Transcripts For CSPAN2 How To Be A Muslim 20170916 : compare

Okay, we are going to start. Good evening everyone, thanks for joining us. My name is yael yisraeli, im the Community Relations manager at the nyu bookstore. This is an ongoing series that weve been having here for the past 70 years featuring nyu alumni like tonight with Haroon Moghul as well as nyu faculty and the General Community as well. Its a real pleasure to be hosting tonight Haroon Moghul who is an nyu along. Welcome back to nyu, pleasure to have you here. We are going to hear from haroon and then have time for questions and answers and a book signing. I want to start the evening by giving a brief introduction. Haroon, i think. Haroon has been very active since graduating from nyu so i dont know if i will cover everything but i will leave it up to him to fill in the gaps. Haroon is currently senior fellow and director of development for the center of global studies, policy, excuse me. He is a commentator and broadcaster who wishes he could be a writer and i think you are, haroon so i actually very much enjoy your writing. Among other things, haroon is also the Muslim Leadership Initiative facilitator at the Shalom Hartman institute. He has appeared in all Major Networks and his reviews have been published at such publications as the washington post, times, cnn, guardian, foreignpolicy and in israel. He is author of a novel, the order of light published by penguin in 2006 and tonight is the launch of his new book , how to be a muslim an american story. Published by beacon press in boston and we thank beacon press for helping us make this event happen. A bit more about haroon. He was previously a fellow at Fordham Law School center of National Security and a fellow in the National Security studies program at new america foundation. He served as director of public operations at the Islamic Center here at nyu from 2007 two 2009. Haroon moghul holds an na from Columbia University where you are currently a phd candidate. So you can tell us more about that. His fields of study include muslim nationalism in south asia, colonial and postcolonial islamic politics and the development of the indian ocean economy. I think that sort of differently than your previous work, this is a very personal book so im going to leave it at that. If i may. Its a real pleasure to welcome Haroon Moghul and we will talk a bit later and have time for questions and answers. Please welcome Haroon Moghul, thanks so much. [applause] hello. Im pretty loud, so i dont know if i need the market mike but you need the mic since you are recording. Cameras follow me everywhere, its called being a muslim. Joke, you can laugh. What i wanted to do is read a section of the book which the color is orange in honor of our president. I saw that coming but i thought it would be a nice gesture. I asked the publisher if we could maybe change the subtitle to a north american story in case i flee to canada but they were not amenable. So the section im going to read is one thats terrifying to me because when you write something, obviously as a writer there are things that you find more i guess suspecting and readers find other parts more affecting so theres the constant search for where is that happy middle ground . This book is personal, it took a lot out of me to write and i come from a very conservative family, religiously speaking. I talked about a lot of things that i dont think my family would have been particularly excited for me to talk about so i had this week long panel panic attack over whether i should invite my family members to my readings because it would be rude not to, but then if i read the book out loud, i would no longer be part of the family. So it was a very exciting balance. What im going to read is a section reasonably early in the book when i was, oh my god, 17 years old. It was before i started nyu, i was in high school and i had come up with a plan, i had a girlfriend and my parents had no idea and i lived in a farm town so there were 95 kids in my entire high school. Everybody in the town except mikes parents knew i was going to prom. This is a section where basically opens with my parents beginning to figure out that i was not the muslim kid they thought i was. When i finally got to the kitchen, a pit in my stomach it was to find my parents waiting an ambush. Why did you have a girl in your car yesterday . My eyes went wide, my mind went into overdrive, on my face compensated by retreating into confusion, perhaps disbelief. A girl . As if i didnt know what one was. Perhaps if i forced them to define the female species, embarrassment would have prevented them from continuing. On reflection this would have worked perfectly. Someone in the community had snitched on me. This is what i got for driving around in the liability of a toy the land cruiser of which there were two in my entire town, one of which along to my family and the other of which belonged to the mosque president whose family was the only other muslim family in town. The two were the same color, beige with brown paneling. The president and my wife both had scars, you can imagine the neighbors confusion. They look the same to me, so to their cars. I decided to only part way. She needed a ride home and sense offering a girl a ride home is already a trespass, maybe that alone was the reason for the momentary panic in my eyes. I folded a waffle in half and shoved it into my mouth, washing it down with chocolate milk. It was nothing, i said, but ive been sloppy. I would have to pursue my secret life with greater deception. I found another job, one that would be easier to hide, softening the blow of being rejected by a chain restaurant. It might have been unethical and possibly illegal. I help students write their thesis papers from scratch for our rewrite. I did not graduate high school once but several times. I profited from my Book Business in order to profit from a life i tried desperately to escape from it. I walked past carla every morning because it was closest to the senior parking lot. My friends tease me for not making out with her. I do wondered why i held back even as i knew, i was scared. It was an absence of opportunity. Her friend samantha prevented one by announcing a pool party at the end of may which i knew i had to attend i would make my move then and there but samanthas house had to be inside the mosque president s which meant you might see my car which as noted was also his car. A huge risk to take two weeks before prom but this new love hardened the edge, not enough to drive over it. I asked jacob to be my ride. Jacob was a bright kid who sometime develop the senior habit of falling asleep during everything. He was bright enough to coast on his wits but the warning signs were there, judging by his snoozing he deemed most of his life to them unimportant to be present for. He almost always wore oversize hen sweaters meaning he looked like his mother had gotten lost inside himself. In case youve forgotten, jacob was usually asleep, not least when driving. Jacobs mom took a liking to me, shewasnt particularly religious always asked me to find jacob a nice jewish girl. As if i had some special access to jewish women that she lacked. On the weight of the party naturally jacobs nose started bleeding. So badly that we drove right past sams house and almost to massachusetts in the belief that we the closer we got to canada, the further we were from harm. Jacob practically ran his moms Station Wagon ground in a neighbors lawn and did a face plant as he sprinted toward the biggest tree in the lawn. It took me a moment to realize he was repurposing leaves as napkins. We met the homeowner which had real napkins after we explained why a plurality of our towns semis were washing their face with oak leaves. This unfathomable omen aside, i ended up that night exactly where i wanted to be, on samanthas pool deck with carla, her beautiful legs pushing on mine. Might need displaced me. Blind shoulder learn how to walk, is a deep instinct birdwell inside them. Its in the right time and place comes to the surface. Some sports reached