534. From Warhawk to Peacemaker: A Congressman’s Radical Transformation | Mark Siljander

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
Episode 534: From Warhawk to Peacemaker: A Congressman’s Radical Transformation | Mark Siljander
Release Date: March 31, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 534 of The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson engages in a profound conversation with Mark Siljander, a former Congressman who underwent a remarkable transformation from a staunch neoconservative warhawk to a dedicated peacemaker. Their dialogue delves into Siljander's journey, his critique of neoconservative policies, and his innovative approaches to bridging divides between Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities.

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Mark Siljander’s Background and Initial Stance

Mark Siljander entered Congress in the late 1980s as a traditional evangelical Christian with strong anti-Muslim sentiments. Identifying as a neoconservative, he was deeply involved in anti-communist efforts, supporting regimes and guerrilla groups aligned against communist forces.

Notable Quote:

Mark Siljander [00:20]: "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."

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The Epiphany: From Warhawk to Peacemaker

Siljander experienced a pivotal epiphany while serving as Congressman's chair of the Africa subcommittee. Confronted with the realities of apartheid in South Africa and the moral contradictions of his anti-communist stance, he realized that his approach was contrary to Christian teachings of love and compassion.

Notable Quote:

Mark Siljander [12:41]: "And it's so contrary to what the Messiah taught and who the Messiah was as an example of love and compassion and mercy, not killing and hate and arming."

This revelation led him to question his previous antagonistic stance towards Muslims and seek common ground among Abrahamic faiths.

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Critique of Neoconservative Policies

Siljander provides a scathing critique of neoconservative ideology, highlighting its naivety in assuming that democracy can be universally imposed through military might. He argues that such policies overlook the complex socio-cultural fabric of nations, particularly in Muslim-majority countries where democracy is not the prevailing system.

Notable Quote:

Mark Siljander [22:29]: "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." [00:20]

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Exploring Common Ground: Religious Texts

Siljander's journey led him to explore the Quran and the Bible, uncovering profound similarities that could serve as a foundation for peace. He discovered that both texts share narratives about Jesus, albeit with doctrinal differences. This realization underscored the potential for interfaith dialogue based on shared beliefs rather than divisive doctrines.

Notable Quote:

Mark Siljander [26:05]: "Jesus, the Messiah from Nazareth, spoke Galilean dialect of Aramaic... the same word the Quran uses, walid, for Jesus was not walid or begotten. And it's a male verb, action meaning sexually."

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Practical Peacemaking Efforts

Siljander recounts his hands-on experiences in Sudan, particularly his interactions with President Omar Al Bashir. By focusing on personal connections and shared spiritual beliefs, Siljander was able to transcend political tensions and contribute to peace accords, even amidst ongoing atrocities.

Notable Quote:

Mark Siljander [86:14]: "And so we went to see Omar Al Bashir... we prayed together. I got up and said, it's time for me to leave. We left, and the next day they signed the peace accord."

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Lessons Learned and Conclusions

The conversation emphasizes the importance of empathy, active listening, and the pursuit of common ground in conflict resolution. Siljander advocates for a "fifth track of engagement" in diplomacy—one that transcends traditional political and economic negotiations by fostering spiritual and personal connections.

Notable Quote:

Mark Siljander [55:40]: "The word is in Aramaic is ministry religion. That implies creeds, doctrines, hierarchy... there is one thing that unites people, including a story and you might read in the book about the Dalai Lama, and that's Jesus."

Peterson and Siljander conclude that lasting peace requires a fundamental shift from adversarial politics to collaborative and compassionate dialogue rooted in shared human and spiritual values.

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Key Takeaways

1. Transformation Through Understanding: Siljander's shift from a neoconservative warhawk to a peacemaker underscores the power of personal revelation and the pursuit of deeper understanding in overcoming entrenched prejudices.

2. Critique of Imposed Democracy: The podcast highlights the flaws in using military force to establish democracy, emphasizing cultural and religious complexities that such policies often ignore.

3. Interfaith Commonalities: By exploring the Quran and the Bible, Siljander identifies shared narratives and beliefs that can serve as a foundation for peaceful coexistence and collaboration among different faith communities.

4. Practical Diplomacy: Siljander's experiences in Sudan illustrate the effectiveness of building personal and spiritual relationships in achieving tangible peace agreements, beyond what traditional diplomatic methods have accomplished.

5. The "Fifth Track" of Engagement: Introducing a new dimension in diplomacy that prioritizes spiritual and personal connections alongside economic and political negotiations can lead to more enduring peace solutions.

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Conclusion

Episode 534 offers a compelling narrative of personal transformation and innovative approaches to international conflict resolution. Mark Siljander's journey serves as a testament to the potential for change and the importance of seeking common ground in a divided world. Dr. Jordan B. Peterson's insightful questioning and synthesis of psychology, theology, and politics provide listeners with a nuanced understanding of the complexities involved in forging peace across cultural and religious divides.

Transcript

[Jordan Peterson]

I mean, 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 and how many people in Cambodia died when the Communists took over 4 million in the killing fields, at least something like that.

[Mark Siljander]

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.

[Jordan Peterson]

47 of 50 Muslim majority countries are not democracies.

[Mark Siljander]

And There is a 4th or 5th 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?

[Jordan Peterson]

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 Three. 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.

[Mark Siljander]

But he shouldn't be trifled with. That's the other side of Trump.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right, but that might also be absolutely necessary. Okay, so back to Palestine. I had the privilege today of sitting down with Mark Silgender, 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 warlike 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 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. And 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 warhawks, 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, 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 Siljender'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. Well, there's lots of places we could go with that. Why was this your quest? Why did you think you were the person to do it? Why do you think a bridge can be built? What's the nature of the divide, all of that? Those are things. We could spend an hour or two hours on each of those subtopics. But let's start with, well, why was this your problem?

[Mark Siljander]

Well, it wasn't my problem, Jordan, when in Congress I made speeches denouncing Islam, the Quran and made external speeches as well. I didn't like Muslims generally, even though I lived in Michigan and Detroit, had a very large population of Muslims and Arabs. And I had an epiphany, believe it or not, in Congress, it's possible for the Spirit to actually speak or hit hard a person within that context. And I claim to be, as an evangelical at the time, a follower of Jesus. And the epiphany was very basic, elementary and simple. If you're really following Jesus, why do you disdain a whole group of people A whole faith group of 1.5 or 6 billion. Is that what Jesus did with the Samaritan woman, the tax collector, those that could have been prostitutes and others? He and Jesus welcomed all and loved them. And love doesn't always, as you know me, like or agree with. So I began studying the Quran.

[Jordan Peterson]

This is when, when were you making the anti Muslim speech?

[Mark Siljander]

This is, this is in my last term in Congress and this is one of the reasons it was my last term.

[Jordan Peterson]

What year? What year was it?

[Mark Siljander]

That's way back in the late 80s when I was in my 20s and early 30s.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay, okay, so in the 1980s. So you were operating as a rather straight laced traditional evangelical in the 1980s.

[Mark Siljander]

And a neoconservative.

[Jordan Peterson]

And a neoconservative, yes. You should define neoconservative for everybody who's watching and listening.

[Mark Siljander]

Yes. That doesn't mean you're Republican or Democrat particularly. But for example, Cheney, Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld during the Bush administration were considered neoconservatives. My definition is they're avid hawks. They typically want to change regimes rather than cooperate and work with regimes by force if necessary. I would say the Iraq war is emblematic of what a neoconservative, they don't mind lying, cheating, being scoundrels if you will, causing wars if their ends are met.

[Jordan Peterson]

And the ends are.

[Mark Siljander]

And that's exactly the question. The ends are democracy. Presumably democracy is some of their deity in that their hope that if we show these poor ignorant people overseas how marvelous democracy is, they, they'll beg for it and the radical Muslims will denounce radical Islam to embrace democracy.

