Spoiler: They did not smoke weed during the podcast.
The highly anticipated Joe Rogan Podcast featuring guests Maajid Nawaz and Sam Harris was aired live on April 19, 2018.
Nawaz promised an update on his lawsuit against the SPLC, who had named him as an anti-Muslim extremist in the 2016 publication, now removed from the website, titled “Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists – Southern Poverty Law Center.” The outcry upon the publication of this list, which also included activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, was tremendous, and yet the SPLC refused to back down.
Nawaz explained as background that he had also been placed in a terrorist watch database in the UK, the opposite extreme of the characterization made by the SPLC.
On October 18, 2017, Quilliam, an organization Nawaz founded to counter extremism, issued the following press release:
Maajid Nawaz Wins Legal Battle Against Thomson Reuters World Check
Thomson Reuters World Check has admitted that Maajid Nawaz should never have been listed under their ‘terrorism’ designation, and will pay significant defamation damages to compensate for the harm that has been caused to Nawaz’s personal and professional reputation. Nawaz was represented by Mark Lewis of Seddons law firm.
Thomson Reuters have said:
“Mr. Nawaz’s World-Check profile had included him in the “Terrorism” category and we accept that this categorisation was made in error. We corrected this error on 27th April 2016 and removed Mr. Nawaz from that category. We have apologized to Mr. Nawaz for the error and apologize to our subscribers for any misunderstanding.”
In 2016, VICE News broke the story that Quilliam’s Founder Maajid Nawaz was placed on a ‘terrorism blacklist’ within Thomson Reuters World-Check database.
In the original story, two senior World-Check employees, who asked not to be named, told VICE News that in over eight years of working at the firm they had not seen a single case of an individual successfully challenging their terror designation.
Earlier this year, the BBC were also forced to apologise live on air to Maajid Nawaz after he was called an ‘extremist’ during a live broadcast.
Maajid Nawaz is now 2-0 in the fight against lies, aimed at damaging his reputation.
As many are aware, Maajid Nawaz has announced his intention to sue the Southern Poverty Law Center for defamation after they actually named him on a list of ‘Anti-Muslim Extremists’ and asserted among other falsehoods that Nawaz believes ‘all Muslims are potential terrorists’ and claiming that he wants ‘all Mosques to be surveilled’.
Because of the extensive legal costs of defamation cases in the U.S., Nawaz has been crowd-funding his legal fund against the SPLC and has successfully passed Phase 1 thanks to the generous donations from his supporters. Yet more support is needed to bring the SPLC to justice and to fund the entire legal case.
Maajid Nawaz said:
“That a reforming liberal Muslim like me who attempts to hold a rational conversation around religion, identity and extremism is designated under a ‘Muslim terrorism’ category in the UK, while simultaneously being listed as an ‘anti-Muslim extremist’ in the USA, speaks to our hysterical and irrational climate today.
Support my struggle for reason by donating to bring the SPLC to justice at www.maajidnawaz.com. I pledge to donate all winnings to my US 501c3 charity.
To the mega-rich bullies at the SPLC, I say: your defamation of individuals who themselves have been the victims of extremism and who devote their lives to fighting extremism by calling them “extremists” is a moral outrage. It is time that you be brought to justice.” (end)
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Nawaz announced on Rogan’s show that he has retained the Clare Locke Law firm to represent him, the same firm that won a substantial defamation lawsuit against Rolling Stone Magazine. The lawsuit against the SPLC will move forward.
Harris noted that 20 years ago, the SPLC was doing excellent work bringing suit against organizations such as the KKK, but now seems morally confused. Harris pointed to his recent mention on the Hatewatch page that the SPLC maintains for having been criticized in an article by Vox for his interview with Charles Murray. Harris notes that he is listed alongside other articles about the Austin bomber and neo-Nazi groups.
Nawaz talked about his life and how he had come to this point in his life. He grew up in the UK, facing violent attacks perpetrated by neo-Nazis armed with hammers and machetes. At age 16, he joined Hizb ut-Tahrir, a non-violent Islamist political group that sought to establish a Caliphate through infiltration into military and society and instigating coups. Ultimately, this activity landed him in prison in Egypt, although many others that were rounded up were tortured and killed. He was held as a political prisoner for 5 years.
During that time, Amnesty International adopted him and his cohorts as prisoners of conscience and campaigned for their release. The support and interest he received from Amnesty International changed his psyche. He no longer embraced extremism, but looked instead to reform.
Sam Harris was much more cheerful after the sting of the SPLC’s Hatewatch debacle, combined with a major mobbing attack on Twitter.
He was able to chuckle about the fact that the hoopla all occurred while he was on a long-awaited family vacation in Hawaii. Harris said the only saving grace was that they were travelling with another family with children and that he was required to pull himself together and be social.
Harris is now pulling back from Twitter after this last episode and has deleted it off phone, but will keep his account open. His observation is that Twitter amplifies certain voices and circulates smears, smears he saw as an egregious attack on his moral integrity.
Harris regrets publishing his email exchange with Ezra Klein of Vox, saying the emails ended up making him look angry and Ezra look open-minded.
Reflecting on his podcast episode with Klein, Harris felt Klein was fundamentally unresponsive to any of Harris’s points. Harris felt like his audience and Klein’s audience are very different—Klein’s audience is happy if you are scoring political points by decrying racism and white privilege, even if that’s not the topic of the conversation.
Harris will continue to use Twitter as a curated newsfeed, because he benefits from the sharing of articles, but not what’s coming in the form of feedback. He has even changed his setting so that he can screen out accounts without verified emails or with eggs as identifiers.
Sam Harris vs Ezra Klein on the Waking Up Podcast: “Identity and Honesty”
The conversation briefly got off on the hot button issue of trangendered people in sports, but it was not central to the conversation. It came up because Joe Rogan had recently been attacked by an online mob for promoting the idea that in MMA fighting, a man who had transitioned into a woman had an unfair advantage.
The rest of the interview focused on Nawaz and his predictions for the future. He is optimistic, but he says it may take another generation for true reform to happen and for extremism to be fully eradicated. He warned that while ISIS may be reducing its power, Al Qaeda has been reorganizing under the radar in Syria. At this time, they are even grooming one of Bin Laden’s sons to become the new leader, which Nawaz expects will attract extremists loyal to the Bin Laden dynasty.