Theres a growing movement in Europe and North America to reconsider where the future of Muslim communities lie. In recent years, a host of security and social concerns have brought to question just how much Muslims can maintain their commitments to Islam and leave peacefully in a society that constantly looks for opportunities to marginalise Islamic practice. The Liberal state is intent on secularising and liberalising Muslims. This has led to a call for Hijra, or migration away from the west an...
Jul 01, 2023•1 hr 13 min
Many Muslims living in the West have become aware that the ideas of tolerance, individualism, liberal multiculturalism and freedom of religion – all liberal notions — have their limits when it comes to our community. A series of tensions, from depictions of the Messenger (saw) in offensive cartoons and the teaching of sexual practices at odds with our faith in schools, has brought into focus how there remains an incompatibility between the ever-increasing demands of the liberal state and the Mus...
Jun 23, 2023•1 hr 9 min
The issue of the caliphate has recently made a resurgence within Muslim discourse. For nearly 100 years the Muslim ummah has been without a caliphate, and many have come to the view that the world of empires is behind us, and we now must embrace the era of nation-states. Yet the issue remains a live one, Islam and Muslims have remained tortured by our lack of ability to resolve some of the most intractable problems we face – leading to the suggestion that establishing a post-nation state brings ...
Jun 16, 2023•1 hr 22 min
For twenty years, the United States fought an unwinnable and ultimately self-defeating war in Afghanistan – only to withdraw in a humiliating way in 2021. The conflict ended what many saw to be a colonial enterprise. We explore that war, where it leaves Afghanistan, the region's geopolitics, Afghanistans relationship with Pakistan and the role of the Taliban. Many see the austere Islamic group as classic freedom fighters, defeating the world's strongest and only superpower. But have they ultimat...
Jun 09, 2023•1 hr 8 min
This week we explore the issues Farhat Amin raises in her new book ‘Smart Teenage Muslimah, an inspirational guide for Muslim Girls’. Farhat is concerned with Muslim girls' challenges in the West and how society impacts their sense of identity and self. Farhat Amin addresses the challenges Muslim women and girls face in Western societies through her engagements. Her writings delve into the unfiltered realities, tackling pressing topics such as the shifting dynamics of the Muslim marriage scene, ...
Jun 02, 2023•1 hr 7 min
We often see people claim an action to be kufr (disbelief), for example, neglecting prayer, or they designate a use of language to be a term of disbelief. This leads to questioning a person's iman. A politician endorses a reprehensible act, or a Muslim academic calls for the reform of Islam – these are all discussed as attributes of kufr. So what is disbelief and what is belief, and does every act of disbelief take a person outside of Islam? We take a deep dive into this often misunderstood area...
May 27, 2023•1 hr 7 min
There has been an uptick in the number of people converting to Islam recently. This was very noticeable in Ramadan, when it just seemed every day, a young man was becoming Muslim. Imam Ashraf, who leads a congregation in the inner-city London borough of Lewisham, discusses why so many British youngsters are turning to Islam. His Mosque saw over 60 conversions in Ramadan alone. I ask him about the influence of Andrew Tate upon many young men coming to Islam. Imam Ashraf Dabous is an imam at Lewis...
May 20, 2023•1 hr 23 min
Inspiration from Sami Hamdi. How do we contextualise the current state of the Ummah? And how do we interact with politics?Excerpt from 'Raving in Riyadh - The New Saudi Arabia' with Sami Hamdi Please consider making a donation, however small, to The Thinking Muslim, to receive a share in the reward and to help us make a greater impact. https://www.thinkingmuslim.com/Donate Join our Telegram group here: https://t.me/thinkingmuslim Follow us on Twitter here: https://...
May 12, 2023•14 min
Please consider making a donation, however small, to The Thinking Muslim, to receive a share in the reward and to help us make a greater impact. https://www.thinkingmuslim.com/Donate From its first moments, Islam was linked to a state-building process, and the shari’ah explicitly addresses rules that can only be discharged by a government, such as the rules of hudud or apostasy. Imam Ghazali even linked the collection of zakat and the marriage contract contingent on having an Islamic gove...
May 06, 2023•1 hr 35 min
From the war in Yemen to raves in Riyadh, political analyst Sami Hamdi analyses the ‘modern’ Saudi Arabia as a regional power. Many see the country to be a staunch ally, even stooge of the United States, yet others hail its recent strategic turn under Muhammad Bin Salman as a sign that at last the country is looking to forge an independent path. From moon sighting to Hajj, the country remains at the centre of Muslim religious life, yet we can’t but observe with horror the activities of its crown...
