Boycott Israel [IslamCity] Interview with Shaykh Hamza Yusuf
This is an edited transcript of an interview that took place in September 2006. Q: Linden MacIntyre: What are the roots of Muslim rage? A: Hamza Yusuf: If you had one word to describe the root of all this rage, it's humiliation. Arabs in particular are extremely proud people. If you look at what happened in Lebanon recently, the Arabs kind of raised their head-- they think it's a big victory, the fact that their whole country was destroyed and over a thousand people were killed, many of them children. Why is it a victory? Because they fought back. That's all. OK, you can crush us into the Earth, but you're not going to get us to submit. And I think that's deeply rooted in Muslim consciousness, the idea of not submitting to anything other than God. You can abuse me, but you're not going to win me over. But if you treat me with respect and dignity, I'm going to fall in love with you. I'm going to sing your praises all over the world because you're powerful and you treated me with human dignity. Q: Where do they see the proof of the humiliation? A: It's everywhere. You don't think it's humiliating to have a foreign force come into your land? You see, Muslims don't have this nation state idea. There's a tribe called Bani Tamin. It's one of the biggest tribes in Saudi Arabia and in Iraq, and they're intermarried. The West doesn't seem to understand that. The Moroccans feel the Iraqi pain as their own. It's one pain. So when you see some American soldier banging down a door and coming into a house with all these women in utter fear who've done nothing, that's humiliation, and it's going to enrage people. And what are we doing there? There are no weapons of mass destruction. They were never a threat to us. You know, Shakespeare wrote a play called Julius Caesar, and it was all about the danger of pre-emptive strikes. Brutus is convinced by Cassius to kill Caesar. Why? Because Caesar's ambitious, because he might declare himself king. And the end of that play, everybody dies; it's just disaster. That's the tragedy of pre-emptive strikes. Q: What goes through your mind when you hear about all these roundups of young Muslims who are supposedly plotting things in London and in Toronto? A: We keep being told about these roundups, and in the end, they're more aspirational than operational. I'd love to have been in the meeting when they thought that one up. It seems to me that they're just a lot of bumbling fools out there. Q: On which side of the equation? A: On both sides. I mean, that's part of the problem. Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, and I think that's really what we're dealing with here, incompetence. Both sides have been incredibly ineffective at achieving their goals-- at least their stated goals. Q: I'm trying to get a measure of just how concerned people should really be though. A: Listen, hurricanes are a much greater threat to us right now. Katrina did much more damage than anything the terrorists could ever put together. Yeah, there's nuclear weapons are out there and that certainly is a concern. That's the job of these intelligence people to stop that, right? But stop making us all live in fear and telling us about orange and red levels. All that nonsense just simply has to stop. We need to calm down and think at a deeper level. People can't think when their minds are clouded with fear. The fear tactic is a tactic that's used by people who want to maintain control, and it's very effective. A democracy is predicated on an educated citizenry. You cannot have a democracy with people that are more interested in what Nicole Kidman is doing or whoever the latest fashion model is. If that's your interest, democracy can't survive. You also have corporate interests here. We have an arms industry in the West that is our No. 1 industry. It's bigger than anything-- automobiles, everything. Now if you don't have reasons to build weapons, where do all those contracts go? Q: Your job is to recruit young people into a more constructive project. A: Well, I'm not a recruiter . Q: You are definitely an influence. A: I've got my own personal projects, like my school and my seminary. But at this point in my life, I'm actually just trying to put some balance out there because I feel that there's an incredible amount of disequilibrium in the way people are acting and the way they're thinking. There are irrational fears. If you see a woman wearing a hijab and fear is your first thought, something's really wrong. How do you racially profile terrorists when 90percent of the world falls into that? Mexicans look like Arabs, for God's sake, and anybody can change their name. I mean Abdullah can change his name to Eduardo. It's not going to be difficult, if they're clever. So how do you profile people? Q: Six years ago, there were probably the same number of disenchanted young people in chat rooms and coffee houses complaining and
