Matthew Kaemingk:
Welcome to Zealots at the Gate, a podcast of Comment magazine. I’m Matthew Kaemingk.
Shadi Hamid:
I’m Shadi Hamid.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Together we research politics, religion, and the future of democracy at Fuller Seminary’s Mouw Institute of Faith and Public Life.
Shadi Hamid:
We are writing a book together. This podcast represents an informal space where we can talk about how to live with deep difference. Thanks so much for joining us.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Hey friends. Welcome back to Zealots at the Gate, a podcast of Comment magazine. My name is Matthew Kaemingk. My co-host is Dr. Shadi Hamid. Together we research religion, politics, and the future of democracy. We’re working on a book together and this podcast is an informal space where Shadi and I talk about how we live with deep difference and how we wrestle with the deepest questions facing us in politics and faith.
Today’s a special episode. Shadi and I were invited to Wheaton College near Chicago, Illinois recently, and we were interviewed by Dr. Alex Massad, who is a scholar of both Islam and Christianity. Dr. Massad had a number of tough questions for us, and we thought that this would make an interesting podcast episode. Dr. Massad asked us how it was that we first became friends. He asked us what it meant for us to try to share our faith with one another. Did we want to convert each other? He asked why I was trying to make Shadi a better Muslim. Why would I try to do that? And what do things like judgment and hell have to do with democratic life?
So it’s a wide-ranging conversation. Shadi and I are both pushed, and we push each other, and we’re really excited to share it with you today. We encourage you to subscribe wherever you listen on podcasts or on YouTube. You can leave us a review, and you can join the conversation and ask us more questions. The students at Wheaton had a lot of great ones, many that we couldn’t even get into. But yeah, you can send us an email at Zealots@comment.org, or you can reach out to us on Twitter, or I suppose we’re calling it X now, and the hashtag is #zealotspod. Enjoy the show.
Alexander Massad:
Welcome, everybody, to this first live recording of Zealots at the Gates here at Wheaton College. We are really, really excited to be able to host this event. We’re thankful for Neighbourly Faith, Wheaton College, Comment Magazine, Dr. Shadi Hamid, Dr. Matthew Kaemingk, the Business Econ Department, Bible Theological Studies Department, and many, many others. As you could tell, many groups and people wanted this to happen. And so we are very grateful and thankful to be able to have this discussion here tonight.
So I’m going to do my best to try to do the introductions as they would do on their podcasts. I’m not a seasoned podcaster. I’m a seasoned podcast listener, particularly while cooking. So I might just imagine I’m cooking a filet mignon in my head, and this will go more smoothly.
So Dr. Shadi Hamid is a columnist and editorial board member at the Washington Post and an assistant research professor at Fuller Theological Seminary. Dr. Matthew Kaemingk is the Richard J. Mouw Assistant Professor of Faith in Life at Fuller Theological Seminary, where he also directs the Richard J. Mouw Institute of Faith and Public Life. Now they frequently introduce themselves in their podcasts as two people who should not be friends. Matt is a Christian, Shadi is a Muslim. Matt is a theologian, Shadi is a political scientist. Matt’s conservative, Shadi is progressive-ish. Matt grew up in the countryside in Washington State. Shadi grew up an East Coast urbanite.
Matthew Kaemingk:
He’s an elite.
Alexander Massad:
Sorry, elite. Elites. Sorry, elites. Don’t want to undermine your status there. Okay.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Whereas I’m a man of the people.
Alexander Massad:
Yes, the hoi polloi. Yeah. Matt is white. Shadi is, as he says, brownish. However, I told him I actually take a little issue with the introduction that they shouldn’t be friends. In fact, I think because of these things, they should be friends. They should be friends because they are different, and it is the differences that they should be friends. I have a very beloved mentor of mine, Dr. Abdulaziz Sachedina, who was at UVA. I believe he’s at George Mason now. He said, “We’ve built weak bridges built on similarities. We need to build stronger bridges based off of our differences.”
And I’m very excited to have both of you here today because your friendship is a great way to show how we can build stronger bridges because of our differences and not despite of our differences. And so I think this is a great blessing for our community, a great blessing hopefully for those who get to listen to your podcast, of which there are two seasons, correct?
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah, now we’re into three.
Alexander Massad:
Now starting three.
Matthew Kaemingk:
So getting it started.
Alexander Massad:
Yeah. And so we’ve also decided to have this at Wheaton College for a couple of reasons. So one, having a live audience I think creates a nice dynamic. But also having an audience of students who are rooted in their faith tradition, who are seeking to go out and engage a world that is diverse, a world that is religiously plural, and having role models to be able to look to and see what does it look like to truly engage the world as people who are committed to their faith traditions but also concerned for the flourishing of our society, our communities, and the world as a whole.
And so really, I think this is what I’m really hoping to get out of our conversation tonight. So normally the script is flipped. Matt and Shadi are normally interviewing somebody, so I will be interviewing them and kind of prodding them with questions. They’ve asked me to be very, very provocative. So I will do my best to stir the pot.
Shadi Hamid:
Great.
Alexander Massad:
But for most of us in the audience, they might not have heard how y’all met. So I’m going to start with an easy question. How did y’all meet, and how did y’all become friends?
Matthew Kaemingk:
So I was a desperate first-time author looking for someone to blurb my book who was very important, someone who had far more Twitter followers than me. And Shadi was pointed out to me as a number of people thinking about issues of Muslim-Christian faith and politics as someone that would be interested in my new book and suggested that I send along a copy of it. So I just cold call sent the book over to Shadi, and he picked it up.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. So I read it. It’s really good. But we were just kind of professional acquaintances at that point, people who read each other’s work, maybe give some feedback. I think our friendship really started to blossom the first event that we did together in DC, and we got to know each other better. But we were on this panel with a Muslim woman and another Christian. And the Muslim woman, a very nice person, but maybe just she had a different approach to things than I did. But she was talking… She kind of ran out of patience with our discussion because Matt likes to talk about deep difference. We care about deep difference. But at some point, she said basically, “Hey, let’s not overstate these differences. We all basically want the same thing. We all believe in the same God.” I know that’s a controversial issue here at Wheaton. And that basically we’re the same. So why don’t we focus more on what brings us together than these so-called differences.
