AS151: An Atheist In A Muslim Country

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:30 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Atheistically Speaking. This is episode 151, and I'm your host, Thomas Smith. Okay, well, because I had Carl Sagan play us off last week, I forgot to thank my patrons, and it's especially important because I had some new ones. Got a lot of new pledges, so I want to make sure—I might have already gotten them, but I want to make sure I get the irreverent skeptics podcast. Uh, I guess. Okay. Well, there's a, there, there, uh, a very funny name that I don't know if I should say or not. Uh. But I, I mean, this person did pledge and I guess if you pledge money to the podcast, then I should be required to thank you as your name appears on, uh, on Patreon.

0:01:20 Thomas: So forgive me if there are any children listening, uh. Cover your ears. I need to thank Bea Arthurs cock.

0:01:30 Thomas: Oh, man. Hey, see, look. Cheap thrills, guys. You can, you can, for the price of a cup of some sort of priced coffee, I don't know. I'm sure you can find. There's a, there's a very wide range of coffees out there in this day and age. For the price of one of those a month, you could put in a name like Bea Arthurs cock and have it thanked. And if you put in five bucks, you can get it thanked every single week. So, I mean, just imagine.

0:01:59 Thomas: So yeah, apologies to anyone who can't stand such profanity on a podcast, but hey, I have to thank my patrons. The Irreverent Skeptics podcast. Well, there you go. There's another pledge. And apparently that's another way to get a plug for something. And I'm happy to do it. Thank you to the Irreverent Skeptics podcast for pledging. Sean Zipperer. I don't think there's anything going on there. Bbod. I know. That looks like just a nickname. Benjamin something. I won't say. And Dan Roskey. So lots of new patrons. Thank you guys so much for supporting the show. You guys are absolutely the reason the show continues and it will die without you very quickly. And now I also need to thank my top patrons Zimu Zinu, Adrian Borschoff, Michael, Jonathan Moyet, Jay Aldenwalt, Bangs Naughty Bits, Sean Zipperer, Peter Skelton, Brian Garefort, Dale, and Matt Garrett, an honorable mention to Samantha.

0:02:58 Thomas: Thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I apologize. I didn't thank you last week, but I just liked the way the episode went off with Carl Sagan. So I wanted to hit it here. And while I'm at it, let me just say, go to atheisticallyspeaking.com, and if you can't afford to be a patron, which is totally fine, you can, if you do any shopping from Amazon, if you click on the button there, then I will get a tiny tiny piece of it, and it will be like a little donation to the show, and it'll help pay for stuff here. So thank you, and please do that because it costs you nothing, and everyone uses Amazon, right? I mean, I use Amazon for everything now. I use Amazon for, if I need, like, I don't, just anything, like soap, I'll be like, well, I don't want to go out. Why would I do that? Why would I go somewhere to do something when I could just find it on Amazon and order it there?

0:03:48 Thomas: So thank you. And without further ado now, I want to get to the episode. Apologies for having to do this so soon in the episode, but very special one today. We've got Adrian, who you may remember. I will go ahead and get right to the interview, but he lives in a Muslim country now, and it's very interesting. So we're going to hear about that, and I'll just go right to it.

0:04:25 Thomas: Joining me again is Adrian, you heard him recently, talking about Pale Blue Dot, how are you doing, Adrian?

0:04:32 Adrian: Very well, thanks, Tom.

0:04:34 Thomas: Alright, well, I am very interested in your situation right now, because you are currently living in a majority-Muslim country, and I thought it would be really cool for me, and for the listeners, to kind of learn what that's like, I mean, maybe some people are familiar, but But I know I have a lot of American listeners who have never lived in a majority Muslim country, and I think it would be very interesting to hear about. So why don't you give us the basics, where you are, I guess, if you want to go into what you do for a living, if that impacts your experience, that sort of thing.

