Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is a program that
will bring you insight,
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I hope into religious
liberty events in the US
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and around the world.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
editor of Liberty Magazine,
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and my guest on the program,
Greg Hamilton, my good friend,
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President of the Northwest
Religious Liberty Association.
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Nice to be with you.
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Let's really take an
expansive view today.
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And very often
we talk about the US
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and governmental systems here,
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but there's a whole
wide world out there.
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Yeah.
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And as you look at
the world at the moment,
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I think it's hard to avoid
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the troubling awareness
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that more and more countries,
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even some formerly
quite democratic countries
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are heading
toward strong man phase,
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a reaction rephase...
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We seem to be
going back to that, yeah.
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Where a strong man, you
know, from with the center
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of the good
portion of the country,
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but they're acting
in very un-liberal ways
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against minorities,
against concepts and, you know,
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it's almost a
fascist view of the state,
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you know, the
government, the state, you know,
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we'll support it and
here I'm your leader and...
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Democracies and constitutions
are failing worldwide.
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And, you know, I made a comment,
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I think it was between programs
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that we're living
in a little golden age
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that is backing the trend.
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Most of the time of
the world's history,
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it's been repressive,
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the individual
hasn't had too many rights.
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Right.
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And what we
think of as liberalism
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or as the enlightenment period,
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it's only a couple hundred years
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out of thousands.
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And even within that
period, it's been spotty.
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So yes, let's talk about this.
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What examples do you see
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as you look
around the world today
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that are of a troubling
shift toward this view that,
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of course, among other things
will almost naturally restrict
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religious freedom
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for many factions
of the communities?
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Well, to me the most
alarming is coming from India,
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where the Prime Minister Modi.
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His name is Modi, M-O-D-I
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is basically trying to promote
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Hindu nationalism,
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which basically
in its parliamentary
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he is trying to
basically outlaw Islam.
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And which is interesting
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because it totally defies
their constitutional system
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from their founding,
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dating back to Gandhi and Nehru,
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I think was his
name and so forth.
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Nehru. The founders.
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And so you...
First prime minister.
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Yes.
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And so that is troubling
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because India is the
world's largest democracy
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and it has
functioned quite well.
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It has its
problems with Kashmir,
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which is mostly
a Muslim province,
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which they've
had problems with it,
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dispute with
Pakistan and so forth.
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In fact, it's
caused both countries
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Pakistan and India to develop
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nuclear weapons
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that basically to
be honest with you,
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it's the biggest
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explosive tinderbox
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ready to happen, so to speak,
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and lot of the
world isn't looking there.
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But I really
believe it's a tinderbox
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and it will explode any day.
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Of course, I think the same.
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If you're
talking nuclear conflict,
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I still think India-Pakistan
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is the most likely
in the whole world.
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But what's triggering
it? The first thing is...
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Well, it's the original
sin of the Indian continent.
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But isn't it interesting
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they would erode
religious freedom
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in order to basically
destroy their constitution?
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Isn't it interesting
how religious freedom
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is front and center
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of authoritarian
governments rising?
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They want to either
redefine it or eliminate it.
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I remember, India was
ruled for hundreds of years
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by the British Raj.
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Yes.
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That sort of
devolved from the...
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Was it East India Company,
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a trading company
that after a while
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needed to become an
administrative control
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and then hand it over
to the British government?
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And England always
had trouble in India,
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which is a huge
continent, many racial groups.
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Yeah.
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You think Indian
is just one person,
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but many tribal groups.
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It's very diverse.
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And many religions.
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Yeah.
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Majority Hindu, but
ten even to this day,
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I forget the exact number,
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but it's
several tens of millions
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of Muslims in India.
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And remember,
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even Alexander the
Great could not conquer India.
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Well, he was at
the end of his tether
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and his men were rebelling
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and they
crossed the Indus River.
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But it says...
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He had to deal with elephants
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that was what
India had back then.
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Yes, but a lot to be
said about India's strength
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and resiliency over the years.
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Yeah.
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But anyhow, when the British Raj
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had a religious problem
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that they nearly
lost India over it.
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The colonial
powers didn't keep country
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under control by
huge armies of their own.
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They co-opted the
locals and they were the armies
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and the sepoy army of England
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was large and they
kept down the Maharajas
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and disenfranchise
them in different places
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or unless they
were very agreeable.
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And things were going well
until the agitation on religion
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hit a flashpoint,
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and the Muslims who
are chafing under what...
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Some of their
leaders with bad intent
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said that the
casings for the muskets
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that they use
they had to bite them
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as they put it that
there was pigs grease on it.
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Yeah.
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And that created a
rebellion that swept India.
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Even among the soldiers. Yeah.
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Well, they rebelled
against the British officers.
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Right.
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They killed in Calcutta,
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I think, it was a
couple of hundred Europeans
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were killed, butchered.
