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SHAYKH HAMZA YUSUF on BBC RADIO 5 with FI GLOVER

Please note: This is a transcript of an interview originally broadcast live on BBC Radio 5. If you would like to recieve the original MP3 recording (50 MB) please mail Zhikr. Thank you.

Fi Glover: After the news and sport our guest is Shaykh Hamza Yusuf who is a leading academic on Islam. He is happy to answer your questions.

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: Sure.

Fi Glover: Good, we've got plenty of them so far. What we'd like to do, if this is all right by you Hamza, is kind of take it right back to the beginning so people shouldn't feel afraid to ask what they might think of the most basic questions about the Islamic faith and you're happy to go through things in detail for us. You have met President Bush and you actually advised him on quite a key point which was the name of the operation, originally called Infinite Justice. And did you suggest the alternative name or did you just point that out?

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: He asked for a suggestion and I think I said... Righteous Justice. But they didn't use that one.

Fi Glover: And how did you find it, talking to him, because we often have a caricature of the man over here.

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: I think my caricature was definitely, it burst so to speak. He came off as very different in private than I imagined him to be.

Fi Glover: Is he knowledgeable?

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: I think he's much more intelligent than he comes off on some of his public imagery. Knowledgeable that I think that he's much more a people type person. He's somebody that seems to me to be, connects very well with people, he's got a type of charisma so to speak. I don't know about... I think that he's probably got a lot to learn about the Muslim world.

Fi Glover: Does he have an intellectual curiosity, do you think?

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: Yeah, I think so. He certainly seemed to be a very good listener and I think ultimately people that make it to these levels of achievement in the world obviously... you know, they've got something going for them.

Fi Glover: One hopes so very much!

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: {laughs}

Fi Glover: We'll take lots of calls after the news and sport...

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Fi Glover: Shaykh Hamza Yusuf is in the studio with us. He has briefed Western leaders on the current situation and has been described as the West's most influential Islamic scholar he's going to stay around for the next hour or so and will be more than happy to answer any questions that you might have. Let's start with where your authority comes from if that's alright. You converted to Islam at the age of seventeen?

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: Right, seventeen, and I subsequently, actually moved to England, I spent a few years in England and then after that I was given a scholarship to the United Arab Emirates and I studied there for four years and then I studied also in Algeria and in West Africa and in Morocco and I spent a period of time also in Saudi Arabia and after that I returned to the United States and did my university studies in religious studies and subsequently started an Islamic school, institute, in California, and I've been teaching there for several years and lecturing. I've lectured quite a bit in the UK and also in the United States and in the Arab world as well.

Fi Glover: What drew you to the Islamic faith?

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: I think that it's probably a difficult question to really pin point any one thing, but I think I was particularly drawn to the Muslims that I'd met, but I had read the Qur'an in English, an English translation of the Qur'an, and was very impressed by certain aspects of the faith that I felt were lacking in my previous faith, so I saw it really as an enhancement of my own upbringing. I was raised Christian and I felt that it was something that was a progressive step for me.

Fi Glover: Can you give us a guide as to the different paths of Islam because this interpretation of the Qur'an seems to be a very integral part of understanding who believes in what and what has drawn some people to the rather disturbed situation we're in now.

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: I think that in all religious traditions legitimacy is problematic. Certainly within the Christian tradition legitimacy was defined within the Catholic Church and obviously the Protestant Reformation rent that asunder so to speak. And since then, I mean obviously we've got untold numbers within the Methodists alone in America, there are over seventy, I think there are seventy seven Methodist branches, that are all within the United Methodist, but they all have different interpretations of their tradition.

Within Islam traditionally you've had, the Muslims have been divided into two groups. The Sunni and then the Shiite. The majority are Sunni. There's probably about eight-five percent of the Muslim world is Sunni. And then you have the large minority is the Shiite. And then you'll have small sects like any religious tradition. Unfortunately a lot of people don't realise that because of the colonial period a lot of the teaching universities were shut down and the Muslim world is still a deeply religious part of the world unlike, you know, the increasingly secularised West. People here tend to see religion as really a marginalised aspect of their life. And even within Christianity the fact that we do in the West tend to see religion as something that's done on Sunday. Whereas Muslims pray five times a day, so there's a pretty strong connection to a religious world view so to speak.