0:05:14 Adrian: Yeah, sure. About, I would say, close to four months ago, I recently moved here to Malaysia because my girlfriend lives here. She was born and raised in Malaysia, and Malaysia is kind of an interesting country because it's predominantly a Muslim country, and a significant amount of the population actually is not Muslim as well. There's a Chinese descendant population here, and as well as an Indian descendant populations. So you have this kind of mix of population, so I would say it's almost like a 70, 30 or 70, 20, 10 kind of population or all a third. So it's kind of interesting. I actually recently moved here because I am looking for a job. So I recently moved from Korea as a teacher, and now I'm looking for a job here as well as an English teacher at an international school. So that's kind of an interesting situation as well, because I'm not going to be teaching at a school that's only, for example, Muslim students.

0:06:58 Adrian: I'm going to be teaching students whose parents are maybe foreign workers, so from all kinds of diverse backgrounds. So I haven't started working yet, but in about three weeks, I'm gonna be officially starting. And it's a bit of an interesting situation here, because the majority, the Muslims that live here are Malay, right? And by birth, they're considered Muslim. So imagine your nationality from birth is your religion. So on your ID card, when you're born, you're labeled as Muslim regardless of your choice.

0:07:45 Adrian: So if your parents are born Muslim in Malaysia, they are Malay, that means you are automatically considered Muslim, whether you like it or not. So on your ID card, right, um, your race is labeled, you're labeled as Muslim because You're, yeah.

0:08:04 Thomas: And that's something that Dawkins has talked about in general, just talking about calling someone a Muslim child or a Catholic child or whatever. Or we shouldn't do that because it's before they even have a choice. But boy, that sounds impossible there. I mean, you're almost stamped at birth, you know? You pretty much are.

0:08:24 Adrian: And the thing is, you're stamped, and you can't even withdraw that title when you're an adult there. Actually, There actually was, um, before I came to Malaysia, I read about this. It was a huge, huge case, law, where a woman who was by birth considered Muslim, she had converted to Christianity, and she wanted to appeal to the court to have her title removed because she didn't identify as that. And they refused to acknowledge unless it's at this well

0:08:32 Thomas: Wow. Wow.

0:09:05 Thomas: And that has big implications because you mentioned when we had talked a little bit off the mic that there's essentially a different set of laws for Muslims and non-Muslims in Malaysia. So how does that impact that? Is she forced to remain? Well, first off, can you go into that a little bit? And then secondly, maybe talk about how that would impact her identity there.

0:09:28 Adrian: Malaysia has a colonial background, right, it has a colonial background from the Dutch, the Portuguese, and most importantly, the, the British, so it, there's a lot of kind of overlap with laws, so the, the Muslims have the Sharia law. So if you're Malay, any crimes you commit are taken to the Sharia court, whether they be civil, social, or whatever. And for non-Muslims, because there's a significant amount of people from Chinese descent and Indian descent, right, they are tried by, uh, the common law, right, which is a lot very much influenced by British law.

So if, if you're looking at this woman, right, she would be, if she was not Malay, there, there would be no issue at all, right, she can just go to a church and she can change the name of her, her religion, right, it wouldn't be so difficult, like if she were a Buddhist and then she decided to convert to Christianity, there would be no case at all, but because she's Muslim, she has to go through the Sharia courts, and then if they don't allow her, she has to go to the highest, which is the Sultan, this is like the, the kind of the equivalent of like a monarchy, king, right,

0:11:03 Adrian: Because he, he can overrule these kind of very huge cases, but

0:11:10 Thomas: Yeah, because when you say Sharia, I mean, that sounds kind of scary to an American because, you know, Our experience with Sharia is not, you know, is from the media, and it's often the worst kind of thing. And I understand in some Muslim countries, it really comes down to what particular judge you get on what particular mood this judge is in when it comes to Sharia law. Is it a little more standardized in Malaysia? Do you know? I mean, this might be, I don't know if this is getting beyond your expertise, but what level of Sharia law are we talking? What kind of things are illegal that, or maybe what kind of things are okay that wouldn't be in a super fundamentalist Sharia, law, sure.

0:11:10 Adrian: Right. Okay.

