Faith and Resilience: Finding Strength in Uncertainty with Dr. Amir Hussain.

“Faith isn’t about blind obedience—it’s about finding meaning in the questions we ask.” – Dr. Amir Hussain

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Amir Hussain, Professor of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University, about how faith—beyond religion—can act as an anchor during times of upheaval. Amir brings over two decades of scholarship and interfaith dialogue to our conversation, helping us explore how storytelling, ritual, and even doubt serve as powerful tools in building both personal and collective resilience.

We discuss how rituals like sitting Shiva offer not only spiritual comfort but also psychological structure during grief. Amir also reflects on the emotional and neurological power of storytelling, and how myth—true or fictional—helps communities make sense of life’s greatest challenges. Drawing on examples from Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, we examine how these traditions shape our responses to uncertainty, loss, and connection.

From addressing the false dichotomy between science and religion to highlighting shared human values across faiths, Amir challenges us to listen more deeply, question bravely, and appreciate the humanity in others—even when they believe differently than we do.

What We Cover:

• How rituals help process grief and restore emotional balance
• Why doubt can deepen both scientific and religious understanding
• The psychological and social value of storytelling in faith traditions
• Insights from One God, Two Religions on Islam and Christianity
• How faith can adapt alongside science without losing depth
• The importance of empathy, community, and shared human experience

Bio

Dr. Amir Hussain is a professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Born in Pakistan and raised in Toronto, Amir has dedicated his career to studying and teaching world religions, with a focus on Islam and interfaith dialogue. He’s the author of several books, including One God, Two Religions: Christians and Muslims as Neighbors, which explores the intersection of shared values, common humanity, and religious understanding.

Resources & Links:

• One God, Two Religions – Book by Dr. Amir Hussain

Chapters

• 0:08 Introduction to It's an Inside Job
• 1:46 Meeting Dr. Amir Hussain
• 1:59 Exploring Faith and Resilience
• 7:46 The Role of Faith in Hardship
• 16:03 The Power of Rituals
• 26:03 Storytelling as a Tool for Healing
• 30:13 Part One Recap and Insights
• 31:50 The Interplay of Faith and Doubt
• 39:05 Science and Religion: Bridging the Gap
• 49:03 Understanding Each Other in Community
• 56:19 Shared Roots: Building Resilient Societies
• 1:03:56 Final Thoughts and Reflections

