Struggle Session 7 Live w/Lara Sheehi and Nina Farnia
The Adnan Husain Show
Full Audio of Struggle Session 7! If you missed the livestream, you can listen back. The Struggle Session is back, Sunday Jan 18 at 3:30pmET/12:30pmPT! This livestream panel program will wrestle with the major developments shaping the world so far in 2026. Expect uncompromising anti-imperialist analysis of the continuing resistance to US hegemony and defense of sovereignty in Venezuela and the Caribbean, Iran and West Asia, from Turtle Island to Palestine. Send your questions and comments for the panel--Nina Farnia and Lara Sheehi, two outstanding comrades and colleagues with important...
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Office Hours 17-Iran: Society under Sanctions w/David Yaghoubian
The Adnan Husain Show
Bonus Audio of the return of Office Hours, a regular Friday livestream on YouTube and X! Adnan and David Yaghoubian, returning guest and historian of Modern Iran and the Middle East at CSU-San Bernardino, discuss their recent visit to Tehran and their social, political and economic impressions. We will also analyze the economic protests and subsequent violent riots as well as the social and government responses, the histories of sanctions and subversion against the Islamic Republic, and the geopolitical context and consequences regionally and internationally. It is a timely discussion...
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Reflections on 2025; Visions for 2026
The Adnan Husain Show
I contributed a short piece to Sasha Frere Jones' newsletter, "Writing about 2025". It's full of terrific reflections from friends, comrades, and colleagues like Nora Barrows Friedman, Calla Walsh, Laleh Khalili, Louis Allday, Abdeljawad Omar, and Lara Sheehi, who have been guest on the Adnan Husain Show or Guerrilla History (or both). I have also been enjoying a range of reflective thoughts, observations, insights from many many others through some wonderful writing. It's a tour de force. I suggest you check it out and subscribe: I have recorded a version with more commentary for those who...
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2025 A Year in History w/Revolutionary Guerrilla Menace!
The Adnan Husain Show
Full audio of Revolutionary Guerrilla Menace's 2025: A Year in History livestream! A fantastic discussion with blistering analysis from the crew. We discussed US criminal assault on Venezuela and its consequences geopolitically and economically on US empire and its designs in Latin America and implications for West Asia and especially subversion or assault on Iran. We analyzed US/Western imperialism and how it is the primary contradiction in global capitalism. Other topics we touched on were far right politics and "divisions" obfuscating the central class politics, the demonization of...
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The Imperial Theory Industry w/Gabriel Rockhill
The Adnan Husain Show
In this episode, Adnan discusses Professor Gabriel Rockhill's new book, This incredibly important book contributes an insurgent foray, a guerrilla attack, against the imperial theory industry and its ideological work in the psychological, intellectual war that is central to the perpetuation of imperialist capitalism of our era. This first volume lays out a crucial method and approach, a way of performing intellectual history through dialectical and historical materialism, while exposing the relationship between the deep state/permanent state forces that have patronized a compatible left...
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Office Hours 15-Sovereign Development vs. Imperialist War w/Bikrum Gill
The Adnan Husain Show
The radical academy is in session Friday, Nov. 21 at 5pm for Office Hours. In this session Adnan hosts Dr. Bikrum Gill, a professor at Virginia Tech, a scholar of international political economy, and member of the Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective. We will talk about the key confrontation of our time: the possibility for sovereign development by peoples of the Global South and the imperialist wars waged against these projects by the colonial West. We'll examine these processes and projects of alternative development outside of Western capitalist hegemony, the geopolitical economies and...
