 Everybody tonight we're debating what is best for the world Islam or atheism and we are starting right now with Randolph Richardson's opening statement. Randolph Richardson is the president of the Canadian atheists, which advocates for freedom, atheism and atheists. Thanks for being with us Randolph the floor is all yours. Thank you James. I've got an opening statement written up for this topic, which is, as our audience already knows, we're debating whether the atheism or Islam is better for the world. I'm on the side of advocating for atheism being better. So, I'll start with my statement. Because we think independently, because we are of our own minds, and because each of us is intrinsically unique. It's unnatural to become who or what others envision, including those in the distant past real or imagined, with whom we've had no direct interactions. With ongoing expansions of our own life experiences, we can build a wonderful foundation of greater living through love, compassion, creativity, non conformity, and personal interactions, particularly when this is freely and genuinely of our own making. Choosing our own paths is the overall theme and atheism, which never interferes with the free nature of consciousness enhanced by memory is logically natural. If your purpose were to be ascribed to life, perhaps making your own path might be the best option since consciousness is so deeply and interactively intertwined. Equally embrace comfort and fear, draw from doubt as a helpful ally, and strive to embark in the practice of freely thinking for yourself, so that you may enjoy a higher quality of existence that naturally awaits as you bask on the horizon of a whirlwind of self sovereignty for your own self mastery is always there for the taking, along with a love for life and diversity in all its cosmic splendor. While Islam imposes restrictions on our freedoms that are contrary to human nature, or at least it seeks to do this, atheism is compatible with all of my aforementioned points. Thank you, James. And thank you to the Muslim apologists for challenging me on this topic. My pleasure and thanks for that opening and want to say, folks, if it's your first time here at Modern Day Debate, we are a neutral channel hosting debates on science, religion and politics. We hope you feel welcome no matter what walk of life you were from and have to let you know, folks, we have many more juicy debates coming up. You don't want to miss them. So, for example, at the bottom right of your screen, that's just one example of one coming up next week. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button as we have many more to come. And with that, I'm going to introduce Eminj, aka the Muslim Apologist, thrilled to have you here as well. And Eminj, aka the Muslim Apologist, is a Malaysian. He runs the Muslim Apologist, a YouTube channel that Eminj had started in February 2020. It was established to counter the growing polemical lies and misinformation made against Islam on YouTube. That is, by the way, a quote from him, as like I said, Modern Day Debate is a fully neutral channel. And so, with that, thank you, Eminj, for being with us. The floor is all yours. Thank you, James. And thank you, Randolph, for being here as well. So, I've also written an opening statement. So, as the nature of opening statements are, I simply present my position without rebutting the other side, right? So, I've prepared several points. So, I'll try to make it brief as short as possible for this. So, Islam has a lot of principles that proves that Islam contributes to the betterment of mankind. So, I've just reduced it to just five major ones. So, the first principle that I would like to touch on is the principle of family. So, Islam stresses on the role of the man and woman in the family, and it has a proper order on concerning marriage and divorce. And Islam stresses that the family is a very important unit in society, which goes to the second principle, which is the principle of social and political order. So, Islam has contributed a social and political order to the world. So, we have the Khilafah system, a political system which encompasses the whole of the Ummah, the Muslim community. And Islam also stresses on consensus in community, or what we refer to as Ijmaq in Arabic. Basically, this consensus is to fulfill the divine will, meaning the divine will of concerning vision, social cohesiveness, and to put that into action. So, in relation to this, there is the third principle, which is the principle of economic order. So, Islam has contributed to the economic order of mankind as well. And I would like to take the opportunity to quote the Pakistani philosopher, Muhammad Iqbal. Dr. Muhammad Iqbal has said, the economic action is the expression of Islam's spirituality. So, from this, we can derive that Islam does stress on the importance of economy as being beneficial to man. So, we have Islamic finance, we have profit-sharing al-Mudarabah in Arabic. And we, of course, we have the systems of Zaka, which is the Tif, and Sadaka, charity. So, these are all things which Islam promotes in order to benefit, to bring to the betterment of mankind. And we go on to the fourth principle, which is the principle of world order. So, in the terms of world order, Islam recognises the concept of universal brotherhood, meaning every Muslim is a brother, is bred into one another. So, whatever happens in one part of the Muslim world, we, in another part of the Muslim world, feel it, and we will take action upon it. And this is expressed historically via the Madinah Charter, where the prophet Muhammad SAW, peace and blessings be upon him, he conducted an agreement between the Muslim community in Madinah, the city of Madinah, with the Jews who were living in the city at the time. And this is enshrined in the Charter itself, which I could get into later on during the course of this debate. And the goal of all this is to achieve tax Islamika, basically a new world order based on an order of peace under Islamic law. So, there are many things which I can elaborate here. So, again, I will leave this for the due course of the debate. And finally, we have the fifth principle, which is the principle of aesthetics or Islamic art. So, Islam has contributed a lot to art and beauty. So, this is expressed in the Arabic of the Quran, for example. And we have visual arts. We have arabesque, geometry, architecture, S3, which are all due to Islamic influence and culture, as well as we have calligraphy. Arabic calligraphy is also due to Islam. And yes, and with that, I close my opening statement. Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity. Thank you, Randolph, for being here. Thank you, James, for hosting. Right. Thank you very much. My pleasure. And we're going to jump into open conversation. I want to say, folks, highly encourage you, if you haven't yet, maybe you have a friend out there who enjoys debates like these. Well, as you can see in the bottom right of your screen, go ahead and click that share button below. You can share this debate with them. And that is one way in which they can hear both sides of this issue. You could say, from each side, bringing the best of their arguments to the debate. So, highly encourage you to do that as it kind of, you could say, brings a little bit more balance to the world. So, without we're going to jump into open conversation. Thanks so much, Randolph. And Hamiyan Jay, the floor is all yours. Well, I'm glad that you laid out those principles. Thank you very much. Are those the five pillars of Islam or are these a different set of principles? No, they are not the five pillars of Islam. These are just basically a summary of what Islam has given to the world. So this is basically something which I referred to. And I just summarized it. Of course, there are more principles than this. For the purpose of this debate, of course, I just summarized it to just five. I do have some questions for you then. Like with the one you talked, the first point, I'm going to ask you questions about all five of them. I do have some partial agreement with some of it, at least. So it's not all, it's not all positional. But I'm the role of the man and the woman in the family unit. My understanding is that under Islam's Sharia, that at least it was like this originally. And I believe it's still like this in certain countries that are run under Sharia under the Islamic legal system. And please correct me if I'm pronouncing Sharia incorrectly. No, you're correct. Okay, thank you. The family, you know, my understanding is that if somebody wants to get a divorce, the, if it's the wife, one of the wives, then she has to apply to the courts and get permission to do this. And in many cases it's interpreted as I understand she needs permission from her husband to do that, but the husband doesn't need permission to divorce her. Is this, this to me is not a fair just family unit because it's not balanced. It's not, it's not providing equal opportunity to the spouse, both spouses based on their sex. And I consider this to be an injustice. Human Rights Code also would agree with me on this. What are your thoughts on this? Perhaps you can clarify what you mean by the family and the authority men and women have in such a relationship. Yeah, sure. Actually you got that part a bit incorrect. Yeah, just hope you're not offended by that. I'm not offended. I'm going to be corrected. Yeah, right. Yeah, just I'm sorry. So I'm going to explain it to you. So basically what you just described is the process of what we call fasah. So just to explain everything from A to Z, the Muslim men, the husband has the power to pronounce the divorce, which we call talak. And this divorce can be pronounced directly without going to the courts and it's only the legal process that comes after that. That's just a recent thing. Does the wife have the same authority? Yes, I'm just going to that. So that's basically the man for the husband. So for the woman, for the wife, if let's say the husband is an abusive person, is someone who was in jail several times, was someone who did not treat the wife well or for some reason or another, the wife can go to the court or what we call the Islamic judge, the qadi and apply for what we call fasah. So she can do that directly without asking for any permission from the husband. She can just go directly to the qadi and the qadi will hear her case and will decide as to whether this case deserves a hearing or otherwise. So the process isn't that straightforward, but in the end, if the qadi determines that the marriage is a failure and that the woman is right, therefore the divorce will continue with or without the husband's permission. Yeah, but she has to apply to a third party for that where all he has to do is choose to divorce and that's it. Yes, that's right. So that's not fair. That's not an equal situation because if she wants to be out of the situation, she has to get a third party's permission for that, but he doesn't. And I consider that. Well, the thing is in Islam, we have a different understanding of what is equality. Because you see, in Islam, the men and women are equal in terms of rights, but they are not the same. So a man, the husband, it's not equal rights as understood in other systems. But in the Islamic system, a man has his rights and a woman has her rights. So the process of going through each of each party's rights are different from one another. So if a man has this, a woman has that. It doesn't mean that a woman is not equal to the man. So this is how Islam works. So the men and women are not considered equal. And I understand in the courts that... Not in the terms that is understood by the Western side. Well, I'm looking at from a naturalistic point of view here, just based on logical facts. The man has two avenues of ending the marriage. One is he can declare it on his own independently. Or number two, he can seek third party's judgment on it. No, he doesn't need to seek a third party. He doesn't need to. No, he doesn't need to. He just pronounces it on his own. The third party thinks it's just a legal process that comes after pronouncing the Talat where in a modern Islamic society, we have the courts to process Talat pronunciations after. But in traditional Islamic civilizations, societies prior to this modern conception, we have courts to process Talat pronunciations. So that came much later. So I think that it's unfair because either spouse should be able to end the marriage without having to seek permission from a third party court. Both sides do have the right to end the marriage. It's just that the process is different. It cannot be given absolute power to do this because the man is still the maintainer of the house. So if a woman is given the right, the same equal in your understanding that is if a woman is allowed to pronounce the Talat, this is not a slight upon a woman. It's just that the nature of a woman is that she's emotional. Sometimes when she's under due stress, a woman is always psychologically more affected than a man. This is accepted in science. So what if the woman suddenly pronounces the Talat without thinking, without being rational about it? So it will cause chaos. If both sides can do it, then it will be chaos. So there has to be a balance. So this is how Islam maintains the balance in the family unit. Did you know that there are female police officers who don't react emotionally, just like the male counterparts in the same police force and that they're also serving in military and not having these extra, exhibiting these extra emotional behaviors that you're talking about. I think that whatever science you're using, I question it. I don't believe it's true. In fact, there are many women in the world who are far better at not being emotionally unstable. And there are many men in the world who are emotionally unstable. So it actually goes both ways. And in my experience, I think that with all the people I've conversed with over the years, I'm not encountering more emotional outbursts from women. I'm finding it's generally pretty even. So I think that that's an excuse that I can't accept, that the science demonstrates that. Well, I would respectfully beg to differ, of course. Yeah. Well, you're saying that I'm not understanding. And so what I'm seeing is, is that women are not having the same authority in the marriage as the husband. So they're not equal partners in the marriage. My wife and I are equal partners in our marriage. And we will communicate when we have to make a decision. And it's in both our best interests to do this. And I like it this way. So I would not be comfortable in a marriage where my wife had less or more power than me. I definitely want the authority to be equal. I think that this is a sexist, misogynistic family unit structure. And I think it's bad for the world because it puts one person at a lower having less authority than the other. And if you're, for example, it's consider a marriage where the man is more emotionally unstable and the woman is more stable emotionally, then if that's the justification, then she should have more authority and power than him, according to the Islamic family unit. Does Islam allow for exceptions for this? Well, I will beg to differ respectfully, back