The Qur'an as Geopolitics w/Indi.ca

Adnan Husain: Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim. Salam, hello, peace to you all, and welcome to another edition of the program. I'm Adnan Hussain, historian of medieval Mediterranean and Islamicate world history, back with another edition of our discussions on history, religion, politics. And today's topic is one that I've been thinking about and sometimes speaking about that I also hope to do more work on, which is the relationship between religion and resistance in this era of confrontation between colonizing empires, capitalist imperialism, and resistance as it has taken shape, particularly in West Asia and in Gaza since the beginning of the genocide, in its most open and aggressive phase in Gaza two and a half years ago, since October 7th, 2023. And that is the theme really of religion and resistance. And I think it's been impossible in some ways to really understand what's been happening without having an appreciation of the religious resources upon which the steadfast, resilient, uh people of gaza have uh demonstrated in surviving this genocide and resisting it but also in all the axis of resistance fronts it's been important to understand the place of faith uh you know in their world view and in the ways that it has shaped their actions and conduct during the course of resistance and so it's been important in that context to take into account their theological beliefs but above all you know the quran as the fundamental source text for muslims and if anybody has noticed the communications of whether it was abu ubaidah or you know leaders of like sheikh hassan nasrallah the martyred leader before his martyrdom or Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, and all of the communications that may come out in official sources, they very often refer to and use verses of the Quran in precise ways to connect with their motivations or their interpretations of the situation to reflect on the principles that are guiding them. But very often as Muslims, I can speak for myself, we don't often think of them as applied texts to current events we think of them as you know timeless moral injunctions or propositions and it's left to us sometimes in the way that they're conveyed to us in sermons in our own reading to try and make connections to our world and to make them meaningful somebody who's done a really good job of actually connecting uh the quran to current events uh is my guest today indy from indy.ca um indy firstly welcome to the program it's uh wonderful to have you here thank you adnan i'm actually a big fan of the program if you guys haven't listened i've been going through the backlog and it's fantastic for walking around during the energy crisis Yes, well, a lot more walking and less driving probably for everybody soon. But so that's great. But yes, I mean, I would encourage everybody to check out your blog if they're not already subscribing or consulting it on Substack and as a subscriber to get the full. But even what's publicly available, there are a lot of like amazing articles with fantastic insights, beautifully written. really just a wonderful resource during this time. But one thing that you've done is dedicated some time to reading the Quran and interweaving it into your examination of the events that are taking place and on some of the programs that we've been on together as a co-host of Resistance is Fertile podcast in our Iran versus the Epstein Empire series. you have on occasion said, well, I read the Quran to understand current events. And essentially, as the title of this episode is, is Quran as geopolitics. And I wanted to ask you, How, you know, first tell us a little bit about yourself, because you're not a Muslim, where that would be conceivably considered a natural thing to do. Although I would say even then, Muslims don't necessarily think of it always that way. But, you know, also, how did you come to, you know, approaching the Quran, you know, in this fashion?

Indi: So I'm Buddhist and I was raised, my mother is Buddhist. And then my dad was kind of like a devout atheist for most of his life. His parents were Christian Methodist and he, for whatever reason, that did not go down well with him. And he was pretty devoutly atheist. But my father told me, to read the bible if i wanted to understand western literature and if i wanted to understand basically the english language and that always stuck with me because as i as the gaza genocide changed everybody i think i guess we see the acute phase right it's changed people for decades before But I started reading communiques from Hezbollah, from Al-Qassam, from Ansar Allah. And I realized I didn't get the references they were making. Because biblical references are throughout Western communication. And Quranic references are through, I guess you could say, West Asian communication. It's just there. It's like part of the... gestalt it's you need to sort of understand that literary base to understand literally anything happening and i just wasn't getting the references they would say among the believers there are men they would talk about spiders web they would talk about it was not you who threw and i was like what are you referring to i've i've like once i was stuck in dubai back when you had to reconfirm flights and i got stuck there and this was back before it became like fully satanic and i walked around i couldn't find anything to read but the quran and i read that and i remember reading it and i remember feeling physically moved by it like you know the phrase god fearing like i felt that like i i just felt something from the book but i you know i got out of that layover i never i never finished it again but then during during the genocide it coincided with three ramadans now so each ramadan i've taken the time to fast because i remember the first ramadan you know people in gaza were just purely starving and i was like how can i eat it made sense at that time but to me the quran is the most sort of user-friendly religion in that if you follow ramadan you have a set time where you can read the quran and it tells you sort of when to wake up when to sleep when to read when and landing gives you pretty high level of hygiene throughout the whole thing and mental hygiene and so i read the quran through that and then through that i was able to understand more what the resistance was saying And as you can tell from my voice, I was raised in the West. I grew up in America, in Ohio, and then I studied in Canada and Montreal. And it's kind of ambient, the Islamophobia there. So I would say I've definitely been racist towards Muslims, just mentally or just ignorantly, callously. It's a weird situation where you think about Islam a lot, actually. It's sort of been the enemy du jour for my entire adult life. But you don't read it much. like the west is full of all these enemies that you talk about their name a lot but you don't listen to their words so there's just almost this pavlovian response you're supposed to have to hearing a muslim-sounding name that's how they use the word hamas because they've said al-qaeda before they've said isis before and they expect you to sort of just salivate like pavlovian dogs of war but as i got older i started treating their condemnations as reading recommendations and if you actually read from these guys directly i also read the isis magazine for a while and that was just terrible that's and it was all and then one thing i noticed was that was like well produced i think that was like western produced it was it was a fascinating magazine but if you read like the other guys they're like oh these are this is a coherent philosophy it doesn't have to be your philosophy and there's actually nothing within that message even within the quran it's not there's no compulsion in it and it it's but the information is there and i would say from my experience like i've had a religious experience as a buddha i was buddhist in in the practice and my mom like made us sit and meditate but i was like this is making me sleepy until i was like 18 19 and then she dragged me to like a monastery in west virginia actually and i had a religious experience there but after that i felt very connected to people of any faith So in Montreal, I went and prayed with Jewish people and they also had like free food on certain days. So I will go there. And then I've prayed with like Christians and with my Muslim friend here. When you go traveling around Sri Lanka, if you're ever stuck, you can like stay in a mosque. They'll let you sleep there. And same thing for covilles and temples, actually. And so... I actually felt a great connection to people of faith, of any faith. I'm aware that the first Quran, sorry, the first commandment of all these religions is to only worship one God. So what I joke is that I follow all the commandments except one. But it's not just an academic thing for me. I feel it. What I say is I don't know if I believe in God, but I definitely fear them. And And I feel great sort of connection to people of faith. And I think it's just important. Like if you just live the world based on worldly things, I don't think it makes you a very good person or very happy.

