signature program in which others of the latest nonfiction books are interviewed by journalists public policymakers legislators and others familiar with their materials. "after words" airs every week and am booktv at 10:00 p.m. on saturday, 12 and 9:00 p.m. on sunday in 12:00 a.m. on monday. you can also watch "after words" >> the next three hours is your chance to talk with author and professor read the

>> host: reza aslan, where does the phrase no god but god come from? >> guest: it is the first half of the muslim profession of faith. there is no god but god and mohammed is god's messenger. it is essentially the phrase that initiates a convert into the muslim faith. >> host: you also write it not look that now, islam is available to all muslims and every muslim can speak for islam. ..

and so it becomes a great shouting match. again, i keep paralleling judaism and is on. the problem of course is there's about 15 million "after jews. when you look at the conflicts in the middle east commodious muslim democrat and was some autocrats fighting against each other, muslim peacemakers and the software makers are doing against each other, what ewers is precisely the result of this reformation process, this individualization of islam, in the process the authority to

decide if faith is being removed, seized ashes back from the hand that these institutions that have gripped it from us at the last 14 centuries and are now being led by any individual within megaphone. >> host: reza aslan, what are the similarities tikkun atoll mood, the koran and the bible? >> guest: there are two ways to answer that question. basically, they are very much reppert and it is based no prophetic history. in other words, what you are seeing is an unders and name that pathetic consciousness if i can use that phrase is something that can be passed on from prophet to profit, from adam to moses, from adam to abraham to moses to jesus to the prophet mohammed. that is certainly the way the koran presented. they see the prophet mohammed as a continuation and indeed aco is

a prophetic consciousness that is just sort of moving along through history. sort of been historical account of god's self revelation to humanity. that asserted the mythic element. sort of the values in the moore's are sort of identical. the notions of answers on stability to man. the idea of the relationship between creator and creation, the duty that humanity has towards the creator to worship, to praise, to obey, concept seven afterlife are very similar. concepts of the cosmos are very similar. more importantly, what you see with these three religions is a

desperate attempt to i guess i was very brave between humanity and god close together. there's this a quality that is physically apart for months, the highest god. i guess if you want to put it in its simplest way, the history of religion, be it the monotheistic religions, the history of religions is predicated upon this long arduous attempt to create less of a distance to train god and humanity, to bring this gap to a close. in many ways massachusetts represents is the incarnate god. it's an attempt to say there is no gap between humanity and god because god became a human, is

why christianity is so profoundly successful as a global religion. but these three religions come in this abraham are intimately intertwined, mythically, historically, morally really. >> host: kidneys three tax be read as political books? >> guest: that's a very good question and i'm going to answer it in a different way. this notion that religion and politics are separate things is a very new idea. i think it is important to understand that religion and i'm talking about on religion in all parts of the world is far more a matter of identity then it is a release and practice is. let me give you an example of what i mean by this. according to the pew forum, about seven out of 10 americans

self identify as krishan. but think about that for a moment shall we? seven out of 10 americans? really seven out of 10 americans go to church on sunday? seven out of 10 read the bible on a regular basis let alone actually follow its precepts? seven out of 10 americans can tell you anything about cheap success that he was born in a manger and died on the cross? the course. the vast majority about 70%, when they say i am a christian are not making so much if faith declaration. they are making a statement of identity. it is about who they are as individuals, how safe they see themselves in an indeterminate world. as a matter of identity, your religions assumes your politics from your economic views, your social views. that has always been the case

and it is still the case now. what am i pretend religion and politics are separate things, but they are not. they are very much a part of the same multifaceted identity that individuals espouse. with regard to judaism, christianity and everything else, it's a very important thing to recognize the phrase iem a jews, i am a christian, i am a month on has less to do with the circuit i believe commended for the rituals i followed than it does with this is how i see my self as a person. this is how i unders and my role in the world and my relationship to the creator. >> host: as far as our hominid whiskers turned, the jews and christians are people of the book. who is supposed to the pagans and polytheists of arabia worship the same god, read the same scriptures and share the same moral falla says muslim community? mohammed align his community

with the jews and medina because he considered them as well as the christians to be part of hezbollah. what is oman? >> guest: ummah is a word that unity. we are not exactly sure where the word comes from. bbc brew, maybe aramaic. nobody really knows. but there's no way to define that kind of new group, the church that they were trying to create. ..

the way that the prophet views the organization is that it was inclusive of other faiths. not poly theistic faiths. if were a pagan, your worshiped other gods, an outsider, you did not belong. but if you were people of the book, which by which it meant jews and christians and also included zorra austrians in the group, you were seen as part of the ummah, and that is really unique in the history of

religions. in fact, the koran refers to something called thëi ummal katalb, the mother of books. it's saying that there is this kind of heavenly scripture, in god, a physical book in heaven with god, from which all scriptures of the world come, and so, in other words, if you talk all the scriptures of the world, the torah, the gospel, the koran, the gotha and combine them together you get this one heavenly book. that's quite a remarkable statement for a scripture to make. not only is it validating other scriptures but saying something quite unique that all these religions are intimately connected. the koran says something along the lines of god could have given you one prophet and one

scripture if he wanted to, but he chose to make you into different communities, quote, so that you may know one another. now, this notion of jews and christians as fellow believers did not last much longer after the prophet mohammad's death. within a generation or so the scriptural scholars very quickly transformed jews and christians into unbelievers and separated islam from its parent religion as a way of creating independence, if you will, in other words, what they believed was that the koran annulled the previous scriptures. but that's not what the koran ever says. the koran says it completes the other scriptures, but it sees those scriptures as part and parcel of this larger mother of books in heaven. quite unusual in the history of religion.

>> host: one more quote -- allings are bound to the social, spiritual, and cultural milieu from which they arose and developed. it is not the prophets to create religions. prophets redefine and re-interpret the existing beliefs and practices of the commune,ñi provi>ng fresh setsf symbols and metaphors in which succeeding generations can describe the nature of reality. indeed it is most often the prophet's successors who take upon themselves fashioning their master's words into deeds into comprehendible religious systems, and muhammad never claimed to have invented a new religion. >> guest: right. right. again, it's people of religions who have the biggest problem with that kind of notion. first because, of course, they want to believe that their religious ideas, their values, their interpretations, can be

linked directly to the prophet, whether it be mohammad or moses or jesus or the buddha or what have you and that is rarely, rarely the case. but most importantly, because home of religion want to believe that their religious views are static, they are monolithic, you hear this a lot in large religions with multiple sects by christianity and islam. muslims and christians like to say their particular christianity, their particular islamism is correct and all the other ones are incorrect. but when you study the world's religions you understand quickly there is no such thing as correct religion. there is no such thing as islam. there is no such thing as christianity. there are only christianities and islams. and that there are almost

infinite varieties through history in the beliefs and practices, the interpretations of these religions, and that each one of these varieties is inextricably tied to the cultural milieu, the political milieu, out of which they arise. islam is important. by the way, what i find really unusual about what i'm saying right now is that most rational-minded people would say, well, of course, that sounds true. when you think about christianity, of course there are 100 ways of understanding christianity, but then when you make the same statement about islam, oh, no, no, no, there's islam is monolithic, but of course islam, like christianity, comes in every flavor that you can imagine. take a plane from new york to london, from london to baghdad, from baghdad to istanbul, from istanbul to jakarta, from

jakarta to -- you will never see the same islam twice. >> host: who is the historic muhammad? prophet muhammad was a fascinating character. he belonged to a very small, fairly insignificant clan, which was part of an enormous and extremely significant and wealthy tribe. so, if you will, he was part of this kind of ruling system but an outcast in that ruling system. he was an orphan, in a society in which orphans had no real protection whatsoever. a society that was deeply stratified between the very wealthy and the poor, and he hat sort of figure out through his own social and business acumen how to become a very successful merchant. in other words, by the time he became around 40 years old, he