0:11:58 Adrian: Well, Well, I'm not particularly an expert on the justice system, but as like a whole, I can give you kind of like a from an outsider's perspective, a case, like here's a, here's an example of a case, there was a deputy prime, or no, he, I think he was, he was a high-ranking government official, right? And he was accused of something like sodomy. And he was thrown in prison for that, because He was a Malay. But this law is overlapped on the non-Sharia law case. But because he's a Malayan, he was tried on it anyways, and he was sentenced to prison. And there was this huge smear campaign about him, and he was this very, very progressive, um, leader, right, and if you want to, if your readers want, or listeners, if you're interested, his name is Anwar, uh, and you can read about his case, and he's this very popular, uh, individual, so like Sharia law is kind of this, I know it sounds scary, and in some parts it can be, uh, it, it's this kind of, uh, system.

0:12:04 Thomas: Yeah, Islamic.

0:13:25 Adrian: It's a system of how you, uh, a moral principle of how your supposed to live your everyday life, right, so like Sharia law can be something of, uh, in the way that you conduct, uh, in your everyday actions, whether it's within family, or if it's within business, right, because they have something like Islamic banking, right, so that even That over Yeah.

0:13:53 Thomas: Banking. What's involved in that.

0:13:55 Adrian: There's just, they have these kind of loopholes about things like interest, right, they're considered what's haram in, in, in, in Islam, right? So as a bank, getting out loans and charging interest for those loans, and they have these kind of loopholes and things that they have different names for it, but they don't represent itself as interest. They have a different name for it, and it works a little bit differently, right. So that overlaps on Sharia law. So in the things that you eat, right, the things that are prescribed and what you're allowed to eat, and the way that you conduct yourself in a business manner, things like homosexuality, right? Those can be tried on Sharia law basis.

0:13:55 Thomas: Yeah. Right

0:14:48 Adrian: So Sharia Law, it kind of has this very dark, negative overtone, but imagine it as a legal ecosystem with a very theocratic attachment to it. It has a very strict religious base.

0:15:04 Thomas: Well, that is what I imagine it just sounds awful.

0:15:09 Adrian: I mean, from a very secular perspective, we often see religion and the state being a very separate manner. But in terms of something like Sharia law, Islam is considered a form of the law, Right. It's supposed to be like a moral guiding system and how you how you conduct yourself in all walks of life, whether it be the things that you eat and the things that you're allowed to watch or the things you're allowed to look at, the things that you are allowed to conduct yourself in in business, right? So it's like this very overarching thing. And depending on the on the in the country, right, there can be different types of penalties. Like you remember in the bonus content and you're talking about the death penalty, right?

0:15:28 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Geez.

0:16:03 Adrian: When you enter Malaysia, immediately, immediately you're reminded. It says any offenders caught smuggling drugs will receive the death penalty. In the airport, you're reminded of that immediately, right, to scare you. Or even neighboring Singapore, which is a less religious but still kind of of more, uh, but

0:16:30 Thomas: Do You remember which was the, which was the one that executed that, I talked to Jake about that, that, uh, executed some Australians, was Indonesia.

0:16:38 Adrian: That was in Indonesia, right.

0:16:40 Thomas: Okay, yeah, that's right, so it's a similar thing. Are they, are they very, very worried apparently about drug smuggling, I guess it's about a big deal.

0:16:40 Adrian: But They have Very Yeah. But The thing is, um, human trafficking is a much bigger issue in Malaysia than, I would say, I would argue drug smuggling, right, because you know what country borders Malaysian immediately, Thailand, and you, you know, there's a lot of illegal smuggling that happens between that, right, trafficking. And even that's serious, like, you can get, they have serious, very strict laws about that too, you can face the death penalty. But even in Singapore, you know, sometimes you have to fill out immigrant cards, in Singapore, on the immigration card, at the back it says any offenders caught will be executed. So

0:16:59 Thomas: Any Offenders

0:17:35 Adrian: They're drug smugglers.

0:17:35 Thomas: Of Of drug trafficking. Human trafficking.

0:17:38 Adrian: Yeah, any of that. I

0:17:38 Thomas: Yeah. What is there anything else they have the death penalty for that, they weren't about, or, or that we would consider that are possibly a little inhumane, okay.

0:17:51 Adrian: Haven't read anything significant.

0:17:56 Thomas: That's okay, wow.

