Part I of Omer Aziz and Sam Harris’s Debate: Motives, Intentions, Get-Rich-Quick-Schemes, and Project Islamic Reformation

In Part I of our debate, Sam Harris insists that we discuss his noble motives, and so we do. I should add here, once again, that no one has alleged that Harris’s primary motive was to literally get-rich-quick (he was born wealthy), but that there is a large market for anti-Islam pamphlets and Harris and Nawaz are cynically exploiting it with little effort — that was my claim. We can either take Harris’s word for it as to motives or we can infer motives from actions. Here, an e-mail change that was supposed to be a blog post and says nothing novel about Islam or terrorism or anything else is published as the Harris-Nawaz pamphlet. Either way, I was hoping to debate the ideas found in the book, not question Harris’s Gandhian intentions.

The parts in bold were cut from the original podcast.

SH: Are you a practicing Muslim? You’re born into a Muslim family and have been identified as a Muslim all your life, or you came to your commitment to Islam later in life?

OA: Well, I come from an interesting family that I think is representative, really, in terms of one of my parents being very secular and very skeptical and one of my parents being very believing but not proselytizing. And so I was practicing at one point — I don’t like that term now, I identify culturally as a Muslim and was within the community of Islam because it was part of my upbringing. You know, when Eid comes around once a year, I want to be with my family and want to celebrate, but I’m philosophically agnostic and so you could say I might even agree with you on the question of whether God exists.

SH: Right, right. OK. I’m talking to you now because of the book review you published in Salon, my favorite website, in which you wrote very critically and dismissively of the book I wrote with Maajid Nawaz, Islam and the Future of Tolerance. And so rather than just talk to you about the review in general, I’m going to have you read it out loud on the podcast, so we can discuss it point for point. Now, you’ve agreed to do this but under some duress — you told me by e-mail you think this is a terrible idea, but I want our listeners to understand why I have structured the conversation this way. Now, first, you can say anything you want. I’m simply insisting that you also read every word of your review, so our listeners can hear it and I can respond, but you can make any caveats or supporting points you want and we can talk of anything under the sun, and I just want to deal with your review first. Just to be clear, there’s absolutely nothing about this that is closing down debate or conversation — I’m not going to edit anything you say unless you ask me to. And so here is why I want to focus on the review. First, it is a very common experience for a person to read a review like this — or even to write one — and to have no idea what the target of this kind of criticism could or would say in response, because there’s simply no good format in which to answer charges like this, and as an experiment I want to use my podcast for this if only just this once.

In particular, I want our listeners to know what it’s like, and I want you to know what it’s like, for me to read a review like this — almost in real time, sentence by sentence. Because it seems to me you can’t possibly know how fully this essay of yours misfires from my point of view. I mean, you took the time to write it, presumably you think your statements are clear and accurate and that you’ve built a very damning case against me and Maajid, in particular, me. But there’s almost no single sentence here that survives scrutiny. And I want to demonstrate this for you,

OA: Let me just make a quick point. My initial reservation to doing it [the discussion] in this format — and I highlighted this when you said, ‘It’s never been done before,’ and my suggestion that it’s never been done before is because this could descend into a Talmudic parsing of single sentences and words that won’t be helpful at all. Now, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say that’s not going to happen.

On a second point, I think in an earlier podcast you said that I really hate you and I hate Maajid, and I want to correct that: I don’t hate you and I don’t hate Maajid. I find some of your ideas to be repugnant and I was responding to those. I didn’t call you a racist [in the original review]. I didn’t call you a bigot. I didn’t call you any names. I’m merely contending and responding to the ideas that I read in your book. So that was my intention.

SH: OK, well, that’s fine and we’ll get into what you said specifically and it’s implications, and again, it’s not going to be a rabbinical parsing of every word, but I do want to move through it systematically. I also want to make clear that my goal isn’t to embarrass you and my goal isn’t even really to debate, ultimately. I’m trying to bridge the gap between your essay and the cynicism that it communicates to me, and what I would consider a real conversation. But I think doing this is going to take some real work because I think we’re very far apart on the page. Obviously, I’m going to cut you some slack because I understand that no one writes an article like this anticipating to then having to read it to its primary target, and I can only assume that even if you kept your opinions about me as they are, you would probably phrase a few of these points differently, in the context of an actual conversation.

So, I think one thing to make clear up front is that your insults don’t matter to me. I don’t take anything you’ve written personally —

OA: — Good, you shouldn’t.

