 Friends, colleagues, welcome to the first director lecture series for the academic year 2324. My name is Adam Habib, and I am director of SOAS. Our theme today is the political weaponization of religion. If you looked and thought about this challenge 50 years ago, all of us would have held the view that religion and the political weaponization of religion is eroding around the world. As we have the emergence of modernity, as we have development, so to the challenge of religion and people being politically weaponized by religious identities will be something of the past. We know over the last 10, 15, 20 years that this is not true. You're seeing the tragic consequences of the political weaponization of religion in the Middle East and in Israel and Palestine today, and you see it in so many other parts of the world. It is a feature of developments in the United States, as we have seen over the last 10, 15, 20 years. You're seeing it in places like Australia, even it has its own manifestations in Western Europe. But we also see it in the Middle East. We see it playing itself out in India and in Pakistan and in Bangladesh and in so many other parts of the world. So the question that emerges is what is going on? Why this political weaponization of religion? What are its consequences for the challenge that we confront as a global community? You know, we live in a time where all of our challenges are transnational in character, either change, pandemics, inequality, renewable energy. All of these are the global challenges of our time. And if we are going to succeed in addressing these challenges, we need to cohere as a human community. But is there possible with the political weaponization of religion? We today seem more polarized than ever. In some analysis, our polarities are as deep as existed in the global community prior to World War I and II. And so this is perhaps one of the big fundamental questions of our time. And so we're going to ask, we've invited two colleagues from very, very different parts of the world with very, very different types of expertise to help us understand. Why do we have these challenges around the weaponization of religious identities? What form does it take? How does it assimilate different parts of the world? And what does it mean for the possibilities of cohering the human community to address the challenges of our time? Our two speakers, we have Shahzad Hamid Ahmad and Josh Rooster. Shahzad is a Pakistani freelance journalist and award-winning documentary filmmaker. His work has ranged from filming with white militia in the US, investigating Mumbai attacks mastermind, masterminded by Hafiz Saidz, Lashkar Ehtayba and ISIS recruiters in Marawi, exposing Nepali children, child marriages, illegal gold mining in Brazil's Amazon forests, filming underwater to investigate the Great Barrier Reefs, bleaching and many, many other stories in Afghanistan, Indonesia and Philippines. Shahzad's documentaries have been broadcast in Al Jazeera, TVF International, Toggle Down News. He received the Prince of Austria's Award for International Cooperation from the King of Spain in 2014. His video Pakistani filmmaker Shahzad Hamid Ahmad receives the Prince of Asturias Award from the King of Spain in a particular period. So Shahzad is a Pulgride scholar with masters in news and documentary from New York University. He has won 10 world medals at New York festivals, three global media awards in Germany and the Green Image Award in Japan, two silver awards and a climate change festival in China and Singapore's Media Cop News Award of the Year in 2015. You can see we've got an incredibly accomplished documentary maker in Shahzad. Our second speaker is of course Josh Ruiz, political sociologist and associate professor of politics at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalization at Deakin University in Melbourne. And he is an internationally recognized authority on the role of masculinities in violent extremism and terrorism and the attraction of men to Salafi jihadist far right and anti-democratic movements. His research focuses on the intersection of politics, sociology, law and religion and as a by state governments in the federal government in Australia. And he has spoken in a number of key international forums around the world. Dr. Ruiz is currently chief investigator on an Australian research council funded study on the far right, intellectuals, masculinity and citizenship. And he's the lead chief investigator of the ARC funded project, anti-women online movements, pathways and patterns of participation. He has authored books on masculinity and violent extremism, the new demagogues religion masculinity and the new populism and politically Islam and masculinity. His latest book co-edited with colleagues is titled security, religion and the rule of law. So again, we've got two colleagues who are going to make help us understand this incredible challenge of the weaponization of religious identities and what it means for the modern world. So I'm going to kick off with Shazad. I'm going to call you in. The floor is yours for the next 10 or 15 minutes. Thank you. Thank you Adam for having me on this talk. I'll focus my comments on my three part documentary series called in bad faith. We went on a journey to film the weaponization of religion across Asia to understand the links between populist nationalism, religion and the use of violence for political gain. And we filmed with some notorious religious based political groups with aggressively nationalistic objectives. Number one, the Rajasriya Swaimsevak Sangh in India, the Islamic defenders front in Indonesia and the Dharikita Labbeck in Pakistan and Indian in Sri Lanka. We got to film with Buddhist extremists out for the Bodu Balasena to investigate their strategies, their motivations and the impact they are having on the respective societies. The part one focused, of course on the Rajasriya Swaimsevak Sangh, which is a right wing paramilitary volunteer organization that aims to create a Hindu Rashtra, a subcontinent only for the Hindus. From supporting cow vigilante groups in Rajasthan attacking Muslim cattle traders to spreading Islamophobia across RSS bag television stations. We attempted to understand how India's secular fabric originating from the idea of ideals of Gandhi is slowly eroding with the rise of Narendra Modi and the BJP after 2014. And we wanted to understand the ideological connections between the RSS and the BJP, which are ruling India for the last nine years. And as we know Narendra Modi is a lifelong RSS member who completely believes in the creation of a Hindu Rashtra. And this sort of philosophy dates back to 1938, when the chief of the Rajasriya Swaimsevak Sangh, Madhav Sadashiv Bhol Valkar, who was inspired by the ideals of Adolf Hitler's theory of Aryan supremacy, wrote his book, VDR Nationhood Defined and where I quote, and he mentions, the foreign races in Hindustan must either adopt the Hindu culture or language and must lose their separate existence or merge into the Hindu race, or may stay in the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation claiming nothing, not even citizens rights. So now we have a better understanding of why India is heading towards this weaponization of Hinduism or what normally people call it, Hindutva. The impact of what's happening in India is falling on every single fabric of Indian society. Sweden's VDEM Institute now calls India the world's biggest electoral autocracy. And as most autocracies clamp down on free speech, India today is no different. It is ranked as one of the worst places to be a journalist. According to the borders without borders, India has slipped to 161st position out of 180 countries in the 2023 World Freedom Press Index. Journalists who remotely questioned the powers that be in India are harassed. Only a few weeks back, more than 45 journalists in New Delhi were picked up and questioned for allegedly taking money from the Chinese government and propagating their propaganda. Intellectuals like Arundhati Roy who once stood for the consciousness of Indian society are facing jail time while people like Pragya Singh Thakur who have terror charges for bombing Muslim cases of worship are elected to the parliament and given respect and honour. I got to film with the right-wing Hindutva TV channel called Sudarshan News that has been free for the last many years to demonize and otherize Indian Muslims. We filmed with its editor-in-chief, Suresh Chauhanke, who routinely uses morphed images of Muslims peeing in mandirs or reaping Hindu girls, broadcasting conspiracy theories like Love Jihad, with the idea that Muslim men are luring Hindu women into marriages and converting them to Muslims. This particular guy has more than 1800 first information police reports against him and he has not once seen a jail for what he has done to the Indian society. So the media and with that social media has created such polarization in Indian society that you have lynch mobs that are roaming the streets of Uttar Pradesh today with believing that these conspiracy theories are correct. Surprisingly even Afghanistan with the Taliban government is known to restrict independent journalism has a better ranking than India today and that is what the price people