of Western modernity that at the same time, without abandoning the faith foundations upon which their spiritual wellbeing, the things that the West envy Muslims for, that spiritual stability, they still can retain that without having to abandon all aspects of modernity.
Thomas: Okay, good. So, I'm glad that you mentioned technology. You seem to indicate that Islam is not so utterly different from modernity because in the Islamic Golden Age, many technological advances were made. You seem therefore, to be equating technological development with modernity.
And I think that is an error. And I think that people too often make this error. I don't think that what makes modernity-modernity is our technology. I think what makes modernity-modernity is a theological turn that occurred like a thousand years ago, Aimen. A long time ago.
A theological turn, which could never be acceptable to Muslims. And that is effectively this. And let me try to explain this; that I think it's very important we understand, that in the 11th, 12th, 13th centuries, Western Christendom slowly lost its faith in this very important truth that before, had been taken for granted by most peoples.
Thomas: So, what I'm talking about here is, is what's known as the rise of nominalism. And it happened very slowly, over many centuries, the 10th, 11th, 12, 13th centuries. And it was known as, by its proponents, the Via Moderna, the modern way.
And this is the first instance of the word modern used in the way we still use it. So, the Via Moderna nominalism. This was basically an idea, a theological, philosophical idea that rejected everything that had come before it.
So, what had come before it? Before it was assumed that universals, which is to say, the words we employ to help us distinguish between men and horses, horses and sons, generic words, specific words, species genera, like the word horse, the word man, the word sky (these are words), they indicate generalities.
There are many, many, many, many individual horses, but we have this word horse, and we can distinguish a horse from an apple because of the presence of this word, horse.
In the past, it was assumed that that word was indicating something real. That universals had a real existence beyond the human mind and the human mind through its natural activity of intelligence could see, if you like, those universals and therefore, make sense of the world.
The rise of nominalism turns this on its head. It says there are no real universals. These are just words in our minds. There are no universals. There are only individuals. God creates individuals directly as individuals, not employing or this act of creativity is not mediated through various layers, universal layers. That God is just acting directly to create individuals.
And honestly, from the perspective of someone who has embraced a pre-modern faith and a pre-modern spiritual practice like myself, the intellectual history of the Western world from the nominalist turn in the high Middle Ages, onwards, reads like a thousand-year civilizational mental breakdown. Because without this faith, that words actually are linked to something real, how can you ever pray, because God is in His name.
Aimen: I see.
Thomas: The name of God is the presence of a reality. And God has granted us His name as a mercy, so that we might in our intellects be United with him through purification.
Is that not the bedrock of tradition, that fundamental proposition, which the West turned its back on?
Aimen: Yes.
Thomas: And since then, has not been able to pray and finds people of prayer, threatening, scary. They don't understand them. What are they doing? They're diluting themselves, they're brainwashed.
Aimen: And that is why the story of creation, starts with God teaching Adam the names, “Wa ‘allama Adamal Asma a kullaha”
Thomas: In the Bible, even more interestingly, Adam isn't taught the names by God. God, it says, waits to find out what Adam is going to name, i.e., inherent in Adam, in the way he was created was his capacity to know things by name.
Aimen: And to name them and to assign words to whatever he was seeing and experiencing. And you see, this comes down again to what I said earlier, Thomas; identity crisis. Not just only identifying yourself, but also identifying everything that is around you. There is an identity crisis in the West, identifying themselves and identifying others.
Thomas: There is an identity crisis, my dear friend in the East, if you like, in the Middle East. Because it is not true that modernity has yet to come to the Middle East. Dear listener, have you been paying attention? It has come. And ever, has it come. It came again and again and again with many, many, many phases.
Aimen: But this is where I will tell you how different it is; in the West, the identity crisis is truly at individual level, as well as collective national level. In the Middle East, it is mostly collective political identity crisis. It is not yet at the individual level.
Thomas: People in the Middle East know who they are.
Aimen: Yes.
Thomas: Let's play devil's advocate here. So, your ordinary Western dude today is going to be like, “Yeah, guys look what that kind of, I know who I am, where it leads.” It leads to the Killing Fields of Syria, the Killing Fields of Iraq, the Killing Fields of name your place.
Aimen: But it also leads to renaissance and the prosperity of Kuwait, UAE, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Indonesia. There are success stories.
Thomas: Does it lead to that, Aimen? Indonesia, time will tell. Time will tell.
