240214_001

So here's session three.

Session three on Islam.

Now, last week we started to go through the five pillars and we made it through four.

So just as a reminder, the first one is the Shachada.

When you say that authentically, that's sort of like the conversion mechanism.

I believe in Allah who is one and Muhammad, peace be upon him, is the Razul, the Prophet.

That shows up, as I mentioned to you, 14 times a day when you do the next pillar, which is Salat, which is prayer.

You do that five times a day.

So five pillars, five times a day.

We talked about giving, alms giving 2.5% of your net worth.

I mean, you'd almost have to have a calculator to do that.

That's a tricky thing to figure, right?

So 2.5% of your net worth is alms.

The fourth one, Siyam, that's the fasting in Ramadan, or in Turkish you would say at Ramazan with a Z.

That's 28 days, not 40, right?

So it's a whole lunar month.

Ends with Eid al-Fatur.

That's the big feast day, begins with the date.

And the one we didn't talk about last week is the Hajj.

So the Hajj is the pilgrimage that every Muslim must make once in their life if they are able.

And that if is like it's a hedge, but really you should be able, goes the teaching.

You should make the Hajj.

The Hajj is a structured ritual visit to the city of Mecca, still in Saudi Arabia now.

So reminder, you can't make the Hajj whenever you want.

There's a specific calendar date for making the official Hajj.

You can go visit Saudi Arabia as a Muslim in any time you want, but it doesn't count unless you go during the right time.

When's the right time?

Well, it changes every year because, as I mentioned, in the lunar calendar, it's short five days of the solar calendar, so all the holidays sort of move around, and the Hajj could be any time of the year.

Particularly in the last several years, if you're not Muslim, you won't be going.

In fact, the penalty for like pretending it could be your death.

It could be really unfortunate.

So you don't really want to do that.

And you essentially need not just an American passport, you need a Muslim passport to be allowed.

Now, Tim's lived in Saudi Arabia before, and Americans can go to Saudi Arabia to do work.

But then as now, if you're an American in Saudi Arabia, you do not have permission to move around freely.

Well, uh we did because we lived in communities, not just in a compound, but the places we could go and take the context.

That's it, that's what I mean.

So if you live in an American community and you're probably there to do oil or food service for oil, let's just be honest, um, you're not permitted to drive to Mecca as an American unless you also have this Muslim passport.

And you probably won't be going to Medina either.

You kind of live in the American oil compound and immediate environs, but it's kind of dangerous still for you to just be trying to drive around Saudi Arabia unless you've got the proper credentials.

What they worry about, of course, is terrorism and defilement.

These are the concerns with the holy places.

Now, uh, you might know uh something interesting uh since it's Black History Month still, that there was this guy that we now call Malcolm X, who uh was relatively uh militant, like initially was in favor of violence on behalf of overthrowing white supremacy in the United States under the teachings of Elijah Muhammad.

Um curiously enough, Malcolm X went on the Hajj and came back advocating nonviolence because it was a spiritual transformation for him to be with white people, brown people, Indian people, uh, all on this pilgrimage, all dressed the same, united by peace.

So what happens on the Hajj?

And just a reminder uh this building in the middle where you see everybody kneeling, this is called the Ka'aba.

The Ka'aba is the holiest piece of geography in Islam.

This is where Ibrahim went to sacrifice the son of promise, Ishmael.

So I know you're thinking, wait, that was Isaac.

Well, if you're Jewish, it's Isaac.

If you're Muslim, it's Ishmael.

Um so the Ka'aba, I don't know if I see it, is like one of these bricks, but just one, and it is a black meteorite.

The rest of the structure has been built up and now it's sort of draped, and it is vacant inside.

At one time, prior to the Prophet, that's where all the idols lived.

This was like the house of the idols, but reminder, when the prophet came in and conquered Mecca from Medina, his first thing to do was smash all of them.

So the Ka'aba is empty, except there is like a prayer leader that lives in there and kind of tends to it.

So uh it's not like fancy, there's no like lavish bathroom or anything.

I don't believe there's a restroom in it at all.

It it there is somebody who who lives in there, though.

Kind of like a lighthouse keeper, if that makes any sense.

Now, because Islam has you know more than a billion followers, you can imagine that when people go to make the Hajj, there actually may not be room for everybody.

You see, you have to do this once in your life, and what do you live?

80 years.

So what does that mean?

There's theoretically a hundred million people coming.

That's not logistically possible, right?

That's too many people.

But it is possible that a million people descend on Mecca once a year.

Um, as we talked about, and you we'll talk about this more uh a little bit later, um, mosques, like where you go to pray, they have to have two things.

They have to have a dome and they have to have a minaret, which is the tower from which somebody does the call to prayer.

Uh the call to prayer reminder begins with Allah Akbar, God is great, therefore come and pray.

And uh Mecca has seven minarets, which means the most any other place can have is six.

So you can't outdo Mecca.

Now, Mecca's not a mosque properly because it has no dome.

Has no dome.

Uh but you do come, and as with the dome of the rock, it's a place where you circumambulate.

