Heart and Soul

In traditional Maasai culture one of the central figures of the community is the laibon. A laibon is a person who has been gifted with the power to see the future. They are not really a fortune teller and they are certainly not a witch doctor. They are more like a seer, but some also have the power to cure illnesses. A laibon is the one who advises the community as a whole on the best course of action to take in a given situation. For example, they can use their powers to say where the community’s cattle should be taken in order to find better grazing when there’s a drought. They are the ones who can pronounce when the time is right for important ceremonies. Today hardly any laibon remain.

There is still one though. Called Mokompo, he is today an elderly man who lives in one of the remotest corners of Kenya, far from towns, villages, and surfaced roads. Although very few Maasai in Kenya and Tanzania have ever met him, he continues to command huge respect. In this programme journalist Stuart Butler travels to Kenya to meet Mokompo and find out the spiritual secrets of one the country's last laibons.

(Photo: Mokompo. Credit: Stuart Butler)

According to some studies, journalists tend to be less religious than the general population. Some find solace in faith, but others begin to question it. So is it a profession which challenges your religious convictions, strengthens faith or attracts the faithless?

Atif Rashid, a Muslim, has started questioning his role as a journalist who believes in god. What place does religion have in the work that he does? To help him consider his future career steps he speaks to other journalists who have turned to god and others who have questioned their beliefs after seeing so much suffering as foreign correspondents. He meets other young Muslim reporters from the USA and the UAE and asks how their jobs impact their faith. And also catches up with two of his former editors, who quit their jobs to lead a more spiritual lifestyle, one as a vicar and another as a monk. Along the way, he considers whether he should follow the same path.

It is the number one question asked to anyone who is fasting for Ramadan, which began at the beginning of April. But what is Ramadan? Why Fast? And how do young Muslims manage Ramadan in their respective lives and work?

(Photo: Iftar water. Credit: Getty Images)

For 500 years the Jews of Europe were kept apart, legally segregated in ghettos. Then at the dawn of the 19th Century Jews were emancipated and overnight what it meant to be a Jew in the world changed. Michael Goldfarb looks at how this historic event changed Jewish identity and the world in which Jews lived.

In interviews with prominent members of his community in three different countries - a Rabbi, a musician and educator, and an organiser for eastern Europe’s rebuilding Jewish communities, he explores the rapid changes of identity in a group of people who lived an essentially unchanged existence for more than half a millennium.

Emancipation changed the practice of Judaism and brought new ideas to the arts. It created controversy within the Jewish community about how far one should assimilate, and hatred outside the Jewish community among those who did not want Jews to assimilate at all. This reaction would create an ideology - anti-Semitism, which would ultimately lead to the near annihilation of Europe’s Jews.

(Photo: Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto rebellion. Creddit: Bernard Bisson/Sygma/Getty Images)

Easter and Passover are among the most important religious festivals of the year for Christians and Jews. But after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, how will the people of faith still left in the country celebrate? Is it possible to practise your belief when your country is at war?

In Odesa, an Orthodox priest is preparing to deliver an Easter service as best he can, even though half of his congregation has left. In the west of Ukraine, members of the Jewish Ukrainian Social Initiative are organising supplies for those elderly members of the faith left in Kyiv. And Radio Maria, a Christian radio station based in the capital, is still broadcasting to as much of the country as possible, and has seen listening figures soar. But will it be safe enough for them to broadcast mass at Easter?

Julia Paul speaks to people from the Orthodox, Jewish and Catholic faiths in Ukraine, to hear what it is like living, and worshipping, in a war zone.

For 16 years Sister Imelda Poole has been fighting in a war. This war has brought her to countries all over the world and just when she thinks she is making progress, the war game changes. Based in Albania, during the pandemic Sr Imelda noticed a new trend in human trafficking as people in poorer regions were struggling to pay their rent due to losing their jobs. It came in the form of a compromise from their landlord; offer your daughter for sex or to be entered into the sex industry to clear the debt. Many of these girls were very young. Some were left with no choice, others, thankfully were able to avail of emergency Covid funding.