Transcript

Speaker: 0:04

This is It's an Inside Job, and I'm your host, Jason Lim. This is the show where we explore the stories, strategies, and science behind growing resilience, nurturing well-being, and leading with intent. Because when it comes down to it, it's all an inside job. Well, welcome back to the show. Have you ever wondered how faith, not just a religious sense, but a deeper human drive, well, how it can help us stay grounded during change, complexity, loss, and uncertainty? Well, in this episode, I sit down with Dr. Amir Hussain. He's a professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He has over two decades of experience teaching, writing, and engaging in interfaith dialogue. And in this conversation, it brings a unique perspective of how faith, community, and storytelling shape resilience. We explore how rituals help us process grief, how doubt can deepen scientific and spiritual understanding, and why storytelling isn't just cultural, it's neurological. Amir also shares insights from his book, One God, Two Religions, which tackles tough questions about the relationship between Islam and Christianity, and challenges the fear-driven narratives that often dominate public discourse. Whether religious, spiritual, or simply curious about how people find strength in uncertain times, I think you'll find this conversation offers something valuable. It's a reminder that our shared stories, mutual respect, and doubt can bring us closer together. Especially when you consider the tumultuous times that we are in in 2025. So without further ado, let's slip into the stream and meet Dr. Amir Hussain. I'd like to welcome everyone back to the show. Today we're going to be exploring the role of faith, not just in religious terms, but as a deep source of personal resilience, community growth, and mental well-being, especially during times of change, challenge, and complexity. And today I'd like to welcome Dr. Amir Hussain. Amir, welcome to the show. Lovely to be on here, Jason. Thank you for having me. You have a long list of accolades and degrees and such. I was wondering, could you give us a brief introduction as to who you are and what you currently do? Sure. So to start at the beginning, you know, born in Pakistan, working class kid, came to Canada when I was four years old and I grew up in Toronto. So literally all my education, kindergarten, a PhD was in Toronto. Both my parents worked in factories. You know, now we talk about first to go, you know, the first kid, the family to go to university. That was me. And you know you were a smart kid you're a child of immigrants and so you had four career paths you could be a doctor you could be a lawyer you could be an engineer you could run your own business and that was it you know and so my thing was oh you know i was a smart kid in high school i want to be a doctor your parents want you to you know succeed you want to be a doctor, you go to university and pretty much within the first week there was this idea of wait wait there's this thing called intellectual like like that's a thing you can get paid to read and write but, If you asked me in high school, do you want to be a teacher when you grow up, all I would have known was high school teaching. I would have said, no, because I saw what my friends did to high school teachers, and it was not pleasant. You go to university, it would be completely different. It was like, wait, this is a job? How do I get this job? Well, you need a PhD. What's a PhD? And so you switch over. We'll get into this, I think, a little bit later. But my undergrad degree was in psychology with a minor in English. And it was the minor in English that helped me to understand about religion. You know, you had to know the Bible if you want to know English literature. But I didn't know the Bible, so you take a course in that. And then you think, well, I'm a Muslim and I don't know much about my own religion other than, you know, growing up in it. Maybe I should learn about that. And that switched me over. So, undergrad degree in psychology, master's, PhD in religion, got a job, fortunately, when I graduated at California State University, Northridge, in the part of the Cal State system in the San Fernando Valley. So, first time, you know, moving out of Toronto to LA, moved to LA in 97. I loved teaching there, like state school, you know, all the universities, except I think one in Canada are state universities. and you saw the transformative power of education that, you know, my parents worked in factories. They have high school education. My sister's an engineer. I'm a professor. You know, education transforms your lives. I loved working in that state system. But every year, because it's a state-funded institution, you know, sometimes there's good money, sometimes there's not good money, more students, fewer resources. But they brought in a chancellor who said very famously that he saw the California State University system. And it's funny what you remember for 20 years ago. As I quote, creating educated workers for the California workforce. And I thought, huh. I thought I was trying to create educated citizens for the world, not workers for California. You know, don't get me wrong. I want people, when they get to university, to get a job. That's important. But I'm not training you in a narrow vocational. So, you know, nothing wrong with it. You want to be a welder. Go to welding school. You want to be an accountant. You know, go to this school. They'll help you become an accountant. I can't help you with that. I'm not good with numbers, you know. I'm training you to how to think, understand things. And so the opportunity came up to say, okay, well, is there a place that actually does try to create educated citizens for the world? And it was the Jesuit University of California. I knew the Jesuits as an order of the Catholic Church, but didn't know much about them. I knew about Georgetown University. You're a basketball fan in the 80s, so you know about Georgetown basketball. And then you think, oh, these folks have been doing education for 400 years. They understand this. And so, long answer to your question, you know, for the last 20 years, I've been teaching at Loyola Marymount University, which is the private Jesuit university in Los Angeles. So, you know, if you'd asked me 30 years ago when I'm doing my PhD, do you see yourself teaching at a Jesuit school in Los Angeles? I'd say, why would I leave Toronto? Toronto's a great city, you know. Jesuit school, I'm not even a Christian. Why would I teach in a Catholic school? Only Catholics go to Catholic schools. And you realize, hey, maybe the Catholic school is a really good place to try and develop people to become educated citizens for the world. And our mutual friend, Jim Gifford, introduced us. I've never been a man of faith, per se. I've always more towards the secular. Even in sort of my darkest hours, I've always turned to sort of inner resources. But I've always been curious as to the other side of the fence, per se. Irregardless of what faith that would be. And that is why I want to talk to someone who's educated, who has a faith, who has a deep knowledge, not just in the Muslim faith, but across the different faiths, a theologian per se in many different fields. And I wanted to talk to you today to have a frank conversation to understand And religion has been in its different forms with us since we banged rocks together in some form or another, and it's evolved into different disciplines, per se, or faiths. I want to know how people turn towards faith to find resilience, to find sort of an inner sanctitude, to find in these tumultuous times. And how that can sometimes bring us, become a steady rock that we sometimes need in such turbulent times that we find ourselves today, Amir. So I guess my first question to ask you is, across these traditions that you've studied and that you've delved into, faith often acts as an anchor during uncertainty and hardship. From your experience, what are some of the ways, the universal ways, that faith helps individuals build resilience? Yeah, that's a great question. And Jason, you hit it right on the head when you said, you know, ever since we've been human, we've been religious. You know, my mentor was the great Wilfred Cantwell-Smith, this extraordinary Canadian scholar, really the best Canadian scholar of religion, like in the 20th century. You know, founded the Institute for Islamic Studies at McGill, got hired away to Harvard, directed the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard. For 20 years, retired back to Toronto. That's where we met. And he has this essay that I assigned to my students where he's basically in front of a new museum in Jerusalem where they have, you know, one of the early human beings they found in Jerusalem, 150,000 years old, you know, who's buried and buried very carefully and thoughtfully in a way that tells us that the community that buried him, you know, took some care with this, buried him in a particular way, buried him with particular objects. And he says, look, I have no idea who buried this person. I have no idea what the rituals they did to bury this person. I know clearly they did this thoughtfully and carefully, you know. It wasn't just a disposal of a body off a cliff or, you know, just randomly burying it or something like that. It was very carefully thought out. And what he said has stayed with me all my life. He says, you know, the proper response to death is poetry, not prose. I use that as a way of starting with what you asked me about because, you know, I'm a scientific person, too. You