In fact, when you show up on the Hajj, there's a few things that you do.

Whether you're rich or poor, and I mean fabulously rich or extremely impoverished, you all wear the same clothes.

So the first thing you do is you put on essentially a homespun white robe.

If you're a man, you will shave your head as well as a sign of rebirth.

Right?

Like you're going back to being a baby.

So you're shaving all of your hair.

And as I mentioned, this is the true equalizer.

This is what was really compelling for Malcolm X is that there were billionaires next to people who were sponsored to get there because they couldn't pay their own way, and they were dressed equally the same.

And you're supposed to eat the same fare too.

Right?

This is you will eat some food, but essentially it's a fast journey.

Um, so initially you'll go and you'll um you'll do the haircut, you'll get on the white garments, and women go too.

Women go too.

They don't have to cut their hair, but they also do wear the simple garment.

They don't wear makeup, they don't wear jewelry.

Like no nobody is wearing anything but the white robe.

Um you'll circumambulate the Ka'aba a number of times, you'll stop and make your prayer.

Reminder that's like involves prostration, and you can see people on the ground doing it.

And look how packed in they are.

This is like exiting a football game for a week.

So you'll circle, you'll see up here that people then go out to the valley and they camp in these tents.

Now the Saudi government has put them up, so you don't have to bring your own tent anymore, but they're tents, and you sleep not on mattresses, but on very basic kind of cots or bedrolls.

Reminder, you're going back to zero.

So there's no temperatic in in Mecca.

And the valley, of course, is in between the Ka'aba and the mountain where Muhammad, peace be upon him, heard the words of Jibreel recite.

Um, what do you do on the Hajj?

Essentially, you are remembering the story by literally walking through its pieces.

You're going to the place.

You're wearing this holy garment.

You're camping in the desert.

And then there's a moment where you'll offer a sacrifice so you can see all of the sheep.

So you do eat.

You eat a lamb, and it's not like a pagan sacrifice where you're like burning censors and all that, but you you you sacrifice a sheep and you eat it.

Right?

This is pilgrim fair, is sheep and um something like pita bread.

And you'll see this guy bending down.

Uh, you pick up some pebbles, and there's a point at which there's a pillar that represents Satan, and you're supposed to stone the devil.

So you throw rocks at this pillar who represents uh the force of evil.

More about the force of evil in just a little bit.

It's an interesting bit.

Um again, you're you're out there for for quite a bit of time, and that is the Hajj.

Now, we don't have something like this in Christianity, although you understand that pilgrimage is very old in Christianity.

So, pilgrimage to Jerusalem, really old.

Pilgrimage on Santiago de Compostelo, right the way of St.

James in Spain, very old.

Couple pilgrimages uh that happen in Ireland and England, right?

You can make pilgrimage to Canterbury, where Thomas of Becket was martyred, right?

Um we don't really have any pilgrimages that are established in the United States, although sometimes you'll hear people will make a pilgrimage to the border, or they'll make a pilgrimage to Selma, right, for civil rights.

Um, those are like nice things.

And I just want to really contrast the difference.

If you're Muslim, it's not nice, you have to do it.

And if you make this pilgrimage, you um come back and you're called a haji, like one who has made the hajj.

You might wear a different color head scarf if you've done that.

It's very honorable to have done it.

Uh, and you might bring back a token with you because there is a well.

If you remember the story about Hagar going out into the desert, and there was a spring that God made so that she and the baby wouldn't die.

That well is called the Zimzum in Arabic, and it's still there.

So this is like holy water.

Now, in the church, we can bless that, right?

But in Islam, it must come from this spring.

So you drink it during the Hajj, but you probably also bring some home for your family and friends.

Zim zoom.

You know what I already said this, but how long is this journey?

It's a week.

Oh.

Yeah, or five days.

It's like five days to a week.

I I used to have it really tight in my head and it's not tight anymore.

Um, so it's you can understand it's pretty expensive.

You not only have to get your flight and your car, you gotta pay for a rope.

And now it is true, remember that there's two and a half percent of alms giving, so it is possible you sponsor somebody who can't afford this so that they can sort of fulfill their fifth pillar.

Right?

So just keep in mind the shachada you do every day, salat you do every day, zakat you do annually, um, siyam, Ramadan you do annually, and this is the rite of passage, you do this once in your life.

Now, there are people who will do it two, three times, but it's not meant to be an annual trip because if you do that, um really you should sponsor somebody else who can't do it ever.

I hope that makes sense.

Yeah, again, we just didn't have anything like this in Christianity.

Like I say, it's optional for us.

And if you go to Jerusalem, you're probably not shaving your head and putting on a, you know, a new garment.

And when you come back, nobody's like, oh, look, here comes here comes Bonnie, the Jerusalem pilgrim.

Like that's this is not a thing for the rest of your life.

Um, any questions about Hajj?

Yeah, it's uh it's a really unfortunate thing.

There's a lot of tension.

And it's hard to know, it's some of it's religious, right?

