Discussion evening: Me, a Christian-Muslim atheist – experiences straddling secularism, Christianity and Islam

This dialogue evening will be based on thoughts from the book “I, a Christian-Muslim Atheist” (2026, Kagge Publishing).

The book discusses what it is like to be a young minority today with a Muslim background, and how this background means that I encounter other worldviews and religions from the perspective of who I am.

The main theme of the lecture will be to present a trajectory in which I ended up being baptised, based on my Shi’a Muslim upbringing, and how following the small steps in an individual life can teach us, even atheists, to have a more advanced secular self-understanding of how complex religion as a phenomenon is. Religion in the lecture will not be about the convictions of a professed faith, but rather how our beliefs are reflections of our social relations linked to class, era, social group and cultural background. Rather than understanding different religions as competitors, the aim of this lecture is to present what it is like for a young person today to live in the midst of the complexity of religions and worldviews, including how this influence takes place online and in encounters with different social classes in Norway.

In this lecture we will see how Christianity, Islam and atheism are not only three social groups that are meant to get along, but also how they interact in the life of a concrete young person today.

Join an exciting dialogue evening with a PhD research fellow in philosophy of religion (University of Oslo) and social commentator Ali Jones Alkazemi.

Open to all – Welcome!