It was like performance art in its delivery and execution, and helped me to hear out why Jordan was skeptical about the term “Islamophobia”, which has become politicized by proponents of both the left and the right, rendering it meaningless and light years away from what it should do: protect individual Canadians from discrimination — not unlike the intent behind anti-Semitic hate-speech laws.

Hearing this video and remembering my initial reaction to it showed me that we can have thoughtful and respectful conversations about taboo topics without being foolish enough to resorting to ear-covering typecast messaging that deter dialogue.

4 FISTS

One of the confusing aspects of my reaction to the photo is that I’m no stranger to throwing my fists when it comes to Islam. To describe my experience with Islamists, let’s rewind to a decade or so, to before it became fashionable to hate on Muslims. When I was in my 20s, I visited family in Iran for the first time, with my father. Despite living my first five years there, I hadn’t returned in two decades. My mother always told me, “In your heart, either you live here or there. You can’t do both.”

I quite enjoyed holding the hands of aging uncles and aunties who all knew me on sight, even though I didn’t have any recollection of any of them. Far from the hot roar of the city, I found a sense of appreciation from being in such an atavistic part of the world. I thought of the creased leather faces of ancient Silk Road traders every time I saw a random dirt road carved in the countryside. I remembered pretty girls with Nicole Kidman nose-jobs, cheesy guys with complicated jeans, gutsy pedestrians, flavoured barley soda and spiral dreads of dark brown opium hidden in basement ceilings. Memories of the ruins of Persepolis, Zoroastrian temples, and tombs of dead mystic poets were forever singed my mind. It felt taboo and special to be in Iran, but also strangely warm and familiar — almost like it was someone else’s memory, someone I knew very well but had never met in the flesh.

Author and his father at a Zoroastrian temple in Esfahan, Iran (2010).

These delicate moments were sharply interrupted by a looming fascistic presence across the propaganda billboards towering over a bustling avenue, or felt even while sitting in the corner of a cousin’s living room, eating take-out. It was a sad and vivid reminder of who really ran the country.

During a mehmooni (dinner party), I met a distant cousin who happened to be a bureaucrat for Hezbollah, the militant Shia political group in Iran. Through my father, he asked me what I thought of Iran based on my impressions from our trip. It’s not common for the more conservative types to address young people directly when a parent is present. In my third-grade level Persian, with clenched fists, I began blaming the persistent relics of the Islamic Revolution that Iran was so far behind the global stage in literally every aspect of public life. I remember not wanting him to get away with anything. I remember wanting to hurt him and wanting him to know how I felt. Your favourite neighbourhood “proud Islamophobe” would have grown even prouder if he knew of my angry, iron-fisted rant on that cool evening in Tehran.

Author at a dinner party with family in Tehran (2010).

On the other hand, I don’t think snarky political t-shirts are courageous, intelligent, or helpful in the slightest. They repel conversation with our Muslim neighbours who would otherwise be willing to talk, which is important in a practical sense because the unavoidable truth is that Muslims are the only people that can sculpt the future of their faith, even though this continues to be a bloody undertaking. The fact remains that dialogue is the best way forward, and whatever replaces it is worse — much worse.

If our “proud Islamophobe” had worn that t-shirt in Tehran, it would take on a whole other meaning. That would be badass to the point of criminality and I’d be the first to pay € 30 for a t-shirt with his now-deceased face on it. But that’s not what this was. This was a virtue-signaling Westerner excreting ignorant stereotypes about Muslims on dryer-safe cotton to other Westerners safely in the West. There’s zero courage in that.

5 NOSE

Following the scent of the next leftist rally in town protesting, oh let’s say, the inherent misogyny of phallic-shaped vape pens, I too can wear an “I’m a proud Christophobe” t-shirt and on it, list negative stereotypes about European Christians — such as separating Native kids from their families, forbidding them from speaking their language, raping them, and then lying about it for decades.

In a frenzy of Palestinian scarves, Che Guevara t-shirts and purple hair, the crowd roars hoisting me on their shoulders — I feel like a million Euros; a perfumed insta-hero. Anti-white Christian-bashing is the trend because it’s seen as punching up by the mainstream left and given that I’m a brown once-refugee, I’d probably get a Hollywood movie deal out of it. But let’s mute the allure of my rosey coastal career prospects for a moment and remember that donning a reeking t-shirt like that makes the issue more about me and less about the actual victims I’m pretending to care about.