to differ with you. Of course. I know you do. I'm married as well. I don't consider her to be unequal to me. I think I believe that we are both in an equal partnership and she has her rights. And she can voice her rights to me. And likewise, in Islam, the man is always the leader of the house. But at the same time, the woman is the leader of the house. So it's balanced. In Islamic understanding of family, in a family unit, it's balanced and both have equal rights in not in the same manner as the Western world. In fact, in the Western world, I see that the family unit is actually being broken up and there are a lot of problems with how families are being run. So where's the equality in that? I mean, how is it working for you there in the West? Because in Malaysia, yes, we have our problems. I do admit that there's no system in the world even the Islamic family. I agree with that. I agree with you here. It's understood as implemented by Muslims. Well, the system is not a problem with Islam itself. It's how the Muslims implemented the system. So there are problems, of course. I mean, it's not perfect because we are human by nature. But overall, I would say that the family unit in Muslim societies are much more intact than that in the Western society. So in Islam, we see that families are united. They socialise intermingle with each other peacefully without any problems. Divorce, yes, divorce do happen. Fights do happen. Yes, abuse do happen. But at a minimum rate compared to how it is happening in the Western world, you can correct me if I'm wrong. I mean, I don't actually have the facts and figures here, but you can read the news and you can see how the West is dealing with it, right? The majority of people I know are not divorced. They're married people. And I guess you could say the same with the single people. I haven't been married yet. I do know some people who have been divorced. And sometimes it's the husband who's cause of the problems. Other times it's the wife who's the cause of the problems. And sometimes it's both of them making the problems. They just don't get along for whatever reason. And the freedom to associate is core to the values and freedoms of a human, of human rights. So if we no longer want to associate with other people or with a group, then that is our right. And that's why divorce is an option. People should be able to end the marriage. And it not having to seek a third party's attention approval for that. When the other one does not have, doesn't have to. So that's where I'm disagreeing now. I understand that under Islam, a husband may have many wives. Is that correct? Yes. But it's not widely practiced. Can a wife have multiple husbands under Islam? No, of course not. Because that would be illogical and acceptable by any human. Because let's say, for example, a woman has many husbands. And the husband sleeps with the wife, right? All husbands, all four husbands, for example, sleeps with the wife. And the wife suddenly gets pregnant. So whose son was it? Or whose child is it? So how do we know? Of course you can argue that you can use DNA testing, et cetera. But what if that particular society does not have access to this technological means? So it doesn't make any sense. In this case, the child would be the son or daughter of all the parents who are married together. That would be unfair to the other three husbands who did not impregnate the wife, see? So if there's only one husband and he marries four wives and all four wives got pregnant, so who's the father of the four, of the child of these four wives they are carrying? Of course it's the man. There's only one husband, right? So all wives, then that would be equal because we know who's the father. But for a wife, for one woman to marry multiple husbands and the wife gets pregnant, whose child is it? It doesn't seem fair to me that the other three husbands should bear the burden. The child belongs to all of them. DNA tests can solve that problem. There are actually some cultures that I've read about that there isn't the concept of marriage. And if a woman gets pregnant, then the whole unit of that village raised all the children together. So they all take responsibility together. And that's kind of a further example, probably from older times, but with certain societies. Well, it's not practical and it's isolated. Sorry, why is that not good? I think you're referring to societies like the Inuit community, the Eskimos, for example. I think they practice this, but not mistaken. I was thinking, what I read about was something from some tribes in the rainforest, but I suppose it could be as well. I've come across this. The one I read is about the Eskimos. Like I said, I don't know whether they still practice this, but yes, there is this case in certain societies where the woman marries multiple husbands. But for me, it's still unfair and it's not practiced widely. It's in isolated regions. If you go to any part of the world, you're more likely to see a polygamist marriage with meaning a man with multiple wives, rather than a wife with multiple husbands. You see? Or a poly marriage with multiple men and women in it. That happens too. What happens is the child now has instead of, they have more parents looking after them and they get more attention and they can end up having a better quality of life. And we don't want to turn this into a whole marriage debate, obviously, but I think I find that the family unit being promoted under Islam, as you described it, to be sexist and misogynistic against women, obviously, sexist against women. And that's problematic for making a better world because as soon as somebody is one class of people, it puts people into different classes, you see. And so when people are in a different class with less power, less authority, then they are automatically a lower class. And that does not make for a better world order, in my view. That puts people arbitrarily down into a lower position when they could be quite capable of being in the position of higher authority and higher power. So that's my view. I think you and I obviously disagree on this point. And if you want to say something briefly in response to that before we move on to the second point, I'm quite happy to do that. Sure, of course. Thank you, Randolph. So basically, of course I do appreciate your opinion, but of course I respectfully disagree. And I see that the Islamic world, the Islamic understanding of a family unit is being practiced throughout the Muslim world and it's working quite well. And there's no disintegration of Muslim communities. Of course, there are some societies where the woman is being abused due to cultural and traditional reasons, nothing to do whatsoever with Islam. But overall, speaking, I would say that Islam has maintained a balance between the husband and the wife. And I would say that Malaysia is one good example of this. So not just Malaysia, there's so many other countries in the Muslim world. For example, maybe I would say Turkey, maybe, yes. And some countries in the Middle East, they actually do very well, like for example, UAE, Qatar. I wouldn't use Saudi, but Saudi, I think they are reforming their system. And Jordan, yeah, there's so many countries in the Muslim world where you can see there's a balance between the family unit, the husband and the wife especially, yeah. Okay, thank you. I'll probably have final comments at the end I've made a note because I want to move on to the next point. So the next point you brought up was the principle number two, the principle of social and political order. And you talked about consensus and community. And I wonder with this consensus and community, if a community's census could make cause for change to the Quran, the Holy Quran. Is this something that would be permitted under Islam if it is a principle of consensus and community is to be taken genuinely and naturally. And it's fullest or other restrictions against that. Could you repeat that because I didn't quite get you were breaking up just now. No problem. So your second point, the principle of social and political order, you talked about consensus in community. So if the community as a whole, most members decide it's a consensus that they decide altogether that there need to be some changes made to the Holy Quran. Would that be permitted under Islam? No, definitely not because the Quran is the review word of God. We believe that Quran is the word made book. So how could that be possible for someone to change anything from the Quran? So when I'm referring to just to clarify, when I say consensus in community in order to feel the divine will, I was talking about the concept of Ijmaq. So the concept of Ijmaq is that when there is a certain problem, the community comes together and decides on that issue. For example, I'll give you an example. For example, maybe let's say there's a problem in the community. Maybe there's a lot of problems involving, let's say an economic issue. Maybe one family has a problem with struggling with their livelihood, et cetera. So the community comes together and decides on how to resolve that issue. So that's one example. So what you're saying, just now your example wouldn't fall under consensus because that would be tempering of God's word. So we wouldn't do that. But for other issues, other humanistic or communal issues, then yes, there shouldn't be a problem with having a consensus on that. Okay. So it's a very limited form of consensus in that case. And I have a problem with it because if there's the Holy Quran, let's say it was running my life and I want to make changes to that because there's a problem with it and it needs to be updated for current times. I'm not allowed to do that. And I'm not allowed to get people together to do this. Even if we all decide, yeah, it would be a good idea to change something in the Quran to make it more applicable to modern times and the current community that is not allowed. So that is a problem. And that is, I think a number one reason why that the Quran cannot be changed. And yet people are supposed to live by it. And I think that that's probably the number one reason why Islam is not better for the world. Well, respectfully, again, I would have to disagree with you because if we are going to change the Quran, then we are creating a new religion on our own. Because all these principles that I've listed out here are all derived from the Quran itself. So if you're going to change anything from the Quran, then these principles will of course change and that wouldn't make any sense, would it? No. So why are there 27 different Qurans that have different Arabic wording in them and different denominations? Are they all wrong except for one? Those that you are referring to is a polemic repeated by J. Smith, David Wood and their cohorts. So it's actually a misunderstanding of the Quranic texts. So there's always been one Quran. Actually, you can refer to my... I actually had a video interview with Dr. Joseph Lombard, professor of Islamic studies in Qatar. So we actually talked about the Quranic texts and the manuscripts. And he stressed that there has always been one Quran and this can be proven from the Quranic manuscripts itself. So I would suggest I would respectfully ask you to take a look at the interview. So you're deferring to the interview. I'm okay with that. Perhaps you can share the link with James. You can include it in the description later. Sure, I would do that. So, okay. So that's... I guess we'll move on to the third point here. Obviously, you and I disagree on this. The principle of economy and Islam stresses the importance of economy, finance, profit sharing and charity. I do kind of agree. I think that it's important that the economy be well-defined and consistent so that people can trust and rely on it. So I don't know the particulars of the Islamic version of that, but basically what you're talking about here, the finance, being the consistency of finance and regulations on it that are serving society well, profit sharing and charity seem to make sense to me. So I don't think you have any objections to what I'm saying here. Not really. It's just to clarify a bit. So in Islam, we have the economic system, the Islamic economic system. In fact, in Malaysia, we were the first country to implement this, the Islamic banking system. So we have a bank here called Bank Islam, the Islamic Bank. There's another Islamic Bank as well, Bank Muamalat. So we have these two Islamic banks in Malaysia. And the other conventional banks have also taken, adopted this Islamic system and they have Islamic savings accounts, current accounts in their respective system. So basically, I would say that Malaysia is the pioneer in the promotion of the Islamic system. So the Islamic system in Malaysia, we have something called, basically the principle of Islamic, the economic principle in Islam is that we are not allowed to have interest, or what we call riba in the Islamic correspondence, economic correspondence between one another. We are not allowed to charge interest for anything or any trading involving money. We cannot have interest in it. So what this economic system does is that it removes this concept and we introduce a concept called profit-sharing al-Mudarobah. So to be honest, I'm not really fluent in the details, but you can... So basically this is the principle, yes. So if somebody borrows money from the Islamic Bank, they have a zero-interest loan, is that right? Zero-interest loan, that's correct. Wow. So can anybody borrow money from that bank and are there any fees that they have to pay? Anyone can borrow money from the bank. It's not limited to just Muslims. It's just the Islamic principle. How do they make a profit, or is it meant not to make profit? Al-Mudarobah, profit-sharing, meaning so the money that you borrow from the bank when you pay back the bank, the bank will invest it into another system. So the returns from that system, it will be put into your account. If there is profit-sharing, if there is any profit being made, if there is no profit then you get zero, of course. But usually there is profit. Well, where does the profit come from? If you're borrowing money at zero-interest, then there's no profit being made there. The profit comes from the bank, from the bank making money into other trades or other businesses. So when banks are lending money, what they're actually doing is they're selling money to people. And they sell it for, they'll charge fees, and they'll charge interest, and that's how they make their money. Do the Islamic banks charge fees? Well, maybe a nominal fee, an administrative fee, but not interest. What would be an example of a nominal fee? Maybe an administrative fee for maintaining the account. Maybe an annual fee, for example, let's say for example in Malaysia, it would probably be like 10 ringgit or 20 ringgit per year, per annum. So something like this. But the money that the bank earns, it will go into trade. Like I said, it goes into trade. Companies, maybe public shares, for example. So the profit from this public shares will be put into your account and split among the account holders. That's how Uda Raba works in basic form. Of course, I have to clarify that I'm not an expert in Islamic finance, but this is