SH: The problem is I don’t take anything you’ve written to heart at all, because it’s as though you’re writing from another universe here. And this is what I find so troubling and why I want to have this conversation. So the problem for me, in general, just to step back before we get into the text here, that I understand Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi better than you understand me and Maajid. And I can actually say this with certainty, because you are absolutely wrong about me and Maajid, and I could ascribe beliefs to al-Baghdadi at random and do a better job than you’ve done here. I could throw the e-ching and come to a better understanding of his motives than you have come to an understanding of ours by reading and reviewing our book.

OA: The only thing I want to say to that is I think I understand Baghdadi better than you and Maajid understand Baghdadi, because I actually factor in to account his political strategy, and his geostrategic policy, that he’s had in Syria and in Iraq that’s allowed al Qaeda in Iraq — the Islamic State in Iraq — to go from being a ragtag group of rebels that was decimated in 2011 to be this very powerful militia in 2016. And the political factors, and I hope we get to them, those are things that you and Maajid don’t discuss, and I don’t see you taking an interest in.

SH: OK, but that’s a totally separate point. I mean, whether you understand Baghdadi better than I do, we can discuss. I’m saying that I understand him, this person who is practically infinitely distant from me on the moral and political and religious and intellectual spectrum, better than you understand me and Maajid, and we have told you our motives for writing this book. That’s what I find so strange here.

OA: Sam — I don’t care about your motives though. For me, it’s about what the book says, and what you’ve said before.

SH: You describe — we’re going to get into it. One of the things I’m going to take issue with very early on in your review is your ascription of motives to us, but again, let me step back for a second. You’re a very smart person who is capable of writing about these issues honestly. In fact, I told you by e-mail that you had a peace in The New Republic about jihadism, I think it was called “The Soul of a Jihadist,” that I totally agreed with. So that’s the mystery I want to attempt to resolve, that you could write an article on jihadism that I could recommend almost without reservation and yet you could review my dialogue with Maajid so uncharitably that I can honestly say, from my point of view, that you communicated nothing but your own confusion and prejudice.

So, my goal here, to be clear, is I want to bridge that gap, essentially between your two articles. But I really think it’s not going to be easy, because from my point of view, almost no sentence in your review does what you think it does. That’s where we’re starting. I think the only other thing I want to say before you start reading your review is that our listeners should know that I’ve sent you a version of it where I’ve marked many places where I think there’s something for us to talk about, and I did this because, given the time-lag on Skype, I didn’t want to be continually talking over you as you began reading a new sentence or paragraph. So you have the complete text of your review, marked by me, and you’ll just read sections and we’ll pause and then begin speaking about relevant points.

OA: Yeah, sure, and I hope that, just to respond to your previous point about my New Republic piece, which I still stand by, of course. There’s a difference between examining the assumptions, the beliefs, and the motivations of an isolated extremist, and then extrapolating that, and saying that is either representative of an authentic or legitimate form of Islam. And my intention in writing this piece and in critiquing your views is how do we actually get a reformation, how do we actually get cultural liberalism in the Middle East. And I propose that your solutions and Maajid’s solutions, which focus on verses almost to the exclusion of politics, is the wrong way forward. That’s what I’ll say on that.

SH: Well, OK, let’s go. Please start with the title.

OA: Sure. So, the title that the Salon editors put on this — and these are the only words in the entire piece that are not my own, is “Sam Harris’ Detestable Crusade.” I also want to have my original title, which I put, which they changed. It was originally called, “The Poverty of the Intellectuals: Sam Harris, Maajid Nawaz, and the Illusion of Tolerance.” And look, I wouldn’t use a phrase like ‘detestable crusade,’ because to me, that’s clickbait nonsense, and that’s what all editors from time immemorial have done. You can rebut that and you probably agree that that’s not a helpful title, but I stand by my own and saying that the ideas in here [your book], were very often impoverished, yes.

SH: OK, well that’s very interesting. But please just read the full title and subtitle and we’ll talk about it.

OA: Sure. The full title was: “Sam Harris’s Detestable Crusade: How his anti-Islam tract reveals the bankrupcy of his ideas.” And the subtitle was: “Harris haughty ignorance and chauvinism are on full display on his new book. A dialogue with a former radical, by Omer Aziz.”

