Renovatio: The Podcast

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 those Fr. Francisco reads—works Barnette is less familiar with. She wonders, and asks as much of Fr. Francisco, what might be missing in her understanding of Victorian texts without a fuller grasp of the works that helped to birth that era. The two discuss what makes great books great, the joy of reading, and the “unruly and intimidating” lineage of great literature. Sarah Barnette, a frequent contributor to Renovatio, completed her PhD in English literature at the University of Oxford in 2017. Francisco Nahoe, who teaches courses in the trivium and politics at Zaytuna College, is a Roman Catholic priest and Franciscan friar.

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 much about Islam nor was convinced of the basic tenets of Christianity, the religion he was fighting for. As Joram pored over books to inform his own, his intentions changed from a close-minded diatribe to a man in search of God and in search of meaning. Joram van Klaveren is a former far-right Dutch politician. In the midst of writing an anti-Islam book, he became a Muslim and rededicated his book, which he would eventually title Apostate, to his search for God and subsequent conversion to Islam. Ubaydullah Evans is the scholar-in-residence of the American Learning Institute for Muslims (ALIM) and an instructor with the Ta’leef Collective.

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 comes with living in a diverse society. For Yusuf and Hibbs, nihilism’s push toward meaninglessness and upheaval threatens our society because we lack a common transcendent standard to which we can appeal. As a result, our popular dialogue is more corrosive and less productive, and people are less sensitive to a sense of what’s missing. Hamza Yusuf is the president and cofounder of Zaytuna College.Thomas Hibbs is former president of the University of Dallas and author of Shows about Nothing.

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 nearsighted economic ends. Caner K. Dagli is an associate professor of religious studies at College of the Holy Cross.David Bentley Hart is an Orthodox Christian philosophical theologian and cultural commentator.

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 clarity on these matters, invoking foundational concepts in Islam, such as the value of intention and the centrality of justice, and bringing into focus less-examined questions around the nature of anti-Muslim bigotry and what Muslims ought to do about it.   Caner K. Dagli is an associate professor of religious studies at College of the Holy Cross. Khalil Abdur-Rashid is the Muslim chaplain at Harvard University, an instructor of Muslim studies at Harvard Divinity School, and a public policy lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. “Muslims Are Not a Race” by Caner K. Daglihttps://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/muslims-are-not-a-race

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 into the prophetic mission and the message of the Qur'an.

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.

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 only because we like huddling in gangs and knowing the exact time: yes, our sex may in fairness hurrah the deed, although the motives that primed it were somewhat less than menschlich. A grand gesture. But what does it period? What does it osse? We were always adroiter with objects than lives, and more facile at courage than kindness: from the moment the first flint was flaked this landing was merely a matter of time. But our selves, like Adam’s, still don’t fit us exactly, modern only in this – our lack of decorum. Homer’s heroes were certainly no braver than our Trio, but more fortunate: Hector was excused the insult of having his valor covered by television. Worth going to see? I can well believe it. Worth seeing? Mneh! I once rode through a desert and was not charmed: give me a watered lively garden, remote from blatherers about the New, the von Brauns and their ilk, where on August mornings I can count the morning glories, where to die has a meaning, and no engine can shift my perspective. Unsmudged, thank God, my Moon still queens the Heavens as She ebbs and fulls, a Presence to glop at, Her Old Man, made of grit not protein, still visits my Austrian several with His old detachment, and the old warnings still have power to scare me: Hybris comes to an ugly finish, Irreverence is a greater oaf than Superstition. Our apparatniks will continue making the usual squalid mess called History: all we can pray for is that artists, chefs and saints may still appear to blithe it. August 1969

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 philosopher of politics and aesthetics. He has authored more than fifty books on culture, philosophy, and religion, including A Dictionary of Political Thought and How to Be a Conservative. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Cambridge in 1972 and is currently pursuing his interest in the philosophy of music. He is a Fellow of the Humanities Research Institute and Course Director of the M.A. in Philosophy at the University of Buckingham. Hamza Yusuf is a leading proponent of classical learning in Islam. He is president of Zaytuna College, and has taught courses on Islamic jurisprudence, ethics, astronomy, logic, theology, prophetic biography, and hadith, as well as other subjects. He has published numerous articles and translations, including The Prayer of the Oppressed and Purification of the Heart. He also serves as vice president for the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies, an international initiative that seeks to address the root causes that can lead to radicalism and militancy.

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 for Renovatio entitled The Secret of the Morality Tale: Sa'di on What It Means to Be Human, which explores the place of literary ethics within the broader Islamic Ethical Tradition.