What happens when women are excluded, silenced and marginalized within religious communities? In the inaugural episode of Scoot Over, Slate journalist Aymann Ismail explores the trouble with rooting out gender exclusion in a group that faces existential threats from outsiders, and what inclusivity in religious institutions and communities looks like.

Melissa Weisz is an actor, producer, writer and consultant with a focus of giving underrepresented individuals and communities a voice. Melissa grew up in the Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn, and through her work, aims to “normalize” other-ness so we can all honor and respect those who do not look like us, love like us, or pray like us. She was featured in Vogue’s “American women in transformation", was cast on Netflix’s Unorthodox, and is the co-founder, producer and host of "the forbidden apple podcast" which explores the complex relationship between queer people and religion/faith. www.melissaweisz.com Follow @melissaweisz on instagram. Follow @theforbiddenapplepodcast on instagram. 

Nurjahan Khatun is the founder of a social enterprise which dares women to do what they have been afraid of doing for lack of confidence, inspiration, resources or a combination of these limiting factors. She grew up in a conservative Muslim community in East London, was the first in her family to graduate university, and is now a TEDx speaker, winner of the Mike Nichols Award for ‘Inspiration’ at the prestigious Association for Project Management Awards, and has been a public and motivational speaker for over a decade. Her first book, Hook of Hope, is due to be published in 2021. 

Aymann is joined by two Jewish scholars to discuss how memory - a personal version of history passed down from generation to generation - shapes identity. 

Emmanuel Kattan is Director of the Alliance Program, a partnership between Columbia University, Sciences Po, Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne and Ecole Polytechnique. A native of Montreal, Emmanuel studied politics at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar and earned a PhD from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He currently teaches a class on the Politics of Memory at Columbia University. He is the author of five books: an essay on ethics and memory and four novels. wwww.twitter.com/emmanuelkattan

Rabbi Alexander Goldbergis the Dean of Religious Life and Belief at the University of Surrey. He’s a barrister, chaplain, human rights activist and broadcaster, with a regular slot on the BBC’s most listened to UK radio station. Alex has an interest in sport and chairs the England Football Association’s Faith and Football Group and previously advised the organisers of the London Olympics on faith issues.

 is a barrister, chaplain, and human rights activist. He is currently the Dean of the College of Chaplains and Coordinating Chaplain at the University of Surrey. He continues to be Chief Executive of the Carob Tree Project, working on a number of international and UK-based community relations and community development projects and is a contributor to BBC Radio 2's Pause For Thought. 

He has been a led a delegation to the UN Human Rights Council for over a decade where he successfully changed international law in relation to group access to justice. In 2012, he was an Olympic and Paralympic Chaplain.

History is written by the victors is a famous phrase, but rarely do we dig into what it actually means and its consequences for how we understand who we are. Aymann speaks with two academics who are teaching the rest of us to resist the neat and convenient historical narratives we learned in school .

Hussein Rashid, PhD, is a freelance academic based in New York City, on the land of the Lenape people. His work focuses on religion in US popular culture, and Shi’i theologies of justice. He was the lead content consultant for the Children’s Museum of Manhattan’s exhibitAmerica to Zanzibar: Muslim Cultures Near and Far, an executive producer on the New York Times op-docSecret History of Muslims in the US, and is an executive producer on the documentary projectAmerican Muslims: A History Revealed.

Nikki Sanchez is a Pipil and Irish/Scottish academic, Indigenous media maker, and environmental educator.  Her TEDx presentation is entitled “Decolonization is for Everyone”, and she is the creator and director of "Decolonize Together", a collective of Indigenous and Black women who offer decolonial and inclusivity workshops and curriculum creation. In May of 2020, Nikki's first book, an anthology of the Salish Sea Resident Orca whales was released by the Royal BC Museum publisher, it has remained on the BC bestsellers list ever since.