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It was just an out of control,
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it was like the
Belgian Congo for area.
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Right. At least
when I was a kid.
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So religion was
big and then I mean,
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a big contention within,
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you think it's just
uniformly Hindu, it's not.
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Then coming up
to the independence,
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Gandhi with his pacifist
views still had troubles
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with the Hindu-Islam divide
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and he wanted
it to be one India.
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But against Gandhi's advice,
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violence broke out and
the killing was immense
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at that time, just
around the 1949 or so.
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Right.
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Well, the movie
Gandhi brings this out.
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Right. Immense killing.
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And...
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End result of
that was the splitting,
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the partition of India.
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People forgetting that
Pakistan was part of India.
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Right.
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They split it to
the mostly Muslim area,
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tens of millions of
Muslims moved there,
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tens of millions of
Hindus the other way.
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Right. But it couldn't solve it.
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And in my
lifetime, I can remember,
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I think it's three wars
with Pakistan over religion.
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There was East Pakistan,
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which is now Bangladesh,
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India fought them
and all over religion.
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This is not a territory.
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And you mentioned, Kashmir,
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that isn't really a
territorial dispute,
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it's a religious dispute.
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Yes, correct.
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The territory is disputed
because the religious majority
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that happens to...
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I think it's a
majority in Kashmir are Muslims.
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Yes, correct.
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And the world, you're right,
the world is watching it now.
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But we've ignored
that almost continuously
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since the formation of
the modern state of India,
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there's been a hot war
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between Pakistan and
India, up in Kashmir.
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And it's no coincidence
that's where Osama bin Laden
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chooses his
hideout, was in Pakistan.
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Right.
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And my view is we've
been in a slow boiled
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to a global religious war
between Christians and Muslims.
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Yeah, I suppose...
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Yeah, maybe.
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I'm not saying it should
happen or I hope it doesn't.
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But it's being progressive.
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And you mentioned
this, and it's not...
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I think the tensions are great.
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I would agree with
that as far as, you know...
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Well, you gave another example
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as we were teaming
up for this program,
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Chiner and the Uyghurs.
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Yes, the Uyghurs.
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Yes.
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China sees their
ethnic distinctness,
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but most particularly
their religious identity...
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And these are Muslims
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in the western
Province of China.
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And I'm sure
I'm not exaggerating
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because China are seriously
bothered by another loyalty,
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The Falun Gong...
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It's in Jiang province,
where the Uyghurs are located.
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Yeah.
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And there are
about 13 million of them.
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Toward Mongolia.
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And 3 million of them have
been put in concentration camps.
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Right.
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My point is
the... In recent years...
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We're not exaggerating to say
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that it's religion
rather than ethnicity
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that's bothering them.
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Because the Falun
Gong movement in China
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where tens of millions of people
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were doing morning exercises
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in the park that had a
philosophical connection
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perhaps to
ancient Chinese religions,
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but it's not a
religious movement.
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Yeah.
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There's tens of
millions of people
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that have been
imprisoned in China
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just because of their
loyalty to Falun Gong.
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So Islam which is a
real religious loyalty
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is troubling China.
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So again,
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here the largest
country in the world
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is troubled by they see
is the threat from Islam.
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India, majority Hindu
is all but at war every day
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with Pakistan
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and with the Muslim
minority in their country.
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And remember, it's
not that many years ago
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that terrorists came
across from Pakistan in,
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I'm trying to think of the city,
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but attacked one of the main
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Mumbai.
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The hotel in Mumbai,
just a few years ago.
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Yeah.
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So this is an
active movement. Yeah.
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And they have a sense
rightly or wrongly in India
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in this case that
they're under mortal threat
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from a broad
based religious movement
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opposing them.
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And are we any different
in the West since 9/11?
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The US is paranoid.
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And you and I
know that most people
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of any religion are faithful
to their religious tradition,
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but they're good human beings
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and they're not violent or
problematic to other people.
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But what makes us very
interesting is it India
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as an emerging nation,
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an emerging nation
in terms of wealth,
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in terms of, you know,
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the digital age.
00:11:08.53\00:11:09.86
I mean, my goodness, I mean,
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India is becoming
the leader in technology.
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It's where
almost all the marketing
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and service calls
that you get from overseas
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in terms of marketing calls.
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They have there
in Silicon Valley.
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I've flown over.
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That's a whole city.
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There all these
calls from India, you know,
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from Indians on the phone,
have you ever noticed that?
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It's fascinating.
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But... Forget the telemarketers.
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Have you ever noticed
some of the major businesses,
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international corporations,
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they're owned and run
by Indian billionaires?
00:11:39.93\00:11:44.27
Yes.
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India is not an inconsequential
country in modern world.
00:11:45.67\00:11:47.24
No, not at all.
00:11:47.27\00:11:48.60
In fact, as it
rises up in power,
00:11:48.64\00:11:50.64
it seems to want to do away
with real religious freedom.