entirely around my insecure, cowardly impediment of a self and shoved it to the floor. I had never felt so over, but heres the thing, i could sense with some radar i did not know i had that she wanted the same. The energy hung in the air, we were opposite ends of a magnet. Fusion releases more energy than fishing. I just reach over, put my arms around her and watch her moms Station Wagon pull off. With people and immediate force, we jump away from each other. I walked carla to her car dejected with this meager consolation, as she made her way he offered me her hand in apology. It was so much in the grass that i fear i have spent my entire life trying only to return to that squeeze and where i could be held with someone instead of just myself. I let my parents to believe that on the friday night, the first week of june, convenient, id sleep over at a friends house, this friends mom conspired with me as did everyone else to leave school early on the day of prom, one had to have parental permission. Both parents gave theirs, mind you do not need to ask. The principal winked at my departing a little earlier than the conclusion of the day. I crossed state lines to my friends home, showered and shaved and returned to summers in time for the evenings events. Jacobs neighbors were on vacation so i parked my land cruiser not nearly in their backyard under their deck. Having been caught once before i would not make the same mistake. At jacobs house i finally relaxed, i was going to get away with this. We went to his backyard and pose for the camera. Back then you had to wait for pictures to develop and got to live in the moment instead of watching yourself living in it a few seconds later. Jacob jeremy and i would our days were dressed to the nines and the smiles we wore for the camera belied what was around the corner. For reasons that will become obvious i have no other pictures of me with carla. At prom practically every student went out of his way to gradually congratulate me. More encouraged that i wanted to attend in the first place. Everyones belief system appreciates validation and i wanted there may be so that one day i wouldnt need it. Maybe soon. Ive gotten rejection letters but also admission letters. Between Boston University and nyu i think the latter. All good things must come to an end. I never see many of my classmates again, i never see this me again. It would be like it never happened. And i love dance to Sarah Mclachlan which i cannot listen to even now without breaking out in goosebumps. I still ask myself who she is, why she needs to know we havent done anything wrong and why i was receiving an islamic mean here of all places. And satan asked adam chow i lead you to a tree into a kingdom that never dies. The apple tastes better than it digests but islam has no original sin. Adam is tempted by the desire to live forever yet fails and he falls, but only in falling does he become the caliph he was meant to be so maybe we missed the point of the story all along. You can do the wrong thing for the right reasons. Adam and eve ate from the tree but they repented, they were forgiven, they stuck together. I was a 17yearold who wanted to belong, to believe there was a world he could be inside and a part of, that he didnt need to analyze from without, the judge, excommunicate or be excommunicated from. If only for a night, let the stars circled me. The flared jeans, metal necklaces, the occasional bracelet bracelet, a wallet to a belt loop, these were the tribal marks of an amateur snowboarder and to validate me by announcing i was other than me, seeking out to fit in. Those emblems couldnt tell you how badly i wanted this cheerleader. We can walk what others want because they want it and still want it for ourselves. Sometimes we are unable to point to where our desires begin and others end. After price from we might have stopped at friendlys, i cant remember. Carla wanted nothing to do with me. The last thing she did was chide me, you cant drink, youve got to drive. The next afternoon alone in an empty bedroom, chart carla chose aol instant messenger to shock and all me. We should break up. Sure, i agreed, died. Ive not expected this would end even as i made plans to go away for college. You can hold two can contradictory host in your head and still be devastated when one of them gives way. Its wanting to have your cake and eat it too but what else would you do with cake i drove with my parents to new york the night after prom to see my family. I sat broken and unspeaking in the black backseat. My mom would pass away less than a decade later. My father is still with us another decade after that but i could not admit to them then or ever after that my end run around them and fail because i was in the end, then you carla and i never moved beyond that first kiss, i didnt work catholics more than the catholic girl. She told me in casual detail what intimacies she would and would not be okay with. I nodded determinedly as if this was a subject i had long ago mastered. Yet for me raised on the idea of marriage once and forever, i believe dating was no different from marrying. Once together, we would remain together, terminology was technicality so i was ruined like i could not believe. Its one thing not to go to prom and another to be dumped the day after you pull off the greatest deception in your brief history. If every person has one great test, mine was and may still be departing. I learned i can deal with death but i could not accept that god would let lives get entangled only to be yanked apart. How can you live forever and be a part forever . That death, a real end without resurrection. A place where a swan cant go doesnt help. Had carla not broken up with me, i have broken it off with her. The deeper sorrow carved into you, the more joy you can contain from which i learned this lesson. The further you let a person into your soul, the longer it takes her to leave. I couldnt have guessed then how much it would hurt give anyone anything of my heart but i have stupidly given all of mine, presuming the future existed while the present was coming together. The following spring i stopped by carlas house to pick up bradley, a good friend of mine. Though he lived on the other side of town. Jeremy, was standing beside me area and none of this memory makes any sense but thats probably because all i was focused on and all i could see so many years later is carla at the top of the stairs putting dishes away. She might have waived. A year later we ended up across from each other at a diner to shareware life had taken us. Jeremy laughed as he and i walked back to my car. That, he said , was the longest conversation you ever had with her. Maybe i should ask her out. I never spoke or saw her again. Maybe we do not live one life but many. Im some never intersect. Maybe i tell myself this to keep feelings away because if i know they can unfold somewhere else, they do not need to know what they mean to this universe. My religion says a man should not be alone with a woman but somebody told me a man should not feel so alone that needs to be alone with a woman to feel like his life is worth living. Smiles, lightness and kindness, she provided to our universe otherwise felt misplaced by but what i missed most of all in the months after we broke up was her hand. From the first time she offered hers at a rollerskating break to when we left the dance floor. It maybe god says you hate the thing and it is good for you. Beyond my desire was an awesome loneliness, a feeling of living in a nothing place only briefly interrupted. Life for us to love was no life at all. From time to time this emptiness made the world start and a beautiful but most of all it hunted and pursued me. Something always comes from nothing. With every difficulty, he says, theres relief. It could be this is me or all of us. We stumble onto god in the blank places we live in but dont belong to if only to be taught we dont belong here. Thank you. [applause] that is a chapter from the book and yes, i got dumped the day after prom. Im not bitter at all. Iq haroon. If i may start the