So when you look at the Muslim world. I think by and large you do have a deeply religious community of people and they're as dysfunctional as most human beings in the modern world, I mean there's a lot of problems in the Muslim world. There's social problems, economic problems. I think areas of Muslim strength are the family, I think the family is still a very integral part of Muslim society and culture and I think that families in many ways are more integral in the Muslim world than they are in the West but certainly in areas, economics and development, these type things, there's no doubt that the Muslim societies by and large are significantly behind the West in those areas.

Fi Glover: Would it be unfair to say that Islam is in a bit of a mess at the moment?

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: I think Muslims are in a bit of a mess. I think Islam is a world religion. I wouldn't say Islam is in a mess but I'd say the Muslims are in a mess.

Fi Glover: What kind of a mess?

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: Well I think part of it is what we were getting to, the legitimacy, is because that these teaching institutions were pretty much dismantled by the colonial powers I mean this is all documented stuff, it's well known to academics. Places like Al-Azhar were actually radically altered and Lord Cromer from England had a hand in that. Places like the Zaytuna in Tunis is pretty much become a secular university. The one place where there still is significant I think strength in terms of traditional studies is in Morocco. The Qaraween university in Fez is still fairly strong, but it was revived by the late King Hussan.

So the fact that there are so few really trained scholars what's happened is lot of Arabs who are not educated in the religious sciences but because of modern schooling have gone through say twelve years of education they can read Arabic up to a point, because Arabic's a much more difficult language, classical Arabic, than say modern English. But they do have access to religious knowledge through books and things like that and what's happened is there's a new generation has emerged of people who are speaking in the name of religion and really aren't trained because I think all of us would agree that in order to interpret anything you have to have the tools.

So for instance in the United States we have the constitution in the United States is the foundation of law. In order to reach a level where you can interpret the constitution you have to be considered a constitutional lawyer and really have a very high level of expertise in legal theory and in law so what happens is that people take Qur'an who don't have that training and they find verses in the Qur'an like the Bible, I mean you have a verse in the bible where Jesus says don't think I've come to bring peace, I come to bring war. But then there's another verse where Jesus says blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called children of God. So which one is it? Are we warmongers or are we peacemakers? And what you need is you need to understand these things. There's metaphysical implications, there's things that aren't to be taken literally, in the Bible as well as in the Qur'an and this is where you need a trained scholastic tradition.

Fi Glover: Right, I mean that's very much like an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is often quoted from the Bible not in it's context it isn't saying what people now use it as a justification.

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: Well I was on a program and I woman called in it's like Jesus said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. And I reminded her actually that Jesus didn't say that he said it is said of old an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth but I say unto you love those who hate you, right, which is quite different. {Laughs}

Fi Glover: From what you're saying is one of the fundamental problems the lack of leadership?

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: I think it is

Fi Glover: And is Osama bin Laden actually trying to become one leader?

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: Osama bin Laden he's an engineer. He's not a trained theologian. He's an engineer. He was trained I think in structural engineering or something like that. Eiman Zahaweeri who's with him is a pediatrician. How a pediatrician could become a terrorist is very strange.

Fi Glover: That's quite a leap isn't it?

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: I think it's a big leap, you know, somebody who was trained to save children and help children could end up participating in events that actually children are killed in is something very very strange. I think you're dealing with people... I think the Afghani war was an extremely traumatic war and I think the veterans of that war were deeply traumatised and I don't think that their psychological wounds have healed , I think in a way they've festered and these people are filled with a lot of rage and anger which is tragic.

Fi Glover: Is there an inconsistency with the actions of the suicide bombers in that they wouldn't have achieved the martyrdom that that they were searching for or even have been granted a place in paradise because of they way they'd lived before? I mean they had smoked, they had drunk, they had taken up with women of ill repute. They had not lived a life that seemed to be very religious beforehand.