know, my undergrad degree is a bachelor of science. You know, science is really important. My best friend's a vascular surgeon. You know, you trust the science. You understand those things. Yeah. That's the prose part, you know, and nothing wrong with that. Where's the poetry part? And so to your question, I think faith, the Quran, so I'm a Muslim, the Quran, the scripture for Muslims talks about the organ of faith, not being, and I'm pointing to my head, not being the brain, but the heart. You know, it's a visceral thing. There's a line in the Quran my favorite line where a group of Arab Bedouin pre-Islamic Arab Bedouin come to the Prophet Muhammad and say we have the Arabic Iman we have Iman, we have faith, and the Prophets come in and say no, no, no, don't say you have faith say instead you have Islam you have submitted because faith has not yet entered your hearts and that's that idea that you do the right thing there's lots of reasons to do the right thing Do you do the right thing for the right reason? That's faith. And I think that that's the key that for so many people in times of distress, in times of great loss, when you deal with a death, we're both old enough to be buried enough people. And that understanding that, okay, I know how the human body works. I know how the human body decomposes. I know what happens in the process of embalming and everything else. Then they put the body in the casket and the casket goes in the ground. Or a Jewish funeral, you know, Jewish funerals, you know, no embalming, you know, very simple wooden casket, you decompose back to the earth. I know exactly from my scientific friends how that body breaks down, how that decomposes, at what point, you know, the flesh is taken off, how the, not to be crude, but how the bugs eat it and all that kind of stuff. For sure, for sure. That doesn't help me deal with the death. That doesn't help me deal with the loss, you know. That's where faith comes in. Do you think that, oh, this person has died, and I'm never going to see them again? Or do you think this person has died, and I'm never going to see them again in this form, but I'm still going to think about them. I'm still going to have a conversation. With them they may have a conversation uh with me i was having this conversation with a friend the other day and then this is another example that dreams we think of dreams in psychology major we think of dreams especially post-freud especially in the western world as a product of our unconsciousness as a product of sometimes neuroses you know you struggle with these things during the day your unconscious mind you know is dealing with it while your conscious mind is worried about you know how do i pay the bills and get the kids from gross from you know chakra practice or whatever, then you go to sleep and the unconscious mind takes over and all those things are percolate up. That's the sort of Western understanding of dreams, you know, both in the Islamic and the traditional, meaning pre-modern Western understanding. That's not what dreams are. Dreams are a different plane. They're a different plane of existence. You know, T.T. I live in L.A., so Hollywood film metaphors. If you know the Matrix, you know, a series of films, it's the construct program, you You know, where Morpheus meets with Neo and they load these programs and he does all these things. You know, this is that place where we can sort of meet outside of the matrix. The cascading code. Exactly. Exactly. Doing this kind of stuff there. But you understand things. Like, things are revealed. You know, to meet the prophet in a dream was as much value as meeting him in person. You look at the great, you know, story in Christianity of Paul, you know, the follower of Jesus, who has this vision of the risen Christ. You know, that's a dream. That's a vision. And so, I think to your question, I think faith often helps us in this kind of way because sometimes it speaks to the non-rational part. Sometimes it speaks to the visceral part. I mean, we've all had the experience where I know in my head what I'm supposed to do, but in my heart I can't do that. And you think, okay, where am I leading? What's going on? What is leading me here? And then religious folks will talk about, the Jesuits talk about consolation and desolation. Like, in your actions, consolation isn't just, you know, being consoled and being happy. It's like, does this move you in a direction to God? Desolation, does this move you away from God, you know? If you're being a religious, faithful person, are you doing things that help other people and help the community? Because religion has done a lot of that. Now, are you doing things that have been really horrible? Because religious folks have done some horrible things to other folks. And so, it's that sense of, you know, where are you moving? Are you moving in connection with people? Are you helping people? Are you moving away from that, you know, and trying to use people and hurt people and do those kinds of things? And, of course, religious people have done that all along. And then the other thing, I'll stop here. is that I don't mean to say that it's only faithful people that do these kinds of things. I have really good friends who are atheists who don't believe in religion, don't believe in God, believe this is it. You have your, you know, 70, 80, 90 years of life. That's it. When you're gone, you're gone. But you still treat people well. You still treat people decently. You still want to have, you know, some kind of legacy that you leave behind, whether it's a scholarship at a university or, you know, with our friend Jim Gifford, who's this great publisher with, you know, 100 great books that he's published. You know, that's like, that's the legacy. That's how his name is going to live on as this publisher, editor of these amazing books. I hope that a little bit for me is that, you know, some students at some point might mention me in passing and say, okay, that's how you're remembered, you know. And so I think, you know, it's not a, let me stop here, it's not an either or, like religion or science or religion or lack of religion or faith. It's a both and. Like, this helps us, I think, helps many of us. Well, what I found fascinating, you have sort of faith practices such as rituals and prayers and storytelling. And you find a lot of this in the psychologies or especially clinical psychologies or cognitive behavior psychologies where we call them different things. But I think they're based on the same underlying mechanism. But these faith practices, they've been around, again, for thousands upon thousands of years in different formats under different religions, whatever those may be. From your perspective, how do they contribute to mental and emotional well-being? Yeah, that's a great question. And I think for so many of us, those rituals, first of all, just help us deal with things. If you know what to do or if you know what people need, you know, you've been seeing people die for a while. You see this. And so, you know, I happen to be a Muslim, but let me talk about, you know, Jewish practices. When someone dies in the Jewish tradition, you're observing a Jew. What do you do? Well, you sit Shiva with them. The idea is that the person who's had this loss is literally not in their right minds. They don't know what's going on. And so they need people with them literally to help them. I mean, you have those sort of moments of deep loss. And so just my own story, you know, when I was in university, met this extraordinary woman. We get married in 1989. 1992 she dies of a pulmonary embolism you know like uh bilateral pulmonary embolism you know blood clot and i have to deal with this death of this person that i was married to less than three years ago and i don't know how i got through that first week without my friends you know the people that would just come by the house and say you know how are you doing what's going on here's okay well did you eat anything well maybe i had an apple this morning well okay it's four o'clock in the afternoon maybe we should go and get some lunch okay yeah maybe you know and one of those things i learned was you know when people are grieving don't send them a floral ranger send them a fruit basket you know because you don't eat you don't think about eating you know so maybe if there's like a fruit basket or something that's what they might have that. From what would this is that i wouldn't have survived that first week without my friends that's shiva you sit with people you're with them you feed them you take care of them you you know you watch them and then you know a week later you know you have the the burial and then then what do you do Well, you know, every day for the next month in the Jewish tradition, you say this prayer, the Kaddish prayer, which is this unique prayer for the dying that never mentions the dead or dying. You know, it's a praise of God, you know, both in the Jewish tradition, the Islamic tradition, the Christian tradition. The proper function of human beings is to pray, is to praise their creator. So, this prayer, this Kaddish is a praise of God. And if you're observant, you say it three times a day, every day for that first month. And in a funny way, you know, most of my Jewish friends or religious Jewish friends are either Reform or Conservative, sometimes Reconstruction, maybe not an option. None of them, only a few of them are Orthodox Jews. It's amazing how many of my Jewish friends start going to the Orthodox synagogue because the Orthodox synagogue is the place that does those three prayers every day in