Adnan Husain: That's so many interesting things in there and shared sentiments that I really appreciate and feel similarly. But you've had a really kind of intense immersion, it seems, in multiple religions and religious experiences and that openness. perhaps is one reason why you've been able to approach the quran in a sympathetic way despite as you say the ambient islamophobia that circulates in the west and obviously you know since the global war on terror is like sharpened as an ideology of the enemy and has been used so i don't know comprehensively you might say to organize western politics in various ways so uh but I find that a lot of people actually have difficulty approaching and reading the Quran. And I would say even Muslims in some ways, because it's a very different kind of scriptural text than the Bible, say, for example, which has narratives, has a story. The gospels are stories, biographical stories of Jesus' life. The Hebrew Bible, Old Testament begins with these narratives from creation of the world. It's like a chronicle, creation of the world, and then this genealogical following, these people, family that becomes a people, and the establishment of their political entity and kingdoms and so on. And so it's like a chronicle. It's like a narrative. biographical stories. And, you know, those are kind of easy to follow as stories, as narratives, whereas the Quran doesn't have that many kind of full, complete stories. You know, one chapter, the Surah Yusuf, the story of Joseph, you know, is a full narrative from you know, covering some of the episodes, you might say, in the end of Genesis, that is, you know, where Joseph's narrative is told that there's a Quran's surah or chapter that's dedicated to that story. And the Quran itself seems to recognize that this is pretty atypical and different because it says at the very beginning, this is Ahsan al-Qasas, this is the best of stories, right? It's almost the only kind of full extended story. you might you know find a couple of other places where like the moses story in confrontation with the pharaoh is told in an extended sort of way as part of a surah but so that's not that usually these things are scattered these episodes that might be references to biblical prophets and patriarch patriarchs and prophets scattered throughout the quran and there's a lot more of injunctions and interpretations of those stories or the conclusions you should draw from them and so sometimes that's off-putting for people partly also because the context is kind of missing in terms of the historical moment of what was happening when this verse came and a lot of this early islamic scholarship you know to answer questions for readers maybe you know muslims themselves trying to understand the quran generated this literature of called like uh the occasions of revelation to explain okay this is what was happening when this verse came down and it was an answer to this problem or this circumstance and so on and so you know understanding the quran has often been about locating it very specifically in its context, but that scholarship is not always available to people. And what's interesting is you've been able in some ways to kind of connect verses to their circumstances, not of their revelation and being set down, but circumstances of their appropriate interpretation, you might say, of how they relate to a contemporary context. situation. So I think that's quite interesting. And I wonder if maybe we might look at some examples of verses that have come to stick with you because they connected with a certain situation. That's quite a funny way of putting it.

Indi: Because basically I'm reading it wrong, right? Because when I read it, I have very little context, but I have the present pain and the present sort of like spiritual dilemma and like geopolitical dilemma that I'm in. So when you read something, it's like if you read something looking for something, you read it differently. And I very much read it looking for connection, not connection. to the ancient context, but to the present context. And I find a lot of that. I find a lot of that, especially like, okay, like my favorite references are to the desert Arabs. I don't know what they're referring to actually, but when I read it, I'm like, yeah, like Dubai, like they're talking about Dubai. I don't know if that's really it. But then for me, it's like those, it talks about, you know, you're going to build these castles and you take protectors other than God and you think that will help you. And I'm like, yeah, you guys, it's, I'm like, it's talking about today. It's talking about places I know. It's talking about people I know.

Adnan Husain: and i i'm i'm reading it wrong obviously i should go back and read the context but no no actually no what i'm saying in a way is that um your approach is actually finding the contemporary relevance, which is in fact actually what the goal of reading the Quran is meant to be. It's not meant to be a discussion of the historical circumstances, except as a guide to understanding, you know, people may have had questions. What is this verse, you know, referring to? And so then you do that work to make sense of it. As a scripture, okay, so as a religious text, rather than just say as a historical text that you would have scholarship to help you understand, as a religious text, obviously it wouldn't be considered working if it didn't become relevant to people in their circumstances after the moment of its revelation. And so I think the way you're reading it, in fact, is actually the right way to read it, is the more spiritually... and cognitively alive way of making the Quran relevant. Like, you know, that's actually how it's supposed to be read. And I agree with you completely that those references maybe to the arrogant Quraysh, you know, that those could be, you know, references to these GCC, you know, Gulf vassal states and their arrogance and their abandoning of Muslims moral uh responsibilities for the care of others and thinking that their wealth immunizes them from the will of god and the fortunes of the world and it's a blasphemous kind of characterization that the quran condemns the quraish i think reading you know these these um Dubai and, you know, like Bahraini elites and Qatari elites in that light is probably very opposite, you know, an example of the method that you were talking about that is actually more in line with like how a believer, a believing, you know, not necessarily Muslim, as in your case, but a believer reads the Koran. So I'm wondering, do you have any other good examples that leapt off the page for you in this period? And you're muted, sorry.

Indi: Sorry, we could start with some of the stuff that like got me. So the stuff from the resistance that got me like into it. So one of the verses is, so Hezbollah, whenever someone is martyred, this is always included. It says, among the believers are men who have been true to their covenant with Allah. Some of them have fulfilled their vow and some are still waiting and they have not changed in the least. And And that comes... So that's in reference to a historical battle I don't know about. But you can see it happening in all the battles in front of you. The Ramadan War, I don't know if it's the 40-day war now, the 12-day war. And in a constant resistance that's been going on now and then for decades before. And then there is that sense that among the believers there are men. That they're like... Because... Muslims, there's billions of Muslims, right? And you encounter them in many ways. But then I think with every religion, there's almost like a fraction that really believes. I feel like maybe the number has been constant from the beginning of like people who actually follow it. Because when I read the Quran, one thing I come across over and over is it is a religion of judgment day. It is a religion where... that this world, and I know there's words for this, which I forget, but that this world is not everything. It says it's a pastime or a sport, or when you awaken on judgment day, it'll be like, people, they'll ask, how long were you on earth for? And you're like, oh, it was like a day or part of a day. there's this and that's a that's not how you grow up in the secular world right especially in the capitalist world your thought that everything is about you everything is about the self everything is about gratification what you can accumulate in this world and the quran throughout is very clear that it's about Not this day, but that day. And one thing that affected me was during the Gaza resistance, I saw a young man who was mortally wounded. And Israel released this footage thinking that I guess it would scare people. But I saw him in his last moments kneeling to pray. And I was like, what is this? Like, what is this? faith that makes you really stand up in face of such impossible odds. And like, what is he kneeling to? And I found that very inspiring and very challenging. And then when I've And then when I've read like the, so, you know, in addition to the Quran, I've read some stuff by Ali Khamenei and he's written some commentaries on it in 1979 and 1976, I think. And he always talks about throughout the Quran, this is something which is repeated, which is have faith and do good works, faith and do good works. Those who have do faith and do good works will, you know, on judgment day will be, I mean, I think they'll be given their deeds in their right hand and everybody else will be giving their stuff in their left and feel bad about it. And that challenged me personally because from the experience, my experience is mostly with sort of Christian literature and Christianity in that sense. And especially in the American sense, it's very much about if you believe in Jesus, you are forgiven and you're kind of almost done. And I'm not saying that's in the true Christian sense, but in the evangelical American sense, it is very much almost like just an excuse. And even within Judaism, there's the idea that if you're Jewish, you're kind of done and you're chosen. But what I found from within the Quran is the whole faith and do good works, the faith and do good works repetition. And Hamani goes into it in detail, but that's hard. the doing good works part. You're supposed to strive with your possessions. You're supposed to give. I mean, Jesus said that also. There's a story in the Bible where a rich man invites Jesus and he's like, oh, okay, I like what you're saying. What do I do? And then Jesus is like, give up your stuff and follow me. And then the rich man is like, oh, no, no, not like that. And I think that's how most of us feel towards faith. It really pushes us. But then with the acts of resistance we're seeing, we're seeing acts of of faith and acts of doing good works. I don't think you can understand one without the other. It's hard to understand faith without the works, but you also can't understand the works without the faith. And I think with the Islamic resistance, there's kind of this resistance to understand it as islamic but i don't think you can understand it in another way even with like iran you can't understand their sort of strategy of war without the quran like why did they negotiate well in in uh in the spoils of war it does talk about if they desist then you need to sort of desist also this is not a concept in like western total war but it is a concept in in in islamic war and i was always taught that you know islamic war is just mindless and savage and convert everybody and cut their heads off until they're muslim and there's absolutely nothing like that it's in it's in fact self-defensive to the point of if you follow normal war theory you're like this is like don't do that like it's it's self-defensive to the point of of like it seems like and you can see that in the shia stuff which you obviously i'm just started reading that but this idea of like martyrdom is also very i mean and there's a lot of verses like obviously the cover martyrdom as well, but in the martyrdom, like, I think that maybe doesn't make sense, but so there's one verse which I was reading, which is, I mean, this is comes from Hamas and they say, so let those who sell the life of this world for the hereafter fight in the cause of Allah and he who fights in the cause of Allah and is killed or achieves victory will bestow on him a great ward. And then they repeat that all the time. And like, they believe that and then believing that makes them acting like that faith makes them do, or it helps them do good works and it enables them to survive great pressure. So I've actually found that very, not just inspiring, but I actually don't think you can understand what's going on without reading the Quran. Like that's my honest opinion. And I don't think it's that crazy an investment of time. If you do it during Ramadan, it's like a month of your life and it's quite spaced out. But I would say at least read the first two surahs. And if anybody's listening to this or hasn't read it, just read it. Like you don't understand the news unless you understand the Quran now.