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: I think that was enigmatic for most of the Muslims, devout Muslims, because Muslims tend to generally... people that are committed to their tradition don't drink, they might smoke, but they certainly don't drink, they don't womanise. I mean human beings always have their short comings and failures, but generally you won't find that in the Muslim community, certainly not in religiously committed Muslims and even not that much in the secularised Muslim community. So I think that was problematic.

But I think when we are looking at these people, if they were indeed Muslims, and most of the circumstantial evidence points to that, I think that there's two major problems here. One that suicide is prohibited in Islam, it's considered one of the grave sins of Islam, and while it doesn't excommunicate a person it is seen as one of the worst things that you can do and homicide as well and it's very rare that these two things will come together where you get a suicidal individual who's also homicidal. I mean this is a very unusual combination. And obviously it's one of the worst but it does occur even in the West. I mean every once in a while we get the guy in America who goes into the post office and shoots all his co-workers and then turns the gun on himself. Human beings do do this. It is a problem.

I think here for me the most difficult aspect of this is the premeditation because this is obliviously something that took a great deal of planning and these people would have had to have been actively living amongst Americans. I think for people in the West when they look at Muslims if you look at Pakistanis for instance on the news with contorted faces and kind of shouting and screaming anti-Western diatribes and burning flags and things like this I think for people who don't know Pakistanis they can obviously think that these are pretty insane people whereas I think English people who have friends that are Pakistanis who have experienced a little bit of that culture know that is in no way definitive of a people or a culture but it represents similar to our National Front for instance in the West or white supremacists, there's quite a few of them in America. There's some ugly Americans, but generally Americans they're nice people. So I think that this is one of the things that has to happen, there needs to be a little more interaction and people need to be aware of some commonly shared core values that we have.


Fi Glover: We've got so many questions to get through we'll go straight to them after we've had some headlines and travel.

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Fi Glover: Time to go straight to some e-mails.

Co-presenter: Very interesting questions, Eddie from Birmingham: "Isn't the key difference between Western thinking and Islam that Western thought values scientific rational thought, questioning things, whereas Islam values submission to the will of God and therefore is it possible for the two to exist happily together in society?"

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: I think it's a good question, but I would say on the contrary I think Islam is very interesting in that it does demand that you question, that you inquire. I think that if Eddie read the Qur'an he would probably be surprised that the amount of verses that are talking about looking at the creation and thinking, 'don't they travel in the earth and see how creation began', the Muslims were extraordinary in their scientific pursuit. In fact a lot of our science is actually based on a bridge that occurred between the ancient world of Greece and Islam, trigonometry was invented by the Muslims, also algebra is an Arabic word, Al-Jabr.


Fi Glover: Isn't one of the problems though...

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: Also just out of the three thousand named stars over a thousand of them in the West still have Arabic names. Most of the brightest stars that you can see up in the sky like Vega, is from Wak'ih or Atere is Al-Tair I mean these are still stars that we look up. They carry Arabic names because the Arabs and Muslims were great astronomers so on the contrary I think there was a great deal of science but the Muslims did like many civilisations go into a type of regressive retroactive period and that was the time when the West began to emerge.

Fi Glover: And so what happens now, I mean is it possible to still say that perhaps there is a dark age going on in terms of new developments?

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: I think there is a bit of a dark age, a little bit, I think that's probably true. Octavio Pase who won the noble prize said if the West does not learn how to bridge the gap between religion and science that we are hell-bent on destruction and he said Islam seems to be uniquely the only religion that was able to do that and that is something that Prince Charles also said in some speechs that we need to bring Muslim theologians to the West to teach us how we can bridge this gap between science and religion that the Muslims seem to have done for centuries.

Fi Glover: But presumably also to also teach the younger generations. I mean do you see that there's some kind of generation gap that is preventing better assimilation between Muslims and people in the West?