[Jordan Peterson]

That was the hope that drove the Iraq war, for example. And I remember in the early stages of that there was a delusion, I would say, that the democratic distributors, the distributors of democracy that constituted the American military would be welcomed with open hands, arms and when the dictator tyrant was deposed, the freedom loving people would rise up and democracy would prevail. Which is you might say somewhat naive view of how democracy works. But, and I know that's a bit of a parody, but that was my sense of the sentiment, the belief. And so the neocons, they were convinced, let me see if I get it right. The neocons were convinced that if they put the might of the US military and the willingness to engage in warfare behind their pro democracy words and threatened the stability of authoritarian regimes, that there'd be the possibility of eliciting something like say a genuine Arab Spring or a genuine transformation among the freedom loving people of The Middle east, something like that. Am I parodying it too brutally or is that a reason?

[Mark Siljander]

Quite articulately.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay.

[Mark Siljander]

And it's critical to note that for several ministrations, including a Democrat, there were regime change policies. And in the Bush administration, there was a secret policy revealed by General Wesley Clark some years ago, much post Bush's term and off two terms in office, that there are seven countries, they wanted a regime change and they would do, as you know, anything to achieve it. So I felt there it'd be critical, since most of these countries were Muslim countries and almost all conflicts, which are about 120 at the moment globally, have to do with Muslims, Christians and or Jews, that perhaps a logical thing would be to study the Semitic holy books behind each.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, right.

[Mark Siljander]

And then see if there's more common ground than we have known heretofore. So I thought, well, okay.

[Jordan Peterson]

And was that part of the epiphany?

[Mark Siljander]

Yes, it was.

[Jordan Peterson]

So how did. Okay, so how. So let's go back to the biographical details and then I'll go into the neocon issue again with you. Well, you said that, you know, your initial stance, this was back in the 1980s, was rather traditional, straight laced, evangelical, and you regarded yourself as a advocate for Christianity in the face of something approximating Muslim error and enmity. And then when you were in Congress, you realized that there was something wrong with that stance, even perhaps from a Christian perspective. But you also had a conceptual realization which was there is some commonality of text between the three major Abrahamic faiths. And if you analyze that commonality, you'd be able to start to establish ground on which negotiation for peace might be established. Is that about right?

[Mark Siljander]

Well, I didn't realize there was so much common ground at the time, but that was the ambition and it was also being a hawk. You know, I was. We were fighting communism at the time, during the Soviet Empire, and as young, naive, foolish, and I was given the chairmanship of the Africa subcommittee, thinking that I was important and turned out to be they wanted to use someone young and naive in a dupe so certain people could sort of use me on with certain legislative efforts. So I promoted anti communist guerrillas supporting guns and arms and propped up desperate regimes that were anti communist regimes.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right, right.

[Mark Siljander]

And it's in the epiphany. This is so contrary to what the Messiah taught and who the Messiah was as. As a example of love and compassion and mercy, not killing and hate and arming. So it was an overwhelming feeling of emotions. I nearly actually teared up on the floor of the Congress. And I'm not one often given to tears like that. And it was just so powerful. And I can't tell you where it came from, but it was during the apartheid debate in South Africa where there were bills to condemn the white regime at the time and I was in charge of it. And I sat there in the House floor with, by myself and my African American aide trying to defend a bill that is a weak, useless, toothless bill to condemn the white regime in South Africa. The Democrats, Republicans came up with an agreement. My job was to push it through. And this debates were for several days. I'm looking, there are 84 Democrats on the Democrat side and Republican. I'm looking at my side. It was just me, my aide and I, that was it, no one else. And it was obvious to me then too bad it took so long to figure it out that I was being used to prop up racism. So the most radical bill as an amendment to the wishy washy bipartisan bill that wouldn't hurt the regime at all, but at least makes some statements. I let the let that bill go through on a voice vote and it was historic because it was a little vibration in the ocean of apartheid and white rule in South Africa and it built into a tsunami essentially within the next few years. And that's.

[Jordan Peterson]

So let me get that story exactly straight. So you were spearheading a weak kneed bill to begin with and you were doing that to some degree, unbeknownst to yourself as a puppet of forces that you didn't fully understand. But then I didn't quite follow that. What was the transformation of the bill that had the cascading effect?

[Mark Siljander]

Well, there was a substitute bill by Ron Dellums, a very liberal Democrat from California that was. It had real teeth in it, I see. Oh, I mean it was seriously condemning justifiably the apartheid regime. And he of course presented it as a substitute for the original bill. And all my I had to do is call for record roll call vote and be voted down. We go back to the other bill, debate that for another day or so and the weak bill would float through the Senate and go through the Senate and everything would be copacetic with the racist. Well, well, I refused to allow a voice vote and no one else was there to call for it except for me because Republicans didn't want to be seen defending racism.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay. And so what's the significance of you calling, refusing to call for a voice.

[Mark Siljander]

Vote because the Ron Dellums bill, this extreme bill, passed the U.S. house of Representatives as a substitute for, for the weak bill. And I was, it was, I was blamed for it. And by the time I got back to my office, I can't tell you how many messages of disdain and anger I received from that. And that was just the beginning of this whole epiphany. And then when I went to the Middle east, usually we go to Israel, because I was on the Middle east committee too, and, and we were told not to see the Palestinians. And I thought, now wait a minute. How can one ever work as a mediator, especially one of the most powerful countries in the world and most powerful parliament in the world, the US Congress, if we don't talk to both sides? We have to. I'm very pro Israel, but I felt we still have to talk to our enemies, what are perceived to be enemies anyway at the time. And I was threatened at that time not to pursue this type of balance, I would call it balance of engaging people that our party was told not to engage.

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[Jordan Peterson]

Okay, so let me, let me expand on this a little bit. So you talked about the anti, anti communism and the, the role of the military, the Role of force in combating communism. And you talked about apartheid and then we also started to talk about the conflicts that involve the Islamic world. So let me walk through those with an eye to fleshing out the neocon position. I mean Obviously during the 60s there was a huge rebellion in the United States, especially by young people, against the use of the military in fighting the communists in Vietnam. An extension, let's say, of the Korean conflict. Now when I was young, I was temperamentally, I suppose, predisposed and also by my youth to thinking that the anti war protests were fully justified. But as I matured and learned more about the absolute horrors of communism, both Soviet and Chinese, I could certainly see the rationale for the US in particular to do everything it could from stopping any population like that of Cambodia, let's say from falling into the hands of the communists. And how many people in Cambodia died when the Communists took over 4 million in the killing fields. At least something like that, some absolute cataclysmic catastrophe. And of course North Korea has never been able, the Koreans have never been able to free themselves from the grip of the Chinese communists. And so it's an open question with regards to communism, how much diplomacy is possible and how much force is necessary. And the certainly weakness in the face of communism and military weakness was not advisable. And then so, so let's just park that for a second. And then on the South African side, I mean I've been concerned ever since the 1980s when the anti apartheid movement emerged that South Africa would turn into what Zimbabwe turned into or Rhodesia and that the radical leftists would take over in the aftermath of the disintegration of the apartheid empire and all hell would break loose. And it still seems to me like that that's a real possibility still for South Africa. Right, so, so these are the sorts of things that you're caught, that you were caught up in, in that nexus. And so the neocons from, from, from what you've said, from what I understand, they're more likely to stand on the side of like resolute and even invasive military force to, to implement regime changes. Now I want to add one more thing to that and then we'll, we'll go back to your epiphany. The, the, the theoretical problem, the problem with the neocon theory in my estimation is that it seems to be predicated on the belief that a totalitarian state is basically composed of like a hyper thug and his minions oppressing a vast number of essentially freedom loving people. And I don't Think that's a reasonable account of a totalitarian or authoritarian state at all? Like an authoritarian state emerges when everyone is lying about everything all the time. There might be the worst thug at the top, but the pathology is radically distributed through the system. So the idea that if you do a regime change that you're going to evoke something like democracy in its aftermath strikes me as wishful thinking in the extreme. So it doesn't seem to me that the neocon fault is necessarily their proclivity to rely on military might. It seems to me that their fault is that they have a naive view of how complex it is to generate the preconditions for a democracy. So.

