Transcripts For CSPAN3 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20240622

Question, and before you do that, identify yourself and your affiliation if you have one. Yes, sir . Hi. My name is steven spitz. I have two related questions on costs. One, i had an experience in the hospital where they said that i needed a certain common procedure, and i asked what the price was. I gave them my insurance information. And they came back and they said, we dont know. Id like to know how common that is, and what is being done to try to let folks actually know what something costs . I might add, i had at the time a high deductible so it was an important question about my outofpocket costs. The second question is Medicare Part b, when i noted it in the biography to mr. White, was involved with in 2003 has a provision prohibiting the government from negotiating prices with the drug companies. And my question is why is that bill in the law . Do you want to take that one, ed . Why dont you start. Ill do the first one, and the second one real quick. The first one was, why cant they tell me what the price is . Like i said you know, forget about the email. Ask them about what a price is and its like getting trade secrets out of cuba, right . Its next to impossible. What were seeing is that what the price is, and what i owe are two different questions, right . And so if i have coverage, i think a lot of the plans are really good at estimating your costs. But sometimes not always. For medicare, the vast majority of people have thirdparty coverage. And so it varies what you owe. But theres a bill moving through the house actually part yours, so i guess its in the senate now that said for medicare, you have to provide consumers a max out of pocket across the hospital outpatient setting, and ambulatory surgery center. What is going to be exciting is, as more data comes into the system, well be able to parse this and cut it and slice it so i can tell you if youre on medicare, this is exactly what youre going to owe for this procedure at this facility. If youre insured in the commercial market, this is what youre going to owe. If youre uninsured, this is what youre going to owe. The price you pay is depending on what type of coverage you do or dont have. Thats kind of the first question. The second question is hhs is prohibited under part b from revealing drug prices. The private sector is not. Managed care and Health Insurers aggressively negotiate the costs in part d. The interesting thing when we enacted that law, we talked to cbo about that specific provision. Getting in the middle of these negotiations, the private sector negotiations to get the drug discounts, versus letting the folks who do this on a daily basis negotiate the discount in the private sector. They said if you had that provision in there, it probably would mess with the negotiations. But you definitely wouldnt save any money. And if you repealed that provision in the law today what cbo will tell you is, it will not save a single dime. The reason is, those ppms and those health plans are already negotiating the discounts. And theyre already being passed on to consumers. Thats why thats one of the reasons we did it. Joel going back to the first part of that question. Someone sent forward a question on a card, suggestion, actually after a long description of a situation to which it would apply, is it possible for providers to get access to Health Plan Cost calculators . So that they are able to inform consumers about their expected outofpocket costs before the services are rendered . Is that a practical possibility . Natalie, or joel . Or for that matter anybody else on the panel . You know i wouldnt say its common place today. Its definitely something that were exploring. Its that whole inoffice stuff. And i remarked early on about how we dont want to inspect relationships, but certainly how do we make more decisionmaking tools available at the point of service. So that when youre taking out your script, or comparing different Treatment Options that you have i wouldnt say its common place i would certainly say thats where the market would like to move. One caveat, though. From the consumer perspective, some of this matters too, how the claim is submitted. So we saw this in the discussion around Preventive Services when i talked about the confusion there about what you may be able to access as a consumer without cost sharing. Part of it is how its submitted and part of it is how its paid by the carrier. How that flows may dictate how you have a copay for that service. I think this comes up regularly. Thats another sort of unknown in the past way from the care that you received to the bill that you get. Yes, go right ahead. Im dr. Caroline popham. Im a primary care physician. Just to answer the gentlemans question about price price is proprietary information. Every Insurance Company negotiates a different price with every provider or every large provider, hospital. So the price is different depending on not what your plan is, but who your insurance is. The Insurance Companies dont want other Insurance Companies to know what kind of a deal they got from a big hospital. So that wont go away. My question is unrelated to that. I have two. A quick one for rebecca. You said that surveys show that Health Insurance providers are less trusted. Im wondering where that information is where you got it from . The source . I want to make sure this is on. I can share that with you. I think it was it was from numerous sources. But im happy to share that with you. I think it was on my slide that its node. Thats been declining over decades. Still some of the most trusted providers are the Health Care Professionals themselves. But weve seen this gradual decline with health plans. Natalie one of your slides has makes the same point, right . That insurers are pretty far down there. Maybe if you had that source, you could provide it as well. Yes. There are plenty of publicly available sources. I think its for the skepticism from institutions in general, that has commanded criticism with respect to the trust issues. I think because there is so much opaqueness around cost and how that whole sector works. You had another question caroline . A real question. Something that hasnt been mentioned at all. You assume that people know what they want or theyll recognize it when they see it at least. And behavioral economics has shown that in fact, with regard to health, people have really no idea about what they need, except for chronically ill people who know what their conditions are, know what medications theyre taking, know what they need. Better than a healthy person. For example its said that women are much more afraid of Breast Cancer than they are cardiovascular disease. But cardiovascular is a much bigger and more likely threat than Breast Cancer. So they dont know what they need. How can they choose it . I would say thats a question were trying to answer. So again, everybodys going to have their different take on what they think they might need, or what theyre most worried about. So thats why information needs to be presented in various ways, so that consumers can look at the difference whether its Preventive Care, whether its maternity care, whether its joint replacement. Youre right, they dont know what they dont know. Thats right. And the sensible thing to do then is to give a comprehensive plan for everybody. Like apparently they do at the california exchange. I think thats what the gentleman said last week, or the week before. That the plans were standardized. Standardized to the degree that with a certain set of them you can get a bunch of Services Without having to meet your deductible first. You still have the actuarial value, the general level of generosity. Then they come with the deductibles, as joel was saying. So for the silver level plan is at 70 , av is far lower than the typical employer plan which is 80 or 85 or higher. That means you have higher outofpocket costs. I believe in california there is a certain set of services you get without having to meet your deductible. For a hell tifl healthy person that will be different from the people who dont see the value of their Health Insurance when they dont know they can get three primary care doctors i thought it was much more standardized than that. Were you there . Do you remember . Its two different questions. I think it was everything but specialty drugs. Highcost things. There were a bunch of things primary care visits prescription drugs. The transcript from that briefing is on our website by the way. I think were here actually, i think this gentleman was in line first. Then two people over here. And then well go back this way. Thank you very much. Bob rhodes, bmj. We have consumers are really drowning in choices. And options there. One thing the system tried to do was with Preventive Care at least, limit the package and define it a little better. We heard today that they may not have done that good a job here. I guess my question is primarily, is there any rule for simplifying and standardizing what insurers can offer and how they can offer it . Wow. The actuarial value is supposed to be a way that bucket plans in big terms, like the relative generosity, by levels i touched on this. One of the requirements for all plans is there has to be a meaningful difference in the marketplace. But that leaves a lot of wiggle room. The kinds of things theyre doing in california or other states, to limit the number of plans, or products any given carrier can offer or to standardize them so some sets cover the same things in the same way. Thats certainly within the authority of the marketplaces. My actual reason why i said wow was, i would argue the other way. I think people like choices. I think when you think about someone with Breast Cancer, versus someone who has cardiovascular disease versus somebody who has cancer theyre going to value Different Things in different plans. One of the reasons i think we see well i think the Affordable Care act was very good at saying plans have to do x, y and z. And the result of that has been limiting options for plans in order to offer lower prices. Thats why were seeing some of the higher cautionary in the plans. I think that to the extent that plans can do a better job explaining the nuances and the difference in their coverage, that will be very important. But i think limiting choices is probably the opposite direction, at least that i would say we should go because health care is so personalized. Its becoming increasingly personalized. As we develop those cures and therapies for cancer cardiovascular disease, not further constrict it. I would also agree with that. Even though i talked about how consumers can be some consumers can be overwhelmed with choice. We do like our choices. And everybodys in a different situation. And also, their threshold on risk really vary. Again, the answer is how do you present those choices. You were talking about the framework for choice. And presumably there are standards for the optimal