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: I think, you know it's important for us in the West to realise how traumatic the last 150 years have been for the Muslims. The Muslims were a people generally who didn't really know defeat. Historically there's very few instance where they actually experienced defeat. Generally it was a very successful religion. The Ottoman empire is the longest lasting dynasty in the history of human civilisation and yet with the colonial incurgen into the Muslim lands beginning with Napoleon, well probably you can look at it from Spain but Napoleon was the heart land, when Napoleon entered into Egypt and then you see until before long the entire Muslim world was basically under colonial control. So I think that was very humiliating for the Muslims. I think they are still suffering from that humiliation.

I think it's very interesting that Osama bin Laden said in one of his broadcasts that we've been living in humiliation for eighty years. I think for us if we look at for instance Nazi Germany. Germany after the Versai treaty was humiliated quite considerably by the other Western countries that opposed Germany in World War One and then they had massive inflation, economic collapse. Within thirteen years they were already electing a fascist government into power. The same is true for Italy so I think one of the things about humiliation is what will often come out of it is a type of an attempt to restore the glory of the past and anybody that can promise that like Jamal Abdul Nassar in Egypt, gains a widespread popular support. I think it's tragic that bin Laden could even strike a cord like that in the Muslims and I think it is indicative of a very serious crisis in the Muslim world that in some ways Muslims have reached a type of rock bottom.

Fi Glover: Lets have another question...

Co-presenter: This is from Claire from Norwich: "We hear a lot about the Islamic nations but is that a reality? Aren't nations divided along geopolitical lines and can there ever be such a thing as an Islamic nation?"

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: I don't think there are any Islamic nations, there are Muslim countries and this is another problem because traditionally the Muslims believed that all of the Muslims should be under one leadership which was called the Caliph or the Khalifa and this is the Ottoman Turkey when it was dismantled in 1924 that was the last Caliph or Khalifa and since then there hasn't been any unified force. There's been attempts at some kind of pan-Islamic movement and this is certainly what Osama bin Laden is relying on that this pan-Islamic spirit will kind of emerge and it will create a clash of civilisations which oddly enough is the policy paper written by Samuel Huntington at Harvard in which he envisioned the future being a clash between the Chinese culture, the Islamic culture and the Western culture. I personally think that we should do whatever we can to avoid any scenarios like that because I think that the world is too intertwined, it's too interdependent and I think that the West has immense interest in the Muslim world. But I also think the Muslim world has serious interests in having amicable relations with the West, I think it's a really bad scenario.

Fi Glover: What is it within the Muslim faith that can provoke such hatred of capitalism

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: I think that Muslims have a deep deep commitment to social justice, to economic justice. I think there's a lot, for instance in October 13th's The Economist, there was an article that 'it's important to keep saying this it's not a war against Islam because the West really has nothing against Islam'. I think that's a little bit disingenuous. Given that I think there's certain elements in the Islamic religion that are particularly troublesome. One of them is the prohibition of usury. So I think that the foundation of Western venture capitalism is ...

Fi Glover: By usury you mean money lending?

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: Interest, money lending, these type things. And this is still a very very essential aspect of the Islamic religion. It was traditionally banned in Christianity and also most philosophers have been opposed to usury or interest. Even John Maynard Keynes called it the necessary evil whereas the Muslims really view it as something evil. And so I think that will always be a problem, a type of tension between Muslims and the dominant economic, for instance in America, you pretty much have to have a mortgage and be paying interest on your house to get tax breaks. Well most Muslims can't take mortgages because it is prohibited in their religion, so they end up renting and it's a real problem for a lot of devout Muslims.

Fi Glover: Sure, fascinating stuff, we've got so many other questions to get through, so we'll pick up this after half past eleven.

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Fi Glover: It's eleven thirty, so coming up, we're taking your calls, you can put them to the man who has President Bush's ear on Islamic matters.

-------------------------[ PROGRAM INTERVAL ]-------------------------

Fi Glover: It's twenty three minutes to midnight Fi Glover here and Hamza Yusuf is still with us and Anita Anand and we've been joined by the writer and documentary maker John Ronson, his most recent publication was titled 'Them - Adventures with Extremists'. Aside from that he's made many award winning documentaries about people who're often on the fringes fighting for their causes, they're all delivered with wry and pertinent wit and he was of course hotly tipped to take over from Richard Maidley on This Morning, that's a joke! You're a very unlikely contender for that post.