[Mark Siljander]

Exactly.

[Jordan Peterson]

And okay, so I'd be more than happy to hear your reaction to any or all of that. And then we'll go back to the epiphany, certainly.

[Mark Siljander]

Well, 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 language. I mean it is, it was completely absurd.

[Jordan Peterson]

No institutions, no history of democracy with nothing.

[Mark Siljander]

Yeah, and this is to me the biggest area of deception with the neoconservative ideology. They are just so still believe that democracy is the best for every country. But how, how many democracies Jordan are the same?

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, they're also a minority of governments like, and the idea that democracy see the problem. Part of the problem with this neoconstance is the notion that democracy is the natural state of governance for human beings, which is like, it's rare. There are a multitude of unlikely preconditions, some of which seem to be. Well, this is something else that we can talk about, some of which seem to be Judeo Christian in their essence. It's like 47 of 50 Muslim majority countries are not democracies. And 100% of Catholic and Protestant majority countries outside of Africa are functional democracies. So this is something we can also delve into when we talk about the commonalities between Christianity, Judaism and Islam, because we also have to account for the radical differences in governance style. Okay, so you weren't a fan of the neocons, even though you, you'd started out as more of a hawk and more of an evangelical hawk. You had an epiphany. And the epiphany, I'd like to go into that a little bit more. Some of that was conceptual. Maybe the Muslims, Christians and Jews have more in common than we might think. But some of it was Your dawning intuition that there was a conflict between the deep realities of your faith and your political approach and strategy. So how did that. Yeah, how do you, how do you make sense of that realization coming to dawn on you?

[Mark Siljander]

It was sparked, Jordan, by a friend from India. He said, mark, you talk negative against Muslims in the Quran, but did you know that Jesus is in the Quran? I jumped out of my chair. I said, I don't believe this is. During the epiphanies. I'm still developing. It's like one is an infant. You're born into a new thinking, but it takes time to mature and hopefully someday become an adult. Adult in this, in, in the context of the epiphany. And I was very angry. I said, I don't believe this. So I bought a Quran in English, of course, and started reading it. And I. In English. And it was extraordinary how many times it mentioned he's the central figure. Strangely enough, it was just a profound discovery. And my wife, I'd screamed back to her, nancy, do you know what the Quran says about Jesus? And she says, I don't really want to know.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, right.

[Mark Siljander]

Well, let me tell you. And then she would, she would got quite infatuated with the whole process as well. So I, after studying it, I, I called a spiritual friend of mine who is my pastor from Michigan, who spoke Aramaic. And this is the key lynchpin now with the epiphany, by the way, he was teaching me Aramaic.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. Which is Christ's original language. Yeah.

[Mark Siljander]

Jesus, the Messiah from Nazareth, spoke Galilean dialect of Aramaic. And there is a 4th or 5th century copy, I believe, of a copy of a copy of what they call the Peshita text. It's in the Museum of London, I think, at the moment. 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, which I love to get into before the interview expires, about Jesus, it also said things, for example, he's not the son of God, he wasn't crucified, negative against the Trinity, things like that, the Christians, including yours truly, felt a little bit offended by. So there you go, there's some of the problems. But then the epiphany grew to a second more minor one. I felt, how does one say this? A very strong notion that is in the words. The words. So I asked my pastor, Aramaic speaker, what is begotten in Aramaic and began learning Arabic at some level and comparing the begottenness of Jesus in the Quran and the begottenness of Jesus, say in Matthew 1 with a long 41 begots be Abraham, begot Isaac, etc and discovered something quite fascinating, that the same word the Quran uses, walid, for Jesus was not walid or begotten. And it's a. This may seem a little technical, but it's very powerful. It's a male verb, action meaning sexually. So of course no Christian believes God had sex with Mary, but that's what many Muslims believe. Christians believe because we say Jesus was begotten the same way as we were begotten. But in the Peshitta text it uniquely and without any coincidental serendipity uses the same word as the Quran, Abraham, Walid. Walid. This begotten, Begotten meaning sexually conceived. When it gets down in verse 16 to Jesus, the form of the word changes to a feminine passive construct in Aramaic meaning there's no man and there's no action. I mean physical action. And when Muslims hear this, the scholars, the cab drivers, my close friends, they're just enamored with this. So the point is, the way Jesus was begotten in the Bible and in the Quran is identical.

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[Jordan Peterson]

You said a number of things that are of crucial importance. Okay, two. Well, if the goal I've been thinking for some protracted period of time Especially in the aftermath of the Abraham Accords, that there are foundational principles that unite Muslims, Jews and Christians. They're all people of the book, for example, and they're all Abrahamic people. And those are the idea that all of our cultures are predicated on a book rather than a city, rather than the state, rather than a military power, rather than an empire. Like that's a radical similarity. People of the Book is a radical change with regard to say the Romans or the Greeks or the pagan empires. The fact that a book is the foundation of the culture, that's an unbelievably revolutionary notion. And then the three, the books that guide all three of the major Abrahamic religions have marked similarities. One of them, as you pointed out with regards to Islam and Christianity, is the centrality of Christ. Okay, so you said that was a big surprise to you and I'm sure it's a surprise to many of the people that are listening. Well, then where's the rub? Well, that's what you turn to right away. Christ is a central figure. Jesus is a central figure in the Islamic text as he is in the Christian texts. But there's doctrinal differences which you zeroed in on right away. But one of the things that you were fleshing out, investigating was the possibility that the doctrinal differences with regards to the circumstances of Christ's conception and birth were less at odds than might be if you were ultimately pessimistic. Right. Because the question is, for me, look in the, the Abraham Accords demonstrated that people of goodwill could circumvent the State Department and what would you say, accumulated doctrinal diplomatic wisdom that it was impossible to negotiate peace between the Arab world and the Israelis absent an agreement on Palestine, which was never going to happen because the Iranians, it's in the Iranians best interest to keep the Palestine conflict with the Jews going on forever. And so that's a non starter. And the Abraham Accord signatories just walked around that in quite a remarkable way. And, and I don't think that that's an accomplishment that's been heralded sufficiently. And I know that the people, particularly in the uae, they've built that tri faith complex and they're, they seem to be working towards a solution that's similar to the one that you're pursuing, which would be the idea that, well, maybe we should start with our commonalities and see what we could negotiate so that we could establish something approximating at least a lasting and cooperative peace. Right. As opposed to continual warfare. Now I was Stunned, first of all, that the Abraham Accords were ever signed. But I was also more stunned that they held in the aftermath of October 7th. I know the Saudis backed off and everything got kind of quiet about Arab Israeli cooperation, but the, the accords didn't fracture. And then more recently I noticed that the UAE in particular, but also the Saudis have taken steps to do something that the west is very loath to do, especially the uk, France and Germany, which is to define radical Islam. Right. Islamism. To set it outside the canonical Islamic doctrine and to oppose it. And the leaders in the UAE of called UAE have called out Germany and England or the UK in particular for being weak in their opposition to Islamism, which the UAE and the Saudis don't regard as part of canonical Islamic tradition. If I got that. Does that seem, is that in accordance with.

[Mark Siljander]

Yes, indeed.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay.