q and a part of the evening, i want to refer to an article that was published two days ago in the atlantic by emma green and the article is titled trying to be an apolitical muslim in america. Its from haroons how to be a muslim tries out the new genre, writing about islam thats not about terror or war. How do you feel about that title . And tell us a little bit what brought you to write a very different kind of book . In the spirit of being political, to answer your question about being apolitical, im going to answer a different question because thats what politicians do. Donald trump just start tweeting but i cant do what he does. So the book is titled how to be a muslim and the first review it got was ready positive but the end reviewer was like, he never answers the question of how to be a muslim. He missed the point but even better is theres a book that was published in malaysia called how to be muslim which is a guidebook so there are confused people out there who are getting like why is the book like a series of teaches about how to pray and there would be someone in malaysia who thinks theyre giving their book kids some book on prayer and their going to read about the kiss after prom so its going to be exciting i hope you you know, when i came to nyu in 1998, the bookstore was not here. When i came to nyu, i had a very tenuous connection with my Muslim Identity and i grew up in a very small, very christian town which is a lovely town, it was just small and i came to new york and you have to like whittle new york down to size, its huge that its overwhelming. I basically debated between joining the validation club or the muslim club and the Salvation Club i went to the first event and it was a dance party and i could not dance so i was like, im not going to spend four years not dancing because thats. Thats why i joined the Islamic Center because i cant dance so i might as well join muslims. Terrible life choices. That comes from honest admissions of our own failures for certain things. So i may have answered your question, i promise. I promise im answering your question. I got really excited because all these different times people were muslim and i thought i may not be particularly religious but i can help build a religious community so me and a few kids were like, we can make ic nyu which is a massive institution into Community Relations<\/a> manager at the nyu bookstore. This is an ongoing series that weve been having here for the past 70 years featuring nyu alumni like tonight with Haroon Moghul<\/a> as well as nyu faculty and the General Community<\/a> as well. Its a real pleasure to be hosting tonight Haroon Moghul<\/a> who is an nyu along. Welcome back to nyu, pleasure to have you here. We are going to hear from haroon and then have time for questions and answers and a book signing. I want to start the evening by giving a brief introduction. Haroon, i think. Haroon has been very active since graduating from nyu so i dont know if i will cover everything but i will leave it up to him to fill in the gaps. Haroon is currently senior fellow and director of development for the center of global studies, policy, excuse me. He is a commentator and broadcaster who wishes he could be a writer and i think you are, haroon so i actually very much enjoy your writing. Among other things, haroon is also the Muslim Leadership Initiative<\/a> facilitator at the Shalom Hartman<\/a> institute. He has appeared in all Major Networks<\/a> and his reviews have been published at such publications as the washington post, times, cnn, guardian, foreignpolicy and in israel. He is author of a novel, the order of light published by penguin in 2006 and tonight is the launch of his new book , how to be a muslim an american story. Published by beacon press in boston and we thank beacon press for helping us make this event happen. A bit more about haroon. He was previously a fellow at Fordham Law School<\/a> center of National Security<\/a> and a fellow in the National Security<\/a> studies program at new america foundation. He served as director of public operations at the Islamic Center<\/a> here at nyu from 2007 two 2009. Haroon moghul holds an na from Columbia University<\/a> where you are currently a phd candidate. So you can tell us more about that. His fields of study include muslim nationalism in south asia, colonial and postcolonial islamic politics and the development of the indian ocean economy. I think that sort of differently than your previous work, this is a very personal book so im going to leave it at that. If i may. Its a real pleasure to welcome Haroon Moghul<\/a> and we will talk a bit later and have time for questions and answers. Please welcome Haroon Moghul<\/a>, thanks so much. [applause] hello. Im pretty loud, so i dont know if i need the market mike but you need the mic since you are recording. Cameras follow me everywhere, its called being a muslim. Joke, you can laugh. What i wanted to do is read a section of the book which the color is orange in honor of our president. I saw that coming but i thought it would be a nice gesture. I asked the publisher if we could maybe change the subtitle to a north american story in case i flee to canada but they were not amenable. So the section im going to read is one thats terrifying to me because when you write something, obviously as a writer there are things that you find more i guess suspecting and readers find other parts more affecting so theres the constant search for where is that happy middle ground . This book is personal, it took a lot out of me to write and i come from a very conservative family, religiously speaking. I talked about a lot of things that i dont think my family would have been particularly excited for me to talk about so i had this week long panel panic attack over whether i should invite my family members to my readings because it would be rude not to, but then if i read the book out loud, i would no longer be part of the family. So it was a very exciting balance. What im going to read is a section reasonably early in the book when i was, oh my god, 17 years old. It was before i started nyu, i was in high school and i had come up with a plan, i had a girlfriend and my parents had no idea and i lived in a farm town so there were 95 kids in my entire high school. Everybody in the town except mikes parents knew i was going to prom. This is a section where basically opens with my parents beginning to figure out that i was not the muslim kid they thought i was. When i finally got to the kitchen, a pit in my stomach it was to find my parents waiting an ambush. Why did you have a girl in your car yesterday . My eyes went wide, my mind went into overdrive, on my face compensated by retreating into confusion, perhaps disbelief. A girl . As if i didnt know what one was. Perhaps if i forced them to define the female species, embarrassment would have prevented them from continuing. On reflection this would have worked perfectly. Someone in the community had snitched on me. This is what i got for driving around in the liability of a toy the land cruiser of which there were two in my entire town, one of which along to my family and the other of which belonged to the mosque president whose family was the only other muslim family in town. The two were the same color, beige with brown paneling. The president and my wife both had scars, you can imagine the neighbors confusion. They look the same to me, so to their cars. I decided to only part way. She needed a ride home and sense offering a girl a ride home is already a trespass, maybe that alone was the reason for the momentary panic in my eyes. I folded a waffle in half and shoved it into my mouth, washing it down with chocolate milk. It was nothing, i said, but ive been sloppy. I would have to pursue my secret life with greater deception. I found another job, one that would be easier to hide, softening the blow of being rejected by a chain restaurant. It might have been unethical and possibly illegal. I help students write their thesis papers from scratch for our rewrite. I did not graduate high school once but several