are paying for voting in the weaponized version of Hindutva or Hinduism in India. Part two of a documentary series focused or was called The Battle within Islam and we got a film in Indonesia and Pakistan and we understood the kind of history that the region has seen and how the CIA and Saudi Arabia funded the weaponization of Islam. We also understood that they were the kind of books that were the had the books that were published funded by the CIA. And they were written down in the University of Nebraska, and then smuggled across to Pakistan and Afghanistan during the 80s had a massive impact on weaponizing Islam and Afghan Pakistani society. And many parts of Pakistan today continue to pay the price and Afghan society as well, of how this geopolitical fight transformed into a fight between capitalism and communism, and how the secular Sufi Islam that once was the mainstream religion in Pakistan and Afghanistan was replaced by a radicalized insular version of Salafism, which continues to be the guiding philosophy behind the Taliban today and how they don't believe in women rights and girls education. Till today it is on the tongue of every jihadist who operates in the Pakistan and Afghanistan region, where they regurgitate the same propaganda that was given to them in in Pashto language, many, many years ago. And the offshoots like of these groups like the tariqa Taliban Pakistan arises continue to bomb seminaries, which were once the mainstream Brail V Islam, and now they're under threat from this Salafi isn't so we've seen how a weaponized version of Islam was used to divide Afghan and Pakistani society for the greater objectives of fighting communism. And that spillover effect has gone to every part of the world. We had fighters coming in from Indonesia, Malaysia, who operated and were housed in places near Peshawar, where they got these trainings and once the war was over, they went back to all their respective countries, including in Indonesia where we got to film the Islamic defenders front, who have now transformed and morphed into activists fighting against blasphemy accusations against minority groups, Christian minorities in Indonesia. We also got to film with the tariqa lab bank, which is also using blasphemy laws and weaponized blasphemy laws under general Zia ul Haq, and how they are being used to how Christian minorities in Pakistan. Just in 2020 we had about 200 cases that were registered against the Christian minority in Punjab province. We saw Salman Taseer assassinated. So that's the spillover effect of a weaponized form of Islam that we saw that was distributed and promoted in this region. And the third part of his documentary series was filmed across Sri Lanka, called Inside Militant Buddhism, where we investigated how these historical conversion of Buddhist strongholds like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, where this history was weaponized for political forces, by political forces, and how groups like the Bodhubala Sena or the Buddhist force were propped up by the Rajapaksha in the last many years of power, and they were deployed against the Tamil minorities and the Sri Lankan Muslims. And eventually this crumbling down of society led to ISIS using these fragmented pieces of society for their own good and we saw the Easter Sunday bombing. So we were able to track how they use social media to create disinformation against Muslim groups, so these deep divisions continue to haunt Sri Lanka today and as a result, the country has collapsed from within and they are literally drilling on foreign aid. And I'll end my statement by stating that most countries around the world are staring down a dark path where religious divisions are getting worse due to the politics of hate and disinformation. Social media in a dark way has been weaponized, transforming one secular society into lynched mobs on the street and where coexistence has become much more difficult. I'll end my initial comments here and thank you and back to you, Adam. Well, thanks to you, Shazad. I'm going to go immediately to Dr. Joshua Suroz. Josh, you know, Shazad speaks about a particular part of the world. He speaks of course about Sri Lanka, India and Pakistan. Your research and work around the weaponization of religion and religious extremism and how that gets politicized is in a completely different part of the world and has a sense and takes and has very, very different political dynamics. Would you take the floor for the next 15-20 minutes? Thanks so much, Adam, for the invitation to be here today. Before I start, I just do want to acknowledge that I'm sitting here on the land of the runjury people of the Kulin nations and pay my respect to their elders past, present and acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded. And that's particularly pertinent and relevant in the context of our voice referendum this Saturday. We've actually got a major referendum going to our people as to whether or not Australia recognizes indigenous Australians in our constitution and establish a formal voice to parliament. And so it's a really tumultuous time here and many religious actors, particularly to the right of politics are actually opposing that voice. So there's a lot going on in this context over here. So my aim here today is just to talk about and to take us over the contemporary theoretical debates around the political weaponization of religion and namely the notion that religion has been hijacked by populists and we could add to this extremists. I'll explore how long subordinated religious actors are teaming up with populists and demagogues to reinvigorate a project of empire building in countries including Russia, Turkey, India, but primarily the United States and many Australian actors particularly seek to replicate what's going on in the US. And I'm really concerned about the potential re-election of Trump and his relationship with Christian nationalism. So I'd also like to use the opportunity here to be a little bit imaginative and play out some current patterns to their logical inclusion over the next decade. And in particular the potential for Christian nationalism to lead to a reordering of US and wider Western societies and how that might relate to the reemergence of religion based empires seeking to reshape the global order. So one of the more, and I should say most of my work for the last 10 to 15 years has been focused primarily on Muslim communities in Western contexts. And it goes without saying that the political weaponization of religion there has caused catastrophic damage to our social cohesion but also our harmony as a nation. And it's only now that Australia is starting to reconcile that with a far more balanced coverage for example of the Israel-Palestine conflict. So looking to hijacking religion, one of the more important books in the politics and religion space in recent years has been titled Saving the People, How Populist Hijack Religion. And that was a collection edited by our Mizuki, McDonald and Wah. And it explores how right-wing political parties have used religion to define the us and them that are so central to the polarization upon which populist actors are thriving. And Olivia Wah argues that for populists religion takes on the role of an identity marker rather than belief. As the national identity he argues Christianity is thin and can be easily hijacked. Rogers Brubaker has subsequently defined the term identarian Christian which adopts a secular posture and an ostensibly liberal defence of gender equality, gay rights, freedom of speech. In other words it's not really Christian. For Brubaker Christianity is embraced not as a religion but as a civilisation identity understood in antithetical opposition to Islam. Other work including that by The Harness and Sheraton goes a little bit further asserting that religion is part of populist style with religious symbols, tropes, feeling and belonging, difference and entitlement being selectively used by populist politicians. So here the populist instrumentalisation of religion rather than religious extremism per se is framed as one of the major issues facing Western democracies. Christian faith and religion framed by both sides as inherently peaceful and beyond reproach. However for myself my grandfather was a kind of coastal minister. I grew up in that environment and intuitively that didn't necessarily stick right with me. And so I was interested in exploring that a little bit further in some of my research. So religion plays a critical role in our society and faith-based conceptions of morality have shaped the laws we live by and practice to this day including in avowedly secular nations. Much of our intellectual progress including the development of the sciences have been driven by faith-based imperatives as humans from religious traditions across the spectrum have sought to understand the divine and to become closer to the divine. With respect to the secular context our universities in some cases a majority of scholars inspired by their faith have sought to pursue scientific truth. Faith has equipped humans to transcend tribal and racial boundaries working together through their love of God to build a future grounded in common humanity. And we've seen faith-based, unfortunately faith-based