Beyond Belief

Discussion programme in which guests from different faith and non-faith perspectives debate the challenges of today's world.

The luxury hotels in the beach resorts of Tunisia which were once packed with tourists now lie nearly empty. The slaughter on the beach at Sousse on June 26th has added Tunisia to a growing list of no-go areas for Western tourists. Tunisia is 99% Muslim but was considered an oasis of secularism in the Arab World. Its revolution in 2011 marked the beginning of The Arab Spring, bringing democratic government in place of a dictatorship. But all those hopes now appear to have turned to dust. Tunisia sends more fighters to Syria than any other Arab country, perhaps as many as 3000. Tunisia is now ruled by a coalition that includes an overtly Islamist party, called Ennahda. So what does the future hold for the country? Is it going down a radical route?

Ernie Rea is joined by Zoe Petkanas, working on a Ph.D on Gender, Law and Social Change in North Africa at Cambridge University; Dr Radwan Masmoudi, President of the Centre of the Study of Islam and Democracy in Washington D.C.; and Berny Sebe, Senior Lecturer in colonial and post colonial studies at Birmingham University.

Produced by Nija Dalal-Small.

The Greek Debt Crisis has highlighted in the most dramatic way just how much our economic systems depend on borrowed money. The figures of international debt are mind boggling. In the economies of wealthy countries like the United States and the UK, around 97-98% of the money is debt. It is money whose value rests not on something that exists in the present but on something that might exist in the future.

We are all living with debt. People in the UK owed £1.436 trillion at the end of May 2015, according to The Money Charity, up from £1.407 trillion at the end of May 2014. That's an extra £584 per adult. We have learnt to live with credit, whether it be a mortgage or a loan for a car or just a credit card account which spirals out of control.

It seems that debt has become an essential part of personal finance. But is that healthy? Or ethical? And do our religious traditions have anything to say about our reliance on debt?

Ernie Rea is joined by Habib Ahmed, Sharjah Chair in Islamic Law and Finance at Durham University Business School; Paul Francois Tremlett, Lecturer in the Religious Studies Department at the Open University; and Michelle Swallow, Debt Advisor at the organisation Christians Against Poverty.

Produced by Nija Dalal-Small.

To Muslims, Muhammed is the most important person who ever lived. He is the Seal or the last of all the prophets, the one chosen by God to receive his final revelation. To insult the memory of the Prophet is a blasphemy and a body blow to the Muslim believer. It can carry terrible consequences as the staff of Charlie Hebdo discovered when they published cartoons which were thought by Muslims to be demeaning their Prophet. The Qur'an tells us very little about Muhammed. What we do know comes from the stories and traditions about the Prophet, known as the Hadiths, which were compiled after his death. Those stories provide moral examples of how to behave; but they also impact all of Islamic history.

Ernie Rea is joined by Jonathan Brown, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilisation at Georgetown University; Sahib Bleher, Imam and author on the Qur'an; and Tom Holland, a Classicist and author of several best selling books including In The Shadow of the Sword, on the origins of Islam.

Produced by Nija Dalal-Small.

The very public failures of the Mid Staffordshire National Health Service Foundation Trust raised serious questions about the standard of care in some hospitals. Two Enquiries agreed that there had been "appalling" emergency care with deficiencies at "virtually every stage." What would have prevented such a humanitarian failure? Some said that an obsession with targets and bureaucracy had been allowed to obscure the needs of patients. Others suggested that nurses in particular had lost the capacity to care. Again and again we heard the word "Compassion". Good old fashioned Compassion - a concept central to the world's religious tradition - just wasn't fashionable in an individualistic and competitive society.

Ernie Rea is joined by Paul Gilbert, Professor of Psychology at the University of Derby: Anna Smajdor lecturer in Medical Ethics at the University of East Anglia; and Joshua Hordern Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at the University of Oxford.

Producer: Rosie Dawson.

In January Alexis Tsipras became Prime Minister of Greece and formed a coalition government with the nationalist Independent Greek Party. Tsipras is a radical, committed to ending austerity. He is also an atheist who publicly declared that he wants to move Greece in a secular direction. That would be a radical move, for Greek Orthodoxy is the only legally recognised religion and may command the loyalty of up to 97% of the Greek people. Tsipras did not take a religious oath on taking office. But since then he has been seen attending Orthodox Services; and has been making friendly overtures to Orthodox Clergy. Church attendance in Greece is low; but Orthodoxy appears to be deeply embedded in the identity of the Greek people. It is almost part of their DNA. Why is that? And how does it impact on the lives of ordinary people?

Joining Ernie to discuss the influence of the Orthodox Church within modern Greece are the Rev Vasileios Papathanasiou, priest at the Grreek Orthodox Cathedra; of the Holy Cross and St Michael in Golders Green; Stavroula Pipyrou Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the University of St Andrews; and Daphne Halikiopoulou, Associate Professor in Comparative Politics at the University of Reading.

Producer: Rosie Dawson.

Kathmandu was a city of temples. Now it is a city of tents." That was the comment of one observer after the two recent earthquakes which struck Nepal. Thousands have died; many more made homeless in one of the world's poorest countries. Nepal is overwhelmingly Hindu; central to the Hindu belief is karma, the conviction that every action produces an equal reaction; that suffering in this life is a consequence of your actions in a previous life. How do such beliefs sit alongside an understanding of plate tectonics? After the great Lisbon earthquake of 1755 which killed an estimated 60,000 people, many theologians abandoned the attempt to explain such disasters in terms of God. What might be the effect of this disaster on the religious beliefs of people in Nepal?

Ernie Rea and guests discuss the promise and threats of developing artificial intelligence with

Producer: Rosie Dawson.

This is the Holy Week; the time when Christians remember the events leading up to the trial and execution of Jesus of Nazareth. It came to a climax on a Cross on a hillside outside Jerusalem, when Jesus laid down his life, according to Christian belief, as an atonement for the sins of the world. He was a scapegoat, an innocent man who suffered the punishment which by rights should have been ours. The scapegoat motif has resounded throughout history. Jews, held responsible for Christ's death, have been made scapegoats right up to the present day. The scapegoat is nearly always "the other;" the stranger who can be made to bear the responsibility for the problems the rest of us don't want to own.

Producer: Rosie Dawson.

Ernie Rea and guests discuss the revival of Confucianism in China.

In 1966 the Red Guard in China sent a telegram to Mao tse Tung. "Dearest Chairman Mao," it read. "We have rebelled. We have torn down the plaque extolling "The teacher of ten thousand generations;" we have levelled Confucius' grave; and we have obliterated the statues in the Confucius Temple." By the time the Cultural Revolution had done its work, Confucianism which had dominated the religious and cultural life of China for over a millennium, seemed almost obliterated. But today it is making a comeback. The Chinese government is encouraging its study. What is going on? How can it be that a philosophy which was thought to be the embodiment of reaction is being hailed as a force of progress,

Producer: Rosie Dawson.