[Mark Siljander]

And the Abrahamic Accords were not lauded anywhere near what they should have been. I was privileged to be in the, at, in the gardens at the White House, watching the signatories and working with North Sudan, where I visited 24 times, a Khartoum and the surroundings to encourage them to participate, which they did, as did Morocco as well. So the Abrahamic Accords began to extended and Saudi was, as you know, as you pointed out, we're right on the edge of joining.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Mark Siljander]

And then October 6th occurred and what a convenient thing to. To happen at that timing. It was horrific. It's nothing less than a, well, atrocious atrocity, but it was also well timed.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, it seemed to me that the, the purpose of October 7th was to stop the Saudis from signing the Abraham Accords.

[Mark Siljander]

Well, that was one, one of the goals.

[Jordan Peterson]

One of the ones.

[Mark Siljander]

It was Iran's goal and there were others. But October 7th. And that's exactly why the timing was as it was.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. Right. Well. And it met with some success, although the agreements didn't fragment. Okay, so now you have this epiphany. And so you were talking about going to, to Israel and speaking with the Palestinians, which. And you faced opposition from within your own party, especially on the neocon side.

[Mark Siljander]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

For having the temerity to propose. Okay, let's pick it up from there.

[Mark Siljander]

So loving enemies is, is not appreciated in politics. And this is. I don't want to get off on a tangent, but this is why Donald Trump is disdained by neoconservatives as well, because he talked to Kim Jong Un his first term. He made friends with Putin. He's a master negotiator. As, as, as you've analyzes psychology. I noticed on one of your blogs, which is fantastic, by the way. And I have a great respect for Donald Trump because his heart is, I believe, is for peace. And he talks repeatedly about all these young men dying and all the people dying. He talks about dying and killing repeatedly. So I believe that's why there's an opposition. He is a man of peace.

[Jordan Peterson]

He's the strangest man of peace.

[Mark Siljander]

Strange indeed. Regardless what people say about his personality, his gruffness, his bluntness, his other characteristic that you pointed out in, in your, one of your excellent presentations, he's inside. And I have no inside knowledge of this, but I just believe from observation that he has this compassion.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, he also has a track record. I mean, when he was president, he led the west into zero wars, right? And zero is not very many. And so that was despite the fact that we were assured by his opposition that he was a warmonger and that it would be Trump that would be most. You could imagine him voted in high school as most likely to start World War Three. And yet when he became president, the fruits that his tree bore, let's say, were fruits of peace. And that was contradictory and strange, given the combativeness of his personality. But, you know, one of the things we might always remind ourselves is that if we're not ourselves capable of promoting peace, let's say in our own family, let alone at an international level, we might not be able to recognize a true peacemaker when one comes along. He's not necessarily going to look like you think, because if you knew how to do that, you do it. And so, okay, now Trump seems to be doing everything he can to, but.

[Mark Siljander]

He shouldn't be trifled with. That's the other side of Trump.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right? But, but that might also be absolutely necessary. Right? We don't, we don't know what the preconditions are for establishing peace. He obviously indicated to people like the dictator of North Korea that he could be communicated with, but not trifled with. Right? And Trump does seem to have that paradoxical personality, which is, don't muck about with me, but if we don't have to go to war, then let's not. Right? And so he, he tromps around like a bull in a china shop. And it's not obvious how much of that's necessary. But I, I really mean, it's not obvious. None of that seems weak. Right? And I think that was the position of someone like Biden who would promote himself like Justin Trudeau does a lot of These good thinking liberals is they're the sort of people in their, in their mouths, butter wouldn't melt. They're such nice gentlemen. And nice has never seemed to me to be a partic. Particularly virtuous. Discriminating nice from weak is a difficult matter. And I don't think people make that mistake with Trump. Okay, so back to Palestine.

[Mark Siljander]

Yes, quick comment. Jesus, you know, they, they had asked, why don't you call down your angels?

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Mark Siljander]

Which he could have, but he did not. Because it's, and I don't mean to say Trump is like Jesus, please. I'm saying there's an attribute that while there's power behind Jesus, Yeshua, as I call him his Hebrew name, there's power he still exerted. Love, compassion, invitation.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. Well, you see the same thing with Moses, you know, at. When the, Moses is near the end of his sojourn with the Israelites, they run out of water again in the desert. And the Israelites ask Moses to intercede on their behalf. And God tells Moses to ask the rocks to deliver water. Right. And he instead, Moses goes with Aaron to the rocks and uses his cudgel to compel and command the rocks to deliver water, which they do. But his punishment is that he doesn't lead the Israelites into the promised land. Right. So the God of the Old Testament who's manifested, let's say, in the spirit of Christ is someone who radically opposes the use of unnecessary force. Right. Now it isn't that Moses has no strength of character because he stands up against the Pharaoh multiple times, puts his own life at risk. He's a very brave person, but he's still severely punished for using force when, when verbal invitation is the order of the day. Right, Right. And so it's possible to have that power at your back and still be morally obliged to use as little of it as necessary to, let's say, to make your point. Okay, so now you're off to Palestine, you're running into opposition from the neocons, you have an epiphany that you should be reaching out and talking.

[Mark Siljander]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

That becomes a practical necessity with regards to the Palestinians. Pick up the story there.

[Mark Siljander]

Yes. And we engaged and talked and broke bread and had tea.

[Jordan Peterson]

How did you do that exactly? Walk us through the mechanisms.

[Mark Siljander]

How did, Well, I mean, when you're Congress, you can, you know, you tell the embassy my interest is to see some Palestinians. I said, well, that wouldn't be recommended or advised. I said, note taken. I still want to see Palestinian, some of the leaders and some average People. We walked down some of the streets in the west bank and talked to people and knocked down their doors. I felt like we're in another campaign of sorts. And it was exhilarating. And I don't even, can't even specify why was. It was like meeting new people, a new constituency. But there was something missing. Jordan. I was trying to find common ground. One can be a nice person, a diplomat and break bread, which is critical in building interpersonal relationship. But there is no spiritual connectivity.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right, right.

[Mark Siljander]

So going back to this thought about the begotten we spoke about earlier, that the Bible says that the Holy Spirit was breathed into Mary by God who is a virgin and the sinless Messiah was born. Well, the Quran says precisely the same thing that God Allah breathed into Mary's a virgin womb and produced Isa Jesus, a perfect zakiya, perfect unblemished Mashiach Messiah. And I thought, well, what's the difference? We call them Son. Our term is Son of God. And the Muslims are all hung up on that. They shouldn't be because in their mind this is the critical point. And here's the common ground you could build with Gaddafi, Omar Al Bashir or your neighbor that the common ground is that he was born supernaturally and the Son, everyone, I mean, excuse me, the Son of God construct is ubiquitous throughout the Old Testament. This, there's, it's unique. Anyone, any being conceived or breathed by Yahweh, including the angels, they were called the Sons of God. Looked down on the women in Genesis 6 and said aren't they beautiful and crave the Nephilim. Well, they are called Sons of God. Even high priests were called sons.

[Jordan Peterson]

You see that in the story of Job too.

[Mark Siljander]

Yeah, and Job as well. So what I'm saying, the notion of Son of God should not be so offensive to, to the Muslims. The point is, what do we mean by that? We mean that God Yahweh blew his Ruha Kodesh, his Holy Spirit into Mary. And that's precisely what the Quran says. The stories are almost identical. And even linguistically the Ruha Quiddis Arabic and Ruha Kodesh is the Hebrew. See the sounds similarities. Aloha is God in Hebrew. Allah is what Jesus himself used in his vernacular. Aramaic in Allah, Allah, Arabic, Aloha, Aramaic, Aloha Hebrew. So that similarity was stunning because most of my Christian friends say Allah is not the God of the Bible.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right.

[Mark Siljander]

Well I said etymologically it is the same God at least, least in terms of title. Now how one views God, maybe through Their lenses is different. There are 56,000, give or take sections, denominations of Christianity all over the world. Hair splitting, every little theological difference. But I would say that there are more dynamic synergies between the Quran and the Bible. I'm not saying so much Islam and Christianity because they have their history, dogmas, culture and. And politics, but you mean in terms of the texts? Yes, interpretations. But the text in Aramaic in the New Testament, the text of the Quran in Arabic merge much more smoothly and consistently than would an Islamic imam debating a Christian pastor.

