Episode
What Empire Cannot Erase: Fatemeh Keshavarz-Karamustafa, Omid Safi & Mays Imad
- Podcast
- Sounds of SAND
- Published
- Apr 30, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 4644
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Summary
Persian Poetry, Radical Love, and the Soul of Iran “The path to God goes through that most difficult of beings, the human being.” – Omid Safi Recorded live at a SAND Community Gathering (April 2026). Watch the full conversation on the SAND Website . We are watching, once again, what empire does: not only to bodies, but to the long memory of a people; to the libraries and sacred sites; to art, language, and the ruins that hold the oldest threads of human spiritual inquiry. We are thinking of the civilization that gave us Rumi, Hafez, Omar Khayyam, Forough Farrokhzad — mystics and rebels and lovers of paradox who understood something about the human soul that we are still, centuries later, trying to catch up to. This gathering invited us to come together: to read poetry aloud, to hear from Iranian voices, to sit with grief and beauty together rather than alone. We work with political and moral vocabulary shaped by Iranian thinkers such as Ali Shariati, who wrote against domination, spiritual emptiness, and the violence of imposed power. We make space for what doesn’t fit into headlines or talking points—the complexity of empire, the difference between a government and its people, the authoritarian forces at work not only abroad but here at home. We also gather with the political inheritance of those who taught generations to resist domination and spiritual emptiness, including Ali Shariati. Guests Omid Safi is a scholar of the Islamic mystical tradition and professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University. He is the author of Memories of Muhammad and Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition , and teaches online courses on Muslim mysticism. He leads contemplative journeys to Turkey, Morocco, and Mecca/Medina through Illuminated Courses. Fatemeh Ke…