And I’m not a big fan of that discourse. So I know Matt wanted to kind of step in and say, “Actually, I’m a Christian, and that makes me different.” But I kind of spoke on his behalf in a way, and I said, “Listen, he’s Christian. He believes in things that we don’t as Muslims. He believes in the Trinity. He believes that Jesus Christ is his Lord and Saviour. He believes that Jesus died for his sins. Those are some pretty substantive differences that shouldn’t just be papered over or pushed to the side.” And I felt almost like I had to defend Matt and his faith as a Muslim and say, “Listen, let’s not soft-pedal this. This is a very real and deep thing for Matt, as far as I can tell as someone who’s engaged with him on these topics.”
And I think that led to a kind of meeting of the minds in a way that we both felt very strongly about the other’s faith in this kind of counterintuitive way. And then since then, we’ve encouraged each other to be more true to our faiths. I don’t know if that’s how you would describe it, Matt.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah.
Shadi Hamid:
But maybe this isn’t Matt’s intent, but maybe he would’ve preferred a different end result. But in some ways, I think Matt has made me a better Muslim. He’s made me want to reconnect more deeply with aspects of my own faith tradition. And he pushes me not to just be some kind of soft, wishy-washy liberal that you might find in a lot of parts of the US. And kind of like, “Lean into your Islam, Shadi. You’re a Muslim. Own it. Act like it. And don’t be this kind of above-the-fray liberal.”
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. So the beautiful irony of that exchange was she was trying to build a bridge to me with a commonness that I didn’t accept. And he built a bridge to me of taking my difference seriously. So he honoured the Christian faith by saying, “No, they’re making some very distinct claims, and we need to honour the Christian faith by taking its strangeness seriously. The cross of Jesus is a very strange thing. And let’s not just call it this nice loving act. I mean, it’s a bloody mess, quite literally. And so let’s not call this all unity.” And so the connection there was not through our commonness but through our difference.
Shadi Hamid:
And I should also say that I wrote a book about how Islam is fundamentally different than other faiths. So that kind of already made me inclined in this direction. I’ve always felt that Islam is different, and I like that it’s different. That’s one of the reasons I’m Muslim, and I’m proud to be Muslim. I don’t want it to be interchangeable with other faiths. Actually, I’m not sure if any of you’ll remember this, but it was from Bill Maher’s show, probably 2014, 2015. And it just really stuck with me because basically, Sam Harris, the new atheist philosopher, was criticising Islam in various ways. And then Ben Affleck is there.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Noted expert on Islam.
Shadi Hamid:
On Islam, exactly.
Alexander Massad:
He’s a great theologian, Ben Affleck.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yes.
Shadi Hamid:
But Ben Affleck felt very defensive about Islam, and he was pushing back against Sam Harris and saying… He was defending our honour on television, which was quite rare at that time. We, as Muslims, still hadn’t really entered into the cultural mainstream the way we would later do during the Trump years. So it was very refreshing for a lot of us young American Muslims to see one of the world’s most famous actors defending us live. But the way he did it also kind of made me uncomfortable in a way that stuck with me afterwards. So I was kind of torn. But basically, he did a version of we all want the same thing. We all believe in the same thing. But he also added a kind of twist to it where he said something like, “Muslims want to eat sandwiches too.” I swear.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Sandwiches bring us all together.
Shadi Hamid:
Sandwiches bring us all together. I’m like, yes, that is true. Muslims do like sandwiches. But there was just something so… It didn’t sit well with me because you should be able to defend the honour of people even if they don’t eat the same sandwiches as you. That’s not what’s at stake here. It’s something deeper, and we should defend each other and the dignity of each and every human individual even if there are profound differences. We shouldn’t always have to feel that the way we bring people together is through the emphasis on sameness. Because what if we find out in the end that we’re not all the same? And I think that we’re realising as a country increasingly in recent years that forget about Muslims, Christians, Jews, whatever. We, as Americans, are not all the same. We have foundational divides that are tearing us apart, and that’s not going to change in my view. That is a kind of permanent feature of American life now. So I think the question of how we contend with deep division is really at the heart of what we should be thinking about as Americans now.
Alexander Massad:
I like your story and the fact that Matt and Shadi, both of y’all, are defending each other’s distinctiveness in your faith traditions. And it got me wondering, so in the Christian tradition, we have missions, evangelism. In the Muslim tradition, you have Dawah, calling to faith. And so what is the relationship between the importance of defending somebody else’s faith difference in relation to each of our respective traditions’ impetus to also call the other to our own faith? So there’s something important that both of y’all…
Shadi Hamid:
There’s a tension there.
Alexander Massad:
Yeah. So it’s something important that both of y’all see in the need to defend Shadi’s right to be a Muslim and Matt’s right to be a Christian and the right to be different. But also, our own internal traditions kind of impel us to want to call out to follow this belief that we have that we think is going to transform the world. So how do you balance that tension, those differences? Or maybe they’re not tensions, maybe they feed into each other.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Right. So I’ll start first because really into evangelism. So as an evangelical, we have this phrase of earning the right to be heard. And what that means for evangelicals is if you live a very ethical life and you’re kind to people, you will earn the right to tell them about Jesus. And there’s a logic to that that I can accept and I can see. But as an ethics professor, I want to say actually, I demonstrate hospitality to Shadi and to other people in my life who are different from me simply because Jesus demonstrated hospitality to me and he purchased me for a life of hospitality. So I have to do that no matter if that leads to evangelism or not.
So yeah, I think that one thing that’s been helpful for me in thinking about this as a Christian is, number one, people don’t save people. So I’m not going to save anyone. In my entire life, I will never save a person. Only God saves people. So that relieves a lot of burden on me to run around converting people because that’s not my job. But I am commanded to witness, to share what God has done for me. And that’s happened multiple times in Shadi and I’s relationship, where we’ll be talking about some political issue or even some personal issue like a relationship or a friendship or some kind of family issue. And we’re talking back and forth. And then we get to this point where I go like, Shadi will ask me a hard question and I just go, “I’m sorry, man. I just have to quote Jesus now.” And I get to that point where I just have to witness to that. But that’s different from ever believing that it’s my job to save someone. So that kind of relaxes me a bit. Is that kind what you’re picking at there?
Alexander Massad:
A little bit?
Matthew Kaemingk:
A little bit.
Shadi Hamid:
I can dive into it more, and you can tell us…
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah, you want to jump into that?
Shadi Hamid:
… what you think.
Alexander Massad:
Sure, go ahead. Yeah.