Because there's counterclaims about who should be in charge between uh Sunni and Shia.

But um a few years ago, some Shia pilgrims who were Iranian went to the Hajj.

Again, they have to, right?

And uh they were trampled to death.

Because you have that many people, right?

Somebody gets spooked or whatever, and so the Iranian government demanded an explanation from the Saudi government.

Like these are our people who have died on this pilgrimage, and the Saudi government's response is no more visas for Iranians.

Now, again, for us, it'd be like that's inconvenient, that doesn't seem fair.

If you're Muslim, it's worse than that.

You're denying a group of people a requirement of their faith by not giving them a visa.

So it's it's very tense.

Now, um, while we're talking about pilgrimage, this is the one you have to do.

If you're Shiite, you have other options too that are important.

So Sunnis don't do what I'm getting ready to say, but if you're Shiite, there are a number of other places you can and should, if you're possible, make pilgrimage to.

Like Medina, formerly called Yathrib, like Basra in Iraq, like Jerusalem.

What do those places have in common?

They're where the bodies of the first nine Imams, descendants of the prophet, have been interred in a mosque.

If this sounds Catholic to you, it's pretty Catholic.

You put a body in a shrine, like St.

John the Baptist's head is in Malta.

And uh the crown of thorns is in, well, three places, including Paris, right?

Like this is where you go on a pilgrimage, not because the people are holy, but kind of because the people are holy.

That's unique to Shiite Islam.

Sunnites didn't quite do that.

So you want to consider this as similar to reliquaries, right?

And so again, the first nine people, there's there's only one in Iran, that's in Mashad, and then there's like two in Iraq, and the rest are in Saudi Arabia.

But it's not limited to the first nine.

Like you probably know this guy, and you probably don't think favorably on him, but uh Ayatollah Khumani is also interred in Iran in a mosque in the city of Kom.

Q-O-M.

And people do make pilgrimage there.

Or the uncle of one of the first Imams might be interred in the city of Shiraz in Iran, and it's considered a holy place.

Not because God works miracles from their bones, but it's understood there's something special about these people.

So you go and pray in their presence.

Does that make sense?

Again, Sunnites don't do that, nor do evangelicals.

Catholic Shiites do those things.

Does that make sense?

Um everybody does this?

Yeah, no, keep in mind if you're a woman, you'll be behind the men at all times because you're not going to bend over in front of a man.

But yes, you'll go.

And sometimes the mosque might have like the key room and then like the women and children's room.

It's like for you so that you know where you go.

It's a curious thing that in much of the uh the Middle East, I mean, mosques are these big domed buildings, and often like they have a lot of space, and they can be much cooler than the surrounding area because this is like a you know tropical climate.

So it's very often that you'll find in the middle of the day people hanging out in the mosque because it's cooler than their homes, like lounging or taking a nap.

And there's a fountain usually in front because you have to do ablutions before you pray.

Sometimes you'll just find children playing in the mosque fountain.

And then, like I said, taking a nap in the mosque when it's not a prayer time.

I've seen that particularly in Iran.

Uh, you you think in really countries that may not have uh where equal opportunity of resources is not always spread equitably, if that makes sense.

Anybody been to the Taj Mahal?

Does Taj Mahal have people hanging out in it during the day?

Yeah, I mean it because it's cool, it's so big and it's marble, right, which is naturally cool.

And India's hot, right?

So people just hang out in the Taj Mahal, and you may aren't they praying?

No, they're just chilling in there, like literally.

Yeah, they might be reading.

Like I said, I've seen people sleeping all the time.

So there's the Hajj, and then there's lesser ones you can take if you're Shiite.

Uh a lot of Muslim folks will try to go to Hivron, which is in Israel.

Does anybody know who's in Hivron?

Ibrahim.

This is the tomb of Abraham.

And it's so contentious because it's in we now what we call the West Bank that there's a separate entrance for Jews and Muslims.

They can't even use the same entrance entrance because the history of violence and hatred.

But what entrance would the Christians use to the Jewish entrance.

And if you went, if you wanted to go now on a tour, you'd have to sign a waiver and you'd have to go in an armored bus because otherwise sometimes Palestinians just shoot tourist buses.

I mean it's and the tra and your travel insurance is void if you get hurt in Hebron.

Again, it's a disputed area between Jews, Muslims, and Christians.

And it's just really ugly, and it's in the West Bank.

So okay, that's the those are the five pillars.

Reminder.

Our big problem as humans is we forget who we are and whose we are, so these things are here to remind us.

There is uh theoretically a sixth pillar.

It's been given a bad name, uh, particularly after 9-11.

So you need to just soften your prejudice against this word, which is the sixth pillar is what you might call jihad.

Jihad is not a war against infidel Americans.

Jihad is the struggle to live the heart of faith.

So it does mean struggle, but it does not mean violence or terrorism.

We have an association with that because, frankly, the news and media didn't understand what they were reporting on.

There were some.

Muslims who said they flew those planes into the Twin Towers as an act of jihad.

Most other Muslims were like BS.