(Image: Sister Imelda Poole. Credit: BBC)

What does it mean to be a young Hindu in India today? The BBC’s South Asia correspondent Rajini Vaidyanathan is in Delhi with a panel of young people aged between 18-27 who have travelled from across India to share what their faith means to them. They give their views on the caste system, Hindu nationalism, interfaith marriage, who is and is not a Hindu and the values and rituals that sustain them in their daily life.

Presenter: Rajini Vaidyanathan

The German Catholic church is one of the most influential and richest in the world. It is at the epicentre of Catholic theology, debates over the future of the church, and the sexual abuse scandals that have rocked the Catholic faith all over the world. Revelations over priests accused of child sexual abuse being protected from consequences by church institutions continue to emerge, with a recent bombshell report even linking Pope Benedict with the scandal from his time in Germany. Many are losing confidence in the church's ability to adapt, and are leaving Catholicism for good.

Wolfgang Rothe is one of a new generation of Catholic thinkers; he does things from his Parish in Bavaria that for many are still unthinkable. He presides over blessings for same sex couples, gives women the opportunity to preach in his church, and advocates for an end to celibacy for priests. He has also become something of a celebrity on social media, bringing his campaign to a wider audience. He hopes that by keeping up with modern values, the Catholic Church can win back an increasingly disillusioned generation of German worshippers.

BBC correspondent Damien McGuinness heads to Munich to meet Wolfgang, exploring what his movement is trying to do, and the immense ructions its causing in the Catholic world, where the church's traditional values are still sacrosanct. As Wolfgang's mission gains momentum, it could tear the whole church in two.

Presenter: Damien McGuinness

A Whistledown production for the BBC World Service

Pav Gill, a Sikh lawyer living in Singapore, joined the Wirecard financial services empire in 2017. Wirecard had global ambitions to become a big player like Google or Amazon. But it did not take long until Pav realised that there were fraudulent business practises going on.

To investigate and examine the financial wrong-doing he had discovered, Pav commissioned an independent report - with damning results. Advised by his mother, Sokhbir Kaur, a woman of strong Sikh faith, Pav eventually decided to blow the whistle on Wirecard. At which point things turned very ugly.

In conversation with Mike Wooldridge, Pav Gill and Sokhbir Kaur recall what it took for them to do the right thing and expose Wirecard’s fraudulent practises and ultimately bring down the company – and what the cost was to their own lives.

Presenter: Mike Wooldridge

(Photo: Exterior view of the Wirecard AG building in Aschheim, Germany. Credit: Roland Krivec/DeFodi Images/Getty Images)

A CTVC production for BBC World Service

From an early age, Fatima Daas knew that she was different. Raised in a strict Algerian Muslim family in the poor suburbs of Paris, she struggled to reconcile the feelings she was developing with her devotion to her faith. Her upbringing dictated that she would have to choose between Islam and her sexuality. At high school, she tried and failed to start teenage romances with boys. Confused and isolated, one day she even took out her frustrations on a fellow student whom she resented for being able to be openly gay.

Mike Wooldridge travels to the suburbs of Paris to meet Fatima and some of those who accompanied her on her difficult journey. He hears about the pressures she came under, and her fears of disappointing both her family and her community.

As she grew up, Fatima says, she coped “by speaking to God…as if He was a counsellor,” sharing with Him her innermost secrets. And for many years, she says, she was convinced she was the only lesbian who was also a Muslim.

Now in her mid-20s, Fatima tells Mike how she eventually reconciled her inner conflicts and made her choice. She has recently published a frank semi-autobiographical novel about her experiences, which has caused a stir in France. “I’m not going to reform a religion that’s existed for such a long time,” Fatima says, adding: “But I have never doubted God.”

(Image: Fatima Daas. Credit: Mike Lanchin)