CONFLICTED

Latest Episodes:

2025 Conflicted Christmas Special Dec 23, 2025

Show notes

What is ‘the Christmas story’ really? And how does it change when you tell it from within a different religious tradition? In Conflicted’s first-ever Christmas Special, Thomas and Aimen retell the Nativity as it appears in the Gospels and in the Qur’an.

They discuss:

Who were the Magi? Zoroastrian priests or Nabataean nomads?
How the Nativity story differs between the Bible and the Qur’an
A controversial theory about how local Christian traditions may have shaped the Qur’anic telling
The overlooked reason why Qur’an presumes its audience already knows the underlying stories
Christ’s ‘unfinished business’ in Islam: the Second Coming and the fight against the Antichrist
The sharpest divergence: the Crucifixion and what it implies about Jesus’ mission

Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

Produced by Thomas Small and edited by Lizzy Andrews.

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What Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy Means For The World Dec 18, 2025

Show notes

In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas speaks with global finance and security analyst Giri Rajendran about the Trump Administration’s newly published National Security Strategy — what it signals, what it omits, and what it suggests about America’s role in a multipolar world.

Thomas and Giri discuss:

How this report differs from previous US National Security Strategies
The end of the old rules-based order of liberal internationalism
The Middle East: a phase shift toward deeper economic engagement
China: economic and industrial competition, not ideological crusade
Europe: NATO burden-sharing, culture-war politics, and coercion by inducement
Russia as a potential ally, no longer an enemy
Whether global governance can exist without global institutions

Follow Giri on X here: https://x.com/Trajan1898

Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm

Find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MHconflicted

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

This episode was produced and edited by Thomas Small.

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The 2026 Middle East Forecast Dec 16, 2025

Show notes

What does the future hold for the Middle East — and the world — in 2026?

In this special episode of Conflicted, Thomas instructs Aimen to peer into his crystal ball and offer his forecasts for the year to come.

In this episode, Aimen and Thomas discuss:

How professional geopolitical analysts make forecasts
The impossibility of foreseeing Black Swan events
Why an end to the war in Ukraine could reshape Middle Eastern geopolitics
The likelihood of a U.S. war against the Houthis in Yemen
Renewed hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon
The strategic importance of the Gulf states
Iran’s nuclear programme, proxy network, and the risk of renewed confrontation

Add your predictions to your 2026 Forecast Card here: https://forms.gle/sMCbRFmFTBdcfEDd8

Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/

Find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MHconflicted

And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted

And Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/conflictedpod

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

Produced by Thomas Small and edited by Lizzy Andrews.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What the U.S. Gets Wrong About the Muslim Brotherhood Dec 11, 2025

Show notes

In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas speaks with Lorenzo Vidino, Director of the Programme on Extremism at The George Washington University.

What happens when an ideological movement is neither a terrorist organisation nor an ordinary religious group — but something in between? One of the world’s leading experts on the Muslim Brotherhood explains…

The early history of Islam in America
The first Brotherhood-linked students arriving in the U.S. in the 50s and 60s
The formation of the first American Brotherhood cells
The Brotherhood’s gradual institutional influence across the 80s and 90s
Why CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations) is so controversial
Germany’s three-fold classification system and what the U.S. can learn from it

Follow Lorenzo on: X, BlueSky, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

Check out his books:

The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West (Columbia University Press, 2010)
The Closed Circle: Joining and Leaving the Muslim Brotherhood in the West (Columbia University Press, 2020).

Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm

Find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MHconflicted

And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted

And Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/conflictedpod

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

This episode was produced and edited by Thomas Small.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Saudi Arabia’s New Bargaining Chip Dec 09, 2025

Show notes

The Middle East is shifting again, and fast. In this wide-ranging overview, Aimen and Thomas break down the hidden forces reshaping the geopolitical chessboard as 2025 draws to a close.

In this episode, Aimen and Thomas uncover:

The power of Saudi Arabia’s discovery of vast rare-earth reserves
The U.S.–Saudi grand bargain
Why the F-35 sale to Saudi Arabia rattled Israel and what it means for the future of the Abraham Accords
Iran’s deepening water crisis and Gulf states’ preparations for instability
The simmering tensions between India and Pakistan
Afghanistan’s compounded crises

Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/

Find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MHconflicted

And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted

And Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/conflictedpod

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

Produced by Thomas Small and edited by Lizzy Andrews.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Has the Muslim Brotherhood Infiltrated the UK? Dec 04, 2025

Show notes

In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas speaks with Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat about the Muslim Brotherhood.

What happens when a Western democracy encounters an ideological movement it no longer has the language — or the institutions — to understand?

The former Security Minister and long-time observer of the Middle East explains what the Brotherhood is, how it operates, and why the British state is struggling to deal with it.