John Ronson: I am that.

Fi Glover: Right let's get straight to all the calls and the e-mails that we have for Hamza Yusuf and I'll start with this e-mail that comes from Steve and Steve says how do Saudi's who've sat on huge money piles square this with your comments on Islamic views on capitalism. Why aren't these guys putting some serious resources into helping their poor Afghan brothers?

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: I think that in Saudi Arabia there's an incredible amount of philanthropic activity in Saudi Arabia and I think that to deny that is unfair to them. But unfortunately that doesn't make news, what tends to make news is the Saudi that spends all his money in Monte Carlo or in London or buying DisneyWorld or something like that. But actually there's an incredible amount of money that does go from Saudi Arabia to other places, but obviously not as much as I would like or most people would like but in the end of the day everybody's accountable to what they do and in Islam there's an idea of accountability not just in this world but in the next world as well.

Fi Glover: Does Islam have Hell as we would recognise it within the Christian faith?

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: There's something called The Fire which is a place of punishment and purification.

Fi Glover: I wanted to ask you as well about the view of women in the Islamic world. We actually talked about it in the program last week and it stirred up quite a lot of controversy and it may seem to an outsider that women get quite a raw deal but would you say that's the wrong interpretation of her status in the Qur'an?

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: I think women get a raw deal in most places and I don't think that Muslims have a monopoly on the mistreatment of women. I think that we still have a lot to learn as just as half of the human race. Men have a lot to learn about dignity and respect that should be warranted to women and I think that the Islamic tradition has an incredible view of women. The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said that paradise is at the feet of the mother. And there's an idea of really honouring the woman. Mary is mentioned, probably, I think she's mentioned more than any other single person in the Qur'an outside of perhaps Moses, she's mentioned many many times in the Qur'an and I think that Islam generally is misunderstood, and I think Muslims misunderstand Islam and the rights of women.

For instance just to give you an example, it is a woman's right in Islam to have a servant in the house and that's actually considered a legal right of a woman that she should have help in her house, domestic help for her chores. It's a right not to have to cook meals for her husband, it's considered a duty if she has children to take care of her children, but actually it's not a right to cook for her husband, or to cook for his guests, and she can actually refuse to do that in Islamic law. Is that practiced? No. Do you see what I mean?

So I think that always you have, in religious studies you have what's called the descriptive and the normative. The normative is what the tradition defines itself as being. The descriptive is how practitioners actually follow that religion and I think there's a very, very deep gap between normative Islam and descriptive Islam and so what most people in the West see is they see descriptive Islam and generally it's sometimes as bad as descriptive Christianity, descriptive Judaism, descriptive Hinduism and every other group of people out there. I think people tend to fall short of their ideals and their traditions but I don't think we should judge a tradition based on the acts of it's practitioners, that's always a flaw in logic.

Fi Glover: Right let's bring in Liz who's in Highbury. You're very welcome on the programme Liz, how can we help your thirst for knowledge this evening?

Liz: Hi, thank you Fi. I'd like to go back to the normative and the descriptive words that you've been talking about. If Islam is the understanding and compassionate religion it's keen to suggest, how can it be that some of it's followers, especially those of the Taliban, deny the opportunity of education to women? Deny them training in important roles such as doctors and dentists? And then deny women access to health care because the men who've made the rules won't allow them to be examined by the only one's who're allowed to study i.e. men. If the rulers of the religion bar women from study how then do they justify the fact that women are actually denied primary health care? That might be construed by a load of people as murder by implication. And it certainly doesn't happen in the Jewish and Christian religions.

Fi Glover: Okay, I think... should... Hamza Yusuf...

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: I think it's definitely a good point and the idea that it doesn't happen in the Jewish and Christian traditions is certainly true now, but historically is it true? I mean don't forget, we're in the post Christian secular West, and we tend to think that somehow Christianity has brought us to this wonderful point of enlightenment and progression. I think in reality a lot of what's happening in the West is a reaction in fact to the brutality of Christianity in the West. The Christians debated whether women had souls or not. And this is in Christian theological texts. St. Augusta considered women to be a real bane to humanity, Eve is seen as the cause of all the problems.