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Full Audio! Struggle Session 6 Live w/Nerdeen Kiswani, Sina Rahmani, Henry Hakamaki & Mehmet Ali Arslan
The Adnan Husain Show
The Struggle Session was back for November on Sunday Nov 23rd at 3pmET! Enjoy full audio of the program. This monthly livestream panel program is not convening to make you feel better--the unvarnished analysis and fierce self-criticism may make you feel a bit worse! But, it will inform and, hopefully, spur you to taking action. As Marx said, the point isn't just to understand the world but to change it. This is an activist panel for a much needed Struggle Session: Nerdeen Kiswani, founder of Within our Lifetime; Sina Rahmani, host of East is a Podcast and impressario/producer of the online...
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Bonus Full Audio! Office Hours 13-Sudan: Resistance, Compradors, an Existential Fight for Liberation w/Hamza Al-Muqawi
The Adnan Husain Show
In this edition of Office Hours, Friday Nov. 7 at a special time, 6pm ET, Adnan hosts Hamza Al-Muqawi a Sudanese writer and activist to talk about Sudan's history as a crucial and continuing front in the struggle against colonialism, imperialism, and capitalist exploitation of Eastern Africa and West Asia. We will learn about Sudan's strategic place on the Red Sea and the geopolitical factors fueling imperial and subimperial designs and interventions as well as the resistance and struggle for liberation by Sudan's people facing terror, deliberate starvation and genocide. Hamza's analysis will...
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No god but God--after 20 years w/Reza Aslan
The Adnan Husain Show
Adnan has a conversation with noted writer and religion scholar Reza Aslan on the 20th anniversary edition of his classic popular history of Islam, "No god but God: the Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam". Reza talks about his unique background and interests in religion, the reasons he wrote this work in the cauldron of Islamophobia during the "Global War on Terrorism" GWOT just a few years after 9/11 and after the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions and occupations. We talked about its reception then and the goals of examining Islam as a religion like any other and how that allowed for an...
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The Names of God (4): al-Rahman, "The Merciful"
The Adnan Husain Show
In this episode, Adnan and Marc explore the most frequently mentioned of the names that serves both as an attribute and a sort of "proper name" in some fashion. We explored the meanings of the Arabic root R-H-M that gives rise to "rahmah" or mercy as a noun and the two adjectival attributes al-Rahman and al-Raheem, the names that are part of the invocation of chapters of the Qur'an. We considered the particular onological and psychological relationships surrounding al-Rahman as the most merciful or the most benificent. In addition, we wrestled with questions of theodicy. How can we reconcile...
info_outlineIn this episode, Adnan and Marc explore the most frequently mentioned of the names that serves both as an attribute and a sort of "proper name" in some fashion. We explored the meanings of the Arabic root R-H-M that gives rise to "rahmah" or mercy as a noun and the two adjectival attributes al-Rahman and al-Raheem, the names that are part of the invocation of chapters of the Qur'an. We considered the particular onological and psychological relationships surrounding al-Rahman as the most merciful or the most benificent. In addition, we wrestled with questions of theodicy. How can we reconcile the manifest cruelty and oppression humanity has wrought--something the angels in Qur'anic origin narratives objected to and charged that humans would sow corruption and shed blood in the world rather than serve as responsible stewards--with the cosmic foundations of the universe in rahma/mercy and the fact that God is pre-eminently understood and uniquely described as al-Rahman? What can this possibly mean in the face of the suffering of most of the world's population in deprivation, during a time of genocide in Palestine and Sudan, as well as in the suffering and difficulty we all face in our lives?
This was a problem medieval mystics and theologians also tried to think through. Intriguingly, these included a sense of a profoundly necessary social empathy as a spiritual value of making the name al-Rahman real that impels sacrifice for the weak, defenseless, and suffering. We had to recognize the limits of these discourses however and consider further what this might mean for the contemporary human experience from psychological and spiritual perspectives. Many issues and concerns came up in the discussion and particularly in contending with how we can understand spiritual and psychological growth in the apparent contradiction of cosmic mercy in a cruel world. that will flow naturally into the next episode on al-Raheem, the compassionate.
Thank you for joining us in this journey through the Names of God. We look forward to your comments and questions.
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