Shadi Hamid:
My view on this is maybe a bit controversial, probably both for Christians and many Muslims. It is my view, and I don’t claim to represent Muslims or Islam. But I have to say, okay, I think this actually happened in Wheaton the last time we were here in 2019, where someone in the crowd…
Matthew Kaemingk:
No, this was at the University of Minnesota.
Shadi Hamid:
Oh, okay. Yeah.
Matthew Kaemingk:
And this ticked me off when you did this. No, here’s the thing. I talked about how I wanted to tell him about Jesus. And Shadi basically said, “I don’t really want to convert Matt.” And I felt left out.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah, okay. Yeah. Let me clarify. Yeah, exactly.
Matthew Kaemingk:
So do your thing.
Shadi Hamid:
Look, I think there is an interest…
Matthew Kaemingk:
You don’t want me to be a part of your club.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So look…
Alexander Massad:
He’s part of the elite system.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah, he’s part of the elite Muslims.
Shadi Hamid:
Okay. So Matt, as an evangelical, as far as I understand it, would prefer that I become Christian. And it’s worth saying that there’s nothing to be ashamed about there. But I think that for a lot of us, when we hear… The first time it was clear to me that Matt would prefer me to be Christian, I was a little bit taken aback and surprised because we hadn’t talked about it explicitly. And it came up…
Matthew Kaemingk:
On stage.
Shadi Hamid:
… in response to an audience question. And I was hearing Matt saying that he would want me to be Christian. I was like, oh, what did I get myself into here in this friendship? But I don’t actually want to convert Matt to Islam. So this is actually one of the areas where there is a little bit of an imbalance. And there are many Muslims who would say that they would want Matt to become Muslim, but for complex reasons that we don’t have to get into in a lot of detail, that’s not how I feel about Christians. I mean, for one, there’s the very personal aspect that let’s say Matt hypothetically did convert to Islam. I do worry that it would ruin his life. Not because Islam is bad, but because he’d have to probably get divorced from his wife. That would cause… How would that work with the kids and what religion that they would be raised in?
Matthew Kaemingk:
It would be hard on my career as an evangelical theologian.
Shadi Hamid:
That too. Yeah, he’d lose his job at Fuller Seminary. So there would be major complications. It would be such a massive life shift for him. And I feel like Matt is doing great things in the way that he is now. And would I really want to be the cause of putting all of this into question? So there is a personal element here is I’m just… That’s just not something I’m interested in seeing. But I think also there is a strand in at least a contemporary Islamic tradition, if I can call it that, or especially I would say 20th century Muslim intellectuals that have really emphasised salvific inclusivity. The idea that you don’t have to be Muslim to necessarily get into heaven. So the question of salvation is obviously an important one for both of our faiths. And it is also worth noting that in the Islamic tradition, Christians and Jews are people of the book. So there is a kind of honour and a kind of higher level, let’s say, for other monotheists in that regard.
So for that reason, there’s less of this pressure on me to think, well, if Matt doesn’t become Muslim, then this could affect him for the rest of eternity or something to that effect. That’s just not something that I believe. And also perhaps more personal and maybe controversial view is, and we were talking about this over dinner just earlier, I don’t actually think theological error is the worst thing in the world. I know Matt is pursuing the truth as he sees it in good faith, he’s trying his best to ascertain what is true to him. And that to me is not something that you would punish someone over in the hereafter. Again, God is the only judge in the end, and it’s not for us to say ultimately. But for me, the fact that salvation is not really… I’m not super concerned about that for Matt. I feel less pressure to bring him over to my side, if you will, if that makes sense.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. One of the things Shadi’s talked about is in Islamic tradition, there is a certain teaching that God honours the person who is earnestly seeking him, even if they’re making a mistake. So even if they have the wrong theological ideas, they still get some reward for that.
Alexander Massad:
The mujtahid that tries and gets it right gets two.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah, exactly.
Alexander Massad:
And the mujtahid…
Shadi Hamid:
Exactly. That’s in a little bit of a different context, but…
Alexander Massad:
Yeah, Christians might not be mujtahids.
Matthew Kaemingk:
So if you get a B minus in your theology class, Shadi’s okay with you, you’re okay.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. But also, I mean, not to dwell on this too much, but there’s also an interesting debate within Islam about what does it mean for someone to be fully exposed to the message of Islam? And especially now with all the negative perceptions and the association with extremism and all the things that we see on the news, it is relatively rare for a Christian or a Jew or anyone else to actually be exposed to what we would consider to be the full, true message. And I don’t think that I would convert if I wasn’t already Muslim.
Also, the religion of our birth is usually the one that we stay with. We know this empirically that the vast majority of us will not change faiths. It’s a big thing to ask someone to convert. So I tend to think that we end up staying in the faiths that we’re born into, and there is a kind of contingency there that it could have been different if I was born with the same genetic makeup but to parents who were of a different faith, then I would probably be of that faith.
Alexander Massad:
I’m going to push on this point of being rooted in a different faith tradition. I’m going to move into the political discussion a little bit more. So as I’ve been reading some Palestinian theologians, one of them talks about how in times of crises, people tend to look for a saviour figure. So who can get us out of this crisis? And generally, people will tend to look at a politician or a political movement.
However, Christians and Muslims believe that this salvation has already occurred. So for Christians, it’s in Jesus Christ, in the gospel that this has already happened. We don’t need to find a political saviour figure because we have the salvation in the person of Jesus Christ, death, resurrection, the gospel, and arguably, Muslims as well believe that God has given salvation of guidance in the Prophet Muhammad in the Quran. And so if Christians and Muslims, in facing a crisis together, so American Christians and American Muslims are both looking out into this political milieu crisis, and Christians go to the gospels and to Jesus as this is the salvation, God has given us, this is the resource from which we need to derive answers. And Muslims go to the Muhammad and the Quran, this is the resource from which we go to derive answers. How can we build societies when we have two fundamental different resources that we go to in order to answer our perceived crises?
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. How can we build societies when we have different..?
Alexander Massad:
Different fundamental resources, especially societies that are mutually affirming to one another without kind of cannibalising the other, just kind of dominating.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Right? So I think, first of all, America is a pluralistic country with deeply diverse religions, cultures, worldviews, ideologies churning throughout it. So that is simply a fact of life. The next fact is we have to find a way to live with one another. Third, there will be no uniting ideology for America. Many people have tried to unite America and assimilate all of these diverse communities into one. That’s not coming anytime soon. And so the question that’s facing Christians and Muslims and atheists and Buddhists and Jews within America is, what resources do you have to make space for others? What resources do you have to avoid idolising a political leader? Or on the other side, I would say that a big political issue for America is catastrophising, sort of believing this is our last election, or this is the most important election of my lifetime.