size of the choice universe for individual consumers. Is that fair . Yes thats correct. And also, i talked about how we present that information to consumers. And what you present first is really important, because consumers often, even though we want to allow all that customization, theres been studies done that show consumers dont always go in and customize it. So how you present it the default position is really important. Whether its showing the premium, whether its the deductible, or Preventive Services. Not to pile on but i think its a little more nuanced in that we talk about the paradox of choice. When youre overwhelmed, you cant distinguish, it adds to your frustration. So its about sort of curateing the highly relevant options where its clear in what the tradeoffs are between them. Its having choices, but youve got to know what they are. Theyve got to be relevant to you. Yes sir . My name is ken sharman from virginia. We predominantly help people who are below 40 poverty level. People who have low Health Insurance lat rasy. The question to the group is why not work with Insurance Companies at reducing the complexity and jargon to educate hess consumers on some of this jargon and try to get the consumers to learn the pro program. Yeah. You know, thats precisely what were doing. Were actually going letter by letter, screen by screen, and really looking at it through the lens of the consumer which is quite new. Ill say, for our entire sector. You know, we used to sell them to employers primarily, and now were selling them to customers. Some of the examples that i mentioned early on is taking the 40 most commonly misunderstood terms, probably something that everyone in this room is familiar with, and recoding those. But also, how to take every single Customer Journey and literally story boarding it out and making it easy and more simplified. This is stuff that ben king, retail hospitality has already done. We are a little behind as a sector. But thats very much the focus of the consumers strategies that the health plans have under way today. I would say, we need to be careful of that, empowering the consumer and not blaming the consumer. So youre absolutely right the information needs to be presented in that understandable way, that plain english way. So that consumers can understand. And i would just add on to that Health Care Professionals really need to be part of this, too. There needs to be more education on how they can communicate clearly to patients. And also need to be thinking about if information is available in other languages as well. And when its translated into those other languages thats also understandable and accessible to people. I think some of this reflects the bumpiness in the shift in strategies. One of the things the Affordable Care act did is for the industry, people are now looking at this directtoconsumer type of channel. Whereas before, they were going to the employers, or to the brokers and agents. And thats a difference. Theres bumpiness in the marketplace and turbulence of the but i think probably what youre hearing is that a lot of the carriers recognize this. Theyre working on it. And theres a lot of really smart marketing. And other people in the system who are probably going to get us back to something thats more plain english accurate reliable, and that consumers can really understand and get their arms around. One more thing. Ill bring it back to the sbc. To the extent that this is out there more and more, and consumers can really build experience with using this, choose the plans and use the coverage, i think it becomes easier. Its an education process. Theyll learn the terms. The glossary we talked about, theres a graphic on the last page that talks about the deductible and outofpocket works. That was enormously helpful to consumers to make those concepts understandable on the way that they havent been before. Okay. Yes . Linda bennett. Im with ask me. And i just want to piggyback on a statement rebecca just made, and joel and others have said about the plain english. But that the demographic now, and in the future, are that there are more limited english proficient, or nonenglish proficient speakers. So beyond translating for the plans, or the sbc, and having good navigators explain when they get that card, and they go to a provider id like to ask natalie, what is anthem and the industry doing to make sure youre in Network Provider has access to the interpreter inperson services they need so that they have good communication, and you have an empowered consumer . And, what are you doing to make sure that there is a system of support . Are you monitoring the electronic records where they say, look, we know this person has limited English Proficiency . They prefer their documents in Something Else . Are there providers providing them with an interpreter . I want to make sure i understand the question. So youre saying, exercise of care where we have limitations or constraints in terms of english speaking, you know, what are the capabilities to ensure that the physician is engaging with the patient . In the language the patient prefers, that they have an interpreter. Part of this is, with the state of washington, for its medicaid program, they have a statewide Interpreter Program where every provider thats medicaid covered can get on and say, next wednesday, i need someone in russian, to speak russian at ten, i need someone in mandarin at 11 00, and somebody in spanish at 3 00. I cant speak to sort of what the health plan is doing specifically in that venue. Im not sure if anyone else can speak to that. I think that Hospital Systems and providers probably have a response to that. Im not entirely sure sort of again, being careful about how the health care interfaces with that relationship. We want to be sure, which i think is where youre going to make it simple and easy. Im not sure im well enough educated on what anthem specifically does in those venues. Yes, maam . My name is airiel zena with the health care coalition. Earlier today, i think rebecca raised that the increased cost sharing the consumers are responsible for making more informed decisions. And providing information and providing clear information on costs and quality. But i wanted to highlight that in april the Kaiser Family Foundation Study showed that only 6 of consumers actually looked at price information, and only 2 to 3 actually use that information. I was wondering if in light of that, particularly given that the consumers indicated they dont actually want a real relationship with their health plan, who is really responsible for providing that information and informing consumers . And also when that information is presented in a clear and understandable way, how do we ensure that consumers are actually using it rather than just assuming that they want that, and if its available they will be accessing it . So, yeah, theres this issue about consumers saying they want quality and cost information, but also knowing that theyre not always accessing it. But the thought behind that is that its because its still not presented in a way usually thats accessible to consumers. And really answering the questions they have about cost and quality. So i think part of it again, is just how were presenting that information. You know, as far as the high deductible plans, we do know that recently i think there was a survey at family usa that 25 of families that had the high deductible plans were actually foregoing health care, were not taking their medications, as often as they needed to, were skipping followup care skipping Preventive Care. Research showed that sometimes consumers were picking those plans because they couldnt afford the higher premiums. It gave them a lower deductible. Some people may not have looked at the information as carefully as they should have about that cost. Im not sure if theres any way we can ensure that the consumers understand something but we can do a lot better job of presenting the information. Its where you are on the adoption curve. Id say we havent gotten to the need of the adoption curve. When things become open table easy, or amazon easy, i think thats where you really see the kickup. We know weve got traction. Theres still data quality issues et cetera. But theres certainly demand. Its not just served up in a way thats incredibly convenient or digestible right now. The attention is there, the strategy is there the investments are being made. The one thing that i think sort of reinforces this is the amount of third parties and external sort of other Third Party Groups that are making massive investments in this area of capabilities. One of the things that i think is actually critical is the information has to be actionable. It doesnt do me a lot of good if you tell me the lowest cost provider in des moines. I dont live in des moines, right . Its got to be in network or out of network. Its got to be an actionable type of solution for the consumer for them to actually use it. Im not sure which of you was first. I will leave it to your sensibilities. Thank you. Bob grist with the institute of social medicine and community health. When ed introduced this topic he said that the subject is, can an empowered consumer drive quality and cost in our Health Care System after the aca . And i think weve heard lots of information about costs going up, and people being overwhelmed with choice. What i learned so far is that empowering the consumer really means overwhelming them with choice. So you can blame them for the fact that they dont get what they need. What i dont hear any discussion of is the strategy on capitol hill to defund the agency for Health Care Policy and research which is designed to study Health Care Quality, and to translate Good Practice into systems that providers can be held accountable for. In other words, while were focusing here so much on Consumer Choice the very function of government to improve the regulatory system or to even conduct research on what quality means is being taken away from us. The House Health Committee probably represented by people around the chairs in the audience here has voted as early as the beginning of 2016 to zero out the budget for the agency for Health Care Policy and research. How can we take seriously a conversation about Health Care Quality and choice when were undermining the very foundations of government function in doing this . Okay. Theres a question. Anybody want to respond to it . Its the agency for Health Care Quality and research. Thanks to the former cochair of the Alliance Board bill grist. I think the answer to this problem is going to be found in the private sector. Its not going to be found through a. R. C. We do a lot of work with them. Theyve done an excellent job on producing plain language summary for consumers, and comparing various treatments. So, you know, i would hate to say our organization would hate to see that funding go away. We think were instrumental in producing information for consumers, and being able to compare treatment. We have