Let’s Discuss

For over 1,400 years, Islam has been woven into the fabric of Europe —

yet this history has been systematically erased. In this conversation,

award-winning historian and author Tharik Hussain joins Ali Zaka on

The Prometheans to reveal the forgotten story of Muslim Europe: from

the Prophet's family arriving in Cyprus in 647 AD, to the Islamic

roots of the European Renaissance, to why this erasure still shapes

politics — and Muslim identity — today.

Tharik's book *Muslim Europe* (Viking/Penguin, 2025) has been called

"perspective-shattering" and "vital, important" by historians and

writers including William Dalrymple.

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WHAT WE COVER

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IN THIS EPISODE

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• How Islam arrived in Europe just 16 years after the Prophet's death

• The "anti-Muslim DNA" embedded in European civilisational identity

• How Islamic scholars built the foundations of the Renaissance

• Why even respected historians erase 1,400 years of Muslim presence

• Convivencia: the truth about Muslim, Christian, and Jewish coexistence

• What historical erasure does to the identity of Muslims living in Europe today

• The interfaith implications of recovering this hidden history

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ABOUT THE GUEST

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Tharik Hussain is an award-winning author, historian, and journalist

specialising in global Muslim heritage. His book *Muslim Europe*

(Viking/Penguin, 2025) is the first Muslim Eurocentric history of

the continent. His previous book *Minarets in the Mountains* was

longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction.

Follow Tharik: @tharik_hussain

Book: Muslim Europe (Viking/Penguin, 2025)

What makes something truly wrong — not just uncomfortable, or culturally disapproved, but objectively, universally wrong?

In this episode of The Prometheans, Ali Zaka sits down with Professor David Enoch — one of the world's leading moral philosophers, Oxford Professor of the Philosophy of Law, and author of Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense of Robust Realism — to tackle one of the oldest questions in philosophy:

Is morality objective, or is it all relative?

Professor Enoch defends Robust Realism — the radical claim that moral truths exist independently of culture, religion, evolution, or human opinion. This isn't a comfortable view. It means that when cultures disagree about justice, rights, or human dignity, one of them is actually wrong. And it means your moral intuitions — when you feel that cruelty is evil — are tracking something real.

We explore:

What "moral objectivity" actually means philosophically

Why Enoch believes relativism collapses when you take it seriously

The evolutionary debunking argument — and why he isn't afraid of it

How morality can be objective without requiring God

What moral disagreement across religions and cultures really proves

Why AI cannot "know" a moral truth — and what that means for the future

Whether you come from a religious tradition or a secular one, this conversation will challenge the way you think about right and wrong.

David Enoch is Professor of the Philosophy of Law at the University of Oxford and Professor of Philosophy and Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His book Taking Morality Seriously (Oxford University Press, 2011) is widely regarded as the definitive modern defense of moral realism.

🎙️ The Prometheans is a podcast and YouTube channel hosted by Ali Zaka (AZD) dedicated to interfaith dialogue, philosophy of religion, and the ideas that shape how we live.

📌 Subscribe so you never miss an episode.

💬 Drop your question below — Do you think morality is objective?

What if God isn't dead — but hiding inside you?

In this episode of The Prometheans, Ali Zaka sits down with Dr. Murray Stein — one of the world's foremost Jungian analysts, former president of the International Association for Analytical Psychology, and author of the landmark Jung's Map of the Soul (published in 13 languages) — to ask one of the most unsettling questions at the intersection of faith and science: does psychology explain religion away, or does it confirm something religion always knew?

Dr. Stein's life is itself a clue to the answer. Born to a Baptist preacher, trained for ordained ministry at Yale Divinity School, then drawn into depth psychology at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich — he didn't leave religion behind. He went deeper into it. For over five decades, his work has sat at the precise fault line where the soul meets the psyche, where God-language and psychology speak in each other's accent.

Together, we explore:

→ What Jung actually meant by the "God-image" — and why it's not the same as saying God is an illusion

→ The numinous: what happens when the unconscious breaks through with overwhelming force

→ Answer to Job — Jung's most scandalous text, and what it means for God to have a shadow

→ The difference between individuation and salvation — do they converge or diverge?

→ Why Freud's "religion is neurosis" and Jung's "religion is real data" are not the same argument

→ What the psyche of a secular age is telling us about its own spiritual hunger

→ Islam, Christianity, Judaism — can one psychological framework hold all God-images at once?

This is not a debate between faith and doubt. It is a conversation about what happens when you take both seriously — when you refuse to let psychology kill God and refuse to let theology ignore the unconscious.

The Prometheans is a podcast on interfaith dialogue and philosophy of religion, hosted by Ali Zaka.

🔔 Subscribe and join a community that thinks hard about what it means to be human.

What does it mean to be a prisoner of the past — and how do you break free?