had figured out a way to use this system that had amassed enormous amounts of wealth at the top to its own benefit, its own advantage. he seems to have been a deeply spiritual man, to the his speier to allity was steeped in the pagan culture of which he arose, something that muslims don't like to think about, muhammad was a product of his world, he didn't just drop from heaven and live in a vacuum for 40 years before he became a prophet. but eventually that spiritual longing led him to have a series of ecstatic experiences in which he claims to have had direct messages from god, condemning the economic disparitiy, the special disparity in his society. and you notice i keep using these terms, economic and social disparity, because the fascinating thing about the:k prophet, muhammad's message, ate

least in the first decade or so in which he was receiving these revelations they had very little to do with theological or legalistic concerns. they were overwhelmingly a condemnation of the wealthy and the powerful, a promise of judgment to those who exploit the poor and the marginalized, the weak, the dispossessed, a commandment to protect those who cannot protect themselves, the orphans, the widows, those who have been left behind by this mass accumulation of wealth, and what i think is very important for people to understand -- again, thissing is something that muslims just sort of have a hard time recognizing because they like to think of the prophet muhammad as purely a religious figure, someone who had this brand new idea there was only one god, which was not

brand-new at all all. every area in the arabian peninsula heard this message a thousand times. one thing i write about in the book, which is new to a lot of muslims, prearabia were awash in religion. hundreds of christian groups and jewish groups, and another group of preislamic mono theists, all of whom believed there was only one god, and in fact the pagans themselves more or less believed there was only one god. they just thought that god was just inaccessible and there were these other lower gods that you could go to for your sun mix faces. the phrase, there is no god but god, would have elicited a collective yawn from preislamic arabia, but the condemnation of the economic situation in arabia, the political situation,

that was intolerable to the ruling powers and that is where the friction between the prophet, muhammad, and the massive tribe that ruled the mecca, originally came from. that is where the conflict and the clash came from, and by the way,88i that should sound familr to people familiar with other prophetic histories, especially the history of jesus. jesus' conflict with the authorities of his time had far less to do with theological doctrine than social and economic issue. that's what a prophet does. a prophet is a reformer, not a creator, of religion. >> host: when did muhammad live, which century? >> guest: well, the traditions say he was born in the year 570, a.d. that's most certainly not historical -- an accurate date. the fact of the matter is inçó preislamic arabia, birthdays

were not significant events so nobody knew when the prophet muhammad was born, and nobody cared until he was declared to be a prophet. but we go with 570 as the traditional date so let's just say near the end of the sixth century. then he died somewhere sort of in the first third of the seventh century. this was really unique about the prophet muhammad when it comes to the prophetic hoyt that many people are familiar with, is that we usually hear about our prophets being failures. that is kind of the history of prophet-hood that one expects, a prophet gets a message from god. nobody listens to him. he usually dies in disgrace. and then after he dies, people say, oh, he was right, and we should have listened to him all along. what is unique about the prophet muhammad is that while he was disadvantaged and disgraced for the first half of his prophetic

experience, the second half was enormously successful. he actually succeeded. he created a little statelet based on his revelations, and interestingly enough, it's that success that i think creates the greatest amount of suspicion among nonmuslim, about the prophet muhammad. he couldn't have possibly been a prophet of god because he succeeded, because his message took, because people listened,

s. until around the start of the fourth century when the empore constantine converts to christianity, and begins the process of turning christianity into the official religion of rome. the problem for constantine, however, is that there are about 100 different kinds of christianity, and you can't have christianity be the imperial religion of the world's most powerful empire unless it comes in one flavor, and so constantine quite famously takes the leaders of the christian movement, the bishops of the christian movement, he locks them up in a room, in a small town, and he is essentially

says, do not come out of this room until you figure out what christianity is, because it can only be one thing. and of course the bishops come up with what is known as the creed, defineing more or less what orthodox christianity shall be. but what happened immediately after the council is that all of these versions of christianity overnight become illegal, and anyone who who espouses those vs has three choices, either get the heck out of rom as fast as possible, convert to ortho dock christianity -- orthodox christianity, or die. what happens is you have this flooding into the lands of the middle east, of this christian communities who want to maintai% their faith bus cannot do so in rome. so where do they go? they go to iran, to north

africa, and they go to the arabian peninsula. so, 200 years later, by the time the prophet muhammad arises, he is living in a world that is full of christians but not the kind of orthodox christians that you see in rome. certainly not the orthodox trinutarian christians. the are referred to as nostiy, who rejected the motion of the trinity, and so for the prophet muhammad, he would have been very familiar with this one particular version of christian thought. by the way, just as he would have been extremely familiar with judahism, because they were

successful and well-established, all of this is to say that the prophet muhammad was born and grew up in a world steeped in jewish and christian thought, jewish and christian mythology. there's a reason why, when you read the koran, when it sometimes restates the great stories of the hebrew scriptures, be it stories about jacob or joseph or moses or abraham, it often begins those stories with the words "recall" or "remember." recall when moses received the commandments. remember what happened to joseph when he fled from his brothers. the reason for that it is quite simple. the koran is repeating stories that it assumes its audience is already familiar with, and indeed they would have been familiar with it because these

stories were part of the milieu of preislamic arabia. >> host: how political wasp]ç constantine's movement to christianity? >> guest: i get that question a lot. most scholars would say it was pure lay political decision. after all, constantine was immersed in a civil war over other claimants to the throne of emperor, and that the sort of sudden conversion to christianity was whether it was intended to or not, the sort of -- the one element that pushed him over to the -- over the top and allowed him to claim the throne for himself. i'm one of these historians who tends to think we should probably just take people at their word. if constantine says he had a spiritual experience in which jesus came to him and told him to believe in him, let's just go ahead and take his word for it.

were there political implications or perhaps political ideas behind this conversion? certainly so. but who are we to judge a person's soul? >> host: good afternoon and welcome to booktv's monthly prom called "in depth." we talk to one author before his or her's body of work. this month we have international best seller, reza aslan. here are his nonfiction books. he began in 2005 with "no god but god, beyond fundamentalism." "beyond fundamental limp, confrontening religious extremism in the aim of globalization, came out in 2010. and "zealot" came out last year, the life and times of jesus christ of nazareth. also teaches creative writing at uc riverside, got his bachelors

degree at accept clara, masters in divinity at harvard, masters in fine arts at the university of iowa's writers are workshop, and a ph.d at uc santa barbara and that was a religion ph.d, wasn't it? >> host: that's right. i got my degree from the sociology department because my dissertation was'

of the god of heaven and earth coming down in the form of a child dying for our sins, this promise that all who believe in him shall also never die but have eternal life. i never heard anything like this before in my life. i immediately converted to this particularly conservative brand of evan-evangelical brand of christianity, and i began preaching it to everyone, whether they wanted to hear it or not. frankly. but when i went to university and began to study the new testament for a living, what i discovered was a great distance between the christ of faith, as i had learned about him in my church, and the jesus of history, as i was studying him

at university. these were different individuals, and i know that that really disturbs a lot of people. both people of faith and people without faith. because we think that they are the same. that's the jesus of history and the christ of faith are the same person, but they're not the same person. the christ of faith is devoid from the jesus of history, certainly -- derived from the jesus of history, certainly, but this jesus of history, this jewish, peasant, revolutionary who lived in the back woods of gala lee 2,000 years ago, was so much more accessible and appealing that while i left christianity as a faith i became absolutely obsessed with learning everything i could"uv about this man and found him to be so much more extraordinary and indeed i would say so much more worth following than the christ of faith.