how I understand it. So I do think that that would be good for the world to lend money to people at zero interest. And it would depend on what the fees are. I need to look into the details of that aspect, obviously. If the fees work out the same as standard interest at typical banks today that are not Islamic, then that's basically just giving interest fees a different name and still charging, in effect still charging interest, but doing it in a different form, it's just word games. But it depends on what the fees are. That's something interesting to look into. All right, thank you for that. You mentioned principle of world order. Islam recognizes all Muslims as brothers and sisters. I think you just said brothers, but I think you meant brothers and sisters, right? Yes, I do. I do. Yeah. Yeah. I guess I'm being charitable here. The goal you said is peace under Islamic law under Sharia. Now, the thing is when I look at certain verses in the Quran, that talk about treating non-Muslims very badly, killing them, for instance, and we got into this in great detail with me and Nadir Ahmad debated on this very channel, modern day debate. I saw that in December. Yeah. So you remember 489 and then the spot check in the next two afterwards. So that was an interesting exchange. I found it very, very enjoyable to go back and forth with them on it. And I called those spot checks the three annoyances, and that seemed to stir a few things up. Now, the problem that I see with this is that it's excluding non-Muslims or in a way for anybody who doesn't form Islam is pressured to conform. They're pressured to follow the Sharia, follow the rules and things that are recommended in the Quran and to emulate many of the characteristics of Muhammad, the prophet. So to me, these are restrictions that are being put on people. And I find that where people are limited, where their freedoms are limited, their life satisfaction is not where it needs to be. It could be a lot better if they have more options. And so I'm very much against limiting options. I'm very much in favor of the freedom here. So the principle of world order in the vision of Islam, to me, doesn't seem like the best approach to use. Because the Quran was written around 1400 years ago. And Islam came to be around 1400 years ago, I should say. I don't know when the Quran was written. I understand there's some debate about that. But approximately 1400 years ago, Islam came to be. So today, the world is very different. We have technology, instant communication, and all sorts of different things. The ability to travel fast to different places and grow food more efficiently and all sorts of things and modern medicine that helps people. And we have a better understanding of psychology as well. So a punishment based system has been shown not to work as well as a rehabilitative system. And so I think that it seems to me that where the Quran is, it doesn't fit with these current modern times that we're in and doesn't bring us to a peaceful world. It brings us to, and it's been said many times that when you look under regions that you have multiple denominations of Islam, that people are sometimes against each other and even trying to kill each other off if they refuse to convert to their denomination. So this doesn't look to me like it's working very well. Islam that is. Well, I think I need to clarify certain things. Okay. So there are some things which I agree with you and there are some things which I don't know, obviously. So just to clarify certain things. What do you agree with? First of all, let's get that out of the way. I agree with you that there are problems in the Muslim world. There are certain parts of the Muslim world that Muslims are killing Muslims. But this is not due to the Islamic principle. It's just that Muslims either misunderstand how the Qur'an is being interpreted, how the Prophet Muhammad, by the way, that means PCB upon him, right? PCB is being practiced. How he practiced Islam. Sounds pretty cool when people say it actually. It's got an interesting sound to it. So anyway, the problem is actually not with Islam. The problem is actually with the Muslims. So for example, you have wars. Of course, you're going to have wars in human society. There's no escape from it. Wars is an inevitable thing. It has been with humankind since from the very beginning. But how do you regulate war? How do you ensure that the damage from war is kept to a minimum? Well, Islam has the answer. So in the modern society that we live in now, we have the Geneva Conventions and all those conventions, the international law which regulates warfare. But Islam has predated that by several centuries by introducing laws and regulations regarding warfare, for example. So for example, like the Prophet said, if you want to go to war, you cannot kill the civilians. You cannot burn the trees. You cannot destroy churches, et cetera. So all these principles are actually already, it's actually now only enshrined in conventions like the Geneva Conventions, et cetera. You see? So how, and you said at the beginning that Islam was, since Islam was written 1,400 years ago, therefore it's in particular with today's... No, no. I'm not saying, to be clear, I'm not saying because of its age it's not compatible. I'm saying that, I'm pointing out that it's been around for a long time. And you've even pointed, you've even confirmed for me that it's not, it can't be updated even if there's consensus and community on it. So there's, I'm saying that it's not really fitting very well with the needs of people in the current times here. I think also I'll tell you, I don't think it fit very well with people in past times either because the biggest fundamental problem I have with it is the imposition on people's freedoms. Okay, so anyway, so I would say that Islam is updated, I mean the Quran is updated with even current times even though it was written many, I mean it was around, been around for a long time because it understands the nature of men to go to war and like for example, the example that I gave, for example, a warfare, Islam has already regulated it. So as I mentioned, so I think you mentioned something about, what was it again, maybe you can repeat some of your points again so I can recall. Which points? Sorry, what I just said to you now. The main one, the main ones, yeah. The primary one I just mentioned is that the imposition on people's freedoms is the issue that I have with it because it's not only is it limiting the people who choose to follow it, it's limiting those who are forced to follow it. Oh okay, yeah, I was going to, thank you for reminding, I was just going to touch on that. So you were talking about people, humankind or non-Muslims or Muslims living in the Islamic society for example and that if that is the case then maybe non-Muslims are required to follow Islamic law as a threat and therefore that would impede their freedoms. So I would say that it's the same thing for Muslims living in the West for example, I mean Muslims are a minority in the West so Muslims need to conform with the laws of the land. So has that been a problem for Muslims to do this to do so? So why should it be a problem for non-Muslims to follow the laws of the land? I find it interesting that you are emphasizing Muslims being a minority. See here in Canada everyone has the right to be part of a religion, to express themselves freely, to associate with different groups, to have opinions, all these kinds of things are protected here. Yes, in Islamic society is the same thing, the same thing. But hang on, in Saudi Arabia for example, if somebody is discovered to be someone who doesn't believe in God then they will be categorized under the legal system as a terrorist and then sentenced to a thousand lashes followed by death. This was something that was discovered I think by the Dawkins Foundation a few years ago and a number of years ago. And others who live in Saudi Arabia have told me about the thousand lashes part of it. So it doesn't sound good. Even if they're just being put to death without the lashes that's still terrible or if they're only getting one of those. That's an imposition. Whereas here in Canada people are free to be Muslim or non-Muslim or Christian or Jewish or whatever religion they want or not at all is in the case of atheism. So I do think that and we're also free to critique each other's viewpoints and religions and whatnot and non-religions. So like what you and I are doing here. So this to me is a better way to live. Saudi Arabia shows an example of people who are who are being having to fit into they're basically applying everything under Islamic Sharia is my understanding and they're very often cited as the example of what an Islamic society would look like because being a legitimate Islamic society. Now I know there's other countries that are under Islam as well but that's a big one so that's why I mentioned that. Yeah well you know why out of all the 100 plus countries that are available in the Muslim world why do you have to pick Saudi as an example because Saudi doesn't represent me even though I'm a Muslim. No actually the largest number of Muslims in the world is not in Saudi Arabia. No not even Iran. It's actually Indonesia and it's a country next door to me. So if you actually Indonesia and Malaysia sorry I just need to clarify this. So Indonesia and Malaysia we are actually culturally linked together even though it's a separate country but they're almost the same lingo. So if you count Indonesia and Malaysia and the other countries one or two countries surrounding Indonesia which are related to Indonesia it's quite a huge number of Muslims here so we are actually the largest number of Muslims in Indonesia. Indonesia has a constitution that guarantees religious freedom along with other freedoms but it's not actually used and what they have in Indonesia is a law that I think by 18 or 19 years old a person has to choose from one of five religions to be a part of and if they don't make that choice they stay in prison for that whole time and if it takes them two weeks then their sentence is doubled by the time they decide a religion so they have to suffer for another two weeks and if they therefore it takes them three months then their sentence turns into six months total and then they're free. So this to me and I know Buddhism and Islam and Christianity I think are three of them I don't remember what the other two are but they're all religions none of them is an option for non-religion and none of them is an option for a whole bunch of other religions too they're just not part of it so it's very restrictive and limited and my understanding is the majority of people there are Muslims and not everybody and now this is seen as fair and I don't see this as freedom this is still a restriction still in a position and even if it's five or 20 it's still restricted it's not wide open and free so I do think that that's also a failure I guess it's not as bad as Saudi Arabia but it is it's still pretty horrible in my view. Well I wouldn't say the Indonesian political system is a representation of Muslims because they are secular. They have this thing called Pancasila which is a secular ideology so I wouldn't say that it's a fair assessment of how you view the Muslim world you should actually view the Muslim world collectively because the Muslim world is not homogenous it's fractured and there are multiple countries. You mentioned Indonesia so that's why I talked about the problems of Indonesia. I was talking about Saudi Arabia first and you said why choose it and you directed me to go to Malaysia. I did but I was just trying to point out that what happens in Saudi doesn't really represent Muslims so what happens in Indonesia doesn't necessarily represent me as well. So whatever happens in Malaysia doesn't represent other Muslims in other parts of the world so you cannot judge Muslim society based on just one country or one individualistic country or one individual system and you see large populations proud of their society in the way it is in places like Indonesia and Saudi Arabia and other places saying that that is representative of Islam running a country and we're seeing it happen. I do think that that's reasonable to judge by that because there's such a large it's almost a consensus which Islam apparently supports it's one of the principles to support consensus but if you're going to use that argument then I'm going to have to use examples like China or North Korea as a representative at least would you agree with me on that? If that is the methodology you're going to use I'm pretty sure you're going to agree with me using North Korea and China. But the difference is though well North Korea is the religious state the dictator is presenting himself as a deity but China is definitely atheist, their government they're the difference is though with an atheistic kind of government which is a secular you don't have people looking at some kind of ideology for atheism to decide what to do because atheism isn't an ideology and so the value there is definitely coming directly from the people whereas Islam it's coming from there's that whole doctrine of the Holy Quran so the connection is there whereas with an atheist regime you won't see that kind of connection that's not there it's the individuals running it and you're arguing it's the same that the individuals running the Islamic one sure but the problem is they're justifying all this stuff using Islam there's nothing that can be justified with atheism that's going on in China the good stuff and the bad stuff because atheism isn't an ideology so people are free to make things and we hopefully make the best decisions for ourselves we don't always do that we see demonstrations of that with Islam and other religions we see demonstrations that atheists but the problem is with when there is a religious doctrine that people are basing it on and this doctrine cannot be changed even if the whole community thinks it should be which you also admitted earlier then people get stuck and you're limiting people's the person's progress is limited people can't question it people can't push back against it can't say get rid of this thing it's not allowed and that's a problem whereas with atheism things can be changed if people want that you know so can things change in China if people decides to overthrow the government the artistic government and install a religious order so that's the thing if governments do get replaced from time to time unfortunately the current government is there to stay until the end of the life of the current leader but once he's removed from that picture hopefully things will change in that regard I'm not certain that democracy would work really well in such a large society I think a different system is needed that includes many democratic characteristics but I don't think that just saying everything should be run according to Islam is going to make the world a better place if the whole world is run under Islam people would be required to go along with all these things and what we see in countries like Saudi Arabia and Indonesia where it's practiced is that people are going to prison for thought crimes sorry what crimes thought crimes crimes