Discussion on Religion and Extremism

I'm a practicing Christian. You're a practicing Muslim.

I've often, at this table and in my life, been most critical of people I feel completely twist my religion to justify cruelty to others, especially the gay community, um, immigrants being torn about. Like, I've, uh...

And I feel a particular responsibility to speak out when people invoke my faith, because it's so sacred, to justify that.

Now, I bring that up because your response that, "Hurt people hurt people," after the Temple Israel attack in Michigan in March really stuck with a lot of people, and you did apologize for that.

But it took you a while to ba- It took you about five months to, it seemingly, understand why that landed wrong with people and voters and constituents.

You know, do you think that leaders have a responsibility to challenge the extremist views in their own religion, especially considering you're the first Muslim senator of the United States?

Yeah. Well, I really appreciate that question, and I agree with you entirely that, uh, we wanna live in a world where faith is something that's used to uplift all of us, uh, rather than to justify the worst human actions that,

um, sometimes drag us down. Uh, you know, after the, the attack, I've been to Temple Israel.

Uh, I went for a bar mitzvah when I was a, a kid.

I grew up just 15 minutes away. Um, you know, I, I condemned it immediately.

Uh, and I wanted to offer context, but, you know, when people are hurting, context is secondary, and I just should've stood with their pain.

Um, and I learned from that experience, and I'm not above apologizing when I, when I make a mistake.

I do wanna offer, though, when we step back, it is important for us to be thinking about how do we start addressing all of the downward spiral of our politics right now.

Yeah. And I think too often there is this approach where we say good and evil, and that good and evil approach hasn't really helped us root out a lot of the pain that causes a lot of the damage that we see in our society.

And so I was trying to argue about, or, or offer context around the fact that that individual had lost a, uh, child, niece, and nephew in an airstrike.

Um, and I want us to, to, to be thinking a little bit about, A, how we demonstrate our ability as leaders to stand with people's pain with no exceptions and no asterisks around them.

Yeah. And also, be able to have an adult conversation about the ways in which actions ricochet around the world and create worse for all of us.

I respect that. I just think that if, if that had been done a- anywhere near what I believed, I would be so furiously en- enraged that they would use the words that I have led my life with to hurt people that way, and that was young kids.

So I just was surprised it took a minute for you to understand that part.

Well, uh, I hear you on that. And, you know- Better late than never.

Well, it's also better early than late, and that is why I apologized for it, you know? Mm-hmm. And, um, I think big picture for us, right?

We have this approach to the actions that people do out of their faith that tends to excuse some groups, right?

So when, uh, Christian Nationals, for example, does something heinous, we give them their humanity and their individuality.

But when somebody of a different faith or of a different community does something, we couple them in as, as speaking for the group. Yeah.

And I just think it's important for us to always be treating the things that individuals do as individuals, and recognize that using one's religion to justify an action is something that's universal across all religions,

not just one or the other. Agreed. Right. Mm-hmm.

So our thanks to Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed.

We will be right back. Come back to the table.

Yes. Be back to the-