>> host: were you raised a muslim? >> guest: i was, i came from a fairly lukewarm muslim family in iran. we were culturally muslim, the way so many people around the world are culturally religious. when we moved to the united states in 1979, of course, this was in the height of the iran hostage crisis and being a muslim was not the easiest thing to be in the united states. i and my family really sort of scrubbed our lives of anything that hinted at islam. for me especially it was way of absorbing into american culture. i was a seven, eight-year-old boy and i wanted to be normal. i didn't want to stan out in any way. but i always have been deeply interested in religion, despite the fact i didn't come from a very religious family or receive any kind of religious or spiritual edification in my household. i think partly it had to do with experience of revolutionary iran, those images of the power

that religion has to transform a society for good and for bad, never left me, and created this indelible and deep desire to know more about religion and spirituality, despite the fact i didn't have an opportunity to do so until i was 15 years old, and had an opportunity to express it. but i've always been interested in religion. i've always been interested in religious history, religious archaeology, religious literature, religious spirituality, things that fascinate me to no end. >> host: 202 is the area code, 585-3880. if you would like to participate in our conversation with afternoon, and you live in the east and central time zone, 5853881 if you live out west. you can also contact us at the phone lines are busy, through

social media. e-mail,fta booktv@c-span.org, ad finally you can make a comment on our facebook page. facebook.com/booktv. you're shia? >> guest: i do not accept any kind of sectarian designation at all. again, thick for me, -- well, let me put it this way. when you study the religions of the world it becomes very difficult to take any religion all that seriously. because what you recognize, what you discover very, very early on, is that all these religions are basically saying the exact same thing, they're expressing the same aspirations, the same desires, the same answers, often using the same mythology, to do so, but really what you see are different symbols and metaphors expressing the exact same sentiment. now, most of my colleagues would

say, well, then, why bother choosing one of those? if they're all saying the same thing, let's just ignore it all. and indeed, i think what would surprise a lot of viewers about the study of religion, and scholars of religion like myself, is that we're all pretty much athiests. but a few of us are not. i am an exception. i am one of these scholars of religion who also takes faith very seriously. most of my colleagues view faith the way that a biologist views a microbe. it's something to be studied from afar, from distance, not something taken personally by any means. i study the world's religions and i am a person of faith. and i follow something that the buddha once said, which is that if you want to draw water, you do not dig six one-foot wells. you dig one six-foot well.

islam is my six-foot well. the path, the symbols, the metaphors i use to understand my place in the world and to experience the reality of transcendence. but what the buddha meant is that while your well may be separate, you are&z drawing the water that every other well around you is drawing from. the water is the same. and that's something i never forget. my identity as a muslim comes primarily from my acceptance of islamic metaphors, islamic symbols, as a comfortable and viable way of expressing the inincomprehensible experience of the divine. but it's just symbols and met fors. they're not more true, they're

not more right, they're just more appealing. that's all. >> host: how significant is the sunni-shia split and what has it created? >> guest: you know, it's a lot more significant now days than it has been in the past. certainly as the main dividing line in islam, sunni, by the way, make up about 85% of the world's muslim. the shia make around 15%. very much historical shift like the catholic-pros tess stand shift, having as much to do with political and social issues and economic issues. shia tended to be far less economically successful than the sunni were. the sunni maintained the power and the structure of the first islamic empire. but nevertheless, in the same

way that many christians would say, catholics, protestant, it's all christianity, and christians would say, no. catholics are right and protestants are wrong. it's an individual experience. i have seen muslims who say these sects are irrelevant, and i have seen muslims say if you're a sheave ya, you're -- shia, you're an unbeliever. but ultimately the reason that these sectarian differences have riz on the forfront over the last decade -- well, let's say, around 2001, around the time of theuçi invasion of afghanistan - is because there has been this deep political divide in the middle east. there has been, in other words, political benefit from inside and outside forces to stoke

sectarian tensions for one's own nationalistic concern. you see this, of course, a lot with the cold war between iran and saudi arabia. iran sees itself as the banner of aslea and muss lime and arabia, the banner of sunni and islam, and they have been fighting for far more than a decade and have deliberately stoked sectarian tensions for their own benefit. now, in many cases those sectarian tensions have become no longer controllable, but in bahrain in lebanon, in syria, well, i would even -- even the united states has stoked sectarian tension in that region. there is this idea that you can control religious extremism, that you can use it to your advantage, and i'm hoping one day we're going to learn that that's just simply not the case. that you can't control fanatics no matter how hard you try.

>> host: in your book, "beyond fundamental limp" what was the arm title. >> guest: "how to win a cosmic war." why does it change? a mystery of the publishing word that authors are never privy to. it was a publisher's decision to change the title. >> host: well in the current version of "beyond fundamentalism. i confronting extremism" you write a cosmic war is a religious wore, conflict in which god is believed to be directly engaged on one side over the. others partitions the world into black and white, good and evil, us and them, in such a war there's no middle ground, everyone must choose a side, it is a simple equation if you are not us, you must be them, you are the enemy, and must be destroyed. >> guest: that's right.lñ and in fact, this notion of

cosmic war is something that exists in all great religious traditions. in the west, of course, it can be traced right to the torah. this is precisely the kind of war that god demands of the israelites. a war in which the israelites themselves are not even really participants in. the israelites are essentially nothing more than the pawns whereby god destroys his enemies himself. when you look at the great wars of the hebrew bible. the destruction -- or any of these tribes this israelites destroyed, the bible makes it very clear, these enemy is did not fall to israel. israel's arms, israel's weapons, israel's might was irrelevant. it was god that destroyed the

armies, and it wasn't so much the god of the jews, the god of the israelites destroyed this tribes if it's that god destroyed the gods of these other tribes the very concept of divine war in the ancient mind has less to do with armies fighting each other thanked did with god -- than when gods destroying each. others when israel destroyed the canyonites, the god of israel was destroying the god of cain, and to at the next level, when the babylonians destroyed the israelites it wasn't the two armies fighting each. others it was the god of babylon destroying the god of the israelites, and the notion of nonmow kneism, the notion there is just one god and no other, is

fairly late notion in the bible. it doesn't really show up until after the babylonian cab different in 586 -- captivity in 586bc. abraham believed that his god was thetl highest god but there were other gods. moses was not a mon ethist, he believed that his god was the highest god and by the way, moses' god was nat abraham's god abraham's galled was called el, and moses' god was called yawai. it's only after the babylonian cab different that el and yawai become a single god. el yawai as scholars sometimes refer to them, and the concept of mono theism is born. all of this is so say that notion of divine war, that we

human beings are pawns in a cosmic conflict between the forces of good and evil, between angels and demons, that this battle is not really taking place on earth, it is taking place in the heavens. indeed it's an eternal battle, one in which the forces of good will defeat the forces of evil. this is a phenomenon you fine playing itself out right now in a large part of the conflict around the world, not least of all in the middle east. it's the conflict that al qaeda is fighting. it's the conflict that isis is fighting. it's the conflict that a great many jewish extremists in israel are fighting. it's a conflict that many people in the u.s. military themselves think they are fighting. a war between the forces of good and evil, not between the armies on earth. that's a cosmic war, and the

great fear about cosmic wars, as i say in the book, is that they are unwinnable. >> host: paul e-mails in from los gatos, california, how can islam ever be at peace with the western democracies when one goal of islam are for all the world to be ruled by islamic law. the koran says, quote, and fight with them until there is no persecution and religion should be only for allah. >> guest: that is not a goal of islam. this notion of --údñq whole world has to be under islam, and that verse in the koran is a historically contextual verse. what is important to understand is for the latter half of the prophet's life he was at war with the pagan tribes of arabia. secondly, also important to understand that as a faith, that muslims believe that their

message should be viewed by all people, all faiths believe this, but the notion that islam is a religion that is spread by the sword is actually historically incorrect. indeed, for the first 150, 200 years of islam, not only was conversion not mandatory or forced upon people, it was discouraged because there were financial benefits of conversion that created a situation-the first islamic empire which ruled not 750a.d., actually made it very difficult for people to convert to islam because you had to pay fewer taxes if you were a muslim, and they didn't want people to pay these taxes. that said, i think it's important to understand that this notion of a conflict between islam and western democracy is a figment of the

imagination. a third of the world's muslim lives in democratic states. the largest, most populous muslim country in the world, indonesia, is a democracy. the second most populous muslim country, poise, is a democratic, bangladesh, malaysia, a democracy, indeed of the ten most populous countries in the world -- populous muslim countries in the world, five -- technically seven but two of them are not very good democracies, egypt cannot be called a democracy -- are democracies. so this notion that islam is somehow inherently antidemocratic is simply factually historically, empirically inaccurate. but one could make the argumentx that all religion, because they rely on a notion of absolutism, are antidemocratic.