of thinking thought crimes or if my microphone is breaking up okay it's alright yeah so anyway thought crimes no we don't persecute people for thought crimes in Islam I mean if other countries are doing it it doesn't mean that it came from Islam it probably came from the authoritarian leader the point I made was that people are using Islam to justify policies and well in China but the thing is in China it's also the same thing there you can be prosecuted for having even a religion so how is that any better than the Islamic system that you no actually they don't prosecute people for being part of a religion there that's actually wrong information yeah they do actually I have information from China where religions are discouraged and most of them are actually practiced underground religions are regulated quite strictly in China because China's concerns are that people are going to use that to try to interfere with the political system and they are basically the people who are getting into trouble there are already know that it's the law that you don't interfere with politics and bring your religion into it and so if they bring your religion into the political sphere and say do this change all this that's a problem now I'm more in favor of a system that allows for political dissent publicly and what not China's reason for it will be because the population is so large and if they were to basically to allow that that could create some major problems in their society that's what the government perceives and so that's where you see the problem so people talk about how there's Islam is not allowed to be practiced in China Islam is not true last time I looked it up there were over 50,000 mosques throughout the whole country that's a lot of people practicing Islam and I have friends and relatives in China mostly friends and they are they tell me that yeah there's people that are doing it but they're kind of there aren't they don't see a lot of people who are religious most of the people there are not but they see them they see Christians well so if you go close to the border by India there's more Hinduism that you see in the Chinese culture there too because it it spread it traverses the border right so there's local influences like that so I don't want to try to defend China or any other country here it's just I think that I'm not going to accept the misinformation about it I understand completely where you're coming from oh by the way I am learning Mandarin just so you know oh and how and how so I do so I do just for our audience we just said very good first then we're just reflecting on how we both speak very little Chinese so anyway yeah we'll stick with English though yes that's hey we're learning about each other these exchanges are important because you learn more about other people and yes I agree now I think so I do see that exclusivity part of it the demand for conformity is a problem now the fifth point you brought up was the principle of promoting art and beauty and I do think that art is a very important thing to have in society it it can especially art not being from being controversial so all types of art I think are valuable now some types of art I'm against censorship however at the video store I do think it's good that there's a rating system that says that's an R rated video that's a triple X rated video so that people can have an idea of what category it is in but that's not stopping them from that's not censorship that's just categorizing them so people can make informed decisions about which video they're renting or nowadays I think went on to DVDs and then now it's all on the internet but that exemplifies my point here now one of the problems I have here with saying you're promoting art and beauty and beauty is very subjective so it is completely subjective but I still like the principle of promoting all these things and discussing what is beautiful and what is true and all these sorts of things that Christopher Hitchens promoted as well that's where I'm getting that from so if it's true that Islam is promoting art and to promote art art must not be something that's censored it must be a wide open playing field if you're genuine about promoting art then why is it that so many Muslims were objecting to drawings of Muhammad well to draw a picture of the prophet or any prophet for them yeah it's not just Muhammad limited to the prophet Muhammad by the way Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam if you draw a photo a picture in a derogatory way of Moses for example of Jesus of Jesus in a demeaning and humiliating manner then yes we Muslims would be offended regardless it's not actually the drawing per se that offends Muslims it's the way the drawing was representing the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam just to point out to a large audience here you might have just given people ideas on more kinds of drawings they can do they are free to do it but they're going to if they want to do it it's up to them but they're going to answer to God that's the important point it's up to them and that's the thing like after the 9-11 tragedy in New York with the twin towers being taken down by airplanes there were people who were talking about drawing the picture of Muhammad the prophet Muhammad and then people were questioning it and many media organizations were refusing to publish this in their newspapers almost all of them out of fear of reprisal violent reprisal of being bombed at their headquarters and all this kind of thing so when the world sees this we're not seeing this as a religion of peace as violence being perpetuated to defend a principle and to impose the Islamic rule it seemed to be presented as a rule under Islam that the prophet Muhammad cannot be depicted and then people were saying why is Islam suddenly taking over and trying to put itself as more important than my legal system that is in my country that ensures freedom of expression now if a person doesn't want to draw these things that's their choice if they want to draw it or not but it should be their freedom to do it now here in Canada the Muslims here all have freedom of expression all for them they can draw in any way they want I don't know a single Muslim here who's drawing pictures of Muhammad it is available to them under law there's nothing illegal about it so they're choosing to be part of their religion which forbids it and they're following that that's their choice that's fine so again limiting the expression of art I think is bad for the world okay well I have two responses to that actually so the first response would be let's say if I were to draw something of Hitler in a very flattering form for example, Hail Hitler death to the you know what would that be allowed in Canada under Canadian law there are people here who do that and they don't get arrested for it yeah but let's say if I do it in France for example in Austria or in Germany would I get arrested for it I suspect in Germany you very likely would because the history and whatnot and I do think that they're limiting people's freedom of expression now if you're the issue is the delineating factor is that if you're doing these things to promote people to protect people riled up and acting violently and trying to cause other problems then you can be held liable for that you can be charged for that because you're perpetuating but then I would argue I mean someone who draws something like this I agree with you it's hatred but if someone who thinks that it's not hatred the same way as you would view someone who drew unfettering pictures of the Prophet Muhammad if someone were to do the same thing but instead of doing it to the Prophet they do it to Hitler in a very flattering and honourable way in a way that praises Hitler we know what Hitler did during World War II and you know that Nazism is criminalised but and yet they are doing this and it's against the European law in any country and yet they are doing it anyway and people and the law will be enforced upon them how is that freedom of expression are you assuming that if people draw the Prophet Muhammad in a bad way that it's going to cause people to act badly and be violent oh that's another thing I need to clarify I don't agree of course with people threatening to bomb or destroy officers just because they drew unfettering caricature of the Prophet Muhammad you're the type of person to disagree with that and I think that's a question let's put it clear I don't agree at all there are a lot of threats being made against officers who want to destroy them just simply because they insulted the Prophet at the same time that doesn't mean I agree with those caricatures being made in the first place hence that is why I gave the example of Hitler so if there's a law regulating Hitler being drawn or being caricatured in a flattering and dirty way why should there be a problem if Muslims are offended when the Prophet is being insulted, humiliated, demeaned in such a way so I think it goes back to respect and understanding of the how do you know that he's an religion how could you how could you possibly know I mean I've seen a caricature or a horrible drawing of the Prophet or what they claim to be the Prophet wearing a turban made of a bomb and how is that something like this, something like my turban here how is that acceptable to me as a Muslim of course I'm offended but you said Mohammed would be offended by it how would you know that the Prophet would not be formally offended we Muslims would be offended because you see we Muslims you need to understand another principle as I was going to explain it but you take a bit of your time so you need to understand how we Muslims view the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam we view him to be dearer to us than even our own parents so I appreciate that exactly so if you were to insult someone who is very very very dear to you in such a humiliating way I mean this is a human nature it's a human expression of emotion something dear or something precious to you is being offended for example let's say if someone were to take a picture of your wife let's say I have to use this example maybe in a nude form and they make the meaning claims about your wife and they spread the photo everywhere wouldn't you be offended wouldn't you want to take action against it I would want to take action if it's done with consent most certainly because that would be a violation of privacy laws here in Canada but the point I want to get at is here and that's reasonable that's a reasonable question you ask now the problem is with if you're offended by an idea someone's presented art is all about ideas it's representing ideas how is it an idea if someone were to draw it it's a caricature of me it's a statement not just the prophet but me with the turban and a bomb on my head so that was a statement that original art piece you brought up in response to 9-11 and it was criticizing ex-president George Bush Jr for calling Islam a religion of peace how is that criticizing when you draw someone's face when that person doesn't necessarily agree how would you know that the prophet agreed with 9-11 it's an artistic form now obviously people I think now the issue is though let's say if someone were to draw I mean you know how I think how I behave if someone were to spread an image of me wearing a bomb on my turban would you agree with that would you agree I don't think that would represent you properly but I don't know you well enough my first impression is you're not that tight to go and blow things up so how would that justify the prophet being drawn in such a manner that's my question well the difference is that you didn't write the Holy Quran so people are looking at that and saying the people who flew the airplanes into the buildings or doing suicide bombing acting in accordance with what's in the Quran but no Muslim would agree with 9-11 nobody agrees I don't agree with 9-11 sorry about that so the point that I'm trying to get at here and I've tried multiple times now is that people are offended which is a valid emotion to have but the mark of a civilized society in my view is in how people respond to things and if they respond by escalating to an act of violence that's not civilized that's taking it up from just an idea to a violent act that's in a whole different realm that is attempting to discourage discourage it's a whole different realm that's discouraging intended to discourage others from expressing themselves freely so to be fully in support of art and be promoting that one must be willing to have the stuff that they find distasteful as well most people are when people see this kind of art most people in civilized society will probably say that's not very nice and the reaction will be maybe wanting to know more about how people feel that way that would be the better way than to respond with acts of violence like shooting up Charlie Hubdos headquarters when all they did was publish stuff you know it's to say that the problem is that people will escalate to acts of violence is I think looking at things the wrong way because that leads to favoring censorship instead we need to be species in this world at responding to things like that that are offensive to us so that we can respond in a way that's more civilized and you know people can respond in kind with art of their own and that's the beauty of free expression you can talk about it and criticize it and clarify your views about it as you have here and I support that this doesn't make the world better to limit people communication is very important free expression is very important part of that of course we both agree that violence is not a solution to this issue but at the same time I would like to yes so I would like to yeah Mr. your message but basically we're going to jump into the Q&A in just a little bit and we're going to run through it very quickly so we can get our speakers out at a decent time tonight folks if you do have any questions please get them in quickly as we've got a good list already and we'll move through them quickly but in terms of closing statements if you guys would still like a closing statement yes sir yes of course let's jump into those now and then we'll jump into the Q&A so given that Randolph had started we'll give Randolph the first closing statement followed by MENJ Randolph the floor is all yours for your closing statement thank you James and thank you the Muslim apologist for this back and forth I'm left with my understanding of Islam that there are restrictions imposed on people and their imbalances on the sexes that I think in my opinion are not good for the world in the long run atheism does not impose any of these kinds of limits on anybody there are individuals that you will find who are good and bad in atheism and as well as Islam and other religions as well and in my own experience throughout the world is that this percentage is pretty much the same in all these demographics because it's a people issue so I have a big problem with the thing we mentioned talked about earlier with the Islamic family unit that I see it is very very imbalanced and very biased against women in a very realistic sexist way because the women do not have the same rights as the men and they have