times. I profited from my Book Business<\/a> in order to profit from a life i tried desperately to escape from it. I walked past carla every morning because it was closest to the senior parking lot. My friends tease me for not making out with her. I do wondered why i held back even as i knew, i was scared. It was an absence of opportunity. Her friend samantha prevented one by announcing a pool party at the end of may which i knew i had to attend i would make my move then and there but samanthas house had to be inside the mosque president s which meant you might see my car which as noted was also his car. A huge risk to take two weeks before prom but this new love hardened the edge, not enough to drive over it. I asked jacob to be my ride. Jacob was a bright kid who sometime develop the senior habit of falling asleep during everything. He was bright enough to coast on his wits but the warning signs were there, judging by his snoozing he deemed most of his life to them unimportant to be present for. He almost always wore oversize hen sweaters meaning he looked like his mother had gotten lost inside himself. In case youve forgotten, jacob was usually asleep, not least when driving. Jacobs mom took a liking to me, shewasnt particularly religious always asked me to find jacob a nice jewish girl. As if i had some special access to jewish women that she lacked. On the weight of the party naturally jacobs nose started bleeding. So badly that we drove right past sams house and almost to massachusetts in the belief that we the closer we got to canada, the further we were from harm. Jacob practically ran his moms Station Wagon<\/a> ground in a neighbors lawn and did a face plant as he sprinted toward the biggest tree in the lawn. It took me a moment to realize he was repurposing leaves as napkins. We met the homeowner which had real napkins after we explained why a plurality of our towns semis were washing their face with oak leaves. This unfathomable omen aside, i ended up that night exactly where i wanted to be, on samanthas pool deck with carla, her beautiful legs pushing on mine. Might need displaced me. Blind shoulder learn how to walk, is a deep instinct birdwell inside them. Its in the right time and place comes to the surface. Some sports reached entirely around my insecure, cowardly impediment of a self and shoved it to the floor. I had never felt so over, but heres the thing, i could sense with some radar i did not know i had that she wanted the same. The energy hung in the air, we were opposite ends of a magnet. Fusion releases more energy than fishing. I just reach over, put my arms around her and watch her moms Station Wagon<\/a> pull off. With people and immediate force, we jump away from each other. I walked carla to her car dejected with this meager consolation, as she made her way he offered me her hand in apology. It was so much in the grass that i fear i have spent my entire life trying only to return to that squeeze and where i could be held with someone instead of just myself. I let my parents to believe that on the friday night, the first week of june, convenient, id sleep over at a friends house, this friends mom conspired with me as did everyone else to leave school early on the day of prom, one had to have parental permission. Both parents gave theirs, mind you do not need to ask. The principal winked at my departing a little earlier than the conclusion of the day. I crossed state lines to my friends home, showered and shaved and returned to summers in time for the evenings events. Jacobs neighbors were on vacation so i parked my land cruiser not nearly in their backyard under their deck. Having been caught once before i would not make the same mistake. At jacobs house i finally relaxed, i was going to get away with this. We went to his backyard and pose for the camera. Back then you had to wait for pictures to develop and got to live in the moment instead of watching yourself living in it a few seconds later. Jacob jeremy and i would our days were dressed to the nines and the smiles we wore for the camera belied what was around the corner. For reasons that will become obvious i have no other pictures of me with carla. At prom practically every student went out of his way to gradually congratulate me. More encouraged that i wanted to attend in the first place. Everyones belief system appreciates validation and i wanted there may be so that one day i wouldnt need it. Maybe soon. Ive gotten rejection letters but also admission letters. Between Boston University<\/a> and nyu i think the latter. All good things must come to an end. I never see many of my classmates again, i never see this me again. It would be like it never happened. And i love dance to Sarah Mclachlan<\/a> which i cannot listen to even now without breaking out in goosebumps. I still ask myself who she is, why she needs to know we havent done anything wrong and why i was receiving an islamic mean here of all places. And satan asked adam chow i lead you to a tree into a kingdom that never dies. The apple tastes better than it digests but islam has no original sin. Adam is tempted by the desire to live forever yet fails and he falls, but only in falling does he become the caliph he was meant to be so maybe we missed the point of the story all along. You can do the wrong thing for the right reasons. Adam and eve ate from the tree but they repented, they were forgiven, they stuck together. I was a 17yearold who wanted to belong, to believe there was a world he could be inside and a part of, that he didnt need to analyze from without, the judge, excommunicate or be excommunicated from. If only for a night, let the stars circled me. The flared jeans, metal necklaces, the occasional bracelet bracelet, a wallet to a belt loop, these were the tribal marks of an amateur snowboarder and to validate me by announcing i was other than me, seeking out to fit in. Those emblems couldnt tell you how badly i wanted this cheerleader. We can walk what others want because they want it and still want it for ourselves. Sometimes we are unable to point to where our desires begin and others end. After price from we might have stopped at friendlys, i cant remember. Carla wanted nothing to do with me. The last thing she did was chide me, you cant drink, youve got to drive. The next afternoon alone in an empty bedroom, chart carla chose aol instant messenger to shock and all me. We should break up. Sure, i agreed, died. Ive not expected this would end even as i made plans to go away for college. You can hold two can contradictory host in your head and still be devastated when one of them gives way. Its wanting to have your cake and eat it too but what else would you do with cake i drove with my parents to new york the night after prom to see my family. I sat broken and unspeaking in the black backseat. My mom would pass away less than a decade later. My father is still with us another decade after that but i could not admit to them then or ever after that my end run around them and fail because i was in the end, then you carla and i never moved beyond that first kiss, i didnt work catholics more than the catholic girl. She told me in casual detail what intimacies she would and would not be okay with. I nodded determinedly as if this was a subject i had long ago mastered. Yet for me raised on the idea of marriage once and forever, i believe dating was no different from marrying. Once together, we would remain together, terminology was technicality so i was ruined like i could not believe. Its one thing not to go to prom and another to be dumped the day after you pull off the greatest deception in your brief history. If every person has one great test, mine was and may still be departing. I learned i can deal with death but i could not accept that god would let lives get entangled only to be yanked apart. How can you live forever and be a part forever . That death, a real end without resurrection. A place where a swan cant go doesnt help. Had carla not broken up with me, i have broken it off with her. The deeper sorrow carved into you, the more joy you can contain from which i learned