My Uncensored Interview with Deepak Chopra

I recently wrote an article entitled "Deepak Chopra on Mumbai: Too Controversial for CNN?" about Chopra's November 26th interview on CNN, which CNN had possibly edited. Within a week of the interview, Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal wrote an article entitled "Deepak Blames America," and Elisabeth Hasselbeck of The View called him "Glitter glasses whatshisface" and mumbled "Go light a bowl of incense." On December 2nd, I interviewed Chopra by phone and gave him the opportunity to speak candidly about censorship in the media, the new patriotism, and latent anti-Muslim racism in the United States. The unedited podcast of the interview can be heard at http://michellehaimoff.podomatic.com/.

Chopra started off by clarifying what happened in the CNN interview. "The interview actually went on for another ten minutes when I was doing it but it was a tape. So it wasn't a live interview. It was taped because I had just finished Larry King and I had to go somewhere. So the actual interview was ten minutes longer than what you saw. Even the online interview version that you saw did not have the total interview because in my interview I talked about -- I take the vow (of non-violence), etc, etc -- I talk about a lot of things which were not there on the transcript."

As far as what was cut, he says, "I spoke about how we are funding both sides of the conflict through our military-industrial complex, which is a huge industry and we fund it through our petrodollars, through the Saudis who then buy weapons from all over the world, but including from us. And these weapons end up in the hands of terrorists as well, so willy-nilly we are participating in the funding on both sides."

In the interview, he mentions petrol dollars going to Saudi Arabia through Pakistan. He explains: "Saudi Arabia funds, among other things, the Mujahidin, Taliban and ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence). So our dollars end up funding these terrorists. And if you are aware of the history, at one time we were funding these people directly -- you know, Taliban, ISI, Mujahidin. It started with the Mujahidin which became the Taliban, which are in turn supported by ISI, which is independent of the Pakistan government, even though it's part of the Pakistan body, you know, they don't have direct control over it. And ISI is well known to enlist the help of Taliban Mujahidin and also give them help. In fact, when we went to Afghanistan and wanted to go after the terrorists we would seek the help of Pakistan government who would pass on information to ISI, who then passes it on to the terrorist groups. So, in fact, instead of helping us, they were basically abetting and co-conspiring with the terrorists."

"It's a very complex situation." He says. "What I've discovered is that, if you start to tell the truth in that atmosphere that -- are you recording this?"

"Yes." I say.

"If you start to tell the truth or even want to know the truth, the atmosphere that has been created in the last eight years in the Bush administration and also with the patriot act and so on... if you start to even look in that direction in the last eight years it has become extremely dangerous because you, first of all, are accused of not being patriotic. You probably want to see the US government overthrown and you are a traitor. I've got some really good friends at CNN and other places... The good people are scared. They've been scared. It's very different to snap out of that mindset."

Chopra hopes that the Obama presidency will encourage freedom of speech, honesty and integrity, and that the media will no longer view critical citizenry as treasonous.

"I have lived more years in this country than I have lived in India. My children are born here. They're citizens of this country as much as Obama is. And I get hate mail from tons of people, hundreds of people everyday saying, 'You should go back to India. You're a traitor. You're this or that.' It's an atmosphere that has been created for eight years. It does a great disservice in the United States to have that atmosphere. And I'm just feeling right now that opportunity to really test if we can speak our truth and not be afraid. Otherwise we might as well live in the former USSR or in China or something. Even in India you can speak your truth and not have to be afraid of being accused of these things by the government or by special interest groups."

But why would a network like CNN censor itself for fear of seeming unpatriotic? What are they afraid of?

"Michelle, we have to be very careful that we don't assume that," he said. "That CNN is afraid. Then we'd be doing the same thing that other people do -- just making assumptions. My perception is that journalists at large are not comfortable by raising sensitive issues... News is sold as a commodity these days and the more sensational it is, the better it is."

He later continued: "I just want to clarify one thing. I don't want to imply that the reason that the interview was cut off suddenly was because of some policy decision. If anything, CNN is more open than anybody else." For example, he says, it could have been a segment time issue.

Does he really think that CNN is more open than anyone else?

