2025 Conflicted Christmas Special

CONFLICTED

Message Heard

Religion & Spirituality, History

4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 23 December 2025

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What is ‘the Christmas story’ really? And how does it change when you tell it from within a different religious tradition? In Conflicted’s first-ever Christmas Special, Thomas and Aimen retell the Nativity as it appears in the Gospels and in the Qur’an. They discuss: Who were the Magi? Zoroastrian priests or Nabataean nomads? How the Nativity story differs between the Bible and the Qur’an A controversial theory about how local Christian traditions may have shaped the Qur’anic telling The overlooked reason why Qur’an presumes its audience already knows the underlying stories Christ’s ‘unfinished business’ in Islam: the Second Coming and the fight against the Antichrist The sharpest divergence: the Crucifixion and what it implies about Jesus’ mission Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/ Find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MHconflicted And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted And Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/conflictedpod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Conflicted is a Message Heard production. Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren. Produced by Thomas Small and edited by Lizzy Andrews. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:15.8	Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas, dear listeners!
0:24.6	Amen, if people could actually see me right now,
0:29.0	they might genuinely think Santa Claus himself has taken over conflicted because, my goodness, my beard is long, bushy, and getting whiter by the day.
0:36.3	It's white as snow, man. I mean, oh my God, what is happening to you? You're getting old. by the day. It's white as snow, man.
0:37.9	Like, I mean, oh, my God, what is happening to you?
0:40.2	You're getting old.
0:41.4	And I'm getting so fat.
0:44.0	My belly is beginning to shake like a bowl full of jelly.
0:48.7	Well, you know, not far away from you, Thomas.
0:50.9	There is an outlet, you know, that mall.
0:53.6	You can play Santa for this Christmas
0:55.9	there, like, you know, go to Santa's Grotto. And the only problem is, some of the kids might,
1:02.5	you know, think your beard is fake and they will start pulling at it. Like, that would be painful.
1:07.0	Kids already pull at my beard. They love my beard. Anyway, Merry Christmas to all our dear listeners to celebrate this holy day and to those of you who don't. Actually, Amin, here's a question, since we've got so many Muslim listeners joining us from across the Muslim world, I wonder, how are they likely to feel about being wished a Merry Christmas?
1:29.0	Maybe they'd feel a bit conflicted?
1:32.2	Exactly.
1:34.2	Well, I think Christmas has been normalized so much across many sectors of the Muslim world.
1:40.8	I mean, one of the largest Christmas trees I've ever seen was in Dubai. And also
1:45.4	in Bahrain and Kuwait, you see a lot of Christmas trees. I'm not sure what goes on in the GCC
	...

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