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Every Sunday at 3:00amAbout the Show
Inspired
Inspired is the nation's leading public radio show about faith, ethics and spirituality. Each week we offer you analyses of the big headlines alongside lesser-told stories – those of Orthodox Jewish artists and African-American atheists, Muslim feminists and spiritual seekers. Through these stories, a rough sketch of our country’s religious landscape begins to emerge. It’s a marketplace of beliefs and ideas too complex for sound bites, and too important to ignore.
Learning Self Defense to Thwart a Hijab Grab
In a church basement in Washington, DC, a dozen Muslim women are learning how to look an attacker in the eye and use their “outside voice.” With an uptick in bias-related incidentsbefore–and after–the presidential election, demand has also risen for self-defense classes to help Muslim women prevent, or escape, attack. Rana Abdelhamid, the founder of Women’s Initiative for Self-Empowerment (WISE) that runs the class, weighs in with her personal story of a “hijab grab.” And a mother attending the class tells us why she brought her two daughters.
Yuka and Zahra: Discrimination Then and Now
Yuka Fujikura is a 90-year-old survivor of a Japanese-American internment camp. Zahra Riaz is a 17-year-old Muslim college student. They sat down together to share their stories, now that their very different situations have been connected: In mid-November, a prominent Trump supporter suggested that Donald Trump’s Muslim registry proposal had precedent because “We did it during World War II with Japanese.” Trump has revised the details of his registry plan multiple times since December 2015. Click here for a timeline of the changes.
There is so much for to our conversation between Yuka Fujikura and Zahra Riaz. Hear a longer version here.
Carrie Newcomer: You Can Do This Hard Thing
Carrie Newcomer is a Quaker singer-songwriter who lives out in the woods near Bloomington, Indiana. She sings about embracing our shared values, searching for moments of beauty, and being present in our own lives. So that got us thinking: after this bitter election season, we’ll have what she’s having. She joins producer Laura Kwerel for an in-studio perfomance of songs that seem especially fitting after this bitter election season, including “You Can Do This Hard Thing.” Carrie Newcomer‘s new album is called The Beautiful Not Yet.