this lesson. The further you let a person into your soul, the longer it takes her to leave. I couldnt have guessed then how much it would hurt give anyone anything of my heart but i have stupidly given all of mine, presuming the future existed while the present was coming together. The following spring i stopped by carlas house to pick up bradley, a good friend of mine. Though he lived on the other side of town. Jeremy, was standing beside me area and none of this memory makes any sense but thats probably because all i was focused on and all i could see so many years later is carla at the top of the stairs putting dishes away. She might have waived. A year later we ended up across from each other at a diner to shareware life had taken us. Jeremy laughed as he and i walked back to my car. That, he said , was the longest conversation you ever had with her. Maybe i should ask her out. I never spoke or saw her again. Maybe we do not live one life but many. Im some never intersect. Maybe i tell myself this to keep feelings away because if i know they can unfold somewhere else, they do not need to know what they mean to this universe. My religion says a man should not be alone with a woman but somebody told me a man should not feel so alone that needs to be alone with a woman to feel like his life is worth living. Smiles, lightness and kindness, she provided to our universe otherwise felt misplaced by but what i missed most of all in the months after we broke up was her hand. From the first time she offered hers at a rollerskating break to when we left the dance floor. It maybe god says you hate the thing and it is good for you. Beyond my desire was an awesome loneliness, a feeling of living in a nothing place only briefly interrupted. Life for us to love was no life at all. From time to time this emptiness made the world start and a beautiful but most of all it hunted and pursued me. Something always comes from nothing. With every difficulty, he says, theres relief. It could be this is me or all of us. We stumble onto god in the blank places we live in but dont belong to if only to be taught we dont belong here. Thank you. [applause] that is a chapter from the book and yes, i got dumped the day after prom. Im not bitter at all. Iq haroon. If i may start the q and a part of the evening, i want to refer to an article that was published two days ago in the atlantic by emma green and the article is titled trying to be an apolitical muslim in america. Its from haroons how to be a muslim tries out the new genre, writing about islam thats not about terror or war. How do you feel about that title . And tell us a little bit what brought you to write a very different kind of book . In the spirit of being political, to answer your question about being apolitical, im going to answer a different question because thats what politicians do. Donald trump just start tweeting but i cant do what he does. So the book is titled how to be a muslim and the first review it got was ready positive but the end reviewer was like, he never answers the question of how to be a muslim. He missed the point but even better is theres a book that was published in malaysia called how to be muslim which is a guidebook so there are confused people out there who are getting like why is the book like a series of teaches about how to pray and there would be someone in malaysia who thinks theyre giving their book kids some book on prayer and their going to read about the kiss after prom so its going to be exciting i hope you you know, when i came to nyu in 1998, the bookstore was not here. When i came to nyu, i had a very tenuous connection with my Muslim Identity<\/a> and i grew up in a very small, very christian town which is a lovely town, it was just small and i came to new york and you have to like whittle new york down to size, its huge that its overwhelming. I basically debated between joining the validation club or the muslim club and the Salvation Club<\/a> i went to the first event and it was a dance party and i could not dance so i was like, im not going to spend four years not dancing because thats. Thats why i joined the Islamic Center<\/a> because i cant dance so i might as well join muslims. Terrible life choices. That comes from honest admissions of our own failures for certain things. So i may have answered your question, i promise. I promise im answering your question. I got really excited because all these different times people were muslim and i thought i may not be particularly religious but i can help build a religious community so me and a few kids were like, we can make ic nyu which is a massive institution into Something Different<\/a> from any muslim club anybodys seen before because its not going to be about, you have to be a certain type of muslim. We were not challenging anyone, we were saying if you identify as muslim you can live here. I was saying its fine, im going to go to law school and if i can become a doctor, i have to be a lawyer. This is Like Television<\/a> eugenics. We literally do not let people reproduce until they have certain kinds of vehicles in their garage its amazing. No one will marry you unless you can afford a mercedes. We are kind of like fascists. But less intimidating because we are south asian. So still answering your question, i promise. I told myself its fine. You can do this and ill go to law school and do what my parents want me todo and who cares if i build a student club. So i was elected president of the Islamic Center<\/a> my senior year. I celebrated by asking a girl out. So sad, unlike hollywood i wrote her a poem and i decided to read it to her in starbucks. This is still my greatest memory because its like the starbucks down broadway. Imsure youve passed it many times. I occasionally pass it. Not because im sad but because im embarrassed halfway through , i used to give friday sermons, and a religious leader asking her to go out and halfway through my reciting the poem, her boyfriend walks in. I didnt know she had a boyfriend. I had asked her friend to do research and his friend completely failed. I think he now runs googles most preeminent. So shes like hey, you gave the sermon at the mosque . What are you doing here . Asking your girlfriend out on a date so that went over really well. I was elected president of the nsa and my third day as president , or Islamic Center<\/a> president was 9 11. And we were the largest Muslim Community<\/a> proximity to ground zero and im a 21yearold kid whos incredibly shy. Im fairly awkward, did not really know how to handle himself in this setting and it became what i call being a professional muslim. One of the reasons i wrote this book is we because there was a lifestyle of constantly commenting about islam and muslims and having to defend your identity and explain who you are and reducing every conversation about muslim this is something to do with violence, either youre a terrorist or not a terrorist. So i wanted to write something that was going to challenge that, i didnt want to write a book that talked about politics or National Security<\/a> even though thats there in the background because it affects in a lot of different ways but i didnt want to write that book because that the book Everyone Wants<\/a> to read and it doesnt tell a story about what i think muslims go through so thats the very long answer to your question. Thank you. Im going to open it up for any questions and i see hands already so hold on and i will bring you the microphone. Have you familiarized yourself with muslim mystic writers . In the book i talk a lot about a few people i guess depending on how you want to define mysticism who were interesting to me intellectually. You south asian poets, and i guy named alana akbar. If you dont know who they are, its fine and i explained why theyre important in the book. Thats a great major to do if you dont want to have a job. You can analyze anything so its a great career choice. I do talk a lot about and toward the end of the book i have a few encounters with i guess what you would call mystical teachers or sufis for lack of a better term who were