Understanding here that the clearer it is the better but she needs to be able to pitch this in a way that starts a conversation. About b. Britain's future relationship with the e.u. . Well realistic we'll see what she does say when she makes a speech tomorrow next Barker Norco's because well thanks our editors were Sara Nelson image and Mulford from its all good morning. B.b.c. News Hants 9 o'clock Donald Trump is promising a quick and fair trade deal between the United States and Britain when he becomes president in just a few days time he was speaking to The Times in an interview conducted by the former cabinet minister and Bracks it campaign of Michael Gove speaking on today Mr Gove said the president elect had predicted the referendum result and was enthusiastic about Britain leaving the e.u. He stressed that he believed that the European Union would potentially break up in the future and that other countries would leave so in a sense he's both emotionally and financially invested in it the other thing of course is that as well that emotional investment I think it's important to stress that he is a deal maker he's a transactional politician and he sees economic benefits for both Britain and America in that trade deal the man expected to be Mr Trump's ambassador to the e.u. Theodore Malak who is a professor at the Henley Business School said the president elect was ready to strike a deal with Britain he told today that the world was changing and that was no bad thing the pound fell to below $1.20 an early trading on the Asian markets this morning before edging back up slightly traders have been reacting to reports that the prime minister will signal plans to leave the e.u. Single market when she gives a major speech on her record policy tomorrow. A coroner in London will begin hearing evidence about how 30 British tourists were killed at a Tunisian beach resort in June 2015 the victims who were aged between 19 and 80. Included 3 generations from the same family G.P.'s have expressed concern about the way the n.h.s. Makes decisions about non urgent specialist treatment they say that some patients in England are put in danger when referrals are delayed and members of the devolved assembly in Northern Ireland will gather at Stormont facing the prospect that the power sharing and ministration will collapse she unfeigned says it will not nominate a replacement for Martin McGuiness who resigned as Deputy 1st Minister last week b.b.c. News and this is b.b.c. Radio 4 good morning in an hour from now the historian Mary Beard will be the 1st link in the latest series of the chain on Woman's Hour talking about her life and the woman who's been her biggest inspiration that's at 10 o'clock but 1st here's Tom Sutcliffe to stop the wake. As America prepares to swear in a president who promised to ban Muslims from entering the country we're talking about the continuing battle to define just what the word Islamic should mean to the world some 1500 years after the religion was founded the writer Graeme Wood has spent 10 years talking to men and women who believe that almost everything that's happened since then has diluted the faith and that holy war is the best way to put it right Sarik Khan argues for a very different kind of Islam through her organization inspire founded to combat extremism and empower Muslim women and Ziauddin Sardar puts the case for Islam as a religion which demands reason and critical inquiry from its believers as editor of the course of the critical Muslim will stay with us the rest Napoleoni His latest book Merchants of men investigates how faith and crime come together in the kidnapping and trafficking business. We're going to start with Graeme Wood whose book way the way of the strangers records meetings with sympathizers supporters recruiters for Islamic state. The absolute distillation of your book I think is a is a refutation of that thing that's very very often that there's nothing Islamic about Islamic state you take the line that there is something Islamic about it you're not saying I take it that they are in any way representative of the one and a half 1000000000 Muslims in the world so so in what way are the Islamic even they would not say that they're representative of the in the entire world population of self described Muslims. And they are however from my conversations with them deeply interested in the issues that are part of the Islamic tradition they are looking back into the history of Islam the scripture of Islam and they have a very small brutal intolerant interpretation of that faith but it's one that they do take quite seriously so my conversations. We're seeking out the people who were the most scholarly of the the Islamic state sympathetic group and then asking them why do you believe what they're so so few other Muslims believe and what's the content of that belief now you say you've gone to the most scholarly Of course you're limited in that in 2 ways only you for all these reasons can't go inside the Islamic state itself they have admitted journalists but you can't be sure that they're not going to find you more valuable as a as a hostage than as a mouthpiece or a sort of route to communicating with the world so you can't talk within the Islamic state you're reduced to talking to really some coin old bull characters on you yes in what sense of a representative of Islamic state well 1st of all you don't even have to speak to the oddball characters of the fringe of the Islamic state although Believe me I spent my time with them the Islamic State has a publishing apparatus it has a factory of production and if you look at that the official statements of the Islamic state you can get a sense of what their theology is what their legal interpretation is beyond that it also it's a proselytizing organization it needs to put out to the mass of Muslims that it's trying to convert to its view its its interpretation and so you can find in cities like Melbourne like London and on the Internet and social media voices that have been given something of an imprimatur by the Islamic state to speak on its behalf and with its voice and then this brand of Islam I mean you detail in particular the vocabulary they use and their vocabulary is very often underlining the fact that going back to a sort of very traditional and kind of 7th century notion yes in many ways they're very ostentatious about this they will take every practice that they have and dignify it with terms from earliest with Arabic terms can you do. Give us an example of some of that because the other interesting movie how jurymen which is their word for influences