So I'll tell you more about that in just a second.

But consider, I mean, there is this sort of this struggle to remember who you are at all times.

There is a struggle.

Hey, that's why we have Ash Wednesday, isn't it?

Because we often forget and do like petty things that lead to death.

So this isn't real different.

It's a call to renewal and repentance.

Now, there is a word for fight an oppressor, and that's Jahilia.

And reminder that when the prophet came into Mecca, he gave them an opportunity to surrender or even to flee.

If they didn't want to become Muslim, he didn't kill them on the spot.

He said, then leave.

Now, you've probably heard things like, oh, there's the sword voice, sword verse in the Quran, which makes Islam inherently violent.

So usually you hear the beginning of the sword verse.

Fight those who do not believe in Allah.

Ah, look, Muslims are violent.

But we didn't keep reading.

You notice you fight people until they pay the tax or until they convert.

So it's okay to be Christian or Jewish.

Remember, you just pay for that privilege.

And again, the prophet didn't convert people by the sword.

If you didn't want to be Muslim, you went into exile.

I hope that makes sense.

Now you may say, well, that still sounds really violent.

Just please keep in mind that's how the Middle Ages worked in Europe.

I'll say that again.

If you want to become Muslim Muslim, you want it to be.

If you wouldn't become Muslim.

If you said not for me, and to heck with Christianity or Judaism, then the ruling was, then get out of town quick.

Because what the concern is, and you've raised children, now you you can say this isn't appropriate for adults, but if you've raised children, you understand that one bad apple can corrupt the whole bunch.

Now, hopefully as our children age, we say, I'm so glad you're around to be a good influence on those other people.

But you know, when they're young, we sometimes worry that our children will be wrongfully influenced.

I hope that's fair to say.

I don't know anybody that's like, my three-year-old can take anything, right?

We we we understand kids need maturity to say, to just say no, right, to all kinds of things.

Uh so sometimes we forget that 18-year-olds hopefully have figured it out by now.

Like we didn't shield children their whole life, like they need maturity and they need an ability to make their own decisions.

Hopefully, we formed them in that because we didn't make them take an elevator, we gave them an escalator ride.

I hope that makes sense.

So part of the struggle, right?

Part of the struggle comes along a couple of things.

So nobody quite knows why alcohol is prohibited.

Like we don't have it in the Quran why Muslims cannot drink alcohol, although the thought is that alcohol can dole your reasoning and make you more prone to fail a jihad.

There's a story that says the prophet witnessed two drunk Muslims having a fight, and that's why the prophet was like none of us.

Right?

Because when you were sober, you weren't fighting.

So to be clear, if you're Muslim, alcohol is haram.

Like, can't have it banned.

I wouldn't go to parties in Saudi Arabia with Talis.

And the the rationale that they use is that they could have their drink as long as when they went to prayer they were still good.

Yeah, I mean, but the rule is none ever.

And so, like in a country, and actually most of the Middle East, what you'll find instead of beer is like a malt beverage that is like O'Dules, but even less alcohol.

They taste fine.

I mean, I love Iranian beer.

Uh there's no alcohol in it, but it tastes like beer soda.

I mean, it's it's pleasant.

And you know, when it's hot outside, beer's actually a great restorer of electrolytes.

Um you know there's this wine that's really famous and from Australia called a Shiraz or a Syrah, that's the French word for Shiraz.

It comes from a city in Iran called Shiraz.

So the Persians drank wine, Muslims killed the wine industry.

Um didn't go outside the compound.

That is ha like the truce they've made with Americans coming, same in Dubai, but then remember you're paying an extra tax for that privilege.

Of course, people who live there say, I mean, you know, like they're not supposed to, but there are plenty of Muslims who drink alcohol and make it in their bathtub.

I had a friend who lived in Kuwait, and he made bathtub liquor himself, because you couldn't buy it in Kuwait at all.

Uh more tolerance for an American doing it than for a Kuwaiti.

And yes, people break the rules just like Christians break the rules.

But there's a zero tolerance for alcohol in the Muslim world.

If they were found making this, depends what country you live in as to what the consequence would be.

In some countries, much more severe than others.

I I remember a friend of mine had some salads over.

And uh wine.

Yeah.

When they were walking, they religious police picked them up.

They went back and picked up the guy that put them in the wine.

He went to jail, you can set home.

Yeah, and caning is not like just to be really clear, caning is when a martial arts master hits you with a bamboo pole in the back about as hard as they can.

I don't know if you remember the guy, the ambassador's kid in Singapore that was spray painting cars.

It's not a it's not a spanking, it's a beating, right?

It is like not a good thing.

Now, what's my opinion on that?

I probably shouldn't share it.

He got what he pays for.

I mean, like, I didn't think the president should have asked them to give him fewer whippings.

He is a spoiled brat that was spray painting cars, and he knew what the punishment was gonna be.

Should there be corporal punishment?

No, but if you know there's going to be, you should get it.

That's sorry, anyway.

I I don't know why we were trying to get him fewer licks.