influential and me making sense of how my life fell apart. The book is basically the story of how i failed. Its the story of how i failed, how my life crashed and burned and i was 32 years old and how i tried to pick up the pieces and make sense of how i as a person supposedly had so much promise on paper and up driving my car into a ditch. Then trying to make sense of it. Its from memory and i wrote about it so its fine how i can talk about it. Im doing okay. Im a happy person. Ive accepted hair loss and its fine. [inaudible] my mom passed away this is what we call irony, my mom was 16 women in all of pakistan who, let me actually go back. My grandfather and on up were religious scholars, so they were like arabic and persian, its like being from a rabbinic family and my grandfather was very interesting because he was religiously conservative but he was not, he would have been completely, he would have either laughed or been disgusted by the kind of things that happened because it would have made no sense to him. He wrotepoetry, spoke persian, spoke english , he did yoga and he saw none of these things, it was sort of a religious human is that used to be common before the town and showed, basically. He had seven daughters, no sons and he raised them all to be educated women so i was raised in an interesting environment where i was spared this incredibly Common Association<\/a> of patriarchy because in my moms family is all women and they all outshine their husbands. You dont even know the husbands are in the room because the women are so much of a personality so my mom was one of 16 women in the country of pakistan way back in the day. So she became a radiation oncologist. I was actually in seattle two years ago and i was at a shabbat Dinner Service<\/a> with people who were like, probably had net worth in the high tens of millions and one of them was amazed that my mom was educated. It kind of makes you wonder what people think of you if you are like what did you expect . I literally left a cave. So my mom was a radiation oncologist and she died of cancer. But im very much my moms child because she loved poetry, music, movies, shes a star trek fan. She loved any better because she sounded like abow ali so she thought pearl jam , she connected with those two things. And she was very creative and she was a teacher in addition to being a doctor but she was very religious so it was an interesting childhood to have as someone who was religiously conservative, very outgoing so i miss her but i also think its like in many ways this book is an extension of how she raised me. Yes. How are you doing . You talk about a lot of your vulnerabilities and failures and thats not an easy thing to do and you mentioned the weeklong panic you had, can you talk about the process you went through to overcome that panic . About a month ago, i bought this woman named rachel, an older woman i talked about earlier a copy of my book. And then i had a panic attack. I said people are going to read this. And then all my god, people are going to read this and rachel is like a jewish mom so shes my boss but shes a jewish mom. Every time she looked at me shed start crying. She cant be my boss. She looks at me like she wants to give me a hug which is a weird kind of situation to be in professionally because she doesnt feel bad for me and pass me on the head. And actually pakistani moms and jewish moms are the same. Idont know where this comes from but theres a weird convergence and someone needs to figure this out. How i got over, for me , writing the book was a way out of it. So to kind of put it on paper i feel like when you Say Something<\/a> or write something, you break its power over you. When i was struggling with these things and i started writing it down i was able to make sense of what i was going through and try to find something out of this. At my lowest point in my life i was severely suicidal and depressed, writing the book was what kept me up because there was this idea that im working on something. I dont know whats going to become of it or its going to be published but my working on this and the yearlong project requires it because i have this. So i feel like for people who are depressed or bipolar, or just in a really bad time in their lives, having something external to yourself that you can pour yourself into is important. That can be music, art, community but you arebuilding something that requires you to kind of be there for yourself. Yeah. I dont know if that answers your question. Also, good to see you. I want to start by saying i love the way you say pakistan, a lot of people here have different accents, it sounds very not like it. I have, so this is a little unrelated to your book. But its related to being a muslim. Keeping aside the thought that everyone has today that muslim equals terrorist or terrorism, i feel like a lot of people have this idea of being muslim and that is that you stop during ramadan, you pray five times a day, you do certain things, theres a checklist of how to be a muslim. And in todays time, theres a fine line between balancing your worldly and your religious responsibilities and not all of us seem to live up to that checklist or idea of being a muslim. And i feel like when you go out into society where people who are not muslim look at you, they feel like if you are muslim, why are you doing a, b, c or xyz . Based on your experience, how do you deal with not feeling like you are living up to that idea or that you know, that checklist. To be okay with it and still feel like you are a muslim . And thats okay . What i would say, first is it your own identity, no one can define your own identity for you unless you are at the airport in which case they will make you whatever they want you to be. Currently, if you carry this book with you on a plane, your identity will be further defined for you thats exciting to think about. And its also a good way to keep the edict because i learned in my experience with amtrak that you just open a book in arabic, it can be anything. You just open a book in arabic, no one will suspect you. Youre going to new york from dc, oh, thats the subway and you can tell i needed it. I will answer your question. What i think personally is that like, to be human, to be fundamentally human is to neither accept yourself as you are because if you fully accept yourself as you are, you are donald trump. You know what im saying . If you accept that i am who i am and nothing is in need of improvement, then you become kind of like this terrible person, you, if you think im the greatest person in the world, im fine as is, thats also a boring life. Why would you ever want to live a life where i am perfectly fine with who i am . Either education or art or family or relationships, you dont want to be like that but this is the thing i noticed with a lot of muslims and im sure its across the board in other communities is that people create an external standard that they express fire to. If that standard is too close to where you are not going to us inspire you but its also going to crush you, does that make sense . If religion is something important to you, the thing you aspire to should be enough that it forces you to become better but not so much that it becomes impossible and becomes a burden and thats for you to decide. At a certain point i think for me, this is my own personal journey, i realized that letting other peoples definitions of how i should be were not actually making me a better person. If you have a spiritual practice or religious practice, if that practice is someone elses practice and its not organic to you, is not going to make you a better person. So it you you worse about yourself every day, you are not improving. I dont know if that makes sense. Also, by my book. People randomly walk by and im like, by my book. On this subject, if i can Say Something<\/a>, if somebody is like judging you, coming to you with a judgment, maybe you can turn the question around of well, you can say im having difficulty with this, this aspect of it. I would be interested to know how you are dealing with