communities securitised, punished and brutalised, subjected to genocide, holocaust and annihilation for their religious beliefs and practices. We've seen too many incidents throughout history where powerful demagogues and populists, not to mention extremists, contested this power, have cloaked themselves in faith to justify walls of conquest and atrocity. Yet we also have to look at the flip side of this and the internal contestation within religion. Even within Christianity there are many factions both within the Catholic Church, within the Pentecostal movement there's an incredible diversity that in secular countries and nations is often cloaked and behind the scenes. And the notion that I would argue that the notion that religions have been hijacked in particular in relation to Christianity overlooks the mutually beneficial relationship between Christian and religious actors in particular who enjoy structural security, privilege, enormous wealth in terms of the assets of the churches and so on, and that relationship with demagogues as they work together to regain a power that they believe that they have lost. This is a relationship in which religious actors draw upon their status, economic strength, institutional connections and power to support those populous leaders who are advocating for them. And I'd argue it's very clear that we're now seeing perhaps more than ever, textualist faith leaders clearly aligning with powerful populists and demagogues. So where do we see this? I mean globally there are significant issues and it was really well articulated in the Indian context by Shazad. But Russia was saying Putin aligned with the Orthodox Church, he's made faith central to the rehabilitation of Russian masculinity and empire. He's brought the Russian Orthodox Church in from a century out in the wilderness. His embrace that Christianity is a key element of a national ideology, utilizing it to contribute to what a painter's called Russia's spiritual security. And so for Putin, the Orthodox Church with its emphasis on traditional values fills an ideological void created by this plan and collapse of Soviet communism, but also safeguards against the proselytisation of evangelical churches in Russia. To Turkey, where Erdogan and the AK Party has teamed up with conservative Islamist leaders. Faith has been central to the reassertion of Turkey and the Ottoman Empire. And Erdogan has adopted an imperial foreign policy that aligns with Turkey's Ottoman Empire past. He sought to achieve great power status and continues to do so. I don't need to go into India in too much detail other than to say that faith has become central to the reclamation of India from the world's largest Muslim minority and the desire to make India a great power. And a case in point is the new parliamentary building which erases representation of Islamic culture and has been framed as undoing the colonial mindset, but it's a building by Hindus for Hindus. And the reclamation of the name Barra, excuse the enunciation, a Sanskrit term referring to a period of Indian Empire. In Europe, we've seen the Law and Justice Party in Poland. In Italy, Giorgio Malone, from the Brothers of Italy Party, has talked about defending God, family and nation. In Hungary, Viktor Orban, from the Fdedz Party, has talked about becoming a defender of Christian values. Now it's easy to see them as cloaking themselves in religion. All aligned with Catholic conservatives who have repeatedly attempted to oust a Pope Francis, even engaging with Steve Bannon in an attempt to do so. And given the significant theological and political shifts that have occurred since Pope Francis took on the role, it's no surprise that he's made powerful enemies. And I cover off that in my book, The New Demagogues. So turning to the US, where I'm particularly concerned about the current trajectory. Particularly as we approach the 2024 presidential campaign. I'm worried about that relationship between white Pentecostals, but also Protestants and Catholics in the US. And their backing and their strong support for Donald Trump. And to a lesser extent, Ron DeSantis, in case Trump doesn't actually make it to the election. And Australia has just had for a number of years a Pentecostal Prime Minister who has also been pushing an agenda but also weaponized religion and faith in many respects. 75% of white evangelicals voted for Trump in 2020, down from 81%. But this compares to 57% for Trump and 42% of Biden amongst white Catholics in that last election. But a July 2023 New York Times poll explored Republican voter attitudes to Biden and Trump based on demographic beaches. It found that 78% of Catholics and Protestants and 77% of Catholics, I should say, held favorable views of Trump. 81% of white evangelicals held a very favorable view. Other factors included no college income, no college and low income. But importantly, 94% of white evangelicals held unfavorable views of Joe Biden. So in this context, where this voter base has played a critical role in the election, and dare I say possible reelection of Donald Trump, he's managed to secure religious right significant wins by changing the composition of the Supreme Court, by securing the repeal of Rowan Wade and based on that outlaw that made abortion legal. Tactics have included becoming highly active in political parties. We're talking here about Pentecostals. And seeking to control court appointments is offered them a reach and influence far disproportionate to their percentage in the wider community. We're only talking about 10% of Americans. And these often intersect with far right political discourse. In their work examining Christian nationalism, Gorski and Perry outline the deep story of Christian nationalism that sits central to the white evangelical Christian narrative. And that's important here because they state that in this narrative America was founded as a Christian nation by white men who are traditional Christians based on the nation's founding documents and Christian principles. The United States is blessed by God, which is why it was successful and has a special role to play in God's plan for humanity. The heroes in this myth, according to Gorski and Perry, are white conservative Christians, usually native born men and the villains are racial, religious and cultural outsiders. And underpinning this, they argue, is an understanding of freedom from government order with Christian men at the top and the necessity of violence to defend freedom and restore order. And they argue that religious nationalism merges with white nationalism. And this ties in with my scholarship on the ideological convergences between extremist groups across the religious and political spectrum. There are anti-women, anti-LGTBAQA plus, anti-semitic, anti-science, anti-government. And increasingly, as we're seeing, there's a strong anti-Muslim dimension, particularly in the US, again. It's also clear in the United States that religion has not been hijacked by populists, even if it's certainly been drawn upon. Trump has proven incredibly adept at exploiting religion for sure, and his election has given considerable momentum worldwide to far white supremacists, alt-right groups, but more broadly, anti-govern extremism and conspiracy theorists. And that's been felt very strongly here in Australia. So as I approach the back end of the talk, I do want to talk about what this means at a global level. It's perceived hierarchy has the capacity to reshape not only the United States, but the global order. Taken to its logical extreme, it constitutes rejection of the rule of law, the idea that we should be subject only to God's law and desire for the United States to reign supreme. Rejection of international governing institutions, including the United Nations, is membership of which places the US is submissive to the non-Christian and non-white other. Support for white evangelical missions and proselytisation, as we've seen in Uganda, most recently, where the government through funding and support from white evangelicals has outlawed homosexuality. The export of hate by newly empowered groups in the United States with no efforts to reign in or control their online activities. The export of Christian nationalist sentiment and possible funding for the growth of localised Christian nationalist movements. The permissiveness towards violence, defending the faith. And an increase in Christian inspired terrorism globally, and that intersection between Christian and white terrorism. So here in Australia, we've experienced our first case of premillennial inspired terrorism at a place called William Beller. And I'm actually on the ground in an investigation for that. So I can't talk too much in detail about what's occurred other than to say that religion and Christianity played a really critical role as a mobilising force. The far right terror attack by Brenton Tarratt, the Christchurch terrorist. Again, was inspired in many respects by this talk and this weaponisation of faith and religion that I think we're going to see more of. But there's also been critically a refusal of the media and politicians to engage with both the Christian Christianity, but also the whiteness of these terrorists and these attacks. And really what we're going to see, as I would argue, is