The Thinking Muslim

A Special Extended InterviewFreedom of speech is an idea we all naturally gravitate towards. Who would want to live in a society where certain types of speech were outlawed or regulated? Or where we had to watch what we say at every turn. To understand this subject further, we have Hamza Tzortzis to break down the idea and to give us an Islamic perspective. Hamza is the author of The Divine Realit...

Vaccines are in the news. As the coronavirus ravages the world, causing untold damage to lives, communities and livelihoods, a glimmer of hope has come in the production of new vaccines. This breakthrough, however has not been universally embraced. Theories abound, across the internet and on social media, suggesting a number of reasons why vaccines are dangerous. So how should we think about vacci...

This week we invite back onto the show Ustadh Iyad Hilal from California’s Al Arqam Institute. Ustadh Iyad has expertise in usul ul-fiqh and has recently presented a stimulating and accessible online usul course. We ask him to untangle the issues of vaccines, medicines in general and we discuss how a Muslim should arrive at judgments and our responsibilities to not fall prey to theories not ground...

Riaz Hasan speaks to Almir Colan, a thinker on Islamic economics and host of the thought provoking Islamic Finance podcast and Director of the Australian Centre for Islamic Finance. He speaks to us about the problems with the current paradigms of capitalism and socialism and how greater thinking on Islamic economics needs to take place. He also speaks about his 'Shepherds Model', the manner we nee...

This episode, I speak at length to the Arab Spring activist Iyad El-Baghdadi about his valuable experience, analysis and forecast about the years ahead. He rose to prominence in the aftermath of the Arab revolutions of 2011 before being summarily arrested and forcibly exiled from his home in the UAE in April 2014. Today he is recognized among the most influential and prominent Arab voices online....

To help us understand the current crises in France, I am delighted to have on The Thinking Muslim Sheikh Yasir Qadhi. Dr Yasir Qadhi is well known in the Muslim community, he is a scholar and since 2001, he has served as Dean of Academic Affairs at the Al-Maghrib Institute, with a center in Houston, Texas.  He is currently the resident scholar of the East Plano Islamic Center in Texas. Dr Qadhi ha...

To an outsider, the United States looks like it is in meltdown. In what seems like months, the farce of the US elections has dwarfed coverage of huge Coronavirus deaths, with most political pundits predicting a Biden victory. But with talk of potential challenge to the result, all signs indicate the possibility of a protracted period of uncertainty. American democracy today seems to be sinking und...

As part of our Arab Spring series, we take a look at the events that shook the region at the beginning of 2011 and ask searching questions about where we are now. The Middle East today remains a cauldron of instability, yet the autocrats and their backers have successfully, for now, subverted a revolution that once filled Arabs and Muslims with hope. My guest this week is Dr Azzam Tamimi. Dr Tamim...

We are coming to the tenth anniversary of the Arab Spring, the momentous series of events that started in hope with the desperate act of a Tunisian vegetable seller. With the return of another pharaoh in Egypt, the impunity with which he has meted out retribution upon those that were opposed to the regime and the killing field of Syria, whose soil today stands soaked with the blood of martyrs, mak...

Malcolm X, the black American Muslim leader is celebrated around the world. His courage, intelligence and skill to persuade, makes him one of the greatest orators in history. Yet, today what he stood for has become unclear, as his image and message is co-opted into several political programmes that, if Malcolm was alive today, he would probably find questionable. Riaz Hasan of the Thinking Muslim...

Twenty years ago, the then UK Labour government led by Prime Minister Tony Blair introduced anti-terror laws that, in time, would expand the British security state. The raft of terrorism legislation that came as a result, have impacted the Muslim community and refashioned our relationship with institutions of government and the way we are perceived by wider society. Our guest today, Moazzam Begg f...

This week we invite back onto the show Dr Abul Izz Abdul Salam, a university professor and expert in comparative economics from Jerusalem Palestine to continue our series, today exploring property ownership. Capitalism places great emphasis on free enterprise, the orthodoxy states most property should be in the hands of private corporations, whereas radical socialism places a greater emphasis on c...