it. Maybe he can help you, if he doesnt help you, you are not doing much better, just making by the book. Whatever, shameless fun. Its all weve got. Capitalism is the point. More questions . I know what youre thinking, i didnt work out. I do have a question. So back to your title how to be a muslim. Can you talk a little bit about your own personal process in terms of self identity, how you see your self today . But final i think is more profound because of the political moment that we live in. I my initial choice of the title was one, tongueincheek. How to be a muslim as if it was a howto manual and also because i failed at being a muslim. I said because the womens question back here that you asked that i had been given a definition of religion that, that just crushed me. Over and over again i felt horrified and i was driving myself insane because of it. In the present political moment what i actually think is interesting is that you know, every society has biases on the far right i hear a lot of people ask who a muslim is because they want to know who demand from the country. Who is a muslim and the question is almost like a National Security<\/a> question. Or gently shown the door out of the united states. And the door is laguardia itself would make want to make you leave the united states. Laguardia is sort of the end of empire. Its like the donald trump of airports. I didnt say that. Then on the left and i see this a lot in new york is people ask why anyone would be religious in the first place. Its not like, who is a muslim versus why would you be a muslim . Most people, their question is how to do that and its this constant struggle and struggle is a good thing, its not a bad thing. If this why is this important to me and i wanted to capture some of that. For me, i think you can choose to have an identity thats very disjunctive, i am this or that or you can have something thats conjunctive and whats interesting to me about nyus i went to study philosophy because i wanted to make sense of the world around me. And i hope, i know that cspan is still up, can you make sure that nobody from nyu philosophy watches this . Thank you. I appreciate that. So look, i love my philosophy majors. Caveat. There was none of the thinkers that i studied who were men and white and christian, right . Could even make sense of High School Classmates<\/a> religiosity. Like, it was like, were going to define the entire planet but we cant even make sense of how most americans want their lives. Which is that kind of liberal bubble that produces the kind of condescension or alienation from the rest of america so there was a point to this, i completely lost the point. The point of conjunction, i found that i still find catholicism because of the people i grew up with to be really interesting. And inspirational. So i could choose to be i am this or that or i could choose to be there are all these different elements to my identity and they may not always connect but they do. And i think we live in an age where there are a lot of people who want everyone to live in certain silos. You are american or muslim, you areamerican or you are brown , that kind of thing. And i know i reject that. Whats up, cspan . I just called able political philosophy student. Some other people have joined us, i just want to make sure that we get everyone. Any other questions before we go back to michael here . Hello michael. The big question is religion versus techno practice him. How do you deal with this . Same question, why would you ask me that right now . Why would you do that . I mean, either the cspan guy is doing in right now. Can you explain, explain what you mean . So there are certain people that think that technology will solve all our problems. And all you have to do is just learn the latest technology and you will be fine because you are part of a movement or whatever. And the opposing view is that you have to take care of your spiritual self. I know there is a Common Ground<\/a> here somewhere and its hard to place. Thank you. Thank you. We work together. We are like the avengers without powers. It seems to be hard to find the balance. To maintain the spiritual and it still have an eye for technology. Yesterday i went to see one of the great achievements of western civilization, wonder woman. A great movie. Such a good movie, by the way, a really good movie and it was like, this is why i love new york. Theresthis couple behind us , the guy has running commentary the whole movie. Thats greek mythology, it sounds like hes reading a wikipedia novel and he made the movie more interesting because like, what is he going to say now . I look to my left and theres a guy playing candy crushed. Straight up has his phone out. I was like, you paid for this ticket. Like, where is this compelling need to play candy crushed right now . I was in this critical thing, are you like your father . So i guess what im saying is i think a lot of times technology, technology has unique outcomes but it also amplifies that we are inside. It doesnt necessarily bring about the new world, it just amplifies tensions in our society so i think my sense is religious leaders and especially the muslim communities have not completely but generally failed to come to terms with the questions by technology, technological dilemmas whether thats cloning or reproductive technologies or Climate Change<\/a> or ai or any of these things but i also think a lot of technologists tend to have a nacve belief about the ability of human tools to change human beings so we saw in the election that twitter basically won the election. It was amazing, it was kind of interesting. The one who mastered twitter, an entire Political Party<\/a> crushed by tweets. That was amazing. Fake news, yeah. Yeah. Because we didnt really think about how it could be used. Yeah. Thats how i want to end the election. Everything goes back to the election, thats why the cover is orange. You have to buy the book, you do, its a really good book. It can change your experience and your life at the airport. Thanks so much. Do we have any other questions . Okay. Would you like to read another small piece from the book . Yes, because i totally prepared a section to read. So im going to do it right now. Oh, i dropped the phone. Okay. What is a good section. I know what a good section is. Its weird how old my god, i wrote this book. How do i have a job . Okay. How long am i supposed to read for . I mean, im a brown man with a mic. I dont know if you know how this works. I was at a red wedding recently where an uncle, uncle is the term in south asian culture or someone whos not related to you and who is your elder. And he got up on the mic and he talked for 45 minutes. Like, start to finish, 45 minutes and someone went up to take the mic from him and he started yelling at that person and it was the greatest thing ive seen in my life because two people were screaming at each other at a wedding. Yeah. Years after my family had decamped from connecticut i had a chance to go back. My mother was buried in enfield Muslim Cemetery<\/a> after i started reading why us, why us is a chapter from the koran. I drove 15 minutes in the wrong direction to see what had become the place we lived together for so long. It had been four years and ski pass. Hassan and i had begun to hit turbulence and i was rattled enough i needed something from before us to hold onto and a gunmetal gray camry, i drove down turnpike road, is accelerated up Mountain Road<\/a> and took the second left all the way to the end. I reached the culdesac and cracked my car up what was once our 1300 foot driveway well aware of the dyer no trespassing signs i had nailed up so long before, warnings i never conceived of had been used against me. The new occupants had painted our windows black but that left me envious. My former home was darker and as a result, kinder. I got out of the car and walked a circle around the house from the Swimming Pool<\/a> to the outcropping of rock that i transformed when i was younger into a fortress. I wanted more, too. Through the windows, to be in my room. I remembered