Welcome to the First Things podcast. I'm Rusty Reno, and this is the Editor's Desk podcast, and guess what? I am at my desk, and I'm the editor's desk podcast and guess what I am at my desk and I'm the editor

and I have with me Shadi Hamid who wrote a fine piece for the October 22 issue of first

things how modernity swallowed Islamism. Thanks for being on the podcast.

Hi, Rusty. Thanks for having me. And you are, I didn't realize that you've got a position at

Fuller Theological Seminary in addition to your, I knew you had a position at Brookings.

So when did the Fuller thing start?

Yes, that's actually fairly recent as of this past January.

It's pretty exciting.

It does seem that I'm the first Muslim scholar to be hired by an evangelical seminary in,

I guess, U.S., I mean, in history, well, at least in Fuller Seminary and other seminary's

history.

So that's it's, so it's, I'm doing this project with an evangelical theologian, Matthew

Kamek.

And what we're, yeah, yeah. So what we're doing is we're, as part of this broader project,

is we're trying to draw on our respective traditions, Christianity and Islam, and to actually

make the case that religion isn't a problem.

Going back to religious sources can actually strengthen American democracy

and really any democracy that is struggling with deep difference. We think that secularism

and liberalism have their fundamental weaknesses. So we have to, you know, think about what we

can do. And religion helps there. So that's,

that's the general thrust of what Matthew and I are doing. And so basically, I'm half-time at

Brookings, half-time at Fuller and mixing it up a little bit. So happy to do that. Yeah.

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