Common Threads: An Interfaith Dialogue

The Qur’an famously declares, “There is no compulsion in religion.” But there is much compulsion today in the name of Islam — from apostasy laws to enforced veils — from Iran to Afghanistan. In his groundbreaking book, "No Compulsion in Religion, No Exceptions"" Mustafa Akyol elucidates the Islamic arguments against these deadly “exceptions” to freedom. It advocates for a faith grounded in free choice, not coercion.

In these episodes, Host Fred Stella discusses with Mustafa how traditional Islamic legal sources include various measures of religious coercion. Apostates and blasphemers are sentenced to the death penalty, and “religious police” forces are called to enforce piety. Moreover, some self-defined “Islamic” regimes of today, such as the Taliban, enforce these verdicts rigidly, shocking the conscience of many people, including many Muslims. So, is there really no compulsion in Islam? Or are there serious exceptions to that Qur’anic maxim, as some authorities explicitly argue? Listen and find out. Theme music "Nigal."

Most people think they are open-minded and would like others to perceive them as such. But for the things that matter most – religious beliefs, for example, or the meaning of life – few of us are genuinely willing to consider that we might be wrong, let alone do the hard work of revising beliefs. At a fundamental level, we humans are somewhat closed-minded.

As a social psychologist, Prof. Daryl VanTongeren researches big questions, such as what makes life meaningful and the nature of humility. I’ve had a long-standing interest in why people are so resistant to changing their cherished core beliefs. After all, isn’t it better to remain open-minded when you may be wrong or can’t know for certain? These and other questions are discussed in these episodes. Listen, with an open mind, of course. Theme music "Nigal."

On a cool fall night in 1999, twenty-six-year-old Sarah Green crept out of her house, retrieved a backpack from its hiding place, and ran for her life. She was escaping not just the Aggressive Christianity Missions Training Corps, a paramilitary religious cult based in the New Mexico desert, but also the cruelty of the cult’s leader—her mother, Deborah. In his book ‘The Oracle's Daughter’ Harrison Hill traces the “extraordinary” twists and turns of the group’s development, from its early days as an outgrowth of the 1960s counterculture, through its descent into conspiracy-fueled abuse, to the explosive trial that would lead to its downfall.

Fred Stella engages with Harrison Hill, discussing this specific organization and the social and psychological dynamics that make such destructive cults appealing to a wide variety of people. Theme music "Nigal."

Christian Zionism is a movement dedicated to reconstituting the Israel of antiquity. To be clear, the purpose of this effort has little to do with love or sympathy for Jews, but to hasten the return of Jesus. The social and political challenges this presents to world stability are manifold.

And while radical Evangelicals have owned the narrative of this plan for over a century, there is now a counter movement led by Christians who maintain that this idea is nonsense. For 99% of the last 2,000 years, this was not a thing.

Fred Stella is joined by journalist Connor Echols who has been following developments in this saga for an up-to-date conversation. Connor recently wrote an article titled, Inside the growing religious revolt against Christian Zionism for Responsible Statecraft. Theme music "Nigal."

Most people today understand contraception as central to women’s liberation, and when the birth control pill arrived in 1960, the media thought it would usher in a sexual revolution. But a surprising number of religious Americans in the mid-twentieth century also saw contraception as part of God’s plan, a tool to create happy, prosperous American families in the post–World War II era.

In this episode, Fred Stella speaks with author Samira Mehta about her book "God Bless the Pill," which traces the remarkable story of how mid-twentieth-century Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish voices promoted the use of birth control and made it more accessible for many Americans. They hoped birth control methods would curb divorce rates by encouraging sexually dynamic marriages and families unstrained by “too many” children—thereby creating a postwar upwardly mobile middle class. Religious leaders also promoted this understanding of the family as tied to Cold War capitalism and encouraged neither racial nor gender equity.

But then came the backlash, both from the Right—which failed to anticipate the feminist potential of contraception—and from the Left, where women, particularly women of color, sought to ensure that birth control was a tool of liberation rather than one rooted in patriarchal and racial oppression. Ultimately, Mehta offers compelling new insights into the way religion accommodates itself to social, technological, and medical change.

Samira K. Mehta is an Associate Professor of Women and Gender Studies and the Director of Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. Theme music "Nigal."

On this episode of Common Threads, Fred Stella interviews author Arthur Zarate about his biography of the Egyptian Muslim theologian, scholar, and activist, Muhammad al-Ghazali (1917–1996), which provides the most comprehensive study to date of one of the most influential Sunni Muslim writers of the 20th century. Al-Ghazali shaped the views of multiple generations of Muslim activists and was a one-time leading intellectual of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. Mediating God charts his rise as a leading theologian in the Brotherhood during the 1940s, his subsequent clash and expulsion from the group in 1953, and his extensive post-Brotherhood career during the Nasser years. To tell this story, it excavates a massive collection of writings by Brotherhood members and their affiliates, many of which have never before been utilized in secondary scholarship.

Through an analysis of this collection, Mediating God provides the 1st in-depth view at the richly cosmopolitan and eclectic intellectual milieu of the Brotherhood and its affiliates from the 1930s through the 1960s.

It focuses particular attention on the underexamined, though voluminous, writings al-Ghazali and his colleagues dedicated to charting God as real and meaningful presence in all arenas of human life, from the mundane realms of daily life to political struggles and scientific enterprises. Theme music "Nigal."

In these episodes, Fred Stella speaks with Paldrom Catherine Collins, the author of ‘Girl in a Box: Seeking Enlightenment as a Tibetan Buddhist Nun.’ It’s a memoir of spiritual longing and the search for an end to suffering.

As a wide-eyed spiritual seeker from Oklahoma, Paldrom believed enlightenment would free her from the messiness of being human, that she could somehow rest in a cloud of bliss. So she took monastic vows, shaved her head, changed her name, and agreed to forgo worldly pleasures.

She recounts her effort to become a stellar nun, at least as she imagined one should be. Her 5-year immersion in the paradigm-altering world of a traditional Tibetan Buddhist monastery and retreat center revealed the depth of her commitment. But the path was not what she’d expected. Both the transcendent experiences and the shattering disillusion continue to lead her to a deeper understanding that she was never lost, already home.

Theme music "Nigal."

This is very fun. We have here an episode from 1996, when I was not host, but guest. I didn't take over the hosting duties until the following year, but I was still active in other ways supporting Common Threads.

Featured here is host Marc Evan Jackson, who has made quite a name for himself in Hollywood.

I don't need to say much here, as I've provided a detailed introduction in the episode. Enjoy! Theme music "Nigal."

I can hardly believe that I am STILL finding cassette tapes with old episodes on them These 2 were recorded, I believe, in 2001. Oasis of Peace is a community in Israel where Jews & Palestinians live and thrive together. I can only imagine the heartbreak they must be feeling now after a horrendous war is and has been raging for the past few years. But please take a listen. It is a great example of just what can happen when peacemakers work together. Theme music "Nigal."

OK Kids, I'm really hesitant to share this with you, but I do want to upload as many episodes as I can. If you've been around for a while you know that every once in a while I find an old cassette tape or CD of shows we did decades ago. And the sound quality is not always great. Well, this is an example of that. I just found this in the basement after cleaning it out due to a flood. For those of you who can handle real lo-fi, you might enjoy these 2 examples of really, really early Common Threads. I can't even hazard a guess as to when we had Dr. BK Parmar in the studio to talk about palmistry, astrology and such. I'm guessing that it could have been in the late 1990s. Early 00s at best.

Anyway, I'm putting up this version today and hoping I might find a way to clean it up a bit and repost. Theme music "Nigal."