that more people look and sound like me who are caught up in this. So as I'm very, very close to finishing, I'm aware of that. So the approach is likely to be tempered only by the potential for the net personal enrichment of Trump and his family. I mean, there's no contradiction in Trump engaging Saudi Arabian princes or visiting India. But in the context of other similarly religiously inspired efforts to rebuild long-lost empires, political and religious extremism might become the norm and a key feature of international relations. And to be provocative, to bring back a long-lost trope, Huntington's clash of civilisations ceases, which has again long been discounted, could in the context of Christian nationalism make a comeback. So in this space, white men are very likely, I would argue, the new face of religiously motivated extremism. I think it's something we need to unpack and explore further. So I'll leave it at that, but thank you very much for your attention. Thank you very much, Dr. Roos. So I'm not going to try and summarize what we're really impressive descriptions of the challenge. I'm going to try and pose a few questions to the users to start the conversation and then I want to pick up some of what Josh spoke about. The thing that struck me about your representation of the challenge in India. The challenge in Pakistan and Afghanistan and the challenge in Sri Lanka was that you saw the dynamics as fundamentally different. So in India, you speak about the RSS. You speak about a domestic politics, which is verging on what you see as a kind of fascist politics that goes back decades to the late 20s and late 30s. And you speak about the assertion of that politics to the contemporary period. When you speak about Afghanistan and Pakistan, you speak about an external intervention, the CIA, and how there's an intervention to take a religious identity of Sufism, which is based on a sense of empathy and not particularly militaristic and conflictual, and they politicize it in a way. And then when you go to Sri Lanka, you go back to domestic and not to external. So why what intrigues me is, is it true that the roots of religious, the political weaponization of religion in Pakistan doesn't lie in the very nature of the partition itself in the formulation of the society they created. And is it all the big bad CIA or are they domestic features? And in India, is it all about the bad RSS? Is there any failures by Congress itself, its own incompetence, its failure at development, its failure at the significant amount of corruption that plagued Indian society that alienated. So I want to force you to think through in more substantive ways in both the Indian Pakistan and I was hoping to get your thoughts on that. Right, I will distill it to this one concept. It's a battle of power, whether it's religion, whether it's gender, whether you talk about any point that we're talking about throughout this talk. If you look at Afghanistan, in the end it was about Pashtun supremacy. If you look at what's going on between, you know, various religious sects in Pakistan, it was about Sunni supremacy. If you look at Sri Lanka today, it was always about Sinhalese supremacy over the Tamils. And if you look at India, which is a much more complex space, but it does boil down to Hindu supremacy. So that is what I saw, the commonality in all these things that when we were filming, I saw that and then you always will get a stronger group and a weaker group. Now I read somewhere that why is there no counter to Salafi supremacy in Pakistan or why there is no Congress counter of secularism. I personally feel that when we were filming, when I was in Afghanistan and we were filming with the Taliban, these people are riding the finest cars. They are armed with the finest weaponry in the world. So it also boils down to the kind of funding that you are facing or you have. If you look at the 80s and the 90s in Pakistan, you saw the propping up of Madrasas like the Jamia Haqqania, where I went in and when you go to their dining area, you realize the kind of funding that's pouring in from Saudi Arabia, from various parts of the world to these people. And when you look and go to a shrine, a Sufi shrine that celebrates poetry, that celebrates culture, they are dependent on the arms of the poor people of Pakistan who come and drop their 10 rupees and 20 rupees. So that is the battle that's going on. It is a battle of supremacy. It is a battle of who is being funded and how. So I feel that that is the core reason why when we were filming, these were the differences that we found. When it comes to the Congress and when it comes to parties that are trying to sell unity and they're trying to sell cohesion and coexistence, I have found that it is much harder to sell that concept to a large mass of people. Dividing people has become easier because of the tools that you have today. You have the biggest dark elephant in the room is social media today. I am currently researching for my next documentary series, which is called Fact or Fiction. And if you just go on Twitter right now, you will realize if you look at the Israel-Palestine conflict and if you go to the Facebook account of an Israeli, you will find the feed is completely different. And if you go to a Palestinian Facebook page, the feed is completely different. So what I call this is the weaponization through algorithms is what our society is facing right now that we refuse to address. And so we are in a much, much darker phase of our existence. We are not looking at the Roman Empire versus the Indus Valley civilization where there was no disinformation when people were at least honest with what their belief systems were. So I think we are in a much, much difficult position and it is a battle of supremacy in the end. I'd like to close my answer with that. I hope I addressed your question. Well, Josh, what I'm intrigued is to tackle the same thing, right? So I'm really trying to understand what's going on here. Why is this? So I accept that the Saudis may very well be putting money in Pakistan and that generated and gave a particular political movement that may have, religious movement that may have been marginal, some wings. But if you read scholars like Karen Armstrong, they speak about moments where religion, different religious traditions live in peace with each other for centuries. And that in the other moments, they live in conflict and they fight each other. And what she asks is why is it that in some moments they live in peace and why in other moments they are in conflict with each other? And she answers the question in the belief that fundamentalism arises when people feel under threat, when people under feel under pressure. And so the question I want to pose with you about the United States or about many of these cases that you look at. You know, why is it that in a place like the United States, the Pentecostals, the churches and the white right movements congregate in the way they do? Is it going to do with two provocations that I want to put to you? One is the growth of inequality in our world. So it is not striking that this all happens in a historical moment where the global economy creates extreme disparities of wealth and poverty in that context. And does that create a sense of an environment where this is enabled? The second is what you touched on, I thought, around secularism. And that is that people of religious faith, whatever that faith is, felt humiliated by the way modern society in its belief in secularism related to them. That anything that was faith-based was seen as anachronistic to modern existence as something primitive and that secularism required you to be agnostic. And that sense of threat, that sense of marginalization created its own backlash. Do you see either of those phenomenon playing a role in the rise of this Christian right that you've identified so eloquently in your remarks? Thanks, two excellent points. I think they go hand in hand. In my own work, I go back in time. I asked the readers and someone to take a step back with me. And I looked at that contestation between the welfare state and free market economics and many of the original scholars who were behind the welfare state and the original thinkers. We're talking Keynes, Breverage, we're based in London and we're Christian socialists. And I'm talking in the Western context here, obviously. And those ideas that underpinned that idea of a safety net for working people, the role of big government and with big government went big church, went big religion. And that in many respects is what occurred in the US as well. But then we saw the emergence of the Montpolleran society, free market economics added to Chicago school that became ascendant. And with free market economics, there's no room, there's no space for faith. There's no space for anything that interferes with the operation of the free market. And so to that extent, the free arm, it goes hand in hand with a almost a militant secularism where everything is pushed to the side. There's no space. So we've seen church attendance drop, particularly in the UK, in Australia, in the US, in Canada, drop from roughly 40 to 50% of the population down to about 10 to 12% of the population over the last 40 to 50 years since free market