is a reference to the. Mohammed see tries and yes that's right so the word which is the word that they used to describe a foreign fighter is a word from early Islam that describes the who who left the city of Mecca to Medina and they described the local fighters in Syria as on Star which was the name for the Medina ins who welcomed the Prophet Muhammad again in the earliest days of Islam so you really implication is we are recreating exactly that they are saying that one sign that they're doing things right is that they can find these analogs in history now of course most people would say that this is a proper perversion or the end analogy is flawed but it is the way that they think of themselves and their positioning of themselves in the Islamic tradition you imply that it's proof of real knowledge and a real kind of determination to seek knowledge but it could be just cherry picking of those words could it I mean to British would be Jihadi as we found with a copy of Islam for Dummies I mean in the same way that $911.00 conspiracies communities textural and engineering without ever being engine is or aren't they simply cherry picking which would make them look good you certainly find many people who have nothing more than a pretensions to knowledge someone who looks on Amazon dot co dot u.k. For the crown for Dummies is probably in that category. I think the answer the to the general question of are they cherry picking in general with their intellectual output is answered by some of the deeper scholarship those people who went and had that embarrassing purchase history they were foot soldiers if you look at the people who are actually producing knowledge producing idiology they in many cases are looking back into usually medieval texts rather than the scripture itself and they're fine. Ending things that require for lack of a better word scholarship again it's a minority scholarship but they are there they're doing the archival work they're doing investigative work and they're producing they're producing a peculiar type of knowledge many of the people you talked to recent conference Georgia last from America who is now called the Son Japanese convert Hasan cannot. Some you might describe as Islamic reborn. Choudhry that So this is something very specific about a lot of these people there are psychological type that they fall into absolutely understand that then distort as it were the reading of how they represent Islamic state or potentially distort Well there is a disproportionate number of people who have gone to the Islamic state who are converts I think what it says is that there there is this one there is one of the many psychological profiles of Islamic state fighters and India logs that it is a very familiar kind of zealous convert that sees its place as trying to really be more holy than the be more Islamic than thou as a result perhaps of having come to the faith late. The it incident do you recognize that the Islamic states are in some sense Muslims just a distorted form and just as a disease 3 easy tree and but does not actually represent the whole hood of the of the forest to that extent yes Islamic and state fighters are going to Muslim states is to actually define themselves as Muslims. But just because they use a slimey criminology does not really make him Islamic in any sense for example the word Mahajan simply means immigrant Now if you want to make one as if I add fighting to that you you certainly can but it doesn't it. I didn't actually seen the meaning of the audience or do you know what Which simply means immigrant you're analogy of the disease tree is interesting though because the option of simply locking off that branch isn't easily available is it since since the tax they refer to and the had deaths they refer to are not ones that mainstream Muslims want to repudiate. I certainly do and I was hearing that there really mainstream Muslims Muslims do. In the kind of had this literature you find a lot of fabricated had these would have been I would have no relevance which and which are not will tend to be proved not to be tempted but but but but by they I don't for example in this line which they're dressed like you'll find to have these with the sense that they're the prophet said the city has a very special play is it where it was the 1st place to be created when the earth was created and the Syrians have a special noble plate and all that I mean that's total nonsense and is clearly a fabricated her and he's no sensible Muslim would would would actually really believe in it but you know it is one of the main main Had it is their dad they actually use they also use the national of restored caliphate as a sort of profoundly important tool for them in terms of propaganda. Sorry condors that resonates with Muslims generally or is that or is that a sort of rather narrow appeal Well I think it's with anything actually rather it will resonate with some Muslims and not with others and so I think this is for me is what's really very interesting because the word Islam ik is is what is so contested at the moment and we often talk about the clash of civilizations between the West and Islam but actually in my view I think the real clash taking place now is within Islam itself and how I think contemporary itself has become dominated unfortunately by strands of what Harby Sellafield an Islamist ideology and you've got the combination of the puritanical with the politicized ideologies forming what some regard some Muslims say well considered to be Islamic orthodoxy like groups like ISIS now they'll be a whole group of other Muslims who will totally disagree with that notion and it's very interesting how it it's not just Muslims who struggle with what they define as being Islam but also how long some define what they perceive to be slamming grammar I thought this was very interesting revelation of your book. Not just how unhumble genus Islam is but even amongst the holidays the schisms and splits and sectarian divides I mean down to the smallest detail Yes absolutely you mentioned John George Wallace and American cleric who's risen actually very high in the Islamic state he comes from a neo revivalist school of legal thought within Islam called daughter. And this is as as heterodox and weird as you can get for an American from Plano Texas to to say that what was basically an extinct legal school is something that he will revive in Syria in the year 2016 is strange to say the least and it really shows that this is exactly the sort of just said a fight within Islam they would agree themselves that the main task right now is the