Renovatio: The Podcast

Does reading help you think if you write your thoughts about what you’re reading? What’s the difference between writing books about books, and writing books drawn from one’s own experiences? Such questions relate to matters that are both practical and philosophical. In this episode of our podcast, Safir Ahmed, editor of Renovatio , interviews philosopher Sophia Vasalou who writes engagingly on phi...

Who is better placed to say what Islam is: the academic from the “outside” or the practitioner from “within”? In this episode of the Renovatio podcast, Ubaydullah Evans interviews Caner Dagli, a scholar of Islamic Studies, to explore the surprisingly elusive answer to the question: “Who gets to define Islam?” As an academic, Dagli critiques the approach the academy has historically taken in defini...

Asma Afsaruddin argues that jihad (martial engagement) as articulated in the Qur’an and by numerous classical Muslim scholars is primarily defensive in nature. The crux of her argument relies on relevant verses from the Qur’an and prominent Sunni exegetes such as Ibn Abbas, Mujahib ibn Jabbar, and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi. These commentators, writes Asfaruddin, argue that the Qur’an only authorizes Mu...

Modern science identifies the self with the brain, but this materialist conception of the self is wholly insufficient. 

Lenn E. Goodman, an expert on Jewish and Islamic metaphysics, joins Esme Partridge to discuss the philosophical heritage of AI (artificial intelligence)—which he locates in the medieval and renaissance study of alchemy, which ultimately sought to create man from matter—and the implications of our rapid embrace of AI.

" One thing that is true of [the Great Books] list is that you cannot… think that it is a unified, monolithic view of the truth. Hobbes and Machiavelli disagree vehemently with Plato, right? There's some continuity there, but Aquinas does not agree with David Hume, who is an atheist. So, at a minimum, an honest reading of that tradition is an introduction not to a monolithic unified conception of...

" The empirical in the traditional notion of reason is only one component in the uncovering of our knowledge. But knowledge really involves uncovering the intelligible object. So what that means is the intelligible object is not there in the empirical world—that actually means transcending the empirical world to make contact with this intelligible essence ." Zaytuna lecturer Hasan Spiker identifie...

“ If your ultimate concern is yourself, if you have spent your life building a monument to yourself, then in biblical terms, that’s idolatry. I think we live in an idolatrous society…  I think it is extremely difficult for people to achieve a moral life without a community .” Chris Hedges speaks to Renovatio editor Safir Ahmed about what fuels our contemporary narcissism and prevents us fulfilling...

In this podcast, Muhammad U. Faruque speaks with Esme Partridge on his recently published book, Sculpting the Self: Islam, Selfhood, and Human Flourishing, which examine notions of selfhood and subjectivity before and in the modern period. Muhammad U. Faruque is Inayat Malik Assistant Professor at the University of Cincinnati. Esmé L. K. Partridge is a writer on Islamic thought and the dynamics be...

Listen and read show notes on Renovatio: https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/media/what-other-than-god-do-we-worship

Listen and read show notes on Renovatio: https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/media/protection-from-power

Listen and read show notes on Renovatio:  https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/media/what-is-the-nature-of-being-alone

What better topic for discussion than beauty, muses Oludamini Ogunnaike, a regular contributor to Renovatio and a scholar of Islam in north and west Africa. Beauty is inseparable from truth, goodness, and justice, yet reference to it is missing from many of our most important discussions on those matters. The neglect of beauty has been detrimental to communities everywhere, notes Ogunnaike; it’s o...

Asad Tarsin, author of Being Muslim: A Practical Guide , speaks with Joshua Lee Harris, a specialist on the work of Thomas Aquinas, on his article for Renovatio , “The Human Arts of Graceful Giving and Grateful Receiving.” In their conversation, Harris explains how his desire to understand gratitude grew from wanting to inculcate gratefulness in his own life and also from encountering people who a...

In this episode, scholars Caner Dagli and Andrew March discuss theories of democracy and their relationship to modern Islamic thought, how modern Muslims grapple with democracy’s promise as well as its baggage, and whether metaphysics can (or should) be untangled from politics. (While March raises Tunisia as an example of a succeeding Muslim democracy, please note that this podcast was recorded be...

The mere act of writing for one’s self tends to reveal the fact that each one of us contains multitudes. When we write in our diaries or journals, we employ rhetorical devices even though our audience is within us. Scott Crider and Sarah Barnette—both are teachers and scholars committed to the craft of writing—discuss how conversing with one’s self through writing treats the self like the other in...

Asma T. Uddin litigated issues of religious liberty for years, but it wasn’t until Burwell v. Hobby Lobby —the US Supreme Court case about whether the Affordable Care Act required Christian owners of a private company to offer contraception as part of their employee health coverage—that she felt thrust into an arena where religious freedom was understood through a stark political lens. In this epi...

What kind of equality could be universal? A scan of history shows that our modern ideal of equality is more fiction than fact. In this episode, Ubaydullah Evans interviews the historian Juan Cole on his forthcoming article for Renovatio that addresses the issue of equality by examining the text and context of the Qur’an. The two discuss how equality is one of the great unquestioned values of our t...

Sarah Barnette, a scholar of Victorian literature, speaks with Fr. Francisco Nahoe on great books and the pleasure of reading. Fr. Francisco, a Roman Catholic priest and Franciscan friar, is a scholar of Renaissance literature currently teaching courses in rhetoric and philosophy at Zaytuna College. The writers Barnette reads, such as the Brontë sisters, were inspired by Renaissance works like tho...

In the Netherlands, the political climate was toxic with anti-Islam bigotry when Joram van Klaveren made a name for himself as a prominent and ambitious politician. He helped to lead the Party for Freedom, with its central platform hostile to Islam and Muslims in the Netherlands. When he set out to write a book that would ground his rhetoric against Islam, he would discover that he neither knew mu...

Hamza Yusuf interviews President Thomas Hibbs, former president of the University of Dallas, on the importance of rekindling a love of language so we might better articulate ourselves and possess the words to describe our experience of the world. Hamza Yusuf and Thomas Hibbs discuss, among other topics, how the silos created by our culture leave us unable to negotiate the inevitable friction that...

How should religious philosophers understand the methods and goals of modern philosophy? In this episode, Caner Dagli interviews David Bentley Hart on the state of philosophy and whether the believer can be hopeful about its future. They take on the fragmentation of science, philosophy, and art and discuss the consequences of the humanities being crowded out from intellectual life in pursuit of ne...

In this episode, Caner Dagli and Khalil Abdur-Rashid explore racialization and religion, using Dagli’s article for Renovatio , “Muslims Are Not a Race,” as a point of departure to examine whether the lens of race obscures actual motivations behind Islamophobia—be they sectarianism, dehumanization caused by war, or political disputes—or helps defang them. Dagli and Abdur-Rashid seek precision and c...