"I think CNN definitely. FOX and the Wall Street Journal are cheerleaders for the old paradigm. They're cheerleaders for right wing extremism and right wing fundamentalism... in a sense two institutions that do more disservice to our country than anybody else."

Chopra's understanding of Islamic extremists provides a much-needed glimpse at where these fundamentalists are coming from, but does the violence stem from a culture war or are terrorists settling the score for a perceived crime?

"Here is my analysis of it." He said. "There are 1.8 billion Muslims in the world. That's about 25% of the world's population. By no means are the majority of these people violent or fundamentalists either."

Chopra, who is a senior scientist at Gallup, was part of a team that conducted a poll of 600 million Muslims (about half of the Muslim population of the world). Countries polled included Pakistan, Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia. What he concluded in the poll is that the vast majority (92-95%) of Muslims are moderates, and they admire the West for their entrepreneurship, business and modernism. A small minority (<5%) are extremists, and of that we don't know how many are actual terrorists. His guess is very few.

Based on the survey, the cause of terrorism is "a rage that comes from humiliation, lack of respect, and also from factors that we are unaware of, generally uneducated about."

He cites Wikipedia estimates of the number of people that have died in Iraq since the war, ranging from 400,000 to over a million. "When we initiated the war on Iraq we forget to remind ourselves that the Iraqis had nothing to do with 9/11. Nothing to do with 9/11. We also know that the Iraqis had no weapons of mass destruction. We now say that Saddam Hussein was a mass murderer. That he used torture and that he needed to be out. We should remind ourselves that we knew this a long time ago and we have used him as our ally for a long time. He was in the senior Bush administration before the first war. You know, much before that... And then we decided to make him our enemy. Nothing changed. He was definitely a mass murderer. He was a torturer. When we did the Shock and Awe campaign. The Shock and Awe. Listen to the words. We're bombing Baghdad and many parts of the country we're calling it the Shock and Awe campaign."

"FOX News actually produced the Shock and Awe campaign as a theatrical production. They hired a musical director. They had symphonic music. And when you saw it on TV it was a glorious, glorious attempt to liberate the people of Iraq. It's easy for a person sitting in a plane 32,000 feet above sea level to press a button. When he looks at the map he presses a button. And you know, we're seeing it on screens. We're calling it Shock and Awe and we hear this beautiful music - sounds almost like Mozart - while this is happening, while on the ground there are grizzly scenes which we don't see in the media, of people being mutilated. People in the throes of death. Bodies all over the place. And gruesome scenes the American public is totally unaware of, but people in the Muslim world are very aware of... We are very self-absorbed."

The deaths that appear in our papers are Western deaths. The women, children and non-Jihadis that die are not part of our conversation.

"I think this kind of mentality that demeans the life of somebody who is perhaps brown, Muslim, inferior, is not that important, but it enlists huge amounts of rage. It takes some of the moderates and certainly makes them fundamentalists. It takes some of the fundamentalists and certainly makes them terrorists."

"Imagine you're on the streets of Baghdad you see planes going up in the sky. You hear in the news this is Shock and Awe and bombs are falling your relatives are killed. Your brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, parents are killed and it's called Shock and Awe. Would you not call that terrorism? Just because the person is in uniform and pressing a button and is calling it shock and awe and doing it to music, is that any worse than a beheading? It's worse because you're not aware of the damage that's being done."

Chopra and his son, Gotham, are involved in Chat the Planet, an organization that encouraged dialogue between New York-based American children and Iraqi children before the Iraq War about ways to prevent the war from taking place. After the US bombed Iraq, the Chopras couldn't find many of the kids who were involved in the project because some had died, while others had lost a parent, brother or sister. "This is the kind of thing that enlists rage in that world," Chopra said.

"Despite that, there are millions of Muslims that admire the US, that would love to have economic partnerships with the US. Would love to learn business leadership skills. Would love to know what makes an entrepreneur. You know, the vast majority of people in the world of any religion want a decent life want to send their kids to school and want to be at peace. And the terrorists are as much a threat to these people as to anyone else."

Chopra's deeper understanding of the reasons for terrorism has been misconstrued of late, most notably in the Wall Street Journal's "Deepak Blames America" article.

"I didn't blame America," Chopra says and then elaborates that placing blame is complex and that Pakistan is suffering because of the people that don't want Pakistan to have a relationship with a nuclear-armed India. "The worst thing India could have done is to have a nuclear deal and to be part of a nuclear club... Why are we selectively choosing to have nuclear deals and making the rest of the world feel unsafe?"

"We have a very self-righteous attitude towards the rest of the world. We have no understanding of how these violent ideologies are born. We want to just go to war and kill the terrorists. Well, the bad news is you can kill as many terrorists as you want, but you cannot kill terrorism. In order to kill terrorism it's gonna have to be a 50-year Marshall Plan to not build war torn cities, but to build ideas. To rebuild violence torn minds. To educate them, to help them, to cooperate with them, to create economic partnerships so that the rage disappears, and to understand them. There are very simple rules for having a dialogue. You respect your enemy. You talk to them with the attitude, 'Yes. We understand that you also have injustice and we also feel injustice. Can we have a room here for forgiveness on both sides? Can we refrain from belligerence?' The more belligerent we get, the more belligerent the radicals get."

Chopra says that, according to Rabinowitz, "I'm a purveyor of aromatherapy, enemas, I say happy thoughts make people happy." He touches on Elisabeth Hasselbeck's comment that he should "go light some incense." He takes personally when the media dismisses thousands of years of wisdom and traditions, and is patient in explaining that aromatherapy and incense work through neuro-associative conditioning. If anyone bothered to ask, he would mention that he is a neuro-endocrinologist and that everything he studies has a medical basis. "If you really examine this, this is racism. This is bigotry. This is hatred. This is prejudice. And this is total lack of knowledge of another person's culture." You can almost hear him rolling his eyes when he says, "The only time I've prescribed enemas is when somebody has constipation."

So what is the nature of his expertise?

"What's an expert? Who's an expert?" he asks. "I have not been indoctrinated by the US government to a particular point of view." But he has the unique perspective of someone with emotional ties to the East and the West. His inner circle includes a CIA agent, his son, Gotham, a former a war correspondent in war torn regions ("He sat across the table with Taliban leaders and had mangoes with them"), and the Muslims that comprise his world ("I come from a culture where Hindus and Muslims for the most part live peacefully").

Chopra wants us to understand about Muslims that which we don't yet understand -- that they have a value system but that it's different than ours. In the Gallup Poll Chopra helped design, Muslims talk about taking care of the elderly and the poor. Despite the terrorism, the crime rate of Saudi Arabia and most Arab countries is much lower than that of LA or DC. Perhaps taking care of the elderly and the poor helps keep crime rates so low.

After Rabinowitz's scathing Journal piece, he received a number of invitations from the conservative talk show circuit, but when he appeared on Hannity and Colmes, Hannity shot him down for comparing a recent Scientific American article about cancer to terrorism. Evidently, when we treat cancer too aggressively, cancer cells hijack normal cells and make them co-conspirators in spreading the cancer. "Do you see an analogy there?" he said. To him, the collateral damage of the war on terror has caused some people to get hijacked by terrorists to become co-conspirators in spreading the terrorism.

Bill O'Reilly asked him to come on The O'Reilly Factor too. "I will appear on your show on two conditions," he emailed O'Reilly. "Number one: You will not raise the volume of your voice. And number two: You will not interrupt me. And I will not raise the volume of my voice and I will not interrupt you." O'Reilly has yet to reply.

"A terrorist has an ideology." He says. "That ideology is savage. It's brutal. It's primitive. It is the worst ideology you can imagine because it's ancient. It's not relevant to our normal times. When you kill a terrorist you do not kill the ideology."

He repeats twice that on Hannity the other night, former Secretary of Defense William Cohen quoted Donald Rumsfeld as saying, "Are we creating more terrorists than we are killing?"

The US has the best weapons and intelligence in the world and yet we can't seem to eliminate terrorism. According to Chopra, this is because we have yet to understand it in its historical, economic and psychological contexts. Economically, the conditions in Pakistan are so abysmal that the poor flock to the Mujahid simply so they can eat. Psychologically, young boys in ghettos in Europe turn to terrorism because they have been marginalized by racism. When one has no sense of identity one may seek identity by joining a radical group.

"Marginalized people get radicalized." Chopra says. "When you have marginalized people living in ghettos who feel humiliated and enraged, when you have poor people living in third world countries and you have people who have no sense of identity, these marginalized people get radicalized by special interest groups which happen to be the terrorists. You cannot get rid of these terrorists without getting the help of the majority of the Muslims in the world who are peaceful people. They're like anybody else. We know that from our own surveys. You can't say that a quarter of the world's population is insane and Jihadist. The terrorists are insane and Jihadist. You can not get rid of an idea... The only way ideas can be given up is if you educate people, if you help people, if you have a conversation with people and if you recognize that other people have a sense of perceived injustice. We don't recognize even that there is a sense of injustice in these people. We also have an ally like Saudi Arabia, and we fund money to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is controlled by very few people who live a very opulent lifestyle. It is to their advantage to channel money to these terrorists and to divert it from the gross inequities that exist in their own countries. Spend a little money and divert and other people are killed and you're getting money from the US anyway, who's your ally. And they will be your ally as long as it is to the US's advantage."

"Why don't we remember? We have such short memories that Saddam Hussein was a CIA sponsored thug that our CIA brought out of exile, put into power after a coup in Iraq. Then George Bush Sr. flooded billions of dollars into Iraq in his support, all the while knowing full well about his torture chambers and rape rooms. It didn't bother us because the US policymakers thought they could use him to their advantage. When they found out not, now he suddenly becomes this evil person which he was all along."

"A state official was once asked, 'How do you abandon your friends so easily?' And he answered, 'We don't have friends. We have interests.'"

So where are all the Islamic moderates? They don't seem to be getting much airtime these days. Perhaps that's because their voices are too quiet, but perhaps it's because we don't want to hear them.

"One of the things we have to do now is ask the moderates to speak out," Chopra says. "I think one of the reasons the moderates don't speak too much is that they're defensive. They're defensive of things they did not do but they're being at least perceived as having participated in it. This is the attitude of people that feel attacked and judged against. And we do nothing to prevent that from happening. If we were actually to reach out to the moderates and say, 'You have nothing to be defensive about. You don't have anything to be guilty about. We are not judging or humiliating you. Or demeaning you.' When is the last time we said to the moderate Islamic world? 'We want your help?' We said it belligerently when we said, 'Either you're with us or you're against us.'"

One of the comments on "Deepak Chopra on Mumbai: Too Controversial for CNN?" was the suggestion that, just as we wear red ribbons to support AIDS awareness and pink ribbons for breast cancer awareness, we should wear a ribbon to show condemnation for acts of terrorism and see Muslims wear it openly. Would something like this be an effective way for Muslims to demonstrate their stance against terrorism?

"I think something like this would be symbolic for sure." Chopra said, but then quickly adds, "It would not get to the root cause that's contextual and relational. You're not gonna solve this the day after tomorrow. If you really want to solve this we have to work at it for 50 years."

On Friday, The Wall Street Journal is printing versions of letters from Deepak and Gotham Chopra responding to the Rabinowitz article. Here are advanced, unedited versions of the letters from the Chopras:

Letter from Deepak

Letter from Gotham

Comments

[rf dude]

BTW Michelle, " Uncensored " makes an _excellent_ titular pun!

[rf dude]

When Dr. Chopra speaks on CNN or other " sound-bite " oriented TV forums, he must realize that his statements will be edited to fit the limited time available.

That being the case, it is extremely important for Dr. Chopra to present his points succinctly and not get baited into expressing statements that come across as U.S. bashing. While his ideas may be relevant, by sounding preachy he turns off many who would otherwise listen to him.

Dr. Chopra has already crossed the threshold whereby he can have a forum on CNN and other network outlets to express his views - his voice reaches many more than ours can.

It is therefore incumbent upon him to find a way to express his message without either sounding preachy or assuming incorrectly that his viewers already understand what he has to say. And it may turn out that CNN, Fox, etc are not appropriate forums for his message as they will never give him sufficient air time to develop his arguments.

Uunless he wishes to speak merely to those who already understand what he has to say - which is more in the realm of feeding his vanity.

[BabsfromKansas]

Excellent article - thank you so much for contributing to my understanding of a complex issue.

[Scrunch]

I respect Deepak Chopra's insights in this article, but find it difficult to share the view that Islam is a benign religion save for a few insane extremists. Many share his view, and perhaps they're correct.
But what I see, admittedly based only on what I've learned from the media over these past seven years and my considerable thinking on the topic, is far more than a religion. I see a way of life, where the religion utterly controls people's lives, and a world view that is about Islam and Muslims. There's an extensive set of rules governing nearly all aspects of life, implying the individual is inherently inept and incapable of living a human life on his own, without his religion, thus leaving his religion as his primary source of identity, above his identity as an individual. From this, there's a disconcerting degree of continually self-indoctrinating conformity. Perhaps as much as any group, there's a profound sense of Us & Them regarding Muslims and non-Muslims. Would most Muslims say they're primarily a human being, or primarily a Muslim?
I see this in the roots of the religion; taken to the extreme you have suicide bombers.
I'd welcome a response from a moderate Muslim, though this forum doesn't lend itself to conversation.

[DCato]

I dislike the term "moderate Muslims" as it implies that moderation is the exception when, for the vast majority of the world's billion Muslims, it is the rule. Hundreds of millions of ordinary Muslims show they reject extremism everyday simply by going about their ordinary lives. Secular and religious leaders and groups have condemned terrorism repeatedly and in no uncertain terms yet it rarely makes the headline: moderates are not newsworthy. This allows the Islamophobes to say that moderates are not speaking up. What they mean is that they think Muslims should be constantly apologizing for being Muslims.

What we must understand that Islamist extremism is a distinctly modern movement. It is a radical response to the challenges of the industrial, globalized world, fusing modern western ideas of the role of the state and law with radical rereadings of religious texts and traditions to create an ideology tailored, very specifically, to today. Self-appointed religious authorities like Osama Bin Laden (trained as an engineer) have sought to usurp the traditional ulama. The strongest bulwark against Islamism is traditional religious authorities. Those who persist in believing that Islam is the problem have rejected our best allies, the traditional Muslim clerics, often in favor of secular authoritarians like Musharraf whose oppressive policies drive people into the arms of extremism.

The Islamophobe says Islam and the West are incompatible. The Islamist says Islam and the West are incompatible. To reject the attitude of one and embrace the attitude of the other seems strange.

[Historical1]

Of Indias population approximately 10% were Muslim, in 1947. Today they are at 15%. Pakistan had a Hindu population of around 25% in 1947. Now the Hindu population in Pakistan is 1%. Nobody in the world cares about the treatment of Hindus in Pakistan. Everybody writes about how the Muslims are treated in India, and how India is somehow the cause of its own miseries, and problems with terrorism. Now this had nothing to do with the US bombing Iraq - I can assure you. So no amount of introspecting on what "We (the US) have done to create terrorism" can fully address the question - Why is Islam not a fundamentally Pluralistic religion? Why can't it co-exist comfortably with other religions of the world. Why does it have to be either / or.

For all the wisdom, in Deepak Chopra's views, I doubt if he has actually read the Koran, the Hadith and the Sira. No doubt the US has done much to exacerbate these problems - especially in Iraq. But there is also something fundamentally at play here, at the very core of Islam. We keep denying this only at our own peril. Let's not make Deepak a hero here. He is coming from a world-view that represents the most liberal, spiritual tradition in the world - Hinduism, even if he may deny that.

[Pejeal]

A agree with you 100%, as bad as it was and still in Pakistan for Hindus, it is even worst in Bangladesh, but few care. I guess the life of a Hindu is the least valuable. These are not the causes of the liberals in the US, like Chopra, who raise the specter of Hindu Fundamentalism after the Mumbai attack and the Gujarat riots without mentioning the Godhra train affair.

The hanging and beheading of homosexuals in Iran and Saudi Arabia, the execution of children in Iran, the stoning of men and women for adultery in Iran, the throwing of acid in girls" eyes in Afghanistan to prevent school attendance, the beatings and hands cut off, the honor killings by the hundreds in Basra Iraq, in England, and now the US, a girl killed by his father in Basra for talking to a British soldier, no jail time for the father¦no, no, of course, that has nothing to do with Islam, "this is a deviation, you know", even though it is called Sharia Law.