Shadi Hamid:
Which can’t be factually accurate each time.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah.
Shadi Hamid:
There’s one most important election of your lifetime.
Matthew Kaemingk:
You can only be right once. And so, within Christianity, there’s two core resources. You pointed to one that salvation’s already occurred. So I’m not allowed to look for salvation in politics or a political leader or a political ideology. Furthermore, I’m not allowed to catastrophise. I’m not allowed to say the world is coming to an end because that’s not my role as a Christian. I believe that someone else is going to announce the end of the world, and it’s not me. And so political worship and political catastrophising are out of bounds for us as Christians. We have theological resources to draw on. But in a pluralistic society, people who are not Christians are going to have to find their own resources for that. And so, when I ask Shadi, how do you as a Muslim avoid catastrophising? How do you as a Muslim avoid making a God out of a political party or a political whatever, a political mantra that sort of identifies you? And that’s a question we as Americans have to ask one another is, how are you going to do this? And so my fellow Christians are being asked that. But everyone is, I would say.
Shadi Hamid:
I think what both of us have in our faith traditions, obviously in different ways, but I think that the impulse is a similar one is the idea of delayed judgment or suspended judgment. And this is one area where are the kind of authors and theologians and readings that Matt has introduced me to in the Christian tradition have really had a major impact on me. I don’t know how many of you here are Kuyperians.
But Abraham Kuyper, we have a joke that I’m the first or second Muslim Kuyperian, but I actually found there was something so refreshing about reading Kuyper’s work because it just really spoke to me. I think these are things that I was already inclined to. But it’s an amazing thing when you’re reading and the author is giving you a language that you always knew was there, but it just had to come out and they just push you in this direction. Even though our conception of sin in Islam is different, there was some that really appealed to me about Kuyper’s emphasis… And this is Abraham Kuyper, the Dutch theologian, former prime minister of the Netherlands in the late 19th, early 20th century. And this idea of being broken by sin and the inherent imperfection of this world and that perfection is only possible with Christ.
And until then, we have to kind of contend with the fragility infinitude of human existence in all of its flaws and faults and to not be afraid to acknowledge those flaws and being this brokenness and all this really appealed to me because we don’t really have so much the language of brokenness in Islam in the same way that Christians do. But what it also means is that we can wait. That because there is a brokenness in this temporal world, we don’t have to be in a rush to impose our will on the imperfect world and the true and final judgment will come in the next life.
And that gives us at least in theory a chance to let go and to chill in a way that I think has become very difficult for secular people. Because if you’re a secularly-minded person, there’s going to be a lot of pressure on you to find solutions and to find definitive judgments in the here and now. And this is where you see a kind of utopianism in secular ideologies because that’s all they have. There is no real mechanism to suspend judgment because there isn’t anything that you take for granted as being in the next life. And many followers of secular ideologies might not even be sure that there’s a next life. So I think that’s a real powerful resource that we have as monotheists who believe in an afterlife is that we shouldn’t put too heavy a burden on this life because it’s a burden that this life can’t carry.
Alexander Massad:
As you all were talking, I was thinking, what is something that… This is a question for each of you independently. So let’s say I’m a secular American, and I want to engage in public discourse. I want to be more amenable to different positions. I want to be able to affirm the differences between your traditions without collapsing into the kumbaya interfaith dialogue that Shadi, you love so much. He does not like it. So what is something in particular? What is something Shadi that the Islamic tradition can teach me that Matt’s Christian tradition cannot, and vice versa? And Matt, what is something in the Christian tradition that can teach me, a secular American, that the Islamic tradition cannot and being a participant in this public discourse?
Matthew Kaemingk:
Nice.
Alexander Massad:
That’s just warming you up.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. Do you want to start on that?
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah, so years ago, when we were first becoming friends, Shadi took the time to read the book of Galatians. And for those of you who don’t know, the book of Galatians is in the New Testament, written by Paul, in which he’s talking about the dynamics between God’s law and God’s grace. And this was disruptive for Shadi to read, trying to understand how God can be both just and merciful, and how does that fit together? And if God just forgives you, why not just enjoy your life? What possible reason could you have to not do bad things?
We had a wonderful and rich discussion, but it’s all to say that like grace, mercy in the person of Jesus. I think as Christians, one thing that we experience is this sense of being in Christ. That concept is not in Islam that you are in God and God is in you, and you walk with God, and he’s in you, and you’re held by him in a very gracious and merciful way. And so to be in Jesus, to be clothed in Jesus, I think that’s a pretty confusing and disruptive thing for a Muslim to hear, right? That you could be clothed in God’s body. And so that’s a very strange thing.
Now, what on earth would that have to say about for a secular person? I think one of the parts about being an American citizen that American citizens struggle with quite a lot is identity and feeling fragile and feeling in danger, feeling alone, disempowered. And when we feel fragile or contingent, we can lash out in a variety of ways, or we can engage in a fight or a flight mentality. My identity has been confronted by this political leader or this whatever, and so my identity is in danger, so I will either fight or I will run away.
Well, I would say that one of the things that Christianity has to offer citizens is this picture of Jesus when he’s being arrested, that there’s fighting, there’s shouting, there’s clubs and spears. It’s a moment of chaos. And some of the disciples want to fight, and some of them want to run away. And in that moment, Jesus reaches out an unarmed hand, and he heals. And I would say one of the strange things that Christianity has to offer that I don’t see in Islam is that kind of an intimate, vulnerable relationship with God that, okay, in this moment of fear and anxiety, I can’t be generous. I can’t be hospitable to this terrible person, but in and through Christ, I can be.
And that’s a weird thing that is, I think, distinct to Christians and might not have an analogy quite in Islam. I don’t know. We’ve never talked about this.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah, I think that’s definitely distinctive.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Okay, good. That’s weird. Yeah. What do you got, man?
