Navigated to Why Morality Matters: Gratitude, Loyalty, and Hope, with Dr. Mona Siddiqui

Why Morality Matters: Gratitude, Loyalty, and Hope, with Dr. Mona Siddiqui

May 12, 2025
1h 1m

Episode Description

You can’t be moral on your own. That’s a radical idea in this time of moral outrage, but thriving in public life requires a sense of mutual accountability, belonging, and hospitality for each other.

Mona Siddiqui is a professor of religion and society, an author, commentator, and public intellectual, and she suggests that the virtues of loyalty, gratitude, hospitality, and hope can lead us through the common struggle of being human together, living forward into a thriving life of public faith and renewed moral imagination.

  • The connection between faith, spirituality, and living a moral life of responsibility and integrity
  • The difference between cultivating virtuous character and doing justice
  • How to thrive in a pluralistic society marked by constant struggle and conflict
  • The promise of gratitude and hospitality in a life of thriving
  • And how to pursue a hopeful, forward-looking approach to restoration in the wake of harm, loss, pain, and suffering.

Helpful Links and Resources

About Mona Siddiqui

Mona Siddiqui is Professor of Islamic and Interreligious Studies, Assistant Principal for Religion and Society, and Dean international for the Middle-East at the University of Edinburgh.

Her research areas are primarily in the field of Islamic jurisprudence and ethics and Christian-Muslim relations. She’s the author of many books, including Human Struggle: Christian and Muslim Perspectives,Hospitality in Islam: Welcoming in God’s Name, and My Way: A Muslim Woman’s Journey. A scholar of theology, philosophy, and ethics, she’s conducted international research on Islam and Christianity, gratitude, loyalty and fidelity, hope, reconciliation and inter-faith theological dialogue, and human struggle.

Mona is well known internationally as a public intellectual and a speaker on issues around religion, ethics and public life and regularly appears as a media commentator on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio Scotland’s Thought for the Day and The Moral Maze.

A recipient of numerous awards and recognition, she is a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, she gave the prestigious Gifford Lectures in Natural Theology. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as an International Honorary Member. And Dr. Siddiqui was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire, which is just steps below the highest Knighting—specifically for her public interfaith efforts.

To learn more, I’d highly recommend her books, but you can also follow her on X @monasiddiqui7.


About the Thrive Center

 

About Dr. Pam King

Dr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.  Follow her @drpamking.

 

About With & For

  • Host: Pam King
  • Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
  • Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
  • Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

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