SH: Right, OK. So it’s interesting, as I expected, you didn’t write this title, and you’re actually not happy with it. Now, you are, I think the third writer from Salon, whom I’ve communicated with, one of them is another Muslim who is just as critical of me as you are, who felt the need to apologize for the title —

OA: — No, I don’t apologize, because these are not my words. They are on my article, but this happens — you’ve written before for public magazines as well, and you are well aware that editors choose the titles.

SH: I’m not saying you’re apologizing for yourself. It’s not a title you stand by. Let me just point out, in case this blew by people too quickly. As with almost every other Salon article about me, there isn’t even a pretense of journalistic objectivity here. There’s clearly an editorial policy there to make me look as bad as possible, and here the reader is straight-out told, that my work is ‘detestable,’ my ideas are ‘bankrupt,’ that I am ‘haughty, ignorant, and chauvinistic,’ and I pointed this out in my last interview with Salon — this is the behavior of a tabloid. No real magazine or newspaper does this.

OA: Although, Sam, it’s not Salon-specific. Salon is not trying to cater to any kind of journalistic objectivity as you call it, or pretend to be unbiased. It’s a magazine of ideas. It’s a salon. If you look at The New Republic in the 1990s, the kinds of titles and arguments they had about African-Americans, people would call that racist today. They were peddling a particular viewpoint and conservative magazines today do it all the time. So this is not Salon-specific. You might think it is because they seem to target you and other new atheists, I don’t.

It happens in every other publication because they want to get clicks…I’m sure if we looked up National Review and The Weekly Standard, we’d find equally questionable titles.

SH: …In any case, just start.

OA: Yeah, sure, let’s start. [Reads from text]: There are few get few get-rich-quick-schemes left in modern publishing. But one that persists could be called Project Islamic Reformation. Writing a book that fits in this category is actually quite easy. First, label yourself a reformist. Nevermind the congratulatory self-coronation the tag applies — it is necessary to segregate oneself from all the non-reformists out there. Second, make your agenda clear at the outset, by criticizing what is ailing Islam and Muslims. The Qur’an is a good place to start, because Muslims, especially in the Middle East, surely treat their holy book more like a military instruction manual than anything else. Third, pose a few solutions. Lest you be accused of nuance, the more vague and generic these are, the better. Fourth, soak up the inevitable publicity that awaits and with it, your hard-earned cash. Voila, Sam.

SH: Ok, so, you actually believe that writing a short book like this about reforming Islam for Harvard University Press is an extremely lucrative thing to do? If you do, I need to educate you on the reality of publishing. You actually think that money would be our primary motive in writing a book like this?

OA: I’m not sure what your primary motive is. I know that if I were to dish out a book about Islam and used the words ‘reformation’ and ‘terrorist,’ I could get a book deal in about five seconds. In fact, I could write that kind of book in my sleep. It’s not that difficult to do — to me, this is intellectual fast-food, and frankly, I think you guys could have done better.

SH: I understand you didn’t like the book and you think we could’ve written a better book. You’re ascribing motives to us here. This is the first paragraph of your piece. You describe this as a ‘get-rich-quick-scheme.’ Now, I’m talking about your understanding of what Maajid and I are up to. Now, I find your cynicism here fairly breathtaking. You think Maajid’s career as a reformer — as a former Islamist who spent years in an Egyptian prison — and who now seeks to deprogram Islamists and jihadists, incurring massive security concerns as a result, and foregoing every other opportunity he might have. You actually think that this is a get-rich-quick-scheme on his part? You think this is how he thinks he can make the most money?

OA: Look, I’ll tell you that there’s been a litany of books that have been published very recently — they are not scholarly tracts — that repeat the same slogans over and over again. They are short pamphlets. And yes, I mean, maybe it’s not ‘get-rich-quick,’ but it’s ‘get-rich-soon’ at least. You build a platform on it. You accumulate a mass following based on people who love the idea of telling Muslims that they should reform by cutting out verses of their holy book — which no other religion has been expected or demanded to do. I don’t think it’s a serious intellectual exercise —

SH: — Again, Omer, it’s a different point. We can talk about whether it’s a serious intellectual exercise.

OA: Do you think it’s difficult to call for a reform of Islam in America today? Do you actually think it’s difficult to do? Does it threaten your security?

SH: Absolutely. We’ll get in to this.

OA: One of the major parties in this democracy have been calling for this [Muslim reform] in very fascistic tones. I don’t think it’s an intellectually brave thing to do, I’m sorry.

SH: Omer, we got to move through this systematically. I’m talking about your ascriptions of motives. You are making assumptions here, which are flat wrong. First of all, there is Maajid’s case of being a reformer —

OA — Very little standing in Muslim communities.