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah, yeah. So it’s a tough one. I’ll say a couple of things. One is that I think Islam has proven, and some might actually see this as a negative thing about Islam, but I’ll just put it out there. I think it really does speak to our moment in America where we really feel the pressure of rapid secularisation. That year by year, it seems like church, mosque, synagogue attendance, and just belief in actual traditions has declined precipitously. And it’s happened mostly in the last 25 years or so, where for the better part of the 20th century, church membership was hovering at around 70 to 75%. And in 2020, for the first time, it dropped below 50%. That’s a massive drop in a very short period of time.
I do have a very deep appreciation for Islam’s resistance to secularisation. It’s kind of… It’s stubborn. It’s stubborn, it has a stubbornness. I wouldn’t want to really… You don’t want to be too stubborn, of course. But some stubbornness, I think, can actually be well alluded to the times where there is this just non-stop pressure to bend and to accept liberal modernity and all of its attendant facets. I think Islam does give very strong resources for resisting that, in part because it emphasises law.
It has a strong legal component that’s by design just simply there in Christianity. And I think Christians see that as a positive thing. And one, I just cited this verse from Galatians over dinner. It’s like one of my favourite verses because I think it captures something that I find very strange and powerful about Christianity, but it’s also not something I particularly like.
So that it adds a kind of twist to it. I get why it’s very compelling to other people, and that’s okay. We have to be willing to say, look, Christians like this. I’m not sure if I’m into it. But anyway, Paul in Galatians says, “God redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.” That’s a radical idea, right? Wow. There’s something really incredible there. But the idea that, but no, yeah, I get the idea that you can sort of, and forgive me if I’m not using the right phraseology here, but in a sense almost transcend the law or that there’s a kind of deeper law that almost supersedes the old law, however you want to put it. That makes me a little bit nervous.
Because I think the law gives us a set of tools to hold on to who we are in very difficult times because the law, at least in a certain sense, is unchanging, and it’s tied to a tradition that has been developed over centuries. There’s the four schools of law in the Islamic tradition and so forth. So that’s one thing that stands out to me as if you want to resist secularisation, assuming you do. Not everyone does. There’s something there. And this is maybe related to, which is the power of ritual in Islam, that there are things that you do every single day that everyone else is doing in the exact same way. I think a lot of Americans, again, it doesn’t have to be these rituals. You can find your own daily rituals in other ways, but I think there is something about ritual that it binds us to a different kind of reality, and it allows us to kind of take a step back at certain parts of a day.
So the five daily prayers, I think, are really powerful example of this. And there’s a set structure to them. You do the same thing every day, and there are some minor variations, but the structure is the same. And I think fasting, too, is another very exacting and difficult ritual in Islam that people are always like, “Well, you can’t drink water, too, for 30 days from sunrise to sunset?” And I think you need to have these strong rituals to be able to be different. Those accentuate our difference in a way that I think is even more striking in the modern period where you don’t really ask people to give up a lot of their day or to fast in a very intense kind of manner. And those things, I think, are strong reminders of what religion can offer us in times where we’re always under pressure to kind of bend to the latest trends or to just give up on who we are.
Matthew Kaemingk:
And when Shadi’s fasting during Ramadan, sometimes he can be a little cranky, but I feel like our conversations are actually much richer because his hunger, his literal hunger, is impacting and making him even more thoughtful about and more reflective about his life, his faith, his politics, and his relationship with other people in Washington, D.C., who no one else is fasting in your circle. And so you’re suddenly very aware of your strangeness and having to reflect on who am I? And then Shadi and I think our podcast discussions during and after Ramadan have an edge to them that’s helpful. And I think we as American citizens, we need people who are more reflective on what is most important to them. And I think by and large, American citizens are not very reflective on those base level assumptions about what life is for.
Shadi Hamid:
And I’ll just add one thing because Matt really helped me with this. Sometimes, I’m going to be honest, I don’t always love every part of Islam in the moment. Sometimes you’re like, “Oh my God, I really have to do this?” I’m sure there’s probably parallels in Christianity where sometimes you’re just like, “I don’t feel like doing this, and I just want to…” Oh man, Christianity’s awesome. I guess you guys don’t have anything like that. But fasting has been very difficult for me. And as Matt said, when you’re living as a minority and everyone else is being productive, and I’m someone who’s ambitious, and I’m living in a city where people are always striving, you almost feel like you’re doing a unilateral disarmament if you’re fasting and almost no one else is. And you start to worry, “Wait, am I going to be like 40% less productive than my peers?” And so sometimes Matt would sense a kind of resentment. So instead of actually taking a step back and trying to see the best of what our tradition of fasting offers, I was like, “Oh, I have to do this. It’s an obligation that’s actually putting me back, and I’m getting behind.” And Matt said this very clear to me in a way that hit me, and I’ve actually been reorienting my fast as a result.
He said, “Shadi, you have to stop thinking about this in terms of productivity. God doesn’t need you to be productive all the time. In fact, the point of Ramadan is to accept your lack of productivity and to embrace that and to ease into that. It’s not something to resist. You shouldn’t be trying to reorganise your fasting day so that you’re sleeping at weird hours of the day so that you’re working all throughout the night with coffee and then basically cheating in a way. No, it’s okay to not be productive. The world will not fall apart if you write a couple less articles in one month.” And that is actually, I think it might seem obvious to all of you, being kind of faithful Christians as far as I can tell, not to be presumptuous or anything, but I think for those of us who maybe struggle with our faith a little bit more, there can be this give and take and a kind of resentment that builds. We’re still believers, but we’re not thrilled about being believers all the time. And I think we have to reorient how we understand what our faith can offer, and I’m going to have to accept being less productive, and that gives me an entry point to become closer to God because other things are more important.
Matthew Kaemingk:
So we’re here. So I was just speaking in a business class today where they were talking about Sabbath and Sabbath rest, and basically everyone in the class was like, “Yeah, I don’t like Sabbath. I don’t want to rest. I want to be productive.” And just here in this interaction over Ramadan that caused me to reflect, watching Shadi struggle with Ramadan and with fasting and wanting to be productive, it convicted me about my breaking of the fourth commandment and Sabbath. And that wasn’t Shadi’s intention to help me become better at Sabbath. But that comes through in that interaction.
Alexander Massad:
We’re in the season of Lent now in the church calendar, and I think Shadi gave a wonderful Lenten sermon.
Matthew Kaemingk:
That was great.
Shadi Hamid:
Thanks, guys.