So I think to say that, and I am not attacking Christianity because I actually have a high regard for Christianity, but I think it's important for us to realise that the Taliban are reflective of a deeply, I would say medieval is probably the best adjective that I can find, I mean these are people, the ambassador to the Taliban in Pakistan went into a room and refused to enter when he saw a picture and when they informed him that it was Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, he said who? I mean this is the ambassador to Pakistan who does'nt know who the founding father, that would be like a British person not knowing George Washington.

So I think that to use these people as an example of Islam, lets look at what the Prophet Muhammad said, he said seeking knowledge is an obligation upon every male and female Muslim and that's related in a collection of traditions related by ibn Maja. Women historically, there is immense number of female scholars in the history of Islam, Imam Isakhawi notes in his Book of Notables, over five hundred living in Cairo in the 12th century.

Fi Glover: So why haven't other Muslims before now, taken a stronger line with the Taliban because it sounds like they've actually contravened?

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: I think that there's a lot of, there's a patriarchal type of ignorance in the Muslim world generally. I think that women do get a raw deal in the Muslim world. I think it's true also in the Mediterranean world, in the southern Mediterranean world, it's true also in South America, it's true to a certain degree in Mexico. I think that this is consistent with a lot of behavior around the world certainly in Asia as well.

Now in the West I think there have been many many strides made for women in the West, on the other hand we also have a lot of things we should be ashamed of. I was in a BBC television programme a few days ago and the woman that interviewed me I said don't you find it troubling that men in this business don't have to be attractive but the women tend to be attractive and she said they won't even let me wear my glasses on this show. I mean, I find that very problematic. But this is the reality. So I think that we have to be very careful about taking standards we have here in the West and simply attacking everybody else.

We have very serious social problems in the West also, and its very easy to take Jesus' advice, his good advice, before you take the speck out of your brothers eye, take the two by four out of your own eye. In this world it's very easy to find targets outside of ourselves, but I think that Muslims have to become more introspective and I think Western people in general we need to become more introspective as well beause the blame game is a very easy game and I see the Taliban essentially, are victims of the Cold War.

I think we tend to forget that a million and half Afghanis died in a war that was largely funded and supported by American covert activity and then instead of having a Marshall Plan to rebuild the country, instead of de-mining the country, instead of actually helping the people we walked away, washed our hands of it, and then let these people hack it out for the next ten years. I mean the actual suffering that's been going on in Afghanistan, I don't think anybody should be looking at that country with anything other than sympathy, I really do, and I think that we're losing our humanity to demonise these people. I know the Afghani people very well. I was in the refugee camps in 1986 and I have many, many Afghani friends. They're extraordinary people, they're a wonderful people, they're a freedom loving people, they love and honour women, and what's happening there is a tragedy of epic proportions.

Fi Glover: Well let me just bring in Chris in Wembley, I don't know whether Chris your point is exactly pertinent to Afghanistan or on a wider issue but do go ahead.

Chris: Well generally it's on a wider issue Fi. The problem seems to me that the West is a consumer society, we have to deal with sometimes people we don't necessarily like because that's the way our economy works. Now we know that a lot of people being run by despotic governments, or tyrannical military regimes or whatever, but the people in those countries object to that way of life or to being run by those people, and they blame us for propping their governments up. However it seems to me that many of the people leave the country if they have a bit of education and a bit of money, they leave and come and live in the West, in safety and security, because they don't want to be persecuted at home. If they keep doing that and only the lower ends of society if you like are left in the country nothing will ever change. They have to stay there and fight and change their system.