I mean, he was asking for it.

Okay, anyway.

Are they putting in all those the big casinos at Dubai?

Dubai is a really weird city.

Oh, I love it.

It's a weird city because there's all kinds of different standards according to where you're from.

And I don't know if you're aware of this.

Dubai is the center in the world for um the illegal weapons uh transactions, so that's where those get banked, and for human trafficking.

And that's in a that's in a Muslim country.

I mean, Halliburton's there too, right?

Halliburton moved there, so there was lower tax burden.

That's an all-American company, Halliburton.

Makes me sick.

Anyway, that's that's Dubai.

They are taxing Japanese now.

Yeah, now just started.

Because they can, because everybody's already moved there.

Now, Dubai is like the New York City, right?

Of 20, it's just the brand new New York City.

It's got amazing architecture.

If you're uh an Emirati, you get a government stipend.

You don't do any work, you get all of these people from Bangladesh doing menial jobs.

It's it's terrible.

I'm sorry, it's a city of oppression.

I mean, it's lovely to look at, but it is a city full of oppression and corruption and greed.

They just bought a condo yesterday there.

In Dubai?

It's beautiful.

Yeah, it is.

It's beautiful.

That's their condo's everywhere.

Yeah, for Emiratis.

For Americans, we can do whatever we want there.

You can get drunk, you go to a casino, whatever you want, right?

Sorry.

I probably shouldn't share my opinions so brazenly.

It's very, though, that city is very odd regarding Islam.

It's very odd.

Islam is not in favor of human trafficking or the illegal weapons trade.

It's not.

But you can do that in Dubai because there's m money to be made.

And if you're an Emirati and you're found drinking alcohol, you might have severe consequences.

It's just very strange.

Um sorry, look, too many opinions.

Okay.

Uh other part of jihad is halal.

And she used to she she told me about how the girl the Saudi girls, I think I'm saying this right, would get on the plane to go to Paris, and on the plane, of course, they bring control and they go to Paris to go shopping.

Yeah.

And bring back fantasy clothes.

You know, and so like I we could say, like, oh, look at those hypocritical people.

But I mean, Christians are like that too, right?

Like you know, we're all like that, which is kind of why I think I'm real in favor of a separation of church and state, to be honest.

But that's also because I'm a Western Christian, so that's like kind of built into me.

Um but I'm in favor of that everywhere.

Um another jihad is is a struggle, is halal, right?

And a lot of people say, oh, that's just like kosher.

It's nothing like kosher.

You can't eat pork.

That's like kosher.

But you know, in kosher you have to like salt meat three times to get all the blood out of it.

And it's halal's just not quite that stringent, just to be clear.

Kosher is about as stringent as it gets.

There's similarities between halal and kosher, but don't confuse the two.

No Jewish person will eat halal and call it kosher.

Because it's not.

Um, the hijab is a jihad, right?

The hijab, in Hebrew we call it a shadow, right?

That's what you see Muslim women wearing.

It's a head covering that you have to wear outside your home.

And it kind of doesn't matter what varietal of Muslim you are.

Liberal Muslims also wear a hijab.

By the way, the Virgin Mary wore one too.

We're familiar with Virgin Mary on the flannel board?

It would have been called a shadow for her, but it's a head covering.

When do you take it off?

In your home.

In your home.

Now, it starts to become controversial when you say the hijab's not enough.

So you're probably familiar that uh there are different add-ons.

The next level up is probably something you'd call a shador.

A shador, uh, which you will see often in Iran, it's not required.

And in Iran, you must wear a hijab.

Or the religious police will have a talk to you that you won't enjoy, particularly possibly at a station.

Um hijab is a what is it?

A hijab is just a headscarf.

Uh like if you want, I can demonstrate with Kathis.

It just has to cover your head.

Uh, usually the way you would wear a hijab, right, is that it covers your head, and then you might do that.

Done.

Right?

It's a way of preserving modesty.

Keep in mind this comes from Judaism.

Because if you're Jewish, the only time you let your hair down is on Shabbat, and you do it to your family.

And this is why most Jewish women, to differentiate themselves from Muslims, don't wear a headscarf, they wear a wig.

So that you can't see their hair.

But they don't want to be confused with Muslims, so they wear a wig.

Does this make sense what I'm saying?

No.

Well, your hair is just for your family.

When I was when I was Catholic.

Well, it's a woman's glory.

And your glory belongs at home, not flouted.

As a kid growing up with eight eight years I spent in graphic school, we always covered our heads with it.

And there are Christians who do it too.

If you're Amish, you cover your head.

Yeah?

You know about this?

Some Mennonite women will do it.

Um Seventh-day Adventists might do that.

Some Catholic women will do it.

They'll wear a hat in church, particularly, like a bonnet.

Yes.

So this is this is a thing.

Now, what's my opinion?

My opinion is that it's structural misogyny.

But I'm also a westernized Christian who happens to think that giving women rules that you don't inflict on men is chauvinist and misogynistic.

Now, it goes from the Chador.