just a couple of minutes left. This will be the last question. And i would ask if you would multitask by starting to fill out the blue evaluation form while youre listening to this insightful question. My question goes into when i think about empowering health care stakeholders, i think a lot about the extension of hhs and other medical savings accounts. I was wondering with your experience, have you seen people making the phone calls and finding out their drug is half the price at walmart or cvs. And pursuing more efficient care . Would you like to identify yourself, sir . Im James Calderwood with asmus. The card question says 97 of insurance plans have Price Transparency tools but only 2 of policyholders use the tools, shop for prices. What can insurers and congress do to promote the use of Price Shopping . Are we shoppers or can we be made into shoppers in this Health Care Field . I think you need to be clear that with the services youre not in the position to price shop. There are some things that are time sensitive. Youre not going online to do your research, not like buying a car or refrigerateor where you can do all the research you want. For the services that you have the time to do shopping we heard today its difficult to know the price. I would argue that price is just one factor that consumers might consider the price of the service, the price that they pay out of pocket. But its also convenience and a preference for providers and other factors that come into play. Im going to share my one little personal example of a person who tried to use price to make a treatment decision and it went very awry. For my daughter i had to use between 40 coinsurance on a 17,000 drug, or a 70 shot. And my carrier could not tell me what my copay would be if i went ahead and got this procedure, what my cost would be out of pocket. They just again, it was based on how the provider was going to submit it, and how it got paid. So even in the best of circumstances, when you make efforts to do a Price Comparison among your factors that you take into consideration, it can be hard. I think were getting there. I think were Getting Better data, more powerful tools, a couple of private sector initiatives were put here. I love hsas. I worked on the law when it was first enacted. They do promote shopping. I think in our heart, were all shoppers. We all make comparisons, we make judgments every day about a whole number of things. One of the areas that i would highlight is, we went and took a look on a lot of the statebased ex chaks and health care. Gov and unless hsa was mentioned in the title of the plan, you couldnt tell whether that plan was hsa qualified or not. So right now, under the tax code, however you feel about hsas there is a significant tax benefit to signing up for an hsa, and its High Deductible Health plan. Consumers arent getting that information just by going to an exchange website. So one of the things that we think needs to change and this could be done regular la tor il or legislative action, we have to tell consumers that this plan is hsa qualified, this plan is an hmo, this plan is a ppo, and that they may be eligible for significant tax benefits if they go that route. Natalie . The portion of the question on how to fix that in modifying mindsets and shifting behaviors, Market Dynamics state that when you have more skin in the game you do start making some tradeoffs. However, this is still health care, which is highly personal. What weve seen there was a great article published that there when people are served up the right information, are put in a position to make a tradeoff, a significant portion of them do make choices towards more affordable treatments at the same quality, but not to the same intensity you would find in other sectors, like consumer packaged goods or Something Like that. It is effective but just a different level of intensity. All right. Well, we have a lot of green cards here to which we were not able to get or which i apologize. But i think that also reflects the level of engagement of our consumers of Health Policy information here. Thank you for spending a beautiful friday afternoon inside a very cool hearing room helping us grapple with one of the most multifaceted set of problems in Health Policy these days. Thanks to anthem and the National Consumer league for helping us think through this topic, and assemble a great panel. And speaking of said panel, help me thank this panel for some wonderful discussion. [ applause ] and well come back to this topic in september. Thanks very much. On the next washington journal, Norbert Michelle from the Heritage Foundation and julia gordon from the American Progress will discuss the successes and failures of the dodd frank law. And Washington Examiner correspondent John Siciliano looks at the ongoing house and Senate Efforts to move the First Comprehensive Energy Legislation in eight years. As always, we will take your calls, and you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter. Washington journal live at 7 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan. This weekend, on the cspan networks. Politics, books, and American History. Saturday morning on cspan, starting at 9 45 the governors address the nations opioid crisis. With guests including u. S. U. S. Representative from california mary bono. The governors will discuss how to stimulate their states economy and the impact on the employment rate. And sunday evening at 6 35 eastern, an interview with former governor of rhode island and democratic president ial candidate lincoln chasy. On cspan2, saturday night at 10 00 eastern on book tvs afterward ralph nader on the many unanswered letters he sent to president bush and barack obama about domestic and foreign policies. And sunday afternoon at 3 30, ten years after hurricane katrina. And on American History tv on cspan tv sunday morning starting at 10 00 eastern the 50th anniversary of president lynndonndon johnsons signing of the civil rights bill. Phone conversations between johnson, his aides, and congressional members about politics and strategy. And the signing of the bill at the harry s. Truman president ial library. And also this weekend, saturday night at 7 15, u. S. Army Cyber Command historian Lawrence Caplan on the history of computers, hackers, and the governments response to computer abuses. Get our complete schedule at cspan. Org. The American Enterprise institute hosted a discussion tuesday on the religious basis of islamic terrorism and whether it should factor in the comprehensive u. S. Strategy to defeat extremists. Panelists discuss whether or not islam plays a role in inciting terrorism, and if the koran is being plan inging manipulated by extremists. This is two hours. Good morning folks. We have a full agenda so even though not everybody is here, were just going to allow people to filter in, and start our conversation. Good morning, everybody. Im Danielle Pletka here at aei. Im really delighted were doing this conference. The title is islamic extremism reformism and the war on terror. But that doesnt really begin to cover the conversation were hoping to have. The prominence of this event is an interesting one. Michael rubin and i were sitting in our office talking about the issues we face in Foreign Policy and domestic policy. And we both have been struck by the scarcity of serious conversation about these issues. The National Conversation, even the policy considerations have been dominated by people on one side like Pamela Geller and the other side by organizations like c. A. R. E. Neither of whom i believe represent the mainstream of thought. Or frankly, suggest reasonable or good policy options for how to deal with islamic extremism in the middle east and the threat it poses domestically. There are real issues to talk about here whether they are over there or they are here within islam, whether theyre u. S. Policy. So thats the conversation that we really hope to have. Were looking to shed light, and thats one of the things that i think the American Enterprise institute does best. I hope youll join us in being part of that. Im not going to introduce the panel. Theyre roughly divided up. Were going to talk about some of the issues in the region and some of the religious questions. In our first panel, well talk about policy options, and then in the second panel. Everybody will talk about what they want, as usual. Youve been here before. The one thing that i want to remind everybody is that while we will have a chance for q a, the way we do our panels now is in a much more informal way. Were not asking everybody to give a presentation up front. This is really meant to be a conversation. So even though were seated behind a dais because we cant figure out how to put the chairs in the right place, this is really intended to be more of a lively conversation than it is a series of lectures. I hope that youll enjoy it. And if you have any comments afterwards please let me know. And let me turn things over to michael rubin. Thank you very much. Im thrilled to be on a panel of three friends. Jennifer bryson and i went to yale together. I was working on iranian history and jennifer was working on arabic language. We continued studying together in yemen, although jennifer had a far more advanced level than i was. She has since worked in guantanamo bay. And most recently, shes been at the Zephyr Institute which is right nearby stanford university. And jennifers one of the experts, i think at issues relating to internal reform and internal debate within islamicism, and has a very nuanced view. Next to jennifer is shadi hamid who i often have to face on a show. Moderating today i dont have to worry about shadi getting the best of me because it often happens. Sha di is one of washingtons most leading experts on Muslim Brotherhood and thought deeply about issues of reform, what is reform issues of extremism what is extremism, and so forth. So i welcome him. And of course, shadi is at Brookings Institution just up the street and soon to be the American Enterprise institutes neighbor. And last but not least is my old friend abbas kadhim. I met abbas in the u. S. Military lecturing. Hes probably one of the best connected americans to the internal religious state inside nedjaf. Hes a senior fellow at johns hopkins, hes also founded indes pencible shiite studies. What i will do is open the conversation to my panelists with the very basic question, we often talk about how islam needs reform. But what exactly is a reform in the what is reformism in the islamic context . Id like to start by rejecting the concept of reform. I dont find it helpful. I find language of revival, renewal, and development more helpful. And lets look just very recently at the chattanooga shooter. His problem was that he was disconnected from the very rich and complex traditions of islam. I dont like a different word. You dont like reform. I dont like reformation. I feel like this word weve been hearing more and more of it. And theres a New York Times best seller that has that word