This is an excellent interview with Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad in which he discusses his reasons for converting to Islam in his teenage years. If you want to read about his conversion you can do so in the article Quicunque Vult, or, A teenage journey to Islam.

Joan Bakewell explores areas of belief with artists, thinkers and other public figures. She talks to Cambridge University chaplain and Muslim convert Tim Winter, known as Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad. He explores the moral sense of the sacred, instilled in him by his mother, his search for a connection with his creator and what it means to be a Muslim convert in Britain today.

Winter made his own journey towards Islam, via the Unitarian church, bringing Western academic methods to his studies of Islam and its history. He is strongly critical of Wahhabism and of the kinds of Islamic interpretation and fundamentalism which underlie extremism and justifications of violence. A participant in inter-faith dialogue at high levels, he has recently returned from the Vatican in an attempt to improve Muslim Catholic relations.

Broadcast on: BBC Radio 3, 8:45pm Friday 2nd January
Duration: 30 minutes
Available until: 9:17pm Friday 9th January
Category: Religion & Ethics

The BBC interview is available on the BBC iPlayer site until this Friday (9th) and is only available to UK users. However, some kind soul has managed to convert the stream to MP3 and made it available as a Torrent download, you can download it here http://www.mininova.org/tor/2150910, you’ll need a BitTorrent Client such as Vuze, BitComet or ?Torrent (there are others but these are the most popular ones).