Renovatio: The Podcast
A multimedia, multi-faith publication about the ideas that shape the modern world from the first Muslim liberal arts college in the United States, Zaytuna College.
Episodes
How to Climb the Seven-Story Mountain by John Walbridge (Audio Essay)
How to Climb the Seven-Story MountainTwo Works, a Thousand Years Apart, Illustrate the Spiritual JourneyBy John Walbridge Classics by Marcus Aurelius and Farīd al-Dīn Attār, a thousand years apart, illustrate the spiritual journey.
To See the World for the First Time by Sophia Vasalou (Audio Essay)
What if you could take a pill that let you see the world with the wonder of Adam on the morning of creation? Aldous Huxley tried it—and his experiment reveals profound truths about wonder, meaning, and what makes us human.In 1953, Aldous Huxley ingested mescaline under supervision and sat back to experience the results. Colors became more intense, flaming out like precious stones. Ordinar
Rumi and Shakespeare by Juan Cole (Audio Essay)
Two of humanity's greatest literary masters—separated by continents and centuries—share a profound interest in how seemingly intractable conflicts can be resolved through reconciliation. What can we learn by comparing their approaches to forgiveness?Scholar Juan Cole examines Rumi's tale of a grocer who kills his parrot in rage, only to be devastated by remorse when he learns the bird had
Can English Capture the Language of Revelation? (Audio Essay)
Can English Capture the Language of Revelation? Robert Alter's Torah and Lessons for the Translation of the Qur'an by Caner K. DagliCan English truly capture the language of divine revelation? Robert Alter's literary approach to translating the Hebrew Bible offers profound lessons for how Muslims might translate the Qur'an—and why most English Qur'an translations fall short.KEY INSIGHTS:
Music and the Decline of Civilization by Esme Partridge (Audio Essay)
What if the chaos in our societies today began not in politics or economics, but in our music? This episode explores a fascinating theory from ancient Greece and China: that civilization's decline starts when musical traditions break down. Drawing from Plato's Laws and Chinese historical accounts, we examine how ancient thinkers believed that exposure to disorderly music could lead direct
Cultural Devolution by Hamza Yusuf (Audio Essay)
Cultural Devolution:How the new victimhood culture rejects human dignity and divinityBy Hamza Yusuf Read by Michael Sugich"Cultures vary in their approaches to instilling a sense of right and wrong in children, and in determining how to encourage rights and redress wrongs. One key difference in approaches relates to the religiosity, or the lack thereof, of the specific culture. In culture
Muslims Are Not a Race (Audio Essay)
Many intellectuals believe Islamophobia is a form of racism, but the ultimate presuppositions embedded in this view are antithetical not only to Islam but to religion as such.https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/muslims-are-not-a-race
The Incoherence of Secular Messiahs (Audio Essay)
The modern world knows it faces a void of meaning—and in a strange recurrence of history, some secular intellectuals are now calling for various forms of paganism.An essay by Faraz Khan
The Silent Theology of Islamic Art (Audio Essay)
To many, Islamic art can speak more profoundly and clearly than even the written word. Is it wiser then for Muslims to show, not to tell?Article by Oludamini OgunnaikeRead here: https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/the-silent-theology-of-islamic-art
Dignity Is for the Heart, Not the Ego (Audio Essay)
Contrary to its usage in today’s public discourse, dignity is not something all humans universally have, but something that everyone must do.Article by Caner K. Dagli https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/dignity-is-for-the-heart-not-the-ego
Can Materialism Explain the Mind? (Audio Essay)
Some philosophers believe materialism has now reached an insurmountable quandary in the question of consciousness.
