Communities of Disagreement
Episode 4 of BAD COUSINS is out everywhere you listen to podcasts. Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or the web.
What’s interesting about Ep 4:
Last time we took you through the story of Abraham and his dysfunctional family in the Book of Genesis. In this episode we are joined by a very special guest, historian of Islam Yusuf Tayara, to talk about how this story has spun off into all kinds of intriguing directions in the centuries following, in parallel with the rise of the traditions now known as “Abrahamic” in the region which is now known as the Middle East.
We start off with a mysterious prophecy from Isaiah in the Old Testament, which seems to rebuke the Arabs for lacking hospitality towards some unspecified wanderers in the desert. We then proceed to a Jewish interpretation of this prophecy in the Talmud, which puts us square into BAD COUSINS territory by specifying that the spurned guests of the Arabs were Jewish priests. Being inhospitable is always bad, but treating cousins this way, of course, is particularly heinous!
Our next stop is deeper in Arabia, with the rise of Islam and the place of Abraham in its holiest text, the Qur’an. Through Ishmael and his descendant, the Prophet Muhammad, Abraham is the genealogical father of Arabs/Muslims, but here we once again see him also playing another role: as a universal symbol of monotheism. From here, the plot thickens with a really strange medieval Jewish legend, in which Abraham meddles in Ishmael’s marital life in a way that seems to also be a commentary on the growing rifts between Shiites and Sunnis within Islam!
We love all our podcast children, but this was an especially fun one. It gets dark at times, as usual for us, but we also really bonded with Yusuf over the political possibilities of turning the “community of disagreement” over Abraham’s legacy into a force for solidarity, justice and peace. In these dark times, we need stuff like that. So may this episode help you kick off the new year with some inspiration.
Also we promised we would start adding reading recommendations, so here’s one you can find on the Internet Archive for free: The Republic of Cousins; Women's oppression in Mediterranean society by Germaine Tillion.
We’d love to hear what you think!
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We’re publishing this show in partnership with The Diasporist, an online, bilingual magazine of political criticism, cultural analysis, and new writing from in and outside of Germany.
They just published a text subtitled “Germany’s selective memory politics and the pattern of ongoing violence in Namibia” by Sima Luipert (whose activism we’re familiar with from Dig Where You Stand reporting) here.
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Simplify has re-launched
Last week, Simplify’s re-lauch was the top story on Podnews, the biggest podcast industry newsletter. To recap:
Our first new episode is with Elinor Cleghorn, author of Unwell Women.
Caitlin wrote an in-depth launch email about the first episode (and the problem with medical history) on our new Simplify newsletter.
We’ve been posting reels and more on the IG.
And we’ll publish every other Monday ongoing now until we have the capacity to go weekly.
We’ve also made a Kollo Media Patreon page - you can support us from as low as 3 Euros per month here.
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