the man has a total freedom to end the marriage the woman has to go through extra procedures to end the marriage and there's the other issue with the number of wives a man can have is one or more whereas a woman can only have one husband these things are when you have anybody in a society who sees that somebody else for an arbitrary reason they have no control over such as their sex they don't have certain advantages that the other sex has that does not make for a good society that if we take a look at the history of women having to fight for the right to vote and in some countries where it got really violent and women even went for long periods of time and injured torture so that they could get the right to vote how important this freedom is this is important to people and this should be important to you because if freedom is restricted the practice of freedom being restricted becomes normalized then that could end up happening to you that could happen to people you love who are your offspring down the road or other people who don't deserve it nobody deserves it so it is so important that the equality which is in a secular society which is not associated with a particular religion is therefore atheistic be the one that prevails because under a system that doesn't favor a particular religion including Islam people who are religious can be partake in their religions and still thrive because they're not being limited or imposed on in any way so it boils down to freedom again as I've mentioned before maybe not today but I've mentioned before that in the term the name Islam does represent submission so you're submitting to the standard and I have if people willingly choose to go into that that's fine but if people are going to impose on and force people into that then that's where there's a problem because that's a limitation on our freedoms it is my belief and in my experience as well what I've seen in societies that people who are free to think for themselves to be who they want to be including transitioning and sexual orientation and all these very important factors to a person they're important to people and if people can freely be and freely have these options and equality they can be the best they have the they have the potential to be the live the best possible life that they can live and if everybody's if more people and hopefully everybody can live a better quality life have a better quality existence in the end we can have better quality societies I prefer to be in a society where people have these freedoms because diversity and it's more interesting to get to know more people and their better quality lives carries over into everybody else's and we all have better quality lives and that's what the world needs thank you very much freedom for the wind thank you James and thank you the Muslim apologist I look forward to your closing statement thank you very much and want to remind you folks before we jump into the closing statement from both of our guests are linked in the description if you want to hear more you certainly can and that includes at the podcast as all of our debates are uploaded to the podcast within 24 hours of the debate and we put our guest links there as well so if you're listening to the podcast right now you can find their links down below with that Muslim apologist the floor is all yours for your closing as well thank you James and thank you again Randolph for the discourse I find you to be a very respectful gentleman and I honestly I do appreciate it likewise of course we will have differing opinions that is the nature of things otherwise we wouldn't be here but anyway just to go to just to summarise everything and probably to just touch a bit on what you have said basically what I propose is a tax islamica a world order based on islamic what you will call sharia but the sharia as understood in the muslim understanding is defined more than just about punishment you see in the west when you say the term sharia immediately what comes to mind is it means cutting off their heads or cutting off their hands or stoning no sharia is much more than that so for the purpose of this closing statement I wouldn't get too deep into it but basically I'm just saying here that sharia is much more than just simply cutting off someone's head it's not just about punishments it's about organising society and putting it mankind's man's affairs into order hence the principles that I have mentioned they all fall under the ambit of sharia they are all sharia for example the example that I gave about the relationship between a man and a woman, the marriage and divorce Islamic economy mudaraba etc those are all sharia they are all part of the sharia so sharia is not just about punishments it's also about art it's also about family it's about society and government etc so all these are sharia so anyway going back to some things that you mentioned about the family I would say that we have differing understandings of how the relationship is between a man and a wife you would see it as unequal but for me it's balanced it's befitting the role of a man as the leader of the family and the woman as the leader of the house so in Islam we consign roles to each gender so one gender cannot probably do the other gender's affairs I mean of course you are going to say maybe there are men who has become husbands etc but is that the natural role of a man to be running the affairs of the house I mean of course there are exceptions I do concede for example you gave an example of police I mean in Malaysia we have all women who became police of course there are women who became police who become doctors, who become lawyers we even have women politicians in certain countries in the Muslim world there are women who became presidents but is that their natural role to become these things not necessarily so so in Islam gender's roles are defined by how each gender is able to undergo the responsibility hence which is why the Muslim man, the Muslim husband is given the concept of tala and for the woman is given the concept of what we call fasah, meaning to go to the third party so I wouldn't see this as being unfair it's just the manner of the gender and how the roles are being assigned to them I mean in Europe in the western world you have regulations, you have laws you have order you have to follow and beholden to these laws if you are not beholden to these laws if these governments do not put into place laws, if there is absolute freedom in all these societies then there will be anarchy the whole world will be in chaos there's always law and order in every society in the world there's always law and order of course you're going to say that your understanding of freedom is different from that but I would see that to be part of this overall mankind's need man's need to have law and order and Islam offers this this is what Islam offers for the benefit of mankind so going back again to art so now the next crossing statement I'm going to touch on is about art well in yeah so anyway in Islam we offer art as well architecture calligraphy etc this art does not offend people but in the western world art doesn't seem to I mean the understanding of art in the western world seems to be very different from that of the Muslim world so honestly I don't see why someone would think that caricature of a person wearing a bomb on the head is seen as art because for me that would be offensive to anyone regardless but I guess we have to differ on that so with that I end my closing statement thank you very much for this discourse and I hope maybe in the future we can have this discourse again and so do appreciate it you show them some love in the chat as we really do appreciate them and this one coming in from 188 I'm telling again says let me ask you both what do you think about the shrinking country that is Palestine I'll clarify my own position by saying free Palestine I think it's a complex situation I'm not well versed on it I know that there's stuff going on with Israel so I really don't have much to say on it if a country shrinks then hopefully it's because the population is shrinking but in a natural way there's been war going on for a very long time in that region and I think that's very very sad because war is hardest on the people who live in the region where the war is occurring and the end result is I don't think it's ever worth the effort in the long run you got it Muslim apologists any thoughts well I can answer this in two ways the short way and the long way so I'll give both so the short way is free Palestine of course and the long way would be the long answer would be Palestine unfortunately is being colonised by these unforeseen forces so as a Muslim myself because these forces are occupying the Holy Mount Al-Aqsa or the Haram Al-Sharif in Jerusalem of course I as a Muslim we feel the pain of our brothers and sisters in Palestine who are undergoing a very brutal and oppressive occupation by a totally uncivilised regime as I would put it but at the same time I hope that these things will come to a resolution as foreseen by the prophet and I hope that the Muslims in Palestine we put severe through this crisis that means God willing by the way in Arabic you got it and this one coming in from so what is your favourite thing about Islam Muslim apologist what is your favourite thing about atheism I think they're talking about like maybe ethically speaking in terms of regarding tonight's debate well I do think that a favourite thing is hard to say I've never been asked that before but so it's a new question to me I'd have to I'd have to get back to them on it but I do think that in principle Islam is more of a conceptual thing things that I do appreciate is that it's a collection of ideas and it competes with other collections of ideas these collections of ideas are called religions and Islam's interesting because it differs from other religions in that it strives to be a more proper kind of legal system where the other religions tend to be more focused on just the religious aspects so that's kind of interesting and I guess it's progress of a sort unfortunately it comes from a very bad time in the region where it is from so there's a lot of and there's a lot of a lot of reflection on the Abrahamic religions and the misogynistic and violent natures of these religions so that is the problem but I do see it as an attempt at progress and they did bring in much of the ideas that were taught by the Greeks and the ancient Greeks and other societies so there was an effort to do things better and to be more up-to-date and more modern than the previous religions that it is partly based on You got it? What about you for atheism? So if I were to have to choose one interesting thing about atheism which I appreciate it's probably the critical aspect of it I do appreciate how it is critical of everything around them but the problem with that is that they go overboard sometimes they have this somehow in it understanding that everyone else is wrong and only they are right I mean probably not for you Randolph but many atheists do think this way so unfortunately because of that it impedes their judgment their objective judgment but overall if they were more objective and they were more open to other ideas then I would say if they were critical of this principle then yes I would encourage them to be more critical yes and they should be critical about themselves as well but eventually I believe that if they were honest with themselves and they are more critical of themselves as well and other ideologies eventually they will come to a conclusion that Islam is the best way for mankind I will take that under advisement This one coming in Arne Rorvik says so you took back the Abe Lincoln beard James can you do the chaplain mustache I want to use it this isn't the Abraham Lincoln beard he didn't have a mustache part just to be fair I mean nothing against Abraham Lincoln but anyway Chris G James you need to get the Abraham Lincoln hat and wear it I think that this person has a good point and then you can we can get you actually like him and then you can say the words everything on the internet is not necessarily the truth or something the misquote of Abraham Lincoln I'll send it to you you can do this I might I mean I have to be honest I like Abe Lincoln he's got a very distinguished prominent face but anyways Arne let's see this Chris G says I think this is yes Muslim apologist you advocating for men to have more rights than women lest there be chaos is morally disturbing to me shame on you for not considering women equal well I would disagree with the the commenter I'm not saying that men should be given more rights than women I'm saying that men have already rights and shrine for them and that women have already have rights and shrine for them as well so they are balanced the understanding of equality as understood by the West is flawed you cannot apply that to the Muslim understanding or the Islamic understanding of equality because in Islam we don't believe that being equal means that both sides must have the same thing doesn't necessarily mean so okay so to be equal it means to be balanced to be balanced doesn't necessarily mean it has to be the same so please get your understanding correct I'm not saying at all that men should have more rights than women no no at all I'm saying that men and women have equal rights have balanced rights in Islam but that doesn't mean that they are the same that's all you got it this one coming in from Mr. Saxa Keats says appreciate you love you James appreciate your support thanks so much and all street cred to the speakers as I said we love these guys we really do appreciate they're the lifeblood of the channel and that goes for all of the speakers that we have on so peabah hello thanks for your question says thank you for the warm welcome this is my first super chat to you please be gentle appreciate that but they also said my question though to the interlocutors when it comes up is quote how are divorce rights sorted out under Islam in relationships where both partners quote bat for the same team I think they're saying how are divorce rights sorted out under Islam in the relationships where gay relationships or lesbian relationships I don't know I don't imagine it's I imagine they're they're going to have to decide at some point who has the male role in the marriage and the feminine masculine and feminine roles in the marriage I I I have no idea how it worked I just guessing in the wild I I'm trying my best so that but I really don't know it's not my area gotcha any thoughts on that me and j sorry could you repeat the last question because you were you were breaking up just now they said how are divorce rights sorted out under in Islam in relationships where it's two men or two women yeah homosexuality is not recognized in Islam we don't acknowledge homosexuals homosexuality marriage so there's no such a question does not arise is an oxymoron you've got it so this I just want to quickly add one thing and then you can respond to me of course I know James would insist on that this is a further example this attitude here to me is bigoted and it is discriminatory against people based on the sexual orientation and so it again do you it