SH: The price he’s paid for this — He lost a wife and son over this. And you’re describing him as an opportunist who’s just out to make a buck. Now —

OA: — His affiliation with right-wing organizations is probably why I would do that. There’s plenty of reformists on the ground, every single day —

SH: — Omer, you’re filibustering. —

OA: I’m not filibustering, I’m explaining —

SH: — I’m trying to get back to the first point you’re jumping off of, which is the ascription of motive. Now, speaking personally, I’m giving you information you don’t actually have about me, alright. Speaking personally, the challenge for me is to make the work I do on this topic — the topic of Islam — remotely viable. Not to have the resulting damage done to my reputation by people like you, not close the door to other opportunities.

OA: Viable to whom? To Muslims?

SH: To even get paid for it. You describe this as a ‘get-rich-quick-scheme.’ You realize, that having people call you a racist and a bigot and a chauvinist and an Islamophobe isn’t good for your career. There’s a cost to this. You realize that many people who agree with me on these issues just across the board won’t touch this topic because they don’t want to deal with the defamatory nonsense I deal with on a daily basis.

OA: Look, there are many white, non-Muslim authors who have written books about Islam. This is not about you in particular. And you don’t have the kind of offensive language in here that you’ve said before, in terms of “we are at war with Islam” or all kinds of, yes, chauvinistic viewpoints. But back to my earlier point, I think doing something like this is not difficult and yet it does make one money — in fact, I have been offered to do it myself. And I’m not afraid of being called anything and I am critical of Islam, so, if you want to complain about having your feelings hurt, that’s one thing, but let’s have an actual discussion of the merits of what reformation looks like.

SH: It has nothing to do with having my feelings hurt. Again, I have to linger on this point because you’re so far from reality here and you’re so satisfied that you’re in touch with it. So just listen to me for a second. Again, I’m talking about me, my career as a best-selling writer and scientist. You’ve made certain assumptions here —

OA: — Sam, you made your career by attacking religion, and that’s totally fine. What were you doing before you wrote The End of Faith? You were a PhD and neuroscientist. You made a lot of money off of this.

SH: Here is a fact. Focusing on Islam, to any degree — writing this book with Maajid, having you on my podcast now, alienates a significant percentage of my core audience. The people who know that I’m not a bigot, the people who see no more merit in defamatory Salon articles than I do, don’t want to hear me talk about Islam and Islamism because this is the most boring thing in the world. Now, I can tell you, that there is almost no one in my core audience who wants me to spend any more time reiterating my concerns about Islam, and yet you seem to think that I am pandering to a huge audience for mercenary reasons. There’s not a scintilla of truth to this charge. You just conjured it out of an unfriendly act of imagination.

OA: Well, look. If I look at your career and the things that you’ve said before Sam Harris become ‘Waking Up’ and ‘meditation Sam Harris,’ it’s all been attacks on religion, and that’s fair, but some of the things that you said about Islam before, which garnered a lot of controversy, rightly so, and I hope we can talk about that — you’re rhetoric — those are things that you should expect to be criticized for. And look, I don’t want to talk about Islamism either. I’ve got a wide variety of interests and creative pursuits that I rather be doing. So this is on me as well. And if you’re listeners are going to be alienated by an opposing point of view —

SH: — They’re not going to be alienated by an opposing point of view. It’s your assumption that Maajid and I — it’s especially egregious with Maajid, but I’m focusing on my part for the moment — it’s your assumption that I am pandering to an audience that is hungry to hear me reiterate the problems with Islam. And that this is a lucrative thing to do. What sort of advance do you think Maajid and I got for this book? You’ve probably heard that best-selling authors get six figure or seven-figure advances for books. What do you think we got here?

OA: I’m not sure, you tell me.

SH: There was no advance.

OA: How much — look, I don’t want to go into your finances, that’s your personal business, but look, this is Islam and the Future of Tolerance. You weren’t talking about reformation of Islam five years ago or four years ago, you were just talking about attacking Islam. And this was originally supposed to be a blog post, and this reads like a long e-mail exchange between two people, I can’t believe I spent twenty dollars on it or whatever the price was. And Maajid posed that it be a book. I think part of the reason for that, it’s fair to assume, is that you would have made more money by publishing it as a book than you would have by publishing it freely on your blog. People pay a premium to read something that should not have a premium price attached to it. This is my point here.

SH: No, that’s not your point —

OA: — It’s one of my points.