purification of Islam from the impurities that self described Muslims have within it yet so that that. Instinct that probably we in the West have to lump al-Qaeda with ISIS and think essentially the same is completely wrong yes and the way that the Trump administration is coming in does that by describing radical Islam without any differentiation is a perfect example of the kind of sick discourse that we've had to have to deal with and probably have to deal with I was very startled to find that John Georgia this is interpretation of the Koran allows him to smoke pot and take magic mushrooms he's found a way around you know there is no prohibition it is not as if this is very into the air and it is very important and the point that point that Graham has made that a lot of these people like converts to Islam Now the interesting thing is if you take a criminal and he becomes going to want to Islam he doesn't he doesn't stop being a criminal and you see if you have you know pot smokers you know it's also as these are all these weirdos So what's actually happening is that kind of all the. Unsavory characters of the world are suddenly discovering that in Islamic state they can express their unsavory ness and and I kind of you know attracted to what this is a kind of a populism of of of the kind that we see in America but in a kind of Islamic form like resolutely only and yes you know I've been following this group since 2002 I've read 2 books one him to carry and the other one about the Islamic state so let me tell you what is my interpretation under one they always thought that they were in the past they always go to and this is also al Qaeda that they were fighting together with Mohammad in the 2nd century therapy so that's the collective imagination of the Mosher the in the element that distinguish the Islamic state from anybody else is the nationalists and these one doesn't come from Islam these are actually comes from the group they joined. Cowboy. 2 I had. In 2003 coming from Saddam Hussein no top ranking officers and intelligence that cease unique it's already had the group it's a very specific but it's a very specific kind of nationalism isn't it the idea of the Caliphate it's a nationalism all the state now the Caliphate even al-Qaeda was the final goal when we win we'll create a caliphate he had the Caliphate is the beginning he had to Cali That is an instrument to apply to and this is where they surely produce an appeal for 45 years I just when I come back I just want to come back to Graeme Wood on that because you think it's a means to an end you think it's the end to which everything else is the means to you in the I actually disagree completely or the rest about the ways in which the Islamic State has distinguished itself we can point to theological ways in which it's distinguished itself from al Qaeda the types of theological purity that is it is emphasized it is different it's a different type and the distinctions are or are perhaps too small for us to get into right now but they are certainly important for the for the followers themselves but when you say that it's a nationalist group I think it overlooks what I've seen as a culture of global jihad that it has inspired Now it may have at its core a political enterprise that has allowed people to flow through it but it is something that's inspired people in Tokyo in the United States in Melbourne in a huge array of places that where I've spoken to people and it's certainly not for them a nationalist project that involves the restoration of the bath that of course had its part in Iraq but these things are certainly not adequate to explain that I think the global appeal didn't want to I want to bring Yeah. Yes nationalism is very much. A very much a part of sliming state just as are the acts by but his as Saddam Hussein but as a part of the slimy state but I think what's really happening is that Islamic state is using classical Muslim terminology like the like the notion of a laugh at directly attract people who know very little about Islam but who want to express their keep criminality all while unseen in some sort some one way or the other in others and so it's become a kind of a magnet for all the male violent be you know people of the world many of these people are new converts to Islam at a very very large question is how you contradict that as it were within the terms of the faith I'm going to create at you something you wrote and it was a little while ago but you spoke very harshly indeed about the openness of Islam to new ideas much of what goes under the rubric of religious thought or culture in Muslim societies is a norm chemical sedative Islam has just been reduced to a set pieties rendering Muslim societies incapable of generating new and original ideas yeah that's I think a non muslim would hesitate before saying anything like that you do how do you get around that. But I think what has happened is that the dominant kind of representation of Islam today. Kind of undermines many of the free thinking the rational the philosophy could traditions of Islam is what it's what it said I was saying earlier on that we have a very narrow interpretation of Islam that is becoming the dominant interpretation and somehow we need to and we need to focus on the fact that that Islam has many many different traditions but can I ask Can I press you on why that has happened is it a registrants on the part of the people who represent that broader more tolerant more open Islam is a distance through fear or is it I don't I think it's a support act it's a product of history it's a it's a particular product of history really when a country less it's old Arabia has found itself with a great deal of wealth it through which it can spread its ideology better is here it's a particular nation and what happened is I'm and I mean when I was growing up in Britain we did not have all this kind of narrow mindedness and you know and closed the literalist interpretation and this is only emerge in the last 2030 years Sorry Terry interesting because when you look between the 11th and the 14th century in some history there was a great deal of free thinking and philosophers who argued for example that organized religion was terrible and we should condemn it and these philosophers were never considered to be heretics but now what you find amongst all of them some say that if you dare to criticize any aspect of religion or religious belief or identity you also very easily can seem to be a heretic or an apostate and so forth and so you've got this we should say that's a very dangerous accusation and absolutely and I