0:17:58 Adrian: I'm only aware of the really big ones, which are things like human trafficking and drug trafficking. But I still feel like when I read some of the laws, and I read what the religious leaders in Malaysia write about when it comes to things like homosexuality, they'll say things like it's a crime worse than murder, right? Right. That's kind of, yeah.

0:18:26 Thomas: Well, that's awful, is there the death penalty for it, or I Mean, you, you said there was, uh, yeah, sodomy, I wasn't sure, yeah.

0:18:32 Adrian: No. Yeah. But I mean, the government official that was sentenced for Anwar Ibrahim, I think, if you want to read about him a little bit, He was accused of sodomy and the person was an adult, was a consenting adult. And then they threw that, they threw him in jail for that for several years. And there was all these appeals. And it's just a really messy thing. And it is this massive smear campaign to try to discredit him as a government official because he was this very progressive, more open-minded Malay Muslim leader that it wasn't as corrupt as the kind of leaders that they have here now.

Um, but you know things Like I Mean Relatively speaking, I think you, you could still argue that it's much better than what it is now. It's Like a kind of like a stepping stone, right? Uh, but even here, you know, thing, things like, uh, slightly more benign, uh, like entertainment, right? Um, they're very careful about releasing any movie that has any religious overtones because they might see it as inciting and being inflammatory or blasphemous, right? So you wouldn't find any movies that have religious overtones in them, as well as shows and movies that have explicit reference to homosexuality, sexuality, and they kind of see it as, you know, like a lifestyle that they're promoting it, so to speak.

0:18:37 Thomas: Yeah.

0:19:28 Thomas: That How How Progressive to not Be corrupt. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

0:20:30 Adrian: LGBT rights here are kind of, you don't, you don't find them out in the open as much. Even

0:20:39 Thomas: Well, It doesn't sound too good for for LGBT there. What

0:20:43 Adrian: Yeah, and for example, let's say that I was a Christian, right, and I was like a missionary. If you're caught handing out leaflets or flyers or proselytizing to Muslims, you can get in a lot of trouble. You can be fined. You can be thrown in prison. You can be flogged. You can get caned, beaten.

0:21:06 Thomas: About the other way around? Do you know, so

0:21:08 Adrian: Oh, of course, not the other way around.

0:21:11 Thomas: It's, it's a okay to try to convert to his people to Islam, but Not There, see, and that's what bothers Me so much about this that I, I think that we can, uh, try to talk about some broader issues here a little bit, but you had mentioned when we talked, uh, sort of again off mic, to kind of leading up to this, you'd mentioned that it's odd when you, you hear discussion of Islam from me or people on the podcast, because you're kind of in amidst it. And I was wondering where you were going with that. Do you think that I've ever talked about Islam in a way that you would consider to be wrong or ignorant? Or is it just... What did you mean by that, if you don't mind me?

0:21:15 Adrian: Oh, yeah. Oh, no, no. Not at all. I actually meant it as it, when you're in America, you're presented with this kind of narrative, right? This kind of very scary, fear-mongering narrative. And, you know, when You're here, or when I'm here, living here, it kind of, it's not there. You know, like these threats of like, oh, you Know, the terrorist attack.

0:22:03 Thomas: Mm-hmm.

0:22:30 Thomas: Well, Yeah. Yeah.

0:22:31 Adrian: You know, like the media really much paints that. And when you're here, it's like you can go on about everyday life, but as long as you're not insulting or, you know, speaking Your mind out loud against it, right? I think that you do a wonderful job trying to talk about Islam in a way that is kind of very open-ended, and you're allowing the conversation to be had, and you know, you're not kind of throwing around this, you know, Islam is, you know, Muslims are bad and they're all terrorists and no, no, of

0:22:31 Thomas: Gay Or yeah, yeah. Yeah.

0:23:13 Adrian: Course not. You Know, Like, definitely.