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[Mark Siljander]

Mm.

[Jordan Peterson]

Is it. Is it reasonable? There's two pathways we could walk down now. We could continue to pick up the biographical story. Let's say that begins with your interactions with the Palestinians. Let's do that. Let's do that. I have a very troublesome question to ask you as well, but I'll forestall that for the time being. So tell me what happens after you start to make contact with the Palestinians? Now, you've pointed out that what you were doing was like a constituency outreach and the beginnings of an investigation into a culture that you had regarded with enmity. And as Foreign and that there was an exhilarating aspect to that, but there was something deeper driving it, which was the search for profound commonalities. Like, my sense is, is that with regards to the Islamic world, unless we, we, meaning Christians, Jews and Muslims, concentrate on what we have in common and work out a framework for collaboration and fair competition, that the alternative is something like capitulation. It's always the alternative to negotiation, capitulation or war. And those are both dreadful alternatives. And so it seems to me that we should at least pray, hope and pray that there's more that unites us than there is that divides us, because otherwise it's going to be a real brutal time. And the Abraham Accords seem to be a real positive move in that direction, especially with regards to the UAE's attempt to initiate this tri faith process. Okay, and obviously that idea gripped you. Okay, now you're dealing with the Palestinians. What happens? What do you realize in consequence of that and what happens?

[Mark Siljander]

I realize what the Abrahamic Accords are missing. All the interfaith groups are missing, what our State Department and our own government is missing. It's what I would call the fifth track of engagement, which is a missing dimension in statecraft. And that is not speaking about religion or even spirituality, but rather since especially Muslims are deeply spiritual people and they respect and honor one who brings faith to them in a way that's respectful. And one of the.

[Jordan Peterson]

So I did a talk with pretty radical Muslim character in the uk, Muhammad.

[Mark Siljander]

Hijab, and I listened to it.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, well, you know, 7 million people have watched that and most of them were Muslim. And the responses, the responses are very interesting because there's a number of hijab's acolytes, you might say, who are making comments, but the typical comment is from the Muslim side is, we're so glad and relieved that a conversation like this is happening and is possible. And like, there was a lot of dissent amongst my team about me going to speak with Muhammad Hijab. And so, like, even five minutes before we were in the car on the way there, there were people from my team calling me and saying, you shouldn't do this, this isn't a good idea. But it turned out to be a good idea because the conversation struck a chord and did indicate that the kind of dialogue that you are describing is not only possible, but necessary and welcome, especially on the Muslim side. They seem, the Muslims, the people who commented in particular and the people who were there seemed very relieved and excited that a serious conversation about at least quasi theological matters was possible and that could be done respectfully. They were pleased to be, I don't know, invited to the table for the discussion. Something like that. Okay, so now you're seeing that when you're talking to the Palestinians and now you're starting to broaden out your contact network, I presume.

[Mark Siljander]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

So. So what happens after that?

[Mark Siljander]

Well, besides. So the. The idea of the sonship of Jesus can be mitigated to a hair split between Muslims and Christians. And then we. They would say they'd bring up other issues. What about the Trinity? What about the crucifixion?

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, that's the question I was going to ask you.

[Mark Siljander]

There's a whole litany of issues that really if done lovingly. Now what I mean by love is not like and agree so much.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Mark Siljander]

But one of the. In first Corinthians there is a love chapter and every wedding in America at a probably Canada. Love is patient, love is kind. Well, we decided to do one of our studies was to do a deep dive in what are the 14 words used in that chapter in Aramaic? What are the sub meanings? What are the cultural context, what. How do we look at it in antiquity?

[Jordan Peterson]

Flesh out the absolutely large language models are very good at that by the way. You can use them technically to do that. So we've done that something very similar with the word God. You can ask a large language model to specify the semantic domain of God and one of my colleagues has found a set of words that can be used to replace the concept of God with 99.5% completeness. Right. So imagine that the concept of God could be explicated by a cloud of closely related words, which is. It sounds like that's what you're trying to do with the concept of love.

[Mark Siljander]

Exactly.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay, okay. You're doing that in Aramaic.

[Mark Siljander]

We find that the Hebrew cognates and the Quranic cognates because they're all sister languages. Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic are similar to Spanish, French and Italian. They're all based on Latin. Most of the Arabic and Hebrew are based on Aramaic, the most ancient language. But they're all cousins, regardless of the scholarly debates of which which came first first which is frankly irrelevant. They're all similar. They use similar words, understandable words and as a consequence we're using these new common ground discovery.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mark Siljander]

To engage people that what was missing in Palestine in the during the visits we could talk about tea and coffee and family.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right.

[Mark Siljander]

But I was ignorant in terms of faith. In terms of faith.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, you also said something very interesting which we should also not gloss over, which is that you could imagine that the secular view of conflict is that it's primarily political and economic. Right. And that's always struck me as wrong. Political and economic conflict is secondary to conflict about first principles, about conflict about. And that's really theological conflict when you get right down to it. So it seems to me to be completely. It's as absurd to presume that you can make peace without a theological discussion as it is to assume that if you decapitate a tyranny, it will turn into a democracy. Right. Those are equally nonsensical propositions. And that seems to be especially obvious as you pointed out. What it's 120 conflicts in the world right now. And what's the proportion of those that have to do with religious conflict?

[Mark Siljander]

Well, I didn't say religious.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, okay.

[Mark Siljander]

See, that word, we can get into it later, is a word I hardly ever use with respect because I know you use it frequently. It's not in the Old Testament, it's not in the New Testament. And the Quran's use of religion, the word deen, that's the Arabic, really means the state of one's life in submission to God. So the notion of there is a institutionalized religious structure. There was in the Old Testament, but they didn't even call it religion. There's no notion of religion in Hebrew. And the only time religion is mentioned in the New Testament. This is important backdrop, I hope, is. Is in James and it says true religions helping widows and orphans and keeping yourself unstained from the evil of the world. Which is. Which is what I believe is a real Quranic jihad, incidentally is an anecdote. But getting back to it, the word is in Aramaic is ministry religion. That implies creeds, doctrines, hierarchy.

[Jordan Peterson]

That's right.

[Mark Siljander]

And so forth. And religions divide people, even tribes divide people. People are divided by so much besides religion. And even denominations can divide people. But I found one thing that unites people, including a story and you might read in the book about the Dalai Lama, and that's Jesus. Jesus does not have baggage of Christianity. I'm not against it.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mark Siljander]

I don't want to make that clear. But I don't think Jesus needs Christianity to lift his teachings up and lift who he was.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, there's plenty. There's. There's a number of people, a faction maybe, or maybe even more than that in the prayer group movement, a presidential prayer group that is distributed all across the Western world now and beyond.

[Mark Siljander]

Oh, vastly beyond.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, that. That also seems to Be, what would you say? Staking itself on that particular belief? Right. That there's something about the figure of Christ that's unifying outside. While you, you said outside the religious. You also contrasted the religious, I thought, very interestingly, with the concept of ministry. Right. Which is a very different idea because ministry is. What is that? Active love, Something like that. So let's go back to the Aramaic cloud of words around love. Okay, proceed from there.

[Mark Siljander]

So these. There are in Corinthians seven elements, attributes to embrace and seven to avoid. And we have turned it into what we may be presumptuously call an algorithm.

[Jordan Peterson]

And we as who?

[Mark Siljander]

Well, those of us that have traveled making peace. There's a numbers of Senate and House members, religious people, both Christian, Muslim and other. We've traveled to 147 countries and worked on six conflicts and releasing 52. This is. I'm not saying this is. We're. It's not, not nothing to do with a brag or presumption, but the work, these, this way of creating common ground, release 52 hostages and. And believers in prisons all over the world. Consistent.