community. And so you do this. And then at the anniversary of the death, you have this ritual. You typically light a candle. You do some other things. The first holiday after the person has died, there's a ritual, you know, we just celebrated Passover, you know, in the Jewish tradition. And as part of the rituals of Passover, you know, you recite the Kaddish and the people who had a death in the last year, they stand and they're there and they're consoled by the community. And so I think back to your question, Jason, these rituals often help us in really interesting psychological and physiological ways. Like I said, that first week, when someone has experienced a death, especially a close death, you know, a spouse, partner, a child, a parent, you know, it's that sense of, yeah, you're not in your right mind. Someone's got to take care of you. You can't just, you know, deal with this. And so someone to help you deal with the stuff, work with the stuff, and then, you know, as you process that grief. If I may just interject there, when in the Shiva or when they do the practice of. Of three times a day of the jewish faith and such what do you think the psychological benefit of that i mean from your perspective what is the reason this came to fruition as part of the ritual as part of the the faith yeah so so i think that the chief psychological benefit and this is whether you're a religious person or not is is our deep connection to and with each other you know i think that's been one of the real dangers of the modern world especially the post-covid world where we don't see ourselves as connected communities where we see ourselves as individuals in our own home. And I say this to my students all the time. Look, I'm a city kid, which means I've always depended on other people. Like, you know, food comes the way God intended it from the supermarket. You know, meat comes the way God intended it, you know, on a styrofoam tray wrapped in plastic. Like, if you give me a cow and a cleaver, I'm a vegetarian. No. No, I got no idea how to kill this thing. I got no idea where the New York strip is. You give me a New York strip, I'll do wonders. I can't take that from a, you know, someone has done this work. Like you grew up in a city, someone has built the water pipes. You know, I'm drinking a cup of coffee. I didn't make that coffee. The nice lady, LaVonganée, who makes my coffee, you know, she made the coffee for me. Like, you know, we're connected to each other. So I think the point is these rituals reestablish that. They tell us that we're not by ourselves. You know, we like to think, oh, I'm an individual. I can do this myself. I can't. I'm sitting in a chair that someone else made. I'm talking to you through a computer that someone else made. We're using a program that someone wrote. You know, I'm in a building that someone else built. You know, we're deeply, deeply dependent on each other. We like to think that we're not. We like to think that we did this all. Ourselves, you know, and so I think part of the function of the ritual is precisely that sense of connection. You know, how do you connect with each other? How do you understand that we're part of a larger whole? We're part of a community. I mean, that, that, that Kaddish prayer has to be prayed in a community. And traditionally the Minyan is 10 people that it's not just that, you know, three people aren't enough or seven people aren't, aren't enough. It's that yet You're a community of people. You're not just one individual. And so I think some of the answer to it is very much that sense of community. Some of the sense of it is precisely the psychological kinds of things. So you experience, and let's stick with that death, you experience a close death. Well, you're thinking about that person all the time. And so how do you, at specific points in the day, get a chance to do that, to say, okay, you know, I'm going to say this prayer in the morning. I'm going to say this prayer in the afternoon. I'm going to say this prayer in the evening. I'm going to say this prayer in community, back to what I said before, so that there's people with me who understand this, who understand that, you know, I need to talk about this person and the danger that we have, I think, again, in the modern world. Western world is you know you're lucky if you have like three days of bereavement leave like from work you know and the idea well you buried your father on saturday well it's monday get back to work and it's like you know i can't function right you know i can't function the same way you know it's going to take me a while to get back to where i was and so i think that that sense of how do you do this how do you rebuild and you know but my undergrad degree is i've been support psychology worked with people with behavioral issues worked with people with head injuries with behavior problems, work with developmental and handicapped kids, you know, doing sort of behavioral therapy. And a lot of it is how do you teach new responses, you know, of action that has been reinforced in the past will likely to occur again in the future. You know, how do you create new behaviors? If you've got a kid that, you know, throws rocks or if you've got someone that smokes, how do you teach them a new behavior to, you know, deal with the stress? And so I think that that's what this does. That's what these rituals do. It's in that sense very much in the psychological behavioral world. How do you create new patterns of behavior? How do you understand that this person that you loved isn't there anymore? And you see this. I had that with a friend whose dad died, unfortunately, during COVID. And the dad did everything else. The mom literally didn't know how to pay the bills. She literally did not know how to pay the phone bill because the dad, the father, did that. Her job was to stay at home and take care of the kids. Go to the supermarket and, you know, she had the bank card to buy the groceries with. She would come home. But, you know, all of a sudden, like these letters keep coming. What do I do? You know, like that kind of thing. How do you teach someone? Oh, these are the bills. Now you're going to, dad's gone. You're going to have to pay. These bills now you know how do you do that and that's just the mechanical like how do you keep your lights on the electricity uh running in your house forget about how do you deal with the emotional stuff to be able to go back and you know go to work take care of your kids but i think back to your question that's ritual yeah and so the sense of ritual does can give a sense of certainty a sense of control over a situation as we process the loss or process the complexity of the change we're going through and so for me storytelling has always been whether it's within religious faith or from you know handed down generation to generation would you say storytelling in sort of the the religious sphere is it a way of obviously passing on knowledge but you know communities go through pandemics they go through migration they go through some sort of tragedy or trauma But those stories get passed down from generation to generation. So is storytelling through the religious faith, is that one way to share, this is how our ancestors or our forefathers dealt with this situation, and thus we can learn from their lessons? Yeah, absolutely. And I think storytelling, and we may talk about it, is myth-making. And when I use the term myth, I don't mean a false story. Myth, Muthoi, in Greek is literally a story. It doesn't matter whether it's a true story or a false story. And we often can learn from stories that we know are false. You know, the Christmas Carol story, you know, Scrooge, Tiny Tim, Bob Cratchit, that's fake. That came out of Charles Dickens' head. But that helps many of us to think, okay, how do I behave in the world? Am I behaving in the way like Scrooge? Am I thankful? Do I see my community? Do I take care of my employees? And so this idea that a fictional story, a Christmas hero, can help real people actually work in the world. So storytelling, I think, is really, really important. Part of it, as you said, Jason, is precisely that. We've been dealing with death since we've been human beings. We've been dealing with loss since we've been human beings. What do we do with the birth of a child? It doesn't have to be terrible things. It can be beautiful things. What do we do with the birth of a child? How do we raise children? You're a parent, and all of a sudden, the doctor's... Congratulations, Mr. Smith. Here's your child. What do I do? How do I deal with this kid? My life has completely changed now. It's done with a manual, right? Exactly. And those stories, but in a funny way, I think that's it. Those stories are the kind of manual. What do you do? How do you do this? Because we've been here. We've done this kind of thing. Now, it's new for the person. The first time you lose someone is the first time you lose someone. It's brand new for you. But we've been losing people for a thousand years. The first time you have a kid is a new thing for you, but we've been having kids for you. Thousands of years and so i think those stories are really really important to help us you know make sense of the world so so one of my dear friends is this marvelous you know english professor at u of t uh the university of toronto excuse me uh charl uh uh uh edward chamberlain ted chamberlain and one of his great books is a book called if this is your land where are your stories. And that's set in a land claims case. So, Ted was involved with the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, especially, you