What is ‘the Christmas story’ really? And how does it change when you tell it from within a different religious tradition? In Conflicted’s first-ever Christmas Special, Thomas and Aimen retell the Nativity as it appears in the Gospels and in the Qur’an. 

They discuss:

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

Produced by Thomas Small and edited by Lizzy Andrews.

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In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas speaks with global finance and security analyst Giri Rajendran about the Trump Administration’s newly published National Security Strategy — what it signals, what it omits, and what it suggests about America’s role in a multipolar world.

Thomas and Giri discuss:

How this report differs from previous US National Security Strategies

The end of the old rules-based order of liberal internationalism

The Middle East: a phase shift toward deeper economic engagement

China: economic and industrial competition, not ideological crusade

Europe: NATO burden-sharing, culture-war politics, and coercion by inducement

Russia as a potential ally, no longer an enemy

Whether global governance can exist without global institutions

Follow Giri on X here: https://x.com/Trajan1898

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

This episode was produced and edited by Thomas Small.

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What does the future hold for the Middle East — and the world — in 2026?

In this special episode of Conflicted, Thomas instructs Aimen to peer into his crystal ball and offer his forecasts for the year to come.

In this episode, Aimen and Thomas discuss:

How professional geopolitical analysts make forecasts

The impossibility of foreseeing Black Swan events

Why an end to the war in Ukraine could reshape Middle Eastern geopolitics

The likelihood of a U.S. war against the Houthis in Yemen

Renewed hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon

The strategic importance of the Gulf states

Iran’s nuclear programme, proxy network, and the risk of renewed confrontation

Add your predictions to your 2026 Forecast Card here: https://forms.gle/sMCbRFmFTBdcfEDd8 

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

Produced by Thomas Small and edited by Lizzy Andrews.

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In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas speaks with Lorenzo Vidino, Director of the Programme on Extremism at The George Washington University.

What happens when an ideological movement is neither a terrorist organisation nor an ordinary religious group — but something in between? One of the world’s leading experts on the Muslim Brotherhood explains…

The early history of Islam in America

The first Brotherhood-linked students arriving in the U.S. in the 50s and 60s

The formation of the first American Brotherhood cells

The Brotherhood’s gradual institutional influence across the 80s and 90s

Why CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations) is so controversial

Germany’s three-fold classification system and what the U.S. can learn from it

Follow Lorenzo on: X, BlueSky, LinkedIn, and YouTube. 

Check out his books:

The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West (Columbia University Press, 2010)

The Closed Circle: Joining and Leaving the Muslim Brotherhood in the West (Columbia University Press, 2020).

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

This episode was produced and edited by Thomas Small.

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The Middle East is shifting again, and fast. In this wide-ranging overview, Aimen and Thomas break down the hidden forces reshaping the geopolitical chessboard as 2025 draws to a close.

In this episode, Aimen and Thomas uncover:

The power of Saudi Arabia’s discovery of vast rare-earth reserves

The U.S.–Saudi grand bargain

Why the F-35 sale to Saudi Arabia rattled Israel and what it means for the future of the Abraham Accords

Iran’s deepening water crisis and Gulf states’ preparations for instability

The simmering tensions between India and Pakistan

Afghanistan’s compounded crises

Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/ 

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

Produced by Thomas Small and edited by Lizzy Andrews.

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In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas speaks with Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat about the Muslim Brotherhood.

What happens when a Western democracy encounters an ideological movement it no longer has the language — or the institutions — to understand?

The former Security Minister and long-time observer of the Middle East explains what the Brotherhood is, how it operates, and why the British state is struggling to deal with it.