when i worked up the courage to ask carla out that her life would only get better. A man is only not alone when he is with a woman. I looked at all the rooms i imagined redesigning. When we live somewhere, we do so permanently. I hope to light a fire in the chimneys we never tested, and tell these replacements how much each oversized room meant to me. I do such a good job of describing what the placement me that the new homeowners would exclaim, why did you leave . I finally belonged somewhere and right when it seemed like i had it all figured out, carla closed the door in my face. It was Nicholas Meyer<\/a> of star trek name that said had high school lasted one more year, he would have ruled. I thought id made it at nyu, forgetting it was just four years. I should have plans for after. I got my same job in washington dc too bad when i was falling to bits. I made it to dubai where i can exhale years of going nowhere. I wondered if whatever greatgrandfather s felt the same way but i had to leave dubai before i was ready to, forced by circumstances made of finances but that is not for them to decide, gandalf said. All we have to decide is what to do with the time given us. There were many wonderful things about dubai but none of those fit my skill set or had room for me. Not even nyu abu dhabi. There was nothing there for me, nothing i can do fulltime that would permit me to build a life there or as i preferred, a life there but reaching everywhere. I broke it grew concerned about the fact of having to leave and i searched for other places to live aside america. I tried hard for istanbul, no such luck. I remember standing outside terminal one and being surprised that it felt familiar but the greatest blows were yet to come. My career had just been interrupted, once back, i applied for countless academic positions, hoping i would get something that would allow me to finish my dissertation before the clock ran out but i received no responses, never mind the courtesy of explicit risk rejection. While i wanted to complete my project, the prospectus for which i submitted and defended i could not. There was no way i could dedicate the time and energy needed to write five full chapters, to complete the research necessary, to sit in the library for hours on end and i had to cobble together enough freelance assignments and other projects to address my debt, nevermind build a life from you. Maybe dubai had delayed the inevitable. Maybe id be stuck in the same 10 jobs, none of them had up to one proper job. Maybe i would be back on another bridge at this time and who would stop me . When i received the invitation from the Public Affairs<\/a> council to speak at their conference, i told myself i wanted to go and maybe i did. More importantly, i had to. The hamster was back on his wheel. The last panel i had danced around the same topicthe era of spring. It was now 2013, the empire was striking back. I flew out in a historic snowstorm. Look, i tweeted, attaching a shot of the dome of the rock adorned up like a christmas ornament. Global warming, someone asked, or the end of days . Yes, i responded. If youre expecting an easy epiphany, stop reading. It took 20 years for the pieces to begin antithesis. I would not come from the close i put on, the women i was with, the drinks i drank. Or a man whoa in movies, i think it think of no better place to finish in los angeles. Thank you. I dont know what that means. Thank you very much and i do remember that snowstorm it was quite a scene. Many of you were in the middle east at that time. Thank you so much. Haroon moghul, thank you all for being being here and i want to wish ramadan a good fast, those who are celebrating ramadan this month. You can rejoin us at the nyu bookstore, we will continue with the book signing, the book is on sale tonight 20 percent off so we kind of encourage sales. And just keep in mind we are closing at 8 pm tonight and thanks so much and have agood evening. Good night. [inaudible conversation] you are watching the tv on cspan2, television for serious readers. Heres our primetime lineup. In light of charlottesville and other recent protests, National Book<\/a> awardwinning author and founding director of the Antiracist Research<\/a> and policy center at American University<\/a> in kennedy examines the history of racist ideas in america. At 8 45, jeremy rapkin talk about how military technology is changing the way we fight wars and defend ourselves against old and new threats. On both tds after words at 10 pm, the Progressive Policy Institute<\/a> David Osborne<\/a> examines the Charter School<\/a> movement and offers his thoughts on the history of public education. Historian john kukla recounts the life of patrick henry, virginias first postcolonial governor and a critic of Central Government<\/a> overstates rights. That all happens tonight on cspan2s book tv. I was trying to figure out my life as an astronaut, life as an administrator for education, all the 24 years working with nasa identity was gone because i had retired, i moved from dc back home and the reason i moved home was to be with my dad. And he was now gone so i had to, that was a moment of really trying to understand the purpose and why im here and ive been told mark twain always said the two most important days of your life are the day you were born and the day you figure out why. Why were we boring . What is our purpose . And i was told by my editor that when i had mark twain, mark twain didnt really say that so if you look in the book, theres nomark twain reference there but i still use mark twain because that was kind of cool, i think. But during that why out and as a society in this day and age with all the things going on, all of us collectively figuring out why we are here to help impact the rockies and the people that are here that could be the explorers that help hr planet for the positive. Thats why i wrote this book. And its the genetics, you will share your story. Its the Family Community<\/a> not giving up, believing in me when i didnt believe in myself and its a journey of steam education, science, technology, arts and mathematics. I grew up not even knowing what steam was i was living it every day with piano lessons and building bicycles and all these Different Things<\/a> and i think one of the things thats going to help us as a civilization is when we realize that we are really on this small blue marble together, working together as one civilization, a planet that we dont always see this happening every day but from the Vantage Point<\/a> of international based station, when i look out over virginia and i see my hometown from space, its only 240 miles up, the distance from dc to new york, not too far. Going around the planet every 90 minutes, seeing the sunrise and sunset every 45 minutes, filling this with people to fight against, i was there with the russians and the germans and having these moments where im flying over virginia, five minutes later over paris where leo i heart is one of my crewmates, you looking down, my mom isprobably eating down there to and in russia they had a couple minutes. It shows you how connected we are as apeople. And then flying over afghanistan looking down and seeing how beautiful itis. But knowing whats happening down there. Aleppo, all these places of unrest and fighting and all this going on but from that Vantage Point<\/a>, its simply stunning. Im going to try to get you all signed up for space x missions. Ive got coupons up here, im signing a book, you might be the lucky one that gets the ride. But if you get an opportunity, whether its through vr or what ever experience you have to get to see this, it the mentally cognitively changes you as a person. To make you want to do better when you see our planet from that Vantage Point<\/a>. Watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Now we want to introduce you to author, professor and winter of the hyatt prize in 2017, mccluskey, her most recent book is called bourgeois equality. Who was Friedrich Hayek<\/a> and its an honor to win this prize. 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