The Chador is a hijab that goes sort of down to the knees like a cape.

So it's like a big, huge hijab.

And you're probably familiar that some women in Afghanistan who had a lot of money in the 1970s, not poor women, rich women, went ahead and covered their face as well.

That's called a burqa.

They chose to do it at the time.

They didn't have to, and now that's become enforced fashion in some branches of Islam.

So there's nothing in the Quran that says women wear burkas.

Nothing like that.

But there are places in United Arab Rimirits, in uh yeah, I think in Saudi Arabia and uh Afghanistan is mandated by the Taliban, right?

Uh Iraq, uh Iranians do it if they want to.

There's no government push on that.

So it could be a local custom where they're from, but you don't have to do this in Iran.

Um and of course, the reasoning behind it is to protect a woman's modesty.

Which is interesting, right?

And here's why I think it's got structural misogyny.

If you say women are beautiful and they tempt men, who's the problem?

Right.

The damn men.

So men should wear eye masks.

My own opinion.

Now there is some thought, and we've had this in Christianity too, and I I know that most Muslim people wouldn't do what I'm saying, but there is a thought that uh women are irrationally always thinking about sex, so they're the problem.

But again, that's structural misogyny, to be clear.

Again, I no Muslim people would probably like what I'm saying, but as a Westerner, that's my commentary on hijabs.

France has a big problem, you think, right now.

Of course they do.

Because Fran France, more than most any other European, well, I'd say more than any other European country, has the largest percentage of Muslims.

And like you can't, and and then this is like the other problem, like what about girls in PPE?

And that's where you get the burkini.

And how do women compete in the Olympics?

Well, they wear like fitted burkas in some countries.

I'm not against women choosing what they want as long as they know it's a choice, right?

But to mandate it just seems really hard on, it seems hard to me, particularly when men don't have to make any behavioral modification.

In Iran, you'll often find that there are two different door knockers on a door.

One is if there's a male visitor and one if it's a female, so you know whether or not you need to put your thing on or not.

That's actually kind of interesting to think through.

Every country kind of does this differently, but hear that this is part of the jihad.

And it's not just a jihad for women, it's a jihad for fathers and husbands, because you have to protect your daughters and spouse.

You have to protect their modesty.

So if a woman goes out not wearing a hijab, shame on her, but you might get a beating too.

Because that's your job to protect your assets.

Is the hijab supposed to entirely cover the hair, or is that it just goes over the top of your head.

And like you know that a country, you can have some sense of the relative strictness based on how much hair the hijab covers.

So if you're interested in knowing, in Iran, the religious police won't bust you if your hijab is showing half your hair.

If you see them coming, you might pull it forward.

But they're not going to cane a woman for that.

If you don't have one at all, you're in trouble.

Iran's a little more lax than you might think, partially because when the Shah was in power, the mini-skirt in Iran was shorter than the mini-skirt in Paris.

I don't know if you're if you know about this.

I can talk about Iran later if you want to.

It's its own interesting place.

Uh okay, any questions about jihad?

Again, it's it's it's the struggle uh to live into the heart of faith.

How does compare to a fatwa?

Oh, I'll talk a bit that a fa'wah is totally a different thing, and it all has to do with sharia.

Oh, maybe I should talk about that now.

So you've probably heard of something called sharia law, right?

So what is sharia?

Sharia is the Arabic word for the way.

The way.

Now keep in mind the earliest Christians called themselves the way, not Christians.

So Sharia is the way to embody the Holy Quran and the teachings of the Prophet, which of course represent like the mouth of God.

So you might call it, oh, that's like the Torah, or that's like the Ten Commandments.

It's the way.

So if you're not sure, can I have in vitro fertilization?

Hopefully, somebody has made a ruling on whether or not that fits within the confines of the Holy Quran.

Who makes those rulings?

Uh they're called, uh, these are legal scholars.

In Islam, they're called mullahs.

So a mullah is kind of like a scribe in the Hebrew Bible.

Or like the kinds of people Jesus complains about.

Scribes are people who read the Torah and say, like, this is in, this is out.

Like, you can't hit an elevator button on the Sabbath, that's work.

If you're familiar with that, right?

So, by the way, there's all kinds of mullahs out there.

So they even have disagreement with each other.

If you're like a really good mullah and you start to become promoted, then you can become one of these.

And again, there are many of these.

There's not just one ayatollah.

Ayatollah Kumani was one ayatollah.

Think of it as sort of like a district court judge or an appellate judge, and here are the local judges.

Does that make sense?

You particularly see these in Shi'ite Islam because these are people who know the way so well that they start to wield not just religious authority but political authority, particularly in a country that is an Islamic republic.

So Ayatollah Khomeini was the leader of Iran because he was the Supreme Court judge, all of them combined in one.

Now, when a uh when a mullah, but particularly when an Ayatollah hears a case, which is called in Arabic a fiqh, they usually give a ruling on that case, which is called a fatwa.

Now, you may have heard that Ayatollah Khumaini gave a fatwa ordering the death of Salmon Rushdie in the late 80s.

