Jordan Peterson on Islam

Jordan Peterson on Islam and Western culture, as Kyle took notes on it.

[STALE] The YouTube video no longer resolves (oEmbed returns nothing, checked 2026-10-06). Kyle’s notes below are the surviving record.

Why it was kept

Kyle’s notes record Peterson’s points on the separation of church and state, the early spread of the Islamic empire, and the contrast he draws between Jesus and Muhammad. Kyle set that last point against Dallin H. Oaks’s warning about presentism (judging past actions by present culture), and closed with Peterson’s “I would like to know if what I think is wrong” paired with Keynes’s “When the facts change, I change my mind.”

As Kyle captured it

• Watched Jordan Peterson talk about Islam
  • URL::
    • {{video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=qEGkBDAuTmQ}}
  • They fail to separate church and state
  • Presents a difficulty for co-existence with Western culture
  • Jesus Christ, of all the things he was, a warlord was definitely not one of them. Muhammad was a warlord. Unclear how to reconcile that.
    • “The lesson I drew from this scholarly research and publication has made me a life-long opponent of the technique of Presentism — relying on current perspectives and culture to criticize official or personal actions in the past,” said President Oaks, who served as a justice on the Utah Supreme Court from 1980 to 1984. “^^Past actions should be judged by the laws and culture of their time.^^” Dallin H. Oaks (Link)
  • The Islamic empire spread massively and wiped out Byzantine Christianity, and a lot of Buddhism cultures as well
  • “I would like to know if what I think is wrong. Because if it’s wrong it’s important that I know it’s wrong.” Jordan Peterson
    • “When the facts change, I change my mind.” John Maynard Keynes

Connections

Jordan Peterson · Islam · Presentism · Dallin H. Oaks · John Maynard Keynes