UNAPOLOGETIC with Ashfaaq Carim

by Middle East Eye

Season 1

Episode 90 - How colonialism redefined "Islam" and how Muslims are moving beyond it | Faisal Devji | UNAPOLOGETIC

In the latest episode of UNAPOLOGETIC we sat down with Faisal Devji in Oxford. Devji is a widely acclaimed scholar of both South Asian history and the history of intellectual thought. In his latest book, Devji presents a novel idea: that "Islam", as many of us commonly use the word today, meaning a single thing with a will and a direction of its own, rather than the faith Muslims practise, is barely 150 years old. Sometime in the mid nineteenth century, people increasingly started using the word Islam not to describe the faith that Muslims follow, but as the name of something that acts. Islam wants, Islam demands, Islam is in decline, Islam will rise. Devji's argument is that this shift happened not because Muslims became more or less devout, but because Muslim political power collapsed under European empire. Once "Islam", or more specifically Muslim political power, was no longer held by kings, caliphs or clerics, it became something anyone could speak for, and many people did. Devji is Beit Professor of Global and Imperial History at Oxford and a Fellow of Balliol College. His new book is Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam. We follow that story through the three movements it produced. The modernists, from Sayyid Ahmad Khan and Ameer Ali through Iqbal to Fazlur Rahman. The Islamists, from Maududi to Khomeini. And the militants of the 21st century. Along the way we get into why Maududi thought sovereignty itself was a form of tyranny, why Khomeini told his own president that the state could suspend prayer and fasting, why Iqbal was declared a heretic and then became the intellectual father of a country, why Hamas quoted him in its founding document, and what it means that you can stand at the heart of Islamic ritual in Mecca today and find skyscrapers and fast food. None of this is an argument that Muslim belief is fading. Devji is clear that the people in the movements he describes may be deeply religious, and that this is not a story about secular against religious. It is a story about a word, where it came from, what it made possible, and what a much older and richer tradition of Muslim thought was obscured by it. And when he is asked whether Muslims are in crisis, his answer points somewhere else entirely. UNAPOLOGETIC is hosted by Ashfaaq Carim.

S1 · E90

Aug 25, 2026

1:36:12

Episode 89 - The story of how a Greater India was shattered into 12 modern states | Sam Dalrymple | UNAPOLOGETIC

"The story that I tell in the book is how this one Indian Empire passport became, by the 1970s, twelve independent passports." - Sam Dalrymple "The story that I tell in the book is how this one Indian Empire passport becomes, by the 1970s, twelve independent passports." — Sam Dalrymple We sat down with historian Sam Dalrymple, author of Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia, for UNAPOLOGETIC. His argument: the "Partition" most people know from 1947 was only one of five ruptures that broke apart the old British "Indian Empire" — a single administrative unit stretching from Aden in Yemen to the borders of Thailand — between 1937 and 1971, producing the twelve nation-states of today's South Asia and Arabian Gulf. This was a world where the Sultans of Oman were schooled in Rajasthan and grew up fluent in Urdu, where a Yemeni family's move to the Deccan gave the world haleem (Yemeni harees, remixed with Hyderabadi spice), and where Rangoon in 1933 briefly overtook New York as the world's busiest port of migration. Sam traces exactly how that world got torn apart, piece by piece. We go deep into the personal story behind Pakistan's founding, from Muhammad Ali Jinnah's transformation after the death of his wife Ruttie, to Gandhi's early opposition to a "Greater India," through all five partitions in turn: Burma in 1937, the Arabian states, the Great Partition of 1947, the forced integration of princely states like Hyderabad and Kashmir, and finally the 1971 war that created Bangladesh. We also talk about the scale of the devastation, the myths that have grown up around it, and Sam's own Project Dastaan, reconnecting Partition survivors with the homes they lost. UNAPOLOGETIC is hosted by Ashfaaq Carim.

