My guest today is Ishmael Brown, host of Angry Black Rant! His podcast may or may not have been somewhat inspired by yours truly… But that’s neither here nor there, as he’s here today to talk about the N word. Should we use it? Can white people use it? If Sam Jackson tells you to use it, should you? We also delve into the US’s terrible racial past a little bit. Much more to come in part 2!

Access part 2 right away here.

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My guest today is Eiynah, @nicemangos on Twitter. She’s a blogger/writer/and now podcaster who has been on the show before. Being an ex-Muslim is a distinctly difficult place to be because of the hate mail comes in from all sides! Today, Eiynah is here to talk about Tommy Robinson and anti-Muslim bigotry. Eiynah sees Islamophobia as an invalid term since in her view, it’s totally legitimate to have a fear of Islam, and yet anti-Muslim bigotry is a big problem at the same time. How do we balance those two? That and more in today’s show.

Here are some links mentioned in the show: http://www.gspellchecker.com/2014/10/ep34-eiynah-tommy-robinson/

Rubin video

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The Sam Harris Maryam Namazie Breakdown

Today’s episode is all about breaking down the Sam Harris Maryam Namazie breakdown which happened on Harris’s Waking Up Podcast. The episode in question can be found here. While my podcast will provide a more detailed explanation, I’m also going to do a bit of a blog post here to hit some of the highlights and to link some relevant information.

I want to explain where my mindset was, as honestly as I can, going into this conversation. I had absolutely no idea it would be such a disaster. I am recorded as saying, in an episode I did with Eiynah (who is mentioned by Sam a few times) that I was very excited for this episode and was looking forward to hearing the two of them hash some things out.  I’ve also been a strong supporter of Maryam, specifically in the Goldsmiths incident in which a highly disrespectful Muslim student group shouted her down and pretty much ruined a talk she was giving to the skeptic club there. I’ve always found her to be a courageous voice in the fight against Islamism and specifically its terrible treatment of women. In full disclosure, I’m also a big Sam Harris fan. I love his openness to have difficult conversations, his willingness to defend unpopular beliefs even when I and others disagree with him, and his clarity of thought. So as you can see, I had very high expectations for the Sam Harris Maryam Namazie discussion!

These expectations were completely dashed. It was so bad that I really wanted to do a detailed breakdown to see what went wrong. I painstakingly listened and summarized the first 50 minutes of the discussion, starting with when Sam outlined the reasons for the episode and ending with when Maryam made Sam change the subject to migration. I was going to do the entire episode, but the second part was plagued with many of the same problems and I already had way more than enough to discuss.

Why the Sam Harris Maryam Namazie Breakdown Happened

Listen to the embedded podcast for more detail, but despite the fact that I think I agree with nearly all of Maryam’s positions, I believe she has the majority of the blame for the discussion being so terrible. To start, her Twitter account after the show made evident how she viewed the discussion going in. Check out these tweets:

He invited me – remember? To prove me wrong. And now it’s my fault I didn’t agree? Please. https://t.co/lvxCSKEmke

— Maryam Namazie (@MaryamNamazie) February 26, 2016

He missed my points entirely bc he invited me not to hear what I had to say but to prove me wrong. I was bored too. https://t.co/yZuTTpbUBH

— Maryam Namazie (@MaryamNamazie) February 26, 2016

Could it really be said that Sam invited her on not to hear what she had to say? In the 50 minutes I painstakingly documented, Sam Harris spoke for roughly 19 minutes while Maryam spoke for 31. At a point when Maryam asked Sam to stop interrupting her because she had let him talk for such a long time, he had talked for 7:45 and she had talked for 13:39. I think this shows that Maryam’s image of what went down is not exactly accurate. I know this may seem somewhat obsessive compulsive of me to have timed all this out, but when I heard how Maryam was portraying the podcast I simply had to know what the actual facts were. 

More evidence that the above Tweets are quite out of line is the fact that Sam is the one with a history of giving people who disagree with him a platform. This includes someone who did a far better job arguing against his pro-profiling stance than Maryam did, by the name of Bruce Schneier. Perhaps Maryam should have read this dialogue to get an idea of what Sam’s position actually is and how to argue against it. Maryam’s entire argument amounted to “I look at people as individuals. You can’t punish Muslims as a whole. You have to focus on Islamists.” When Sam would ask how one might focus on Islamists without focusing on Muslims, she was never quite able to answer. I’d like to repeat that I think Sam is probably wrong in his stance on profiling, but not for any reasons that Maryam came up with. I disagree with him because of the practical problems involved in such profiling. But Maryam did a terrible job of having a dialogue. I would recommend she spend at least a tiny amount of time listening so that she can actually engage Sam where he stands. Again for much more detail on this, check out my podcast embedded in this post.

If you’d like to see my painstaking notes (which I’m almost embarrassed to have taken)  on the first 50 minutes of the Sam Harris Maryam Namazie disaster, I made them into a PDF here.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:18 — 47.1MB)

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