Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the aftermath of the terrorist attack in Denmark and go to Copenhagen to speak with Flemming Rose, a journalist and the Foreign Editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, the daily newspaper which published twelve cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005 that sparked violent protests across the Muslim world. Since Flemming Rose made the decision to publish the cartoons, we discuss the decision to hold a public event “Art, Blasphemy, and Freedom of Expression” in a Copenhagen café with the controversial Swedish Cartoonist Lars Vilks who also caricatured Muhammad, that provoked a terrorist attack which left a film director at the cafe and a Jewish guard at a synagogue dead. In discussing freedom verses censorship, we look into whether restrictions should be put into place to prevent young European Muslims from being radicalized in prison as was the case with the terrorists responsible for the recent massacres in Paris and the young Danish-born terrorist who was just released from jail two weeks ago.

Part 2

Then the world-renowned Islamic scholar Dr. Abou El Fadl joins us in the studio to discuss the recent displays of barbarity and murder done in the name of Islam, as well as the execution-style murders of three young Muslims in America whose killing is still being attributed to a parking dispute even though the contested parking spot was empty at the time the young students were executed by their neighbor. Dr. El Fadl is a Distinguished Professor in Islamic Law and Chair of Islamic Studies at the UCLA School of Law, who served on the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom and on the board of directors for Human Rights Watch. His books include “The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists”, “The Search for Beauty in Islam” and his latest just out is, “Reasoning with God: Reclaiming Shari’ah in the Modern Age”.   

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the collapse of Yemen, a country on the front line of the war on terror that only recently senior national security officials were claiming was a success story in the battle against al Qaeda. Christopher Swift, a Professor of National Security Studies at Georgetown University and a Fellow at the University of Virginia’s Center for National Security Law joins us to discuss the dire warning the U.N. Secretary General gave to the U.N. Security Council that “Yemen is collapsing before our eyes” and the capture of an army base by al Qaeda where militants are now in possession of a lot of heavy weaponry.

Part 2

Then we examine Congress’ plans to cut food stamps again and the apparent compulsion among Republican lawmakers to punish the working poor by demanding that recipients are drug tested and should be required to show a photo ID when they use their government-issued debit card to buy food for their families. Jim Weill, President of the Food Research and Action Center, joins us to discuss this second attempt after Republicans tried to cut $40 billion from the program in 2013 but managed to strip $8 billion, and the false assumption that food stamp recipients are freeloaders when half are children and 43% live in households where someone is earning.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with a veteran CIA officer Robert Grenier who was the CIA station chief in Islamabad and the head of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center. He is the author of the new book, just out, “88 Days to Kandahar: A CIA Diary” and we discuss what went wrong in Afghanistan after the successful routing of the Taliban and al Qaeda in the first Afghan War, based on war plans that Robert Grenier drafted, and his refusal to sustain White House interrogation policies that led to him being forced out of the CTC.