Aimen: Malaysia-
Thomas: But petrostates that have been well-governed, have like a leg up on the competition. So, I'm going to play the devil's advocate here. These countries are very rich and very connected to Western capital flows through that wealth. And for that reason, they have created very, very successful versions of late modernity.
Aimen: Indeed. But nonetheless, are they still comfortable in their skin or not.
Thomas: But the point about life, Aimen, isn't to be comfortable in your skin. God knows it might be, that as you approach-
Aimen: Typical Christian suffering.
Thomas: No, no, no, no, no, that's not true. As you approach the divine, as you undergo this sort of experience of purification, things that you take for granted are unmoored, are undone.
You experience this thing, like the Sufis call, Al-Fanaa’, the disappearance of the self into the great one only of course, for it to reemerge as Al Baqaa, as coming back as an entity.
Aimen: Existence.
Thomas: But changed radically transformed by the experience. So, I don't think the point is to be comfortable in your skin, though, being comfortable in your skin is an indication that your faith is built on a rock.
Aimen: Exactly. That's the whole idea. Because I tell you something, if you look at any nation, I'm not saying like basically, but just because they are petrostates. Just look at Norway, for example, it is a petrostate. Can we say that the Norwegian society doesn't suffer from any identity crisis? They do, actually.
And so, this is the case with any rich society, whether because of natural resources or because of their ability with finance or because of the technological advance. One way or another, every nation on earth could become rich if they are well-governed.
Because look at the Congo, the DRC, the Democratic Republic of Congo. They have as many natural resources in terms of the worth of them as Saudi Arabia, but look where they are right now.
It's not about really the question of just because you are rich. It's also because you said it yourself, well-governed. But where that good governance came from? From tradition, it was born out of tradition.
Thomas: Bad governance can come out of tradition too.
Aimen: Exactly, and also, bad governance could come out of modernity.
Thomas: Of course. So, again, I don't think this is what we're talking about.
Aimen: Look at the Killing Fields of Cambodia. It came out of communist modernity.
Thomas: Why is there not a big juicy steak in front of me, I want to take a bite. Dear listener, this is what Aimen and I used to do in our restaurants. We're going to fight and fight until the end.
I think you haven't answered my contention that the nominalist turn, the movement away from an experience of intellectuality of intelligence, which was of the substantial unity between words and their reality, including, and specifically, words that indicate immaterial realities, fundamentally the word “God,” that it was not just theoretically true. It was experienced in the heart, in the soul as real, that the word God resonated, the name of God. And in Christianity, that name is Jesus. And it resonated.
This is such a universal human experience. All the religious traditions speak precisely of this thing. And it is the fundamental fact of modernity that it cannot make sense of it. It has torn itself apart.
It has had mental breakdowns, it has launched World Wars, it has invented technology of monumental monstrosity as a result of its alienation from the substantial reality that lies behind the word God.
Aimen: And this is why the Islamic principle which means what is already known by mind, by necessity. Anything that is out there that you can say, that the sun is hot, the night is cold, the sand is corrosive.
All of these facts are what we call in the Arab mindset, that this is what we know by absolute conception of the mind. You see, necessities or absolutes, we call them absolutes.
And this is why the early Arab dictionaries, which I love to read through, especially like in Sibwayh. And ironically, he's Persian, and yet he wrote like the most important Arab dictionary. He wrote when he came to the word, Allah, God, which is by the way, a derivative of Alaha in Aramaic.
Thomas: It’s the word God, yeah.
Aimen: Yeah. And which is derivative of Elohim in Hebrew. So, when he reached the word Allah, and he wanted to say, is it, maeruf’aw or nakra as we say in Arabi (known or unknown) so he can't just like say known. So, he said, Allah, God is the absolute known.
Thomas: Well, that's exactly what I'm saying, Aimen.
Aimen: Because we believe in absolutes-
Thomas: So, my question then is how-
Aimen: We believe in absolutes. We don't doubt everything.
Thomas: How can you be so sanguine in your estimation of the possibility of an Islamic modernity. You always trumpet the technological successes of parts of the Muslim world. How Islam can take this technology and do something with it. I don't think so.
Technology is stamped by the mindset of the maker of the technology. For example, think of this, I've been racking my brain here about this nominalist turn and the weird, slow transformation of the West from Christendom into modernity, what went on.
And one thing that happened in, I think the 11th, 12th centuries was the introduction of paper from the Middle East. So, a much cheaper means of creating paper, creating something on which to write. Which meant in the high Middle Ages, an explosion of books. So, books need to be written. You write in discursive language.