limits a whole demographic of society and that is bad for the world again when you're putting people down and saying that you're not recognized as a valid person when you're a valid person that's a problem and so this is not the recipe for making a better world in my view well we will have to disagree on that because our values are not the same in Islam a marriage is between a man and a wife it cannot be between a man and a man and a woman and a woman it just doesn't make any sense that's all so if someone wants to pursue such a relationship they are going to have to do it behind the scenes because Islam doesn't recognize it so there's a problem if people have to sneak around and do things in secret what this is doing the imposition of Islam is forcing them to lie and not live honestly with everybody else including themselves with who they really are openly and publicly and in a free world in a free country where people have freedom protected this limitation doesn't apply this is not a valid limitation and then again that's the problem with Islam I know you probably need to respond again go ahead sorry James I'll stop I'll stop all right so respectfully of course again I disagree with you because it doesn't work that way so if someone has a homosexual urge as I would say that is between him and God and how he would manage it is up to him so to marriage one behind the scenes even that is up to him so that is his choice but he's going to have to answer to God in the hereafter but Islam is forbidden period this one coming in from empathy respect says I love Randolph I'm a Christian but can vouch that he is wonderful a wonderful person I wish more atheists and Christians had his level of civility and charity thanks empathy respect I really appreciate I was on his show one time he has a YouTube channel and where he interviews people and he interviewed me was quite a while ago and I appreciated the time he gave me thank you I agree with that I agree with the comment I find Randolph to be a very nice individual very nice gentleman I do appreciate being talking to you in this discourse thank you I've enjoyed this conversation Maria very much with you as well thank you absolutely and this one from a rival on the other side of the fence a pastate prophet he says in the Muslim Apologist ideal world if Islam is fully implemented what should be done to those who leave Islam considering that this is the person who blocked me from Twitter for calling him a fuckface I'm surprised that he's going to even ask this question to me what do you think I mean what do you think a Muslim would do to a to a montage I don't even have to answer this question I will answer because I think it's an important question James I it's there are countries where people are being executed for being apostates for leaving Islam and this is justified under Quran 489 or verse chapter 4 verse 89 or other chapters to apparently so I'm opposed to that because people should have the freedom to leave any religion and that's a freedom that's protected freedom of association freedom of opinion freedom of religion important freedoms for people I think that a person should be free to leave a religion and should not be coerced into leaving it should not people should not be trying to convince them to leave and by the same token it should apply in the other direction as well where people are not coerced or forced into joining a religion so and I think pure research did study Sam Harris was talking about it years ago they surveyed Muslims around the world it was statistically significant and they found approximately 65% of the Muslims they asked were in favor of death for apostasy and so that that is a problem that needs to be corrected I think because it's it shows that there's an attitude that is opposed to people having freedom so thanks James for giving me a chance to to talk about that and Muslim apologists I know you probably would like to respond to me yes so the issue on the issue of apostasy trying to be serious here now so I have I have books on it actually regarding apostasy there is a great debate in the Muslim world regarding how apostasy should be regulated the other the of course the general consensus is man as the prophet said man badala did not who fucked to lose this is a hadith in in Sahih al-Bukhari so basically it means whoever leaves his religion queues him but there is an interpretation there's a debate regarding what does this hadith actually mean and on what in what context does this hadith needs to apply does it mean you have to queue all apostates does it mean you anyone who just leaves the region you just queue him no I doesn't necessarily mean so so there are specific context and incidences regarding how this should be applied there's one scholarly consensus which says that this only happens to those to those apostates who leave Islam but they don't leave it quietly if they leave it quietly and they just leave their lives in peace you don't want to harm them but if they leave Islam and they start talking bad about Islam they criticize Islam they make videos insulting Islam they tear the Quran live in video then yes the law applies to such people this is basically the understanding of the juries so there are many differences of opinion but this is the basically the main consensus you got this one coming in from do appreciate your question as well good day to you sir says to Muslim apologist very simply Muslims are fleeing to disbeliever countries by the millions so if Islam is what is best for the world why then isn't the world fleeing towards Islamic countries I get this question all the time but the thing is I'm in Malaysia Malaysia is a democratic country is a Muslim majority country I'm not fleeing to the west there's something I need to share with you viewers as well I was born in the United States I was born I'm actually technically I am an American I have an American expired American passport somewhere actually but I'm a Malaysian and I'm not fleeing to the United States the land of my birth no I'm still in Malaysia so you can judge you can you can say that Muslims are fleeing in growth from the Muslim world to to the west it's not necessarily so and Muslims do that for variety of reasons just the same way as people from the west come to the east as well I mean we do have people from the west here in Malaysia and in many other regions in the Muslim world so it goes both ways so it's not because of Islam it's not because of the religion it's probably because of economic reasons family there are so many reasons why someone would leave a Muslim country to go to a non-Muslim country for example for economic reasons like for example the job that I do I'm in digital marketing I would probably get a better pay if I were to move to the US or Canada for example in fact this would actually be the most reasonable thing for me to do if I want to pursue my career in digital marketing so let's say if I want to do that then yes I would move to the west but why would I want to I mean why would that be a reason to say that Islam is the cause no it's not Islam it's not the reason so there are many very variety of reasons so to simplify it to mean that Muslims are leaving the Muslim world because of Islam I think that is an unfair and biased judgment this one coming in from Aaron Johnson says when Muslim Jesus comes back I think they're saying like the Muslim interpretation of Jesus coming back although I don't think Islam has a second coming of Jesus we do we do we do they say people will have to choose to convert or die the source is the Sanan Abidawad 4324 Sanan Abidawad thank you and they said and reliance of the traveler page 602 to 603 is that what's best for people I think you're going to have to reference properly because you just quoted the name of the book and the page number how is that relevant I mean anyway I just to touch on the reliance of the traveler reliance of the traveler is actually not it's not a well known book in this part of the world so we don't really rely on whatever the reliance of the traveler so just to clarify the reliance of a traveler is a fake book written by an Egyptian author in the 13th century and it's basically a collection of hadiths and then there are some interpretations made by this Egyptian jurist but in this part of the Muslim world we don't use the reliance of the traveler we have other books and sources of fake so not necessarily we agree with what the reliance of the traveler say or their interpretation of a certain fake rule you got it and this one coming in from do appreciate it question from Arabian princess says to Muslim apologist under the Sharia law are Christians and atheists equal to Muslims good question well I would say that it depends on what you mean by equal if you mean the same role no of course not it's the same thing between as a man and a woman right in Islam so in Islam we do acknowledge that under under the Sharia law under Islamic rule non-Muslim citizens are given their rights they have their rights as practice in in the traditional Islamic Muslim society before the concept of nation states came about non-Muslims were actually given authority to govern their own affairs they have their own communal laws and communal rules so as for example let's say there's a Christian community living in the Muslim world in back in those days during the Khilafah they are actually given their own court system they are given their own laws to govern their own community so this is how Islam had worked in the past but nowadays since we are all living in a nation state concept so I guess the law varies from one country to another so I can't speak for any other country but in Malaysia we treat the non-Muslims just the same as how we would treat the Muslim anyways all are under the law I don't see why it's that a problem you got it this one from Ryan Morris says let me know if I pronounce it right Ryan said since you said you were happy I was here in chat I felt special thanks for your support seriously Ryan that means a lot and we really are glad to have you here and I gotta tell you folks I want to just reinforce thanks Ryan that is special support absolutely and I gotta tell you folks when we say hello in chat we really are glad to have you here that that is me typing so as I'm reading chat and looking for questions I always like to say hello to people and so if I missed you don't it's it's nothing personal it's just that sometimes I'm moving so fast but I do want to say welcome no matter what your position is whether you be Muslim, atheist regardless of your race or sex or whatever everything we really do hope you feel welcome no matter who you are we want to be as fair as possible as a debate channel we want everybody to feel like they've you know gotten a fair shot or gotten a fair warm welcome and so thanks Ryan for your support and then Arabian princess strikes again she says in the Quran it says you can beat women even if they didn't do anything so when is it okay to beat women and what kind of a god would give a command like this Muslim apologist only when they asked nicely that's that's that's a him or from the BDSM community apparently well I think I think that's a total misunderstanding of Surah An-Nisa verse 30 48 I don't recall okay I think it's verse 48 right so that's a total misrepresentation of that verse right so basically the verse says that there are steps taken in order to to admonish your wife because of disobedience okay or what we call new shoes in Arabic so because you see that it goes back again to the relationship between a man and a wife in a marriage so the man as I said many times the man is the leader of the house and the woman is the leader sorry the man is the leader of the family the woman is the leader of the house but the man is the leader of the family he needs to be in he has to basically be in the lead to control the affairs right doesn't mean that you need to be oppressive towards the woman of course but if the woman does not acknowledge does not give the husband the due respect that he deserves like for example she's abusive to a husband and she admonishes him when there's not necessarily to be admonished see abuse abuse can go both ways right so even the wife can be abusive to the husband then yes then there are these steps to be taken so one of them is darubah your wife you have to beat your wife that's how the kuhan mentions it but beating here doesn't mean you're going to take a cane and whack the woman out of her black and blue until she dies no that's not what darubah means so how do we interpret this hadith this kuhani verse we go to the hadith or the prophet where the prophet explains it so basically what you do beating here means taking the stick the miswak I don't have the miswak here with me but it's basically a small tiny stick and you just beat her with that it's not even painful you're not supposed to hurt her you're not supposed to make her black and blue the point of this is to make her feel shameful or remorseful of her actions and this is only taken as the very very very last step taken this is like the third or fourth step so no you don't go and go around beating your wife just because the wife is this obedient to you no there's several steps to be taken and even if it comes to that you just beat her with a miswak it's a very small stick it doesn't even hurt anyone you got it this one coming in from do appreciate your question Chris G says so you sign a non-disclosure as a Muslim if I remember right this came up during the discussion of I think when the question came up on why it is that there are allegedly millions of Muslims moving out of Muslim countries and wanting to go to non-Muslim countries rather than vice versa either of you guys remember contextually what this might refer to when Chris says so you sign a non-disclosure as a Muslim I don't know what that's about I don't even understand what it means no can you read the question one more time James yeah so you sign a non-disclosure as a Muslim and I just can't remember if I Oh I think I know I'm going to guess what they might be referring to I've heard I've seen videos of people who've gone into the mosques and they're greeted by people everything's fine and it comes across it's presented very well certain mosques not I'm not saying all of them are like this and then after a while these are mosques that are particular ones that are known for producing extremists and then after a while after a number of months pass and then they get into more of these little kind of special interest groups within the whole mosque community where they start learning more extreme things and it starts to get really nasty and so there was some kind of expectation that they're not going to share this with the public so I guess it might be a reference, subtle reference to KIA and stuff like that I'm not sure so have you heard of this stuff the Muslim Apologist? I've never heard this in my life this is news to me I'm totally stumped I've never heard of this before I'm sorry I can't answer that question then I recall the video was in Australia somewhere but they said there were some other parts of the world where this happened these are ones that are producing extremists there's a problem with those mosques