In this landmark episode of The Prometheans, Ali Zaka sits down with Dr. Darren Staloff — Columbia-trained historian, professor at the University of Florida's Hamilton Center, and one of the principal lecturers of the legendary Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition series alongside the late Dr. Michael Sugrue.

Together, they explore one of the most urgent questions in all of philosophy: Does history serve life, or slowly suffocate it?

At the center of the conversation is Friedrich Nietzsche's On the Use and Abuse of History for Life (1874) — a work Nietzsche wrote when he was just 29 years old, and which remains one of the most prophetic texts in the Western philosophical tradition.

In this episode, you'll discover:

— Why Nietzsche opens with a herd of grazing cattle — and what it reveals about the curse of human memory

— The three types of history (monumental, antiquarian, critical) and why each one can either liberate or imprison a culture

— Nietzsche's concept of the "unhistorical" — and why the greatest creators in history were masters of strategic forgetting

— The connection between 19th-century German historicism and today's culture wars, cancel culture, and the politics of memory

— Dr. Staloff's personal reflections on Michael Sugrue — his intellectual partner, his colleague, and one of the greatest teachers of the 20th century

This is not just a philosophy podcast. It is a conversation about what it means to be alive in an age drowning in its own past.

Dr. Darren Staloff holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University and is the author of The Making of an American Thinking Class (Oxford University Press) and Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson: The Politics of Enlightenment and the American Founding (Hill & Wang). He recorded dozens of nationally distributed lecture courses for The Teaching Company and co-anchored Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition — a series that has now garnered over 23 million views on YouTube.

Islamic Worldview vs Modern Worldview | ft. Dr. Carl Sharif El-Tobgui | The Prometheans

What lens are you using to see the world — and does it hold up to scrutiny?

In this profound and wide-ranging conversation, Ali Zaka sits down with Dr. Carl Sharif El-Tobgui — Associate Professor of Arabic & Islamic Studies at Brandeis University, PhD from McGill, and one of the most rigorous Muslim intellectuals engaging Islam and modernity today — for a deep philosophical exploration of worldview, its architecture, and what's at stake when two civilizational frameworks collide.

Dr. El-Tobgui begins by unpacking what a worldview actually is — not merely a set of beliefs, but the invisible grammar through which we interpret all of reality. Like a native language, our worldview is so deeply absorbed from our environment that we rarely notice it — until it's challenged.

From there, the conversation methodically walks through the seven pillars of any complete worldview:

🔹 Ontology — What is the nature of reality and existence?

🔹 Theology — Is there a God, and what is His relationship to the world?

🔹 Epistemology — How do we know what we know? What counts as valid knowledge?

🔹 Ethics & Morality — Where do moral values come from? Are they objective or constructed?

🔹 Anthropology — What is the human being? What is our nature, dignity, and purpose?

🔹 Teleology — Does existence have a direction, a goal, a final end?

🔹 Economics — How should resources, wealth, and labor be organized and distributed?

Dr. El-Tobgui then traces the historical origins of the modern worldview — from the Enlightenment's dethroning of revelation, through scientific materialism, secularism, and postmodernity — showing how each shift reshaped humanity's answers to these foundational questions.

The conversation culminates in a direct, intellectually honest comparison between the Islamic and modern worldviews across every dimension — not as a culture war, but as a civilizational dialogue rooted in reason, revelation, and a genuine search for truth.

Whether you're a student of philosophy, a practicing Muslim navigating modernity, or simply a curious mind asking life's deepest questions — this episode will sharpen your thinking and challenge your assumptions.

🔗 Dr. El-Tobgui's free course "Islam and LGBT: Gender, Sex & Morality in the Modern Age" (45 lectures, 33 hours) is available at learn.sapienceinstitute.org

For twenty years, he served at the altar. He took vows. He wore the robe. He was planning to build a monastery. And through all of it — quietly, privately, overwhelmingly — Islam was calling him home.

In this episode of The Prometheans, Ali Zaka (AZD) sits down with Said Abdul Latif, formerly known as Father Hilarion Heagy — Eastern Catholic priest, Byzantine monk, and one of the most talked-about conversion stories of our time. His announcement in February 2023 trended on Google across the Arab world and shook both Christian and Muslim communities globally.

This is not a debate. This is not a polemic. This is one man's honest account of a soul in search of God.

They discuss:

How the recitation of the Quran first broke open his heart in 2001

The role of Rumi and Sufism as a bridge between Christian mysticism and Islamic tawhid

Years of inner conflict — serving as a priest while Islam grew within him

The moment he knew: "One simply can't be a priest publicly, and a Muslim privately"

🌍 Why his conversion trended globally — and what the worldwide Muslim response meant to him

📚 Resources he recommends for those beginning their own journey of inquiry

He described his conversion not as leaving something behind, but as a return — calling it a "reversion to Islam" that felt "like coming home."