Apr 29, 2023•1 hr 36 min
Paul Williams of Blogging Theology talks to Muhammad Jalal about his ten most influential books, why he recommends them and the importance of reading. Titles mentioned in order of rank: 1. The Meaning of the Holy Qur'an by Abdullah Yusuf Ali2. Islam and the Destiny of Man by Charles Le Gai Eaton3. The Book of Hadith: Sayings of the Prophet Muhammad from the Mishkat Al Masabih selected by Charles Le Gai Eaton 4. Encountering Mystery: Religious Experience in a Secular Age by Dale C. Allison Jr.5. ...
Apr 15, 2023•1 hr 5 min
The recent atrocity at al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan underscores the brutality of Israel’s settler colonial project. Our guest this week, Palestinian and Islamic activist Dr Azzam Tamimi gave us a background to the apartheid policies of the state and explained why he believes, ultimately, the severity of Israel’s brutality only serves to express its sheer failure as a project. Azzam Tamimi is a British Palestinian academic and political activist. He is currently the Chairman of Alhiwar TV Channe...
Apr 05, 2023•1 hr 1 min
Please help us this Ramadan by making a donation to the show - more information here: https://www.thinkingmuslim.com/Donate The great Damascene scholar Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 751/1350) authored the masterpiece of Islamic psychology Madarij al-Salikin, (Ranks of the Divine Seekers). It sets out the great Hanbalite's advice on how to journey to Allah and reach the ranks of a loving believer of our Lord. Professor Ovamir Anjum, the translator into English of this great work, talks to The Thin...
Mar 31, 2023•1 hr 3 min
Please help us this Ramadan by making a donation to the show - more information here: https://www.thinkingmuslim.com/Donate This fascinating interview with Dr Sohail Hanif looks to uncover the secrets of Ramadan. What should the month indeed mean to believers? And what should we be striving to achieve this month? How should we treat its minutes and hours? And how do we know whether, as the hadith suggests, we have lost its blessings or gained success out of it? Dr Sohail is the Chief Executive ...
Mar 24, 2023•1 hr 22 min
Dr Imran Waheed is a consultant psychiatrist who specialises in acute mental health cases. We ask him about the mental health crisis, whether the lack of iman has a role in its prevalence and whether Islam has role in its cure. We look at consumer capitalism and sadness, the absence of community and faith and how one can build mental resilience. Join our Telegram group here: https://t.me/thinkingmuslim You can donate to the show here: https://www.thinkingmuslim.com/contribute Follow us on T...
Mar 18, 2023•1 hr 20 min
Dr Jonathan Brown joins us this week to engage in an in-depth discussion about the Hadith corpus and why contemporary arguments forwarded by orientalists and modernists lack rigour. He takes us on a journey of informed exploration of some of the key personalities and thinkers of early Islam and the lengths they went through to determine the veracity of a tradition attributed to the Messenger of Allah (saw). His books include The Canonization of al-Bukhari and Muslim: The Formation and Function o...
Mar 11, 2023•2 hr 4 min
99 years ago, the Ottoman Caliphate, the world's last widely recognised caliphate, was abolished on 3 March 1924 (27 Rajab 1342 AH) by decree of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. The process was one of Atatürk's reforms following the replacement of the Ottoman Empire with the Republic of Turkey. Abdulmejid II was deposed as the last Ottoman caliph, as was Mustafa Sabri as the last Ottoman shaykh al-Islām. We explore the circumstances that led to this momentous event. Why the Ottoman calipha...
Mar 03, 2023•1 hr 17 min
The British Conservative government has for some time embarked upon a project to make life difficult for ordinary Muslims. We have spoken previously about its policy of Prevent, an extraordinary state plan to compel all public servants to monitor Muslims in their midst and report on them if they showed signs of extremism. This project has enveloped the community within a cloud of suspicion, spread fear and self censorship and led to a series of malicious or ignorant allegations that has scarred ...
Feb 24, 2023•1 hr 3 min
The sadness we feel after the earthquakes in Turkiye and Syria is heightened by our Ummatic feelings of closeness to the worldwide muslim community. Many of those affected have been subject to years of civil war at the hands of a brutal dictator. Sadly, this is yet another disaster that has befallen this Umma and we pray that Allah has mercy on those that died and enter them into a place where there is eternal peace. This week we interview Dr Omar Suleiman to discuss the issue of earthquakes and...
Feb 17, 2023•1 hr 13 min
The war on terror, a US-led strategy that saw deadly interventions in the Muslim world, has transformed a generation of Muslims. Some, like my guest today, unwittingly got caught up in this mindless campaign and 21 years after the events of 9/11, we still feel the aftereffects of programmes that placed every Muslim in categories, moderate or extreme, good and bad, loyal or disloyal. Moazzam Begg, a former Guantanamo detainee upon his release, has been a tireless campaigner for the truth, exposin...