[Jordan Peterson]

And you said ameliorated six conflicts.

[Mark Siljander]

Yes. Including a genocide.

[Jordan Peterson]

Over what span of time has this occurred?

[Mark Siljander]

30 years.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. Okay, so we definitely want to. We definitely want to delve into that.

[Mark Siljander]

But it's based on love.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right, and now you're defining that.

[Mark Siljander]

You said there were six, seven attributes to embrace.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right.

[Mark Siljander]

And seven to avoid.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay. Okay.

[Mark Siljander]

For example, you are emitting love to me now by creating a safe environment by which we can communicate together.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay. And that's definitional. So what's the.

[Mark Siljander]

That's behavioral.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah, got it. Well, that's what you do if you're, if you have any sense as a psychotherapist. And that is a logos, is it process. Well, Carl Rogers was one of the people who formulated that most clearly. The idea that if you. Freud was doing this, although he didn't. He didn't say as much exactly. Freud believed that if you listen to people and let them speak without, like, spontaneously and without expectation, that their minds would automatically devolve towards the problems that confronted them and start to spin up something approximating a solution. And Rogers, who was a Christian seminarian before he became a psychotherapist, he became an atheist. At least that's what he said. But his doctrine was still intensely Christian. He believed that if you. You could set up the preconditions for positive transformation by setting up a dialogue, dialogical space. A lot of Roger's work has been Used by peacemakers like. Like consciously by peacemakers trying to mediate between groups with opposing views. One of the Rogerian presuppositions, for example, it's very useful one, is that you listen carefully to what someone says and then you repeat back to them what you think they said until they agree with your summary to ensure that genuine comprehension has been established. And it's a Rogerian presumption that when that happens, there's transformation on the part of both participating parties. But to me, that's a reflection of something Rogers knew as a Protestant seminarian, that you know, whether where there are two more gathered in Christ's name, so to speak, then the Spirit is there. And I think that's actually technically true from a psychological perspective, because when people can communicate freely, a transformative process that aims at something like peace and cooperation does make itself manifest. And I think you can tell when that's happening because the conversation is meaningful and engaging. That shows you how deeply that process is in accordance, even with the instincts that mediate it.

[Mark Siljander]

You're very good at that repeating back. You've been doing that. Now you repeat back. And we try to do that when we're talking to leaders, when they're saying, well, the United States has done this and they don't understand our position. And we patiently listen.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Mark Siljander]

So creating a comfortable space, a safe space, listening and not pushing or promoting an agenda is in terms of international peacemaking. For example, we went to see Omar Al Bashir, the sudan in the mid 2000s. I say we. I mean, there are sitting members, former members, the delegations change. And we brought an American, Sudanese, Muslim, who assured the president that we weren't there to convert him.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right, right, right.

[Mark Siljander]

One of the problems you start talking about Jesus with anyone, ah, you're trying to convert me.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah. Well, we skirted that problem when I talked to Muhammad Hijab, because one of the things that happened in the mosque was that we had a conversation about Christ which went quite well, I thought, remarkably well, given the circumstances. But again, there was no attempt on my part of Jonathan Pageau, a friend of mine was with me. There was no attempt to convert, like to count saved souls, let's say. It was merely a. Merely. It was merely a dialogue. Right. And an exploration. And so that lack of agenda, that's gotta be something like humility in search of peace. Right. Like, if I want to forge an accord with you, the first thing I should at least do is try to figure out who. Who I'm dealing with. And I'm not gonna manage that at all till I listen a lot. And that's gotta be way before I decide how we're gonna proceed. Because I don't understand at all how I could even possibly proceed with you unless I knew who you were, what you valued, what you would conceptualize as peace. You know, whether that was your goal and if not, why not? That requires an awful lot of listening. Okay, so that love, you said one.

[Mark Siljander]

Of the attributes, so there's several. You know, I say there are seven to embrace and seven aspects to avoid. One of the things to avoid is not to shame or dishonor someone. Do not do.

[Jordan Peterson]

That's a good idea.

[Mark Siljander]

Do not push an agenda. Do not keep a record of wrongs that. Oh, Mr. President, you armed the Janjaweed in Western Sudan and Darfur and you are massacring the. The African Muslims. These are Arab Muslims. There's a difference culturally in one part of Western Sudan called Darfur. And there are two and a half million people displaced and nearly a million people have been killed. Tens of thousands of women brutally raped. Yeah, wasn't that would be an elephant in the room, wouldn't you say? Every single Western person that came to see him, what do you think the first thing they did? Shame? Disgrace? I'm not saying he wasn't. Didn't deserve it. I'm just saying that love says you. Don't push that.

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[Jordan Peterson]

Well, it's also, there's moral hazard in there too, you know, because. Well, it has something to do with the problem of seeing the moat in your neighbor's eye when you're not too concerned about the beam in your own. It's like it might be the case that there is a litany of sins to be laid at your feet, but it isn't necessarily obvious that me personally, I'm the one to do it. I could be concerned about the errors I made. That might be a better focus of my attention if I'm trying to understand you and make peace, you know, and you could imagine that in any geopolitical discussion there's going to be egregious sins that could be discussed on both. On both. On behalf of both participants. Especially if you extend the historical time frame because no one's going to enter the room with a complete like man of innocence. If you go back like 300 years.

[Mark Siljander]

You are so right. We went with congressional delegations to countries, especially communist countries, and we'd outline Jordan issues that we had with their sins.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Mark Siljander]

And then they would outline what we have done. We are hypocrites.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Mark Siljander]

And. And they weren't wrong all the time.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, right.

[Mark Siljander]

I'm not saying America's horrible, but we do have. If you look back in our history with there's a few skeletons. Yes. A few skeletons in Europe with all their expansionism. There's definitely skeletons. So why. So you, you diverted with arguing who's righteous and who isn't. It's, it's.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, that's not the point of a discussion about peace is if the discussion is about peace, the searches for the pathway to peace, the search isn't for the longest litany of previous wrongs that can be laid at the other person's feet. Obviously that's. You can't. That doesn't even work with your wife, let's say.

[Mark Siljander]

It certainly does.

[Jordan Peterson]

No, no. You enter the argument with, with an arm's length list of all the transgressions of the past. That's exactly what you see happening with couples who are on the precipice of divorce. They can't bring any issue up without all the unresolved issues immediately. All the unresolved demons immediately entering the fray and complicating things beyond belief. Right. So you enter the.

[Mark Siljander]

So, so we're sitting. Think of this now. Say we were sitting together and we're talking to Omar Bashar in the midst of this Horrific, unimaginable genocide with atrocities beyond human understanding. And we don't mention anything about the Janjaweed, the murders, the rapes, nothing. We talk about, ask him about his family, his children, his wives plural. And we get to sharing the discoveries. Now here we. Here it comes. Discoveries of the common ground, the Arabic. I tell him, your excellency, we have new common ground we haven't known before between the Quran and the Bible. He said, well, I thought you, I looked you up. You're an evangelical former, you know, congressman. And you're not very, you don't, you're not very appreciative of Islam. So. Well, you know, that was then, this is now. I've read your Quran. And rather than saying, as so many Christians will do, is of the devil and condemn the prophet and such, rather than approaching it, that's disdain again. That is using shame again. Or using a negative hateful approach rather than. We look for one of the loves too in Aramaic is look for the best inside of a person or a situation.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right, right, right. That's what you want.

[Mark Siljander]

What do we, what can we do?

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, that's a good definition of love. I always thought is the best in me serving the best in you.

[Mark Siljander]

That is in the Aramaic, but you wouldn't see it in the Greek.

[Jordan Peterson]

Unfortunately, that's in the Aramaic.