Adnan Husain: Right, right. Yeah. I mean, I've been thinking actually of trying to start a Quranic reading circle online for people who might be Muslims, might not be Muslims, but are interested in a kind of liberation perspective on it. I think that would be interesting. So everybody should be encouraged, I think, to read it just for, as you're saying, to try and really understand the resistance and what's happening and how it shapes their understanding. Now, in the past, sometimes the way people have read the Quran and tried to use it as explanatory has been, you know, orientalist in that they're imprisoned in this kind of, you know, the text says this, so they must do that. And if they don't do that, then, well, it's because they're not really good Muslims. And, you know, it's this kind of literalist sort of application what they miss is the spiritually alive adaptive maybe we would even say dialectical way in which the resistance reads the quran and also i think the way you've been reading uh the quran in terms of in relation to contemporary events both as insight to the resistance but also as helping explain you know how how uh how this uh good works as you're saying how they're conceived and how those can be understood as as as meaningful but something else that you said at the very outset i thought um was very interesting and important and something that i've seen also in critique uh even in my recent interview with uh hussein assaf with vocal politics in lebanon from last week when I was asking him about this question of Shi'i revolutionary theology in the resistance in southern Lebanon. And he made the point that we don't think of things, of course we think in materialist terms, about the character of forces, but also there's something more that is meaningful, which is this kind of spiritual orientation, this idea that worldly life and just victory in worldly matters isn't the most important or the only thing. It doesn't mean you ignore it. It doesn't mean you do stupid things, sell your life cheaply or not care about this world or not care about injustices of... you know, inequality and poverty and all of that. But it is this kind of sense that you have to have something higher. And I think this is difficult for people trained in a capitalist mentality. And even the critique of capitalism only as a materialist analysis and critique of it is missing something, it seems to me, about human motivation, why dignity is so important. And so because that's what's left is are you going to be a person of principle and adhere to your principles that call you to righteous ideals of action and sacrifice? And that may mean you are having to sacrifice your life and be a martyr. But there's dignity is more important. And that's a really important source of this resistance spirit. is that, okay, yeah, it may not make sense to keep fighting against you because you're gonna destroy my life, take my land, do all these things we may lose, but to surrender and to be humiliated and subservient and to accept injustice, would kind of make us not human. And we need to be dignified in our, at least the dignity is something that can never be taken away. If you adhere to those principles, that has like an incredible power, you know? So that's what you said about that is, is, is interesting because if you only look at it from a materialist perspective, it's hard to understand. what's the place of dignified resistance here, you know, in this calculus, you know, like, I mean, it's just a materialist calculus.

Indi: It doesn't make complete sense, you know? You know, I've been reading the Quran very much out of like pain. And then you, because you see people who are just, the worst and who value the worst getting away with it. Like you see someone like say like Donald Trump rise to the top from just being awful his whole life. And even the people who are raised up in society seem to lie, cheat, steal. And you see that in your life and in the news all the time, the news is full of it. The news is almost advertising for sin. It's like sin and just, if you sin hard enough and with enough talent, then you can rise to the top. But then when you read the Quran, it says, you know, let them laugh a little now and weep and return for their misdeeds. This idea of a judgment day, I think it's very important. It's obviously important. The Quran talks about it all the time. But the idea that someday the people will be judged for their misdeeds. And then the people, even if they're not rewarded in this life, the Quran also says, like, you get rewarded in this life as well by doing good. I think doing good is actually just the best long-term strategy. It's the most sort of... most stable sort of way to live your life if you cheat and steal it's it has problems in this life as well but the crown says very clearly that there's there's a there's a reckoning like there's a day and when when you're in this world when they're getting away with it and when they're rubbing it in your face right and they're basically trying to humiliate you and saying look i can take your dignity it cost me nothing it cost me nothing and it means nothing to me and your lives mean nothing to me and your children mean nothing Just the idea that your children do matter and that your dignity does matter and that your lives do matter. And also, this to me is important, that those guys will get it. And the Quran does say that, you know, those guys, the people that do wicked, they will regret it. And I believe that. I have to believe that because otherwise I'd be so angry. And the Quran really does speak to that. And what strikes me is, I mean, it's the same God for any people of the book, but even within Buddhism, there's this idea that this world is illusion and that the focus on the self is actually the root of suffering. And then you can see that in, I mean, I grew up in America under capitalism, of course, and the focus is on yourself. But then you see the people who follow that. My kids love Michael Jackson. We just watched the Michael Jackson movie. And he just, but like that destroyed, like, what is it? He reached the pinnacle of what you're supposed to be under that society and just absolute misery, like requires anesthetic to sleep. Like there's something there. There's a huge just hole at the center of that where God should be, where something spiritual should be. And I think that speaks to people not just in the resistance, but in your daily resistance to the cultural pressure to just be an awful person and try and get away with it and make as much money and step on as many people as possible. and that's not a satisfying way to live for the person doing it you know it's it's not just for the people who get humiliated and those people are sometimes we talk to palestinian people on on the resistance is fertile podcast and i think like i don't know if this is a weird way to say but i'm like you at least are not humiliated you know you're suffering but you have your dignity and then we who are outside we're not suffering we have every comfort but we don't have that dignity and I fear that. When I read the Quran, actually, I'm scared because I'm like, I'm not doing enough. I know I could do more. And it comforts me and it challenges me in many ways. To be honest, it challenges me more because I think we all know that we can be better people and there can be a better world. But the Quran says that this world is kind of like a test. This world is a test. people and i i'm failing i think most people are failing but then we also see in in this life that some people are succeeding then i think i think of the martyrs and then so that helps you understand right so when you see the people who are martyred and they're like in hezbollah where they're saying people say congratulations sometimes in in around people say congratulations and that doesn't make sense if you're like oh this life is everything my bank account is everything that's all anything else is just crazy like suicide but you can understand that because if you read the quran like yeah they strived like with their possessions with their lives they didn't run towards getting themselves killed they tried to be but they didn't they didn't fear they didn't fear death And I think there's just something there for everybody in that it's not just this life and it's not just this person. That's a very modern concept. We are part of families. We are part of what the Palestinians called Samud, like a community. And then there's comfort there. There's a better way of living than being alone. And I think it's, so it's not just about understanding the resistance, it's about understanding life. And I think what you're getting here is not just geopolitics or even like philosophy. I think it's just, it's true. There's a great amount of truth in the Quran. And if you read it, within the Quran it says one of the proofs of the Quran is the Quran. So even when I first read it, when I first, you know, when I was in Dubai and I felt like God-fearing, It's beautiful. You're not supposed to read it in translation, but even in translation, there's just a magnificence and a beauty and a poetry, which to me cannot really come from man. To me, this is God-given.