Boycott Israel [IslamCity] interview with Shaykh Hamza Yusuf
INTERVIEW With Sheik Hamza Yusuf Hamza Yusuf was born in Washington State and grew up in Northern California, where he lives with his wife and five children. He converted to Islam in 1977 and spent 10 years studying Islam in the Middle East where he followed a more classic interpretation of the religion. After the attacks of 9/11, Yusuf emerged as a respected Islamic scholar, advising both the White House and the Arab League. In recent years, he has focused his teachings on bridging the widening gap between the West and the Muslim world. In this interview, he talks about tyranny and incompetence on both sides and offers his prescription for creating more common ground. This is an edited transcript of an interview that took place in September 2006. Q: Linden MacIntyre: What are the roots of Muslim rage? A: Hamza Yusuf: If you had one word to describe the root of all this rage, it's humiliation. Arabs in particular are extremely proud people. If you look at what happened in Lebanon recently, the Arabs kind of raised their head-- they think it's a big victory, the fact that their whole country was destroyed and over a thousand people were killed, many of them children. Why is it a victory? Because they fought back. That's all. OK, you can crush us into the Earth, but you're not going to get us to submit. And I think that's deeply rooted in Muslim consciousness, the idea of not submitting to anything other than God. You can abuse me, but you're not going to win me over. But if you treat me with respect and dignity, I'm going to fall in love with you. I'm going to sing your praises all over the world because you're powerful and you treated me with human dignity. Q: Where do they see the proof of the humiliation? A: It's everywhere. You don't think it's humiliating to have a foreign force come into your land? You see, Muslims don't have this nation state idea. There's a tribe called Bani Tamin. It's one of the biggest tribes in Saudi Arabia and in Iraq, and they're intermarried. The West doesn't seem to understand that. The Moroccans feel the Iraqi pain as their own. It's one pain. So when you see some American soldier banging down a door and coming into a house with all these women in utter fear who've done nothing, that's humiliation, and it's going to enrage people. And what are we doing there? There are no weapons of mass destruction. They were never a threat to us. You know, Shakespeare wrote a play called Julius Caesar, and it was all about the danger of pre-emptive strikes. Brutus is convinced by Cassius to kill Caesar. Why? Because Caesar's ambitious, because he might declare himself king. And the end of that play, everybody dies; it's just disaster. That's the tragedy of pre-emptive strikes. Q: What goes through your mind when you hear about all these roundups of young Muslims who are supposedly plotting things in London and in Toronto? A: We keep being told about these roundups, and in the end, they're more aspirational than operational. I'd love to have been in the meeting when they thought that one up. It seems to me that they're just a lot of bumbling fools out there. Q: On which side of the equation? A: On both sides. I mean, that's part of the problem. Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, and I think that's really what we're dealing with here, incompetence. Both sides have been incredibly ineffective at achieving their goals-- at least their stated goals. Q: I'm trying to get a measure of just how concerned people should really be though. A: Listen, hurricanes are a much greater threat to us right now. Katrina did much more damage than anything the terrorists could ever put together. Yeah, there's nuclear weapons are out there and that certainly is a concern. That's the job of these intelligence people to stop that, right? But stop making us all live in fear and telling us about orange and red levels. All that nonsense just simply has to stop. We need to calm down and think at a deeper level. People can't think when their minds are clouded with fear. The fear tactic is a tactic that's used by people who want to maintain control, and it's very effective. A democracy is predicated on an educated citizenry. You cannot have a democracy with people that are more interested in what Nicole Kidman is doing or whoever the latest fashion model is. If that's your interest, democracy can't survive. You also have corporate interests here. We have an arms industry in the West that is our No. 1 industry. It's bigger than anything-- automobiles, everything. Now if you don't have reasons to build weapons, where do all those contracts go? Q: Your job is to recruit young people into a more constructive project. A: Well, I'm not a recruiter . Q: You are definitely an influence. A: I've got my own personal projects, like my school and my seminary. But at this point in my life, I'm actually just trying
