The First Fundamentalist (Part 1)

In this episode, Thomas talks to distinguished BBC journalist Paul Kenyon about his new podcast series Two Nottingham Lads. Paul recalls highlights from his remarkable career, which has taken him from Iran to Libya to Ukraine to Stockport —as he watched, in real time, America los ...  Show more

As jihadist violence in Mali escalates, Thomas and Aimen trace the history and present-day power of JNIM (‘Support Group for Islam and Muslims’), an Al Qaeda affiliate that has been laying siege to the capital Bamako. Will Mali’s secular state survive? Or is a jihadist takeover o ...  Show more

It is said a people without a past are a lost soul. And in today’s turbulent world, the Muslim ummah has come to realise that we have, in many cases, been taught a version of history that fails to appreciate what the late Shabbir Akhtar called Islam as a imperial faith.Dr Yakoob ...  Show more

Welcome back to another season of the Islamic History Podcast! In this season, we're going to mostly cover the Umayyad Dynasty. The first several episodes will be focused on the founder of this dynasty, Muawiyyah ibn Abi Sufyan. Today's episode is an introduction to Syria and Kuf ...  Show more

Today’s episode in our history of revolutionary ideas explores the world-altering impact of Islam from the seventh century onwards. David talks to the leading Islamic scholar Tim Winter (Abdal Hakim Murad) about what changed – and what didn’t – with the appearance of Islamic law, ...  Show more

In our last episode of the season we wrap up the intellectual history of Islam by examining how the orthodoxies that we discussed in the previous episode were popularized. We talk about the emerging class of legal scholars called the ulema, the madhabs of Hanafi, Maliki, Shaif, a ...  Show more