Reza Aslan: Bio, Books, Education, Historian, Zealot, No God But God - Interview (2014)

• published: 06 Aug 2015
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Reza Aslan (Persian: رضا اصلان‎, IPA: [ˈɾezɒː æsˈlɒːn]; born May 3, 1972) is an Iranian-American professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside. His educational background is in religious studies and the history of religion, and includes a PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has written two books on religion: No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam and Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. Aslan is a member of the American Academy of Religion. Reza Aslan supported the assassination of Libyan "Revolutionary Leader" Muammar Gaddafi. Aslan's family came to the United States from Tehran in 1979, fleeing the Iranian Revolution. He grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. At the age of 15 he converted to evangelical Christianity.[5] He converted back to Islam the summer before attending Harvard.[6] In the early 1990s, Aslan taught courses at De La Salle High School in Concord, California. Aslan holds a BA in religious studies at Santa Clara University, an MTS at Harvard Divinity School, an MFA at the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop, and a PhD in sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.[7][8][9] His dissertation was titled "Global Jihadism as a Transnational Social Movement: A Theoretical Framework".[10] In August 2000, while serving as the Truman Capote Fellow at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Aslan was a visiting faculty member in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Iowa, becoming the first person to teach Islamic studies full-time in the state.[11] Aslan was the 2012–13 Wallerstein Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Drew University Center on Religion, Culture & Conflict. Aslan has written articles for The Daily Beast as a contributing editor. He has also written for various newspapers and periodicals, including The Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Slate, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, The Guardian, the Chicago Tribune, and The Nation. He has made numerous appearances on TV and radio, including National Public Radio (NPR), PBS, The Rachel Maddow Show, Meet the Press, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, Anderson Cooper 360°, Hardball, Nightline, Real Time with Bill Maher, Fareed Zakaria GPS, and ABC Australia's Big Ideas. On 26 July 2013, Aslan was interviewed on Spirited Debate, a Fox News webcast by anchor Lauren Green about his book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.[18] Green was "unsatisfied with Aslan's credentials," and she pressed Aslan, questioning why a Muslim would write about Jesus.[19] Aslan answered, “Because it’s my job as an academic. I am a professor of religion, including the New Testament. That’s what I do for a living, actually.” The interview lasted about ten minutes and focused "on Aslan's background more than the actual contents of the book."[19] The video clip of the interview went viral within days[18] and the book, which was up to that point selling "steadily",[18] appeared at the 4th place on the New York Times print hardcover best-seller list.[18] By late July 2013, it was topping the U.S. best-seller list on Amazon. Following Aslan's interview with Fox News, some questioned Aslan's academic claims. An article written by Manuel Roig-Franzia in The Washington Post entitled "Reza Aslan: A Jesus scholar who’s hard to pin down" accused Green of asking "astonishingly absurd questions," and Aslan of being a "moving target", as those questions succeeded in goading him to talk about his qualifications. It described him as being "eager—perhaps overeager—to present himself as a formidable academic with special bona fides in religion and history" and "boast[ing] of academic laurels he does not have."[21] The article quoted Aslan's dissertation adviser, Mark Juergensmeyer, as saying that he did not have a problem with Aslan's characterization of his credentials. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reza_Aslan Image By roanokecollege (Reza Aslan) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons