Name: Joe Rogan Experience #608 - Ali Rizvi
Uploaded: 2015-02-05T05:54:38.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #608 - Ali Rizvi' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-02-05. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #608 - Ali Rizvi' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-02-05. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #608 - Ali Rizvi

All righty, Ali, Rizvi, you're looking at something, what's going on, there's
something
wrong with the sound, too loud, too loud, we're very obnoxious here, we like to
be loud,
is this it right here, check, check, check, check, check, is that better, is
that fine,
yeah, do you want to fuck with it, it's that button right there, the one right
below the
clock, there we go, welcome to my country, my friend, I know in your country,
it's frozen
solid, and you escaped, came down here, did a little drinking last night, maybe,
maybe,
oh, no, yeah, yes, I've been drinking lots of water, and that's why I was
telling you
that, you know, this long podcast, I was just wondering if I could take a pee
break.
You could absolutely take a pee break, do not be intimidated by the long form,
we're just
trying to have a conversation here.
No, no, I'm fine, I'm good.
You're working on your new book, and your new book is entitled The Atheist
Muslim.
That's a working title, yeah.
Is that like jumbo shrimp, or military intelligence, is that one of those oxymorons?
It was partly a tongue-in-cheek thing, and then there's a serious element to it,
too.
The tongue-in-cheek thing is I was, I have a friend who's, she calls herself a
feminist
Muslim, so I'm not going to name her right now.
Oh, okay.
So I always have fun conversations with her, you know, she's like sort of nominally
religious,
and, you know, I was like, how can you be a feminist Muslim?
Isn't that like being a meat-eating vegetarian?
Right.
You know, it's a contradiction, and she's like, well, no, there's parts of it
that I
like, parts of it I don't like, so I just, I mean, she's essentially saying
that she cherry
picks.
Right.
So I figured, and then, you know, there's other things, like there's LGBT
Muslims in Toronto.
There's a big community.
Really?
There's a great people, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Transgender Muslims.
Transgender Muslims, gay and lesbian Muslims.
That's a small crowd.
That's, it's hard to find your peers.
Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's actually quite sizable.
It's, uh.
Really?
Yeah.
Like, wait a minute, 10 people?
How many, how many transgender Muslims are there?
Oh, I don't, I don't know what number.
And, but they practice, like.
Yeah, they practice.
They're, they're religious, they do, um, they do, like Friday prayers and, you
know, things
like that, have a lot of events that go on, so.
But clearly, in the Muslim religion, like homosexuality, and, you know, there's
a lot of, there's,
there's a lot of areas of that that are looked down upon.
Right.
Right.
So how does one justify that or rationalize that in their head?
It's, I, I think what's happening is, like, the Muslim community that's in
North America,
in Canada, the United States, they're a little bit more progressive.
They're sort of going through what all of the other religious groups went
through when they
came here, is they kind of have, like, you know, the religion part is really
more of an
identity issue.
Right.
And they have broad beliefs, like, they'll believe in God, they'll believe,
they'll stick
to some traditions, but, um, you know, a large part of it, like, they're
integrating pretty
well.
It's very different in Europe, it seems.
Sort of like, um, American Jews, perhaps?
Yeah.
Like, a lot of American Jews are not really religious at all.
Like, I have a lot of friends that will call themselves Jew.
Like, my friend Ari Shafir, clearly an atheist, but yet, if you talk to him, he'll
tell you
he's a Jew.
Yeah, and, uh, there's, that was kind of the idea, the title of the book, um,
is, it's,
it's a jab at the cherry picking thing.
I was thinking, you know, you can cherry pick, um, you can be a feminist Muslim
and LGBT Muslim.
If you can, you know, I can, I can cherry pick all, you know, I can cherry pick
all the
way to non-belief.
Yeah.
I'll keep the things I like, like, uh, like I love the Ramadan feasts.
I grew up with that.
Um, you know, the, it's just very communal, uh, families get together.
It's great.
The Eid holidays are great.
Um, tax exempt status, you know, why not keep that?
But what, you only have tax exempt status if you operate a religion though,
right?
You do, yeah.
I was, I mean, I'm kidding about that.
You're going to have to operate your own church.
Yeah.
I probably won't be doing that anytime soon.
You can do it if you want to.
My friend Alex Gray does that.
Our friend Alex, the painter.
Yeah.
He's this, uh, amazing psychedelic artist and he has this, uh, this
organization called
the Chapel of the Sacred Mirrors.
And, uh, he, what he's essentially does is, is done rather is create his own
religion and
he has tax exempt status.
Although his, this, I think that not like the state recognizes it, but his town
doesn't want
to recognize that they want like local taxes.
And it's, it's, it's very interesting because people are cool with religions as
long as
they're really old, as long as they're like, as soon as you know who made the
religion,
whether it's even Mormonism gets looked down upon because Joseph Smith,
although he lived
in the 1800s, everybody, there's a historical record of Joseph Smith.
It's pretty easy to track.
Whereas, you know, Scientology is the most made fun of, and that is by a
science fiction
writer in the 1950s.
It's the easiest to track.
It's like, it's right there.
Yeah.
Anything newer than that, you're like, come on, get the fuck out of here.
Like you can't.
I know you, you wouldn't believe it.
And even those older religions, if you brought them back, if they started
recently, right.
Some of the, it's just, uh, you know, when religious people make fun of Scientology
and Mormonism, it's always entertaining because, you know, you know, you're
talking about like,
well, yeah, angels are real and virgin births really happen, but like this
fucking Mormon
shit, you know, so it's, uh, I know it's, it's kind of funny when you look at
it.
I think I saw this comic where there were these two religious groups fighting,
they're running
against each other with swords.
And one of them was screaming two plus two equals five.
The other one was saying two plus two equals three.
And they were about to fight about it.
And that's really what it's like sometimes when you look at it.
Well, did you see the, the anger from the people that were, uh, upset at Neil
Tyson, Neil
deGrasse Tyson for tweeting about Isaac Newton, you know, Isaac Newton, who was
born on December
25th.
And, you know, there were, there was a Darwin or Newton that was born December
25th.
It was Newton.
Was it Newton?
Yeah.
And he was, he was tweeting about, you know, this great man being born on this
great day.
And so many fucking religious people got really angry at him.
Although he said nothing negative whatsoever about religion.
Yeah.
But they were like, you know, you're shitting on our holiday.
And it, to me sort of highlights what religion is for a lot of people.
It's, it's, it's a group that you belong to.
It's a team.
Like I'm a Patriots fan.
Yeah.
You know, don't fuck with our team.
I mean, it really does become something like that.
And when you're talking about American Jews or Muslims, maybe perhaps that don't
really follow
all of what's in the Quran, they just decide to cherry pick.
It's kind of a similar thing you're dealing with.
It is a similar thing.
It's probably a good thing.
I mean, that's how people sort of progress forwards.
Right.
I, I mean, we're talking about Jews and the old Testament is, you know, we're
talking about
killing gay people.
Like Leviticus 2013 says it, it says, you know, if there's two men and you find
them,
you know, together in the way that a man should be with a woman, then they,
they'll be put
to death.
That's exactly what it says.
But most Jews don't really take that seriously.
They've moved beyond it.
Even, you know, Christians, you know, one of the things I look at is Catholics,
you know,
the Pope says you should not use birth control or, you know, abortion is a bad
thing.
And the majority of Catholics are, they're pro-choice, you know, they have premarital
sex.
They are, you know, they're perfectly fine with all these things.
Do you think the majority are pro-choice?
Over here in the U.S. they are.
Is it, is there like a statistic that proves that?
Yeah, there is.
I don't know the exact number, but the majority of Catholics in the United
States are actually
pro-choice.
That's interesting because I would have not thought that was true.
Yeah.
I would have thought that it would probably be at the very least 50-50, but at
the very,
more likely skewing towards pro-life.
No, it's, it's definitely, I mean, they, they, they are pro-choice.
I mean, Joe Biden's a Catholic, he's a practicing Catholic and he's also pro-choice.
He's also an idiot though.
Yeah.
You know, when we were, uh, comics back in the early days.
He's a funny idiot though.
I mean, it's, uh.
Yeah.
He is, yeah.
Well, people forget about this, about Joe Biden, but you know, not to,
everybody makes mistakes
and I'm sure it probably wasn't his fault, but, uh, in the 1980s, he was
running for president
and, um, he plagiarized a huge chunk of John F. Kennedy's speeches.
Yeah, he did.
And we used to do Joe Biden night at Stitches and Joe Biden night would be like,
we would
all go up and try to remember each other's acts.
Like I would try to do my friend's act and he would try to do my act.
We would try to, we'd steal each other's jokes.
It was like an inside thing that we would do on open mic night.
Yeah.
That, uh, this guy, uh, I forget who, who came up with the idea, but we would
call it,
he was such a known plagiarist that we would call it Joe Biden night.
Yeah.
That kind of, I think that was one of the major things that killed his campaign.
Not the only thing.
Yeah.
But now he's the vice president and it's sort of never brought up.
Yeah.
He's, I, I think he's done, there's a lot of stuff he's done that I think that
kind of
redeemed him, you know?
Um.
Right.
But how did that not come up when he was like debating Sarah Palin?
It did.
Well, it didn't come up during the debate, but during the campaign, there were
people who
tried to bring it up.
Yeah.
But I think that just, it'd been so long and, uh, he had done so much more
since then.
Like with the foreign policy, with the violence against women legislation and
so on, that people
were willing to, you know, let him get past.
And he has a really strong personal story too, that he, uh, you know, uh,
emphasized.
And so I think, uh, he was able to move past that.
It's interesting because a lot of times things like that are real career
killers.
And it was as far as like him being the actual president, president, like when
people talk
about Hillary running for president, no one's talking about Joe Biden running
for president.
Have you noticed that?
Like no one.
No one.
Is he running for president?
No, he's not.
He's not, right?
But he's the vice president for eight fucking years and no one hates him.
Yeah.
You know, it's not like he's Dan Quayle where everybody's like, get that
fucking moron out
of office.
He, he never did like, even in the other campaigns, whenever he's run, he never
really did too
well.
I mean, he was, he was running against Obama too, back in the way.
And then Obama chose him as vice president.
But he, I think he was always in like the single digits.
Right.
But I mean, he is the vice president.
He is.
You would think that that would be like a prime candidate to keep the Democrats
in a position
of power.
Yeah.
But no, they're looking towards a woman instead.
Yeah.
Like, dude, you're a liability.
It was, it was like Dick Cheney, right?
He was also vice president.
Right.
There's no fucking way he was going to, yeah.
Well, he's probably the most hated vice president ever.
Dick Cheney, like the most despised, like there's some people that supported
him for sure,
but the people that hated him really fucking hated him.
Yeah, they did.
It was just such a money trail, you know, pointing him directly to Halliburton
and all
the, yo