know, land claims over the last 20 years in British Columbia. And the line comes from an elder who's in a court case because it's a land claims issue. And, you know, the Crown, of course, has a piece of paper that says, you know, so-and-so sold this land to Captain so-and-so in, you know, 1826. And so, you know, here's the ownership of the land. And one of the elders gets up and says to the judge, those words, if this is your land, where are your stories? You know, we know that we're connected to this land. We know we've been in this land 10,000 years because we've told stories about this land and what happens at that mountain or what happens in this season or where this spring is when we really need water you know we have these stories about this place that's what connects us to this place and the government of canada in one of its its rare you know governments often don't do amazing wonderful things but in this case they did where uh the government of canada said that okay we're going to recognize oral testimony with the same uh oral history excuse me with the same level as we do the the written precedent record you know to say that yeah we don't have a piece of paper that says you know we were given this land or we bought this land in 1826 we've been living in this land for the last 15 000 years you know and we have stories that tell us that we've been living on this land for 15 000 years you know do those have equal weight to the sort of written testimony the piece of paper that's the precedence there and so i think like the fact that even in canadian law, we're seeing the importance of stories. In the first half of my conversation with Dr. Amir Hussain, we explored how faith, beyond religious doctrine, how it can play a vital role in building personal resilience, strengthening communities, and supporting mental well-being, especially in times of uncertainty and upheaval. Amir, who came to Canada as a young child from Pakistan, shared how growing up as the son of immigrants shapes his understanding of belonging, identity, and spiritual growth. We also trace the fascinating journey from wanting to become a doctor to studying psychology and ultimately finding his calling in religious studies. Amir explained how this shift wasn't just academic but deeply personal. He credited mentors like Wilfred Cantel Smith for shaping his view that faith is not about blind belief but how we find meaning and purpose, especially in the face of death or suffering. You know, Smith's idea that poetry can be a spiritual response to death, it struck a chord within me. There's something timeless and deeply human, something profound about turning to words and rituals during our most challenging moments. And that brought us to the role of rituals in grief. Amir talked about how practices like the Jewish tradition of seating Shiva offers structured community support that many modern societies lack. He emphasized that rituals, whether daily prayer, lighting a candle, or coming together with others, well, how it helps us process grief gradually rather than pushing us to move on too quickly. Now, these shared moments remind us that we're not alone. Amir made the case that real faith isn't about having all the answers. It's about asking the questions that matter. In religious and scientific traditions, doubt can sharpen understanding and strengthen conviction rather than tearing it down. So now let's slip back to the stream with part two of my conversation with Dr. Amir Hussain. And I'd just like to segue to talk about, if you don't mind, about the interplay between faith and doubt. You know, when many of us experience some sort of crisis, we start, for those of faith, may start believing, you know, why hast thou forsaken me, per se, you know, and those kind of words. But how can doubt sometimes actually deepen rather than diminish our people's faith and resilience? Yeah, no, but it's a great question, Jason. Thank you. I start my comparative theology classes with this fancy word, theodicy. You know, theodicy, literally the problem of suffering. You know, why do the righteous suffer if God is good, if God is powerful, if God is just, why do the righteous suffer? Is that the term, theosity? Theodicy. Theodicy. Yeah, really the problem of theodicy, righteous suffering, you know. And it's a very real question. You know, like I said, if the basic premise of many religions is A, there's a God, B, that God is good, C, that God is all-powerful. Why do people who are righteous and good suffer? Wide of the wicked problem we see that all the time you know the really good people who are completely hard done by the terrible people that you know get all the uh the benefits and luxuries and and things like that and you think how could this happen and then you think about you know the horrific kinds of things like the holocaust you think about uh you know uh genocide ethnic cleansing you know tribes being wiped out you know all like how how can this happen uh to us how do we make sense of this and i think the the idea here is that so that that's one question that the faith and doubt thing i think is really interesting because doubt is normal doubt is a good thing like i think for a lot of religious folks they think that you know faith means complete and utter uh understanding belief you know giving it over blind obedience you know kind of thing that's not what it is because again uh like faith is and i'm gonna point you to my chest you know faith is an interior visceral thing it's a felt thing it's a heart thing it's not a belief thing it's it's not i'm pointing my head here it's not a brain it's not a thinking you know kind of thing there like you have this feeling you have this and it's it's funny uh because we say the phrase gut feeling and now again my friends who are medical researchers you know talk all the time about okay we've done a lot of work now with our gut like you know what happens in the gut whether it's microbes in the gut with other things the gut what does. It mean that our gut actually does some really interesting things in our body. That isn't just about digestion you know and so those kinds of you know like what a gut feeling is and so like for example in the quran um the the uh, The person who does not believe, kufr, and we have the phrase kafir that comes out, non-believer, really means person without faith. The opposite of faith, excuse me, the opposite of disbelief or doubt is thankfulness, you know. And so, I think that that's the key. The idea is that the person who doesn't believe is the one who is not thankful and we understood being thankful to God. And so, I think that that's the issue here. that, you know, clearly things will happen, clearly things will happen that will challenge you. We talk about that, you know, I grew up in a university world in which we learned psychology class of, you know, Thomas Kuhn, the structure of scientific revolutions, you know, paradigm shifts. We think that the earth is the center of the universe. Then someone says, you know, it makes a lot more sense if we think of the earth as going around the sun rather than everything revolving around the earth. You know, it makes more sense if We think of things this way, then that way. And you completely shift the paradigm. You change things. You have to reorient. You have to rethink stuff there. I mean, we look at what we've done just in the last 100 years or so with flight. I mean, and flight is a little more than 100 years old. And you look at the Wright brothers flying like what they fly, like 100 yards and 10 feet off the ground. And now, you know, I can get, you know, forget about military, you know, supersonic fighter jets. The fact that I can fly across the country in, you know, four hours, you know, is extraordinary. It completely changes the paradigm. And so, absolutely, things happen, you know, whether they're good or bad, you know. What do you do when your child dies? What do you do when your village is wiped out? What do you do when there's a pandemic? How do you make sense of the world? And that goes back, I think, Jason, your point about storytelling is so important. We have these stories. We tell these stories because guess what? There have been other pandemics. Guess what? There have been other people. I mean, every experience is unique. But guess what? there have been other people who've lost you know a loved one how do we make sense of this how do we understand uh this which doesn't then mean you say okay i can't deal with him or now some people do and again sticking with the jewish example the holocaust for so many jews it's like but how can this happen we we are the chosen people of god we are called by god to live apart to be holy to live different lives than the rest of the world because we are the chosen ones of god and a third of us Only a third of the Jewish community during the Holocaust is wiped out. How can this be? How can we have faith? And for many Jews, it was like, I can't believe. How can there be a God? There can't be a God anymore. For others, there's a sense of, no, we still have to go on. We still have to do this, you know, because, again, in the past, there were people who wanted to kill us. In the past, there were people who tried to wipe us out, you know, this king of Babylon, this king of Persia, you know, all those kinds of things, you know. And so, I think, again, this is a way of making sense of the world. And in that sense, whether you're talking about scientific doubt or religious doubt, doubt is important. You have to question, you know. I say to my students all the time, and I'll stop here, you