[Mark Siljander]

Absolutely. It's one of the key to do is look for.

[Jordan Peterson]

It's a great definition of parenting. Right. If you're. Well, if you're. That's what you hope as a father, that's the best in you, that's serving the best in your child. Definitely. And that's what you want in a marriage.

[Mark Siljander]

And first of all, they're shocked. You study the Quran, Right?

[Jordan Peterson]

Right.

[Mark Siljander]

You studied. I said I've been studying it for years, your excellency. Well, what do you think of it? I think it's marvelous. I have disagreements, but I found things that appreciated. And so what is the transition for your excellency? Especially as it pertains to Jesus?

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Mark Siljander]

Oh, we love Jesus. You can't be a Muslim without loving him. And of course.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. Which is a very strange thing to realize.

[Mark Siljander]

And that was in your interview with Muhammad. He, he said the same thing. Yeah, they will all say that, which is true. However, I say there's. It's deeper than that. And so I go through a machine gun litany of what the Quran says and if ness. I don't speak Arabic fluently, but enough words of the Quran to recite it in Arabic if necessary. And we go through that he was supernaturally conceived, as we alluded to early, by the Holy Spirit. He's sinless. He could heal the sick, the blind. He. He could raise the dead. He could clay form clay birds and breathe his. His breath on it. And they became. It became living beings. What a miracle. And he's. He was. Allah took him up to heaven and he's coming back on Judgment Day. That's what all Christians believe too. So of course I appreciate that as part of the Quran. And he said. And it's. He looks like surprise because very few Muslims have heard it all together. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. We have dozens and dozens and dozens of. Of unbelievably divine attributes of Isa Jesus in the Quran. Like he's the word.

[Jordan Peterson]

How much of that is outlined in your 2008 book?

[Mark Siljander]

Most of it, but not all of it. Since then, there's been much more research.

[Jordan Peterson]

Where is that available?

[Mark Siljander]

Well, I'm ready to do a. A trilogy of a new book called At War with Peace, but where. There are some people interested in making a movie first, and they asked me to hold it off and coordinate with the script and other. And the release of a potential.

[Jordan Peterson]

Could you do a course on that?

[Mark Siljander]

Absolutely.

[Jordan Peterson]

Could you do a course for Peterson Academy on that? You don't have to answer that.

[Mark Siljander]

Well, I would. It would be an honor. I know. What do you have 50,000.

[Jordan Peterson]

50,000 students? Yeah, we got 30 best professors in the world. Yeah, it's coming along real nicely. But that's like. That's remarkable common ground between Islam, Christianity and Judaism. Well, that would be a wonderful course. And it sounds like you've done a tremendous amount of background work preparing for that. And so that would be. Well, that would be a course I'd want to take. So, you know, that's one of my criteria for determining whether a course should be offered is. Would I like to know that?

[Mark Siljander]

So back to the office of Omar Al Bashir.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Mark Siljander]

So we're going. Have we brought up anything political yet? The answer is no.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Mark Siljander]

Families, friendship. Then he interrupts, says, why are you really here? Yeah, I've heard Gaddafi did the same thing. Why are you really here? Yeah, he said, the truth is we want to become prayer partners and pray for peace together. And together discover the commonalities between the Quran and the Injeel, which is the New Testament in Arabic.

[Jordan Peterson]

And why would he be skeptical of that? Like, why did he. We talked already about the difference between the approach that you're using, let's say in the classic State Department use or approach. So how would you contrast the discussion that you had with him, in which this question arose, with what he would have expected from the typical diplomat?

[Mark Siljander]

Okay, that's a. That's a very insightful question. First of all, a typical diplomat, you know, diplomacy is shame diplomacy, the things we alluded to earlier and accusations and failures and positioning and manipulation. And then if they don't agree and the politicians come in and is. And assert themselves, and if the person to whom we are addressing these things to, as diplomats, disagree, then we bring up the other two, what I call tracks of engagement. And that would be economics. We could threat sanctions on you, your government, or trade. So threat, threat or military. Peacekeeping or bombing. Take your choice.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right.

[Mark Siljander]

So where is my question, Joan? Where's the good cop? You know, everyone's watched police shows during the interrogation, and the first interrogator slams the table, says, you better talk. Tell us everything. You're going to prison for 30 years, and we're going to go after your mother, your father, your sister, and your brother. And this person is frightened to death. He's taken out, and his partner comes in and says, here's a cup of coffee. Don't mind my partner.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Mark Siljander]

You know, he gets a little emotional.

[Jordan Peterson]

The caller. Caller. Yeah. Yeah.

[Mark Siljander]

So don't pay. See, in other words, where is the good cop in U. S. Policy? We don't have to be religious with this. So if I were speaking to President Trump or Marco Rubio, who heads the State Department, I would encourage them to consider some type of training for a special advisor or a special envoy that would be for peace and reconciliation. Something I don't care about at that.

[Jordan Peterson]

How could we?

[Mark Siljander]

In every country, there needs to be a good cop. So we're sitting there, getting back to Omar al Bashir. He said, why you're here? And I told him, we're just here to be prayer partners, find common ground and pray for peace. So we leave. We go back.

[Jordan Peterson]

Did he believe you?

[Mark Siljander]

Yes.

[Jordan Peterson]

Why did he.

[Mark Siljander]

I'll tell you why. How much time do you spend with the president, typically?

[Jordan Peterson]

Me?

[Mark Siljander]

Well, anyone. Anyone?

[Jordan Peterson]

A very. A very short amount of time.

[Mark Siljander]

Two and a half hours later. It was embarrassing, but we had to go. He was still talking.

[Jordan Peterson]

Okay, got it.

[Mark Siljander]

So he said, well, can you come back?

[Jordan Peterson]

Yep. Though. That's good. That's good.

[Mark Siljander]

Yes, we will. Within short weeks, we came back all the way back to Hart with another team. This time, he had a room full of his scholars.

[Jordan Peterson]

Oh, yeah.

[Mark Siljander]

All dressed in, you know, the Sudanese attire. And some of my friends who hadn't experienced this before in politics were a little shocked. Said, remember, if you're coming, you can. You don't have to come with me. I'm just a former member. I'm a nobody. But we have behavioral agreement. Do not bring up anything political.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right.

[Mark Siljander]

Only ask personal questions. Unless they ask you. Let them open the door. So we spent two and a half hours again with his. All his scholars asking penetrating questions. Well, about the crucifixion and what the Quran says and what about Son of God, all these provocative issues.

[Jordan Peterson]

How do you feel confident in addressing those issues from a Christian perspective, let's say, because you. I presume you didn't bring a team of scholars with you.

[Mark Siljander]

No, I brought a Muslim scholar with me from America. I always want to bring a Muslim to a. To a Muslim meeting or a Buddhist to Buddhist meeting, if possible, to let them know that we're safe through this safe environment. And they have to feel like you're not there to ambush them in some fashion. Yeah, Well, I mean, how did I respond to them? They were shocked because most scholars have not heard this. I was in Oxford University lecturing to people way above my pay grade, and the Brits were all sitting with their arms crossed.

[Jordan Peterson]

They're good at that.

[Mark Siljander]

And 12 look, looking like this at me.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. I think they have special classes in that.

[Mark Siljander]

My wife Nancy was in the front row, and I tried to tell a joke. Not one smile or flinch. They all sat there in this.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mark Siljander]

And Yasser Suleiman, who's head of Islamic study, was the emcee and introduced me kindly, and I felt I'm in big trouble. My wife, similar to the Ukraine ambassador during the Oval Office meeting with Trump and Zelensky, like this, it's going to be a disaster. So I quickly threw up a prayer. I had all these fastidious notes because I'm not a scholar, have no paper in linguistics or Islamics. Political scientists. Yes, but not in those specifics. And so they're probably wondering, why is this arrogant former congressman from America to come and tell us something we don't know?

