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In this week's episode, I am honoured to welcome Dr. Farid Esack. Dr. Esack is a traditionally trained scholar and a successful academic in modern universities. He has authored many famous written works on Islam and is arguably the world's leading Islamic Liberation theologian. He was appointed as gender equality commissioner by Nelson Mandela. Through the organization, The Call of Islam, Esack played a leading role in the struggle against apartheid. He advocates interreligious solidarity against all forms of injustice and has worked extensively to support Muslims infected with HIV. He is currently Head of the Department of Religion Studies at the University of Johannesburg. In 2018 he was awarded the Order of Luthuli (Silver), South Africa's highest civilian order, for his contribution to scholarship and work for justice.

Dr. Esack has also lectured at many distinguished local and international institutions of higher learning. He is a former Distinguished Mason Professor at the College of William and Mary in Virginia; he also occupied a University Professorship in Ethics, Religion and Society at Xavier University in Ohio. In addition, he served for two years at Harvard University – between the Divinity School and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences – as the William Henry Bloomberg Professor and the Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal Professor in Contemporary Islam.
Dr. Esack is the author of books such as The Struggle, On Being a Muslim, and Qur'an, Liberation and Pluralism: An Islamic Perspective of Interreligious Solidarity Against Oppression. In this episode, Dr. Esack shares his experience in the apartheid. We discuss what he learned from his experiences and how we can use some of the messages from the liberation movement today, where there is so much division. We also talk about how after building a movement against the apartheid, South Africans had to encounter additional challenges with gender inequality and how they navigated that stage.

I wanted to bring Dr. Esack on this podcast to gain some wisdom and hopefully share that with the listeners. We are currently in a time of polarization and an "us" against "them" mentality in many aspects. I wanted to use this dialogue to demonstrate that we are in this together and perhaps find some common ground through the act of love. I also believe that we have lost sight of the wisdom that sits with people who had come before us and encountered similar challenges, even though those challenges may appear different. Dr. Esack is an individual who possesses that wisdom, and I am grateful I was able to speak with him. Finally, I wanted to highlight that the responsibility of change sits with all of us, and it is something we can take on. I hope this conversation gives us something to think about even if we do not agree with everything.