00:11:50.67\00:11:54.74
And that's very troubling.
00:11:54.78\00:11:56.11
They don't want to deal
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with the
diversity in their midst.
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Is that a sign of
the times for nations
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across this earth, this planet?
00:12:02.55\00:12:05.09
I think it is.
00:12:05.12\00:12:06.45
What you put your
finger on is troubling
00:12:06.49\00:12:07.92
is that this present
administration in India
00:12:07.96\00:12:11.26
seem agreeable to restrictions.
00:12:11.29\00:12:14.46
I think largely
until this point,
00:12:14.50\00:12:16.97
the government had
pretty good principles.
00:12:17.00\00:12:21.50
The laws were okay.
00:12:21.54\00:12:23.00
But the horrific things
were happening in the villages
00:12:23.04\00:12:25.81
where mobs would
rise up and lynched.
00:12:25.84\00:12:28.34
We've had Seventh-day
Adventist pastors lynched there.
00:12:28.38\00:12:31.38
Right.
00:12:31.41\00:12:32.75
As well as many
Muslims and the Christians,
00:12:32.78\00:12:38.42
but, you know, what
could the government
00:12:38.45\00:12:40.96
at a large country
do to stop ignorance
00:12:40.99\00:12:44.66
and paranoia and
mob action in attend
00:12:44.69\00:12:47.43
other than then
having active policing,
00:12:47.46\00:12:50.27
but this is a shift
00:12:50.30\00:12:51.63
from that where
there's a cultural animus
00:12:51.67\00:12:54.24
to where the government
seems to be going backwards
00:12:54.27\00:12:57.77
and they're doing it
00:12:57.81\00:12:59.14
in the name of sort
of India first and...
00:12:59.17\00:13:01.48
Right. And Hindu nationalism.
00:13:01.51\00:13:04.11
Another factor is interesting
00:13:04.15\00:13:05.71
is that the
Seventh-day Adventist Church
00:13:05.75\00:13:08.35
has grown tremendously in India,
00:13:08.38\00:13:10.22
especially in
the northern regions,
00:13:10.25\00:13:12.95
in terms of building churches,
00:13:12.99\00:13:15.86
lots of evangelism
having been done there,
00:13:15.89\00:13:18.83
and it has grown tremendously.
00:13:18.86\00:13:20.43
So it affects even I'm sure.
00:13:20.46\00:13:22.33
But I can tell you in a nutshell
00:13:22.36\00:13:24.83
how that causes
problems in India.
00:13:24.87\00:13:27.20
Because a large attraction
for Adventism for Christianity
00:13:27.24\00:13:33.17
is that the poor people,
00:13:33.21\00:13:37.11
the untouchables can escape
00:13:37.15\00:13:39.25
the rest, social
restrictions of Hinduism.
00:13:39.28\00:13:41.82
And so it draws
them to Christ largely.
00:13:41.85\00:13:44.32
And it's
largely the untouchables
00:13:44.35\00:13:45.72
that became Adventists.
00:13:45.75\00:13:47.09
Yeah, a very high percentage.
00:13:47.12\00:13:48.46
I don't know you said largely,
but a very high percentage.
00:13:48.49\00:13:49.82
Yes.
00:13:49.86\00:13:51.19
Well, you
couldn't create something
00:13:51.23\00:13:52.79
more naturally
antagonistic as Hindus.
00:13:52.83\00:13:56.23
True. Very true.
00:13:56.26\00:13:57.60
So there's
reasons for these things,
00:13:57.63\00:13:58.97
doesn't excuse it.
00:13:59.00\00:14:00.34
Right.
00:14:00.37\00:14:01.70
But it's not just a
free floating antagonism.
00:14:01.74\00:14:04.87
There is social changes of it.
00:14:04.91\00:14:07.14
And as we know,
00:14:07.18\00:14:08.54
in the world at large
Islam is more easily threatened
00:14:08.58\00:14:12.55
because in many majorly or
majority Islamic countries,
00:14:12.58\00:14:16.75
culturally, they
haven't really advanced
00:14:16.79\00:14:18.72
much from the medieval era.
00:14:18.75\00:14:21.09
I mean, if you want to
criticize Christianity,
00:14:21.12\00:14:23.53
go back into the Middle Ages
00:14:23.56\00:14:25.56
and the
Inquisition and all the rest.
00:14:25.59\00:14:27.16
It was every bit
as bad as obtrusive
00:14:27.20\00:14:29.13
and persecutory as say,
00:14:29.16\00:14:31.67
Saudi Arabia or some
more toward non-Muslims.
00:14:31.70\00:14:34.44
Let's take a break.
00:14:34.47\00:14:35.80
We'll be back to continue
00:14:35.84\00:14:37.17
this discussion on
the world as it is.
00:14:37.21\00:14:39.14