We speak to a regular guest Dr Shadee Elmasry about division within the Muslim community. I ask him, how does Islam help us to navigate our differences? What makes a valid shari’ opinion? How do we know whether a scholar or commentator is sincere to sources of Islam? What makes a mujtahid and what are the limits of the muqallid (follower)? We discuss the recent trend amongst duat to call out and d...

Even if we don’t subscribe to the oft quoted phrase of Jordan Peterson that there is "a crisis of masculinity", we may accept that young men live lives in an era where their roles and responsibilities remain subject to intense scrutiny. Our guest today, Ameen from the popular Mind Heist podcast and the YouTube help channel Seera Masters is a young man trying to make sense of this world. Ameen set...

The environment we find ourselves in after 9/11 has made it very difficult for our community to simultaneously continue living an Islamic life and meeting the demands of our daily existence. This atmosphere has given rise to what can only be called a liberal inquisition, the constant reminder that we should be defensive about our faith and that what we believe is somehow out of sync with modernity...

Our guest this week, Dr Joseph Kaminski is associate professor at the Department of International Relations at the International University of Sarajevo. He has spent the last six years in the country, which he has now adopted as his own. Dr Kaminski has written a number of papers on Islam and governance and he is currently authoring a book on Islam and liberalism, a matter we discuss at the end of...

Our guest this week, Imam Dawud Walid, although acknowledging the importance of activism within the Islamic tradition, argues that our community must tread carefully when developing lines of collaboration with progressive movements, lest we are utilised for problematic political and cultural aims. He argues that activism does not fall out of the purview of the revelation and if we are to make a ch...

The dress of Muslim women has been politicised by secular thinkers, left wing activists, conservatives, feminists and talk-show hosts that all believe their take on the subject will emancipate Muslim women. For centuries, an obsession with Muslim women’s dress has enabled an array of political projects. This week we speak to two guests, firstly Farhat Amin, who is working on a book project to addr...

The Hijab or Khimar has been subject to ferocious scrutiny, with youtube influencers, journalists, politicians and academics all participating in what is now a regular feature in how liberal society would like Muslims to live. To address the subject Farhat Amin from our sister podcast, A Muslim Mom spoke to Emaan Abbasi, a writer and academic that recently penned a brilliant piece titled, “not my...

My guest today, Hakeem Muhammad, grew up in the communities excluded by mainstream America. He argues that in our anger we should not undervalue the structural conditions that enable and safeguard those that treat their fellow man as sub-human. The structural racism that plagues American life comes from a broader ideology that shows disdain for non-European cultures and creeds. He argues powerfull...

Muslim’s that engage on social media often contribute to the online antagonism that reflects the coarse and crude trend of wider society. It goes like this, someone tweets a view, sometimes coherent and thought through and sometimes not and within a short space of time, it solicits a torrent of abuse. This week on The Thinking Muslim we look at ‘Muslim Twitter’, what causes the bitterness? how do...

Ertugrul is a show about the legendary father of Osman I, the founder of the Ottoman Sultanate. The show’s success in the Muslim world leaves many, especially those with liberal leanings, perplexed. Its recent airing in Pakistan has taken the country by storm. Prime Minister Imran Khan has tweeted about the show, suggesting all young Pakistani’s can gain a sense of lost history and Muslim unity. S...

Death has become a part of our everyday lives. Covid-19 and its spread have brought home to us the undeniable reality that we are mortal beings and our accumulation of wealth, prestige and power will come to an end. How we think about death impacts on how we think about life. So how should death be conceptualised? How should we really remember death, beyond the occasional thoughts about it? How do...

How should we understand the ahadith related to plagues and medicines? We are often deluged with cures for a host of ailments and some argue conventional pharmaceuticals have little value in the face of these solutions from sunnah. This week on the Thinking Muslim Podcast I have invited an imam and author Iyad Hilal from California, America to explain what is the prophetic sunnah and how should we...

This week I speak to Fadl Hejazi, a Muslim academic from India, about the crisis facing the Muslims of India. To cover its obvious failures, key Indian politicians and its RSS supporters opted to turn the country on its Muslim citizens, blaming the mounting cases on the Tablighi Jamat Ijtima (gathering) in Nizamuddin. What they dubbed  ‘Corona Jihad,’ an insidious campaign to spread the virus to H...