SH: You’re just — you’re not in touch with reality here. You’re not in touch with the costs, professionally, reputationally, for touching this issue. You think that there are windfall profits for anyone who wants to say something negative about Islam. It’s just simply not the case. Let me just give you another example. When Ben Affleck called my comments about Islam racist on Bill Maher’s show last year, I was trying to launch a book about meditation and the nature of consciousness and a rational approach to spirituality. And that’s a book I actually had been paid a fair amount to write. And there was literally not a moment for the rest of my book tour, where I could talk about my book. Instead, I had to deal with idiots who thought that Affleck made sense. And honestly, I’ve spent much of the last year doing that.

Now, do you think — just consider this with fresh eyes for a minute — do you think, that when you’re trying to launch a book about spirituality and meditation and a scientific understanding of consciousness, do you think that having to endlessly beat back charges of racism and bigotry is a good thing for marketing that book? Is that a moneymaker?

OA: Two points. The first is that there is a huge audience in the United States for right-wing politics and right-wing views about Islam. This is not new. I’m sure that you are aware of this. You encounter it all the time in the media and half of American democracy — at least one of the two major parties — has been caught up in this. The second point is that the reason why people were so critical of you and asking you all those questions is because on that appearance, on the Bill Maher show, you called Islam “the motherlode of bad ideas,” you threw out a number that at the time — this is where some of your critics were unfair, where you pulled it out of thin air and I don’t think, I give you more credit than that — but you called Islam “the motherlode of bad ideas” and the guy next to you, Bill Maher — who I also really like, I think he’s a funny comedian and I love watching his show — but he compared Islam to the “fucking mafia” — those are his words. You expect people not to raise those questions when you’re going around?

SH: The point I’m making is that there is a cost for this. This is not a self-serving, opportunistic, profitable thing to do. And most people who agree with me won’t go near this topic because of all the pain it causes them. There is no upside to it — yes, there are a few right-wing areas of publishing, where a couple of people can sell books, pandering to what you might legitimately call a racist or xenophobic or bigoted audience. That is not the market for Maajid and me. It’s incredible that you’re not seeing this. So I’m someone who deals with many other topics, whose audience wants him to deal with other topics. At this point, almost anything but Islam. Just picture this. Do you think, that anyone pays a lot of money, to hear me come tell their students or employees that Islam is a terrible religion.

OA: I’m not sure what your sources of income are and who pays you and who doesn’t pay you, but I’m certain that, if tomorrow, or some time in 2016, you were to say, expand the part of the The End of Faith dedicated to Islam and write out the most withering critique of Islam that you could possibly write, I’m sure that would sell very, very well. Especially in the United States. Especially in Europe, where people are getting very antsy about Islam. I mean, look, if you think that criticizing Islam and doing it in very heated rhetoric doesn’t sell well, then, honestly, dude, you are deluded. It sells extremely well, you get platforms, you can go on the media, you can market your books, and you get more followers and more readers, and people want to hear that.

SH: You’re wrong about this. I have five New York Times best-sellers under my belt now —

OA: — The first one being The End of Faith, criticism of religion, which started it all —

SH: Yes, but there’s much more to the book than that and it’s not focused on Islam. And it was the first book in a wave of new atheist books that started this publishing trend. You couldn’t publish the same book today and hope to get lots of readers. And my book with Maajid was never expected to be a New York Times best-seller, hasn’t been a New York Times best-seller, was not written because we thought this was a great angle to make a lot of money. It was written to communicate specific ideas, which I hope we will get into, and it was written as an example of a conversation that succeeded. Maajid and I started far apart when we first met, and we converged in a very happy collaboration. And we’re putting it out there as an example of how a conversation on this topic could and we think should start.

Now, the fact that you don’t understand the reputational costs to this, the fact that you don’t understand how much damage has been done to our public conversation on this topic by articles like the one you just wrote and by periodicals like Salon that title them the way they title them is flabbergasting to me and I’ll draw the picture even wider for you here because you do not understand the implications of this. Do you think when it comes time to get your kids in to elementary school, after handing in an application, do you think that having to warn the director of admissions that a Google search on daddy might just turn up charges of racism and bigotry that aren’t true?

OA: — Didn’t call you a bigot, once again.

SH: Chauvinist is in the title of the article.

OA: I hope they would move past the title, which an informed reader is supposed to do.

