Renovatio: The Podcast
A multimedia, multi-faith publication about the ideas that shape the modern world from the first Muslim liberal arts college in the United States, Zaytuna College.
Episodes
How to Climb the Seven-Story Mountain
Two Works, a Thousand Years Apart, Illustrate the Spiritual Journey
By John Walbridge
Classics by Marcus Aurelius and Farīd al-Dīn Attār, a thousand years apart, illustrate the spiritual journey.
What if you could take a pill that let you see the world with the wonder of Adam on the morning of creation? Aldous Huxley tried it—and his experiment reveals profound truths about wonder, meaning, and what makes us human.
In 1953, Aldous Huxley ingested mescaline under supervision and sat back to experience the results. Colors became more intense, flaming out like precious stones. Ordinary things—chairs, tables, the fo...
Two of humanity's greatest literary masters—separated by continents and centuries—share a profound interest in how seemingly intractable conflicts can be resolved through reconciliation. What can we learn by comparing their approaches to forgiveness?
Scholar Juan Cole examines Rumi's tale of a grocer who kills his parrot in rage, only to be devastated by remorse when he learns the bird had saved his life—and Shakespeare...
Can English Capture the Language of Revelation? Robert Alter's Torah and Lessons for the Translation of the Qur'an by Caner K. Dagli
Can English truly capture the language of divine revelation? Robert Alter's literary approach to translating the Hebrew Bible offers profound lessons for how Muslims might translate the Qur'an—and why most English Qur'an translations fall short.
KEY INSIGHTS:
• Why Alter's one-man Torah tr...
What if the chaos in our societies today began not in politics or economics, but in our music? This episode explores a fascinating theory from ancient Greece and China: that civilization's decline starts when musical traditions break down. Drawing from Plato's Laws and Chinese historical accounts, we examine how ancient thinkers believed that exposure to disorderly music could lead directly to political collapse—and why th...
Cultural Devolution:
How the new victimhood culture rejects human dignity and divinity
By Hamza Yusuf
Read by Michael Sugich
"Cultures vary in their approaches to instilling a sense of right and wrong in children, and in determining how to encourage rights and redress wrongs. One key difference in approaches relates to the religiosity, or the lack thereof, of the specific culture. In cultures where a significant n...
Many intellectuals believe Islamophobia is a form of racism, but the ultimate presuppositions embedded in this view are antithetical not only to Islam but to religion as such.
https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/muslims-are-not-a-race
The modern world knows it faces a void of meaning—and in a strange recurrence of history, some secular intellectuals are now calling for various forms of paganism.
An essay by Faraz Khan
To many, Islamic art can speak more profoundly and clearly than even the written word. Is it wiser then for Muslims to show, not to tell?
Article by Oludamini Ogunnaike
Read here: https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/the-silent-theology-of-islamic-art
Contrary to its usage in today’s public discourse, dignity is not something all humans universally have, but something that everyone must do.
Article by Caner K. Dagli
https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/dignity-is-for-the-heart-not-the-ego
Some philosophers believe materialism has now reached an insurmountable quandary in the question of consciousness.
There is something paradoxical about that deepest and most original source of social organization—namely, the giving and receiving of gifts.
Read the Article: https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/the-human-arts-of-graceful-giving-and-grateful-receiving
Science, philosophy, and art have been blown apart, and our conversations have devolved into chaos. How do we begin to learn the art of disagreement?
Read the article: https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/wisdom-in-pieces
Despite the diversity of our countless creeds, colors, and cultures, our society has been subsumed into a monoculture of ersatz arts, entertainment, and consumerism. How can we recapture humanity’s once extraordinary individuality?
The Egalitarian Objection to Liberal Education
And Why the Liberal Arts Are Indispensable to Equality
By Thomas Hibbs
What does it mean to “manifest” something, or for something to “become manifest”? For those familiar with Islamic mystical terminology, the concept of tajallī may come to mind. Often rendered into English as “manifestation,” tajallī denotes the appearance or disclosure of the divine names in physical forms. Similar to the notion of “theophany” in other religious traditions (with the philosopher Henry Corbin taking tajallī ...
Sacred scriptures certainly qualify as Great Books, but can they be read as literature in secular settings?
Read the essay by Eva Brann- https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/other-peoples-truths
The way societies driven by profit and production design and build lived environments breeds an apathy that, unchecked, can only lead to the dissolution of human communities as we’ve known them.
Article by Marwa Al-Sabouni https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/resisting-the-architecture-of-apathy
Read by Lyba Hussain
Produced by Faatimah Knight
The dignity of man in his potential to be whatever he desires to be, this fifteenth-century Italian prince & philosopher gave rise to the modern secular worldview that privileges self-actualization above all else.
Essay by Esme Partridge
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