My fiancée, Patricia Marcoccia, initially set out to do a documentary on Jordan’s friendship with his honorary brother, Charles Joseph (Charles’s family adopted him), and master carver of the Kwakwaka’wakw First Nation. I began to think more deeply about Canada’s history with indigenous populations after I met Charles and to this day, I still think about one scene from those early shoots in 2015. Jordan and Charles were driving to a Truth & Reconciliation Commission event in Ottawa when Charles said, “The triggers were the smells” to which Jordan asked, “Any particular smells?” and Charles replied, “It was a smell that Natives don’t have…not seeing the person but knowing you’re getting hurt by them. You just don’t lose that. When you’re a young boy getting molested. When your eyes are closed-in pain your senses get stronger. They called it Bible study time and bring you to a private room and there isn’t even a Bible in it.” He continued, “They punched me around, ripped my clothes off of me…cut my hair all off. The abuse started minutes after entering that building…”

Author visits Charles Joseph in his home studio, Surrey, BC (2019).

The traumas Charles carries from residential schools still haunt him to this day, as do the countless Iranian women, like my mother, that have lost so much of their civil freedoms under Islamism. But there are more useful ways to express our frustration with the injustices committed in the name of religion than an “I’m a proud Christophobe” t-shirt, which doesn’t actually invite Christians into the conversation in the spirit of reconciliation, but rather purposefully alienates them in the name of a misplaced, narcissistic vengeance.

6 MOUTH

Fortunately, I had the opportunity to talk directly to Jordan about the photo. In the age of online rumors, partisan emotions and Twitter feuds, it’s always best to have direct dialogue to sort things out, when possible.

Jordan has been a challenging figure in my life, ever since Patricia started a documentary project on him, several years ago.

In the 2016 YouTube video that entrenched Jordan’s public identity as the controversial professor against political correctness, “Fear and the Law,” he explains that when people are having a genuine disagreement, anger is often a natural part of the experience. It’s an indication that the issue at hand is worth talking about. Jordan became the avatar of speaking your mind, even if you say it badly or clumsily at first. But was the t-shirt simply an expression of free speech?

To my relief, Jordan listened intently and understood my discomfort and anger at the photo. He said that he tries to keep the events surrounding his book tour relatively apolitical and that he would now instate a policy that kindly asks guests not to wear clothing with provocative political slogans during his VIP meet & greet events. This makes sense to me, because Jordan is supposed to be a beacon for dialogue, and whether he likes it or not, he inadvertently becomes entangled in whatever those slogans may be as their images proliferate on social media.

When speaking with Jordan I began to think that maybe in some ways — and possibly in the most important way — it’s a beautiful thing that a guy with Islamophobic views resonates with Jordan’s work. What the people who banned Jordan’s books, rescinded his Divinity School fellowship or questioned whether Jordan Peterson has “gone too far” don’t understand is that Jordan’s philosophy is fundamentally about valuing people as individuals, not for the collective identity groups they belong to. The New Zealand terrorist denounced individualism and held a worldview that was completely opposed to seeing Muslims as human beings, which is what propelled his unforgivable act of hate against them.

That sunny afternoon in Toronto with Jordan and his debate with leftist scholar, Slavoj Žižek, reminded me that conversation is the most important tool to use when sifting through troubling issues. Our mouths serve as pressure-releasing valves that help maintain a civil sanity held in the space between conflicting worldviews. A heated debate can turn into real violence when these arteries get clogged, which is a good reminder — as it was for me — of how to keep the vital veins of communication open and not disrupt their flow with self-centered provocation that can end a conversation before it starts.

7 MIND

The reflective mind can be a powerful thing. By working to sort out the layers of my different reactions and by being reminded to be patient with myself and gentle with others, I was able to make a bit of sense of the world in and around me.

My moment of outrage forced me to excavate no simple answer, but a complex layer of reactions to unpack that which can’t be dumbed down into a sensational sound bite or clickbait headline. Anything worth delving into can’t be summed up so neatly, and anything worth talking about is often accompanied by strong reactions.

A self-examined life has the potential to better define our views and morals with the pinnacle being a beautiful death of our more outdated parts and a parsing out of what we think from what we feel.

Some advice from NYU social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt comes to mind: that we must remain slow to judge others for most of us have more in common than we’d like to think. Very rarely in life do we meet true villains and heroes as we skirt on the shores of competing worlds.