Feb 11, 2023•1 hr 8 min
After a brief pause, we are back and now on YouTube video. In this episode, we explore with Hamza Tzortzis the crisis of the modern Muslim man. We live in a fast-paced world dominated by technology. Social media has enhanced our lives and given space for Muslims to build networks, raise the profile of beleaguered members of our ummah and forward the call of Islam. With the goodness that comes from this compression of time and space, there are also challenges. In their eagerness to contribute to ...
Feb 04, 2023•1 hr 36 min
Joram van Klaveren understands the far right in Europe, this is because he was one of them. As a leading member of Geert Wilder’s Dutch Freedom Party and MP in parliament, he argued for a Netherlands without Islam. This was until he decided to write a book to attack Islam, and his research ultimately led him to embrace the faith. Today he calls for Europe to reconsider its irrational hatred towards Muslims. I ask him to tell us his story, address immigration and explain how the far-right functio...
Nov 23, 2022•39 min
Mobeen Vaid has been at the forefront of addressing the creeping liberalisation of social attitudes of the Muslim community and how these opinions often are way out of sync with the global Muslim ummah and Islam. Mobeen’s erudite commentary has looked to counter and critique these trends and today he lectures at Mosques and community centres across the US. Thanks to the team: Riaz Hasan, Musab Muhammad, Reem Walid, Adeel Alam, Yusra Zainuddin, Ahaz Atif and Umar Abdul Salam. Join our Telegram gr...
Nov 06, 2022•1 hr 11 min
Prevent, a statutory duty of all public officials, looks to find what the government calls signs of radicalisation. Often, these indicators are conflated with Islamic practice or subject to the prejudices of teachers and other officials that have been whipped up in a McCarthyite-style frenzy.Dr Layla Aitlhadj is the Director of PreventWatch, she Is an academic and activist who has been following the trail of mayhem caused by Prevent and has for years held the government to account. Thanks to the...
Oct 18, 2022•1 hr 2 min
The journalist Peter Oborne stands out as one of the few defenders of our community in the mainstream press. Over the past two decades he has worked tirelessly to speak truth to power. He is currently a writer for the Middle East Eye and was named as British Press Awards Columnist of the Year in 2013. Previously he worked as the chief political columnist of the Daily Telegraph until he resigned in 2015. His latest book is T he Fate of Abraham: Why the West is Wrong about Islam, which takes a loo...
Sep 14, 2022•1 hr 6 min
Imam Dawud Walid has recently published a serious contribution to the subject of manhood. He argues that the rich classical scholarly works detailing how to bring up young men have been forgotten. This sacred idea of chivalry may look out of place in modernity, but it produced well-balanced young men that combine courage with humility, strength with forgiveness and public duty with prayer. Imam Dawud Walid believes Islamic masculinity is not naturally acquired but has to come from revelation and...
Sep 06, 2022•1 hr 15 min
This is a repeat of a show first published in early 2020 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 i...
Sep 02, 2022•58 min
Our guest this week, Professor Ovamir Anjum argues that any future reconstruction of this sacred institution has to be premised upon what he calls an Ummatics framework, an ummah-centric model. He argues that the rashidun model was fundamentally based on the consent of the ummah, and through shura, that is, consultation, and this is how the earlier caliphs successfully built an empire unlike any other. In this interview, Muhammad Jalal asks him to spell out what it means to think in an ummatic w...
Aug 16, 2022•1 hr 25 min
Our guest this week is an insider turned sceptic. Harris Irfan takes on the essential purpose and complexities of Islamic finance and questions whether it has fulfilled its lofty Islamic objectives. Harris is the author of “Heaven’s Bankers: Inside the hidden world of Islamic Finance”.In this discussion with Riaz Hasan, he talks candidly about how much Islamic finance depends on a capitalist riba-based architecture. He recalls his part in acquiring funding for the Makkah clock tower, a project h...
Aug 03, 2022•1 hr 10 min
Is there a problem with Muslim public intellectuals and scholars that engage with the political right? My guest this week, Yayha Birt, believes that white convert scholars that interact with the likes of Jordan Peterson should evaluate whether they risk confirming their anti-Islam prejudices and a distasteful pro-white ideology that today undergirds the populist white nativist backlash. In a recent piece he penned, found here: https://www.ihrc.org.uk/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-being-convert-lea...
Jul 24, 2022•1 hr 7 min