economics or neoliberalism, as it's commonly referred to, has become the norm and become ascendant. And similarly, we've seen trade union membership drop from around the 45 to 50% mark down to around 10 to 15% in most economies. So we've seen traditional institutions that have bound people together, that have provided them a sense of solidarity and belonging, effectively shipped. And with that, so I think there's a move to blame secularism, but it really, in particular by these religious actors who feel under threat, but it's also the church. So it's also the economy. It's also the way that the economy is undermined people's participation in their institutions. And so they feel themselves not to be on an upward social trajectory where they're able to build a movement, you know, work together and so on. They feel lost. They feel like they've not only stagnant and their numbers have placated, but they're going downhill here in Australia for the very first time in our last census. Non-religion became the largest or non-Christianity, I should say, became the largest. So Christianity has now dropped to less than 50% of the Australian population. And that has absolutely scared and terrified many of these leaders who feel like their privileged status in society no longer exists. And so if you put that in the US context, my high migration, in particular from non-Christian countries, high migration combined with a sense of economic impoverishment, it's no surprise that it took only five to six years, I should say, for Trump to announce his presidential run after the GFC. That had a long tail. I'm particularly concerned about the long tail from COVID and what that's going to entail for many of these movements. So I think there's a sense of decline, a sense of loss, a sense of nostalgia for that past, but also that loss of privilege, that loss of status and standing and power has really shaped a hard edge to many of these movements. And they're looking for advocates, they're looking for people who are going to help reinstall and politicians who are going to bring them back and make them great again. Do you see an economic dimension to these reemergence of a kind of hateful religious identities that have come to dominate the kinds of parts of the world that you reflect on? Look, I think that there is money to be made in hatred, for sure, there's no question about it. If you just analyze the most famous term that they use in India for the media that spreads hatred, they're known as, it's called Godi media. And Godi is an Indian word for meaning, the meaning is lab dog. And so you have a rise in organizations who are completely funded by a certain political party to peddle a certain narrative. If you talk about Pakistan, if you give me an option if I had to stay in Pakistan and choose a career, I would have run a Salafi Madrasa because there is so much money to be made in this profession in the country that I would have definitely chosen that as a career option. So if you look at Afghanistan, if you look at Sri Lanka, these political parties and these groups are completely running on the arms given by these political parties. So I think there is a lot of money to be made and it's turning into an industry. And so there are various BJP IT cells, for example, that have propped up all over the country. And there was a recent Washington Post investigation that saw more than 150,000 people recruited just for the Karnataka elections. And now where we are heading to is the next 2024 Indian elections and you will see the number of people that are going to be recruited. And you are talking about countries where there is high unemployment. If you look at India right now, there are more than 23,000 Indians who were caught at the US-Mexico border. That is the level of unemployment that we are talking about. There are more than 800,000 Pakistanis who are leaving Pakistan every year because the economies of these countries are unable to deal with this burst of population that's coming through. India and Pakistan and Bangladesh, this is maybe like this region in itself is a big part of humanity just stuck in this little neighborhood. So you're looking at a complex issues. You're looking at unemployment. You're looking at educational institutions who are unable to produce quality graduates. And eventually they are used as cannon fodder by these hate groups and extremist groups. I was filming in two hours away from Atlanta and this group was a white supremacist group called the 3%ers who believe that the 3% of US white nationalists were the ones who fought for the freedom of America. And these guys were armed to the teeth. They had some of the finest weaponry I've ever seen in my life. So eventually these groups do receive funding. If you look at Hindutva groups in India, if you look at Bajrang Dao, if you look at VHP, if you look at the Sangh Pariva, they get funding from Indian Americans living in India. So there is definitely a lot of money to be made and I think that is where we are losing the battle of coexistence. Two quick questions. I want to say to the audience that I am going to move to the audience in in a couple of minutes, but I have two questions both for Shazad and Josh. In rapid succession, and I'm hoping you both will will give me your thoughts on both. The first is, in both questions, in both your reflections, you speak a lot about the mobilization of the right by actors in the right, whether it's conservatives in the religious movements, whether it's political populace and how they they begin to see a coincidence of interest. The question is, in all of these societies, we also have what I would call broadly progressive people, people of social democratic inclination, people who believe in empathy, people who believe in the human community coming together, people who believe in religion's identities can coexist without having to kill each other. And in all of these societies for long periods of time, those people were in the ascendant. So the question is, are they doing something wrong, and not simply the bad, the bad people doing something right. That's the question. You know, even in the United States, Josh, the Democrats have come to power. They are people, progressives at various levels. There was Obama, there is a Biden, there was others, and you know, Congress was in power in India. There is, there was Bolsonaro in Brazil, but so was there Lula in Brazil. And so the question I want to ask is, instead of blaming where we are simply on the right, what is the, what is it that progressives are doing wrong? What is the agency in this failure of ours? And I wanted to force you to ask and reflect on your own comrades, I would presume, and say what are they doing wrong? That allows them to fail so spectacularly every single time. Maybe I should start with you, Josh, and then I'll come to you, Chesha. Yeah, thank you. Great question. You've flipped that on its head. I think it's about the emotional tone of the epoch and the era that we find ourselves in, in many respects. Emotion plays a critical role. What was Obama able to mobilize? What was Biden and what have progressive leaders been able to do best? It's to mobilize hope. They run positive campaigns about the future and inclusion. And what to, what to the right in particular focus on, they focus on fear and negativity. Now, we have faced over the last two decades in the context of 9-11, the war on terror, an era, a political era in which tabloid media and the right-wing governments around the world have managed to mobilize that fear consistently, vigorously, and pursue that. And to create a sense of a small minded thinking around protection of ourselves at all costs. And I think in that sense, what that fear has been able to do is to overcome any chance of hope, but that goes hand in hand with downward social trajectories. The cost of a house in any major Western city nowadays has probably more than trebled. Housing is increasingly unaffordable. We have a cost of living crisis. Interest rates have gone through the roof. People are so focused on themselves that attempting to put something big and progressive on the agenda like the voice to parliament referendum we're facing here in Australia, which had widespread support, widespread support in the early polling will probably not get up because it's the worst possible time to try to bring something that it requires hope and inspiration and big picture thinking. We're just coming out of a pandemic. We've had 14 straight interest rises coinciding with the vote. So I think hope converses fear, but I also think the role of social media is being critical and potentially overlooked. Social media is a mobilizing force. And I would say in many respects, those who feel themselves alienated, fearful and angry, far more effective actors online in spreading and creating that fear and that sense of conspiracy and that deep existential angst, then progressives are spreading hope online. Shahzad? I think as a member of the left, we are to blame for a number of things that we are not doing right and what the right wing is doing is. The right wing is very organized. The right wing is well funded. The right wing is motivated in what they believe in. And even though if you look at all these countries that we've