prominently in the subtitle. So, i mean, part of the problem there is this idea we can apply concepts that were specific to christianity, and its evolution, to a very different religion islam. And this idea that we almost assume that theres this liberal determinism that all societies cultures and peoples will ultimately end up at the same end point, the end of history if you will. Its just a matter of how long it takes to get there and what happens along the way. I find this idea a little bit, you know, in a way its sort of paternalistic and patronizing. Why exactly should islam be like christianity. Why should muslims necessarily there was that big debate im sure a lot of you saw with bill maher and ben affleck, and i think a lot of us were maybe not, i dont know but a lot of you may have been cheering on ben affleck. It was problematic, even though it might have been kind of our instinctual feel to say, oh, good. He was essentially saying that we all want the same things that muslims want to eat sandwiches, too. And he actually said that, eating sandwiches, as if and we all want to raise kids and have good jobs and all of that. Which is all fine. But you can want to eat a sandwich but still believe islamic law should be central in public life. You can want to eat sandwiches and believe the hadud punishment should be implemented. Thats when i think it becomes challenging. Anyway, the point there is that it may be that islam ill just put this out there and we can get back to it what if islam is uniquely resistant to secularization . Then what . I will push back on one question actually, and ask you for clarification. When you say hadud punishment, for the wider audience what is that . It would include stoning adulterers, cutting off the hands of thieves, various punishments for alcohol consumption. Im going to push back on something that jennifer said if i may. When you talk about how its not necessarily to have a reform, but a reconnection with the rich theology and theological debates within the islamic contexts, the question is, given in the late 20th century the distortion thats come from some of the funding of rad camicalradicalism lets say from the Islamic Republic of islam as well, how do you go about reviving some of the other strains of debate that might not be as well resourced . What do you think they oh logically those strains are . So small disagreement i have with shadi on this. Both touch on an issue that i think is really important. And this is the issue of religious freedom. Including religious freedom from muslim and muslim societies. With the hadud punishments, it is debated whether death for apostes is for punishment. That debate is ongoing. Theres a lot of rich substance in it. For this distortion that we see today is one reason that in my own research i became so interested in the question of muslim support for religious freedom, including a muslim majority society, is because there are a lot of constructive voices out there, but theyre often crushed by authoritarian regimes, modern social pressures. And so i think one of the most important things is going to be reducing the barriers that the constructive voices face, such as censureship and lack of funding. And as for specifically which one details, im going to pass on that for now because its almost too big a question. But that will at least start it off. Well come back to that. This is actually a question that im going to ask to abbas. Because maybe we could say that we have a sectarian divide going down the middle of this table. Simply because while im not muslim my background ph. D. Is in iranian history. I spent much more of my time in the shiite world. When it comes to some of the sectarian differences about which we hear so much today i remember that while shiites may be 10 or 15 of the Muslim Population worldwide between the mediterranean, through iran its about a 50 50 split which means theres a sense that absolutely everything is in play. When it comes to shiaism, are there major differences this is for the panel between how internally sunnis and shiites deal with extremism, or for lack of a better word reform or revival within their own communities . Well, thank you. Well be happy to give you an honorary citizenship, so thats no problem there. Good morning, everyone. Thanks to American Enterprise for putting together this timely and important panel. Glad to be with this distinguished group of scholars. Let me address your first question. Because i think its important. And give it a little bit of a different slant. I have no problem with the word reformation, or a reform. As long as we know reform of what, and how. I think if we distinguish between these two concepts that islam as a religion and what muslims did as a historical series of events, we can talk and legitimately should talk about reforming the muslim experience of our 1,400 years. Because we dont really have in the original source of koran of islam, the koran, that is, and the authentic we cannot authenticate it. It is not specific what we do about the state. A lot of the hadud has been developed later. Through the muslim experience, and reform can always be going back to the roots of islam. And then trying to derive from those roots what works for this time and this age. Just like the muslims throughout the centuries have gone some of them to the roots, and what was working for them in their time and their place. We can talk about the reform and the religious question. In terms of your latter question, extremism, whether its shia or nonshia, i dont like to use the word sunni. When i taught i said there is such a thing as sunni. We have four schools of theologian and four schools of jurisprudence. They said we got it right on one and the others are wrong. Extremism is extremism everywhere. And it is problematic. I wouldnt say a shia extremist is better than a sun nie or a nonshia extremist or the other way around, but also they are coming from the same source. People do interpret their sources and their original sources of their religion. Some of them interpret in a more friendly way and others have or a little more restrictive point of view but extremists in both sides or all sides claim an ill legitimate me nop me monopoly of the truth. What i was trying to get was this notion that within shiaism, of course, one follows a source. Theres constant debate as one follows traditionally and predominantly although not always as we discussed in previous panels living sources of emulation and so that means the debate continues dynamically although perhaps then in anyone who has gone to these cities have seen these various debates that occur on a microlevel among the various ayatollahs. It seems in the shia and sunni world, the idea of an on going debate that centuries ago a consensus was achieved a consensus that can no longer be challenge. Is that a factor or is it not a factor . Abbas first and then yeah sure. I mean there are differences and i would even go as far as saying there are differences among the four schools that we call the sunni schools. Sometimes in certain schools of islam, certain people have an omnipresent authority. Its very hard to come against a ruling that was made in the 13th century a. D. And that is something that is with us and thats why we see it is very hard to loosen ones self from the grip of the authority of certain people. But if i go in other schools or in other places, it does come up with new rulings all the time and also in the malaki school there are a lot of them. But you are right on one thing right on the spot is that the shia have gone with the idea of the jihad much more than their counterparts and that gave them a lot of flexibility to fit in the time and the circumstance and we see even among shia different times have led to different rulings as we can see from different times or even earlier from 1920 scholars so the followers. Not any of the great constitutionalists who came up with the one most important books of constitutional islam, so you have that and there i would agree with you totally yes. Just one two finger, can you define for the term. Ishti jihad, it means giving ones open or giving ones side of a certain argument but jihad as a term in shia Juris Prudence means asserting ones effort from the ruling and original source of the koran the tradition of the prophet or the other sources such as reason or the consensus of scholars when it existed. Okay. Shadi. I agree with abbas that among conservative muslims, theres wide interpretation, thats because perception has largely been noncleric i kal movements, were talking about doctors, engineers and lawyers trying to take premodern concepts to take them to a modern context. Obvious you are going to have a lot of diversity. What im saying is there can be disagreement about the specific implementation of sharia law but there does seem to be i would kind of go back a little bit further and say if we look at the founding moment of islam and muslims arent bound to their founding moment but muslims cant fully escape their founding moment either. Founding moments matter and the fact that prophet mohammed was not just a prophet or bsh you, but a theologian that has real implications, even 14 centuries later now because now you have a secular reformist type in the arab world and he or she is making the case of separation of religion and politics that person has to go up against the prophetic model. There are ways to do that, but they are challenging and its unlikely to get a Critical Mass of support in the muslim world because it involves challenging hermetuical arguments. I would mention one more thing. The muslim relationship to the text is quite different than christianity. So there is no equivalent to koran in christianity. So even if you talk to rightwing evangelicals, they dont believe they would say the bible is the word of god but they would not say that the bible is gods actual speech. And this might not sound like an important distinction but it is absolutely critical in my view. Even if you are a lax muslim, its a credal requirement to believe that the koran is the not just the word of god, not just inspired by god but gods actual speech, what that means is every single letter and word is not mediated, it did not go through anyone else it is gods speech. So the fact that even a lax muslim has an even more intense commitment to the text than a right wing evangelical does to the bible, we can debate what the applications are. Thats one thing to keep in mind. One more thing on this the reformation issue, we have a Reformation Movement of sorts. And it led into what we call mainstream islamism, so the Brotherhood School of thought and if i had to define islamism made stream islamism in one sentence, i would phrase it like this, in an attempt to recon siel premodern islamic nation law with the modern nation state. If you look what they have been doing for decades, thats pretty much what their view is. Reform and reformation can lead to ascendant conservative forms some would even say celifees. Toipt touch to