In this episode, Thomas questions Tom about…

Tom’s time in Egypt during the Arab Spring
His conversations with Brotherhood members
The UK government’s secretive 2014 review of the Brotherhood a nd why Parliament challenged it
The institutional blind spots inside Whitehall and MI5
How Brotherhood-linked networks operate in Britain today
Why talking openly about the Brotherhood is so politically and legally fraught
Strategies for the UK government to tackle the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood

Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/

Subscribe to Tom Tugendhat’s Substack here: https://tomtugendhat.substack.com/

Find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MHconflicted

And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

This episode was produced and edited by Thomas Small.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Conflicted Returns: A New Era Begins Dec 02, 2025

Show notes

Conflicted is back. Aimen and Thomas return with a renewed mission and a bold vision for the future of the show. In this special relaunch episode, they look back at the journey so far, celebrate the global community that’s grown around Conflicted, and reveal what’s coming next in an ever-more turbulent world.

In this episode, Aimen and Thomas:

Offer a sweeping recap of Conflicted’s story arcs, themes, and analyses
Reveal what the next phase of Conflicted has in store for dear listeners
Reassert Conflicted’s commitment to rising above the polarisation and simplifications dominating mainstream media
Celebrate the many friends of the show—journalists, scholars, analysts—who have helped Conflicted become a global phenomenon
Thank the listeners whose engagement, questions, and curiosity have shaped Conflicted’s direction (and good-naturedly endured Aimen’s dad jokes)

Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/

Find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MHconflicted

And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

Produced by Thomas Small and edited by Lizzy Andrews.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Conflicted Revisited: Ethiopia’s Overlooked Conflict Nov 26, 2025

Show notes

This week on Conflicted, we’re unlocking another episode we first released for members of the Conflicted Community.

In this interview from last January, I talk with Martin Plaut, a distinguished journalist who has reported on conflicts across Africa for decades, and whose book Understanding Ethiopia’s Tigray War was an essential resource for us in preparing our series on Ethiopia. We discuss:

Ethiopia’s recent Tigray War and why it proved so consequential for the Horn of Africa
How the federal government — with Eritrean support — turned against the Tigray region despite its long rule in Ethiopia
Martin’s personal story of growing up in apartheid South Africa and his early political activism
His current work on the history of African slavery and common misconceptions surrounding it

Speaking of slavery in Africa, Martin’s latest book Unbroken Chains: A 5,000-Year History of African Enslavement has recently been published. I hope to get Martin back onto the podcast to talk all about it!

Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/

Find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MHconflicted

And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted

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India and the Future of World Order: A Conversation with T.V. Paul Nov 20, 2025

Show notes

This week on Conflicted, Thomas is joined by T.V. Paul, Distinguished James McGill Professor in the Department of Political Science at McGill University.

Prof. Paul is one of the world’s leading thinkers in international relations and author of Restraining Great Powers: Soft Balancing from Empires to the Global Era and The Unfinished Quest: India’s Search for Major Power Status from Nehru to Modi.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Thomas speaks with Prof. Paul about:

India’s strategy as a rising power in a shifting multipolar world
How ‘soft balancing’ works as an alternative to military alliances
The benign and malign dimensions of American hegemony
Why globalization both empowered and destabilized the global middle class
India’s complex status anxiety and its quest for recognition
How China and India navigate rivalry, nationalism, and regional threats
The future of the liberal international order—and whether it can survive
What a new global settlement might require from the West, China, and India alike

Join the Conflicted Community here: https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/

Find us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MHconflicted

And Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MHconflicted

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Conflicted Revisited… Husam Mahjoub – How Foreign States are Fuelling Sudan’s Civil War Nov 12, 2025

Show notes

This week on Conflicted, we’re unlocking for everyone an episode we first released a year ago for members of the Conflicted Community — an interview with Hussam Mahjoub, a Sudanese journalist, political activist, and founder of the independent TV channel Sudan Bukra, which has become a vital source of truth amid the chaos of war.

When it was recorded, Sudan was already sliding into catastrophe. But in the months since, the country has fallen even further into one of the world’s most devastating wars. The conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces has shattered the country: communications have collapsed, hospitals have shut, and millions are displaced or facing famine.

In this conversation, Hussam helps us understand how Sudan got here. He traces the rise of the RSF from the Janjaweed militias that terrorised Darfur twenty years ago, and walks us through Sudan’s modern history, from the long dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir, to the 2019 revolution, and the collapse of hopes for civilian rule.

Hussam also offers an insider’s view of the regional powers shaping Sudan’s fate — Egypt, the Gulf states, and Russia’s Wagner network — and how rivalries over gold, trade, and influence have turned Sudan’s agony into a proxy struggle.

Listening now, his analysis feels prophetic. The structural forces he identified then have since erupted into the full-scale war we see today.

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