Adnan Husain: Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, that is, you know, the Quran's case for itself is to say, you know, like, try and bring something like it, and you won't be able to do so because this is from God. But also that something you were talking about just resonated and reminded me again of... why like doing wrong and doing evil for narcissistic or self aggrandizing or selfish reasons is so dangerous to oneself. you know i mean and even in in western philosophy you know socrates was basically kind of saying that you know that like if you do bad you're really just harming your i mean you are harming others but you're also really harming yourself like the only way is to try and be a just person to do the good you know that it is as you were saying the kind of long-term right strategy even though others may take short-term you know uh decisions to privilege themselves over others or you know do the dishonest thing for short-term kind of gain but you know there's risks to that uh both because eventually there's some kind of accountability but also you are debasing yourself that is a very dangerous thing to do and if you have a whole society that is built upon accepting debasement of oneself, which I think is one of the problems of capitalism is the greed is good, is a reversal of the moral order that for thousands of years, people understood that greed is extremely dangerous, corrosive, corruptive, that it will prevent you from doing any good and it will be dangerous to yourself and society. You know that that was kind of reversed and elevated now to some kind of principle. That's a very dangerous sort of condition to be in. And it reminds me of the Quranic phrase, you know, well, in the Adam and Eve story, you know, when they disobeyed God's commandment not to, you know, kind of eat from the forbidden fruit. And the Quran has a very different way of dealing with this than the Quran. biblical story. It has resonances with the biblical story, but it's less this kind of ontological problem than it is a question of how disobedience has terrible consequences for you. Because what Adam and Eve say to God after they have done this wrong thing is they say, God, we have wronged ourselves. We have oppressed ourselves. ourselves and if you don't forgive us then we will surely be among the losers like so it's the recognition that you have not like angered god you know like you haven't done something that affects god you've done something that's harmful to yourself and if you don't expiate that somehow and try and do better um you know then you will Be losers, losers in the sense both in this world and in the next, in the time of judgment and accountability. You will be a loser because you didn't take the opportunities that you had. And while at the same time, like the Quran also talks a lot about tawbah or forgiveness or tawbah or expiation, penitential forgiveness. turning towards god away from what you've done that was wrong and turning towards god and that this is in fact actually a more beautiful thing than always being uh sinless right you know like being perfect it's actually and there's hadith and things that interpret this that it's actually god loves the believer who sinned but turns in you know penitential kind of spiritual grief as it were at how they have wronged themselves and turns to god for So that kind of sense that we're doing it to ourselves is, I think, an important kind of recognition that I heard in what you were saying.

Indi: but look at the people who follow the path of materialism and they're not happy like it doesn't lead to happiness like i mean you end up like what do you think what are they doing like you end up abusing people to like feel anything and that's not obviously the people are not in like healthy relationships or they're not having healthy lives

Adnan Husain: yeah i mean i think you're you're absolutely correct look at all the maladies you know you might say in kind of capitalist society western capitalist society um pure materialism has clearly not made uh people happy it's given them you know greater material security many other kinds of benefits but uh look at all the depression all the know alcoholisms you know suicide um you know these are things that are not so known despite the terrible poverty and stress and difficulties that people in the global south go through all the time but there's a different kind of attitude towards and there's some sense of community and solidarity which actually is much more sustaining than this individualism and the stress and the pressure that goes with defining success individually in the context of materialistic, capitalistic consumption and wealth acquisition, right? Like that's, it's not actually very fulfilling. So I think that's an important point. But I wanted to get also to, you wrote, I mean, maybe we might look at some of the verses in Unfal, you know, Spoils of War, eighth chapter that, relate to many contemporary events. But I also would say that I think you quoted many verses that came from it in a wonderful post that you wrote last summer. understanding Iran through the Quran. And I would say you could equally say, and you also do talk about some of the other resistance movements. You could say understanding the axis of resistance or the Islamic resistance through the Quran. And you used, I think, a lot of verses that come from Surah Anfal, The Spoils of War, because it is a verse that really talks about war, peacemaking, principles of negotiation, which is, again, an interesting thing about the Quran is that the context in which it was revealed, you know, many verses are from this period of the Meccan era, which is when the Prophet and the early Muslim community were facing the arrogant wealthy quraish and their idolatrous but more than just their idolatrous kind of worship also their um the quran charges them with thinking that they are ghani that they are wealthy But it also means it's one of the 99 names of God, which means the self-subsisting, right? The independent, like not depending on anyone else. And these people in their arrogance and their wealth thought that that immunized them from having to depend on anybody. And likewise, that meant that they didn't have to express solidarity or communal obligations and support for the poor and the sick and the weak within their own community. tribes and the quran has a kind of social theology that is both theology of idolatry and rejecting that but also of the arrogating to oneself of something that is a characteristic of god alone that then undermines the social fabric and social solidarity and communal responsibility And so those kinds of principles are there and relevant in that context. But I wanted to kind of come to some of these, points in in surat anfal and in your use of them uh to try and understand and i would recommend everyone go check out this wonderful blog post that's available um as well because you put a lot of things together but to understand something like you know what are the principles behind um making war and um also you know making peace right these were kind of interesting things that we could learn something, it seems, from.