i want to touch quickly on ill legitimate diversity. I think this phrase of ill legitimate monopoly is precisely what they want to claim. As for reformation i agree actually with your latter comment about how some would say islams initial Movement Toward effort of a reformation of sorts within the sunni tradition, i see coming more with the solifees who look at the tradition as barn ackles on a shoot and also had a narrow view as to what it means to go back to original sources and whats possible from those. Okay i actually im just an explanation to the audience we may appear that we are delving into the weeds but thats only because the second panel, which is going to be led by Danielle Pletka is going to look at the greater macro issues into how this fits into the United States policy and broader policy within the islamic world. That said what i want to do is pick up on something which abbas said almost in an offhanded way, when you talked about, you differentiated authentic kadif and this reminds many of the work ive done with the fbi in which ive oftentimes here and ive heard this from other islamic scholars as well about the problems growing in the region from inauthentic hadif. An hadif is an example, tradition of the prophet mohammed its an important source beyond the text of the koran itself. The question i have when you made the excellent observation that oftentimes what we have with these modern if you were more extremist movements are movements of engineers of doctors, of other professionals rather than movements which are necessarily being led by theologans. When you have a situation like this maybe in your various areas of expertise and within the greatest greater islamic world, you all have Different Levels of expertise. I want you to give the examples of inauthentic teachings perk lating to the top and speculate how you can counteract those or how within the policy world you can contradict these . Can i go to you first, jennifer . One specific example comes to mind that ive been looking at in a lot more detail is the so these hadith are sayings and actions attributed to mohammed and with this issue that earlier about whether or not death for apostasy is a mandatory punishment, this does not come from a koran but rather than a saying attributed to mohammed i think here we need to talk about the modern environment of 140 characters. At least those of you who are involved for a time in islamic studies will see in social media both in nonmuslims who are very involved in these anti muslim movements, and extremists, this little phrase, mohammed said he who changes his religion kill him. Well that fits into 140 characters and so that gets you know, shared around but that is embedded within a saying itself that has the all these traditions of who narrated it, who said this, and these this is very very important for muslims themselves and this is where these questions of authenticity comes from and that saying of mohammed has in its chain of transmission somebody named ikrama who was known as a liar and so there are major scholars throughout islam that wont accept any traditions that were narrated by ikrama and now it gets into far more detail and you are probably starting to get bothered and bored, and those who are thriving on the quick social media get bored and thats where we then lose connection to these discussions going on that are challenging acceptance of that hadith and they are challenging it based on internal traditions to islam but these get into long detail conversations by the scholars and the theologans which is very difficult from the way political akctivists will approach the text. I would offer a note of caution. I mean, i think we have to ask ourselves this question of does belief precede action or is it the other way around . Sometimes we just assume so doctrine says something and, therefore, that explains why a certain Islamist Group takes a certain Political Action but oftentimes in practice its the reverse. And you especially see this with mainstream islamist movements the brother hood or the p the justice and Development Party its the main Islamist Party in morocco now and also part of a coalition government. So they will they will feel forced to do something so political necessity will push them in a certain direction, but they wont have thought it out theololgic theololgicically, because they have done it, they have to justify it to their followers so they retroactively go and try to figure out some ways to justify things that they probably wouldnt have justified 10 or 15 years ago. Islamist movements over time, we dont have to like them, but we have to acknowledge that they have changed on a number of key issues attitudes toward democracies, womens rights, they dont believe in gender quality, from where they are now from the 60s, there has been a shift. They have been driven by political context, not theology. Does it really matter what certain hadith it matters but we can debate how much it matters, if you want to find something in the islamic tradition to justify what you are doing you probably will be able to find it somewhere because its such a diverse rich tradition. Can i jump in respond quickly . Shadi makes a vitally important point that its often political agendas and powerseeking that are driving actions and digging a little bit shallowly through the tradition to try to justify them but this question of so then does islamic theology matter i think is really important, and i just had a blog post that i put up at arc of the Universe University of notre dame blog of a lecture from someone from pakistan who gave a terrific talk does islamic theology matter if what is being done is fundamentally political . He feels as a muslim hes looking at the sunni perspective, that the public religious discussions have become so distorted that he feels that this engagement at the theological level does matter even if that itself is not a primary driver. Im just going to give it a little bit of nuance here, back to our question of authenticity, and since i normally go deeper into that when i teach but today when i spoke about it, it came as a fit in the conversation authenticity here there are two kinds of issues with the hermanutics of the islam. The koran, muslims believe this is the exact word of god. It has not been changed by as little as a comma since the days of the prophet mohammed. That zil not that still does not mean that we are immune from error when we are rely on the koran. There is the issue of interpretation. We deal with words that have been in currency 1400 years ago yes, it is the same language if you want to bring it home just imagine how different the meaning of the word arms in the u. S. Today from the days of madison and jefferson, and the second amendment. Are we talking about the thing that madison needed five minutes to load or the thing that you can mow down 200 people in a matter of seconds . We dont know really what madison would do if he saw the ak47. So what do we do here . We go with our own best efforts to imagine what he would do. And there are good arguments on both sides. And in islam, the same thing. Yes, the koran is the word of god in the mind of a muslim but the meaning of each word in the koran is in dispute in the mind of muslims today as what they meant 1400 years ago. When we talk about the hadith, its not just the statements of the prophet the source of legislation and islam are the statements, the acts, and the consent of the prophet and, you know, i dont want to get go deeper into that but when you go to the acts and consent you become murkier in your interpretation of what those meant. If we stick to the hadith in general, the authenticity is a very important issue to think about. Like the koran which was recorded in the time of the prophet, the hadith was recorded 200 years ago years after his death, so and so told him, so and so told him and the prophet said. How many can you reproduce what we said in the last 15 minutes . Imagine six, seven eight people in the chain of transmission that will get you exactly, if we are differing on the meaning of an exact word what will happen in those 200 years . So that is one thing. The other part of it or the other layer of it is that it is not always this hadith or the koran is being used honestly. Lets remember that those groups, whether they are tourist groups or ie delogs, they are not using these in an honest way to get a verdict. Most of time they are used to advance an agenda. Muslims have lied and attributed things to the prophet to 1400 years and there are stories and stories of what people did. And a matter of hadith that trickle down i think it wasnt addressed the part of the question, what can hadith will come in and take the hadith for example about the 70 virgins, its not one of these books that are considered authentic. It is coming from out of that, and even if you were to think where is it is used, it is used to help or to sort of lure those people who are you know, fit the profile. Who is the guy who will be a suicide bomber . Look at their profile. Are these people who are likely to go and study the six hadith book and see which one is right and what is not and what it means . And much to say as one of our colleagues used to say, you know, the hadith should be rejected on the grounds of practicality, even in paradise, you will not be able to find 70 virgins, so its just an issue that you have to really deal with, but it is used to manipulate certain people and that is what you have. Between the shia and the sunnis, the shia dont even have a book that they can call authentic, and that is easy. Yes, they do consider certain hadiths, but even if they have been used for 1400 years or 1200 years or a thousand years youve seen recent scholars who came out and said these are not really zaya. One of the greatest scholars came out and rejected certain hadiths who have been used by the greatest scholars of muslim before. There is that always that revision. This word kind of ties the hands of certain muslims in the nonshia world when they want to come against you. It is one of the compilers of the hadith books. He around 200 years after the prophets death came and worked from the age of 16, actually about 16 years, he was working on that hadith compilation. He traveled around the muslim world, and then put together what he considered to be the exact awuthentic hadith book, several thousand hadiths are put in his books. People in the muslim world and what we call loosely the sunni world say this is the most authentic book after the koran, so going against this thats why they call him bahri and today is yes, basically that is the most authentic according to sunni muslims most authentic hadith and of course there is muslim, his companion and contemporary who came out and filled out his footsteps. He came out with another book. Sometimes they agree and sometimes one has them and the other does not. These are the two most important, but its the collection of hadith that is being followed. If i could just offer a nod of segue