#1107 - Sam Harris & Maajid Nawaz

Joe Rogan (0:02)

Four, three, two, one, boom, and we're live. Gentlemen, Sam, Maajid, how are you?

Maajid Nawaz (0:08)

Good, thanks.

Joe Rogan (0:08)

Pleasure to meet you.

Maajid Nawaz (0:09)

Pleasure, Joe.

Joe Rogan (0:09)

Thanks for coming here.

Sam Harris (0:11)

Yeah, I'm very happy to get you guys together. I've been looking to do this for at least two years, and finally it's arrived.

Joe Rogan (0:18)

What's been your ultimate goal? What was it?

Sam Harris (0:20)

Well, Maajid is just a superstar that needs more exposure. I mean, he should be running half of civilization.

Maajid Nawaz (0:30)

That's one of those quotable things you can put on the back of a book, isn't it?

Sam Harris (0:33)

Yeah.

Joe Rogan (0:33)

It's a good one. You shouldn't put that one. It has to be on the back of the book for sure. Definitely not on the front.

People who read it and go, superstar.

Sam Harris (0:41)

I can't blurb the book we wrote together, unfortunately.

Joe Rogan (0:45)

That is an issue.

Maajid Nawaz (0:45)

You're too kind, Sam. Thank you.

Joe Rogan (0:47)

It's very generous of you. Are you suing the Southern Poverty Law Center? Is that what's going on?

Maajid Nawaz (0:54)

Yeah. I, in fact, have an update for everybody because, you know, we crowdfunded a lot of the early costs for the case against the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Joe Rogan (1:02)

What did they do? What is it based on? Let me back up a bit.

Maajid Nawaz (1:05)

Once upon a time, yours truly, a British Muslim of Pakistani origin, was listed in the United Kingdom on the Thomson Reuters World Check Database under a category red terrorism designation, across the Atlantic in the United States by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-Muslim extremist. So, I was both a Muslim terrorist and an anti-Muslim extremist, according to two separate lists.

And of course, that speaks to some of the polarization in our times in how irrational this conversation around extremism, Islam integration, Muslims in the West has become. I sued Thomson Reuters World Check, the database. This database is no joke. It's like HSBC and many, many other banks use this database for background checks on whether clients can have a bank account with them. So as a result of, for example, Thomson Reuters and their database, Quilliam, which is a counter extremism organization I founded 10 years ago, had its bank account shut down in the United States because of the Thomson Reuters well-checked database system that HSBC subscribes to.

Anyway, we sued them. They paid damages. They issued an apology and they took my name off this terrorism designation list they have on their well-checked database.

Sam Harris (2:26)

Maajid, I think maybe you should back up further and just give your kind of your short form bio in terms of why would you ever be on a terrorist watch list?

Maajid Nawaz (2:34)

I'll do that.

But at the same time, the Southern Poverty Law Center had listed me, as I said, as an anti-Muslim extremist. So we are also taking legal action against them. And I will get to your point, but I think just want to say that the I've just held a law firm on retainer Claire Locke, and they were the ones that sued the Rolling Stone magazine for that college rape scandal. Yeah, that's right. Successfully got one that case Claire Locke, which is an announcement made here exclusively with you. No one else knows this yet. We have retained Claire Locke.

They are writing to the Southern Poverty Law Center as we speak. I think they've got wind of it, the Southern Poverty Law Center, as of I think either yesterday or the day before. They've removed the entire list that's been up there for two years. They've removed the entire list, which also had Ayan Hirsi Ali on it, and it's no longer available on their website.

Joe Rogan (3:23)

Now is there logic that if you're a critic of Islam, of radical fundamentalist Islam, that you are somehow or another a racist extremist?

Maajid Nawaz (3:34)

So, that's pretty much what they've said. If you criticize Islam, Ayan, myself, who have come from within the community, who have had that experience, that somehow that makes us anti-Muslim.

There are a number of logical errors involved in that logical leap that they've made.

Joe Rogan (3:50)

Do they have any distinction? Is there anything that they write that sort of points to why they would say that?

Maajid Nawaz (3:56)

One of them, honestly, the reasons they listed, one of them was that I had a bachelor party in a strip club a year before I got married.