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
The more I started studying the historical Jesus, the man who lived 2,000 years ago... the more I started to realize that there was this chasm between the historical Jesus and the Jesus that I had been taught about in church.
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.
The Muslim community is completely fractured - it doesn't really exist anymore; the only place it does exist is online.
'Zeal' is essentially a compromising devotion to God, a commitment to cleansing the Holy Land of all foreign and pagan presences and to re-establish the kingdom of David as God had intended.
I wouldn't call myself a Christian because I do not believe that Jesus is God, nor do I believe that he ever thought that he was God, or that he ever said that he was God.
Many poets in Iran have learned to speak almost a secret language, where political issues are talked about in allegorical ways.
Mike Huckabee and indeed many of the Christian conservatives in the U.S. have far more in common with the Muslim Brotherhood than they'd like to admit, in that all of them very much want to see a role of religion in society.
American Muslims - young American Muslims in particular - are starting to understand that unless they are willing to stand up for all the other oppressed communities in this country, including those discriminated against for their gender or sexuality, then no one will stand up for them.
In the 5,000-year history of Jewish thought, the notion of a God-man is completely anathema to everything Judaism stands for.
Few Iranians these days go through the fiction of calling themselves 'Persian.' Calling yourself Persian is a way of distancing themselves from Iran.
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.