Alexander Massad:
Yeah, this is your first sermon here live on stage. It was wonderful. But no, honestly, that’s something that was very powerful for me from the Muslim tradition, living with my Muslim friends in Jordan and being there during Ramadan and being challenged with having to think differently about the point of my life instead of being in academia or whatever we’re striving for where you produce, produce, produce, produce, and being fundamentally reoriented. I think it’s a really good lesson for not only us on stage, but especially for students, of whom we demand a lot. We have multiple events always on campus. There are professors who make them come to these events. They’re just so much demanded, and they’re going to go into a world that’s just going to demand more and more and more of them.
I really like the idea that I see in Ramadan that I think is a really good reminder for Christians that fasting is a pushback against the world’s demands on us.
Shadi Hamid:
Yes. Yes.
Alexander Massad:
And it says, “We are not the world’s, we are God’s, and I’m doing this even though it’s tough.” I think that’s something that’s really hard for Protestants especially, to do things that are tough because we don’t have these like, you have to pray five times a day. If you miss a prayer, then that’s actually an error, and that can get counted against … “I missed today. I’ll do better tomorrow. I’m going to really try in Lent. I’m going to pray three times a day. I’m going to read my Bible more,” but doesn’t have that same kind of impelling. It’s something that I think is really …
Shadi Hamid:
Because we get literal sins. If we miss a prayer, it means that you’re incurring a sin. It’s not a trifle to be taken lightly. I mean, if you miss prayers here and there, but if you just don’t pray, then that’s a serious thing because then you’re just getting constant accumulation of sins.
But I think there’s a lesson here also for secular folks who don’t even have a faith tradition, not that there’s any here, but because other people listen to the podcast. But basically, I think that one thing I’ve realised more and more as I’ve gotten older is work and productivity and worldly success isn’t going to make you happy. It makes very few people happy the way they think it will, and they only realise that too late.
Some people don’t realise it at all. Sometimes they’re, God forbid, on their deathbed and they’re like, “Wow.” You know? And you might’ve heard something to this effect, that people on their deathbed never regret like, “Oh, I should have done more work. I should have put more hours in the office.” No one is thinking that in their last days and last hours. They are, however, thinking, “I could have spent more time with my loved ones, been more involved in my community, been doing things that offer goodness to the world and to the people around me and to the people I care about.” That’s what people regret.
I think that religion allows us to come to these conclusions maybe a little bit more straightforwardly or quickly because we’re told it directly, but even we get lost. We’re in an environment in which it’s very easy to lose ourselves. I think it would be great if more and more Americans can realise in this time of despair, and we hear about this, the epidemic of loneliness, the deaths of despair, suicidal ideation being the highest it’s ever been among young Americans. We are really facing a crisis of meaning.
And you don’t have to believe in our exact faith traditions to kind of reorient your own life and to decide that you’re going to live differently for just happiness, just to be happy and more content. We don’t normally maybe think of religion as being the path to happiness. I think oftentimes people see religion as being very austere and unforgiving, and people are kind of grimacing all the time. Maybe not Christians, I don’t know. I’m sure some Christians grimace, but yeah.
Alexander Massad:
Yeah. So I’m going to take a moment. We’re going to take questions in a few minutes. So if you all can take your phones out and there’s a QR code up there. So you can scan the QR code, type in the question through Slido, I will go in and then pick the most deserving of questions. If you were in my class, you do not get extra credit, but I’ll be very proud of the anonymous person whose question I will ask.
So yeah, please upload these and start asking a few questions. I’m going to talk a little, ask a few more questions just to give y’all some time to populate the question list, and then I’ll turn to questions a little bit after that.
So one of the things that really struck me again, as y’all are talking, is how in each of your interactions, and this is circling back to a conversation we had a little bit earlier. Each of your interactions, both of you found yourselves being pushed deeper into your respective traditions.
I’m going to say this phrase, and I’ll explain. Is that a failure? In other words, if Matt, as a Christian, who wants Shadi to follow Jesus, is it a failure in some sense, or is there an error, or is it not something to celebrate if Shadi becomes more Muslim or vice versa?
I know, Shadi, you don’t want Matt to become a Muslim, but is there something where if Matt is getting pushed more into a Christian tradition because of the things that you’re talking about and thus getting away from maybe the teachings of the Quran? So we talked about how believing in the Trinity is not something that aligns with Quranic teachings, right?
So is there something … How is pushing each other into your respective traditions, is that something to be celebrated? Is that something to … I don’t know. How do you think about that? Because again…
Shadi Hamid:
I’d be really curious how Matt would respond to this. I’m actually not sure exactly how he would answer this.
Matthew Kaemingk:
I think you should talk first.
Shadi Hamid:
Okay. Sure, sure. I’ll give you a second to gather your thoughts, but it is worth noting. Matt did allude to this, but I think it’s really fascinating that Matt is bothered by the fact that I don’t want him to be Muslim. I think it’s a really interesting thing to reflect on that if I found the truth, wouldn’t it make sense to want to share that truth with a dear friend? If you care about someone, you want to share the good word.
So I think it’s really cool that Matt, in a sense, wants me to want to convert him to Islam. That’s what true … There’s something really powerful about that. That’s what true friendship is in a way.
Alexander Massad:
But to some degree, you are explaining your Muslim faith to Matt, and in the process of doing so, you’re teaching Matt about Islam.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. So in that sense, this I take to be a success. Matt knows more about Islam now than he did five years ago. I think he’s, if I can use this word, more sympathetic to aspects of Islam because he’s seen them up close.
That’s probably good to have more people who are sympathetic towards Islam, but in the end, I think that my own sense is, and I think this is what Matt might say, a version of this he did earlier, that in the end, we do the best that we can. That we try our best to share whatever we think is most useful to the people we care about, and then the rest is up to God.
We’re not the ones who are going to kind of close the gap or make someone convert. In the end, that is God’s will, and God guides those whom he wills. I think being able to separate our own agency from that of God’s is important here because, again, as Matt was saying earlier, it does seem like a lot of pressure to put on yourself if you’re going around trying to convert a lot of people on a somewhat regular basis.
That means that every interaction you have with someone that you care about, a friend or an acquaintance, is going to be fraught with this kind of existential tension. And to kind of acknowledge that that can only come from God, I think, is important.
We have a Hadith that you guys know I like to mention a lot. It does really resonate with me, especially in times of difficulty and crisis, whether personal or political, that trust your … It has to do with a camel, but basically, it’s that tie your camel and then trust in God.
