Listen Live on KKFI
Every Sunday at 3:00amAbout the Show
Inspired
Inspired is the nation's leading public radio show about faith, ethics and spirituality. Each week we offer you analyses of the big headlines alongside lesser-told stories – those of Orthodox Jewish artists and African-American atheists, Muslim feminists and spiritual seekers. Through these stories, a rough sketch of our country’s religious landscape begins to emerge. It’s a marketplace of beliefs and ideas too complex for sound bites, and too important to ignore.
Muslims Respond to Trump: “He Couldn’t Give ISIS a Better Gift”
Hate mail, vandalism against Islamic centers, and even a pig’s head thrown in a mosque are just some of the complaints the Council on American-Islamic Relations has received in the days since the Paris and San Bernadino terror attacks and Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim statements. In fact, CAIR’s executive director tells us that the attacks against Muslims are the worst he’s seen in his 20 years at CAIR. Awad and two Muslim scholars respond to the backlash. With Nihad Awad, Executive Director of CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), Yasir Qadhi, Muslim cleric and professor at Rhodes College, Maria Dakake, Editor of The Study Quran and professor at George Mason University.
How ISIS (Mis)Reads the Quran
ISIS claims to follow Islam by the book. But they completely ignore its many verses on peace, tolerance, and the idea that “there shall be no coercion in (the acceptance of) religion.” Two Islamic scholars explain how most of the world’s 1.7 billion Muslims read the Quran, and put some of its seemingly violent passages in context. With Yasir Khadi, Muslim cleric and professor at Rhodes College, Maria Dakake, Editor of The Study Quran and professor at George Mason University.
In the Age of Texting, The Quiet Intimacy of the Prayer Request Line
Though you can reach them by text, email and letter, 1-800-NOW-PRAY is still the most popular way to contact Silent Unity, a prayer ministry established in 1907. These days they receive 4,000 calls a day from all over the world, and as far as its founders know, it’s the longest-running prayer request line in history. We talk to Charlotte Shelton, President of Unity to find out more about the spiritual movement behind that number and explore the enduring comfort of the human voice.
Star Wars: A Template for Awe
Say what you want about “hero journeys” or the veiled Eastern mysticism of the Jedi Knights—that’s the icing on the cake in Star Wars. It’s the smallness you feel in its big universe that’s the real spiritual “force” of George Lucas’ epic. Eric Wargo, science writer (National Institutes of Health) and blogger on science fiction and futurism (The Nightshirt) tells us that for him, great space movies like Star Wars really are religion, re-linking, reconnecting him with something higher and far, far bigger than himself.