talked about, the right wing is the minority. Yet they are noisy. Yet they are more vocal. On the other hand, I feel that the left wing while I've lived my life under President Obama's election campaign, and while I've lived a certain portion of my life under the semi left Imran Khan in Pakistan or we've seen Congress members fighting elections in India. I think there is a level of lack of motivation in what they believe in. I think then again, what George said about social media, if you can just do a little experiment and post something negative online and see how it goes viral versus saying something positive and something about cohesion, and it doesn't get the traction. So I think as we are in this world where children are literally growing up in the digital age, we have to give importance to how these algorithms have created a monster, created a right wing monster for various societies that we are unable to fight against. The left has not been able to come up with a strategy to analyze what they're doing wrong even. And I feel that there is a greater level of conversion happening from people from the left wing going to the right wing. That is another big threat that we're not talking about. Leave alone the idea that we can coexist and the majority of the people love peace and love harmony. The right wing is radicalizing the left right now. And that is something that's happening all over our societies. I know wonderful friends who joined the Taliban. They are my friends who used to go out and party with me and live a very secular life. Eventually ended up joining the Taliban. They joined the Jihad in Afghanistan. I know a number of friends who live in Singapore. One of the most secular, one of the most wonderful countries that you can coexist in. All religions live in harmony. And I have been kicked out of homes because I said a certain thing that they did not agree with. And they believed in the propaganda that they were getting from various social media outlets. So I mean, I'd like to ask you, you know, in my country, one of the things that Nelson Mandela used to say is that if you want to fundamentally change your society, you don't need to only speak to your own people. You need to speak to the opposite side and shift them. Now you can't shift all of them, but you may be able to shift some of them. And that in many ways was the real wisdom of Nelson Mandela. And the question I must ask is whether progressives have forgotten that they become so used to their own echo chamber and having to agree with people that they that whose values they share that they've forgotten to respect others and try to shift others to another world view or to at least a coexistence. And I wonder whether we should ask progressives whether we're doing enough of that. What would you think, Shazan and I'll come to you in a minute, Josh. I completely agree with you because there's a definite demonization of the right wing. And I feel it started with the whole Donald Trump phenomena in the United States, and how the right wing were dumb people who did not understand the complexities of the world. And so I think that that is definitely correct. If you look at any part of the world, the right wing has always been demonized and the left has not reached out to them. That has definitely not happened in the Islamic world, as I say, the secular Muslims who are living in South Africa, in Pakistan have never made an attempt to go to these madrasas and address and share what they think is right and bring them towards what they feel should be how coexistence should go ahead. And I think that there is definitely an agreement there. Having said that, you are also dealing with the right wing that's violent. And you are dealing with two different groups of people, one that does not believe in violence versus a group that does. So how the question rises is how do you address a group of violent believers or people who use violence to propagate their cause. So it's definitely a challenge. Any thoughts on that? I agree entirely. I consider myself progressive for the most part. And I think that really what we see from the political left, particularly activists, is a condemnation, a blanket condemnation and an inability to even attempt to engage. And what that then creates is almost a full circle where you've got two hard edges butting up against each other with most people somewhere in the middle. I think most people can be reached. But I think that as you were saying, Shazad, that hard right, the violent right, I think that requires something different. But I think it requires, and this goes to one of the questions in the chat around producing counter-propagandization. Well, for me, it's about counter-narratives. So rather than counter-narratives, it's about alternative narratives. Rather than telling someone you're wrong and here's why, here's the truth, you can offer them alternative trajectories. You equip them, you give them agency to explore new paths. And that's a real process and takes a lot of skill and a lot of effort. But I think the rewards there are potentially far greater. So I want to come to questions that people, the audience who are listening to you have actually posed. And I've got a couple that I would like to go through. Josh, there is an interesting question that goes, given that religion has always been a civilizing instrument and used by politics and power actors. We've always had people, ethnic or religious entrepreneurs, trying to mobilize for political power. What is the difference today that allows them to be far more effective than on previous occasions? You know, why is it, in Shazad's terms, the other recess is successful today when it wasn't in the 1930s and late 30s and 40s and 50s and 60s and other periods? What is it about this historical moment that drives this? Any thoughts, Josh? I think it comes down in many respects. These are transnational movements. These are movements that are organized online. These are movements that are talking to one another, engaging, building momentum, resourcing each other. And I think in many respects it's the internet, it's technology, it's the technological affordances of social media that equip these groups with a level of organization that they never had before that helps them build momentum. I think it ties in to economic decline and a stripping of citizenship in our institutions in wider society. And I think that's created that perfect storm. People feel dislocated, alienated, angry. There's a lack of institutional support for them. Where do you go? You go online and you find solace and community online. And I think that's what's given these groups far more momentum than they've ever had. So, I mean, there's a second question and really it's directed to Shazad, but I think both of you might have an interest in this. Shazad, one of our members of our audience has kicked off by suggesting that, you know, religion in its traditional sense is in declining many societies. At least religious observance of the rituals that play out. And it's particularly declining in welfare societies in societies with high level, high welfare states. Why? How would you see that? Do you think, you know, if the welfare will save you, why bother with God in a sense? Do you think that's an answer? Enable high levels of social democracy in places like Pakistan and India and Afghanistan and Sri Lanka? I'm imagining that we did have that in the United States, or at least some version of it, and it didn't work. Do you think that's an answer? I think that if you look at the 1940s and 50s and you look at the kind of leadership that you had. You had Muhammad Ali Jinnah on one end, a liberal, secular, forward-looking, progressive, Islamic leader. On the other hand, you had Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, you had Nehru, who were progressive, who believed in the coexistence. But since then, there's been a steady decline. One of the questions talked about the rise of the Islamic movement in Iran. And I think that sort of coincides with the rise of General Zia ul Haq in Pakistan that coincides with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. So I feel that there was a failure of this particular leadership in the 1940s and 50s and economic failures of Jinnah, of Nehru. That resulted in what Dr. Josh mentioned, is that going and taking solace in religion or leaders who proposed that you follow me, you follow this particular brand of Islam and your economics will improve. So if you look at the speeches, I personally interviewed Lashkar-e-Tayyubayi chief, who was the mastermind of the Mumbai attacks. And he was addressing a group of farmers in Punjab. And all he talked about was economics. And that is something that our secular leadership right now has been unable to understand. That economics is at the center and the heart of radicalization of these groups. The Hindus are being promised that they will get better jobs if they support the RSS and the BJP's agenda. So in the end, I think it boils down to how much food do I have on the table. And if you don't have food on the table and you have nothing to lose, then you will go and believe in any fairy tale there is out there to believe. And right now, if you look at Afghanistan, they are now realizing the price for