Indi: Yeah, it's part of reading the Quran for daily news. A lot of stuff, if you read it from a purely sort of Western real politic lens, you're like, well, there's a bunch of refueling aircraft on the ground now, as we speak, in Ben Gurion Airport. Why don't they light them up now? Like, why wouldn't you do that? But But then if you read the Quran, it's very clearly self-defensive. So, I mean, this is not, I don't know if this is. So one thing I find that describes the Americans is it says when they're told do not cause corruption in the land, they say we are only promoters of peace. But it is they who are really causing corruption, though they do not realize it. That always sticks with me because I'm like, I know those guys. Like that's you're talking to me. You're talking about right now. And then, but then it's even in the face of that, even in the face of someone else being evil, you're not supposed to do evil. And then it talks about also, I think this is from, I don't know if it's from Al-Anfal, but it says, yet here you are slaying one another and driving some of your own people. This is speaking to the sort of the apostles, like the Comprador regimes across the region. Here you are slaying one another and driving some of your own people from their homelands, aiding one another against them, committing sin and aggression. and but if they came to you as captives you would ransom them surely their very expulsion was unlawful for you do you believe in one part of the book and deny another part of it those of you who act thus shall be rewarded with disgrace in this world and with a severe punishment on the day of resurrection god is never unaware of what you do such are they who buy the life of this world at the price of the hereafter their punishment shall not be lightened for them nor shall they be helped And that's, again, to me speaking to today, even Americans are technically people of the book. I think they've gone so far afield that they're people of like, I don't know, Facebook, but like... But like Americans, like Jews, anybody with like a heart in their body, this should speak to you. And it does speak to the current affairs. But then to return to Al-Anfal, the part that I come back to is it says, "...believers, when you meet and battle those who deny the truth, never turn your backs on them. Whoever turns his back on such an occasion, unless it be a stratagem of war or an endeavor to join another group, will indeed draw upon himself the wrath of God." And it also says, you did not kill them. It was God who killed them. And when you prophet threw sand at them, it was not you, but God who threw. So when there's the father of the Iranian missile program, I forget his name. It starts with an M. I get it mixed up with Mossadegh. But I was watching a video and he was talking about, I mean, these are engineers. These are scientists. And he was like, no, the number one thing is like Allah. The number one thing is God. And that's just a very different way of approaching it. But then that affects how you use the missile, right? And you can see that Iran and the resistance take great pains to avoid civilian casualties, even among groups where the civilians are kind of off-duty military. But they take great pains. There's that idea of proportionality in the Quran that, you know, as they strike at you, you can strike back at them. But you never see them striking back at a hospital or a school. There are still just, you know, like limits to that. And they die for that. Like, because they're not firing like wobbly scuds and stuff like Saddam did, which they could have built more of and just lobbed at them. They've taken time to build these precision missiles. But then they die for that. And... But they die for a reason. As you can see, it's more about the wrath of God than the wrath of empire. But that makes them stronger than empire. Because the Quran also says constantly, you can't take protectors other than God. And if God can't protect you, who can? And I think that's true. And I think it leads you to live your life in a different way, but it also leads you to conduct war in a different way. I think the people are expecting them to respond to the West by becoming like the West, and they're fighting differently. The way they fight, they are fighting following a different belief system. And so then it also lays out sort of like the limits on it. It says basically fight them until there's no more religious persecution and religion belongs to God. If they desist, then surely God is watchful if they do. But if they turn away, know that God is your protector, the best of protectors. But there is this idea that if, so we've seen this cycle of ceasefires and then people online are like, why do you believe them? Why do you believe these people? They've lied to you every time before. They've blown up the negotiating parties. Why do you believe them? But it's not about believing the Americans. It's about believing in God. And then God does say, if they desist, You also need to desist. So that explains the current events. It explains why they fight the way they do, why they're not savage, as the Westerners say, why they insist on preserving human life. And it also explains why they entertain these, frankly, real politically meaningless ceasefires. Because you do have to give these people a way out, not because they say so, but because God says so.

Adnan Husain: Yeah, so I mean, Hassan Tehrani Muqaddam is the father of the missile program. Look that up. But I mean, I think Also, however, I would say the Quran is not naive either, you know? Yeah, far from it. It's like you should adhere to these principles. But look, if they're deceptive and they're untrustworthy, which I think obviously that is the case, and I don't think it is, as you're saying, that they believe the Americans. They know that they're deceptive, untrustworthy, and that perhaps they're not – even planning on negotiating in good faith. And it's not that you go into these naively. If they are deceptive and faithless, then you have to fight them, right? The Quran is quite clear is that you give opportunities, chances. In fact, actually, it was something that I wanted to talk with you a little bit about in general, which is that I feel like the temper of these times really fits the kind of uh fits the approach of the quran in having principles but also recognizing that there's some people who simply will not accept the truth accept the reality they're faithless they're so trapped in their own arrogance or self-aggrandizement and selfishness that they will refuse to act in good faith they will refuse to see the truth and those you're just going to have to confront and not have any illusions about uh the need for that but you give them chances to maybe break out of this you give them the opportunity god sends prophets to warn humanity but then there's always some people who just are faithless and resist and so in this time of the two and a half years and of the intense phase of the genocide when we've seen the uh liberal institutions of the post you know world war ii world order international law you know all of these things that were part of the architecture of a world that would maintain western hegemony on its own terms uh but could be uh understood as having universalist appeal and that perhaps we could appeal to these systems of justice and go to the icj and you know all of that nobody believes in any of this anymore anywhere in the world they've seen this is just a time of decision you stand against horrible, genocidal, capitalist imperialism, or are you with resistance for human dignity, right? Like it's like a time of decision and of choice. And I think in some ways the Quran's sort of, jaundiced attitude towards some elements of humanity that will just do evil is also kind of useful in this in this time because if we go back to the surah unfall and those points about uh you know peacemaking you know there are also those uh verses that follow That if they incline to peace, you must also incline to peace. But if they are faithless, fight them. Right. Like don't let them take advantage of you. Right. So, you know, I think I think there's a good balance here for realpolitik with over, you know, with overriding principles that that nevertheless, you may have to kind of deal with people who are simply not going to reciprocate and you will have to confront them.

Indi: And that's one of the parts of the Quran when I read it the first few times, I didn't understand because it said that not that people, it said that like God had made people had like hardened their hearts or like, especially Pharaoh. Like it said that like Moses in the Quran, Musa, like praise to God to sort of, hardened to make pharaoh hardened pharaoh's heart and i was like why would you do that like why would you not like and also like how would i didn't understand that but then as you know two three ramadans in now i'm like oh yeah like their hearts have been hardened and i used to also wonder why it took pharaoh 10 plagues like for me after boils i'd be like i'm done like whatever you want like i'll do it yeah but but let your people go please go yeah go okay But like, I used to wonder why it took 10 play. And now you can see like Americans have gone through what, like 2008 COVID like this. They're still not getting it. But God really has hardened it. It makes sense that some people's hearts have been hardened, that they're closed to the way and to the prophet itself. The Quran says, you know, you'll say this, but they won't. But they're like they're just not changing some people. And that is true. like you can see that you can see that in life and you behave the best you can and you try and show the example you bet the best you can i think saint francis azizi said preach the gospel if necessary use words But you show through your example what you're doing, but you can't, to some degree, you can't change people. And you have to defend yourself. And then the Quran does have that concept of self-defense. So within Buddhism, it's very much about being the Buddha, basically. The Buddha just consciously, it's a path. The Buddha offers a path to enlightenment, a path out of suffering. It's not, and when people asked him questions about other issues like the age of the universe or what you should do in this and that situation, he simply said it's not relevant. But the Quran is much more of a, it gives you a user guide to sort of all aspects of life. And I think one of the big differences, we're talking about the difference between sort of capitalist worldview and this worldview, The Quran is just longer term. So none of its advice is naive. When you look at stuff through the news cycle, you're like, oh, they did that in the news. Why doesn't Iran put something equivalent in the news? But if you're viewing it on a decades timescale or centuries timescale or a day of judgment timescale, you take very different actions. And I think that's what the Quran helps humans do. And as you can see, humans do need a guide, right? You can't And the guide that the capitalists have taken is just capital, like corporations and the next quarter. And you can see what happens with that. The technological republic, you know, these kinds of things. Or like the way Trump lives is just the next news story. But you have to take a guide that guides you a bit further because this life is longer and your family's life is longer. And the Quran gives you sort of a longer term perspective. view. But we're now at what you said is like a time of decision. We're at a time where that all gets sort of crystallized. In Iran, we're seeing the results of years of decades of preparation. In Palestine, when I go back and read the resistance, I go back and read people from Al-Qassam, people from the 20s, 30s, saying the same things in much more desperate circumstances. But you can see that the Quran enables people to think longer and think deeper. And then that gets you to values like dignity. It gets you to values like compassion. It gets you closer to like, you know, your heart than if you live by the news cycle or if you live by the quarterly cycle, it gets you just very close to your body, which is what fades away. But if you're close to your heart and if you're close to God and what lasts, then I think that's where faith gets you.

