Heart and Soul

Evangelical Christian women of colour were the kingmakers in Brazil’s last presidential election. In May, a corruption conviction that barred the former left wing President from running was quashed on a technicality. And the stage is now set for an epic election showdown where experts say it’s women of colour who will have the deciding vote. But after four years in power, will they turn a blind eye to Jair Bolsonaro’s comments that some consider misogynistic and racist? In ‘The Bible, Black women and Brazil’, Lebo Diseko travels to Brazil for Heart and Soul from the BBC World Service, to find out if their vote may deliver the President his second victory.

In February 1983, a group of 42 Shia devotees left a quiet village in the Chakwal district of Pakistan and embarked on an epic journey to Karbala in Iraq. This was no ordinary pilgrimage but had been ordained by Mahdi, the last spiritual leader or Imam of Shia faith. His instructions were communicated to the faithful in miraculous messages channeled through an 18 year old woman.

The caravan left in two trucks on the 1300 kilometre journey to the port city of Karachi where they were to cross the Arabian Sea for Iraq. What happened next is a story of extreme sacrifice in the name of the Shia Islamic faith and would result in the deaths of 18 men, women and children.

In this programme reporter Shumaila Jaffery returns to their village before she travels to Hawkes Bay to discover what really happened on that moonlit night four decades ago. She tracks down survivors to explore if what the sacrifice of the devoted may tell us about Shia Islam today, asks; ‘could something like this ever happen again’?

Writer and poet Nikita Gill and sitar virtuoso and composer Anoushka Shankar are friends and collaborators whose life stories share many parallels. In this programme, recorded sitting with tea and doughnuts on the floor of a child’s bedroom, they share an intimate conversation about a moment of spiritual awakening.

Nikita reflects on the idea that awakenings or epiphanies often follow a challenging or traumatic phase of life. She recalls a series of personal experiences which compelled her to take a train north and walk all through the night and into dawn. She describes how she returned from this experience a changed person.

Anoushka describes how a build up of stressful experiences pushed her to a breaking point which also became a spiritual calling.

Together the women reflect on the idea that these moments are a profound part of the story arc of our lives, forcing us to confront our deepest values and setting us on a new path. They share how the experience led to new wisdoms and spiritual practices.

Prodiucer: Sarah Cuddon

(Photo: Anoushka Shankar (L). Credit: Laura Lewis. (R) Nikita Gill. Credit: Peace Ofure)

In 2007 Christian and Muslim leaders in Norway controversially recognised for the first time in modern history, the right to convert between the two faiths without harassment or impediment. They also called for all missionary work to be conducted “without force or manipulation".

The “Joint declaration on the freedom of religion and the right to conversion” was welcomed as an important contribution to inter-faith dialogue in the Scandinavian nation. But it was also seen by some Muslims as recognizing the right to abandon Islam, which is considered apostasy and punishable as a criminal offense in many Muslim countries. It was similarly criticised by some of Norway’s evangelical churches, which saw it as disavowing their central missionary role.

Reporter Maddy Savage travels to Norway to hear the stories of some of those who’ve chosen to convert from one of the two faiths to the other; and to ask whether the joint declaration played any role in their life changing decisions.

Fleeing from the war-torn Mariupol in eastern Ukraine, Afina Khadzynova is trying to reconnect to her Greek roots in the Mediterranean island of Cyprus.

CERN, in Geneva, is the most complex scientific experiment in the world. It has just restarted operating after a break, and is celebrating the 10th anniversary of detecting the Higgs Boson, a particle that is the final piece in the jigsaw of the standard model of physics. It explains how particles acquire mass. Without mass, there would be no matter and we wouldn’t be here.

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN was designed to find this Higgs boson, and smashes particles at almost the speed of light in a tunnel deep underground to discover new particles. It attempts to explain how the Big Bang worked. We go underground to visit one of the enormous detectors at the famous Large Hadron Collider and talk to young scientists from different parts of all the world who, despite looking for scientific answers to how the universe began, still believe devoutly in a creator.

Among the other contributors are the designer of the LHC itself, Lyn Evans; physicists with and without faith who have been at CERN from the early days; a scientist who studies anti-matter and other members of CERN staff, old and new. Faith in Science is presented by Elin Rhys, a scientist raised as a Baptist, who struggles with not knowing the answer to what was there before The Big Bang and tries to discover how scientists with a faith square this with their research into why we exist.

(Image: Elin Rhys and Dr Orlando Villalobos Baillie stand in front of the Alice Experiment at CERN. Credit: Telesgop)

We explore the interplay of faith, spirituality and LGBTQ+ identity in this special episode for Pride Month 2022. We hear three fascinating cross-cultural and religious conversations between people who are also LGBTQ+. Furgie was raised a Muslim as a child in Pakistan. He speaks to Sukhdeep, a gay Sikh man in India. Abby Stein left her strict Hasidic Jewish community and transitioned but she is still very much Jewish. Abby talks to Claire who is a 73-year-old trans woman from the UK. Finally two African queer women explore their relationship with religion - one as a Christian and the other as Muslim growing up in Kenya.

(Image: A rainbow flag seen flying during a Pride March in New York, USA, 2021. Credit: Erik McGregor via Getty Images)

When ISIS swept into Mosul in June 2014, the organisation immediately began a campaign to wipe out the most important part of the northern Iraqi city’s unique heritage - its a multi-sectarian culture. Mosul was home to ancient and modern Christian communities, Yazidis, Shia and Sunni Muslims, and at one time, Jews.

Throughout the period of ISIS occupation Omar Mohammad, a history lecturer at Mosul University, risked his life daily to get news of the city out to the world via the internet. His Mosul Eye blog became essential reading. Now living in exile in Europe, Omar de Mosul, as he is known, is reconstructing the history ISIS tried and failed to wipe out, including the history of the city’s Jewish community.

Presenter Michael Goldfarb spends time with Omar as he collects oral histories from the remaining Jews who were born and grew up in the city. Most Jews left the city in the early 1950s in the upheaval following the establishment of Israel. He also speaks with Rabbi Carlos Huerta, retired US army chaplain, who spent the first year after the US overthrew Saddam Hussein in Mosul with the 101st Airborne. He had no idea about the rich Jewish history of the place and spent much of his time investigating it.

Presenter: Michael Goldfarb

(Photo: The dilapidated Sasson Synagogue in Iraq's northern city of Mosul destroyed by Jihadists. Credit: by Zaid aL-Obeidi/AFP/Getty Images)

A Certain Height production for BBC World Service

BBC Faith and Ethics reporter Claire Jones has been granted exclusive access on board British warship HMS Northumberland while on deployment to the North Sea.

The military chaplain onboard the warship is Reverend Dr Louisa Pittman, one of three female chaplains in the Royal Navy. She caters for all faiths, never carries a weapon, and holds no rank so the captain or a junior rating can speak freely.