bringing in the Taliban. During the last 20 years, you meet an Afghan and they would always mention that things were better under the Taliban and that the Ashraf Ghani government has given us nothing. And that was the reason why it took the Taliban 7 to 8 days to run over the Afghan National Army. And now they're realizing that that wasn't the case, that economics is a completely different monster than supporting the Taliban and bringing in these people who will bring peace and who will bring equality in the system. So I think it's a much more complex world that we live in today. Josh, I would like to come back to you on the same thing, but I'd like to ask you as you think that and answer that question. You know, what is interesting in a place like the UK is we've had these Lester riots. And many of the people involved in the riots were second generation, sometimes even third generation British men and women. Yes, of Hindu background and Muslim background. But what makes a second generation or third generation Hindu or Muslim in Britain, who's grew up in a broadly pluralistic and democratic society, want to repel those pluralist and democratic gains and act in ways that are so narrowly chauvinist and religiously chauvinist. So how would you explain that as you think through what Shazad responses. Yeah, look, I've done a lot of work on Muslim community. So we're talking to me or to Shazad. No, I'm talking to you, Josh. Thanks. Yeah, so I've done a lot of work on Muslim communities in Western contexts, and a lot of work with second and third generation Muslim men and women. And what I think differentiates them significantly from their parents is that their parents came to the Western context to the US or in particular Australia, the UK, Canada, looking for a better life. And they're focused purely on almost completely immersing themselves in local culture and building a better life, building small businesses and so on. Second and third generation, Kazan Haj talks about this as a prominent philosopher here in Australia, talks about this process of misinterpolation. So he's drawing on other philosophical streams. And what he talks about here is this process of shattering. You're told that you fit in, you told you belong, you told your Australian or British or Canadian until you're not until you start to experience that structural systemic inequality and discrimination. And as you face that, as you, as you start to realise, actually, I'm not really British. I'm not really Australian in the eyes of the media, the government, the key institutions. Well, they find solace. And so Islam, Hinduism, other faiths become an identity marker and a sense of belonging and solidarity that they're otherwise lacking. And so in that, in that environment, there's a little bit of emotion, a sense of shame, humiliation, resentment, and that can be mobilised quite radically and quite readily by extreme sentiment. So what I want to come back to is three questions that are posed by members of our audience. And I think all are really central, but you've touched on. One is, is there a need for public ownership of social media platforms? You know, Shazad, you spoke about social media and its negative impact, just you touched on it. Do you think we should be speaking about the nationalisation of social media platforms and their regulation in a much more rigorous way? Or do you think that's a step too far? Shazad. Obviously, there is a question between free speech and my right to say whatever I want to say versus regulation. And I find that what's going on on Twitter right now and how we've seen the democratisation of Twitter, where the right being extremist elements have the right to create their account and spread propaganda as much as. as much as the left wing does. And that's what the current leadership of Twitter believes in. Versus you come up with an online space where everyone's free speech is regulated. But what's happening is that many people have now stopped believing in the power of social media and they've now created their own eco chambers. You have telegram groups run by the Taliban who propagate their agenda. And if you agree with the point of view, you join that particular group. On Facebook, you have closed groups that only believe in a certain narrative. So I think that the weaponization of social media has gone to an extent where these extreme groups are creating their own social media groups, their own social media in a way. So I think that the question has gone far beyond that now is to how to re-engage these extreme groups and bring them back to one common social media now. And I think that it's a very, very big challenge. And I think people sitting in San Francisco who are designing these tools have to come up with an answer. I don't think that activists or academics will have an answer to these popular tools. And now it's becoming pretty extreme where you, on these social media outlets, you can enjoy the freedom to disseminate boring videos. You have the freedom to spread anything, really, and create any narrative that you want to. And it doesn't have to do with facts at all. Josh? In terms of nationalization, I don't think it'll be trusted by extremist groups or anyone who's got any form of anti-government leaning. It's a great idea. It's optimistic. But I've sat in Senate committees where you've had politicians there talking tough about regulation of social media companies. And yet we know this. We're talking about algorithmic radicalization. We really want to hit these echo chambers. We're sick of the lack of action by Meta and other groups. And then they go in the room with them. They fall to water. They just fall apart. They refuse to confront them because these companies have enormous power. And so, unfortunately, I think we're in this process where regulation continues to be a significant challenge. But I do think, again, the point of bringing everyone together, I think that if more work could be done, Twitter's just become a cesspool of hate over the last few months because of the unadulterated flow. I think you find that balance of regulation, but also allowing people to have extreme views. Without crossing over into violent extremism or you harm and threaten and intimidate and harass others. I think we can find that balance. We can start to move forward. I mean, that brings an interesting question because it dovetails neatly with the question that has been posed by one of our viewers. And what they have suggested is asked a much more proactive question rather than on social media. What they're saying is, how would you create spaces for engagement in polarized societies? How do you make people who are in these polarized camps in very polarized societies start talking to each other so that we get away from the echo chambers. We allow people in different religious camps and others to start talking. What are the kinds of ways to enable engagement across the divides that seem to, is there any thoughts that either of you have? Ross, Josh, you wanna kick off here? Yeah, thanks. A critical component of this, I think, is coming back to face-to-face communication. One of the primary issues around online activism and behavior is anonymity, disinhibition. People, you can act online in a way you would never act face-to-face. You can yell, abuse, harass, threaten people. You wouldn't do that in the street, you'd be arrested. Face-to-face interaction requires a level of civility, but also requires a level of humanization. You're not just speaking to an avatar, a fake profile, just speaking to a person. And I think a big part of where we need to move forward is because I think the social media technology has gone so far above and beyond the human brain and what we're actually capable of dealing with as a collective way as a society. I think we need to bring it back to community and to face-to-face engagement. And I think you take that and that's probably your first step. Shazad? No, I agree because I think that there is a rise in interfaith harmony groups in Pakistan that I've never seen in my life before where there are guided tours that are taking place and financed by various agencies and embassies in the country where Sunni groups are taken or school children are being taken to Hindu temple in Pakistan. And so I think it boils down to the curriculum that you are raising a generation that is learning about hatred on social media, but how do you counter it? You counter it in schools. You counter it, like George said, on a face-to-face basis. But on the other hand, you have a right wing that's way too clever and way too smart and it's outsmarted the left a long, long time ago. And you see that it's happening in India right now that they're revising the curriculum. That is one of the most dangerous things that are happening in India right now. They're inculcating RSS hatred in school education. That there was this one chance that they could regain a secular India from the grassroots and they countered that as well. And if you look at Pakistan, they've invented laws. Even in India, they've invented the love jihad law. For example, in Uttar Pradesh, that if you are a Muslim and you want to marry a Hindu, you can't, you will be jailed because you broke the law. In Pakistan, for example, if you try