Adnan Husain: That's interesting. I mean, this longer term kind of sense of time and history. The Quran often talks about the fate of previous peoples as an example that you should consider for yourselves. That look, this is what happened to them. Don't think it can't happen to you. And this is why it happened to them. So avoid those mistakes. And there's a lot, even though it doesn't tell the histories in the same way that say the, books of the hebrew bible you know narrate all of this or the um you know synoptic gospels tell a kind of biographical history a story of of of jesus um there's a lot of reference to uh history uh also i think you know it was an era where there were the remains of previous great civilizations, you know, in the Near East that Bedouin, you know, could visit and see that like, oh, there used to be a big city here and there's just like now kind of rocks and and things and nobody's living there. And like the Quran and even you could say pre-Islamic Arabic poetry also reflected on this, on like the fate of other peoples. But the Quran really moralizes it as a historical lesson for the contemporaries that no matter how great and strong they may become, if they depart from the path of God, they could lose everything. And this is the kind of like thinking that doesn't make sense in the imperial consciousness, right? It's incapable of seeing how you know, rise and decline happens. They've not read their Ibn Khaldun either, you know, 14th and early 15th century Muslim historian who theorized something like you could say the social sciences as a way of explaining history and understanding dynasties coming and going. You know, so it's this kind of imperial consciousness that's antithetical that doesn't appreciate time and the ravages of time or the lessons of history. And that's something that is a warning constantly, you know, in the Quran. And I think even Surah Dhrum, which is an interesting one, because again, that's a geopolitical surah. It's about Rome and Rome's conflict with the Sasanian Persian empire and the fact that they had recently suffered a defeat, but the Quran, you know, predicts that the romans will win but it that's just at the very beginning what it really the rest of the surah or the rest of the chapter is really about like learning something about the fate of past peoples and whether they were faithful to god or not and how that affected their their their fortunes um

Indi: Yeah, as you were speaking, I just flipped open and yeah, that's one of the verses that came up. This is from Al-Hajj, but it says, how many a toy, how many town we destroyed, which was given to wrongdoing so that its roofs fell down and how many well is deserted and how many a lofty castle is in ruins. Have these people not traveled through the land to make their hearts understand and let their ears hear? The truth is not, the truth is that it is not the eyes that are blind, but the hearts that in the bosoms that are blinded. And I just flipped open while you were saying that. That's just what came up. They talk about it a lot.

Adnan Husain: This is an example of, like, it being geopolitically very relevant in that sense. Yes, yes. And they talk about the towns of, like, a place I don't know, but Ad or, like, Hud.

Indi: And they talk about specific places where, you know, this has happened before. And there's an Aboriginal philosopher, Tyson Yankaporta, who says, like, look on the civilizations of the past. There's a reason that they're deserts now. And then this is... So Sheikh Yassin, the founder of Hamas, said this when, like... just everything goes through cycles he calls it he called the quranic cycles for israel but you're young you're middle-aged you're old and then you die and he said any nation built on plunder ends up like that and so he viewed it as sort of like 40-year quranic cycles but i think this is if you live in nature and if you know this then that's obvious, you know, you see things live, you see things die. The Quran talks constantly about the rain comes, it waters the earth, it brings life forth again, and then that life dies again. Anybody who goes outside knows this. But if you live inside, like on a Bloomberg terminal, you don't know this. All you see is like the market going up all the time. You're like, this can go on forever. But this is very short term. thinking and and it's i think satan is a pretty good way of putting it like it's following satan so the quran talks about satan all the time um and then there is this idea that yeah there's temptation that you can get what you want now you can get away with it now and you know deals with the devil are good that he just gets you on the interest rate so i think entire western civilizations take a sort of deal with the devil to think of just the day ahead the life of the body And it leads to suffering for them as well. But it's led to great suffering for people across the world. But I do think like the longer term, higher consciousness, right? I talked about there's a longer path that following faith gets you. And I think the higher consciousness, the idea of deep time, the idea of deep faith, I think we're at a moment of decision, as you said, where that's, we're seeing it emerge. And like God knows people have been waiting.

Adnan Husain: And it's interesting that you mentioned the satanic kind of component to like, what is the Quranic view of Satan? You know, like, I mean, it isn't just this sense of kind of inexplicable, implacable evil. It's actually choices and decisions and false consciousness that is at stake. And above all, supremacist thinking and supremacist logic and arrogance so the fall of uh satan is being unwilling to obey god's command uh to bow down you know before adam this new creation um this theomorphic being right that has both a kind of body but also the spiritual soul But the body is pretty crude, according to Satan, Iblis. He's like, I'm made of fire. And this is somebody made of mud or clay, this material, the dust, without being able to see that there's a spirit that's been breathed in that is connected to the divine in a way that the jinn, creatures of fire, but he thinks fire is a superior nature, gives him a superior nature. And so he asserts in his arrogance that, no, I am superior to this, you know, creature. And we see that in this supremacist kind of logic today is entirely about this kind of, you sense of the superiority of a certain ethno-national or racial class over others.

Indi: And to me, it goes back more directly to sort of creatures of fire. So in Sri Lanka, we were colonized by corporations, right? The crown and the flags were somewhat coincidental. They just kind of gave them like a branding license over the rest of the world, which didn't belong to them. But we were colonized by corporations. And if you look at corporations now, what are they powered by? They're powered by, you know, by energy use. They're powered by fossil fuel use. They're powered by silicon. They're powered by fire. And people have taken these creatures of fire as their protectors. So, I mean, again, this is how I read the Quran based on like my context. But when I hear about Satan or bliss, I think of people that follow God. corporations, things who don't bow to humans, right? They don't bow to natural life. If you look at these other economic systems, you could say communism, you could say Islamic governance. If you read the constitution of Iran, there's this idea that humans and human dignity are at the center of it. But if you look at Western systems, it's really property. Property is Property rights is what they preserve. It's not human rights. It's sort of like I say it's a branding exercise. And analyzing the West based on human rights is like analyzing Coca-Cola based on their advertising. But their actual constitution is corporate constitution. It is creatures, in my opinion, of fire who refused to bow to humans. And again, maybe that's me reading my context into it. But I feel like even Khaldun, if you read him, he seems to get evolution. And you've given me some sheer reading. And I was reading that. I was like, well, these guys get the beginning of the universe pretty down to like a very physical level to a degree that honestly scares me. But... like this knowledge was there. And I think Satan is still here. There's this, there's this saying from the, I get it from the usual suspects, but the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world. He didn't exist. And I was reading something from Ali Hamini in his book on Islamic, Islamic thought. And he talked about Satan is, you know, that voice inside all of you inside us is, telling you to do bad, to go to the shortcut, that it's there, that you're fighting Satan all the time. And yeah, I feel that. And I think within liberal thought, you're talking about like liberals and they have this idea of a universalist thing. There has been just this rejection of Islam specifically, right? But this rejection of God as a way of talking about anything, the idea that you shouldn't talk about that, that's going to be offensive to some people. And I think you can talk about it. Most people in the world have faith to some degree. And I think a lot of this stuff just doesn't make sense if you don't think about it from that higher consciousness level. And I think what we're seeing with resistance now is that Islam is a perfectly valid governing philosophy. It doesn't have to be for every country, because I mean, say Sri Lanka were Buddhist, we should probably find something Buddhist to help us govern. But it's a perfectly valid governing philosophy. And not everyone needs to go to the end of history, which is just accelerates the end of the world and pursue this liberal universalist thing, which really has no concept of human dignity. To me, in my opinion, it serves creatures of fire. It serves Satan.

Adnan Husain: yeah this is very interesting i mean uh islam as a mode of governance um is absolutely anathema right like that is the that is there's islamophobia which is about its illiberal character or You know, some old holdover of like Crusader Christendom's kind of sense of identification and the inimicalness historically of this rival religious culture and civilization.