toward the next panel and look at all this discussion here about how complicated making sense of even one individual hadith and these traditions that abbas and shadi have talked about, i see this one of things that needs to be done is there has to be room for this complexity and two mistakes that i see being made, one is by governments with muslim majority populations which are trying to respond to violent extremism by having the government decide what good islam is and having this very narrow watered down simplistic version that is governmentapproved for the textbooks and that crushes discussion. This is foreign to islam. The other mistake ive seen this in some european governments, some aw treeian members of parliament wanted muslims to write down in a book what the koran means. They said you have to tell us what it means you have a statement that all muslims in austria are going to agree on and i saw a muslim in the audience laugh at this which is appropriate. This is looking at islam through a lens of christian traditions where in the catholic and or though dox christian traditions you had councils that had creeds. In the nature of islam, there is going to be this ongoing discussion and you are not going to be able to fit it into a textbook for sixyearolds approved by the government and closed the discussion. Would he have got to keep space open for the discussion to keep going. So as ive been thinking about some of these issues listening to my colleagues, one i think theres one area where religion plays an undeniable role and its a little more basic than the specifics about hadith. Ive spent a lot of time with islamists activists particularly Muslim Brotherhood members and leaders and when you get to know these guys, you are probably going to at some point hear their conversion story if you will how they decided to join the Muslim Brotherhood. Now we probably have our preconceived notions about why people join but one thing that struck me is that the more i got to know them, i kept on hearing certain things where there was this one brotherhood member who i remember said to me that he joined the brother hood because he wanted to get into heaven. Its that simple for him. Its not about political power, elections, anything like that. He believes that joining an organization with a structured curriculum and a hierarchical Leadership Structure will help push him to become a better muslim and i feel like those of us secular westerners we have trouble understanding this basic inspiration and we try to kind of parse theirs words. He doesnt really mean that. Theres got to be something more material and tangible thats driving him like maybe he is poor or economically you know hes under employed. I feel like we have to take these things more seriously because thats what they believe. So even if somehow they have false consciousness about what they actually believe and they are probably the better judges of what they believe they believe that this is what is driving them and some ways its actually the most rational explanation for joining a group like the muslim broward brotherhood. What is more important than eternal salvation . When you think about it thats pretty much the most important thing. Thats pretty rational. Im going to just in the next five minutes i have one other question that delves a little bit into the weeds with regard to interpretation and then im going to open the panel to questions from the floor before we move on to our next panel, but theres actually two issues which i want to touch upon. One is this issue which is oftentimes cited to explain radicalism and thats the issue of aborrow abro investigation, what that means if you have two versus of koran, that that revealed to the prophet last automatically trumps that which came earlier and as shadi had said, i mean, mohammed was not only the prophet of a great religion but he was also a statesman and it was toward the end of his life that the state really started to consolidate and therefore some of these later versus tend to be a little bit more stricter or hard line in their interpretation if you will. So how does the issue of abrogation fit in and the second question i have to throw to the panel, i have a relatively secular upbringing, i went to a quaker school, when i would read shakespeare in junior high school, i didnt know the billow i kal biblical allusions. I think it was argued that during the rise of islam, the Arabian Peninsula mecca itself was an incredibly diverse world. Mecca was a trading city. Mohammed was a merchant so had interacted with jews and christians. If we want to look more broadly, people also understood mora astroism. The question is given how much was understood by early muslims about christianity and judaism and frankly how little is understood by christianity and judaism by many contemporary muslims today in places like saudi arabia what is lost in the interpretation that simply is like me trying to read sharks spear without a biblical education . I will address the abrogation and let my colleagues elaborate on the other part of your question, so well divide the work. Abrogation here is you talked about two rulings. One comes later than the first or the second comes later and then you get a modification of the verdict. Let me give you an example. You know, and in the u. S. , for example, when it comes to segregation and desegregation of schools, in the late 1800s 1890s, a case by the Supreme Court was called plesy versus ferguson that says you keep the kids separate but give them equal facilities. Then that was the law for years and years until 1954, and you come with brown versus the board of education, in kansas, and then this case went to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court said equal by definition or inherently, separate is not equal, inherently. So now you have the law that says you desegregate and you get to the implementation of it as we know it from history and the eisenhower days. Same thing here, in islam there are two different issues when you talk about abrogation. First we talk about koran abrogationing koran. There were certain issues that were addressed in different ways than later. Concrete example is the consumption of alcohol. There is a verse that says do not pray while drunk. So simply in order to be able to do, you know you get to there is fine print because you pray all the time so you dont get time to be drunk but still even if you managed to squeeze in a glass or two then thats fine. Thats early because you talk about people in the Arabian Peninsula at the time, their only means of entertainment was drinking. If you come to them and theres a new religion and give up this and give up that and you give up alcohol, they say go im not going to be part of islam. Later on when there was a lot of investment, there was a state that could enforce that rule said dont drink period dont drink period. The second one an borrow investigated the first and thats what they call partial abrogation. The earlier continues to be in existence in koran somebody who praise, he condition drink and pray. The other problematic part that is more relevant to our panel is when there is the school that says the hadith of the prophet can abrogate the koran. The koran is authentic. You can deal with it even we dont know really for sure which verse came before the other. When you read, you see this is a mess here, when you look at the chronological, but that is koran abrogating koran. When you get to a school that the hadith can abrogate the koran, then you get to what jennifer was talking about who says whoever abandons his religion, kill him. This is a hadit ha that is attributed to the prophet, it goes against another verse in the koran. That the koran says whoever wants to believe let him believe. Whoever wants to disbelieve let him disbelieve. Another verse it says he who believes then goes into disbelieve then believes goes into disbelief and increases his disbelief, so theres a process of someone who is defying the belief time and again and then, you know, there is a killing, he will not have the chance to do all of these things. In the koran, which gave certain hadud these punishments to much later issues less than the death penalty, it addresses abandoning religion, apostasy it doesnt give punishment. Its only in the hereafter. Thats another indication where the koran is silent on it. How can he do it . Theres also the most clear one there should be no compulsion in matters of religion. Again, six, seven, eight versus that can say no punish many and one hadith that you find with a lot of grains of salt you have to take it with and muslims do follow it in order to kill someone where the koran does not. So abrogation of hadith or the koran by the hadith has been the most problematic practice but muslim idealogus and Muslim States because thats how to get rid of your opponents, what better way than to say the prophet said to it. There was a sudanese scholar who was executed knit 80s so he wrote a book the second message of islam where he makes a distinction between the mecca versus and the medina versus his argument is the reverses the versus revealed in mecca are eternal versus in islam the ones revealed in medina are how to apply those to the historical and political context of medina seventh century. That raises a very interesting question of Historical Context. Muslims all agree its the word of god but then you get into this issue. Lets hypothetical what if a divine message was reveal to someone in new york city like mohammed. Presumably some of the things would be different, and just with that kind of thought experiment we know that Historical Context really matters, so, for example, when it comes to gay rights presumably anything revealed today in new york would have a little bit of a different perspective, a more tolerant one. Saying that women receive half of the inheritance of men, no one would take the divine message seriously in the u. S. Or europe or a lot of other places in the world if that was in the text. They would say this doesnt really relate to our modern context, so thats one way of looking at this issue of context. Jennifer. Just briefly on this question of abrogation, what i think we need to look at is the eternal discussions that muslims themselves are having. It raises flags for me when the most frequent place that i see this question of abrogation being raised in which later versus of the koran or perhaps even hadith would make other versus of the koran il legitimate, i see temperature being raised most often to nonmuslims, who are very attached to islam is violent. If they are the ones raising this again and again and again and that should raise some flags for us. I relate that to the concept of takia who is raised by those who say you can never trust a muslim, this term means its okay to lie sometimes. Muslims says how can i be doing something that ive never heard of . If these conversations arent important to muslims themselves internally, we need to look at that. You raise a great point that familiarity