The discussions take place in a relaxed and informal atmosphere, many of them filmed at the Huize Piranesi, a 19th-century Dutch farmhouse that has welcomed thinkers for decades. Each episode also includes beautiful footage of Islamic art and Muslims going about their daily lives and prayers.

Elders’ hope is that the conversations will contribute to a new understanding of the diversity of Islam, and to a decrease in Islamophobia among Americans and Europeans – a much-needed corrective to popular Western perceptions of Muslims.

“In the aftermath of the Paris attacks in November 2015, everyone in the West seems to have an opinion about Islam, but few appear to have any actual knowledge…with little or no awareness of the diversity, and indeed the modernity and in some cases even the liberalism, of the religion. These shortcomings and failures of policy and imagination make Islam Unknown a particularly timely work.” -Jack David Eller in Anthropology Review Database (November 23rd, 2015) Click here to read the full review.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. “[Elders’s] approach with each subject is genuine, reverent, and introspective…It is certain that anyone fortunate enough to view this film will benefit from its broad insights, opinions, and shared knowledge.” —Library Journal

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. “There is a remarkable depth and breadth to each of the eight conversations. Elders is a skillful interviewer, posing thoughtful questions and then getting out of the way of his guest’s response. An excellent classroom resource, appropriate especially to academic libraries supporting religious and Middle Eastern studies, ISLAM UNKNOWN is a strong choice for public libraries as well.” —Educational Media Reviews Online

Disc One

• Asma Barlas — God is Uncreated, God is Without Sex and Gender
• Nasr Hamed Abu Zayd — Truth With a Capital T: the Most Dangerous Concept
• Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im — Everything I Do A Quest for Meaning
• Amna Nusayr — I Became Another Woman

Disc Two

• Reza Aslan — A Cosmic War is a Religious War
• Anouar Majid — We Are All Minorities
• Ömer Özsoy — Also the Qur’an Is the Work of its Time
• Mehmet Asutay — Justice: The Essence of Any Moral Economy

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This four-disc set collects all four remarkable conversations, along with introductions and commentary by Dutch philosopher and writer Fons Elders. Elders moderated the original debates – hand-picking each of the participants after spending some time getting to know them. Now, looking back four decades later, he offers perspective and context, summarizing the arguments and highlighting the key moments of each debate.

Each of these conversations captures the intellectual and social ferment of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when dramatic social and economic transformation seemed imminent – and philosophical questions underpinned discussions about what form the new society would take. Though many of the questions under discussion are timeless, this social and political context gives them a particular sense of urgency.

Disc One: Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault

The Chomsky-Foucault debate has become a much-studied classic. This DVD captures all the energy and passion of the two philosophers, as they discuss whether or not some form of universal human nature – an inherent ability to understand language and scientific concepts, for instance – exists, or whether our responses are purely socially and culturally conditioned.

Disc Two: Alfred Ayer and Arne Naess

A lively debate between British empiricist Alfred Ayer, who champions a limited skepticism, and Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess, the founder of the deep ecology movement, whose philosophy embraces interconnectedness.

Disc Three: Karl Popper and John Eccles

Historian of science Karl Popper and his close friend, Nobel-prize-winning neuroscientist John Eccles, discuss Popper’s famous criterion of falsifiability: the idea that a statement is only scientific if it could possibility be proved false, which he had articulated against the traditional positivist view of the scientific method.

Disc Four: Leszek Kolakowski and Henri Lefèbvre

Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski and French thinker Henri Lefebvre (both former Communist Party members) debate the ongoing significance of Marxism and the concept of alienation – while at the same time struggling to define what a future, post-capitalist society might hold.

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