The Human Arts of Graceful Giving and Grateful Receiving (Audio Essay)
There is something paradoxical about that deepest and most original source of social organization—namely, the giving and receiving of gifts. Read the Article: https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/the-human-arts-of-graceful-giving-and-grateful-receiving
Wisdom in Pieces (Audio Essay)
Science, philosophy, and art have been blown apart, and our conversations have devolved into chaos. How do we begin to learn the art of disagreement?Read the article: https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/wisdom-in-pieces
Pluralism in a Monoculture of Conformity by Hamza Yusuf (Audio Essay)
Despite the diversity of our countless creeds, colors, and cultures, our society has been subsumed into a monoculture of ersatz arts, entertainment, and consumerism. How can we recapture humanity’s once extraordinary individuality?
Pluralism in a Monoculture of Conformity- Hamza Yusuf (Audio Essay)
The Egalitarian Objection to Liberal Education
The Egalitarian Objection to Liberal EducationAnd Why the Liberal Arts Are Indispensable to EqualityBy Thomas Hibbs
Transcendence and TikTok (Audio Essay)
What does it mean to “manifest” something, or for something to “become manifest”? For those familiar with Islamic mystical terminology, the concept of tajallī may come to mind. Often rendered into English as “manifestation,” tajallī denotes the appearance or disclosure of the divine names in physical forms. Similar to the notion of “theophany” in other religious traditions (with the philo
Other People's Truths: Reading Sacred Scripture in Secular Settings (Audio Essay)
Sacred scriptures certainly qualify as Great Books, but can they be read as literature in secular settings?Read the essay by Eva Brann- https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/other-peoples-truths
Resisting the Architecture of Apathy (Audio Essay)
The way societies driven by profit and production design and build lived environments breeds an apathy that, unchecked, can only lead to the dissolution of human communities as we’ve known them. Article by Marwa Al-Sabouni https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/resisting-the-architecture-of-apathyRead by Lyba Hussain Produced by Faatimah Knight
What Pico Thought—and What It Wrought (Audio Essay)
The dignity of man in his potential to be whatever he desires to be, this fifteenth-century Italian prince & philosopher gave rise to the modern secular worldview that privileges self-actualization above all else.Essay by Esme Partridge
The Sin of Cosmocide (Audio Essay)
What Islam Gave the Blues by Sylviane Diouf (Audio Essay)
Where Islam and Nationalism Collide by Zaid Shakir (Audio Essay)
What if each and every ethnic group developed a very strong nationalist movement? There would be bloodshed and chaos until the unforeseeable future.https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/where-islam-and-nationalism-collide
Counting the Minutes: Productivity and the Well-Lived Day between Abū Hāmid al-Ghazālī and Benjamin Franklin (Audio Essay)
Courteous Exchange in an Age of Empire by Sarah Barnette (Audio Essay)
What Walking Can Do For Our Souls (Audio Essay)
What is the Write Way to Read?
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 engagingl
Who Gets to Define Islam? with Caner Dagli
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
The Limits of Aggression
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 auth
The Trouble with Consciousness (Mark Delp and Esme Partridge)
We Are Not Our Brain (Muhammad Faruque and Esme Partridge)
Modern science identifies the self with the brain, but this materialist conception of the self is wholly insufficient.
The Ancient Roots of Transhumanist Thinking
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.
"Is a Great Books Education for Everyone" with Thomas Hibbs
"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 concep
"The Knowledge that Transcends the Empirical World" with Hasan Spiker
"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 ide
"The Decline of Morality Amidst the Celebration of the Self" with Chris Hedges
“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 fulf
Sculpting the Self with Muhammad U. Faruque and Esmé Partridge
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
What, Other Than God, Do We Worship?
Listen and read show notes on Renovatio: https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/media/what-other-than-god-do-we-worship
Protection from Power with Mohammad Fadel and Lawrence Jannuzzi
Listen and read show notes on Renovatio: https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/media/protection-from-power
What Is the Nature of Being Alone? (Stephen A. Gregg and Asad Tarsin)
Listen and read show notes on Renovatio: https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/media/what-is-the-nature-of-being-alone
Why Beauty Is Not Optional with Oludamini Oggunaike and Ubaydullah Evans
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 Ogunnaik
Graceful Giving and Grateful Receiving
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 peopl
Power to the People?
