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Hanging out with, you know, other freakish super geniuses like doctor James tour, David berlinski, Peter Thiel, three people that we are having at Socrates in the city. Actually, no, we've had doctor tour recently. We've had berlinsky some years ago. And Peter Thiel, no, we did. We've had all of them at stock decency, but John smer is hanging out with them. And we thought, what are we going to do? A week without John's mirac is like a week without sunshine. But then John said, Eric, I very, very, very, very highly recommend that you have on someone who actually he already recommended him many, many times before. And we thought perhaps we would get Raymond Ibrahim on the show. So sitting in for our friend John smek is Raymond Ibrahim. Now let me explain to you folks. Raymond Ibrahim is a really distinguished scholar and spokesperson on issues considering the Middle East. He has a brand new book called this is a big deal. I want to talk to him about this. This is called defenders of the west. The Christian heroes who stood against Islam. The forward of the book is written by Victor Davis Hanson. I think that tells you everything you need to know, Raymond Ibrahim, welcome to the program. Hi, Eric. Great to be with you. Thanks. Don't be nervous that you're sitting in for John's mirac. Others have done it before. Many of them have died, violent deaths, but I'm just saying, just put that out of your mind. But when John's mirac raves and raves about someone, it's really not difficult to us for us to understand. We need to get this person. And so we're just really grateful to you for coming on. And tell my audience a little bit about yourself. I mentioned that you're the author of a brand new book called defenders of the west, the Christian heroes who stood against Islam. What is your own background? I know you have an Egyptian background as well. Yeah, so my family is the cops Coptic every time I say that word cops have to people ask me what precincts I come from. But cops Coptic, of course, the indigenous Christians from Egypt. So my parents immigrated to the United States in the mid 60s. I was born and raised here. Because of that background being coming from a Christian minority sect from the Middle East surrounded by Islam. I was always interested in, of course, in those issues, but then in college, as you mentioned, Victor David saints and was my professor for many years and I'm proud to say a friend and mentor and so forth. I naturally gravitated towards history, military history, and then long story short in 2001 when I was writing my master's thesis with the Victor Davis, Victor David Sanchez, my chair, it was actually about the first military encounter between Islam and the west for really Christianity, Christendom. And because I was employing the languages I was studying, Arabic and Greek and so forth. And anyway, long story short, and then that's when 9 11 happened and I went to Georgetown university, studied there for a little bit in their contemporary center for Arab studies, which is, as I later found out, it was very ideologically charged. And I left there. Despite stellar performance, I might add straight age, but I had to leave there just because of the political reasons and then I got a job with the Library of Congress in the near east section where I dealt with Arabic materials and other Middle Eastern languages. Sounds writings by Al-Qaeda in the early 2000s and long story short, that got translated into my first book, the Al-Qaeda reader, which came out in 2007 from Doubleday. And since then, I've just really been involved in this nexus of Islam in the west. And I've also gravitated very much again to my own personal interests, which is the Christians. How Christians fit into this. And so for the longest time I write about the persecution at Christians encounter that I did that in my 2013 book crucified again, which I continue because I write monthly reports for the gatestone institute collating all of the anecdotes of persecution that arise at the hands of Muslims, these to be Christians. Any of these, of course, if it was the opposite, it was a Christian or a western person doing this to a Muslim would be all plastered all over the media, but of course we don't hear about it. So I really get it from alternate sources, small websites, Arabic language sources, and so forth..