Indi: You got to the Crusades. I was waiting for it. Sorry.

Adnan Husain: Yeah, it had to come in somewhere. I won't go further. But so there's that older kind of hostility of it as a rival system. But then there's the secular liberal kind of mode of thinking about how it is absolutely irrational and against enlightenment and all of that. Again, like, you know, if you're to see who are the enlightened kind of figures in this context, who are the rational actors, the, you know, it's the steopratic.

Indi: Or Western Enlightenment thinkers. Sorry, Western Enlightenment thinkers were heavily influenced by Islam.

Adnan Husain: Yes, of course, like this is the larger point is that, you know, these cultures and civilizations aren't just so separate. You know, historically, there was so much interaction and sharing and so much of Islamic hate knowledge. And that is because, you know, it was conducted in Arabic and there may have been Christians, Jewish scholars and scientists, as well as Muslims that all participated in producing Islamic and extending kind of what they received from the ancients and critiquing it and developing it. And that that knowledge then was absorbed back and translated into Europe and was very important in the later developments that took place up to the Enlightenment and so forth. But that is a suppressed history because they have to immunize themselves from you know, the taint of the outside influence. It's all just some internal genius of its own, you know, and even when it came from outside, its recovery of our own Greco-Roman, you know, it's like, well, you know, in the ninth century, Al-Jahez was writing about like, uh iconoclasm in um and other movements in uh the eastern roman empire the byzantine empire and saying yeah you guys have really lost it we are the inheritors of this rational greek tradition you guys are really something else and um you know that's all kind of unknown so of course there's that kind of component but you know what i was trying to um you know get at is this is this idea that um You know, Islam has a long history of governance and of being a basis for successful polities. It isn't to say that the way it historically existed and developed is incorrect. know to be uh employed in contemporary times without adaptation and development and you know kind of thinking what makes sense you know in um current social conditions and technologies and modern states you know the way that they're organized etc but it clearly has a history a political philosophy governance that um can be adapted to the modern world. And I think that is exactly what the Islamic Republic of Iran very dangerously poses because there may be ambient Islamophobia, but what's especially dangerous it seems in this moment is when Islam is seen as a successful mode of politics or governance. That's when it becomes like really super dangerous. And the Islamic Republic of Iran in trying to defend its sovereignty in the basis of a different kind of system is that example that has to be crushed, you know, for that reason. And there's an interesting article. I mean, I'd like to do a whole episode on it, but there's an interesting article that was published in Tasnim's kind of strategic studies, Tasnim being the Iranian... news agency, but they have a kind of like think tank that's associated with it, strategic studies, put out an interesting report on why Iran was able to have kind of a successful Islamist uh program that didn't either just get corrupted or get overthrown and an interesting article written about it that you know really says it's because they adapted it to building institutions in a new way So I think that's another thing that I would reflect on what you were saying about it as a mode of governance. That's actually what makes it incredibly threatening.

Indi: Yeah, because it's in a Muslim region, right? So every country in that region is nominally Muslim. Muslim, like Saudi Arabia, like even UAE, they still pose as if they're Muslim governments. But I think they've quite clearly taken protectors other than God, as in quite physically, they take weapons from, I guess, Rome, but from whatever the, I call it white empire, but they've taken weapons from empire, they've taken people. There's reports now that UAE took Iron Dome batteries and Israelis in at the start of the war. They've obviously taken protectors. other than God. Whereas if you look at Iran, they barely take help from anybody. It's not like they're a Russian thing there. They produce their own stuff And if you hear them, they don't, if you hear Israel or even UAE, they're appealing to other countries to save them. They're appealing to America generally. They're appealing to other people to come and save them. And when you hear from the resistance, they don't even appeal to each other. What they do is they tell the people in the region for your own souls. stand up at this time of great testing so Abu Ubaidah right underground under great suffering you never hear him say come save me you never I've never heard him say that what he did say is for the sake of your own souls look at what is happening look at what this means for you for your own souls for yourselves as Muslims and save yourself You don't, like, don't save me. Because Abu Ubaidah, he's saved, right? He's strived. But these people are lost under the terms. I always think about it during Ramadan. Like, are they reading the same book that I am? Because if I was reading the book and I was them, I would be terrified. I would be terrified. Because it's quite clear that you can get away with it now and you can laugh a little now, but you weep for your misdeeds. And I think it's because they've taken protectors other than God, but you're right, that's what makes the West so scared of Iran, because it shows that real Islamic governance, But I think someone else, I was talking to someone else about this, but how the empire tries to devour every rebellion. So Martin Luther King becomes essentially like a stuffed trophy head on the wall. Gandhi gets devoured as everybody needs to be nonviolent, even though obviously in India, Gandhi was part of a larger resistance movement. it devours all the rebellions you can see that it's trying to devour islam it has tried to devour islam it has tried to turn islam into something it's not which is a religion of submission to empire it's not it's a religion of submissions to god and then Iran is showing that and they've got to be eliminated for that. And so it is really a battle. It's an existential battle. I mean, as Al-Sinwar said, it is a religious war. And it's not just religious on Iran's side, obviously. I think it's Religious on the other side, but I mean, I'd say their religion is Satan or Satanism more than anything.

Adnan Husain: Well, it's this religion of empire. It's imperial religion of domination, of genocide, of elimination of the other. I mean, even these apocalyptic scenarios are... framed around the elimination of religious difference. It's like all the Jews will be converted or slaughtered and all the other non-believers slaughtered and only this one community will be saved and will be dominant globally and universally. Even the vision of what they're hoping for and achieving is genocidal elimination of the other. That's rather telltale about the characteristic of, which isn't for all Christians or all Jews and Judaism, but there is imperial forms of all of these religions. What Iran is demonstrating is, as you were saying, a resistance

Indi: interpretation that is guiding their resistance against the seminar does fail different does fail you could see the way stuff is going the amount of time America spends talking about Islam it's like Rome like they would become Muslim if they survived like Barron Trump would like convert at some point and then like America would become some weird corrupted form of Islam I mean I think

