Reza Aslan
Reza Aslan
Reza Aslanis an Iranian-American author, public intellectual, religious studies scholar, producer and TV host. He has written three books on religion: No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in the Age of Globalization and Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. Aslan is a member of the American Academy of Religion, the Society of Biblical Literature, and the International Qur’anic Studies Association. He is also a professor of creative...
NationalityIranian
ProfessionTeacher
Date of Birth3 May 1972
Many poets in Iran have learned to speak almost a secret language, where political issues are talked about in allegorical ways.
Few Iranians these days go through the fiction of calling themselves 'Persian.' Calling yourself Persian is a way of distancing themselves from Iran.
The people on the streets of Egypt and Tunisia and Libya and Syria and Iran have done more to defeat the ideology of Al Qaeda than anything that the United States has done. They have shown that there is a third way, that with peaceful protest you can have an end to dictatorship and a role for human dignity, a role for your religious faith in society.
The bad news is that Iran wants to talk about everything except their nuclear program. They want to talk about regional cooperation, they want to talk about the sanctions issues, and it seems like the western powers want to talk about nothing more than the nuclear issue.
Anyone who says that Iran will commit suicide with its nuclear power is a moron and has no business in discussion.
The Revolutionary Guard controls almost everything in Iran, and this is hurting the people.
When you're a brown Muslim from Iran talking about Jesus on TV, you need to keep your cool at all times, OK? That's not rocket science.
Every single interview I have ever done on TV or in print says I'm a Muslim.
There's no question that homophobia is rampant among the world's 1.5 billion Muslims - but that doesn't negate the fact that there are huge groups of Muslims who have easily reconciled their faith and sexual orientation, like LGBT people in other faith communities.
There's nothing more distasteful than an academic having to, like, trot out his credentials. You really come off as a jerk when you do that.
Whether or not you believe that after three days of being dead and entombed, Jesus got up and walked out of his own accord, what you cannot argue about is the fervent belief of the followers that this happened.
Literature offers not just a window into the culture of diverse regions, but also the society, the politics; it's the only place where we can keep track of ideas.
I have watched Muslims chant 'Death to America!' on the streets of Tehran, then privately beg me to help them get a visa to the United States.
Nobody, absolutely nobody, straps a bomb on their body because they were recruited from the Internet. It takes an enormous amount of personal face-to-face contact and time in order to recruit a young person into the cause of jihad.