The idea there, and you just got to think about seventh century Arabia here, so you have to kind of make a little bit of a jump here with me. But basically, you can’t just leave your camel there and be like, “Well, God will take care of it,” because you’re not being responsible. God wants you to take the first step and make sure you’re doing your due diligence. You got to actually tie the camel, and that takes effort, and you got to be intentional about that.
But then after you leave the camel, someone else might very well come and cut the rope, and then the camel will kind of … I was going to say gallop, but camels don’t gallop. I guess they just move very slowly away from the tree.
Alexander Massad:
They run, they run. They have two knees. They can…
Shadi Hamid:
Oh yeah. I guess they do run. They do run.
Alexander Massad:
… camel races, and yeah.
Matthew Kaemingk:
They lope.
Alexander Massad:
They lope, yeah.
Shadi Hamid:
Alex knows clearly more about camels than I do.
Alexander Massad:
I have been to a number of camel auctions in Saudi Arabia. So yeah.
Shadi Hamid:
There you go. But there is something very powerful about, and it goes back to our theme of learning to let go. You’ve done the best you could do under the circumstances. Other people have their own agency. There is something, I think, liberating about that idea. I think that does relate to some of these questions about whether someone else becomes the religion we want them to be.
Matt is doing the best he can to show the beauty that he sees in his faith. I don’t think he’s cutting corners. I think the way he talks about it is very powerful, but he can’t control how I’m going to react to that and whether I’m going to find it as beautiful or compelling as he does.
Matthew Kaemingk:
So in relation to your question, the fact that Shadi and I have actually become more intense in our Islamic and Christian faith as a potential failure, I want to give two different answers to that. One is a big political response, but the other is sort of the personal.
So politically speaking, I don’t view deep difference in America as a problem to be solved. I don’t think of religious difference, cultural difference as something that I want the government to try to solve. I don’t want the state to assimilate us all into one Christian whole, Muslim Ummah, or anything else. I don’t want the state to try to solve difference.
What I want is for that difference to have the capacity for hospitality, to have the capacity for tolerance, for productive debate, and for peaceful antagonism, even to say it even stronger. I want the religious, cultural, political differences in America, those passions, to be allowed to come out in the public square and to contest each other. I don’t want the state to unite us. That’s why Joe Biden’s inaugural speech bothered me, was it was all about uniting America after January 6th. I thought, “No, we’re deeply divided. Let’s own that and talk about how we live with that division.”
Now, very differently, the personal thing about why do I encourage Shadi to be a better Muslim? Why would a Christian do that? I think that’s a cool question. I really like that. I think there’s a number of things that are going on. It’s really been more of an intuition. It wasn’t something I set out, “I’m going to try to encourage Shadi to be a better Muslim,” but I think a number of things.
One is, I think Islam is a deeper and wiser and more beautiful way of life than 21st-century postmodern individualistic consumerism, really. I don’t want Shadi to be an individualistic atheist who’s just all about Shadi. I don’t think that’s good for him. I think Islam has a more healthy way to be human. I think it offers a more healthy way to be human than shopping on Amazon all day and being a self-centred jerk who is trying to advance yourself in your career. I think that’s bad.
So I look at Islam as a reservoir of cultural wisdom. Also, I want Shadi to be talking to God every day because I think that’s going to be … If I want Shadi to talk to Jesus in a meaningful way, I want him to be praying every day. I think that’s probably a better path than if he’s numbing his soul with consumption and worldly things. It’s going to make it harder for him to respond to Jesus. So there’s that too. So there’s the political thing and then the personal thing.
Alexander Massad:
Yeah. No, I appreciate that. That’s great.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah, but also, he does the same for me, and that he pushes me to be better. So honestly, it’s a way of loving your neighbour is just pushing them to be true to the things that they say. In the Bible, we have this thing of iron sharpening iron, and he sharpens me, and I sharpen him, and sometimes it’s uncomfortable, and he doesn’t appreciate what I’m pushing him on, and I don’t always appreciate what he’s pushing me on, but I think we’ve just experienced it in our relationship, the benefits and blessing of that.
Alexander Massad:
Yeah. Well, thank you.
Shadi Hamid:
Well said. Yeah.
Alexander Massad:
Yeah. All right, so I’m going to some anonymous audience questions here. “For students who want to work in politics, Washington, D.C., or international or otherwise, what are recommendations that you would give to these students to practically navigate a career in politics with their faith?”
So Matt, of course, from a Christian tradition navigating for the students, but also Shadi, I’m particularly interested in how can our students here at Wheaton College learn from your experience as a Muslim navigating these spaces, right? So what are the unique things that your Muslim faith has taught you in navigating these spaces that our students can learn?
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah, like a young political professional moving through Washington, D.C. in their 20s and 30s. How do you draw on your faith to do that?
Alexander Massad:
Yes.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. Ooh, that’s good.
Shadi Hamid:
That is a really good question. So I do think it is different for Muslims and Christians in maybe a counterintuitive way. I think it’s actually, in some ways, easier to be a faithful Muslim in Washington, D.C. and other major urban centres because I sometimes joke about what I call brown privilege. If you’re brown, you can get away with more, which, at least in my world, seems has been my experience, that people give me more leeway because they want to be deferential to people of different colour, that sort of thing.
I guess you guys probably know about these developments. I think there’s kind of a taboo against problematising the faith of minorities. So that can apply for Orthodox Jews, for Muslims, Hindus, and so forth. I think if you’re a white Christian, people tend to look at your religion as more of a liability because it’s kind of lumped in with all these other negative things that’s part of our political and partisan debate.
So that’s just maybe just an empirical observation. I don’t think that’s a good or bad thing. But for me, I’ve found that when people know I’m religious, it’s almost a cool, exotic thing. They’re like, “Oh, tell me more about why you don’t drink or why you’re fasting.” They almost want to learn about this exotic, mysterious faith, which has actually been pretty helpful for me.
And I think part of it too is, and I think this would apply to everyone, regardless of your faith tradition, if you’re very clear about your faith commitments from the beginning, you don’t create confusion later on. So people aren’t always wondering, “Okay, why is he doing this? Why is he doing that? Is he not going to show up to happy hours and whatever?”
So I think that being very forthright and not being embarrassed or afraid to say these things upfront, that you are a person of faith and that you have certain commitments, and you can kind of see where the conversation goes after that. I think people, in a way, respect that even if they don’t agree with you, but they respect that you’re very serious about who you are and you kind of stand in your truth.