Adnan Husain: it's so funny because uh you know this is sort of what historically happened to the invaders of you know once islam crystallized as the you know over centuries it took but once it created a kind of you know commonwealth and was a majoritarian religion in much of the region and capable of building a mass society and the institutions to to express it and support it. Once that happened, you know, there were occasions where crusaders came and they either were like expelled, you know, or the Mongols who were much more dangerous and much more devastating and powerful is that, you know, after two, three generations, you know, 70 years or so, you know, rulers became muslim and they're like good muslim sovereigns i mean so you know there was this they tried to eat it and in fact actually ended up either getting expelled or being absorbed and digested into kind of one version of islamicate rule muslim rulership so that's a kind of interesting thing so we will see you know how this works out um whether the system that the Islamic Republic of Iran is kind of propounding and representing, and which it has from the very beginning in its revolution, which was not meant to just be a Shi'i Iranian revolution, but was meant to be something to revive the independence, sovereignty, and salience of Islam and the Ummah in the rest of West Asia to be free of empire and to truly decolonize, that we're seeing a kind of second round and possibility of it being know expressing itself and that's exactly why as you were saying abu abayda never asked for help larijani you know right before him he was martyred um one of the last things he did was he put out a you know a communication to the muslim country saying you really should do this for your souls is get on the right side and revive this ummah you know and not because iran needs you you know, to do it for us, but do it for yourselves. This is the right thing to do. Now is your chance to free yourselves from enslavement. You don't want to be slaves. You want to be, you know, free Muslims and, you know, stand firm on the same values, right? So that's an interesting point is that consistently, as you were saying, it's been part of their communications. It's like they... And what's behind it is exactly what you've been saying so acutely is rely and trust upon God as your protector and not anyone else. And if you do so, then we will be actually together because we stand together on this. So but I had wine. You've been very generous with your time for this, like what has been to me really a fascinating and wonderful discussion. But I did, you know, have one final like example that's kind of a fun one to illustrate how it's like relevant to current events like, you know. and that is from the same surah which means that you have to interpret it within the understanding of this as reflections on the kind of question of combat and conduct of war and peacemaking and basically of politics like religious principles in politics where god is advising the you know muslim community how it should behave and conduct itself is that there came on the 11th verse of Surah Anfal, remember when he caused drowsiness to overcome you, giving you serenity, and he sent down rain from the sky to purify you, free you from Satan's pollution or whispers, strengthen your hearts and make your steps firm. You know, or make your feet firm, your legs firm. I stand, you know, together. And this just reminds me of all these wonderful, you know, what were thought of as conspiracy theories, but seem to be a lot more scientifically correct. documentable in the manipulation of the weather that since destroying many of the radar and other kinds of installations in the UAE and other places in the Gulf that clearly were part of attempts at cloud seeding and other forms of weather manipulation that had brought more precipitation to these, you know, desertified territories on the western side of the Gulf that suddenly Iran for the last several weeks has been inundated with rain. And it's been regarded as like an extraordinary blessing, you know, after years of drought and water shortage problems that you know had been used even in the western media that never tells us anything about iran but one thing they were very keen to tell us in the past like eight months was how much water problems and shortage iran was suffering that suddenly that has all been changed and rain has been sent down from the sky you know to purify the the To purify the people of Iran, to free them from Satan's pollution or Satan's whispers, the waswas, and to strengthen their hearts and make their feet firm.

Indi: It's funny you mentioned that. I was literally just looking at that exact phrase. Yeah, he brought drowsiness upon you as well. It's full of these signs that sleep and waking, night and day, like the fallowness of the land and then the fertileness of the land, the cycles. This is lost in a sort of Cartesian plane of you just make your stock market go up. The connection to the natural world is lost. and the connection of action to faith also is lost and that's also deep within islam repeated constantly within islam and so the rain it's it's not just the like radars cloud seeding or whatever you also have these oil facilities which are belching out huge amounts of of pollution and if you talk about just the general climate iran is doing more for sort of degrowth and for climate change than anybody on earth. We're seeing like a climactic event. So in Sri Lanka, where we already have the fuel shortages, people are switching to electric, like people are switching to solar. This is happening all over the world. And Iran is, you could see Iran, like why do they have a nuclear program? Well, they also saw a future, not for like blowing up their own neighborhood as the West imagines, but for a future beyond this sort of energy use. They saw like a moral... People are just showing that there's moral ways to govern and not completely material ways to govern. And that maybe the moral ways also lead to more material benefit. You're talking early in the conversation about sort of like the benefits of the material way of thinking, but there's this phrase when they keep attacking Yemen or they attack Iran, now they're gonna see why we don't have healthcare. But we still don't see why they don't have healthcare. Whatever system they're doing doesn't deliver them victory nor does it deliver them healthcare. And I think people are seeing that there's other ways to think in Fukuyama's end of history, he talks about how Islam as a political philosophy is discredited and communism is discredited. But you're a historian, you know that from 1979 to now is kind of like a rounding error in historical terms. And you can say that the Islamic revolution of then is continuing. It is actually like reaching fruition now. And just as China reestablished itself as a civilizational state, So Hezbollah, Nasrallah said he doesn't believe in, you know, a nation of 10,000 square kilometers that is Lebanon. He believes in a sort of like connected ummah, like a connected Muslim world. And I think we're seeing that in action. The bases have been cleared. Like, as you say, the rains are falling again. An ancient civilization, an ancient way of thinking is reasserting itself over the short-termism and the careerism and the selfishness of white empire. It's a spider's web. What Nasrallah said is it's weak as a spider's web. You speak of the radar stations, those radar stations were the spider's web. that kept the spider firmly ensconced in Israel. But what that surah, the spider says is, if only you knew that is the weakest of constructions. And it's hard to see in the news cycle. And it's hard to see in the short term. But that is why I invite people to read the Quran for their daily news. Because, I mean, man does not live by bread alone. And it has a longer view. which speaks to sort of, I think, the feelings you get from the news and the feeling of injustice and the feeling of frustration. But then it also speaks to justice and to truth. And it just has a longer, longer view. And I think to understand what's happening now at a time of great change is I think you need to zoom out a bit and see it in context. And to understand the Islamic world and Islamic resistance, you have to understand Islam. I think it's just there on the tin, as they say.

Adnan Husain: It's so interesting because I just went to a talk a week or so ago about a recent book that was published, 2025, that was mimicking in its own way Fukuyama's end of history, but was originally going to be titled The End of Islam. um as a subject in history but is you know uh titled the waning crescent the rise and fall of global islam um and i kept thinking this is the most inopportune time to have published yeah that's a strange time to do it like maybe the 90s like that's right yeah so i really have to thank you for you know those final thoughts and your conclusions and um perceptions and interest and engagement it has really meant a lot to me actually um this kind of dialectical reading of the quran um because i'm so into it from you know, kind of, you know, devotional kind of orientation, as well as like as a scholarly historical and studying the Quran, that your approach has really illustrated to me the best of ways of reading the Quran for meaningfulness uh for us now in guidance and interpretation of the world that we're in and giving it some kind of moral principles of of of action that are clearly also key and critical in guiding the islamic resistance so I have to thank you so much, Indy, for being generous with your time and your wonderful work. Maybe you can tell people again how they can follow you and keep up with your interesting reflections on the world today that sometimes they might come across a Quranic quote in.

Indi: Often, often, because it's true, it happens often. So my name is, or my pen name is a URL until the Canadian government takes it for me, indy.ca. And I also, for my own reference, I edited a book called Reading Resistance, which I just like self-published on the website, but that has the Quranic references or the Quranic surahs that I come back to the most, and also their context within sort of resistance writing. And honestly, more than like random blogs, I would say, I invite you to read the Quran yourself. I was just walking down the street in Oxford and someone handed me this. And it's been, this is like the good word translation. You obviously should read it in Arabic, but I can't get there yet. But I invite you to read the Quran for yourself. to understand what's happening in the day-to-day. And I read it for comfort, and it also challenges me. And I think it just puts stuff in context where you can really lose heart in the present moment, but I would say be of good cheer. There are good people in the world, and I do believe there is God watching over this.

Adnan Husain: Yeah, glad tidings. Surah Al-Anba, you know, the chapter on glad tidings. And the Quran was meant sometimes also to gladden the hearts and bolster the spirits of the Muslims when... they were facing confrontations and they very often there were factions and groups that became defeatist or complained or thought the question maybe we should do it this way or that way or maybe we have to just accept you know the oppressors because they're so powerful and so those conditions um you know the early muslims also experienced and the quran addressed a lot of that so i find that advice that you're giving not just to understand but also for your own kind of spirits being raised and bolstered and to free your mind of some of the kind of temptations of defeatism that are very easy to fall into because struggle doesn't mean simple victory. It means struggle and having to deal with defeats in the path to victory. So I really appreciate those remarks. I hope people have found this a very interesting episode, whether you're Muslim or non-Muslim, about the way the Quran can help you understand and interpret the current world, but also give you insight into the resistance against empire today. So I wish all of you peace with justice and solidarity to you all.