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 need to look at economy. You can listen to his Islamic finance podcast here https://podcasts.apple.com/...
Dec 06, 2020•1 hr 10 min
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. He lives in Oslo, Norway, where he has been granted political asylum, and writes regularly for both ...
Nov 23, 2020•1 hr 41 min
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 has raised some searching questions over the past few weeks about French policy towards Muslims, violenc...
Oct 30, 2020•1 hr 26 min
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 under the contradictions, inequalities and culture wars that undermine the fabric of its political stan...
Oct 26, 2020•55 min
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 Tamimi is a Palestinian academic and activist and has for decades contributed to Islamic and political wor...
Oct 17, 2020•49 min
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, makes even the most optimistic person surmise that the Arab Spring has turned into what can be called a...
Sep 27, 2020•1 hr 21 min
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 Project speaks to Hakeem Muhammad, a lawyer and campaigner about his thoughts on Malcolm X, distilli...
Sep 13, 2020•55 min
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 from CAGE UK, is a brother that took a stand and through his public engagements gives hope to believe...
Aug 28, 2020•1 hr 14 min
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 collective ownership, looking upon property rights with scepticism. Until now, Muslims have oscillate...
Aug 18, 2020•39 min
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 defame one another. We also discuss the duty of enjoining maroof and forbid munkar, how does a layman...
Aug 07, 2020•1 hr 39 min
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 off on a journey to discover what Islam expects from a man and in his own words found conclusions th...
Jul 28, 2020•1 hr 13 min
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.In this febrile atmosphere, some have called for more radical action to affirm the faith of our fam...
Jul 18, 2020•1 hr 29 min
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 the podcast.Follow my thread evidencing how the West accepts Srebrenica as a human sacrifice: https...
Jul 13, 2020•47 min
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 change, this has to be rooted in an Islamic notion of justice and using means that accord with the pro...
Jul 01, 2020•1 hr 13 min
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 address the twin challenges of Muslim confusion about their Islamic rights and feminism and then we discu...
Jun 18, 2020•1 hr 7 min
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 body, not my choice” for the online magazine Traversing Tradition. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/pri...
Jun 12, 2020•44 min
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 powerfully that white supremacy cannot be separated from liberalism, in fact, liberal protagonists, from Lock...
Jun 02, 2020•53 min
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 we tone down the rhetoric and how can the revelation and our illustrious scholarly past help us to re...
May 27, 2020•1 hr 11 min
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. Saudi Arabia has banned the show, citing its malign influence and Egypt’s "High Fatwa Council" (Dâru'...
May 17, 2020•1 hr 1 min
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 we make death our partners and our guide in conditioning our present?To understand this idea, I hav...
May 09, 2020•58 min
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 evaluate what it has to say about plagues and medicines.Iyad Hilal has authored one of the best book...
May 04, 2020•56 min
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 Hindus. The virus, in their warped view, was another weapon used by Muslims against the majority popul...
Apr 24, 2020•45 min
What is pronounced today in a post-truth world is the increase of non-experts on social media that forward their views and gain an audience upon conspiracy theories and half-baked truths. This week we invite Dr Naveed Syed from Public Health England and Dr Imran Waheed to unravel the truths behind the crisis and why so many people are susceptible to conspiracies. We look at the origins of Covid-19, the means of transmission, the herd immunity theory, flu statistics, verification of news, Faceboo...
Apr 18, 2020•1 hr 3 min
Since the Coronavirus lockdown became a daily feature of our lives, a number of commentators have speculated about the future of economic liberalism. Many on the left and some Muslims have concluded this period will presage the end to capitalism and the dawn of a new economic order.Such claims may fail to live up to proper scrutiny, instead we may be witnessing the acceleration of America’s position as the global hegemon and with it, the fragmentation of the American led liberal world order.My g...
Apr 05, 2020•1 hr 5 min
As we hunker down and wait in anticipation for a Covid-19 breakthrough, we inevitably begin to think about our mortality and whether we have within us the ability to deal with this crisis. In the coming weeks we are going to explore the Covid-19 crisis and its implication upon us. Today I invite back onto the show, Dr Shadee Elmasry, an imam and Islamic scholar from the United States.We look at 1) the 'cancellation' of jummah and the madahibs, 2) Is this a punishment from Allah, 3) Are we martyr...
Mar 30, 2020•52 min
My guest this week, Dr Ovamir Anjum , although abhorring all that Isis may stand for, suggests that its brief rise to notoriety has opened up space for intelligent minded Muslim’s to reimagine a world with a just Caliphate. Dr Anjum calls for a new wave of thinking on the subject, grounded in revelation and aimed at showing both Muslim’s and non-Muslims how Islam’s thought should be considered as an alternative to the contemporary decaying world order.Dr Anjum argues in a recent long read penned...
Feb 21, 2020•1 hr 9 min
What is a man, what makes a man and what is masculinity? Dr Shadee Elmasry takes a look at toxic masculinity and Islam's response. Dr Shadee in this debate, stands out for his dedication to a nuanced and intelligent look at how revelation informs the Muslim conception of masculinity. How did the Allah and His Messenger's (saw) practice nurture an Islamic vision of masculinity?Follow the programme on Twitter @thinking_muslimhttps://twitter.com/thinking_muslimJoin the Thinking Muslim Course - visi...
Jan 26, 2020•1 hr 6 min
This week I speak to Dr Asher Siddiqui, an engineer from Delhi who has been at the epicentre of the protests at Delhi’s Jamia Millia University.During the past two weeks, India has been rocked by countrywide demonstrations spontaneously driven by largely young Muslim’s energised by their mutual dislike for a new citizenship law designed to relegate Muslim’s as second class citizens. The law, the Citizenship Amendment Act, enables the state to fast track the citizenship of migrants but significan...
Jan 01, 2020•32 min
In our short lives it is inevitable that we shall experience the death of our loved ones. Psychologists claim that there are five stages of grief, and for some to come to terms with the death of a partner, son, daughter or close friend may never be reconciled. We hear of many whose hearts are never settled and who live a shadow of their former lives. Many fall into depression as a consequence and others turn to drink and drugs to temporarily release their minds from the reminders associated in e...
Dec 25, 2019•53 min
My guest this week has been working in the field for over twenty years, Dr Imran Waheed is a consultant psychiatrist and looks at what is mental illness and why is it on the increase? How does Islam help us to deal with our mental health and build resilience to deal with the travails of life? And why has the liberal west failed to enhance the human mind? Follow the programme on Twitter @thinking_muslimhttps://twitter.com/thinking_muslimDonate to help us promote the podcast using PayPal here http...
Dec 03, 2019•51 min