S1 · E89

Aug 11, 2026

2:14:17

Episode 88 - Do Greeks have more in common with Arabs and Turks than Europeans | Sean Mathews | UNAPOLOGETIC

We sat down with Middle East Eye journalist and author Sean Mathews on UNAPOLOGETIC to ask a question that unsettles a lot of assumptions: do Greeks actually have more in common with Arabs and Turks than they do with the rest of Europe? Mathews is the author of The New Byzantines: The Rise of Greece and Return of the Near East, and his answer draws on years of reporting from Istanbul, Cairo and occupied Jerusalem. He argues that Greece's "Western" identity is a relatively recent import, imposed from outside, and that the country's deeper roots, culturally, religiously and geopolitically, lie in the wider Middle East. The episode traces how the Greek revolution, the population exchange with Turkey, and the collapse of cosmopolitan cities like Alexandria all shaped the identity Greece wears today. We also get into the present: Greece's fast-deepening, and increasingly fraught, alliance with Israel, and what that could mean for Turkey, NATO and the wider region. UNAPOLOGETIC is hosted by Ashfaaq Carim.

S1 · E88

Jul 30, 2026

1:38:47

Episode 87 - How the US backed Khomeini, then armed Saddam | Scott Horton | UNAPOLOGETIC

The US backed Khomeini's return to power, then a year later greenlit Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran, the same country it had just warned Saddam might attack. In this latest episode of UNAPOLOGETIC, radio host and presenter of The Scott Horton Show, Scott Horton, sat down with MEE's Ashfaaq Carim to discuss the history of the US and its impact in the region. They also touched on Netanyahu's "new Middle East" doctrine and whether real US pressure could actually force him to fall in line. UNAPOLOGETIC is hosted by Ashfaaq Carim.

S1 · E87

Jul 23, 2026

57:35

Episode 86 - How the US blunder in Iran accelerates its decline and dooms Israel | Andreas Krieg | UNAPOLOGETIC

We sat down with Andreas Krieg for the fourth time on UNAPOLOGETIC, this time in the aftermath of the war on Iran, to ask what it has done to the balance of power across the Middle East. His answer is stark: this is the most fundamental shift in regional order in thirty years, and it has undone the American empire in a way he does not think it can recover from. We get into why the Gulf no longer believes the United States can protect it, why its bases have become magnets for attack rather than deterrents, and why nobody in the region has a plan B for the order that is now crumbling. Andreas lays out the battle between the Israel lobby and the Gulf lobby that he believes will decide Washington's approach for years to come, the split between Marco Rubio and JD Vance, and why Iran has emerged able to impose its will without ever building a bomb. We also talk through Iran as a network state, the Strait of Hormuz as a chokepoint, Saudi Arabia's strategic drift, Qatar's network power, Egypt reduced to a beggar state, the violation of Iraqi sovereignty, Syria under Sharaa, and why Andreas argues Israel has become a hammer that sees everything as a nail, isolated and digging itself into a hole it may not climb out of. UNAPOLOGETIC is hosted by Ashfaaq Carim.

S1 · E86

Jul 4, 2026

1:41:29

Episode 85 - Israel's dream of ruling the region is over, its decline has begun | Mustafa Barghouti |UNAPOLOGETIC

"Now Netanyahu has failed. Iran was not broken. Arab countries now realise that relying on Israel is a death sentence." In this episode of UNAPOLOGETIC, we sat down in studio with Mustafa Barghouti, Palestinian physician, leader of the Palestinian National Initiative and co-founder of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society. Barghouti argues that Israel's two strategic goals, imperial domination of the Middle East and normalisation with Arab states, have both collapsed, and that this marks the beginning of its decline. Across the conversation he sets out the scale of the atrocity in Gaza, the slow strangulation of life in the West Bank, and the transformation of Israeli society towards what he describes as fascism. He explains why the regional war with Iran ended in strategic failure for Netanyahu, why Oslo and the 2005 Gaza disengagement were traps rather than concessions, and why he refuses to accept any framing that places oppressor and oppressed on equal footing. Barghouti also turns to the question of survival and resistance, from the 90 midwives employed in the first weeks of the war to the clinics rebuilt multiple times under bombardment, and makes the case that Palestine has become the global measure of commitment to justice. Despite everything, he ends on a note of defiance and hope. UNAPOLOGETIC is hosted by Ashfaaq Carim.

