Tariq Ramadan
The charismatic scholar sets the story of the Prophet in context.
Rt Rev V Gene Robinson
The Bishop of New Hampshire, whose homosexuality threatens the schism of the Anglican Church discusses The State of the Communion. Chaired by Stephen Bates, author of God’s Own Country: Power and Religion in the USA.
Christopher Hitchens, Ian McEwan
Christopher Hitchens presents his case against Religion to a London audience at The Hospital in Covent Garden. He talks to Ian McEwan.
Colin Thubron
The travel-writer passes through China, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey, taking in the most sterile desert on earth and the strife-torn mountain valleys of today’s conflicts. ‘To be travelling the Silk Road is to be travelling the history of the world: tracing the passage not just of trade and armies, but of ideas, religions and inventions.’
Christopher Tyerman
Driven by Faith, greed and wanderlust, from 1095 to 1291 successive generations of Christian soldiers ransacked the Middle East. They defined the shape of the Mediterranean world and the relationship between Christianity and Islam.
Martin Goodman
In asking why, in AD70, three Roman legions destroyed Jerusalem and its Temple, the historian analyses the origins of Christian anti-Semitism.
Richard Dawkins, Steve Jones, Martin Rees
Chaired by The Guardian’s Science Editor James Randerson.
Steve Jones
Scientists are professional pessimists, always dubious about what they find. Believers, in contrast, are certain: full of joy that their own Big Book contains the truth. The geneticist talks about science and faith as conflicting explanations of what we are; and how biology, in the end, is blind.
Richard Dawkins, Rosie Boycott
The geneticist eviscerates religion, intelligent design, and the idea of a supreme being.
Michael Gove, Rageh Omaar, Ziauddin Sardar, Martin Bright, Tahmina Anam
From the beleaguered Iraqi parliament and Sharia courts in Karachi to Westminster’s ‘hearts and minds’ projects in Preston and East London, can Islam and democracy ever find common ground?
Ghazi Hammad
Ghazi Hammad is the spokesman for Hamas and the Palestinian government. He makes a suprise appearance at the 20th anniversary of the festival.
Ian Kershaw
The historian recreates ten critical political and military decisions taken between May 1940, when Britain decided to fight on rather than surrender, and the autumn of 1941, when Hitler decided to destroy Europe’s Jews.
Frank Gardner talks to Rosie Boycott
The Arabist, BBC Security Correspondent, gunned down in Riyadh, whose deep engagement with Islam and the Middle East offers a unique perspective on The War On Terror.
Rageh Omaar talks to George Osbourne
The Somali-born journalist discusses his own experience, and that of other British Muslims with the shadow Chancellor.
Karen Armstrong talks to Melvyn Bragg
Between 800 and 300 BC there was an explosion of new religious concepts fundamentally transforming our understanding of what it is to be human. But why did Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, Jeremiah, Lao Tzu and others all emerge in this 500-year span? And why do they have such similar ideas about humanity?
Robert Winston
The eminent medic and broadcaster discusses the relationship between religion and science from primitive times to our multi-faith world.
The Guardian Debate
Joan Bakewell, Madeleine Bunting, Ziaudin Sardar, Philip Hensher, Reza Aslan and Anthony Julius
How are both religious sensibility and freedom of expression to be accommodated in pluralistic societies? Is offence the price believers must pay for living in a free society? Or do those who advocate free speech have to accept that in some circumstances other beliefs and principles may have to take priority?
Reza Aslan
Can an Islamic state be founded on democratic values?
Aslan believes we are now living in the era of 'the Islamic Reformation'. He examines the roots of this reformation and the future of the Islamic faith.