Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
An author who writes about world religions, best known for her bestselling books on Islam after 9/11 and as a public speaker.
On the island
Eight records
Cello Suite No. 2 in D minor, BWV 1008: V. Menuet I & II
I love it because it suggests difficulty, going round and round. A lot of my life has been circling, following the same pattern, until finally you get to the centre.
The Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos
Christ was made obedient for us even unto death. And I'm very grateful for the opportunity in the convent, even though I couldn't sing.
Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73 ('Emperor'): II. Adagio un poco mosso
Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, with the Prague Symphony Orchestra conducted by Václav Smetáček
It was the first piece of classical music I really responded to. The serenity and expansion of this music immediately spoke to me.
I think it expresses very much that sense of alienation from your surroundings, a sense of nothing making sense, which was what the outside world seemed to me, and the absence of the beloved...
I played these late quartets of Beethoven over and over and over again to myself in these dark years. And they they express so much the sort of pain and yet the ability somehow to soar above it.
Surah Al-Qadr (The Destiny Surah)
I chose it because it reflects the meditative side of Islam. It describes the moment when the Quran came from heaven to earth and enters the night almost as Jesus is conceived in the Virgin Mary.
Clarinet Quintet in A major, K. 581: II. Larghetto
Eduard Brunner with the Hagen Quartet
I love it because it's breath. Breath is vital to our lives. And here Mozart, a tormented man, is able from the depths of his being to breathe out this serene, peaceful, expansive sound.
String Quartet No. 14 in D minor, D. 810 ('Death and the Maiden'): II. Andante con moto
Vienna Philharmonic String Quartet
I love the combination here of sweetness and pain. We mustn't ignore the pain of life. And together here, I think they become extremely poignant and inspiring.
In conversation
Presenter asks
5:23Why [did you decide to go] into a nunnery?
I wanted to lose myself. I wanted to lose all the confusions of adolescence in this being that we call God. I wanted to be enlightened and inspired and inspiring, even a saint. And I was also, I didn't like life in Birmingham. The concentration was so much on money and material possessions. And also that I felt the position of women looked so deadly.
Presenter asks
13:41If the reforms had been in place by the time you went in and life as a nun had been less repressive, [might you have stayed] the course?
No, I was not a good nun. I'm not castigating myself there. I think very few people can live that kind of life successfully. It's very difficult to live a life of total chastity, total obedience, where you give up your own will and judgment to somebody else and have no material responsibilities whatsoever and remain and become mature and whole.
Presenter asks
22:46Why did you think that you could explain [the thinking behind the Ayatollah's fatwa against Salman Rushdie]?
I had started to study about Islam in the course of my television programmes and while I abhorred the fatwa, I abhorred the book burning, but I was also disturbed by the fact that some of Rushdie's supporters segued from a denunciation of those things to an out-and-out denunciation of Islam itself... I thought we cannot afford, after the 1930s, to allow ourselves to cultivate a distorted image of a whole people.
The keepsakes
The book
The Complete Works of John Milton
John Milton
I think I could start learning some of these extraordinary poems off by heart. Again, it would be something to do. And I love those massive, massive architectural sentences. So that would be my choice.
Presenter asks
25:25Do you think [our reaction to the terrorist threat] has to do with the fact that we're predominantly secular in our approach, that we just don't understand the power that religion can have over people?
I think that's true in Britain. It's not true in the United States. They're the people who want to understand the horror of 9-11 in a religious manner... But we are not as capable of that. We are extremely secular.
Presenter asks
29:26What about you, Karen, and your religion today? Do you practise it? Do you get down on your knees and pray?
No, I certainly don't. After my dismal failure in the convent, that gives me a sense of... horror... I wouldn't even call myself Christian any more because I cannot s I can't think that Christianity is the only way. My study of religions ha shows that every single one of them... Is valid. They're all teaching the same thing.
“Every time I tried to join a popular mainstream activity, I've fallen off. First of all, being a nun in Britain, a very secular, unreligious kind of country, then remaining single all my life in a society dictated by coupledom, being an epileptic, too, in a society that finds that particular condition difficult to accept, and finally writing about religion in Britain, which again is a rather marginal activity. But it's by actually accepting this kind of outside status that I've found somehow that I've come to the centre of myself.”
“I left with a sense of absolutely sickening dread and terror, because the religious life and the training I'd received was meant to change you and condition you at a profound level. And once I got outside the context where this training made sense, I found I simply didn't know how to live. And I became anorexic and suicidal, not because I wanted to die, but because I'd lost the art of living.”
“I think the diagnosis of epilepsy was one of the happiest days of my life because for years I had been having fainting fits... Now I thought I was going mad... I thought I'd probably broken myself in the convent and that I would end my days in a locked ward...”
“Study has become my prayer. So I've stumbled on a kind of spirituality that suits me... I still think of myself as a kind of nun. I've never married. I live alone, and when I'm not racing around the world talking to people, I'm in silence, thinking constantly about God and spirituality and religion.”