i mean, let's be honest. we live in a country in the united states, in which -- again, according to pew, about a third of americans, 100 million of us, fall under the designate of religious nationalists. dominions, christians who believe in the united states as a christian nation, founded exclusively on christian values and principles and should be, as rick santorum has repeatedly said, as mike huckabee said on the campaign trail when he was running for president, should be predicated exclusively on biblical values and to paraphrase mike huckabee, the very constitution of this country needs to be changed so it aligns with biblical values. one can say that is an antidemocratic view because it is essentially prioritizing religion and one version of

religion, one interpretation of religion, over all others and over civil society. so, in a sense, all religions are both antidemocratic and democratic, which goes back to what i have been saying for the last hour. which is that religion is nothing more than interpretation. religion is what a religious person says it is. islam is what any muslim says it is. my version of islam is as valid as osama bin laden's version of islam. i would love to sit here and say that his version of islam is incorrect, and my version is right. except that's not true. we are both right and we're both wrong. you have the christian abortion bomber, his version of christianity is as correct as desmond tutu's version of

christianity. they're both right and they're both wrong. so, if you have muslims who say, antithetical to islam, they're right. if you have mulls hims who say democracy is absolutely compatible with islam, they're right. so, stop saying islam is this or that. christianity is this or that. there is no such thing as this or that when it comes to religion. it's always what an individual says it is. >> host: reza aslan in zealot, this the dedication for my wife, jessica jackley, and the entire jackley clan, whose love and acceptance have taught me more about jesus than all my years of research and study. >> guest: anybody who saw that famously uncomfortable fox interview knows my wife is a christian, as is my mother -- i'm the one who converted my mother to christianity and is a

very devout christian, and my wife and i have twin boys that we joke are undeclared but who will grow up in all great religious traditions and will decide for themselves what they want to believe. the reason i made that dedication is because my wife's family comes from a very devout evangelical christian background, and for a lot of people, that seems incongruous. how could it be that this devout conservative evangelical family, my brother-in-law is an evangelical pastor, can have in their family a muslim of all people, and while they will freely admit when they discovered their daughter was dating and about to marry a muslim man, they were confused. they'd never met a muslim before. my mother-in-law, humorously

says, the only thing she knew about islam is what sean hannity told her, and yet within five minutes of meeting me all of that went ain't away and what they displayed towards me was a love and acceptance and compassion that is the best expression of christianity. not the expression of christianity that we so often wee from our politicians, a religion of exclusion, a religion that is all about who is not part of us, who does not receive salvation, but the christianity that is about inclusion, about love and acceptance, and they taught me, they really taught me, what true christianity is about, and i am forever grateful for it. i am as much a part of their family as anyone else.

we have an amazing relationship, and i have learn as much from them as they've learned from me. >> host: we have two hours left in our program today on booktv. rosa aslan is our back. now it's your turn to talk to him. michael, you're up. >> caller: thank you tremendously. dr. aslan, i want to apologize sincerely on behalf of us christians forot what and other islamics have heard too often in the united states. allah is a false god. and our brothers worship the only real god. i can't stand that coming out of local teachings from local -- what is it called -- talk radio down here. let's be honest. it's protestant radio. we don't get the television network -- >> host: cue give us your

religious background and are you a person of faith today? >> caller: don't anybody call me -- please don't anybody call me a conservative. i'm conservative on moral andth that values, especially big hollywood, big nashville, big marble and dc comics...

>> guest: that you could be an extreme liberal evangelical christian like my friend jim wallace is, creator of sojourners, or you can be an extreme conservative evangelical christian. in other words, you may have the same beliefs and practices, but those beliefs and practices can be expressed in diametrically opposite ways. the other thing that i'll just say, michael, and i appreciate what you were saying, and, listen, i've gotten as much love there christians as i've gotten anger and hate. and, again, it goes back to individuals. and the way individuals think for themselves. the problem for me, i've been saying earlier that we should not confuse religion with faith, that they are different things. religion is not faith. faith is mysterious, it's ineffable, it's deeply

individualistic. if you believe in god, you believe in something that is by definition impossible for the human mind to comprehend. god is, if thinking be, utterly transcendent. we do not have the ability to understand what god is let alone express what god is. what is religion? the language that helps us express it. that's it. it's just a language of symbols and metaphors that give us the opportunity to express to ourselves and to like-minded people the experience of faith. the danger comes when people confuse religion with faith. when they think that religion is the destination, not the path to a test nation. when they think that -- destination. when they think that religion is the ends, not the means to an end. and i think that if we did a

better job, people of faith, of all faiths, in recognizing that my particular religion is just a unique way of expressing similar sentiment as other people of religion, we would have far greater peace, far greater understanding than we do now. unfortunately, most religious people -- be they jewish or husband limb or christian or buddhist or hindu or whatever -- most religious people tend to believe this their religion, not the in what their religion tells them to believe. in other words, your tate is not in god -- your faith is not in god, but in your religion. and that, i think, is a tragic, tragic mistake. >> host: professor aslan, are your books available in your home country of iran? are they available in israel or some of the more volatile arab countries? >> guest: my books, especially "no god but god," have been translated into hebrew and are

quite popular in israel. and in arabic there's an err due version of "coming." zealot will be available in the next year, it takes a while to do the translation. we, of course, have very strict sanction laws against iran. the treasury department makes it very difficult to translate and sell english material in farsi to an iranian audience, and, of course, iran makes it very difficult for material like this to be spread out. so what i have done is i have paid for my own persian translations of my books, and if you are not in iran, you can go to amazon and buy them this persian, but if you are in iran, you can just simply go to my web site, rezaaslan.com, and download a free version in farsi of my books. "no god but god" is available

right now. the persian translation of zealot is finished, and we're in the process of putting it online so that any farsi speaker anywhere in the world can have free access to it. >> host: because of your writing, have there been any fatwas against you -- [laughter] be them muslim, christian or jewish? >> guest: sure. but, listen, as i like to say, you know, fatwas are a dime a dozen, you know? i can get you -- give me an hour, i'll get or you a fatwa on any subject you want. a fatwa which is, you know, has achieved almost supernatural dimensions in the united states because of the violence that's taking place and perhaps the salman rushdie affair, the fatwa is nothing more than a juristic opinion by a must havety, a scholar who has achieved a certain number of years in training. it's literally an opinion. it's not a papal bowl, there is

no sort of infallibility to it. and, indeed, what's really fascinating about fatwas is that no fatwa can overcome another fatwa. so, in other words, if you have two imams in this world and one issues a fatwa saying coke is evil, drink pepsi, and the other issues a fatwa saying pepsi is evil, drink coke, there is no mechanism to decide which is correct. you as a muslim get to just simply decide if you like this i ham, you follow his -- imam, you follow his fatwas. if you don't, you follow the other guy's fatwas. and, indeed, most muslims don't have a single imam that they follow, they just follow whatever fatwas they like. so they'll follow imam a when it comes to, say, fatwas about marriage or purity, they'll follow imam b when it comes to fatwas about, say, you know,

living in a certain way or let's say foreign issues. that's the thing about islam is that, in a sense, ironically speaking, you know, because of the previous caller it is a quintessentially democratic religion in that it's really up to you who you want to follow. >> host: john is calling in from washington. john, you're on booktv. >> caller: yes. my question is, is that do you see the future of religions continuing to diversify and grow in number, or do you see a future where religions coalesce and maybe become like one unified religion? >> guest: what a fantastic question. and this is something that i'm deeply interested in when i write about religious traditions, because i do believe that you can sort of move forward in the timeline, the history and make certain predictions. and i think that this is going to sound weird, but both of your

sort of two possibilities of religion are becoming true. one, religion is becoming far more individualistic. it's becoming fractured into greater sects and schisms. primarily this has to do with the internet. i mean, sociologists refer to this process that's taking place over the last decade as materialism. that's -- as postmaterialism. that's just a fancy way of saying the very definition of community is altering right before our eyes. think about it this way: for all of human history, i mean, ever since we were, you know, neanderthals living in caves, for all of human history the definition of "community" was the people around you. finish the people in your cave. the people in your tribe. the people in your village. the people in your city. the people in your country. the people in your nation.