[Jordan Peterson]

Right.

[Mark Siljander]

And they were. I could just. You could almost smell the. The angst. Well, I felt just led to close the book and just start talking to him. Much like you do with people, huh? Instead, I'm. I'm here because I want to validate some shocking discoveries that could be game changers if they're correct. But I'm unschooled to know if they are, and I need your help.

[Jordan Peterson]

Immediately. Right, right.

[Mark Siljander]

Their arms went like this, in this manner. And Yasser Suleman ended up being one of the endorsers of the book, as was a few others in the audience.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right. So you turned yourself from a salesman of ideas into someone who's on a quest for enlightenment, and them into the providers of that.

[Mark Siljander]

Hence the subtitle that Harper Collins came up with, not me. You know, a quest. Because it's one thing if you think you know it all and you're a professor. It's another thing if you're ignorant. Ignorant and trying to become less so, but still ignorant.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. Which is. That's a better place to stand always. I think.

[Mark Siljander]

So this showed me something quite dynamic that. Don't presume that I know everything. So we were presenting to the scholars findings in a similar fashion. This is now back in Khartoum, Sudan, with Omar Al Bashir. Yeah. And to the disdain of our government at the time, you know, which was the Bush administration. They were just so angry with me going there because I've been there 24 times. I told you. And at this time, maybe this was only my second trip with him. And on this second trip, after talking to scholars for hours, he. The president jumps out of his. Leaps out of his seat, actually. And I thought we said something wrong.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right.

[Mark Siljander]

No, I've seen this before. The meeting's over. Goodbye.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right.

[Mark Siljander]

I said, well, I'm sorry, your excellency, if we said anything that offended. Oh, no, he says, we're having dinner and that's a good sign. It turned out, I thought, a disaster. And he opened these sliding doors, and there was a table for 30 some people all lined up. We all went in. We're sitting together breaking bread.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Mark Siljander]

He always asked me to pray before because they don't pray before the food. Typically they do a bismillah, which is in the name of God, and that's enough. So he then, at this dinner, Jordan said, well, now, Mark, you were in Congress, said, yes. And you were in the un. I said, yes, you know, I can't accept this UN resolution to deploy peacekeepers in Darfur. Said, I know you can't. He said, what do you think I should do now?

[Jordan Peterson]

Wow.

[Mark Siljander]

Who opened the door for the elephant to come in?

[Jordan Peterson]

No kidding. Yeah.

[Mark Siljander]

Said, well, since you asked. And of course, the team I'm with, he asked a question.

[Jordan Peterson]

Right.

[Mark Siljander]

I didn't hear him say it, but I could feel that you're saying, oh, thank God he asked the question. And I had this plan. And see, God gives. Gave you very specific Talents and you're applying them and using them to influence people. When I respect very highly. And it gives each of us certain talents and backgrounds for reasons. And we have to discover what that that reason or reasons might be. And right then and there it occurred to me that this is why God had me in that useless politics. I've served in town council, state legislature, three terms. Three terms. I'm not trying to. That was at least like what a waste of time. Because you can't really get anything done. That's why. So I could get in the door. Why would he talk to me otherwise?

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Mark Siljander]

And ask a question such as that. Knowing of the background. So people call on you for your expertise and as a consequence you can help and bless people and work with them. And I gave him the plan. I said let's do a hybrid force of African Union, so mostly be Africans in UN let's make most of them Muslim. And I'll talk to the secretary General. Vankima, do you know him? Said yes, he's a Buddhist and he's a very good man. And we've become friends because his number one goal is to stop the genocide in Darfur. And this is just to remind viewers this in the mid 2000, 2000, 4005, 6. And he said, I'll do it if you write it. I said, I was an ambassador, I didn't write anything, including speeches. He said no, but I think you could do it. So we go to Dubai a few days later after touring. Touring with his plane the displacement camps in Darfur with hundreds of thousands of people living in. In a blue ocean of UN tarps. Underneath these blue tarps and the kids, hundreds would see a white face. Nate come and talk about food. And it was, it was so heart wrenching. I mean you have to say, well, this is what God made me to do. Why am I here in the middle of the. Of nowhere in Darfur in this horrible crisis? Then I go to a tent of hundreds of women who have been brutally raped and they're being attended to and they wanted. They said can you give them a word of encouragement? It was one of the hardest talks I've ever given. What do you say to a person, persons that had experienced such horrific atrocities? So right then my heart was committed to do whatever it took and wherever God would lead me. And once that was written, the resolution, the new resolution saves his face.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yeah.

[Mark Siljander]

Still accomplishes. The goal is much more detailed, but it's unnecessary to get into passed the Security Council even with some of our edits they had to be corrected later. That are because we were typing in a business center in a hotel in Dubai with his staff. And it literally went through. And deployment of peacekeepers were accomplished. And Ban Ki Moon and I went there to have a prayer session. And he's. Keep in mind, he's Buddhist background, wonderful man, by the way, my opinion in terms of a human being and compassion. So there's. There's my wife who was with me, and we go on to meet Bashir, the president and his foreign minister, with Ban Ki Moon and his chief of staff. My wife was teasing him because now I was friends with. Had met him maybe 12 times, and we prayed together. He laughed and often offered me a Sudanese wife because he thought I was a good Muslim because I knew the Quran so well. She said, please don't offer my husband anymore.

[Jordan Peterson]

It was.

[Mark Siljander]

It was, as we say in North Carolina, hoot and a half. It was. And he laughed and it really broke the ice because, you know, Ban Ki Moons is a great stature of the UN Secretary General. And then we started all laughing. My wife left and we went in the room. We're having tea and crumpets. And the. The president says, omar Al Bashir, remember his Bashir, his foreign minister, the ambassador, as chief of staff. I mean, as chief of staff of Ban Ki Moon. Ban Ki, just the five of us. He says, mark, you pray. He's always asking me to pray. I don't know why. So we hold hands. Can you imagine this? Buddhist, Muslims, Christian, holding, praying, holding hands. I got up and said, it's time for me to leave. So we left. And the next day they signed the peace accord and they were, there's peace.

[Jordan Peterson]

All right, sir. Well, that's a very good place to bring this part of the conversation to an end. I think for all of you watching and listening, that you can join us on the daily wire side. I think what we'll do there is you talked about six conflicts that you've been engaged in, and I think we should probably delve into that and also discuss more about the resistance that the kinds of movements towards peace that you've been participating in have encountered and why those exist. Why those have existed and still exist. We got into that a little bit at the beginning of this conversation, but I think we could. That's fertile ground for continued discussion. So all of you watching and listening, you can join us on the daily wire side. Thank you to the film crew here in Duluth. Right. We're in Duluth. Right. Yes. I had a talk here last night with Father Mike Schmitz, which went very well. That'll be released on YouTube in relatively short order on faith. And so that's probably worth paying attention to, if you're inclined. Thank you very much, sir. That was absolutely riveting.

[Mark Siljander]

And thank you, Jordan.

[Jordan Peterson]

Well, and I'm so interested, too, in following up with you with regard to the work you're doing on establishing this, like, domain of foundational agreement, at minimum. What that would mean is that, well, instead of fighting about all of this, you know, we would understand with the people that we have to share the planet with that we agree on all of this, and, you know, maybe we can. This is something Carl Rogers did point out. You know, if you listen long enough, you find out that many of your problems vanish in the communication, and those that remain are susceptible to intelligent and careful negotiation. And so, God, I hope that's true. It sure better be. And your experience has been that it is. And that's real experience, and with real consequences. And so that's very much worth knowing. Very nice talking to you.

[Mark Siljander]

Thank you.

[Jordan Peterson]

You bet. You bet.

[Mark Siljander]

My honor.

[Jordan Peterson]

Yep. All right, thanks, everybody.