know, in the beginnings of theology classes, like, yeah, the point of this exercise is to ask questions. You know, I'm not scared of a person who asks questions. I'm scared of the person who has no questions, who has no doubt, who has completes. That's the person I'm scared of. You know, of course you have to have doubt. Of course, like, I don't have the answers. I have questions. That's why I've been studying this for 30 years. I completely concur. I completely concur. I think critical thinking is a necessary skill as we move deeper into the 21st century, and especially the chaos of the next 25 years, you know, that kicked off this year. And that I'd like to segue because I think you made a very interesting point because we can see a dichotomy. And I think it's a kind of a false dichotomy but I'd like to get your perspective between what science is this general area of science and this general area of religion and a lot of the times when you hear debates or talks about it they are completely divided an ocean between them but one thing you've just said to me which I concur is that whether it's religion or whether it's science asking questions is a good thing, Doubt allows us to see that. That's part of what critical thinking is. Because then it allows us to understand... The underlying mechanism behind something or to understand the string of knowledge or, the understanding that becomes the infrastructure to hold something up, if it's a belief or a scientific hypothesis or theory. I was wondering if you could sort of riff on that and maybe elaborate from your perspective. Yeah, yeah. No, and again, like I've said this before, my undergrad degree is a Bachelor of Science. I think science is important. I was so thankful you know at the University of Toronto psychology was a science third year we had to do statistics fourth year we had to do like experimental experimental design fourth year you had to do an experimental uh uh you had to do an experiment that you'd write up as if it was going to a APA. Journal until the scientific method you know that's really important and so when you have these anecdotal kinds of things someone says well this I'm like yeah well what's the end like how many subjects where they randomly chose what's happened there you know is it an actual trial is it a placebo effect is it this kind of you know i think those things are really important is this statistically significant yes four people this happened to four people but is that statistically significant it may be it may not be you know depending on on on who the people are what happened there and so i think the the scientific part is really really important i think the the The danger is, and I go back to my teacher, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, he has this great line, and he's talking about religion, not about science, but I'll apply it to science in a second. He says, when you're comparing religions, normally. People tend to see other people's religions as they are and their own as they ought to be. You know, it's the aspirational kind of thing. It's the comparison of. Oh, yeah, Pope Francis just died. You know, Pope Francis is an extraordinary human being. If you're comparing Pope Francis to Osama bin Laden, guess what? Pope Francis is a much greater human being than bin Laden was. You know, don't compare the terrorists in one religion to the saint in the other. Don't say, oh, you know, Christianity is much better than Islam because, look, we have Pope Francis in Christianity and you have Bin Laden in Islam. I'm like, yeah, you've got Timothy McVeigh in Christianity. You've got, you know, so are we comparing, you know, apples to apples? Yeah, we can cherry pick anything, right? Right, exactly. But that's the religion science thing. That's where I'm going with this is that oftentimes we will point to religious people who do stupid things, forgive my saying that, you know, and use that as an example of religion. We will talk about scientists, you know, who fake their data and, you know, all sorts of cases there and realize and say, oh, yeah, that's science again. No, that's cherry picking. So let's not cherry pick. Let's look at, you know, what science is, what religion is. And I think they're both attempts to help us understand our world in very different ways. You know, I've said this to you before that I always say to my students that science is important. Science helps us to ask in many ways the how questions how does this happen how did this start how did this pandemic begin you know religion asks the why questions you know not how does life on earth begin why does life on earth begin that's a separate question that's a different question and so i think you know we see oftentimes science and religion especially and i. Someone who's living in America and quite concerned about some of the ways in which America is going more to a literal fundamentalist interpretation of a particular religious tradition, you know, which then sets public policy. And it's like, wait—, That's the scary part is, first of all, you're not dealing with the complexity of the Christian experience. You're not dealing with the experience of those of us who are not Christian, who happen to be Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, atheists, whatever. But that sense of, yeah, the science tells us this. And you have to do those kinds of things. You know, you look, as we're speaking, you know, one of the big issues, not just here and in the U.S., but starting out, unfortunately, happened in Canada. Measles outbreak, vaccines, you know, this kind of thing. And this idea that, oh, yeah, yeah, you know, I'll just give my kid cod liver oil and I'll pray and he'll be fine. I'm like, yeah, no, give him the vaccine. Like, that's important. Like I said, you know, my best friend's a vascular surgeon. There are times when prayer helps. There are times when prayer does things. There are times when you need a surgeon to go in and cut out the cancer. Like, you know, that's really crucial here. And so at what level is it just, it can't be. This goes back to our previous conversation about blind faith, about lack of any kind of doubt, to say you can't have that blind obedience, whether you're a scientist or a theologian. The science only advances when we actually start looking at the data and don't try to make the data fit our theories. That's bad science. Good science is let's look at this data, and this data is actually challenging something. This data is showing me that I should go in this direction. And the sort of purely accidental discoveries, like we all know the penicillin, you know, kind of thing of, oh, here's this moldy bread that's been left and here's this thing and here's this guy that notices, wait a minute, there's something different about this. Maybe we can cultivate it. Maybe we can do this. Or, you know, I said this to my best friend who's a vascular surgeon, you know, the advancement that saved more lives over the last 200 years in medical advancement is soap and water. It's doctors washing their hands. It's the germ theory. You know, wait, you're telling me there's tiny little things on my fingers and those can be transmitted from touching one patient or other patient? Who do this? You know, well, you invent the maestrobe. You do these kinds of things. You do this sort of test and say, oh, yeah, this is why we need to wash. This is why surgeons wash their hands and put on gloves. Yeah, just riffing on what you're saying. You know, this was several years ago, but I read something about the Dalai Lama. He goes to the practicing faithful in Buddhism. He says, you know, our faith goes back, whatever it is, 4,000 years or what have you. But if science teaches us something else, even though we've been believing something for 4,000 years, But if the science, without a doubt, shows us something else, then this is where we need to shift our belief in a certain way, in a certain direction, based on what is contemporary understanding of certain things. And I found that such refreshing thing, especially from a secular perspective that I tend to walk around with. I found that such a refreshing way of looking things. And this is where I saw not a division, but a confluence of both the religious belief, per se, in this case, Buddhism, but how science can adapt, how they can go hand in hand, maybe, hand in glove, per se. No, absolutely. And I think, again, a good, healthy religion like Buddhism, like the Buddhism of Alamma, evolves, changes. It's not static. Like, you know, again, in my theology class, the next thing I say, you know, is if you're going to learn one thing in this class, it's that there's no one way to be anything. You know, you talk about a Buddhist. Well, what kind of Buddhist? Where? When? We used to think this. Now we think that. To use an example close to home here, you know, you look at the Bible, especially the New Testament, demons inhabit the world. You know, the Jesus in Mark's gospel casts out demons, you know. And we can say that oh yeah that was a pre-modern thing you know we of course as scientific rational people know that demons don't exist in the world these were people who are mentally ill these were people that psychological you know whatever whatever whatever well that's one way of looking at it another way of looking at it is like what if you do believe that there's actual evil uh in the world and so the catholic church you know as we all know from you know the the uh bill friedkin movie the exorcist you know does exorcisms and many people think that oh yeah what a quaint old. Superstition kind of thing, like, you