0:23:14 Thomas: Well, I Appreciate That I do want to say that I, I don't consider myself, I, you know, I'm, I'm no expert and I'm not, you know, I, I think that I, I have very limited opinions on Islam, and I, I have been even, especially recently, and given this, uh, this right, right-wing terrorism shooting, I do believe that Islamic terrorism as a threat is very overblown. And I don't really think I've ever expressed too much of an opinion the other way. Anyone, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. My problem with Islam has always mainly been it's a bad worldview. And it's, it's a worldview that I don't think it is just as bad quote unquote as any other religion. I think it, I think an example of that is what you've described because you also said, you also told me that Malaysia is considered to be pretty progressive on the, on the Muslim scale, you know,

0:24:18 Adrian: Definitely, I mean, there's, it's considered progressive here that now, you know, more, you see a little bit more often some Malay girls won't wear the hijab. You Know,

0:24:32 Thomas: Gasp. How are you, how are you able to handle that such temptation, Adrian?

0:24:40 Adrian: It's you Know, that's, that's the thing, like, that's considered, and you know, when you've mentioned it on the podcast before, I, now that I'm here in Malaysia and then I listened to, you know, the, the person like Reza Aslan, I kind of raised my eyebrow. I'm like, do you just completely gloss over the fact that this is considered a very, you know, progressive step country, yet they have absurd mentality towards, you know, homosexuality. They They Have, they Have this attitude, that very regressive attitude towards women, right? Oh, yeah.

0:24:41 Thomas: Exactly.

0:25:14 Thomas: And Yeah. Yeah. Qualities that any liberal, on if it was a white person expressing those opinions, they would absolutely destroy them. They, liberals in this country go crazy Against any conservatives who are anti-gay, any conservatives who, you know, anti-women's rights, and but once, once it's someone who's maybe not white, once it's a different culture, there are these competing forces. And I really respect the, I absolutely respect the drive and the discomfort that liberals have, that progressives have with alienating like another race or another group or another, and I totally sympathize. But I think that it's pretty easy, I think, to take a more rational and non-reactionary point of view. I understand wanting to fight against Islamophobia. I think Islamophobia definitely can exist.

0:25:34 Adrian: Oh,

0:26:21 Thomas: I don't think it's something that can be written off as, it's not an irrational fear, therefore it can't exist, you know, or something like, I think you can be racist against people that you view as a certain group, a certain ethnic group, and a certain religious group. I think that doesn't mean that they get a free... I think what I worry about is very, very bad ideas getting a free pass because of progressive protection and overprotection. That's what I worried about. Hmm.

0:26:58 Adrian: Yeah, I mean, maybe you can, maybe you can see this parallel, I see, I see this liberal parallel between something like vaccines for, for Example, there's this kind of comfort. There's a comfort of, you know, things are going really well, generally speaking, right? We have the luxuries of having vaccines, for example, right, and we don't understand the effect of something like polio because of the vaccine, it's been basically eradicated. So anytime something bad happens, we want to blame something. So maybe The vaccine is poisoned and it's causing the rise of autism, but it's kind of like you fail to see the actual safety of the vaccine.

Seen, and I, and I kind of feel like there's this, in from a liberal perspective, often with something like this, Islam, is, um, there's just kind of complacency and not recognizing a bad idea when there is one, because You Know, there's, I live here, generally, on an, on a daily basis, and I interact, interact, and I see Muslims every day, and I haven't been attacked, I haven't been, you know, screamed at or told, you know, to leave the country, or, you know, people are very warm and kind, and they treat me with with respect, and I treat them with respect back, and there's... there's nothing wrong there on a, on a human level, right? But that

0:27:09 Thomas: Okay. Right. Yeah. Sure.

0:28:44 Adrian: Doesn't mean that they, their ideas get a free pass. And I, and I see this kind of parallel in vaccines, is that they kind of fail to see, there's this kind of comfort. There's a complacency.

0:28:43 Thomas: Yeah, well, I agree. And And I, could, I

0:28:57 Adrian: And

0:28:58 Thomas: Could, uh, uh, to to bring up my comparison I made, same thing goes when you talk to a lot of religious people who are, who might be anti-gay, I have that constantly, I, I've, I've talked with some, you know, religious people who are the nicest people, they seem completely great, they're, and they, they are, they're really, but they have some backwards ideas and they're harmful. And I think it's important, and I'm glad you say that, because if it's true that there are atheists out there, and I'm just going to talk about atheists because that's the group that I feel like matters for my audience in this conversation, if there are atheists out there who do envision any Islamic country as some sort of barbaric, terrorism-laden existence, then yeah, I mean, that's wrong, and I'm glad you're giving a picture of what it is like there, because yeah, people are going to live their day-to-day lives for the most part.