to enter an Ahmadi mosque, for instance, there can be a blasphemy case filed against you because you're a Sunni Muslim. You can't enter a mosque. You can't call it a mosque. So the V, the society... By the way, what that sounds like is apartheid South Africa. In many ways, those were elements of apartheid South Africa. Correct, correct. You've got those laws. You've got the laws from Southern America in the 40s and 50s. So those are the grim, those are the delicate situations that the left is facing right now. When you have to counter them, you have to engage with all these discriminatory laws that the right wing has spread in your path. One more important question, because at one level, if I listen to both of you, I'm utterly depressed because it seems like the world is ending and we all for a hiding to nothing. Oh, is there a future? And what is the possibilities of a more humane world, a better world? Are we saying that that world has gone forever? Or are we saying that we need to do certain things towards that world? And I'd like to get both your thoughts in that. I presume you do not want all of our viewers to go home utterly depressed. Let's start with you, Josh, again. Look, I think I'd give the caveat to a lot of my talks and then engagement with the wider public to say, look, I focus on the dark and the dirty. And I don't want you to go away feeling terrible about this because I am looking at a small percentage of actors here. I think there's cause for considerable optimism and hope. We had a global pandemic. We had millions of deaths, but in that context, we've also had enormous scientific progress. We've managed to emerge out of that. We're rebuilding our economy. We're rebuilding our societies. People starting to talk to each other again, face to face and engage. And I think there's enormous power in that. And I think there's enormous power in learning from the mistakes of the past and moving forward. I think social media, as I've said, we've had to catch up to where we're actually starting to get our head around what that means. And I think in many respects, people are starting to look and create their own communities that counter a lot of the hate. I think people are fed up with hate. I think people are fed up with polarization. So I'm actually optimistic about where we go as not just as individual societies, but globally. And I think the issue of having to address catastrophic existential threat of climate change, I actually think in that context, societies must talk together, must cooperate. And we've seen that all be fragmented. We're starting to see it more and more. So I'm positive and optimistic as much as I focus on the ugly and the horrible. Azad? I think nature is the most powerful tool on this planet. And I think it's decided to bring us together. If you come to South America and Bogota, where I am right now, and you see the lines of people who have no food and who have no jobs and they're all marching towards the United States right now through the Darien gap. And there is no nationality, no religion. They don't have, they don't believe in any of the differences. All they believe in is reaching to the United States in one piece for better economic prospects for a better future. So I think that climate change, as Josh said, is gonna bring us together in the end because we are facing a very bleak. We are facing a time where eight to nine billion people will not know where their food supplies are gonna come through. So I think in the end, I think mother nature is going to decide and is going to bring us together as you see the people in the Darien gap. They're all together, they're Afghans, they're Chinese, they're Ecuadorians, they're Colombians. They're all together in this battle against inequality and justice. So I think there is hope. There is a hope for the future. And I am positive that eventually climate change is gonna decide how we're gonna deal with this hatred that's prevalent all over this wonderful world of ours. I have to, I mean, it's an interesting question, but I have to push back in one sense, both to you Shazad and Josh, both of you raise climate change. And at one level, I entirely agree. At another, I worry that the North and the South have not cut a deal, you know. There is these debates that it always fractures on the socialist, not the socialist, but the socially just transition. And how do you make and align what is the needs to address climate change and speak to the immediate needs of poor people in the middle of the Congo basin? You can tell the person in the Congo basin, don't cut the trees because the planet needs it. But if he or she's got to cut the tree so that they can heat, they can have fire because there's no energy and feed their children, they're not going to worry about what's 50 years or 100 years from now. They have to feed their children. How do we get that alignment together? Either of you got a thought, Josh? Yeah, look, I'm being located in Australia and obviously with the Pacific Ocean at our doorstep, those countries that are most impacted, facing that existential threat to their very future, like the fact that they could well just due to rises in ocean levels, be wiped off the mat is really cause for incredible concern in this part of the world. And the Australian government, I think we're seeing this interesting sort of shift. Our right-wing conservative ministers were caught laughing at this on camera only five to 10 years ago. I don't remember exactly when. And it was quite incredibly embarrassing and humiliating to know that they were laughing about this, but what's happened in more recent times to conclude the change of government is that we're not only understanding and seeking to ensure that these countries feel safe, feel secure, whatever it takes to keep them afloat, whatever we need to do as a country to work with them. And a big part of that is the great power challenges in our region. China are going in there and spending hundreds of millions of dollars. And Australia and the Western context can't counter that. And so there's this competition and one way that's being expressed is through climate change. And I think that's actually in some ways working to their favor. We're investing considerable resources into ensuring their sustainability and ongoing by bringing them in, working economically with them. Thanks, just Shazad, one minute for your thoughts. Frankly, Adam, I would much rather be divided between the North and the South as against being divided between religion, race, and religion, there's a Muslim, Buddhism, I'm done with them. So I much rather choose the North and the South division, which is pretty clear. And I also believe that climate change will reach everyone in the end. It will not spare anyone. And so I feel that there is a higher chance that we will gather together and fight against it rather than be able to come up with a solution for the religious bigotry and hatred that's going on in the world right now. So ladies and gentlemen, friends, colleagues, this is a lovely point to begin to come to an end to the conversation. Perhaps the optimism lies in three things, it seems to me, from what I've heard in this conversation. The first is climate change and the challenges of our world are going to force us to come together. Migration, there is a feature of our lives and you can station as many troops and as many naval vessels as you want in the Panama Canal or in the Mediterranean, people are coming through. And as they come through, they fundamentally change our societies and they evolve our societies. And in that presence, we come to know each other, we come to engage each other, we come to be with each other. And that changes us and creates at least the structural conditions for a greater sense of humanity and empathy. The second is we need to learn to talk to each other and we need to learn to talk to divides. It's an old Nelson Mandela advice, political advice. You can speak to your comrades as much as you want, but the day you begin to transform society is when you learn to speak to the people who are not your comrades, to learn to win them over, to craft with them a common political project, a common human project. And then it seems to me the third, and perhaps as important, is how we move towards a humane economic system, one that is less defined by extremes of billionaires on the one hand and people can't put food on the tables on the other. And only when those three things come together in a conversation, come together in a way that aligns, that's when we create the conditions for a more humane empathetic world. On that basis, I wanna thank, of course, Josh and Shazad for your wonderful comments, for the fact that I think Josh, you woke up right in the middle of the night. I'm sorry about that. Shazad, I think you're right in the morning, I will imagine, and colleagues to all of you around the world, thank you for joining us. We will be having many of these in the coming months, these directors lecture series on the great challenges of our time and how to think through solutions to those challenges. You're central to us thinking through these things. And so I wanna thank the audience from around the world and I look forward to seeing you next month. Thank you very, very much.