This week on The Open Door (November 1st), panelists Jim Hanink, Mario Ramos-Reyes, and Valerie Niemeyer discuss India, religious freedom, and Thomism. Our distinguished and welcome guest is Prof. Timothy Samuel Shah of the University of Dallas. By training and personal passion, he is a scholar of politics and political philosophy, specializing in religion and global politics, religious freedom, and the history of moral and political theory. With his wife, Rebecca Shah, he is based in Bangalore, India. With Rebecca, he has established several initiatives in partnership with the University of Dallas, including a Jacques and Raïssa Maritain Program on Catholicism, Public Life and World Affairs. Under the auspices of the Maritain Program, Prof. Shah coordinates a monthly online Thomistic Study Circle, which involves numerous expert and amateur Thomists from around the world, and which seeks to re-enliven an appreciation of the Angelic Doctor’s timeless teaching and relevance, especially for public affairs. Most recently, he and Rebecca established a Program for Indo-American Understanding and Friendship at the Gupta College of Business at the University of Dallas. The program, among other things, seeks to promote deep dialogue and genuine understanding between Hinduism and Catholic Christianity. In addition to serving as a Distinguished Research Scholar in the Politics Department at the University of Dallas, Shah also serves as Director of Strategic Initiatives for the Center for Shared Civilizational Values, an organization he founded with senior leaders of the world’s largest Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama in Indonesia, in order to strengthen and preserve a rules-based international order founded upon respect for the equal rights and dignity of every human being.

1. Prof. Shah, Tim if we may, how can Americans better understand India, now the most populous nation in the world?
2. What might Mahatma Gandhi think of India today?
3. Commentators are calling attention to the political and military implications of the developing relations between India and the United States. Can you explain for us something of what’s at stake?
4. India’s Supreme Court recently declined to recognize same sex marriage, insisting that it was a matter for the legislature. What factors went into this decision?
5. How did you come to have a special interest in religious freedom? What are some of the key challenges to religious freedom today?
6. Could you tell us about how you came to the University of Dallas? How is it a distinctive institution?
7. At the yearly conference of the American Maritain Association you presented a paper warning of the “siren song” of Catholic integralism. Why are you critical of this phenomenon?
8. It has been said that everyone is born either a Platonist or an Aristotelian. But you are a keen Thomist. How did this happen? Were you, perhaps, trying to combine the best of Plato and of Aristotle?
9. Is there a Catholic-Hindu dialogue in India? Is there a Catholic-Muslim dialogue in India?
10. Pope Francis has said that we are already in the midst of World War III. What do you think he meant? Do you agree with him?