Whether you are Muslim, Christian, atheist, or still searching — this conversation will reach something in you.

"My pull towards Islam over twenty years has finally led me home." — Said Abdul Latif

📚 Recommended by Said Abdul Latif:

Works of Abdul Hakim Murad (Tim Winter) | Let's Talk Religion

What is the strongest argument for the existence of God?

In this thought-provoking conversation, I sit down with philosopher Kenneth L. Pearce to explore one of the deepest questions in philosophy, theology, and human existence. Together, we dive into the Contingency Argument, the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and whether reality itself demands a necessary foundation.

Is the universe a brute fact—or does it point beyond itself?

Can science ever answer the question of why there is something rather than nothing?

And does rejecting ultimate explanations come at a philosophical cost?

Drawing on ideas from Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, George Berkeley, and contemporary analytic philosophy, this podcast challenges both believers and skeptics to rethink their assumptions.

Whether you're interested in philosophy of religion, metaphysics, or the intersection of reason and faith, this is a conversation you don’t want to miss.

What does it actually take to make a good argument about whether God exists — and what separates a rigorous case from a philosophical dead end?

In this episode of The Prometheans, Ali Zaka (AZD) sits down with Dr. Kevin Carnahan — Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Central Methodist University, PhD from Southern Methodist University, former co-editor of the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, and one of the most intellectually honest voices at the intersection of academic theology and public discourse — to do something rarely done well: weigh the strongest arguments on both sides with full philosophical seriousness.

Together, they dissect five of the most consequential arguments in the philosophy of religion:

🔹 The Kalam Cosmological Argument — Does the universe's beginning demand a transcendent cause, or does modern cosmology dissolve the premise?

🔹 The Contingency Argument — If everything that exists could not have existed, must there be a Necessary Existent that grounds all reality?

🔹 The Fine-Tuning Argument — Does the universe's extraordinary precision point toward a Designer, or are we just the lucky observers of an indifferent cosmos?

🔹 The Problem of Evil and Suffering — The oldest wound in theology: can a perfectly good, all-knowing, all-powerful God coexist with the depth of suffering we witness in the world?

🔹 Divine Hiddenness — If God genuinely wants a relationship with every human being, why do sincere, open-hearted seekers so often find silence?

No strawmen. No cheap shots. Just two people committed to intellectual honesty asking: which arguments actually hold, which ones collapse under scrutiny, and what does that mean for how we think about ultimate reality?

Whether you're a believer, a skeptic, or somewhere between — this conversation will sharpen how you think.

🎙️ The Prometheans is a podcast and YouTube channel dedicated to interfaith dialogue and the philosophy of religion — hosted by author, educator, and storyteller Ali Zaka (AZD).

📚 Subscribe for conversations that take ideas seriously.

What if the debate between Islam and feminism is built on a misunderstanding?

Ali sits down with Dr. Haifaa Jawad — author of The Rights of Women in Islam: An Authentic Approach and one of Britain's foremost scholars of Islamic gender discourse — to ask the question that neither traditional Islam nor mainstream feminism wants answered on the other's terms.

Drawing on decades of scholarship in Islamic studies, gender discourse, and socio-political analysis, Dr. Jawad challenges simplistic narratives and examines:

— Whether Islam historically empowered women or restricted them

— The difference between Islamic teachings and cultural distortions

— The rise of Islamic feminism as a global intellectual movement

— The philosophical tensions between Western feminist frameworks and Islamic metaphysics

— Whether true gender justice can emerge from within the Qur'anic paradigm

This conversation goes beyond slogans — pressing into theology, history, and ideology to force an honest reckoning with modernity, identity, and truth. If the framework you've inherited can't survive scrutiny, this episode will tell you why. If it can, it will show you how.

Do you actually exist? Not your body, not your thoughts — but you. The unified, continuous self you have always assumed was there.

Buddhist philosophy says no. And one of the world's leading philosophers is here to make the case.

In this episode of The Prometheans, I sit down with Professor Jay L. Garfield — philosopher at Yale-NUS College and Harvard Divinity School, and one of the foremost Western interpreters of Buddhist philosophy — to explore one of the most radical and consequential ideas in the history of human thought: that the self is an illusion.

We go deep on Nāgārjuna's 2,000-year-old argument that nothing — including you — has independent, inherent existence. We examine what Buddhism means by "no-self" (anātman), how that idea connects to David Hume's bundle theory, and what modern neuroscience is discovering about the constructed nature of consciousness. And we ask the hard questions: If there is no self, who is morally responsible? Who suffers? Who is liberated?

This conversation sits at the crossroads of Buddhist metaphysics, analytic philosophy, and the deepest questions of interfaith dialogue. Whether you come from a theistic tradition or none at all, the challenge Garfield brings is one you cannot easily dismiss.