with christian traditions are important and common historically and astonishingly absent today. I think there is room to reopen that. Let me open the floor to a very few questions. You can ask as many questions as you want but were only going to answer the first one. Second of all, everyone in washington has an affiliation, so say your name and where you are from. Wait for the microphone. Wait for the microphone. And then after that, were going to go to hadia and well turn it over to the next panel. Im from the brookings institute. Even it to think the prophetic model modern imagination as a head of state . Should i also tell another sentence to explain what i meant . Sure. So if we look at the modern construction of the self going back to the roots, isnt it to think that this is fundamentalism which could be applied to other contexts, what we call fundamentalism in various forms, either religious or nonreligious, so why islam should be exceptional in explaining in the context of Human Behavior . So he obviously wasnt a head of the state in the modern sense of the word state but he was the head of a Political Community, one that had a somewhat distinct geographical location, so we call it a variety of Different Things, but i think the point still heads that he was the head of whatever that thing is, whether state community, so on. I have to admit that when shadi used the phrase head of state, i sort of thought no, i disagree. I think it is helpful to realize that the nationstate today is a different type of structure and the head of a nationstate today has powers that are fundamentally different and this is something that some muslims themselves have raised such as abdullah aheem who has this interesting argument for him to follow sharia aw thenically, it needs to be a state where the government is not involves because the powers are so foreign to the traditions of islam, for him to be following by choice as a believer, it needs to be a personal choice and not imposed by force of this new thing that we have today of nationstate. I look at mohammed more as a Community Leader although i recognize what shadi said it was a Political Community of sorts. If i may its a very important debate and distinction simply because if you read ayatollahco manes workses he legitimate miess his claims to the structure of the Islamic Republic of iran based on his reading of the prophet mohammed and the prophet mohammeds involvement in politics and loiks likewise we can say the same thing, whether its legitimate or not, abu backr baghdadi has raised again. The state that the prophet provided over was not recognized by u. N. Security council but basically lets look at how he went about it. First, even though he was bound by the message that he said it came from god, he was very pragmatic seeing that medina had a community of jews and muslims and he drafted what scholars called the constitution of medina about 40some articles that regulated the relation between jews and muslims within medina in a secular way, i will say not religious way. He mobilized armys. He conducted business with foreign or sort of other entities. He even regulated the relation of people coming to medina or leaving, in other words, refugees, et cetera, who would runaway. He applied laws. He had punishments. He organized a society. So there is all of that within the time frame of this seventh century. I would say yes, you can call it a state but, yeah, of course if you compare it with lux em boring today that would not be a state, i agree. Very quickly and were going to the next panel. Can you please wait for the microphone . Jennifer you made a great point about the oversimplification of islam for the islamists, the 140 characters or less. In light of that and in response that theres this rich tradition in islam and we theyd access to and removing the obstacles to access to it so do you i ask this question to all of you, do you think that mainstream muslims, traditional muslim will be able to ever launch a Successful Campaign against islamic extremism if were not able to overly simplify traditional mainstream islam . Great question. Yes it is a good question. [ laughter ] i think so for example, i Work Together with a group of muslims now on a project called Islamic Religious freedom. Org, and one of the one of things that were looking for ways to do is to try to find bridges between the complex analysis for example of these hadith to the 140 character versions and were finding that one of most important things we have to do is devote a longterm period of time, because our engagement at the 140 character level is drop, drop, drop, drop, drop. And its taking it takes a lot of those drops to keep the conversation going and keep others engaged and be able to touch on the different aspects but this bridge between a modern media world that wants quick, simple answer, and the reality of this complexity is very, very tough, and my twitter account Somebody Just asked me oh, im sorry. I just got this note. Anyway, so its going to be hard but its not impossible. But its going to take time. I was going to just conclude very cleverly by saying we were talking about twitter and sense everyone on this panel has so much expertise i thought that as we conclude and as we welcome the next panel, i would ask each of you or i would tell each of you provide your twitter handle so its dr. Abbas kadhim. Shadi. shadi. Thats j. S. Bryson. With that i want to thank our panelists. It was a truly fascinating panel. [ applause ] i feel like there should be a really good play called waiting for mohammed. Thank you everybody, that was a really marvelous panel and i hope everyone enjoyed it as much as i did. Were going to turn now to a little bit more of a for lack of a better word, a practical conversation about what to do. I think we understand in depth some of the challenges that face us and the fact that, you know this is not this is not a simple issue where we can suddenly embrace a reformist and expect that in ten years reform will have happened. Part of the challenge i think that we face and one of reasons why we wanted to have this conversation and im so glad to be join by such a distinguished panel to discuss this is our National Conversation really has been dominated on the one side by political correctness. Successive president s, republican, democratic, who like to stand up and say this is not islam as if they are in a position to dictate what islam is, whether they are right or wrong ask the Islamic State is neither. I actually think that the Islamic State is both. It may not be the islam that should be, but it is in fact certainly a form of islam and then on the other side, bigotry. All muslims are terrorists. This has become the tenor of the public conversation rather than an intelligent debate about what it is we can do. Today im join by three marvelous people. Ambassador husain haqqani. Editor of Current Trends in islamist ideology and Mohamed Younis who is an expert for the Gallup Organization and particularly a specialist on the questions of youth unemployment in the middle east. Lets start super generally. Is this at heart this problem of islamist extremism something that the United States should try, can try to contend with as a matter of policy . Are there policy answers . You can start. Thank you very much, danielle. I think this question the president recently had mentioned and he said were not in a war with islam and that certainly came through and we all agree with that but i dont know why he did not make the distinction between islam as a religion and the islam the ideologically driven by islamic extremists. I think there is a big difference between the two and i think we should be clear when we address this issue especially right now and we see the rise of radical extremism not only in the middle east and the muslim world but also here attacking us here in the United States. I think we are in a very critical period of time and we need to move forward in addressing these issues addressing it in a very wise way but also firm and strong. Okay, and i want everybody else to answer this question as well, but as you answer it, consider this, okay, fine less embrace the idea that we should have a war on islamic extremists of the isis variety, not a war with the islam religion, what does that war look like . What are the components part of it . If you want to punt it over to husain. Im happy to its always a pleasure. Let me begin by saying that i was here for the last panel and you know, i was quite sort of shadi spoke of islams foundational moment. The truth is islamics foundational moment continued well into the next two or three centuries. The mohammed was not the start of the caliphate. People can think they all belong to one community but its not one faith. Its multiple dimensions. Look at christianity in the United States. You know from quakerism to evangelical christianity. They all are christians and there are more mondays and some christians may have zink different views of and they consider themselves christians. Islam is the same. It has many dimensions and basically what were dealing with is the problem of those who are engaged in war. And so you cannot fight a war without recognizing that these people are your enemies and so this attempt to try and assuage muslim feeling and they are muslims, i speak as somebody who has been born in the fact community, muslims trying to be aapologetic and dont criticize our religion nobody is criticizing that religion as long as. All these parsing of arguments in universities is not going to help with all due respect. Islamic history is complex. In the eighth and ninth and tenth centuries, there were people who wanted more reason in religion and the reason why they became weak as small groups, they became weak is because the caliph to decided to use the force of the state. What we have seen as a child and zainab was a child. I went to a form of devotional music which is prevalent in south asia as a form of devotion. Now isis would behead me for listening to it. The fact remains that the reason that radical menace. Im not in the business of commanding politicians. But David Camerons speech yesterday about what britain plans to do about islamic extremism is a speech i would like to hear from the United States president. Here is a short summary of it. He says that islamic extremists selfidentify as muslims. It may be a variant a distortion it does have have to do with islam. Its a radical ideology, when they are fought, they need an ideological counterstrategy. Here in the u. S. The journal that you cannot remember was my idea and my friend and ed brown, we got together, we started it its the only journal in the english language that studies various radical texts and tries to explain them in plain english. Ideally this should be a bit similar to the journal that was published during the cold war still gets published called problems of communism. Im getting into the trump moment of exaggerating too much. Dozens of languages is more accurate than hundreds. And