Sam Harris charged with lack of empathy

Sam Harris talks about his appreciation for many of the world's religions and shares some of his personal experiences with Sufism.

SAM HARRIS: One thing I'm often charged with is a lack of empathy, my criticism of religion and my criticism of Islam in particular signals a kind of ignorance of just how good it can be to be religious. And, so what are these people experiencing that is so important? I seem to just run roughshod over all that and merely insult them by criticizing their holy books. Well, this charge is actually untrue.

I have experienced a real appreciation for the the both the outward and the inward signs of of all, many of the world's religions but Islam as well. And that you know first is I think the call to prayer despite what I think about the doctrine of Islam is one of the most beautiful sounds I've ever heard. There's absolutely no mystery to me that a devout Muslim would, you know, weep with ecstasy hearing this sound I mean, that’s just you know, despite my better judgment I could shed a tear over that sound, right.

I love the poetry of Rumi, Rumi is a Sufi and many Muslims believe Sufis are heretics but still, you know, there's a tradition of of Islamic mysticism that I'm in touch with by reading the poetry of someone like Rumi or listening to the music of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the great Qawwali singer. The the beauty of all of that and the the the seeming sacredness of of all of that is not a mystery to me. And you know I've done Sufi practices like Sufi dancing and chanting with Sufis and done the Zika and I've done it all night long right till dawn. Right, so I know what it's like to sit in a group with a hundred Sufis and feel the profundity of doing that practice. And I love the food and I love the architecture and there is not a bone in my body that is xenophobic with respect to the outward signs of Muslim culture apart from my allergy to the irrational and dogmatic and divisive and dangerous claims coming from this worldview.

So a lack of empathy is is is a false charge and in fact the people who lack empathy are those who can't grok just how powerful the compulsion is to follow the letter of the texts. And they don't understand how meaningful it must feel to be a jihadi at this moment in human history, to see the whole Western project as anathema and to be certain of paradise, right. To be certain that there is some very simple steps you can take to have your eternity assured, right. I, you know, I've never believed such a thing, but I am I'm as close as I think a person can be to empathizing with that belief. And you know, I have never had a moment's doubt over whether people sincerely believe this. And what you, what you encounter among secularists and people in the left in particular is a fundamental misunderstanding of just how easy it is to believe in paradise and how many people in fact do believe in paradise. And this is not something that you you meet among you know Christian fundamentalists.

You know when I talk about the motives of jihadis to a devout Christian audience there's there's not a not a sceptical mind in the audience because all these people believe in heaven themselves, right. They believe they have a holy book dictated by the creator of the universe. They know exactly what it's like to be full of faith in the presence of eternity, right. They know that death is an illusion, right. They know that that when you die you don't get a dial tone. They know that there's more to life than just spinning around on this rock. Or at least they think they know, right. And so they have no illusions about some other motivation on the part of a suicide bomber who has just told us about his expectations of martyrdom, and how he can't wait to be with the virgins in paradise, right. They don't, they're not reading Noam Chomsky trying to figure out what really motivated this guy. And that's a delusion that the liberal West has to overcome.

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