S1 · E85

Jun 29, 2026

1:06:50

Episode 84 - Why reaching a ceasefire was essential - Iran, Hormuz and US decline | Laleh Khalili | UNAPOLOGETIC

Laleh Khalili is a professor of Gulf Studies at the University of Exeter and the author of Sinews of War and Trade and Extractive Capitalism. She is also Iranian-American, with family members displaced by the current war, a scholar with both the expertise and the personal stakes to speak to this moment with rare authority. In this episode of UNAPOLOGETIC, Ashfaaq Carim sits down with Khalili to understand what the US-Israeli war on Iran and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz actually means, not for markets, but for people. They discuss who is winning and who is losing, how Iran has used commercial disruption as a weapon, the deep colonial history that produced this crisis, Israel's periphery strategy and its long alliance with Iran before 1979, and why an empire in decline is always the most dangerous version of itself. UNAPOLOGETIC is hosted by Ashfaaq Carim.

S1 · E84

Jun 13, 2026

1:20:17

Episode 83 - Cenk Uygur on being banned by the UK and how it shows that the West has fallen | UNAPOLOGETIC

Cenk Uygur, founder of The Young Turks, was banned from entering the UK hours before this conversation - blocked by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood for criticising Israel. We speak to him live about what his ban indicates about the West's accelerating collapse, how governments are criminalising dissent on behalf of a foreign state, and whether the freedoms the West claims to stand for are already slipping away.

S1 · E83

Jun 2, 2026

30:16

Episode 82 - How the establishment made the far right respectable | Daniel Trilling | UNAPOLOGETIC

In this episode of UNAPOLOGETIC, we sit down with Daniel Trilling - journalist and author of If We Tolerate This: How the British Establishment Made the Far Right Respectable. We discuss who is actually responsible for the rise of the far right and how dangerous the global far right rise could be for freedoms across the globe. From Trump's assault on democratic institutions to Orban gutting Hungary's free press, Modi's rise during a period of extraordinary economic growth to Reform's promises of a British ICE - Trilling maps a global pattern of far right movements exploiting the failures of a governing class that never saw it coming, or simply didn't care. In the UK, he traces how David Cameron opened the door, Rishi Sunak presided over the ruins, and Keir Starmer arrived without a plan - leaving Nigel Farage as the unlikely beneficiary of decades of establishment failure. Could Farage be the next prime minister? What would a Reform government actually look like? And can any of this be stopped? UNAPOLOGETIC is hosted by Ashfaaq Carim

S1 · E82

Jun 1, 2026

1:45:08

Episode 81 - Is Elon Musk a white nationalist? We asked his father | Errol Musk | UNAPOLOGETIC

UNAPOLOGETIC spoke to Errol Musk, father of Elon Musk, and the result is a conversation is an interesting foray into where ideology is formed and where it is inherited. Errol traces his journey from post-war poverty to building a life of considerable wealth and takes credit for funding the very first company Elon and Kimball started in 1995. But it is his views on race, politics and identity that are likely to stay with you longest and defines the conversation. He reflects on post-apartheid South Africa in terms that invite direct challenge, describing the country under a black government as being "in a terrible state" and expressing views on land, farming and black economic capability that are difficult to swallow and that are challenged directly throughout. On Tommy Robinson, Errol is equally direct. He defends the Musk family's financial support for Robinson's legal fees, calls him "a political prisoner," compares him to Mandela, a comparison that is contested at length, and suggests he will "very likely, very possibly one day" be prime minister of England. His views on immigration lead to a metaphor that, once heard, is difficult to forget. We also put to Errol the words Elon himself has used to describe his father, "a terrible human being" who has done "every crime you can possibly think of," and take some time to examine how their relationship has evolved over the years, from the early decades in which Errol was the provider, to where things stand today. Draw your own conclusions. UNAPOLOGETIC is hosted by Ashfaaq Carim

S1 · E81

May 25, 2026

1:23:20

1 of 9