it's geographically defined what it means to be in a community. in the last decade, that definition has been shattered by the internet. because now community is no longer geographically constrained. indeed, a kid in indonesia, let's say a christian kid this indonesia may have more in common with a muslim kid in los angeles because they share the same love of music, love of movies, they share the same interests, they share the same values than either of those kids may have this champion with their own -- in common with their own sort of geographically-defined communities. this is what we mean by postmaterialism. in other words, it's no longer safety or sustenance or shelter that defines a community, it's these postmaterialist values. and religion has been utterly shattered, the very definition

has been utterly shattered by these new community formations which is why we're seeing more sort of religious sects popping up online. people don't meet in actual churches, they meet in chat rooms. so that's one future of religion. the other future of religion, however, is one in which science and religion are starting to become closer and closer to each other. now, this drives both religious and scientific people mad when i say this, but the truth of the matter is that the more science begins to redefine the nature of reality, the more it starts to use religious language to do so. certainly mystical language to do so. the idea that all matter is eternal, that it it has always existed and will always exist. that what makes me what i am is the same thing that makes this

table what it is. these are mystical religious ideas that have been around for thousands of years. so i think that if we look at these two trends and move into the future, we can start making some very interesting predictions about what religion will look like a hundred years from now, a thousand years from now. what i can tell you with some confidence is that religion is not going to go away. we've been talking about the death of god for about a hundred years now. at the dawn of the 20th century, one-half of the world's population defined itself as either christian, muslim, jewish, hindu or buddhist. 100 years of secularism, of scientific advancement, of economic development and that number is now two-thirds. it seems that people are becoming more religious, not less religious. and i don't think that there's a reason why this trend is going to reverse anytime soon. >> host: mary, atlanta.

good afternoon. please go ahead. >> caller: hey, reza. i just have to say i admire any person who can put a sentence together that has fatwa and papal bowl at the same time. >> guest: i appreciate that. [laughter] >> caller: brilliant. brilliant. are you familiar with richard -- [inaudible] and his center for action -- [inaudible] >> guest: i've heard of it, yes, i have. >> caller: okay. the reason i ask is he's a type of catholic, he's a francis can monk, and his outreach -- i'm not, i'm palestinian, i'm episcopalian, so i'm not a catholic, but he preaches the way that the pope, the new pope does. it's very inclusive. and, basically, where i want to get -- this is not an ad for him, i'm sorry, but to come up with everything that religion comes down to. i like where you went with symbols and metaphors.

>> guest: yeah. >> caller: but i'm looking for actionable consequences of those, those metaphors, and i'm not looking for war. i'm palestinian, need no more of that. i'm looking for, well, just take jesus as one, you know? healing, preaching, feeding, basically taking care of our -- >> guest: yeah. >> caller: -- our regular sisters and brothers of all different colors and faiths. i guess what i'm trying to say is i love where your brain is. it is astounding. is there an actionable -- >> guest: yeah. >> host: all right, mary. thank you very much. >> guest: very good question, mary, thank you. before i answer that question, let me just talk a little bit about my love for pope francis. everybody loves pope francis for a whole host of reasons, but people what they don't realize is that pope francis is the very first jesuit pope. which if you understand anything

about catholic history and anything about the jesuits, you understand what a remarkable statement that is, how earth shattering it is to have a jesuit pope finally at the vatican and as a proud product of a jesuit education. in fact, it was the jesuits who first taught me about religion, it was a the jesuits who first taught me about the historical jesus. i couldn't be prouder or happier to have pope francis in the papacy right now. because at the heart of the jesuit ideal is the preferential option for the poor. it is the notion that jesus' message is about the poor and for the poor and that the only way to really live up to jesus' commandment is to also have a commitment to the poor, to the dispossessed, to the marginalized. and pope francis, i think, has learned a valuable lesson from his predecessor, pope benedict, which is that, you know, the

catholic church is two things. it's a bureaucracy and a church, and you can't really reform the bureaucracy. pope benedict realized this. but you can reform the church. and the way to do so is to just simply live out the commandments of jesus and hope everyone else follows, and that's what pope francis has done. and i am so, so proud to be a product of a jesuit education and someone who really supports this pope and what he's been doing. so that's my two cents on the pope. this notion of sort of the thing that religions have in common is, of course, incredibly important. at the heart of it is this idea that is found in all religious traditions and which is most familiar to jews and christians as do unto others as you would have them do unto you. the golden rule exists in every religious traditions in the world.

religions that go far back before judaism, the cold of ham rabbi, the oldest, most ancient code of ethics we have has the golden rule in it. this idea that there is a way of treating other people regardless of their race or ethnicity or their religion, their nationality. and it's simply how you yourself want to be treated seems so basic. but at the heart of the it is this notion -- of it is this notion of compassion, that we are to have compassion for one another, that we are not to focus on our differences, but the things that we have in common. now, i will be the first to admit that this is very difficult to do. it's difficult for the reasons that i mentioned before, because people confuse religion for faith, and so they focus on their religion that divides us rather than the faith that unites us. but also because we tend to focus on something that i call

interfaith dialogue. that if we can all come together, if a jew and a christian and a muslim can come together and talk to one another about their religions, that it'll create a greater bond. it's a beautiful idea, and i'm not by any means dismissing it. it's a great thing, and it should happen. but it's not enough. interfaith dialogue is not the end all and be all. and so the advice that i have for all those great churches and synagogues and mosques who want to have greater connection, greater connectivity and cooperation with people of other faith, it's not enough to come together to talk about the things that unite you. what you need is interfaith action. i am a great supporter of a wonderful american organization called interfaith youth corps founded by a friend of mine out of chicago. the interfaith youth corp. has a

very simple message. rather than getting young people of different religions to sit in a room and talk about the things that unite and divide them, instead, they go out onto the streets, and they clean the streets. they help build hospitals, they feed the poor and the needy, they clothe those who are naked. in other words, they put their shared values into action because the one thing that we all have in common regardless of what religion we are is that we all have the same ideals, we have the same morals, we have the same values at the foundation of all these religions. it is care for those who cannot care for themselves. so you want greater connection, greater peace, greater pluralism between religious traditions? stop talking about the things that you have in common and go put those things in action. >> host: david, rochester, new york. please go ahead with your question or comment for reza

aslan. >> caller: yes, dr. aslan, you mentioned earlier in this program -- [laughter] it's been so long, i forgot the -- zero as try januaryism. and i believe that was the religion of persia before it became iran. and what i was wondering is are there any vestiges left in, of this religion in present day iran or any place else, or is it a completely dead religion? thank you. >> guest: what a fantastic question. and i love it when people ask me about sor rah as try januaryism because it is one of my favorite religions and probably, i would say, the most important religion in the history of religions. and i am not saying that lightly. the prophet lived probably around 1100 b.c., that's our

best guess. it was the first monothe wristic religion. it was not the first monotheist. the first was actually the great egyptian pharoah who believed that the ahten was the only god, that all other gods were fall gods. that religion did not last very long, but sor rah theus that was the first of what we refer to as the are revealed rough fetes. in other words, an individual who claimed to be receiving a direct message from god. not abraham, not moses. thousand, what's fashion -- now, what's fascinating about this message is that it begins with this statement that there is only one god. not that there is a high god and there are other gods that are lower than god which is what the sort of revailing sentiment was in mess -- prevailing sentiment

was in mesopotamia and the near east, but that there is just one god, the lord mazda, is what he called his god. that all the other so-called gods were not gods. in fact, he designated them as something that had never been set before. he said that they were what he referred to in our modern parlance as angels and demons. that's right. he invented the very concept of angels and demons. that wasn't the only thing that he invented. he invented the concept of heaven and hell. before this time really there was a notion of the after life, but the after life was just a mirror of the life in present. if you were a warrior in this life, you died, and you were a warrior in the after life. if you were a slave in this life, you died, and you were a slave in the after life. certificate theus that was the first prophet to argue that what your role was in the after life

had nothing to do with your position in this life, but it had to do with your moral choices. he started this phrase called good thoughts, good words, good deeds. if you accumulated enough good thoughts, good words, good deeds in this life, well, then you went to a good after life, heaven. if you did not, you went to a wad after life, hell. a bad after life, hell. he had such a deep impact on what we now know as religion because the first great iranian empire of cyrus the great was a astrian empire, and those who remember your ancient history, it was cyrus the great who liberated the jews, sent them back to israel to rebuild their temple, and, indeed, they thank cyrus the great in the hebrew bible by naming him messiah.