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: It's actually a really good point, I think you're making an excellent point. It's called the braindrain. It's not just the money that comes here, but actually the West incites some of the best intellects in the third world to enter into think tanks and to enter into university and also in America there's over ten thousand physicians from the Muslim world practicing medicine in the United States most of them don't want to live in their countries and that is a serious problem because the West we do have freedoms here that most people don't enjoy in other places in the world. I grew up in the United States and I hope we don't lose them I think we're very vulnerable right now, you know increasing security and just the overall paranoia that's starting to permeate the society can enable some of these laws to be enacted that we're going to regret later. But unfortunately security is a higher priority than liberty even in Western legal theory which is why in the United States the fourth amendment says that you're protected from illegal searches and seizures except in case of invasion or threat to national security. So security is actually a higher priority than liberty.

Unfortunately in most of the Muslim world they do live under despotic regimes and it's very difficult and I think a lot of the anger and resentment towards the West is due to the fact that a lot of these regimes are armed militarily by France, by China, by America and by Great Britain. Great Britain has incredible economic interests in the Muslim world.

Fi Glover: Do you in a sense though dilute your faith if you do leave your country and go and live in a capitalist society?

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: I haven't found my faith diluted living in the West. I've found that, you know there's things that trouble me about the West, I think they trouble all of us. I think most thinking people are troubled by the consumerism. I think that the breakdown of family, a lot of the things that are in traditional understanding, some of the core values of Western civilisation. In a sense I was a child of the enlightenment, my father was a professor of humanities, I great up with a lot of the enlightenment ideals and I think they're wonderful ideals and I've never found them to be in conflict with my Islamic training.


Fi Glover: But isn't it interesting that we will have all those kind of debates in a very secular way. I mean certainly in this country on a very kind of political scale, with a lower case P. But when it comes to interpreting somebody's faith we attribute I think a greater kind of importance to it all or less than acceptance. That you can be diverse, you can debate the problems, you can accept the problems, they're just what you live with. They're just all around you, no matter what faith you are.

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: There's, you know there's an idea in America they say in polite company you don't discuss religion and politics because they tend to cause conflict and I think that for Muslims in particular they're very sensitive about their religion, particularly right now, because the West tends to look down on a lot of aspects of the Islamic religion certainly the veiling of women, the covering of women is very very problematic in the West. On the other hand I think in the West it's very troublesome to Muslims to see the unveiling of women, to see the levels of pornography that have entered into the levels of mainstream society. The fact that I have small children, when I go to the grocery store, I feel troubled by the fact that there's pictures everywhere. Now some people will say it's just human bodies and things like this but I think that most societies have this idea that we should have modesty, that there should be levels of modesty.

I certainly think that women should have a choice about these things and I think that in Islam that is part of the Islamic tradition. You don't want to become fascist and to impose religious ideas on people, that breeds hypocrisy, it doesn't breed faith and I think that it's an indication of the bankruptcy of the Muslim community that they want to enforce these things because it would seem that they're not capable of convincing people that these are things that they should adhere to, and I think that's what troubles Western people so much because we do have this idea that there is a freedom. Even in that smorgasbord of decadence that is out there there's kind of still an underlying
idea in the West that well you still choose watch something that maybe you shouldn't be watching, you still choose to wear something that maybe you shouldn't be wearing. But there's that idea of the freedom of choice.

From a Muslim perspective there's also this idea that it's a little bit demonic to really, to basically, to exploit these natural tendencies that tend to make people feel disappointed with themselves when they succumb to it. I think a lot of us when we do things people that over eat you know they tend to have that tinge of guilt, oh God, you know my gluttony got the best of me again or the husband who's trying not to have an affair but God he just can't keep it together and he goes and he does that thing and then he sees his wife and he feels guilty and...

Fi Glover: And he ends up on a bad television programme.

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: Exactly, or breaking down his family and then really regretting that it all happened and all that. So I think that playing on those weaknesses because obviously vices have always made good business so I think for Muslims they've always felt that it's just not a good business to go into.

Fi Glover: And John do feel free to join our conversation. We know that you've got a lot of questions that you want to put and sadly we're almost running out of time.

John Ronson: I wanted to just ask you how you got to know George Bush and how that worked out?

