00:00 Islam, and I'm proud to have witnessed it up close with my family, is a religion
00:07 that has some great similarities to Christianity. As someone who's spoken to
00:12 the wisdom of the book, of the Word, so beautifully, can you help us understand
00:17 how we need to treat religion more seriously, not realistically, more
00:22 seriously? Well, with Islam and Christianity, I mean, obviously we're
00:28 embroiled in a conflict between those two systems of belief, but maybe we could
00:31 look at the commonalities and see how we could progress from there. It's a
00:36 reasonably, reasonable negotiating strategy, let's say. Well, what's
00:40 importantly similar between, say, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity? Well, the first
00:46 thing is that that's all people of the book. That's a big deal, because
00:51 what that means is that all three of those cultures have decided in some
00:55 mysterious manner that a book should be at the center of things, and so they've
01:02 all decided also, because that's what that implies, that the Word should be at
01:06 the center of things. Now, each religion differs in their interpretation of that,
01:12 and that causes problems and has advantages as well, but that's a major
01:19 commonality. It's a stunning commonality, and it's quite the mystery that that's
01:23 occurred. I think when Islam burst onto the scene, it unified a diverse
01:29 range of fractionated tribes under the power of the Word in a book. Well, that's
01:34 a remarkable thing, and so we should attend to that and try to figure out
01:37 what that means, that we're all guided by the Word, also the written Word, and then
01:43 we should also be attendant to the potential dangers of that, because in
01:47 some sense, the printed Word is also a frozen document, although a book can be
01:51 very sophisticated and subtle, and sacred books tend to be exactly that. And then,
01:56 of course, in Islam you also have some degree of veneration for the figure of
02:02 Jesus Christ. Now, the details of that matter, let's say, and the fact that
02:10 there's disagreement about his precise stature, let's say, that's not trivial, but
02:15 the agreement that there's something of massive significance there, or profound
02:20 significance, is also not trivial. And so that's something for everyone to discuss.
02:25 And when we were speaking earlier this morning, you mentioned the communitarian
02:30 emphasis in Islam, and I'd like to address that too, and the feeling, and
02:35 perhaps well-founded, of many people in the Islamic world that the Western world,
02:40 with its stress on individuality, doesn't pay enough attention to the
02:44 sacrality of the community, and you know, that is a criticism very much worth
02:49 attending to. By the same token, you might say that if you want to serve the
02:55 community best, even if you put it in the highest place, let's say, because
02:58 something has to be in the highest place, you're still faced with the necessity of
03:03 the veneration of the individual, because a community is a living thing, and the
03:09 circumstances that communities find themselves in across time change. And so
03:15 there has to be a living element of the community, and that can't be the past
03:20 because the past is dead. That has to be the living individual. And so to serve
03:24 your community properly, you have to be a very well-developed and courageous
03:30 individual, even if you feel that should be subordinated to the, you know, broader
03:34 interests of the community at large, which I think is an appropriate way of
03:37 looking at things. And what a privilege, right? You want to do something
03:40 that matters with your life. Well, could you be useful to your community? Well,
03:45 that would be a good thing. That might, you know, improve your view of
03:49 yourself with all of your faults. And so all of those things are massive
03:55 commonalities, and you know the fact that there are three different communities of
03:58 the book, you say, "Well, that's a problem because of disunity, and how can they all
04:01 be right?" It's like, well, they can no more be all right or all wrong than the
04:08 members of a family living under the same roof. They're different. Well, what's
04:12 the advantage in the diversity? The disadvantage is the disunity and the
04:16 potential for conflict, but the advantage in the diversity is, well, different
04:21 traditions are going to generate different takes on the world. And like,
04:25 if your life is perfect and couldn't possibly be improved, and the same is
04:30 true of your family and your community, then, you know, you don't need to listen
04:33 to anyone's opinion. But if you're not where you should be or would like to be,
04:37 and neither is your family or your community, it might be that people you
04:41 disagree with and who think differently than you have something to say to you,
04:46 because you're already acting out what you think, and it isn't working. So where
04:51 would you look? And I think that's partly why that injunction exists, to love your
04:55 enemy. So what does that mean exactly? Well, first of all, it would be better not
04:59 to have enemies, unless you want them, you know, because they're a convenient place
05:03 to put evil, let's say, and then you don't have to deal with it, except to hate them.
05:07 But you really want enemies? And wouldn't it be better to bring people on board so
05:11 they could be contributing to the solution of all the catastrophic
05:15 problems that we face? And so, you know, I try when I'm being interviewed by someone,
05:20 say, who's hostile to me, and I don't always manage this, to remember that I
05:24 don't need an enemy at all. Really, I don't. And to bring people on board,
05:29 wouldn't that be better? Well, unless you want misery and pain and suffering and
05:35 war, and you know, there's a part of all of us that absolutely wants that,
05:40 absolutely wants to see everything burn. You know, consciousness is so unbearable
05:45 in its essence that maybe it should not exist at all. That's the motif of Goethe's
05:50 Mephistopheles, right? Satan himself. And you know, it's a non-trivial proposition,
05:56 and we all wrestle with it. Wouldn't it just be better to have nothing? Why? Well,
06:02 the absence of pain. And you know, the problem is, is when that proposition is
06:11 put into action, everything that makes you object to life gets worse. So, it's not a
06:17 solution.