know, there are no demons in the world, little girls aren't possessed by demons, or that kind of thing. Well, now, if you're a Catholic and you go to your priest and say, Father, you know, I think my daughter is possessed by demons, you know, if the priest is a good priest, they'll say, oh, okay, have you gone to your pediatrician, let's schedule an appointment, let's go to your family doctor, let's see what physiological issues are there with your child, you know. And then after that, it's like, okay. Now let's go to the psychologist. Let's see if there's any psychological reasons, you know, for why your child is behaving in the way your child is. You know, it's only when you've eliminated, you know, the medical and psychological. Then you might start thinking about the spiritual, you know, causes. And so, but again, this point of it's not that, oh, yeah, my child's supposed to be my demons. Oh, let's call him the exorcist. Like, no, no, the first thing the Catholic person is going to say, let's call him the pediatrician. Then they're going to say, let's call him the psychologist. Let's call him the child psychiatrist. The exorcist is like the fifth call that we make, but again, it's that kind of thing there that, you know, do you understand that, yes, we used to think of demons and people possessed by demons. Now we understand both psychiatric issues, you know, people with certain medical problems that cause hallucinations or this kind of thing, or people with really deep-seated psychological issues or trauma, all those kinds of things. That's what's resulting in this behavior not uh a demon you know and i think that that's a great example of yeah you have to follow you know uh what's out there what's available like yeah i'm as a religious person i pray you sort of pray for people but you also ask them to go to the doctor like you know if a friend has heart disease it's like okay yeah i'll be praying for your well-being but i also hope you go see your cardiologist i also hope you follow what your cardiologist tells you because that's important uh uh there you know we have that knowledge i would just respectful of your time i mean i'd like to segue over to your new your latest book actually one of many but one god and two religions where you explore the relationship between islam and christianity i guess a kickoff question is what inspired you to write it and why now yeah that's Thank you, Jason. That's a great question. I appreciate the chance to talk about the book. And so, you know, I've written a number of books about Islam. Muslims, world religions. And I wrote a book in 2006 about Islam because that was post 9-11. And after 9-11, after the terrorist attacks, especially here in America, where so many Americans did not know about Islam and Muslims and what they saw. If all you know of Islam is Islam in the law, that's a horrible religion because that's a horrible person. You know, how do you make sense of this? Um, And again, you think it sort of gets better that 20 years after 9-11, people know more about Islam, things happen, they know their neighbors, you have all sorts of Muslims that are doing extraordinary kinds of things. And so, like Mahershala Ali, you know, actor, I live in Hollywood, you know, wins two Academy Awards, first American Muslim to win not just one, but two Academy Awards. You look at, you know, the sort of television shows now with like Rami, with Rami Youssef or Mo. You know, different people on the news, like, you know, Ali Velshi having a television show in Toronto or in Canada for that matter, you know, for several years. The CBC had a woman who wore hijab as the, you know, never as a kid in 1970 did I think I would see a woman in hijab be the anchor for the CBC News, you know. And so you have that kind of, how do I say it, Muslims much more at the mainstream. But there's still that sort of Islamophobia. There's still those things. And so 2016, when then candidate Donald Trump says very famously, you know, in March to Anderson Cooper on CNN, I think Islam hates us. I thought, oh, this is different. You know, here's a president that's talking about Islam and Muslims in really negative ways that other presidents haven't talked about, you know. And in the first Trump administration, you saw the travel ban that happened within the first week targeting people in the Muslim majority of the countries. You saw the issues there. And so that's where this book came out of. At Georgetown University, John Esposito is sort of the senior scholar for Islam in America. And he's talked about what he calls the normalization of Islamophobia, you know, post the first Trump administration. And so that's where this book, One God and Two Religions, sort of came out of to say, okay. You know, when you have a president saying these kinds of things, When you have the negative kinds of images and impressions that you have of Islam and Muslims out there, you know, how do you deal with that? How do you address that? And so the book is in two parts. The first part is just basic information. You know, who are Muslims? What is Islam? What is the Quran? Who is the Prophet Muhammad? And a lot of folks don't know. You know, in the same way that you talked about Dalai Lama and Buddhism, and I use that as an example here. You live in Los Angeles. You know something about Buddhism. You've heard something about the Buddha. Now, you may not know who the Dalai Lama is, you may not know what Tibetan Buddhists believe about the Dalai Lama and that kind of thing, and so you might want to learn a little bit more. So the first half of the book, One God, Two Religions, is really talking about the basics of Islam. The second half talks about the issues that come up, issues that are contentious. And so in the contemporary age, like images of the Prophet Muhammad, you know, there's a very famous case a couple years ago at Hamline University where art history professors showed some images of the Prophet that Muslims had made, not to be scandalous, not to be sensationalist, but in an art history class. And you had some Muslims saying, well, wait a minute, we can't do this. We don't show the Prophet, even though the images were made by Muslims, you know, hundreds of years ago. And so there's sort of controversy over there. Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses, I wrote my dissertation on part of that, you know, 40 years ago. Now, you know, can't the Muslim world take a joke? What's going on? Why is Aitola Khomeini, you know, putting a death threat out on Salman Rushdie? But the kinds of things that you see now, like with women in hijab, some part of the mainstream, some not, you know, who do you think of? What do you think of when you think of Islam? And then the violence and terrorism question. I mean, you see horrific violence that Muslims have done, but you see violence that non-Muslims, you know, have done. I mean, we're taping this at a time where over the weekend in Vancouver, you know, this attack on the Filipino community, someone drives a truck through a parade and, you know, kills at least 11 people. You know, we see violence. We see horror, you know, around us. How do we make sense of that? You know, what do we do? And if what you see, and I'll stop here, if what you see is, if what you know about Islam is what you see on the television, it's a very different kind of thing. If the only Muslims you see are Muslims committing terrorism and violence on this television show or that television show, you know, then you may be suspicious of your Muslim neighbor. You know, how do you live with your Muslim neighbor? How do you understand that neighbor? And that's the subtitle of the book is Christians and Muslims as Neighbors, you know. It goes back to what we started with, you know, we live in community. How do we live in community? How do we understand each other? How do we know our neighbor? You and I were talking about this earlier, and I'll stop here. You look at Canada, and one of the great things about Canada is the health system, the fact that we have socialized medicine in Canada, like every other civilized country but one, America. Health care is a right for its citizens, not a privilege for those who are employed. But we talked about, you know, where do we get that from in Canada? Well, we get it from Tommy Douglas. We get it from the social credit card. You know, Tommy Douglas was inspired to do this because it is Christian roots in the social gospel movement. That, you know, what does Jesus tell us in Matthew 25 about taking care of the poor, the sick, the needy, visiting those who are in prison, you know, giving food to the hungry. You know, so for Tommy Douglas, it's his Christian duty to take care of his neighbor. It's not his neighborly duty to take care of his neighbor, you know. And so that sense of, you know, how do you work in the world? How do you treat people as neighbors? That's part of the reason we have socialized health care in Canada. I'm not saying there aren't problems, but of course there are problems. No, no, no, no. But I think it's a very salient point. You know, right now as we sit, you know, the world is polarized by religious differences. The one that just blew up now is between India and Pakistan, for example. You could almost draw the lines between the Hindus and the Muslims, just in that case. Then you have the Middle East and what have you. But I was wondering, your book, how can emphasizing these shared roots build more resilience and inclusive societies? Specifically to your book between Islam and Christianity, how can these shared roots help draw us together, to educate