judaism was deeply influenced by this ideology, and, indeed, what we know as christianity can in many ways be understood as a marriage of zora-astrianism and judaism. it is not a dead religion, but it is a dying religion. there are, i would say, maybe 250,000 left in the world. it's a dying religion because it's a religion that you can't convert to, and any religion that you can't convert to eventually dies out. a shame, because it is an important and historic religious tradition. >> host: bev corpswomen tweets in to you, why do religions seem to consistently degrade and persecute well? >> guest: because they are patriarchal institutionings. religions are man made, literally. all religions are manmade. and so when it comes time to interpret a religion, it's going to be interpreted in ways that benefit men. and, again, this is true of all religious traditions.

>> host: and, in fact, you write in "no god but god," the origin's evolution, you write: the fact is that for 14 century ies quranic -- and because each one inevitably brings to the quran his own ideology and his own preconceived notions. it should not be surprising to learn that certain verses have most often been read in their most misogynyst interpretation. >> guest: and, again, i would say that's true of all religions. >> host: debbie, albuquerque. good afternoon to you. >> caller: hi, how you doing? i've been waiting to talk to you. i find what you're talking about absolutely fascinating. i do take exception, you're a sociology major and theology, then why did you gloss over talking about jihadists? because i see, i heard that you neglected to mention that one of the very first attacks was on

mecca on november 20, 1979, when they first mecca for two weeks. you didn't mention that at all. and that was really the very first strike that they took against the united states was like we became the infidels from that point on. i mean, yeah, we were focused with them taking the hostages in tehran, and it sort of got glossed over and didn't make the news, but you didn't mention anything about that. and i'm just curious why. if you're -- because i'm also a sociology major, and i know about it. so i'm just sort of curious why you made reference to that, oh, in the last decade this has been an uprising when that's truly incorrect if you actually do know history. it started in '79 in mecca, and i'll take my response off the air. thank you. >> host: and if you would also include where did jihaddism come from. >> guest: sure. well, first of all, what i said is the sectarian conflict between sunni and shia has been exacerbated over the last

decade, not jihaddism. jihaddism is a very specific and very new phenomenon. jared buckman at west point says that it probably can be traced to about 2000. i would go a little bit further. i would say that it can probably be traced to about 1989 and the soviet invasion of afghanistan. jihaddism is a transnational movement. in other words, it's a movement of radical muslims who with believe that the very concept of the nation-state is anathema to islam. they want to reconstitute the world as a single caliphate under their control. the reason i go through this important terminology is that we tend to conflate jihadist and islamist as though they're the same thing when in reality they are opposite things. islamism is a nationalistic ideology. it is a political philosophy

predicated on the creation of an islamic state. islamists are not globalists, in other words. they have a distinctly geographically, nationalistically defined objective. jihadists do not. jihadists want to get rid of all borders, all boundaries and to reconstitute the world under their command. al-qaeda is a jihadist organization. isis is a jihadist organization. the muslim brotherhood is an islamist organization. hamas is an islamist organization. very important that we get these terms right because they require vastly different responses. and islamist organizations and a nationalist organization wants something concrete, wants something measurable. and so, therefore, whether they can have what they want or not, there's still room for negotiation, room for discussion. a jihadist organization is fighting a cosmic war, as i said

earlier. they want nothing. al-qaeda cannot be negotiated with. isis cannot be negotiated with because what they want is impossible to achieve in this world. and so they require a completely different response. now, i would say that, fortunately, this administration has been much better at understanding the difference between the two organizations, but the media has not. the media conflates these words all the time. i was watching "meet the press" this morning, and isis was repeatedly referred to as an islamist organization. that is factually incorrect. and so terms matter when what is at stake is our national security. >> host: from "no god but god," the biggest obstacles in the path to creating a genuine islamic democracy are not only the traditionalist ulama or jihaddist terrorists, but perhaps, more destructively,

those in the west who stubbornly refuse to recognize that democracy if it's to be viable and enduring can never be important. >> guest: the lesson of the war on terror, i would say. >> host: got an e-mail here. in-laws, yes, we are his biggest fans. just wanted to let everyone know that we are honored and blessed to have rez is saw as -- reza is our family. we are so touched by your comments and very proud to call you ours. end of commercial for reza aslan. >> guest: i love you, guys. >> host: jim in mercer island, washington. jim, qd. ..

why did jesus speak at the messiah while the others did not? that is part number one. the second part is why did the gentiles find this jesus movement and the new movement so repealing. the jews didn't, but the gentiles did. i'll take this off the air. thank you so much. >> guest: you are right. as i write in the book, "zealot" , and many messiahs came before and after jesus, far more

popular, far more successful in their lifetimes, but of course 2000 years later all of them have been forgotten about and only one person is still called messiah and that his cheeses of nazareth. why is that? part of it has to do with jesus himself. he's an extraordinary individual and social you were what really separated him from his fellow messiahs, this teaching about the kingdom of god come a new world order in which those on the topic is the topic goes on about the bottom change is than the poor and rich would exchange places in the first shall be last, the lash shall be first. this is extraordinary. people did not talk like this in first century palestine. we absolutely know about the early jesus movement is after jesus' death, or whether the mush that the cheeses did, but the things that she things that she's a hat that were passed from the community to community from followers to follow her. his teachings survived his death in other words. to put it in its simplest way, the reason why jesus is so

called messiah, whereas those others were not, it has less to do with anything jesus had of dead than what its followers said about him. in light of the resurrection experience, however you want to define that, they had to do with a fundamental problem, which is according to everything judaism has ever said about the roland function of the messiah, jesus was not the messiah. he didn't do anything the messiah was supposed to do. he didn't re-create the kingdom of david. he didn't liberate the jews from foreign occupation. confronted with the fact that by the definition of messiah, jesus wasn't the messiah. the disciples to change the definition. they made the messiah son enough, something spiritual in the something celestial, someone who performs this function not in this world, but the next world. someone whose kingdom is an earthly kingdom, but a heavenly kingdom. as you can imagine for a great

many jews who are familiar with macy on expectations, this didn't work for them. they simply did accept this new definition of messiah. the more the definitions right into the roman empire come into the diaz prayer, the more non-jews sounded appealing. the son of god would have been unusual was not that unusual is not that weird of a notion. so very, very soon after jesus' death, within two or three generations, the non-jewish converts far outweighed the non-jewish ones and christianity began to divorce his cell from its jewish parent and becomes sent a new cumbersome and wholly independent as it is today. >> host: reza aslan company probably rocks the world comes

the christian world with "zealot: the life and times of jesus of nazareth." but you do right this in your book. he said the most obvious reason not to dismiss the disciples resurrection experiences out of hand at the cell messiahs before and after them. it was precisely the fervor with which the followers believed in the resurrection that performed this time is that into the largest religion. while the resurrection itself is an ahistorical phenomenon. another was something historians have no business talking about one way or another. the claim to the resurrection by the disciples is an historical phenomenon reason unquestionable historical phenomenon. it is just a fact that very soon

after jesus' death, his disciples believed and preached he was risen again. i personally estimate he believes in god so i'm not going to deny jesus was raised from the dead. i'll just say it's not my business as an historian. what cannot be denied is whatever happened this ecstatic experience by the disciples is about more than anything else transformed the small jewish movement into the world's largest religion. the mac however you write, there is this nagging fact to consider. one after another of those who claim to have witnessed the richness jesus went to the wrong person to ask about refusing to recant. it is not that unusual.

it is important to understand that this wasn't a statement. leafing jesus risen from the dead wasn't a joke to those followers. it's something they were willing to die for. let's not be so quick to simply dismiss that experience, whatever it was. >> host: an hour and a half left with our guest, reza aslan, author of the "zealot: the life and times of jesus of nazareth," "weather on the "beyond fundamentalism". tonya davis is the producer of this program is one of the things she likes to do is ask our guests what are their influences. what are their favorite books. here's a look at professor aslan latest.

