This past week Aspen Institute Radio focused on religion, radicalism, and intolerance in society. This episode includes conversations about religious pluralism in America, the portrayal of Islam in the media, and the future of religious racism.
Aspen Institute Radio, our two-hour radio show, airs every Saturday and Sunday on SiriusXM Insight (channel 121). Each episode dives into the topics that inform the world around us. Here in our weekly Listen Longer posts, we’ll recap each episode and show where you can read, watch, and listen to more. Don’t have SiriusXM? Try it free for a month here.
Islam and the Media
When violent jihadists take lives, Muslim intellectuals are often asked to explain, make distinctions, or even apologize. Arsalan Iftikhar, Dalia Mogahed, and Reza Aslan share their stories from years spent on speed dial, answering for Islam. They reflect on the media’s role in distributing images of violence and propaganda, and the editorial decisions around when to publish — or not — images of the Prophet.
Religious Pluralism in America
When it comes to religion in America, are we pulling together or pulling apart? Three distinguished authorities on American religion discuss how the country can move from diversity to pluralism, acknowledging our differences yet bridging them to build a more robust civic conversation.
Radical: My Journey out of Islamic Extremism
Today, Maajid Nawaz leads a think tank focused on things such as citizenship and identity, religious freedom, and extremism. But his young life is marked by years spent as a youth leader and recruiter for a radical Islamist group, which ultimately landed him in an Egyptian prison for four years. In this enlightening speech, he shares his remarkable transformation toward liberal democratic values.
Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and the Future of Religious Racism
With signs of rising anti-Semitism and Islamophobia throughout the world today, many worry that xenophobia against religious minority groups will be a defining issue for generations to come. The Atlantic’s Leon Wieseltier and The Islamic Monthly’s Arsalan Iftikhar discuss current upticks in anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, their impact on the rise of right-wing political parties in Europe, American media coverage of religious hate crimes, and more.