Because Salman Rushd wrote this book called the Satanic Verses that was loosely based on a historical event that the prophet recanted some of the verses because he said they came from the devil, not from Jabril.

So that's a real thing, by the way.

That's a real thing.

And then, has anybody read the Satanic Verses?

Not his best book.

Not his best book.

And weird.

It's like reading the left behind series.

I mean, and that is actually what it is.

It's the left behind series of Islam.

Well, Ayatoni Khamenei didn't read the book.

He heard about it, and he heard the case, a fake, and he thought this is blasphemous, so he ordered a fatwa, which is any loyal Muslim shall kill Salmon Rushdie on site for blasphemy.

So Salman Rushdie fled to London and hid and all of that.

But if I said that, hey, uh women must wear a burqa, not just a hijab, that would also be a fatwa.

It doesn't have to be enforceable by death.

It's sort of like a Supreme Court decision that transcends different territory depending on which version of the Sharia you subscribe to.

There are many different schools.

The most famous one would be like the Hanbali school, or um oh, this is what happens when you get old.

What's the other one?

I used to know so much, and now I don't.

Yeah, so um like if you're a Wahhabist, Wahhabist, those would be like the Taliban or Wahhabist um, and and Osama bin Laden was a Wahhabist too, right?

Very, very tight constricting fatwas given about the place of women and what men must do.

Compare that to, say, uh Pakistan, who parts of Pakistan, I mean, Pakistan elected a female prime minister.

It would never happen in Afghanistan.

That's because there's like a more dominant and different version of the Sharia.

So when you hear Sharia law, don't think that there's one Sharia law.

There's a few different ones.

It's not like you pick and choose which one you like.

Usually you're born into this, and the community you belong to favors one over the other.

Right?

And just to be clear, that's not so different from Christianity.

We have a lot more Sharia options to us in the form of denominations.

And we belong to one where if somebody says, What's the church's teaching on abortion?

I could say, well, here's the general principle, but lots of people believe different things.

Which makes us relatively unique.

Does that make sense?

So I grew up as a Southern Baptist with essentially a sharia that said you should not drink alcohol ever.

Evangelicals often share that perspective.

You certainly would never have it at church.

Just as an example of different sharia.

Okay, and then we got to meet some of the clergy in Islam as well.

Um again, this is really tough when this person is also the most important political person in your country.

Because essentially they're unassailable.

Like they have all of the power.

How do they become a problem?

Well, it's interesting.

I mean, how do you become an ayatollah?

Well, first you have to be a Mola, which is sort of like you get your Islamic JD.

Like you you're sort of barred in Islam.

You've gone to school, and and then like you have a reputation of being a really sort of great scholar, and people like your rulings in sort of the consent to make you an Ayatollah, and then if you're charismatic or you've got a compelling vision for life, then you become popular.

I mean, Ayatollah Khomeini, strangely enough, as much as people feared him, like some people really loved him.

I mean, the guy, the guy didn't steal any money.

He lived super simply when he got back, and that was a nice thing because the Shah stole billions of dollars from Iran.

And he always looks real dour, but like he played with his kids.

Like the reputation for him playing at home with his kids and being good to his wife is like well known.

Um I mean, I I think he's scary, but I'm an American.

I don't like his policies, because like they seem like over adjusting the pendulum.

Anyway.

Oh yeah, Salman Rushdie, yeah.

After Ayatollah Khomeini died.

And now there's another Ayatollah called Ayatollah Khamaini, which is like if you uh you find that confusing, you should, right?

It's really, really close.

So he's now the the current supreme leader in in Iran, Ayatollah Khamaini, who's theoretically more liberal than Ayatollah Khamaini.

It this is like splitting hairs.

And so that they put it on his eye, yeah.

Yeah.

So I'm guessing that was thinking, well, I don't care if the Ayatollah Khamaini is dead and that bot is no longer in existence.

For me it is.

That's the interesting thing about this.

How do you undo a fiat from God to the faithful?

Oh, that doesn't apply anymore.

I mean, good luck, right?

Like this is where you, once you say something, how do you withdraw it?

I know I'm telling you some of the darker parts of the story right now.

Keep in mind I've tried to tell you lots of dark parts about our own story, right?

So we all got darkness in us.

And hey, with with um when you take religious politics and mix it with political, it just gets tough fast.

Um I can tell you more about Iran later, because like I'm a minor, I'm a minor expert on it.

Um usually we have a particular view.

I'll just go ahead and tell you about it now.

Um we have a particular like strong view about Iran, like what's wrong with those people without realizing that we're most of what's wrong with those people.

So I'll just briefly tell you the history that um there that the the sort of the, if you know Kamal Ataturk, he's the one who made uh Turkey a secular country, which has now been undone by Erdogan, right?

But Kamal Ataturk said, we're not an Islamic republic, we're a republic with Muslim people in it.

And he had sort of a contemporary in Iran, um, named Reza Shah, and he did the same thing in Iran.