SH: They don’t. But you’re deliberately missing the point here. The reality is to deal with this topic, especially as a white guy, but even Maajid doesn’t escape the charges of bigotry and racism, even Ayaan Hirsi Ali doesn’t escape charges of bigotry and racism. The point is to broach this topic is to guarantee a whirlwind of unjustified charges of bigotry, racism, chauvinism, xenophobia, and an endless trail of this online. And this is something that self-respecting public intellectuals who value their time and sanity are avoiding at almost any cost. I know these people. They’re my colleagues. And the fact that you not only don’t see this, but see it only as pure upside, for anyone who wants to defame Islam, they’re going to get a book deal, they’re going to get rich, they’re going to get feted in chauvinistic circles, and it’s just going to be a gravy train of bigotry that they can ride till the end of their days, that is insanity.

OA: There are always costs to entering the marketplace of ideas, regardless of what those ideas, and there are, of course, benefits as well. In my estimation, the benefits in this case, of attacking Islam, and of attacking Muslims, are greater than the costs, and there should be criticism and withering criticism of people like yourself and of Ayaan Hirsi Ali who basically call for war against Islam. Let’s boil this down, because you are not an impartial arbiter or peddler of sophisticated arguments. You have said some very chauvinistic things and you have rightly been criticized for them. Now, no one should be attacking you personally, no one should be threatening you, no one should certainly not be threatening your livelihood or your life, but people should have the right and responsibility and I think the obligation to offer withering rebuttals to that kind of rhetoric. When someone says that “It is time we admitted that we are not at war with terrorism. We are war with Islam” — that deserves extreme scrutiny because it is an extreme statement.

SH: …Ok.

OA: Do you disagree? Look, if I — Let me reverse this quickly. I think Israel has a right to exist and I think it’s occupation in the West Bank is illegal and ultimately there’s going to be a two-state solution. Now, as a brown-skinned, Muslim-named person, I’m aware that if I came out and said “We are at war with Judaism” or with “the Jewish people” or “with Zionism” — what do you think the response would be?

SH: I just don’t understand how you’re missing this point. We can talk about all this. I am still stuck on this “get-rich-quick-scheme,” this attribution of motive, this picture you have of everything in the marketplace —

OA: — OK, how much money did you make off the book? Since you claim that there’s only costs associated with targeting Islam.

SH: Here’s a nice question —

OA: — How many Twitter followers have you gotten, since these are all things that accumulate on your platform.

SH: Nice question. We didn’t get an advance for the book, it’s all about royalties now. I should be very concerned about book sales. How many times do you think I’ve checked with the publisher to see how many books we’ve sold?

OA: I don’t know, Sam. I don’t know you.

SH: That’s right. You don’t know. Zero. Zero is the number you’re looking for there.

OA: You’ve made zero dollars off this?

SH: No, I’m sure we’ve sold some books. I have no idea how many we’ve sold —

OA: — So, this was a blog post that turned into a book, so you went from zero dollars to x, that is greater than zero. So you’ve made money off of this. And, look, to me that’s a secondary point but you want to focus on it.

SH: No, the point is your attribution of a sinister, mercenary, opportunistic, cynical motive to something that is a pure effort to have a publicly valuable conversation. That is what I’m focusing on. I mean, Omer, your reluctance to concede this point — your reluctance to concede that you actually had no information about publishing here or about our motives or about how much money we were going to make, so you were just saying something that sounded right to you, that you wanted to be right —

OA: You’ve just admitted that you made money off this, number one. Number two, it was originally supposed to be a blog post, and number three, the new atheist books — The God Delusion, god is not Great, The End of Faith — of course, as you mentioned, they would not be published today they have already been published, but would you deny that Project Islamic Reformation books are not in vogue now? That articles calling for reformation don’t go viral every two days? Would you deny this, that there is a great market, and a great readership, and a great listenership for these kinds of ideas?

SH: Yes. I would deny it. It’s the least lucrative and most costly thing I could be doing. And I’m informing you about this — I don’t expect you to know this, but what I’m saying is true. And your reluctance to step back at all from your ‘get-rich-quick-scheme’ claim says a lot about you. You’re getting your JD at Yale, what could you possibly hope to do as a lawyer if you’re showing this little concern, not only for the truth, but for the perception of your commitment to the truth —

OA: — My commitment to the truth is completely independent from and I think, should not factor in, financial profit of any kind. It’s a corrupting motive, number one. And number two, as an attorney and someone who is actually interested in reforming many communities and inducing cultural liberalism, I want to work with these communities, which is apparently what Maajid wants to do. And here’s something I’ll tell you. This book is going to influence and change precisely very few opinions in the Muslim world —

SH: — Again, you’re changing the subject. The truth I’m talking about here is, you made a claim about our motives that is demonstrably false, I’ve given you several reasons —

OA: — You just admitted that you made money off of it.