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 re
Cultivating the Life Skill of Writing
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
Are Believers a Political Tribe? (Asma T. Uddin and Caner K. Dagli)
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
Equality in the Ancient World with Juan Cole and Ubaydullah Evans
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
What Makes a Book "Great"? Fr. Francisco Nahoe and Sarah Barnette
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
From Fanaticism to Faith: Joram van Klaveren and Ubaydullah Evans
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 neithe
The Decline of Language and the Rise of Nothing: Hamza Yusuf and Thomas Hibbs
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 frict
Philosophy without God (David Bentley Hart and Caner Dagli)
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 purs
Why Are Muslims Seen as a Race? (Khalil Abdur-Rashid and Caner Dagli)
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 precisi
The Qur’an, the Prophet, and a Forgotten History - Juan Cole in conversation with Hamza Yusuf
Juan Cole's Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires (2018) retells the history of the prophetic period in seventh-century Arabia through the context of a brutal war between the Iranian Sassanian Empire and the Roman Empire in the Near East. In this conversation, Juan Cole and Hamza Yusuf reflect on how a new understanding of the historical period can give us sharper insights
Conversing with a National Treasure: Wisdom and Wit with Eva Brann
Hamza Yusuf, President of Zaytuna College, converses with Eva Brann, the sagely long time educator and author of St. Johns College in Annapolis Maryland about philosophy, wisdom, and wit.
The Art and Artifice of Poetry (Scott Crider & Hamza Yusuf)
Scott Crider and Hamza Yusuf discuss the art and artifice of poetry. https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/authors/scott-crider https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/authors/hamza-yusuf ____________________________________ Moon Landing – W. H. Auden It’s natural the Boys should whoop it up for so huge a phallic triumph, an adventure it would not have occurred to women to think worth while, made possible
What Conservatism Really Means (Roger Scruton & Hamza Yusuf)
In modern educated circles, the philosophy of Conservatism doesn’t usually enjoy a good opinion. Liberalism being the default philosophy of the educated classes. The conversation we present today presents conservatism divorced from politics, as a philosophy of conserving only what is good of the past, and might challenge you to reconsider your opinion on the subject. Roger Scruton is phil
The Secret of the Morality Tale
Renovatio's Editor Safir Ahmed sits down with Cyrus Ali Zargar for a chat about his research into the role of storytelling in Islam's ethical tradition. Cyrus Ali Zargar is an assosiate professor of religion at Augustana College who recently published a book entitled The Polished Mirror: Storytelling and the Pursuit of Virtue in Islamic Philosophy and Sufism. Cyrus Zargar wrote an article
What the Hadith Tradition Reveals About Religion in Academia
The study of Hadith is a subject which is often misunderstood. We asked Jonathan Brown to help clarify some of the most common misconceptions about the study of Hadith from different perspectives. Jonathan Brown is an American scholar of Islamic studies. He is an associate professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service where he also holds the Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Is
The Silent Theology of Islamic Art
To many, the silent theology of Islamic art can speak more profoundly and clearly than the most scholarly works, and its beauty can be more evident and persuasive than the strongest of arguments. The Qur’an is not a set of syllogisms or prosaic rational proofs but a recitation of unmatched linguistic beauty, filled with symbols, stories, metaphors, and poetic phrasing. It was the beauty i
Can Religion Be Studied Impartially? (Caner Dagli)
A wide ranging interview about the study of Islam with Caner Dagli. Dagli is an associate professor of religious studies at College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, specializing in Qur'anic studies, interfaith dialogue, and philosophy. An editor of The Study Quran, he was among the 138 Muslim signatories of the 2007 letter “A Common Word Between Us and You,” an appeal to Christian worl
The Roots of Our Crises (Hamza Yusuf)
Hamza Yusuf at the inaugural Renovatio event on May 14th, 2017 at Zaytuna College
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