I mean, as long as it's not a war-torn, you know, incredibly poor developing country, I mean yeah, they're going to be regular people, but that does not mean that they don't have some backwards ideas that are very harmful to specific groups like women or like, you know, like LGBT people, you know, I think that's what really bothers me about it and it bothers me that it is a, you I don't want to call it racism, but it is a weird thing.

0:30:34 Thomas: I don't know what to call it. It is an odd thing to totally discount homophobic or other, again, just as an example, or other backwards anti-progressive ideas, to turn a blind eye to them just because someone's a certain ethnic or religion, ethnic group or religion to turn a blind eye to that is a little weird, but you would not turn that blind eye if it were someone who was white. You know, I think that, that is not right. I don't think that's right at all.

0:31:07 Adrian: Maybe you might not agree with this, but because a lot of the times you hear within atheist circles, and when people talk about what's one of the big ones when it comes to any kind of religious debate, morality, right? And it's not really, really black and white about, I don't think that religion is the cause of a lot of bad behavior, but at the same time, I think what's a stronger thing is that it's not a deterrent for bad behavior, right?

0:31:43 Adrian: In terms of, you know, it's going to stop you from being a bigot, right, If you're a bigot and you often hold religious ideas, I think it gets magnified.

0:32:00 Thomas: Well, well, so this is a bit of a chicken and the egg kind of thing, I guess you're saying, like you, you think that that comes first as opposed to the religion.

0:32:04 Adrian: Well, not so much that it comes first, but I think that it often is a larger aspect of it. Because morality is this very widespread thing, and it's very hard to pinpoint one specific cause of why someone would act a certain way. Because it's hugely multifactorial, but I'm of the mindset that I feel it doesn't deter from bad ideas, right? It almost magnifies them.

0:32:39 Thomas: Well, yeah. Yeah. Well, I think it depends. I think it depends on the particulars of your religion, because I think that a religion and a religious doctrine that has homophobic or anti-women, again, these very illiberal ideas, a text or a tradition that has those is going to affect the people who believe in it. I do think that there are are multiple factors. But to take the extreme example, I mean, I just heard Reza Aslan, a clip where he said, religion, I'm not exaggerating, he views religion as a completely neutral thing. And then bad people make bad Muslims or make bad Christians or whatever. And that to me is just absurd, because there's at least, I don't know that we'll ever put a fine percentage on it.

0:33:33 Thomas: But I really believe that people's beliefs affect their beliefs. I mean, I don't know how else to put it. I mean their belief systems are going to affect how they look at things and they affect the people around them. So like when I think of my own example, I wasn't really religious as a kid. But I was in an area that was religious and in an area that had really bad ideas when it came to gay people. It had really backwards thinking. And as a result of that, I probably had some of those ideas as a kid. I would never have been violent or anything against a gay person but I had backwards ideas about gay people I had a really, I would say I would say it would be just like a weirdness, like I didn't like it and I didn't know what it was. So, I thought it was just weird and not right.

0:33:41 Adrian: Yeah, absolutely. Sure. Right.

0:34:33 Thomas: But then very quickly, as soon as I was exposed to more people and more liberal thinking, I was very easily able to recognize that that was backwards thinking. And now I can hardly even imagine thinking that way. But what, I mean, mean, I didn't really change religion, I guess. I did change where I was. And I did change the, a lot of the worldviews of the people around me changed. And I think that affects it. I think that, that when you have a worldview that has these ideas, it's not neutral. It's not like Reza Aslan says.

0:35:07 Adrian: Of course. No.

0:35:08 Thomas: So yeah.

