Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a research fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) and the author of the book The Arab Case for Israel. He champions immediate, unconditional, and comprehensive peace between every Arab nation and the Jewish state.

​Hussain joins Yasmine to discuss his book and to share with us why he believes peace with Israel is the only path to progress.  They will also ponder questions around Islam and Democracy. Is Islam compatible with democracy? Does Popper's Paradox perfectly encapsulate the issue with immigration of Islamists to western nations? How can democracy defend itself? Is democracy inherently vulnerable to ideologies like Islamism?

 Raised in Beirut, Baghdad, and Baalbek, cities that have repeatedly served as epicenters of the Middle East’s most seismic conflicts, Hussain’s research focuses on Arab affairs, spanning Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Sudan.

His career launched as a reporter, and later managing editor, at Beirut’s The Daily Star. In Washington, he helped launch and manage the congressionally funded Arabic satellite network Alhurra Iraq before leading the Washington bureau of the Kuwaiti daily Alrai. He has also served as a Visiting Fellow at London’s Chatham House.

 Hussain’s articles in English have appeared in several outlets, including The New York Times and The Washington Post. He also publishes regularly in Arabic media. He holds a degree in history and archaeology from the American University of Beirut and is fluent in English, Arabic, and Hebrew.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/abdulhussainhussain

Twitter: https://x.com/hahussain

Explore more of Hussain’s latest policy research and analysis at https://www.fdd.org/

Loay Alshareef is an Arab Muslim peace advocate, historian, and social media influencer whose mission is to bridge divides between Muslims and Jews and to champion peace in the Middle East.

He will be joining Yasmine to discuss how antisemitic Muslims are spreading their hate to the west and how that hate is leveraged in the conflicts with Israel and Iran.

Born and raised in Saudi Arabia to a Saudi Egyptian family that once held many radical views, Loay experienced a turning point in 2010 after living with a Jewish family in France. That experience reshaped his worldview and inspired his lifelong commitment to peace.

He began his media career in Saudi Arabia, working across fields such as language education, history and tourism before dedicating himself fully to peace advocacy and promoting the Abraham Accords.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lalshareef

Twitter: https://x.com/lalshareef

Hamza Abu Howidy is a Palestinian activist, writer, and educator from Gaza. He works to challenge extremism and promote dialogue between Muslims and Jews. A former political prisoner under Hamas, Hamza’s personal journey took him from radicalization to peace advocacy, leading him to dedicate his work to exposing the human cost of ideological warfare.  His writings and social media activism combine lived experience with sharp political analysis, focusing on Palestine-Israel, antisemitism, and the future of coexistence.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hamzahowidyy

Twitter/X: https://x.com/HowidyHamza

Salima was born in the UK to a strict Bangladeshi Muslim family. Her parents forced her to memorize the Quran, attend mosque, and wear the hijab from a very young age. She and her siblings were physically abused by their mother and kept isolated from other children their age.​

When her parents began discussing a marriage to a cousin, she decided to run away with her sister. Because Salima was under 18, social services became involved and helped the two sisters escape safely. Unfortunately, the abuse continued in the foster system, and she had to leave her foster home to protect herself.​

Today, Salima lives a life she once only dreamed of, sharing a home with her partner and their two dogs. She now speaks out about the abuse she endured to shed light on the realities faced by women with backgrounds like hers.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/salima_alam

Sarit Gad grew up in a Jewish home in Miami, Florida, always drawn to the nostalgia of her ancestors who came from Afghanistan, Syria and Lebanon. Her family did not pass down stories, but she always knew they had left the region and she carried that quiet history with her.

The old warnings about Jewish hatred felt like distant echoes from another time, shadows she believed the world had already outgrown.

She believed deeply in coexistence and peace. It was not until October 7th, while interning at the United Nations in New York, that the full complexity of reality became impossible to ignore.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saritmedia/

Magomyed was born in Saudi Arabia during a time of profound darkness. The morality police controlled the population through roadside checkpoints. They would halt vehicles and demand identification while aggressively interrogating passengers: “Who is this woman beside you?” Clerics cited ‘honour’ in their sermons, urging men to tighten their control over the women of their families, warning that otherwise they would be “forced” to commit violence to safeguard familial honor. Teachings such as these, repeated endlessly, propelled thousands of young men into the ranks of Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and similar groups.

At seventeen, Magomyed was on the way to answer the call for jihad in Syria. Only 50 kilometers from the Saudi–Iraqi border, he turned back, deciding he wanted to find a different way to serve the ummah. Over the next two years he completely deradicalized, and later moved to Canada to pursue an engineering degree. 

