534. How Some Muslim Countries Navigate Extremism | Mark Siljander
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Obviously, during the 60s, there was a huge rebellion in the United States against the use of the military in fighting the communists in Vietnam. As I matured and learned more about the absolute horrors of communism, how many people in Cambodia died when the communists took over? Four million in the killing fields? At least. Something like that. This is extraordinary naivete to think one could go to Iraq, or even Syria for that matter, and force an American, US-style democracy on a people group that is broken into different faith groups, Muslim, Shiite, Sunni. It was completely absurd. 47 of 50 Muslim-majority countries are not democracies. And there is a fourth or fifth century copy of what they call the Peshitta text. And Peshitta means simple and straightforward. And it has the Aramaic language of Jesus. So I began reading that and then reading the Quran. And while I had many nice things to say about Jesus, it also said things, for example, he's not the son of God. He wasn't crucified. I felt, how does one say this?
We were assured by his opposition that he was a warmonger and that you could imagine him voted in high school as most likely to start World War III. But, you know, one of the things we might always remind ourselves is that we might not be able to recognize a true peacemaker when one comes along. But he shouldn't be trifled with. That's the other side of Trump.
I had the privilege today of sitting down with Mark Silgender, a former congressman. Mark wrote a book in 2008 called A Deadly Misunderstanding.
A Congressman's Quest to Bridge the Muslim-Christian Divide. Now, when Mark entered Congress decades ago, he was a pretty straight-laced and rather hawk-like, so war-like, evangelical Christian with a pretty pronounced anti-Muslim stance, pro-Christian, anti-Muslim stance, very partisan in the religious sense. And he had an epiphany while serving as a congressman that said, He was not loving his enemies, so to speak, in the proper Christian manner. And that sent him on a quest to learn about the commonalities of belief that could, no, do unite the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian world. Now, he particularly concentrated on Islam and Christianity. And we discussed... the consequences of that quest, theoretically, conceptually, and also practically.
Now, I'm interested in this because it seems to me that Islam and Christianity, Judaism, have been at each other's throats for hundreds of years, and the situation in many ways hasn't changed. Maybe it's even more crucial now than it ever has been. I've watched the Abraham Accords unfold over the last six or seven years, and there's a real pathway to peace there. It's partly predicated on the United Arab Emirates attempts to bridge the tri-faith gap. And Mark Siljander is operating at that nexus. And so I really wanted to talk to him about what he discovered and how he managed to broker peace, by the way, in six major international conflicts, which we also talked about in some detail, especially with regards to Darfur and Sudan.
We also touched upon the objection of the neocon war hawks, of which I suppose he once was one, their opposition to his peacemaking ministration, so to speak, and why that opposition emerged. He was accused of being a traitor, for example, by the neocons who were hell-bent on regime change as their answer to how to bring a longer lasting and more stable peace to the world. Anyways, we walk through all of that. It's one of the most, I gotta say, it's one of the most fascinating podcasts I've ever done. It has a lovely narrative arc. It ends absolutely perfectly. Fascinating personal story. Very interesting conceptually. And what would you say? Compelling with regards to Siljinder's ability to shed light on what actually goes on behind the scenes, internationally and domestically. Join us. All right, Congressman Siljander, I wanted to talk to you today for a variety of reasons, hopefully all of which we'll go into, but I think we should start with the topic of your 2008 book, which is a deadly misunderstanding, A Congressman's Quest to Bridge the Muslim-Christian Divide.
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