SH: We have sold some books.

OA: Yes, from a blog post.

SH: Originally, I thought we could do a blog post. It became such a substantial conversation and it was taking so much of our time and we wanted to do it right, we wanted to spend more time doing it, that it justified the further effort to make it a book. So then, we wrote a book together, and it was a great collaboration that many, many people have found valuable. We haven’t even gotten into the substance of the book yet, because I’m trying to get you to concede that the information you thought you had about our motives and about the reality of publishing and about the lack of security concerns that people like Maajid and I have, all of that was delusional. And I’ve given you several reasons to recognize that your charge was false —

OA: — I’m going to quote you my own words, what I exactly said : Soak up the inevitable publicity that awaits, and with it, your hard-earned cash. You have received plenty of publicity from this book, and you have already conceded that you received cash from this book, so I’m not sure what your quibble is — is it with the facts?

SH: No, no, you describe it as a ‘get-rich-quick-scheme.’ I’ve heard you on another podcast confidently describing it as a get-rich-quick-scheme. —

OA: — There’s a lot of money to be made, you already said there’s a big market for it.

SH: No, I did not. It is the worst possible market for me. And it comes with massive costs. Security costs, it comes with reputational costs, it comes with the cost of having people try to take the words out of your mouth, it comes with the cost of a conversation like this, that many people would find excruciatingly boring. I mean, this is, all bad news from my point of view, and yet I do it because I think it’s an important topic to raise. The reason why I’m having this conversation, is not just to deal with the topic of Islam and Islamism, but I’m trying to have hard conversations like this because I find that the inability of people to get through hard conversations and converge. The inability of people to have their minds changed in real time. The inability for people to admit that they were wrong in real time, that, I think, is actually the biggest social problem we have. It’s much bigger than the problem of Islam or religion

OA: Racism is the biggest social problem we have. Maybe this is a close second.

SH: I would seriously disagree with you there. The point is that two people have to be able to disagree and find some way of talking about that disagreement in a way that’s productive. Even on this podcast, where I have all the information, where I know about the economics of publishing, where I know what I get paid and when I get paid and when I don’t, when I know about the reputation costs and and security costs, and you know none of these things, you still won’t back off an inch.

OA: I’ve seen the books that have come out according to what I call Project Islamic Reformation, both yours and Maajid’s as well as Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s. I recognize that there is a market for it, because I could very easily enter this market and make money off of this kind of project. And you’ve already admitted that you made money off of this. So, look, to me, this is a secondary point, but if you cannot concede the fact or admit that there is money to be made and readers to be had by criticizing and denouncing Islam and calling for an Islamic Reformation, then i don’t think we live in the same world.

SH: My point, Omer, is not that there is no money to be made, my point is that this is the lease good way for me to make money. Maajid could make much more money, doing something else. Ayaan Hirsi Ali could be making much more money, doing something else. We’ll get to those — later in your article, you make charges against them that I want to address. Here, we’re still on the first paragraph here. This is the problem. I’ve given you several reasons to recognize that this charge, that we’re involved in a ‘get-rich-quick-scheme’ is false, and I can assure you, that our listeners will recognize it to be false. And you’re tenaciously holding to it, past the point where it’s falsity is obvious to everyone, makes you look like an asshole.

OA: We’ve already established that there is a market for this, a readership for this, and it is a trend. You know what you should have done, if you don’t want to create a perception of making money, go and do a scholarly, serious study of Islam and what needs to be done, rather than this 128-page pamphlet. And this creates the perception of financial interest, which is just as bad as having a financial interest.

SH: No, I’ll tell you about why the book is short. Why the book is short is that people love short books now. And the reason why there aren’t more of them, and again, let me just educate you —

OA: — Please, do not speak to me in such domineering tones, I do not need to be educated. I am an educated individual.

SH: This is something you can’t possibly know. Because, everything you say, suggests you don’t know it. How many books have you published?

OA: Well, soon to be my first.