us, to pull us together, to see, you know what, maybe we're not that different. Right. So some of it is, and the book is written, like I said, the subtitle is Christians and Muslims as Neighbors. So it's really written about Christians and Muslims. And many Christians are surprised to understand that Jesus is important to Muslims, that Mary is important to Muslims. You know, you can see this, but our listeners can't. Like, you know, I'm in my office and there's an image right here of Our Lady of Guadalupe, you know, the Virgin Mary, the fact that the Virgin Mary is mentioned by name in the Koran, you know. And so for me as a Muslim, Mary is important. So that's just one sort of small example. But it's really more about how you act and how you live in the world. So I had an uncle, you know, South Asian, Pakistani guy, engineer, worked in petrochemicals, moved from New Jersey to Houston, moved to a very conservative sort of Baptist neighbor in Houston. And he called me and said, look, you know, you're a scholar of religion. I'm coming from New Jersey where there's a lot of South Asians. I'm going to Houston where there aren't a lot of South Asians at the time that he moved there. Most of my neighbors are going to be white evangelicals, Baptists. They don't know who I am. they're gonna be scared what do i do and i said go knock on their doors introduce yourself he's like what are you nuts and i'm like no just do it and he said okay and so yeah so you move into the neighborhood and you you walk around the neighborhood and say hi you know i'm so-and-so your new neighbor and when they get to talking i knew what would happen because like oh so you believe in god you pray you pray every day you read your religious texts you have sort of conservative religious values oh you're actually more like us than you are uh uh you know what we feared like we feared oh this pakistani muslim who's going to come and you know bring jihad to try to kill us oh no this is actually a decent guy and so i think that that's it you know as we get to know people you know we get to understand you know we got to live together we got to work together and and you know do you know your neighbor do you work with your neighbor do you rely on your neighbor or do you fear you know and don't get me wrong there may be reasons to If you're your neighbor, if your next-door neighbor is psychotic, yeah, that's a real issue. But I think back to what we started with, that, for me, is the real sense of religion, is showing that commonality, showing that connection. We're connected to each other. We're connected with each other. And I hope the book can help a little way of helping to educate folks. And it does the opposite, too, in the sense of it's written to help Christians understand Muslims, but it also helps Muslims understand Christianity. What is it that Christians believe about the world? who is your Christian neighbor? Because again, if what you see, it goes the other way. If what you know about Christianity is right-wing evangelical who's protesting the funeral of a gay child or something like that, you know, about the kid going to hell, well, that's not a particularly good form of Christianity, you know, and that's not what most Christians believe. And so, you know, it's as much about helping Muslims understand Christianity as it is helping Christians understand Islam. And I think in that way, helping us to work together, to live together. Now, it's been such an insightful conversation because, you know, what I'm pulling from this is that, you know, we sit down with each other, regardless of our differences, and we dialogue, we converse, we try to understand each other. And through that conversation, we see another human being across from us, even though we have different beliefs, different faiths, different opinions, what have you, there are going to be commonalities. And it's from those commonalities that we draw connection, that we draw community. Irregardless if we're from two different faiths or two different countries or whatever nationalities. But that's what ties us together. That's the connective tissue that I've wanted to talk to you about today, being a man of faith and myself a man of secularism per se, and to understand and draw that. And I think just this conversation is a living example, how we can create these bridges between two different perspectives and they're maybe not that different at all, actually. There's more commonalities and similarities than there are differences and opinions, per se. I think it's been a very enlightening conversation for me because what I hear is that whether it's religion, whether it's science, what have you. Having the openness and the flexibility to adapt and to evolve and to take on different perspectives that can create more resilience and lessen the division. And I say this pragmatically, I don't say this theoretically, but pragmatically having conversations with guests of your caliber or with my clients, because it's through this storytelling, through this sharing of sort of the inner dialogue, the inner what's going on with that. And then this conversation, this dialogue, this debate we can have, which is healthy, well, we lead to something that is more of sort of, instead of divergent, but more convergent. At least that's my perspective that I've taken from this brilliant conversation today, Amir. Thank you, Jason. I really appreciate this because I think that that's exactly the heart of it. You know, how do we help each other to understand each other, to know about each other, to live together? Because guess what? We're going to live together. Like I said, it's a city hit. I rely on 100 people every day just for my existence, 99 of which I've never met, you know. I mean, is there any last thoughts you would like to live with our listeners today? Yeah, no, I want to thank you again for the opportunity to be here. And I think for your listeners, that sense of, you know, understand about each other, learn about each other, know that those stereotypes can be very useful sometimes to help us but become very hurtful other times that you might have more in common than you would think with someone who is deeply religious when you're not or from a different religion uh that then you might be but it's it. Learn your own stories first, and then once you've learned your stories, you know, help to learn someone else's stories. I think that's really what makes sense, and I'll stop here. I say this all the time to my students. Like, look, you can read any book you want about Islam, including, you know, one of the books I've written. You can read any book you want about Judaism, you know, but do you get invited to an iftar by a Muslim friend to celebrate the end of the day's fasting? Do you get invited to a Shabbat dinner and see how your Jewish friend lives out their Judaism by just simply having a meal? Do we sit down at a table together? And I think that's the encouragement. For me, that's why I think what you're doing is so important. How do you get people together to talk to each other, ideally to be able to sit down across from a table and eat with each other, talk with each other, understand each other? Because that's the only way we're going to solve things together, not as a collection of, you know, 7 billion individuals. And so the book you've written that was launched this year, I believe, was One God and Two Religions. Yeah. And that's by Dr. Amir Hussain. Amir, thank you very much for a brilliant and insightful conversation today. A privilege to be with you, Jason. Thank you. I was struck by Amir's perspective on doubt, not as something to be feared, but as something essential. Whether we're talking about science or faith, well, questioning helps us grow. Amir so eloquently said that faith doesn't have to be rigid or blind. It can be visceral, it can be heart-centered and alive with curiosity, just like great science. They may ask different kinds of questions. Science seeks the how, while religion often explores the why. But both play a role in helping us make sense of the world and our place in it. We also discussed the importance of balancing belief with understanding and how religious traditions, including Buddhism, have adapted to evolving knowledge. Amir shared some fascinating insights on how even institutions like the Catholic Church consider psychological and medical factors before considering spiritual explanations. That is an excellent example of what faith looks like when faith evolves with humility and reason. We also talked about Amir's latest book, One God, Two Religions, which explores the relationship between Islam and Christianity. You know, it's a timely and necessary reminder that education, empathy, and shared stories can chip away at fear and foster connection, especially in a world where divisions too often define us. I think that our conversation ended on a hopeful note, that dialogue and understanding are the antidotes to division, that listening, listening to each other's stories builds not only bridges, but resilience. And we all need more of that right now, no matter what we believe. Amir, thank you very much for such an enlightening and intriguing and compelling conversation. I appreciate your time and sharing your knowledge and your experience. Folks, if this conversation resonates with you, consider sharing it with someone who might appreciate a new perspective. And if any of you have got a guest in mind for a future episode, I'd love to hear from you. I'm always on the hunt for a great conversation. Well, until next time, keep well, keep strong, and we'll speak soon. Music.