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>> keyers to look at hooks being published this week:

>> host: set five, salman rushdie, one of your favorite books and authors. >> guest: that's right. i remember the first time i read satanic verses. i must have been 20 i think. i had heard about it obviously never got around to reading it. i thought only friends bookshelf and i thought was a big deal. let's read this thing. it was incredible. the idea you could write about the deep spiritual ideas in a work of fiction to make it come alive in the narrative that he did, it really and what to me as a writer. probably a lot with garcia marquez are the three sort of authors i thought this is what i want to do. this is who i want to be. >> host:

>> guest: it'd save hook by not a very well-known political philosopher who teaches at iowa. it is a book about the way we can start thinking about money as a secret day, the way it used to be. he makes a very important argument, which is the creation of what we call money arose to facilitate gift exchange. in other words, the idea was before money if i had something valuable and that you needed i would give it to you and then you would give me some valuable that i needed. but as the transaction became more complicated, little trinkets to rose so i would say thank you or the chicken. i don't have anything of value to give you now, but here's a trinket and laid her on you could give me and i would give you some invaluable.

what is obviously have in the modern world is this trinket has all of a sudden become intrinsically valuable. in other words, it's not about what this got me, is a trinket itself and not more than anything has led to the uncontrolled greed, the tremendous wealth gap we see around the world and trying to create a sense and understanding us money that returns to his original notion as a sacred thing that is nothing more than an exchange between individuals from goods and is peered >> host: if peered >> host: a few that participate in our conversation with reza aslan, the phone lines are jammed. you can also contact us via social media. our e-mail address is booktv at c-span.org. leave a comment on twitter. at times tedious or handle there. finally, leave a comment on her face but page, facebook.com/

booktv. alexander, ocala, florida, you're on the air. >> gentlemen, first and foremost, thank you for having me on the question. i am constantly on a consistent basis. the self-proclaimed prophet and television minutes or is constantly say we should not listen to the educated academia scholars who are concerned with theology, that this is nothing but false and there's a whole premise around the good what are your thoughts about this? will take us out there. thank you so much, gentlemen. >> guest: they may have a point. this suspicion about academia and color should, which is why the red by the way is really our fault. it is the fault of academics and scholars. we spent so much of our time talking amongst ourselves,

pontificating in our dusty office libraries and so little time trying to communicate our ideas to a popular general audience that it's no wonder we are seen with suspicion, particularly by religious people. this is something i faced all my life. i decided early in my career that i never wanted to be the academic and all this time poring over is about cooking that 17th century acadian tax. what i wanted to do was take this information that i was learning, information i found to be extort airily interest and into package it in an appealing and accessible way for everyone else to enjoy. i simply assumed if i find this stuff interesting, other people would, too. you would be amazed at the pushback i have the deed from my

colleagues in departments of religion around the world. the truth of the matter is academics are not just discouraged from writing popular books. they are actually punished for it. to this day i have young grad student tell me what they should do, how they should achieve the popular success i have achieved and my answer to them is get 10 year first because it doesn't help to have "the new york times" best-selling book. it actually hurts you in academia. i think this is changing. i think the young scholars especially were scholars of the media age, a digital media age are becoming more adept at navigating social media, navigating popular media. when you increasingly see historian of contemporary russian history at john dewar,

you know, joking and talking about 13, young scholars see that in day i can do that. i can write a book about my particular field that people outside of my field would enjoy. so it is changing for sure, but this general distrust of academics, a theologian, of scholars is sent in that i really blame the alps for more than anything else. >> host: how long did you work on "zealot"? >> guest: well, the rioting of it, for years. the research two decades. i mean, it really began with that first course in religious studies that i took at santa clara university and the first time that a professor showed me the difference between an historical look at jesus and the theological look at jesus.

so i would say about two decades is really delving deep into the origins of christianity before years of writing. >> host: d. right at home? iraq this? >> guest: i have a home office. it is easier until my train 2-year-old survived to write at home. now i have to escape. i will go really anywhere that i can kind of have a few solid hours of uninterrupted work. >> host: copy shop? >> guest: copy shop. i now have an extra office, which sometimes helps. as any writer will tell you, a book comes out and if you're lucky and it's a successful book, that results in a never-ending talk to her. so it is time for me to sit down and get to work on the next book. >> host: from "zealot," 2000 years later paul's creation is utterly subsumed the jesus of

history. >> guest: i would say about the comment i received about "zealot," the one that is most common and most surprising is what happens in the decades immediately after jesus' death and his rivalry that pops up between paul, the great sort of preacher of christianity to a gentile audience and a far lesser known, but perhaps more sick became geekier, james the brother of jesus. of course some of your listeners may not be aware of this, the chief has had four brothers. shave, joseph coming judas and simon and an untold number of sisters who are not named in the new testament. one of his brothers, james, became the leader of the jesus movement after jesus' death. indeed their hand-picked

designated successor to jesus. he was known as the bishop of bishops, the head of the jerusalem sm layer church. they didn't use the word church then, that assembly. the assembly in charge of all the other assemblies. james was according to other historical documents that we have at that time the undisputed head of what can be called christianity for a good 30 years after jesus' death. again, this is remarkable. jesus was in charge of the jesus movement or three years. james his brother was in charge of it for 30 years. and yet, he's been almost totally written out of christian history and that is for a very understandable reason. james had what can only be described as a limited view of this new movement. he believed that this was a

jewish movement for jews. james is okay if a non-and until the year 57, that included circumcision. in the year 57 he removed it as a requirement, but nevertheless maintained on the purity and dietary laws. this was as far as james was concerned a jewish expression. she says was a set time. he was preaching to other jews. to follow jesus truly come you have to follow the law of moses, the torah. paul had a completely different view of this movement. paul of course converted to the movement after the death, never met jesus, never spoke, but was what he describes as direct communication with the risen jesus. he said the risen jesus gave him a completely new message, a message of universalism. not only did paul say you didn't

have to follow the law of moses, paul said he shouldn't follow the law of moses. he said christ was the end of the torah, that this was a message not only just for jews, but it was for everyone. to truly follow this new movement, you had to divorce yourself from judaism. you have to become a paul referred to is a new being, one that was neither jew nor greek, nor area come in to something else entirely, part of a brand-new creation. a new creation link jesus was a new creation. what i am describing will sound very familiar to christians because it is called christianity. but what i think really surprises christian to learn is in a lifetime if these two men,

james and paul, paul was an outcast. he was marginalized. he was safe wrench figure. this version of christianity that he was preaching was heterodox to say the least. indeed on numerous occasions, paul with settlement to jerusalem to answer for his heretical teachings about christianity and to answer directly to james. you know, as i sometimes joke, you can't win an argument with james. how do you win an argument with a flesh and blood brother of jesus? what are you going to say that is going to be a man who can say i've talked with jesus and that's not what he meant. you cannot win an argument against the brother of jesus. so paul lost that argument. paul dies in the year 626. james dies in the year 62.