SH: OK, well let me tell you a dirty little secret about why there aren’t more short books in publishing. There are not more short books in publising because publishers can’t figure out how to make a lot of money publishing short books. If they want to publish a 300 or 400-page book and charge you $30 for it, this is the cost-scale in publishing. And if you publish the 100-page version of a book that really doesn’t have to be any longer because it is a very short argument and you’d just be padding it to make it longer and it’s actually what people want to read because they can read it in a single setting and they don’t have to decide whether they have to sacrifice that much time to the book — they can just sit down and read it. Publishing has not solved the problem of how to publish those books, and contrary to what you assume, this is a money-losing move from a publishing point of view — to publish a short book and sell it for $17 is much worse, from a publishing point of view, than selling a big, $30 book, and that’s why more people don’t do it. And when Maajid and I write a short book because we think it should be a short book, because want people to absorb it in a single setting, we are pushing against the merely mercenary, merely cynical, merely profit-seeking attitudes in publishing.

OA: Let me just ask you a question then. Do you think that writing a book about Islam, which encompasses a quarter of the world’s population, as you know, and over a billion people, as you also know, and the subjects of ‘tolerance’ and ‘the future’ — do you not think that merits a deeper and longer study?

SH: It merits a century of conversation, and Maajid and I have made absolutely no pretense of giving the last word on this subject. We’re trying to deliver a starting point, a novel starting point, which we did. But the price you pau for writing a comprehensive, scholarly, endlessly footnoted book, is that you lose the people who can’t invest that much time and energy and reading it. And that’s totally understandable. And we tried to write the book that you could hand to your friend, whose worried about this topic but hasn’t spent any time thinking about it, and say, “Listen, just take an hour and read this,” and that was our goal. And it’s a goal we’ve accomplished. But the problem is you are —

OA: — Those aren’t the people you should be addressing, are they? You want to be addressing Muslims, not the person who doesn’t know anything about Islam.

SH: That’s a separate topic —

OA: — No, it’s the same thing. We’re talking about who is going to read your book and what’s the project you want to accomplish.

SH: All I’ve been talking about thus far, is your ascribing motives to us that are completely false —

OA: — And you conceded all the factual points, about the market existing, about you making money off it —

SH: This is a stupid little trick, that you have to stop using because it makes you look terrible. To falsely summarize what someone has conceded, is not only annoying, it is effective only with stupid audiences. It’s going to get you fucking nowhere. So just listen to me.

OA: — Sam, don’t speak to me in those tones.

SH: You’re becoming an incredibly frustrating person to talk to, because you’re endlessly wandering off the point, and you’re pretending to be a mindreader. I mean, everyone on the left these days, is pretending to be a mindreader, so you’re in good company. —

OA: — On the right as well, who think Muslims are bloodlusting, violent, jihadists.

SH: The worst people on the right, with whom I have no connection, aren’t saying that. But I’m certainly not saying that. No one is saying they aren’t all jihadists. No one is saying they are all blood-lusting —

OA: — Well, you did say that the Muslim world “is utterly deranged by its religious tribalism.” So that get’s very close to it.

SH: If you want to read all of that in context, then we can talk about what I actually said.

OA: …“Islam marries religious ecstasy, sectarian hatred, and triumphalist expectation of world conquest in a way other religions do not.” Is that Islam, or is that ISIS, or are they the same thing?

SH: Again, you’re changing the subject. I hope to get in to those subjects. I can only aspire to get in to those subjects. But, you’re digging in here. This should be the easiest point we discuss. The point where you have no information and I have all the information, in terms of what it’s like to publish on this topic. But you have dug in so deeply here —

OA: — OK, a simple question for you, Sam. Is there money to be made or is there not in publishing a criticism of Islam.

SH: If you sell a single copy of your book, there is technically money to be made. Fine. That is a point that has absolutely no relevance to our conversation. The point I was making, and will continue to make as it comes up here, if Maajid and I were trying to get rich, if we were trying to make money in a way that was painless as possible, and as lucrative as possible, we would not be doing what we’re doing. We would be doing anything but what we’re doing.

OA: Making money in the intellectual sphere, in the publishing world — criticizing Islam is one way to do it.

SH: But publishing on other topics does not involve these other charges of bigotry and racism, does not involve security concerns you reap when you deal with these topics. I could write books about Mormonism and never look over my shoulder, never worry about security concerns, never worry about being attacked as a racist or as a bigot, and make the same points about religion in general. This is a unique problem with Islam.

OA: If I took all your words and replaced Islam with Mormonism, I’m sure you’d get some very strong rebukes from the Mormon community.

SH: Nothing analogous to what happens with Islam. Let’s continue, we literally just went through one paragraph.