[taimur]

Who burned the Godhra train? Was it Pakistan or indian muslims? Stop lieing. Did you read the forensics report. The train was burned from inside by the passengers within it. This is an established fact.

[taimur]

Where the hell did you get that Pakistan had 25% Hindus. Are you nuts? This is stupendous beyond belief. No body massacred Hindus in Pakistan. Though some rioting did take place during partition but comeon. Stop lieing.

[Teland]

You know, I've mostly ignored Mr. Chopra, because I didn't believe he had anything to say that I had any interest in. Clearly, that was a mistake. Thank you so much for this interview!

[ListenPeople]

My only comment is to say, thank you for the article!

[humble liberty]

I hate to break it to some people, but cretins like Cheney actually want terrorism to exist and be perpetuated, preferably overseas but occasionally domestically.

Could KBR, Blackwater, etc. make more money with:
- War or peace?
- Saddam's Iraq, with no U.S. presence, or filled with contractors?
- The "Other" and fear or NOT entering economic and Constitutional collapse because of nomadic terrorists often holed up in some mountains?

But we've always been at war with East Asia, right?

[realist333]

It would take a lot more than Dorothy Rabinowitz's tunnel-vision journalism or a 2-digit IQ like Elizabeth Hasselbeck to harm the reputation of Deepak Chopra.

Dr. Chopra's views on Islamic extremism are right on the money. President-elect Obama would be well advised to seek his views when formulating long-term policy on the Middle East.

[Motik70]

Deepak is right, you can't make friends by bombing people. The War on Terrorism, can never be one by bullets and bombs, and the U.S. military has admitted to this. The War on Terrorism is a war of ideas, Western capitalism/democracy versus Islamic theocracy.

[insightful55]

Thank you Deepak Chopra for speaking out and telling it like it is. For too long genuine debate in our country has been missing an alternative and worldly viewpoint. For all the attacks we have suffered, the questions WHY? WHY DO THEY HATE US? WHAT HAVE WE DONE TO THEM? have not been asked or contemplated by us. Though the media bears much of the blame for keeping us ignorant we have to bear responsiblity for we are citizens of a democracy that empowers us to dictate the course of our government, and we can only determine the right course if we have a broader perspective of the world.
This election has shown that we are ready to listen to others and hopefully we can once again disagree and criticize without fear of being labelled unpatriotic. As any parent can attest to,offering criticism and another viewpoint does not lead to popularity but every conscientious parent does it anyway out of love.
If we want the world to respect us once again we have to start showing respect for the world.

[outsideinfluence]

I guess there is a mistyped or mistranscribed word in this article: surely "It's very different to snap out of that mindset." should read "It's very difficult..."?

[LightningJoe]

What's really saddening to me, is that when someone says such sensible things, it's news.

[love5pets]

Well, sensible things said by sensible people often get censored. Or we have great thinkers and intellectuals like Elizabeth Hasselbeck casting their widsdom for the public to listen and learn from.

Obama should sit down with Chopra.

[Qreative]

As an American Muslim, I want to thank Deepak Chopra for doing what so many Muslims are afraid to do: Tell the truth about Islam as a world wide religion.

If the culture of fear and oppression has been difficult for anyone in the past eight years, I can personally attest to how hard it has been for Muslims--even those of us who were born and raised here feel the need to censor ourselves in the face of unfounded abuses and ethnocentric prejudices that are not only sanctioned, but actually promoted by the U.S. Government and its policies.

[atlantajoe]

what do think scares muslim women more, George Bush or honor killings. You know, a women gets raped then she gets planted in the ground up to her neck and stoned to death? Does Bush promote this or it is Muslims that promote this.

[Dezg]

atlantajoe - Thank you for reminding me how grateful I am this holiday season that Sarah Palin is not our VP elect. Because we know that she supports persecuting rape victims even further by making them pay for their own rape kits as well as wanting to legally make them give birth to the baby created during the rape - but of course we Americans aren't anything like those fundamentalists in the Middle East. Not only that, I'm so grateful that people with your mindset will no longer be occupying the White House come January. "It's a New Day..."