Then there is a broader question of whether you should go to D.C. or pursue a career in politics. That’s a whole different issue because I have very mixed feelings about whether that’s a good idea. So sometimes I do feel a kind of pressure because I talk to students a lot. There’s always this sort of thing about, “Should I go to D.C.? Should I go to grad school? Should I go to policy school?” and all of that.
Maybe I’ll just throw out a thought that maybe isn’t exactly the answer to your question, but it relates to the general thrust of it, which is, I think there is a real issue about ambition and how people become very ambitious at a very young age, and they want to just accomplish as much as they can. They’re always wondering, “What’s my next step? How do I achieve? How do I improve my resume?” and so on.
I think that, generally speaking, we need more students, regardless of faith, to question whether ambition is actually good, not all the time, but there can be a real cost to a constant drive to achieve and to do the next thing. I think it also relates to a broader problem with the Ivy League and what people have to go through to get into these fancy schools.
There’s a lot of cutting corners, not literally cheating. Well, there is some cheating too, but in a sense of you kind of have to keep on working nonstop from the age of 14 or 15. Then you get to your early 20s, and you finally get the good job, and then you’re just wondering, “What the heck have I been doing for the last 10 years of my life?”
I think that having that ambition to the exclusion of all else and having this set plan, I don’t think we should be encouraging our students to always have a plan. I think there’s a real value to meandering and not knowing what you want to do, and being confused, and spending time reading books. It is very different than what a lot of people get as advice from their parents or professors. It’s okay to just take a break and to not be doing things and to not be improving your resume.
To me, this is especially important for those of you who are of faith because if you’re always on the go, if you’re always trying to achieve and do the next thing, I think that it really creates difficulties in terms of how you can understand your relationship with God. You just don’t have as much time or space for those things. I don’t know. That’s just a general thought.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah, just a couple of thoughts in relation to that. One is don’t work for a political leader who wants to be worshipped and who demands to be worshipped, who wants you to follow them, who wants you to join their revolution. If a political leader starts to talk in apocalyptic terms about the end of the world, this is the last election. This is our last chance to save America. You need to run as fast as you can in the other direction because those people are demanding that you worship them and that you give your full allegiance to them. So if someone starts to talk that way, run away.
You know as Christians that you are broken. So the first person you have to suspect in any political deal or discussion is yourself. So when you enter into an environment where there’s deals being made, laws being passed, you have to say, “I am a sinner. I could be wrong. I could be missing something. I could be being taken advantage of.”
So you can’t trust yourself and you can’t trust the people around you in a way. And that kind of humility is not often practiced in politics. The final thing I would say is you have to develop a Sabbath practice. And what that means is not just taking Sunday off but having 24 hours when you say, “I am not the one who will save America. I am not the one who will save the world. I am going to leave this to God for 24 hours.”
And then I think finally in relation to your career, Shadi sort of touched on this, is Jesus says, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and everything else will be added unto you.” You need to actually trust that if you seek the kingdom of God first, your career will take care of itself. You will have enough food to eat. You will have a place to sleep. But if you have your ladder leaned up against the right building, which is the kingdom of God, you will be taken care of, but you have to put that first. So that’s what I would say.
Matthew Kaemingk:
That’s what I would say. But yeah, D.C. is not necessarily a very encouraging place for faith, but we need people of faith in those spaces. Shadi is deeply needed there.
Alexander Massad:
Thank you both. We have time for one last question. The last question I’m going to choose is, “How has your commitment to each other, given your very obvious faith differences, affected your respective families and other personal relationships?”
Shadi Hamid:
Oh, okay.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Oh, man. All right.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah, you can go ahead.
Matthew Kaemingk:
So I think in many ways, I talk about Shadi all the time with my wife. So my wife, Heather, she knows what’s going on with Shadi, and we talk through a lot of the things that I’m wrestling with. So there’s been a lot of, I think, deepening in our conversations around faith and politics because I’m constantly talking about Shadi. So Heather, she follows him on Twitter. She knows what Shadi is doing and reading and thinking. And Heather will push me on Shadi questions or conversations.
Heather and I, we have three boys, and so our dinner conversations often centre around politics and faith and stuff like that. So yeah, Shadi has been an ongoing guest in our home for a long time.
In relation to that, I think it is important, and I talk about this with Heather a lot, is not to make an idol out of Shadi because he could be wrong. And I need to not put Shadi on a pedestal. He’s a human being, and he has his own failings and foibles, and he and I disagree. And so Heather and I talk through that a lot of just like where I think Shadi is wrong or where he’s hurt me or something. Yeah. So there’s all of that. So yeah, we have a running conversation.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. My parents don’t really get involved in my personal friendships. They know I have this very cool Christian friend and whatever. But I guess they see me as someone who’s always had friendships across different divides, especially because my parents come from a pretty elite international background, and they see that as a normal thing to have friends across religions and so on.
I think it’s maybe been … I would say it’s definitely been a positive experience for my girlfriend who’s Christian and more practicing. Well, she says more practicing than me. That’s her words, not mine. But she grew up, I guess you could say, more mainline Protestant and then became evangelical in college. So she’s definitely on the more conservative side theologically. And I think it’s been a positive experience for both of us because she’s also very interested in learning about Islam, and she’s been reading a lot more about Islam and, in particular, about interfaith and Jewish-Muslim-Christian relations.
And it’s something that we can really share together, and she sees what a positive influence Matt has been in my life. I think she sees how positive it is to have a friend who you can talk to about these things, but to really have that also carry over into a romantic relationship in the sense that we can talk about our respective religions and have these very interesting conversations and debates.
Sometimes they’re tense because religion is personal, and it doesn’t always go well. So I don’t want to make it sound like it’s this perfect kumbaya experience. Sometimes you have to work through some of these difficult issues. But I think having the experience with Matt and then having that carry over into my relationship with a Christian woman has been very meaningful for me.
Alexander Massad:
Well, thank you both for that. Thank you for both your honesty. And it’s been a real pleasure for me to get to know both of you and to have you here at Wheaton College. And so thank you again for being here, and thank you to the audience for showing up and for listening and for submitting your questions. I wish I could get to more of them, but that was a really great one to end on. So thank you both. Thank you to Comment. Thank you to Neighbourly Faith, Business Econ Department, Bible and Theological Studies Department, and many, many others. So thank you again.
Shadi Hamid:
Thank you all.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Thank you all.
