Two Cultures, One World | Tarek Mounib

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• 00:05

  My guest today, Tariq Munip, was living in Switzerland, originally born in Canada, and his parents are actually of egyptian descent.

• 00:14

  And growing up sort of, and living and really being comfortable in a lot of different cultures led him to really start to be concerned about what he perceived as so much hatred and so much vitriol and so much othering and lack of the ability to see the humanity in other people in the world.

• 00:35

  And that kind of reached a fevered pitch.

• 00:37

  And while he was living in Switzerland and Zurich, building his own companies, he decided to set aside a bunch of time and do something that so many people thought was maybe even impossible to go to the United States to find a group of Americans who really were concerned, were fearful, who had feelings about people, especially Islam, especially in the Middle east, that were not good, and then bring them to offer them a free trip to Egypt, where they would then be paired with people who were very often the exact opposite of them.

• 01:16

  And to film it and just see what happened without forcing any sort of educational agenda, but just to watch and see what unfolded as people discovered or didnt discover each other's shared humanity.

• 01:29

  The result was a documentary called free trip to Egypt, which is now circulating.

• 01:34

  Definitely check it out.

• 01:35

  We will link to it in the show notes.

• 01:37

  That was really incredibly powerful, so moving on so many different levels.

• 01:40

  So I had a chance to sit down with Tara today and talk not just about his background, but also about how his own life and his experiences have informed his lens on other people and how he sort of made the jump from Canada into Europe and what really motivated this entire adventure and also how it has changed him in a profound way and led to a continuing movement called the pledge to listen, which we dive into.

• 02:13

  So excited to share this conversation with you.

• 02:16

  I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is good life project.

• 02:27

  I think the most important thing, especially to my father, was the religion.

• 02:32

  So he really felt a strong attachment to Islam and islamic values.

• 02:37

  So he really wanted to impart that specifically.

• 02:41

  And he felt Arabic was a part of learning about Islam.

• 02:45

  So I think that was more important to him than the general egyptian culture.

• 02:51

  Right.

• 02:51

  My mother was more into egyptian and european culture and more open and less worried about what she would impart.

• 03:03

  Yeah.

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