So, the more you're writing, the more you're thinking, discursively, the more you're thinking in this ratiocinative way, this thinking way, the further away from the prayerful contemplative way, which is still enshrined in things like poetry, forms of written language that are poetic.
But this thing where it's not about thinking, it's about seeing with the intellect, the pure intellect, which is what everyone used to know. You read Plato, the church fathers, they talk about this.
So, you have paper, you have more writing. Therefore, you encourage thinking in the mode of writing, and then you have the printing press, more writing, more reading. You're reading words that have been produced in the mode of this thinking. And now, God knows, we have Twitter. We have tweets. It's like all of these technologies in print on us the spirit whereby they were created.
So, I don't think that one can just say, “We can have cars, we can have smart phones, we can have Twitter, we can have all of these things, all the technology of the West we can have, it won't make a damn difference on our spirits.” I call bullshit to that. It will make a difference.
Aimen: It would make a difference, but I can tell you something here, Thomas; if you mean by modernity, technology then yes, Islam or Muslim societies, and depending in each one because we have to go case by case and state, by state, and society by society, but many Muslim societies could, and I would say, should embrace technological, and I will stress here, technological modernity. And they will be able to actually go far into that.
The level of scientific papers, the level of technological advances that some Muslim societies are achieving right now in the fields of agriculture, in the fields of medicine are astonishing.
However, however, if you are talking about modernity in the sense of abandoning tradition and in particular, abandoning absolutes of the faith, I would be the first one to tell you that's not going to happen.
Thomas: Well, I think that you're in for a shock. I think that sure, Muslims are making great strides in the practice of scientific and technological development. Great. Sure, Muslims are still despite that determined to maintain faith and absolute truths.
Well, as far as I'm concerned let's go back to the 18th century, the late 18th century, the enlightenment period where Westerners were making these amazing strides in all manner of rational science while still believing or so they said, in God, but that God had changed in the meantime.
Because it wasn't actually God, it was God as a concept in their mind, a mere concept, which they gave their allegiance to. And they read a book and they believed that in this book, were absolute truth that I will believe with my thinking mind, but they began to stop experiencing intimately through contemplation and prayer; the realities that all of that pointed to, because they didn't believe in that.
And I think honestly, that the extent to which traditional peoples get involved in this game of technology and science, is going to affect this change in their minds too.
Aimen: Of course. Do you know why? Because a Muslim world, or I would say, because I don't believe in Muslimmunity, it never happened. It only lasted a hundred years after the prophet. And then that’s it, everything disintegrated, politically speaking.
But if we're talking about Muslim societies, they can only advance technologically. And also, they can only advance philosophically if they shed (and I mean it here, and this will a little bit upset to you) the mountain of superstition that kept piling up over the centuries. And by that, I mean-
Thomas: You are an 18th century Muslim philosoph my friend, you're there with Hume, just get rid of this Christian superstition and we'll have the sunny uplands on the First World War, the Second World War, The Holocaust, environmental destruction. Woo-hoo.
Aimen: I'm actually a traditionalist because I believe in the purity of Islam from superstition. And from superstition, I mean from the invention of hierarchical religious institutions. I believe in Islam as this beautiful disorganized chaos.
I really don't believe in organized religion. I believe in Islam to be this beautiful, chaotic mosaic that is coming together, believing in the absolutes of the one God, but at the same time, not believing in Islam as an institution.
Thomas: Well, Aimen, I'm going to give you the last word in this argument because we've got to bring it to a close. We'll just put a pin in this conversation, Aimen.
And dear listener on the assumption and at least the hope that you enjoyed listening to our argument. There's more to come. Conflicted is not over. There will be a season four.
For now, dear listener, all I want to do, and I think I can do this on your behalf too, Aimen; to thank you for your loyalty, for subscribing, for sharing Conflicted with your friends, for engaging so passionately as you do on social media, it means a lot to us.
Aimen, 9/11, still a powerful image of modernity being attacked. It's still there in these questions; what is modernity, can modernity coexist peacefully with Islam? It's the endless conversation.
Aimen: Yeah, it depends how you define modernity.
Thomas: And we're back in the beginning. To be continued, dear listener, to be continued.
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That's it for this season, but will be back before you know it with Conflicted, season four.
[Music playing 01:04:08]
Conflicted is a Message Heard production. This episode was produced and edited by Bea Duncan. Sandra Ferrari is our executive producer. Production support and fact checking by Talia Augustidis. Our theme music is by Matt Huxley.