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: {laughs}

John Ronson: Well obviously all the things you've said up to this point open up many fascinating areas and I think for instance, I think the great misunderstanding is the fact that we forget that our secular liberalism is itself a belief system. We fear people who have belief systems not realising that our fear is our belief system.

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: Brian Appleyard wrote a brilliant book about that, he's a British writer, about the kind of secularist fundamentalism that exists and the intolerance that a lot of secular humanists have toward other belief systems.

John Ronson: Well you were speaking about the paranoia in America that's happening now...

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: That one of your favorite subjects.

John Ronson: Well yes it is.

[everyone laughs]

Fi Glover: You carry on Anita.

Anita Anand: Well I actually want to know how you know George Bush.

Fi Glover: Oh okay we're on the Bush thing again!

Anita Anand: Well did he ask you?

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: Well I was actually bushwhacked. It wasn't something I sought after.

John Ronson: So who? What?

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: Somebody who's in the White House who I knew his father quite well they asked for a Muslim scholar suggested that I would be probably the most appropriate person to be representative of Islamic scholastic tradition.

John Ronson: This was after September the 11th?

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: After September 11th.

John Ronson: They wouldn't have wanted an Islamic scholar before that.

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: They should have had one though, I think because it'd help pre-empt some of these things.

Fi Glover: Can I bring Hanif from Birmingham into the conversation gentlemen as we only have 4 minutes left. Hello Hanif.

Hanif: Hello Fi, first I just want to make one point which is thank you very much for finally bringing on a legitimate Islamic scholar on to your programme and on to the BBC who can articulate Islam to people and not people with hooks and eye patches and shouting out.

Fi Glover: Well I mean it's absolutely our pleasure Hanif and I'm sorry we've kept you waiting so long but do go ahead.

Hanif: I have a number of points but my main point was this, as a Muslim and Imam Hamza will understand what I have to say and he can explain to you later. I am a Muslim from the Deobandi tradition of north Pakistan. We have been told by virtually every single mosque imam in Birmingham that the Taliban are a legitimate Islamic government following an orthodox Islamic law which is a Hanafi version of it and that the law that they're trying to implement in that country is the Sharia and Muslims should be supporting them and that any differences that Muslims have with them are differences of interpretation. But in the main they are trying to implement Islam in their country including you know cutting off hands, the hand of a thief or stoning adulteresses and adulterers. Now I want to ask Imam Hamza what is his view about the Islamic legitimacy and orthodoxy of the Taliban because we're getting confused signals.

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: Well, again I think that they filled a power vacuum. They were put in there by the Pakistani secret police which tells you something right away because I think there were definitely state interests in having some stability in Afghanistan.

Fi Glover: But why are other Muslims supporting them and saying they are a believable cause?

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: I think generally because Muslims have a very strong affinity for anybody that declares that they're going to establish an Islamic law. Nowhere in the Muslim world is the Islamic law being practiced anywhere. I personally don't agree because I've actually heard people speaking in the name of the Taliban and there are things that, I mean the idea of forcing people to have beards. There's nobody can say that's Islamic. There are Islamic opinions that a beard is not an obligation to wear. Also, the idea of cutting off hands in a place that has no economic framework right now, I mean it's madness, Omar, who's called Omar The Just suspended the law of cutting off of hands during a famine because he said it would be unfair to...

Fi Glover: I just want to ask Hanif a couple more questions before we have to leave it. I think Hanif it goes right back to what we started talking about. There's just this confusion isn't there, which obviously you are feeling and having to find your own solutions to. Would that be right?

Hanif: Well the basic confusion is, I am trying to be a student of Islamic Law. I go to an Imam who teaches me from a centuries old Islamic text book and there are certain laws in there which go against the whole grain of Western civilisation. But for me, from my understaning of it, they're fundamental to Islam. So okay there are these laws there and we're told by people who happen to have read the translation of the Qur'an...

Fi Glover: Hanif thank you very much indeed for your call. Hamza Yusuf thank you very much for coming in.

Shaykh Hamza Yusuf: Thank You.

Fi Glover: It's been absolutley fascinating, we appreciate your time.

-------------------------[ PROGRAM ENDS ]-------------------------