obviously if it involves extremists then I'm sorry they're not part of Islam, Islam doesn't teach this that's all I could say Sunflower said I think they're attempting to say that even if you leave Islam you never disclose that you left Islam so you're kind of sworn to silence regardless no it's not that it's just that if you leave Islam let's say if you want to apologize to Islam from Islam and you do it peacefully the context here is peacefully not being violent not being rude or insulting or demeaning towards your former religion just live your life you can live Islam all you want and you can just live your life that's the point it's not a non-disclosure agreement there's no non-disclosure agreement for you to when you really want to live Islam you just leave Islam if you want to leave go ahead you will be answerable to God in the year after you're part of the 35% well I don't know about that but basically if you want to leave Islam go ahead no one on this earth is going to stop you but you're not supposed to go around bad mouthing your former religion and be not only bad mouthing but being insulting and rude and there are so many apostate channels that I see on YouTube which does this and I'm afraid the hard law would apply on to this type of people but I'm pretty sure there are many out there who have left Islam but they are living their lives fully and nobody is going to give a shit about them I had to clarify something here so people should not if they've left a religion they're no longer part of conforming to it so if they want to talk about their experiences and they have some views on it that it's really bad and they're free to express that in here in Canada at least anyway and many other countries too I'm sure in the United States it's not a problem so to say that they're going to be in trouble for hate speech that's only if it's being applied to people it was being applied to a collection of ideas like a religion then that's focusing your dis disdain for that on the ideas people will criticize atheism I don't have a problem with that and I'm going to respond to it when they do if I have the opportunity to correct things now somebody is going to go after individual atheists and say these people are bad then that's a personal attack rather than attack on an idea or a concept you got it and this one coming in from do appreciate your question as well Aaron Johnson says when Jesus is back or returns will people have to convert or die? Muslim apologists according to the hadith there will be Muslims there will be people who would follow Jesus and there will be people who would be against Jesus so those who who are against Jesus would be with the Dajjal what the Christians would call the antichrist yes we have that concept in Islam so basically the Muslims will side with Jesus those who who were not Muslims before they will side with Jesus there will be some who will be siding with Jesus and there will be some who will be against Jesus and those who do not go with Jesus will be with the antichrist and these two forces will clash eventually that's the islamic scretology of things just to my previous comment James I want to add a word of the day for you miso theism M-I-S-O-T-H-E-I-S-M it means a hatred for theism against a particular type or whatever so that's probably the term that I should have mentioned in my previous statement there you got it and thank you very much for this question coming in from Arabian princess says two M-I-N-J Muslim apologist you said we go to the hadith in one of the hadiths which is Sahih your prophet said whoever changes his religion kill him do you agree with this you want the short answer or the long answer the short answer is yes of course I agree but the long answer is something which I've already explained earlier I've already touched on this right so yeah gotcha Anne want to say thank you very much for that question Arabian princess as well as this one coming in from Chris G he had said hmm Muslim apologist could you call your wife over into the room so I can see you look at her in the eyes and tell her that you are the leader of the house and that she isn't because that would be chaos ha ha ha unfortunately I can't do that because in Pontian there's a town in Malaysia about 200 plus kilometers away from me with my son so she's caring for my mother-in-law whose leg was just recently amputated because of diabetes so she had to be there so she's staying there at the moment right so I'm staying with my parents here so my wife is in Pontian yeah gotcha I hope everything's okay and yeah thank you yeah of course and the let's see want to remind you we just had one last question that Erin snuck in our guests are linked in the description highly encourage you folks you can always check out their links and that includes if you're listening via the podcast you can check them out there too but Erin Johnson with the last question says Jesus will abolish the jizya meaning a source jizya I understand as being a tax on people who are of particular religions that are not Islam yeah the jizya is basically like income tax upon the non-Muslims the Muslims we pay zakat we have a similar concept for Muslims we pay almost the same rate in fact the jizya is actually lower than that of the zakat zakat is 2.5% jizya is around 1 to 1.5% of your income so yeah so this is basically what jizya means it's all consistent with my understanding but okay you got it and want to say folks as we had mentioned our guests are linked in the description and have to also say hey if you know somebody who would enjoy this debate feel free you can click that share button below and you can help get the word out on this debate if you're especially if you're like I really thought my side won that one you could share this with a friend and you'll look neutral because they'll say it's true both sides got equal time and you can share with them and if you thought your side was more persuasive then you'll be kind of persuading them in that way I don't know what you guys think but I want to say thanks to our guests it's been a true pleasure Randall and I mean it's been a true pleasure to have you guys James thank you very much for supporting yet another free exchange of ideas this means a lot to me to be on your program and thank you to everybody who's tuned in Muslim Apologist it's been pleasure speaking with you yeah likewise I enjoy my time here thank you very much James and to you sir Randall thank you very much my pleasure and want to say folks I'll be back in just a moment I'm going to share about upcoming debates so stick around for that post credit scene and I'll be right back but thanks to our guests one last time and I'll be back in just a moment ladies and gentlemen I'm still here don't worry I'm going to zoom here and then you'll be able to see me again as I have a big smile on my face because one that was a great debate really civil and we really do enjoy these debates obviously you know that if you've been a viewer at modern day debate because you've seen that we do enjoy these I love getting to do modern day debate it is honestly I absolutely it's just for me there's nothing else I enjoy more I really do enjoy this and so I was just talking to somebody today and they were like what do you enjoy about it and I was like I love that I get to learn and simultaneously like we're putting out content because I used to do a YouTube channel and I used to edit the videos and eventually editing can become a little bit monotonous at least for me I mean like but so this is nice because it's like we just live stream it and I get to simultaneously listen and learn and that's like as like the footage is being just put into YouTube so like there's no editing and so it's nice I just enjoy that it's like a simultaneous like learning experience while doing the YouTube thing so I do appreciate you guys and want to say thanks for all of your guys' support and thanks Randolph Richard Randolph Richard and I appreciate it so much thanks for your being with us tonight as well as MENJ and thank you so much we just appreciate you Randolph you've been like such a loyal helpful person to the channel and to me just a really kind person and a person who is always just trying to hear me out because like I've talked about this before so you know we've got some critics out there most people I think are actually really supportive and I'm so thankful for that but yeah for some reason we do have some critics and nonetheless I appreciate Randolph that you're the kind of person that you've given us a fair shot and you're like well like let me hear James' side of the story you know because there are some people that are just bizarrely uncharitable like in terms of thinking that I am like this terrible person but the idea is that again that's a small percent and all I can share why like some of these critics are saying what they do we talked a little bit about it last night some of it is because of the topics the controversial topics or the controversial people that we host that by itself a lot of people are like oh it's bad bad no James and we have good reasons for it we don't just do it arbitrarily and some people are like oh yeah we know it's because you want the people out or the attention or whatever it's like no no no there's actually a very good peer review type evidence based argument that what we are doing is producing a social good and I'll get to that well I want to say hello to you in the chat first and then I promise I'm going to get to that argument but Muslim apologist thanks for your super chat said thank you James appreciate that Muslim apologist thanks for your support and good to see you says love the debates I don't know and this debate was great for that the blood sports thing is fun too I agree that's one thing I was talking to Bob recently and we were saying it's fun when it's variety it's not the same thing all the time I like it that it's like it's true some nights are fiery and I don't I don't fault the debaters for that that's okay and some nights are more civil discourse like tonight where they're calm peaceful just you could say much more you can hear what the speakers are saying the entire during the entirety of the debate I like both like I like that we have variety here in modern day debate and when we do have a civil discourse a kind conversation where the speakers are respectful of each other to the 10th degree like for example like tonight it's so encouraging because it's like it's it's natural it's organic it's authentic it's not because I James the moderator was just constantly you know over bearing on every guest that we have on here it's just organically happening by itself that's one thing I've got to say but also yeah it's like it's true we have a lot of variety we have different topics I would say you if you really enjoy this channel you're probably high on no not a drug trait openness so in psychology there's the big five is the most popular model of personality traits and the way that you can remember them is the acronym ocean so there's openness there's conscientiousness extroversion agreeableness neuroticism so the that's the five and each of the big five traits starts with a letter from the word ocean now openness means you either and actually 10 these tend to correlate you like the arts and that could even be like digital art so for example like I I really enjoy Photoshop I do all of our thumbnails I never said they're good but I enjoy it and it's a form of arts and it could be painting though it can be any type of art the other thing is correlated with that is you tend to like ideas you're an idea person you're like tell me the new ideas tell me something stimulating something controversial something a new take on something I'll give you guys a new take on something you guys I'm a little should I tell it's like this is a controversial one so I'm a little bit nervous on that I should say it but well you get the idea though you like new ideas and you like new topics being debated and you like even that it's not just a debate channel with religion debates we also have political debates we also have science debates on flat earth like we have everything and so absolutely different topics all the time different people and if you like that you're probably high on trade openness if you like this channel for real in addition let me say hi to you in the old live chat and then I'll tell you that argument that I said that I was going to tell you about but Phoenix alpha so glad to have you here and Randolph Richardson thanks for being with us in the old chat I always enjoy seeing you here and again thanks for being loyal Randolph's the type of guy we've known each other for years now we've talked and kind of like we've had Randolph on and I've gotten to know him enough and talk to have these communication with him where like I said Randolph's the kind of guy that you know I think that if somebody would you know try to throw you under the bus when you're not around Randolph would be like hmm I'm not sure if I've seen James act like that but I guess you know let me see if I can hear his side of the story first that's my best Randolph impression but I love your Randolph but so hmm the idea here is like that's a kind and a loyal friend that like I said because there are some people out there that for some reason just hate like I said some of is because of who or what we platform in terms of the people or the topics I got recently I got a message and like more than one message like but one that in particular that stuck out to me where it was both the topics and the people they said I don't approve and now here's that argument this is based on in the psychological research because a lot of you I don't know if you know so I'm getting my PhD in psychology so I'm in the end of my fourth year so right now I'm like finishing up my grading for the semester and then I'm going to be basically prepping for my fifth year of my doctorate so pretty close to the end and the idea here is in the psychological literature there is a theory and it is it's a genuine theory it's got mountains of evidence for it it's called the elaboration likelihood model it's by petty and Cassiopo from 1986 and tons of evidence suggests that if you have two people that come into a debate and let's say because a lot of times people say James I'm so upset that you're hosting so and so their arguments are you know immoral or unethical because maybe they're you know maybe they have arguments that are let's say because I'll be on you guys know that I'm not racist I don't like any sort of racism or anything like that it is true that we have some controversial people on where their arguments might be at least in part like they have maybe racist assumptions or something and like I said I'm not racist I would recommend you guys know like not to be racist but the idea is when we have them on the show this theory the elaboration likelihood model that I mentioned would suggest that in a debate like this the person with the strongest arguments the most logical reasoning is the person who's going to be at the most long-lasting effects in their persuasion on people and so sometimes people say well James I agree that the you know the racist person or whatever it is I would agree