0:35:10 Adrian: I've heard this before, that part of a big push, even for me, was noticing how others around me thought. The more and more I saw other people's ideas and how they justified their ideas, and they kind of often, not shamed, but laughed at these kind of homophobic and religious ideas, it really kind of motivated me to be like, well, why are they doing, why aren't they doing this? This. And, you know, they're saying it for these and these and these reasons. And I felt this kind of not pressure, but this kind of almost like a forced reflection, like, you know, damn, maybe I really have to look at what I'm what I believe and why I believe it.

0:36:07 Adrian: And I think that's a big push on your kind of beliefs. And here, you know if you're if you are Malay, for example, if you you're Malay and you're you're born as a Muslim technically then you're reinforced that all the time. In almost every aspect of your life. And any any kind of counter is enforced as a bad thing, right? Because like let's say I wanted to form like an atheist group here in Malaysia. I could, I could do that, right? I could probably do that. And, you know, I would find a handful of, you know, people from Chinese backgrounds and Indian backgrounds that kind of, they felt strongly about this because it does exist, right.

0:36:26 Thomas: Yeah. Really? Hmm. Sure.

0:37:00 Adrian: They're just a very small group. And I would generally be left alone. But if I, for example, started opening it up and saying like, oh, you You know, I want to go to Muslims and talk about this. I want people who are doubting their Islamic beliefs that they're welcome to come. Then I would have a red flag on my head, and I would probably be in a lot of trouble, that I'm deviating and I'm harming their morals and I am harming the religious beliefs by convincing or trying to convince them to leave.

0:37:47 Adrian: It just had this quote on quote ex-Muslim, you can remain anonymous but you are welcome to come and share your story and if you have doubts. And I would probably be in a lot of trouble. I could probably be fined or thrown in prison or caned. I don't know. Right. And I wouldn't take that risk. If I was in Canada, right, I would gladly do that. No problem. If I was in America, I'd probably do that without any hesitation. Hesitation, but, you know, when I'm here, I have to constantly remind myself, like, you know, hey, you're in a Muslim country, right, you have to be careful, and I hate that kind of victim mentality, like you know I have be, well, you would

0:37:47 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:38:33 Thomas: Oh, I don't think it's victim mentality at all. I think it is responding to the environment you are in. I mean, that is the reality of where you are.

0:38:43 Adrian: Think, here's like a very silly example, like oh, you now, let's say I have a ham sandwich, and walking around around in public with a ham sandwich, I would have to be aware of the fact that I'm walking around with a non-halal object, and that majority of people around me are Muslim, and they would not take kindly to something like that. And you would see from a secular perspective, that's, oh, that sounds silly.

0:39:18 Adrian: But when you're here, you're kind of, you know, pork and bacon and and pig products are, you know, those are not good things here, they're dirty, and, oh

0:39:18 Thomas: Yeah, it is.

0:39:32 Thomas: Yeah. Well, that's an irrational idea. And I think that it is not... I really don't think it's relativistic or, I guess, Western-centric or whatever to say, we ought to get rid of as many illogical ideas as we can because they're harmful. And I would include many ideas that a lot of Western people hold. Astrology, like you said, anti-vax, anti science. There's plenty of them. It has nothing to do with race or country. I think that many countries are a lot further on in being progressive than others. And it's very simple to say that. I don't think that we need to be so relativistic and say that everyone has their own way of thinking and they're all equal. I Think it's harmful to have ways of thinking where you have to be worried about carrying a ham sandwich.

0:40:01 Adrian: Yeah, yep, well,

0:40:34 Thomas: It's ridiculous.

0:40:44 Thomas: Okay, well, that does it for the first part of the interview with Adrian. We will get to the second part on Thursday, of course. And I just want to remind you, patreon.com/atheist, more bonus content with Jake. He had a very interesting experience this last weekend, hosting some events and doing all that. So we're going to hear about that. That one was the one just freshly published. And of course, there will be another one. I think we may talk about a few of the issues that we've touched on in these two podcasts. So that should be interesting. Well, I can't think of anything else I immediately need to tell you except thank you so much really, really from the bottom of my heart to all the supporters of the show in any way that you do it. It's just, it makes it worth it and thank you. Thank you so so much and I will see you guys on Thursday.