In this episode, Thomas questions Tom about…

Tom’s time in Egypt during the Arab Spring

His conversations with Brotherhood members

The UK government’s secretive 2014 review of the Brotherhood a nd why Parliament challenged it

The institutional blind spots inside Whitehall and MI5

How Brotherhood-linked networks operate in Britain today

Why talking openly about the Brotherhood is so politically and legally fraught

Strategies for the UK government to tackle the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood

Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/ 

Subscribe to Tom Tugendhat’s Substack here: https://tomtugendhat.substack.com/ 

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

This episode was produced and edited by Thomas Small.

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Conflicted is back. Aimen and Thomas return with a renewed mission and a bold vision for the future of the show. In this special relaunch episode, they look back at the journey so far, celebrate the global community that’s grown around Conflicted, and reveal what’s coming next in an ever-more turbulent world.

In this episode, Aimen and Thomas:

Offer a sweeping recap of Conflicted’s story arcs, themes, and analyses

Reveal what the next phase of Conflicted has in store for dear listeners

Reassert Conflicted’s commitment to rising above the polarisation and simplifications dominating mainstream media

Celebrate the many friends of the show—journalists, scholars, analysts—who have helped Conflicted become a global phenomenon

Thank the listeners whose engagement, questions, and curiosity have shaped Conflicted’s direction (and good-naturedly endured Aimen’s dad jokes) 

Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/ 

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This week on Conflicted, we’re unlocking another episode we first released for members of the Conflicted Community.  

In this interview from last January, I talk with Martin Plaut, a distinguished journalist who has reported on conflicts across Africa for decades, and whose book Understanding Ethiopia’s Tigray War was an essential resource for us in preparing our series on Ethiopia. We discuss:

Ethiopia’s recent Tigray War and why it proved so consequential for the Horn of Africa

How the federal government — with Eritrean support — turned against the Tigray region despite its long rule in Ethiopia

Martin’s personal story of growing up in apartheid South Africa and his early political activism

His current work on the history of African slavery and common misconceptions surrounding it

Speaking of slavery in Africa, Martin’s latest book Unbroken Chains: A 5,000-Year History of African Enslavement has recently been published. I hope to get Martin back onto the podcast to talk all about it!

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This week on Conflicted, Thomas is joined by T.V. Paul, Distinguished James McGill Professor in the Department of Political Science at McGill University.

Prof. Paul is one of the world’s leading thinkers in international relations and author of Restraining Great Powers: Soft Balancing from Empires to the Global Era and The Unfinished Quest: India’s Search for Major Power Status from Nehru to Modi.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Thomas speaks with Prof. Paul about:

India’s strategy as a rising power in a shifting multipolar world

How ‘soft balancing’ works as an alternative to military alliances

The benign and malign dimensions of American hegemony

Why globalization both empowered and destabilized the global middle class

India’s complex status anxiety and its quest for recognition

How China and India navigate rivalry, nationalism, and regional threats

The future of the liberal international order—and whether it can survive

What a new global settlement might require from the West, China, and India alike

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This week on Conflicted, we’re unlocking for everyone an episode we first released a year ago for members of the Conflicted Community — an interview with Hussam Mahjoub, a Sudanese journalist, political activist, and founder of the independent TV channel Sudan Bukra, which has become a vital source of truth amid the chaos of war.

When it was recorded, Sudan was already sliding into catastrophe. But in the months since, the country has fallen even further into one of the world’s most devastating wars. The conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces has shattered the country: communications have collapsed, hospitals have shut, and millions are displaced or facing famine.

In this conversation, Hussam helps us understand how Sudan got here. He traces the rise of the RSF from the Janjaweed militias that terrorised Darfur twenty years ago, and walks us through Sudan’s modern history, from the long dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir, to the 2019 revolution, and the collapse of hopes for civilian rule.

Hussam also offers an insider’s view of the regional powers shaping Sudan’s fate — Egypt, the Gulf states, and Russia’s Wagner network — and how rivalries over gold, trade, and influence have turned Sudan’s agony into a proxy struggle.

Listening now, his analysis feels prophetic. The structural forces he identified then have since erupted into the full-scale war we see today.

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