And uh this Reza Shah was like Ataturk, he was successful, he had some he had some charisma, and then he had his son, who was the last Shah, and and that guy turned out to be kind of like a thief, and he didn't have charisma, and he didn't honor village politics at all, and so there was a free election where uh the consensus was to elect a guy named Mossadegh.

Mossadegh was again a popularly elected president of Iran to replace a hereditary emperor.

The problem was Mossadegh wanted to nationalize oil, and uh it was the British government, BP, that was extracting all of the oil to their own favor, right?

So BP kind of got thrown out by Mossadegh, and then love living in this country, I do, but the CIA decided to overthrow Mossadegh so that we could have the oil rights in Iran.

And this was the first coup that the CIA overthrew based on commodities.

So we believe in democracy unless we can get a lot of money.

This is how it worked, truly.

You can read the story.

So we overthrew Mossadegh and put the Shah back, the one the people didn't want.

The one who was cruel and vicious and stealing from Iranians.

We forced the Shah back on them.

And the Shah was very, what do you know, like Western.

As again, I mentioned this miniskirt in Tehran was shorter than mini-skirt in Paris.

And I have neighbors who worked for Brown and Root, and they were building like a state-of-the-art naval base in Iran.

And the Shah had his own Gestapo spying on people who were trying to overthrow him because he was robbing the country blind.

So people would just get taken out of their house in the middle of the night, never see them again.

The Shah spent all this money on the 2000th anniversary of Persepolis.

Maybe you've heard about this.

Gandhi went.

Uh Gandhi was real critical of this.

Um it's just sort of interesting.

Uh it's in the middle of the desert, and uh, what do you know?

The scout jamboree for World Scouting in 1979 was supposed to be in Tehran.

Except there was this small event called the Islamic Revolution.

And essentially that's when Ayatollah Khamaini, who had been exiled into Paris by the Shah, flew back, the Shah fled with billions of dollars that he kept.

And um, you know, it's hard to say whether most Iranians wanted Ayatollah Khomeini.

They just didn't want the Shah anymore.

So Ayatollah Khamaini kind of stepped into this power vacuum, and you can understand, based on what I've told you, you don't have to believe me, why Iranians had a hard time trusting the United States.

So that led to the whole U.S.

Embassy thing, right?

Where they took the U.S.

Embassy hostage.

I'm not saying that's an okay tactic, but you know, just give a little bit of thought that these are people who think they've been enslaved by the United States.

So they're returning the favor, right?

And um Khomeini kind of lived on this anti-American sentiment, um, and and that's kind of where we are today.

Now, uh Obama kind of eased that up.

So I was able to go under Obama.

Like I went for uh 10 days back in 2016, but there's it's no good time to go now.

It's not a good place to visit politically because of the whole nuclear sanctions, etc., right?

Why do they want nuclear weapons so that they can't get pushed around by the United States, just honestly.

You can say, well, we're not gonna do that.

Okay, that's fine, but if you're an Iranian, like that's what you're afraid of.

Why do they let this guy stay in power?

Because last time they had a revolution, this is what they got, and they're worried it could be worse.

Do most Iranians like this?

No.

No.

What are their options?

I mean, this is kind of what it's like to be in Iran, according to the people I talk to.

Nope.

I have a few people who like were a tour guide, etc., right?

And this community has a lot of Iranians.

Like Houston got a lot of them.

People who work at NASA, downtown, there's like five Iranian restaurants.

I mean, again, at the time of the Shah, um women could be anything in Iran.

And this is still true.

There's more Iranian doctors that are female than male today.

So women's rights in Iran are pretty strong.

I think I mentioned to you that if I were a solo woman traveler going to an Islamic country, the safest place for me is Iran.

Because if a man touches me, he'll have his hand cut off.

Well, I mean, that's a high penalty.

I'll tell you, I've been to Egypt and I have people touch me and like grope me.

It's super gross.

And if I were a woman, it'd be even worse.

Because there is an understanding that if somebody's not Muslim, you can kind of have your way with them.

Because they're infidels, so they're kind of less than people.

So solo travel by women in many Middle Eastern countries, not a great plan.

I'm just gonna be honest.

It's not because people there are worse.

I mean, I'd say the same in Italy.

I don't know if you've traveled in rural Italy.

I mean, I had my butt grabbed, which is like anyway, yeah.

So so there.

That's a little bit of better run.

Controversial, political, that's fine.

Uh but we're we we are, as a country, we've we've meddled in things.

We just need to be honest about that.

I wish we would be honest and sort of say, I'm sorry.

I don't know that we need to like pay reparations, but it would be great if we just said, I'm sorry.

Because we did that.

We did it because we were thinking we were keeping the world safe.

But let's be honest, there's a lot of money to be made.

A lot of money to be made.

Yeah.

Okay, so that was about that.

Uh why don't I quit for here and we'll start talking about mosques, which are different from churches next week, if if if that works.

Yeah, I'm gonna mention them more next time when I talk about different branches, because there's Shiites and Sunnites, and then there's a couple of other branches.

Yeah.