Mogamyed will join Yasmine to discuss the normalization of radicalization in Islamic countries, how quickly that radicalization can lead to giving up your life in the name of Allah, and discuss the difficulty of deradicalization and all of the obstacles and risks involved with making that decision.

Amanda Knox is an exoneree, journalist, public speaker, author of the New York Times best-selling memoir, Waiting to Be Heard and FREE: My Search for Meaning. She is the host of the podcast Hard Knox. Between 2007 and 2015, Amanda spent nearly four years in an Italian prison and eight years on trial for a murder she didn’t commit. She was finally acquitted of murder in 2015. She has since become an advocate for criminal justice reform and media ethics. Amanda is an Executive Producer of the 2025 mini-series The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox available on Hulu/Disney+.

Amanda will be joining Yasmine to ponder the questions: 
What does resilience actually look like? 
What does it mean to be free?
How do we live with what we can’t undo?

 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amamaknox/
X: https://x.com/amandaknox
Website: https://www.amandaknox.com

Waiting to be Heard: https://www.amandaknox.com/waiting-to-be-heard.htmlFREE: My Search for Meaning: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/amanda-knox/free/9781538770719/

Jay Solomon, author of The Iran Wars: Spy Games, Bank Battles, and the Secret Deals That Reshaped the Middle East and co-author of The Free Press report How Qatar Bought America joins Yasmine in Episode 4 of Islam and the West to discuss how Islamist governments like Qatar and Iran have spent billions of dollars infiltrating the media, education and governments in the West to control the narrative and spread their ideology.

Jay Solomon is one of the U.S.’s premier investigative journalists and writers, with a global track record that goes back nearly 30 years. He was The Wall Street Journal’s chief foreign affairs correspondent for over a decade, during which he broke some of Washington’s largest stories, such as the Obama administration’s secret cash shipments to Iran. He also served tours in the Middle East, India, and East Asia. He’s an expert on international sanctions, illicit finance, nuclear proliferation, and cyber warfare.

Jay on X: https://x.com/jaysolomon

Jay’s works:

• The Iran Wars: https://a.co/d/hoNi9nr
• 
  
  How Qatar Bought America: https://www.thefp.com/p/how-qatar-bought-america?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

In a new special series called Islam and the West, Yasmine is inviting the most brilliant minds of our time to discuss the most pressing issues of our time. These conversations help us understand the goals of Islamists in the West, who are infiltrating our governments, media and academic institutions. They also examine strategies to battle the overwhelming antisemitism and Islamism in the West.

Dalia Ziada, who serves as the Washington, D.C. Coordinator for the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), joins Yasmine in Episode 3 of Islam and the West to discuss the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists’ mission in the West today. 

Dalia Ziada is an Egyptian Muslim writer and political analyst.  She specializes in governance, geopolitics, and regional security in the Middle East. Dalia held senior positions at regional and international think tanks and civil society organizations, in Egypt, Israel, and the United States. She has led projects, advised policymakers, and authored articles, papers, and books analyzing the geopolitical conflicts and power relations in the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean. Since May 2024, Dalia has been visiting American university campuses, in partnership with Hillel International, lecturing on the changing geopolitics of the Middle East in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/daliaziada

X/Twitter: https://x.com/daliaziada

In a new special series called Islam and the West, Yasmine is inviting the most brilliant minds of our time to discuss the most pressing issues of our time. These conversations help us understand the goals of Islamists in the West, who are infiltrating our governments, media and academic institutions. They also examine strategies to battle the overwhelming antisemitism and Islamism in the West.

Hamed Abdel-Samad, author of Islamic Fascism, joins Yasmine in Episode 2 of Islam and the West to shed light on the Muslim Brotherhood. They will discuss their origin in Egypt, how they perfected their ideological tactics through the Middle East, and how they are using those tactics on the West today.

Hamed was born in Egypt to a Sunni Muslim Imam and became a member of the Muslim Brotherhood in his university days. A stay in a summer camp run by the Muslim Brotherhood triggered doubts, causing him to become skeptical, and eventually an atheist. He studied multiple languages as well as political science in Germany, and has worked as a scholar for most of his life. Following the publication of his book Mein Abschied vom Himmel (My Farewell from Heaven, 2009) in Egypt, a group issued a fatwa threatening Abdel-Samad and he was put under police protection. Hamed has called for an "Islam light" in Europe without sharia, jihad, "gender apartheid", proselytism, and "entitlement mentality", and has received multiple fatwas calling for his killing as he is accused of heresy in Egypt. In his latest book, Islamic Fascism (Der islamische Faschismus, 2014), Abdel-Samad describes Islam as a fascist ideology under the cover of a religion.

X: https://x.com/hamed_samad