Swimming Against the Secular Stream

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Swimming Against the Secular Stream

April 12, 2023

1hr 8min

Ramadan isn’t going great for Shadi Hamid. Fasting in a secular city is hard. Everyone else is running around being productive and well-fed while Shadi’s feeling sluggish, hungry, and tired. Shadi’s discouragement with Ramadan kicks off a broader conversation with Matthew Kaemingk on the struggles both Christians and Muslims face in secular cultures. Is faith *really* supposed to be this hard? Can religion ever win out when it is constantly forced to swim against the secular current? Here they discuss a controversial proposal found in both Islam and Christianity—namely, that the state should accommodate and even support our spiritual practices.

HOST
Shadi Hamid
Shadi Hamid is a columnist at The Washington Post and Senior Fellow at the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.
HOST
Matthew Kaemingk
Matthew Kaemingk is Professor of Public Theology at Theological University Utrecht and Senior Fellow at the Center for Public Justice. He also co-directs the Templeton Pluralism Fellowship.

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Swimming Against the Secular Stream

Swimming Against the Secular Stream

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