that they don't have the best arguments James because that's what I say it's not like they have it's not like they're winning the debates and they say I agree their arguments aren't as good but it might be the case that maybe the the person that I disagree with that the charlatan the person who's spreading harmful information they nonetheless maybe they're good-looking or charming you know those types of things that might persuade people to and the theory actually addresses that it calls that peripheral persuasion because it's true people are actually a bit more persuasive if they happen to be let's say humorous or if they happen to be good-looking in that case though so in other words people will say well what if the charlatan is a person who happens to be more good-looking or humorous or charming and that's how they win the debate you know through those more more peripheral routes which is what the theory actually calls that type of persuasion is peripheral the theory finds that their persuasive effect you might say in the debate is going to lose out to the more logical arguments because in this theory they find that a more long lasting effect on persuasion comes from reasoned arguments not these things like how charming a person might be or how good looking or whatever it might be and so I would say we are actually doing a good thing it's a net good when we host controversial topics or people and the reason is bad arguments get exposed and they fall by the wayside it de-radicalizes a lot of their followers now that's my argument for why and it's a peer-review based argument so when people just say well no I'm like okay well then give me some peer-reviewed evidence against it like if you're gonna say this isn't the case that's an empirical claim you can't just say well I disagree and that's false it's like okay well this is like mountains of peer-reviewed evidence it's not just enough for you to assert it well no it's bad it still produces a net bad effect I tell them what's your peer-reviewed evidence I remember it was even a guess before we went live on the show one time he an older gentleman who brought this up before we started going live I was like this is a weird time to bring this up but I told him I gave him that argument and I said what's your peer-reviewed evidence and he just again went into just speculation and making claims like oh no well it's still harmful you know and I was just like and this guy was purely he looked like he was just like he was like uncomfortable and he had just had his feet held to the fire because that's the thing it's like all these haters whenever they come up to me with their objections it's always just claims well that's immoral if you host that topic or if you host that person that's your immoral or you know that's bad that's not acceptable and I'm like here's my peer-reviewed argument on how it produces a net good what's your peer-reviewed argument and they don't have it and I'm just like wow it's ironic because a lot of these people claim that they care about science and logical thinking and I gotta say but I want to say thank you guys for your support most the vast majority of people are very supportive and I've got to say we're super thankful it's been so busy that I've been behind I wanted to put out a thank you video to say thank you and we're excited and we're celebrating the fact that we just passed maybe it was like a week or two ago yeah I'd say it's like probably about a week and a half to two weeks ago we passed 70,000 subscribers that's huge and so most people like really are supportive and I just appreciate that so much drastic measures in the live chat I see there says yeah respect for modern day debate and James great platform thanks for that friend I appreciate that and Dre Day thanks for being with us as well as Arabian princess as you're doing a great job James very nice channel thanks so much Arabian princess that really means more than you know and Said Matish thanks for your support thanks for being with us Master Optics good to see you long time viewer Gohan am I saying it right Gohan Gohan glad you're with us Red Hand thanks for being with us and Cogito Ergo glad to have you here as well as Phoenix Alfa glad to have you with us DT puncture with us gross potato happy to have you with us Samar Rao says any examples of civil debates that are your favorites what about the opposite fiery debates that you've liked the most civil one and that I it's like it's actually one of my favorite debates ever is the one with Matt Delaunty inspiring and inspiring philosophy which is our biggest video that's like people love that debate and it was a really high quality debate and it was respectful and it was just fantastic and in terms of the most fiery one certainly one of the most enjoyable ones was recent some people hated this debate it was a very love hate type of debate infrared in Jackson Hinkle going against Destiny and Dylan Burns that was a wild one and it just oh my goodness that it was hard to turn away from that you know because it was just that was wild to say the least it was fiery Joe Schwartz good to see you says I always look forward to these debates thank you for the hard work James thanks Joe seriously that really means more than you know and I'm all credit to the speakers I'm just a guy in the background sending emails and yeah I moderate but like I gotta tell you it's the speakers of the life blood of the channel we love them and so we're thankful for them and Phoenix Alpha good to see you says let's see so I don't have good to see you there in the old live chat as well as Samar Rao says I love Adobe Illustrator but I've had a hard time getting into Photoshop any resources you'd recommend Samar Rao I would recommend I only use Photoshop I think it's called elements let me look this up really quick Adobe Photoshop elements if you get like the permanent because you get you don't have to get the renewed because that's like their most basic version if you get that and you don't have to renew it it's a very like easy way to go about it that's just my best recommendation and so that's one nice thing I would just I always would go to YouTube videos and I would Google what it was I wanted so like strokes this is like super useful to know is like a stroke is like let's say you have a PNG file so like it's cut out so like you notice in all of our thumbnails it's like it's got this modern day debate background like you can see in the back of me here and in that case a stroke is like the white line that goes like around the entire person you know and it like it's like it hugs their shape or their form that's called a stroke and you know so if you just YouTube like on YouTube you just Google or search how do I apply strokes in Adobe Photoshop elements that is like how I learned it and so and like I said I'm no expert but it's at least oh man our thumbnails at least come a long way they used to be even worse you always three says Dr. James Coons almost that's right almost I'm excited about it I do love the PhD it's hard that's for sure it's a challenge but I do enjoy it and I've got some major grading to do in the next two days I'm gonna be just hammering away at it so it is hard work but I nonetheless I enjoy it and I'm thankful for it and that's I think it's a great attitude to have about life don't ask for an easy life embrace challenges and let it grow you and stretch you so things like whether it be school or work or working out whatever it is that's good for us is that's like how we grow and that's how we grow and develop modern day debate like we really we have things we know we can improve that for sure and we're working on it and we're going to improve them and that's what learning is so we are excited about the future of modern day debate I am like absolutely pumped you guys we've got some big stuff we're gonna be planning out this summer in terms of some big time debates this coming fall in person so we're pumped about that we might do one or two this summer that's up in the area we have found that like the kind of the best data suggest that people prefer events in the spring or fall so we might put that off a little bit you know we're gonna play it by year the biggest thing though is we do want to plan out these big ones and so Dray Day says thank you James thank you Dray Day seriously for your support it means a lot Martin H. says thanks modern day debate that was actually good fun 99 oh I'm glad you enjoyed it it was I enjoyed it as well Ryan Morris says the only way to strengthen one's own arguments is to debate opposing views this channel is important you're appreciated James thanks Ryan seriously that means a lot it really does and also thank you Ryan for your super chat support seriously that really does mean a lot we're glad you're here and want to say yeah as well as everybody else I think it's the first time I've seen you in here tonight thanks for being with us and then said what are your thoughts on the inspiring philosophy versus Jake the Muslim metaphysician debate coming up I hadn't even known about it so that sounds like a juicy debate and let's see oh yeah this says funniest was Destiny versus Gavin McGinnis that was a fun and wild one that's true that was absolutely fun and then let's see Samarro says I hate Adobe subscription model I agree you got to go to the Amazon and get like the permanent one it really does it's way better and then Al Solmo thanks for being with us as well as Saichiro Navas says just give them all A's James that's funny and then Samarro says any live debates on the roster in person you mean we we it's up in the air in terms of like what we might do brainstorming so we really do we really want to take modern day debate to the next level so I've got a list of big time people to reach out to that I'm really excited to kind of like we might do it we're going to start doing some panels too so get ready for that that's coming up soon it's going to be fun we really do enjoy that Arabian princess says yeah I have family in Cairo and I have been to Egypt in Cairo in particular and I was like absolutely it was a great beautiful beautiful pyramids tremendous pyramids big beautiful pyramids in addition to I went over the bridge that crosses the Nile I walked over that so that was really cool and then there was a tower not far from the Nile I can't remember what the tower was but I know I went to visit that as well let me put this tower in Cairo I haven't thought about this for years is this the Cairo tower okay I think that was the tower that I visited the Nile let's see but yeah it was absolutely it was awesome so I do want to go back to Egypt someday harsh reality glad to have you with us and then let's see here and Al Salmo says thank you I appreciate that Al Salmo seriously appreciate your support want to say I love you guys we are going to have a debate tomorrow Flat Earth returns Amy is going to be moderating that one I'm going to rest and well technically I'm going to be grading but during the time that debate happens I think by that time I'll hopefully be done grading and able to rest and so Amy will be moderating that it's going to be tremendous and then let's see Samarro this is beautiful pyramids tremendous pyramids I mean people are saying they're the best pyramids but yeah I want to say thank you guys you guys make this fun we have a lot of debates next week and then we've got four scheduled or at least close to being scheduled so we will have a number of debates next week I think at minimum three maybe even five so then we're going to get even more like it's going to be close to like five or six a week for a while so we do plan on having a lot more and so want to say thank you guys for your support seriously I love you guys make this channel awesome and I'm serious here's some ways that you guys make the channel awesome thanks for hitting like that helps us and then drastic measures says not trying to destroy your neutrality but can you give your own religious background and current beliefs so I have said before I'm willing to answer since I've what's the word I'm looking for since you've asked and I'm not I'm going to be like discreet about it or short because I mean it's also in the description box anyway so most people have seen it in the description box is what's the word I'm a Christian and politically I'm more kind of agnostic I think I'm like more in the middle in terms of like I'm kind of like okay like let me hear both sides and I do want to hear both sides in the case of religion and atheism and things like that too but in politics I'm like more I see myself like move more like regularly and so what else was I going to say though oh yeah if you do hit like that helps the channel that's one way in which you guys have helped the channel and I appreciate that another way is if you hit share you can share these debates and we do see because I'm able to see in the back like in the creator studio how many times people share debates and I do appreciate you guys sharing debates that really does help us seriously good old word of mouth like that really does help us grow we appreciate that more than you know and so thank you for that and thank you guys for all of your support seriously it means more than you know I love you guys I appreciate you guys and I want to say I hope you guys have a great rest of your night I really do it's always fun oh and then but yeah I want to say thank you guys for your support as you guys really have made this channel grow immensely is even for example I'm not I'm not just saying it questions during the Q&A that's another way that helps us for real because you know we can't have a Q&A without questions and so thanks for that as well and drastic measures as thanks for answering my pleasure but thanks guys for hanging out with me in the after show this is always fun to get to catch up with you I told you that we talk about upcoming debates so sorry that I hadn't actually done that I'll tell you now the ones I was going to mention so I told you tomorrow we've got Flat Earth versus Globe Earth a classic that's been around for centuries we should have a creation of illusion one on either Monday or Tuesday probably Monday and that's going to be a tag team one we have Taylor a newcomer she's getting her PhD and Maddox are going to be teaming up and the team that they're opposing is still TBD otherwise Hake versus Hunter Avalon on gay adoption on Wednesday as well as we may have on Friday Christian versus atheist versus black Hebrew Israelite and then Saturday the 21st will be T jump versus finding truth on whether or not Islam is scientific or I think it's whether or not the Quran is scientific so that is for next week and like I said yeah we're working on a lot so thanks guys for your support seriously you make it fun and we're excited about the future as we strive to fulfill the vision of providing a neutral platform so that everybody can make their case level playing field we're passionate about that we appreciate you and thank you for joining us and pursuing that vision that we're bringing to YouTube and want to say thanks everybody we love you guys we hope you have a great night keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable and we'll see you in the next one