so people actually understand what is being discussed by these people. Three or four years ago we read articles in magazines on line we realized a new movement was arising that end up being the Islamic State. What would be the components of a policy response. Four. One would be a military component. You have to fight them and dislodge them from territory. There has to be an intelligence component to understand whats going on within these movements. There has to be a an ideological components and there has to be a Law Enforcement component for finding and identifying those who are breaking various laws but there is a component missing. You cannot let people just to give you an example, danielle, and ill give the sort oosh ill go quiet for a few minutes to others can speak. Theres a tendency in the state department to make sure if they are having a meeting theres x number of hijab and x number of men with beards, thats their stereotype of muslims. If up the jewish community, you have rabbis. There are women in my family who cover their head and there are women who dont wear the hijabs and they are all muslims. The real role of the western power is to encourage diversity. Muslim brotherhood leeferred leader, the originator of kind of a modern terrorist ideology, he is not the originator because there are other movements that have been extremely extremist but there is also another egyptian scholar. I doubt if anybody except tworo three of us have heard about him, he wrote a book make being the argument this whole knowing of an Islamic State was flawed because medina was not really an islamic city. If i were to run a campaign i would make sure there were millions of copies of this book in various languages and locations and people actually read the argument for why the notion of the Islamic State in the modern era is a flawed notion. Ill stop here and let others speak. Im take a shot at your first question. Really, its two components in terms of what we do about it we got to be careful as to we. Theres certainly a role as america in a war on islam what were seeing is a war within islam. Some of it is ideological. Some of it is military. Some of those military, you know attempts are very much legitimate be is objective. A lot of them unfortunately, in the past couple of years, at least in the middle east have been completely diverted for other political purposes. As the utilizes, we United States we need to be cognizant of that. We need to make sure that our position is really one in which creates an environment for a diversity of opinions who actually see the light of day. So kind of going back. Theres two things. Philosophically we need to increase, not we america, but we people who want to see this problem more effectively addressing, im not somebody who believes and part of this is based on our polling im not somebody who believes we need more scholars that can counterextremist narratives. There are a lot of those people. They are highly qualified. I can list pages of names on a piece of paper who have been very for somebody. Theyre doing everything they can, quite frankly. The challenge, really, is in having somebody not believe that joining the Muslim Brotherhood will send them to heaven because the karan doesnt say joining the Muslim Brotherhood i see that and we need to be clear. Thats the challenge because those people have been convinced, primarily because of a state of juris prudential literacy that this has become required. That what has become so we saw the first time i talked about that, i know this is going to trigger a lot of concerns prosecute from people because this point is often used, i think disingeniously, but shariah, and we will debate this, from my view, it is the utopian ideal set as a flag to rally towards, as a goal to achieve in a utopian existence. Fuhk is the attempt by human beings to make mistakes who are mostly lawyers who are trying to interpret out from that ideal how do we do it on planet earth . A very important point was made in the lan last panel, that isis is not a traditionalist movement. Isis is a complete walking away from the tradition of Juris Prudence within its plan. The schools of thought that were eloquently explained by the last panel, the very premise of what they did was legal debate. Everyone knows any real answer, no matter what, is it depends, dot, dot, dot. This is a litmus test for people. Im family to talk on this a little. If you are facing a movement whose ideology is if you dont agree with me you look morality, you are not dealing with somebody who operates in the traditional approach. That tradition is foundationally based on the idea that we can disagree, but fundamentally our disagreement doesnt necessitate for one of us to be less of a muslim or our debate or disagreement doesnt necessitate for one of us to go to heaven or one of us to not go to hech. People who are claiming to be scholars, and maybe some of them are, actually assume the title of holiness. And ill talk about the sunni perspective now. In sunni traditionalism, the only thing thats holy is god. God is holy and the word of god is believed to be eloquently and accurately described to be the actual spoken word of god. When you have that confusion you begin to enter a space where the religious leader is now assuming a holy role that is completely alien to traditional islam and based on that what this person space is religiously mandate. If this person stands on a square and says who wants to die a martyr, raise your hand, if im a good muslim, i need to be on that square and raise my hand. If this person says to be a good muslim, you have to do x, y and z, its either that or its not. When we polled on all of these issues, very thoroughly between 2005 and 2009 what was initially a study of the majority countries, when we asked people about 9 11, you think its completely justified or unjustified most people in this room would not be surprised, overwhelming majorities say it was completely unjustified. I think all of us have reached a little bit of understanding of what were dealing with here and understanding the afghanistan muslim on the street is not going to commit themselves to 9 11. This is across 40 countries not one response included a religious justification. All of them included political justifications, basically grievances people had with the west. We basically found three pockets of studz or three general topics that people continuously cited this is regionive of language, culture, left of education, urban rule, the whole nine yards. The u. S. And the west generally do not want to see these people, muslims and muslim majority countries attain a level of selfdetermination, they dont support us governing the way we want. Overwhelming majorities in almost every single country. So acute conflicts, im upset about the iraq war, etcetera, etcetera and religious and cultural sdrap the notion that islam is willynilly disrespected, not seen as serious, not taken as equal by people in the west. So when you ask people in muslim majority countries what do you admire most about the west, the most common answers will surprise you. Number one is continually, number two is liberty. When you ask americans what they think about islam the positives impressions they have about islam, theres basically nothing. To some degree, muslims are not crazy, they actually realize that a major part of the disconnection in the communication across, you know, waters is essentially that we as muslims, based on the polling have a lot of addmiration of the west. But the west sort of sees us as a problem. And im not saying this is the truth. Im saying this is perception. So my only point is that Muslim Leaders need to lead instead of following perception. These perceptions have been created by our leaders. And including party leaders. Fewer books have been translated into the arabic language which is the language of 300 Million People in the last century than are translated into spanish every year. Aspect stan, which is a nation of 200 million published only 2,583 books the year before last compared to 10,000 for finland which has a population of 5 million. Actually, it is time for muslims to recognize their decline and the causes of it. And that is not going to happen by increasing Juris Prudence awareness, in all respects. I understand many people that fight, for example, the taliban many of them dont know much about islam. They really dont. They are following the leader. They say this is a man who knows islam, im following him. Im trying to go to heaven. I think increasing that is the job of muslims. Im talking about the juris prudential literacy of muslims. I think you made my point. If youre a taliban fighter that knows nothing about islam but the policy question if i may complete my thought the policy question does not actually have anything to do with the juris prudential awareness. Although it should but it cannot. Thats not what policies of government can be about. They can be about the manifestations. They cannot be about a deep rooted psychosis. Absolutely. Im not proposing that the department of defense embark on separation between lets and religion is a big factor. Respecting the rule of law, also respecting human rights in these countries and i strongly believe that the majority on our problems in the muslim law comes from the lack of human rights region the lack of respecting the rule of law and justice. We are not free to speak, we are not free to demonstration, we have not free to practice our religion. You come to america, you come to the west to be able to practice your Religion Without being persecuted by socalled islamic governments. These governments are the base of and extremism that we are facing and seeing today. And they are supporting it fmly, they are supporting it with text and boats and education throughout their tvs, throughout their curriculums they teach in the school, so on and so forth. I actually think we are more agreement on the panel than it would otherwise be led to believe from them jumping on each other. The debate in islamic tradition of you took the words out of my debate. In the tradition of tolerance. I actually think youre all saying the same thing which is fundamentally that there is a leadership problem that we perceived that its coming from this part of the world that the people who others look to whether theyre selfdesignated or anled by the United States government, the state department, are, in fact, pushing people. They are first of all leading these perceptions and i think thats very important. I think the point you made is exactly right. Which is that these perceptions dont come from nowhere. The challenge, though is how you operationalize. This is where i really want to press on what you said. This has become extremely popular to idealize. This is an idealonlial fight. You dont win those with bullets bullets. Some part of it, i think you do win with bullets. But that being said the challenges that this really isnt like communeism in so many ways. First of all this was an all out defense against