at that point as i say, paul's views are the minority view to say the least. but here is the difference between paul and james. james, like his brother, jesus, was an uneducated, illiterate peasant from the backwoods of calais. he never wrote anything down. he couldn't write anything down. paul was an educated, urbanized cosmopolitan roman citizen or one of the wealthiest port cities in the entire terseness. he wrote everything down. everything he believed he wrote down. and so, with the destruction of listen, the death of both men and the transformation of judea and to no longer a distinctly jewish tradition, one that is

preached in debt to roman, what that generation of christians discover is a dozen or so letters from paul outlining this vision for a universal version of christianity as opposed to the more at no nationalistic person of christianity preached by jean. and a man who was derided in this regard newness of life time becomes in many ways the creator of what we now know as christianity. look at the new testament. we have one letter by james. it wasn't written by james. it was written by his followers. one letter by james, the undisputed leader of this movement, the brother of jesus is of. we have two letters from peter. the first of the apostles, the rock upon which jesus built his

church. we have three letters from john, the beloved disciple, one of the triumvirate that ruled out for the early christian movement along with peter and james and we had the lesson letters from paul. indeed, nearly half of the new testament is either written by paul ritchie admitted to paul or about paul. that tells you the enormous influence that this man ended up having. and what, if you're a christian, for the better. a lot of people say whether james had one? what james had won the argument with paul? is that it happened, they would be no such thing as christianity today. let's be honest. christianity would be a small, probably of the mexican jewish sect in the middle east. james didn't win. call one.

christianity became the universal religion that anyone could join regardless of their ethnicity or nationality or religious persuasion and that religion has become the largest religion in the world. >> host: what do we know about when the gospels of john, paul, luke were written? >> guest: there's a lot of debate about some of the particulars, but the prevailing theory, the theory that i've paid the overwhelming majority of scholars agree goes something like this. not long after jesus' death, let faith dirty, 33, somewhere around here, his teachings he can to be spread around or a lien on his communities if not its actions. his teachings come with except the last crucifixion and

resurrection, which were liturgical events. so those were passed along. but the disciples, with the followers of jesus cared about was that things jesus said, not so much the things he did. eventually, sometime around the 50th comment is teachings began to be written down. we don't have access to this document any longer. we refer to it cryptically ask you, whihich is from the german word cabal a, which means source. but imagine if he wrote the jesus quote book. that is what we are talking about. so this quote book existed sometime around the 50s. in the year 70 is the will to the jewish revolt against rome, triggers on this destroyed. the temple is destroyed in the first church, the church and james is destroyed. authentic faith that his point of the letters of paul and this hypothetical text that we call?

not long after 70 a.d., indeed almost immediately after cumbersome time to seven e., 71, 72, an early christian by the name john mark, that so we that so he think his name is anyway, in room safe down and gives birth to this brand-new genre called gospel. what he tries to do if he takes this sort of traditional biography, the sordid secret biography of the caesars that is very common and he adapts it to jesus and he writes the gospel of mark. ..

>> guest: and so about 20 years later, sometimes between the years 90 and 100, two other gospel writers -- matthew and luke -- writing at a distance from each other and, interestingly, unbeknownst to one another decide to, as it were, update mark's gospel. so they take mark's gospel, and they have at their disposal this other document, q, the sayings of jesus. and, of course, they have their own tradition, their own

individualistic, particular traditions. ask they rewrite the gospel -- and they rewrite the gospel, and they fill in a lot of that, let's say, missing material. so there are all these infancy narrative. what happened to jesus' early years before he was baptized? what about all these rez election appearances, you know, all these stories that we have that don't in mark? and now you have the gospels of matthew and luke. with mark, they're called the synoptics because they read the same, they very much present a single lahr kind of narrative about jesus, a singular chronology. about ten years later, sometime between the years 100, perhaps even as late as 120, we have the fourth gospel, the gospel of john. and that gospel is written at a time in which there is no longer anything jewish about this religion. it has absolutely divorced itself from judaism. mark is a deeply jewish text.

matthew and luke still maintain sort of jewish affinities. at the very least, they explain the jewish things that jesus does. john begins his gospel not with an infancy narrative, not with jesus' miraculous birth to a virgin, it begins at the beginning of time. [speaking in native tongue] john says, in the beginning was the word and the word was with god, and the word was god. right away john says something brand new. you see, matthew, mark and luke never, ever called jesus god. ever. they called jesus the son of god, which is actually a title, not a description, it's a title for king. they certainly intimate that there is a divine quality to jesus, and certainly postresurrection there is a

divine nature to jesus. but at no point in these three gospels does jesus say i am god. the first verse of john says jesus was not a man, he was an eternal, divine being who was responsible for -- now here's his story. so right away what you see in john is something completely new, totally different. now, what we know, of course, is that these four gospels were not the only four gospels, that there were many, many more gospels that were written; the gospel of thomas, the gospel of phillip, the gospel of mary magdalene, the gospel of the egyptians. these gospels were lost to us as a result of constantine's creed, all these other gospels were eventually destroyed. fortunately, we found them about 60 years ago in a village in upper egypt. we now refer to them as the

knostic gospels. your readers, you can go to barnes & noble and buy copies. they're quite fascinating. but nevertheless, what's important to understand about what i just said is two fundamental facts about the gospels. and, indeed, about every word ever written about jesus. number one, they were all written by people who never met or knew jesus. let me say that one time. every word ever written about jesus, every word, was written by people who did not meet or know jesus. his disciples were illiterate. they never wrote anything down. the first words about jesus were written by paul. he never met jesus. the toes pell of mark -- gospel of mark was not written by a man named mark. these are not eyewitness accounts of jesus' words and deeds. these are theological

reflections about who jesus was written many years after jesus' death. matthew was not written by someone named matthew. these are very common in the ancient world to title books in such a way to indicate that they are written by someone, you know, who knew the prophet but, but in reality that's just an homage, if you will. with the exception of luke. luke very likely wrote the gospel of luke. but the rest of the gospel writers were not, they were not -- these gospels were not written by the people after whom they are named, in other words. so that's a very important thing to keep in mind when trying to figure out how to extract historical information from the gospels. these were written by people who were the second and third generation of christians, not the first generation. >> host: and from "zealot," the kingdom of god is a call to revolution, plain and simple.

the prophets banded zealots and messiahs of jesus' time all knew this which is why they did not hesitate to employ violence in trying to establish god's rule on earth. the question is, did jesus feel the same way? there may be no more important question than this for those trying to pry the historical jesus away from the christian christ. arvelle, dallas, texas, thanks for holding on. you're on with reza aslan. >> caller: hello, thank you -- >> host: thank you, sir. >> caller: nothing would please me more than to sit down across a long dinner table with you, a couple of bottles of wine and discuss these. i think you're brilliant, and i look forward to reading your books. i'm aware of your writings. i've worked in the middle east on three different occasions over 20 years from 1994 until now. i have some very strong viewpoints about islam. i think it is -- i have just two

things. i know you have a whole lot to do and say today. how do you, how do you come to terms with the murder of some 600, 800 jews that mohamed participated in after the battle of -- [inaudible] around 630? >> guest: very, very good question. actually, i write a lot about this topic in "no god but god." and, of course, part of it has to do with this mythology that rises about mohamed's time in me deep that, mythology that depending on whether you're a jew, christian or muslim you're going to interpret in your own way. what i try to do is remove religion from the issue altogether and really analyze what was happening in mecca at the time n mecca and ma dean that at the time -- medina at the time of mohamed. in the case of maine dean that, you're talking about various tribes, jewish, pagan and muslim who are all living under the single constitution called the

constitution of medina which i talk about at length in the book. a constitution that required every cig that story to -- signatory to defend medina against the member can invasion. and many of the jewish tribes did. but there was a tribe that in the middle of the battle of the trench changed sides. they actually decided to start fighting on behalf of the meccans against the medinans. this wasn't the first time that a tribe had done something like that. it actually had happened a couple of times beforehand, and both times the punishment for those tribes was exile. and so those tribes, if they weren't going to defend medina against its external enemies, were not allowed to live in medina any longer. this third time, however, the prophet mohamed -- and, by the

way, it wasn't his decision, it was an arbitrator who dash traited between -- who arbitrated between them -- decided that punishment for treason against the constitution would be that the men would all be killed. which was, of course, tribal justice. that's how it worked. now, it's very important to understand that this tribe was killed not for religious reasons. in fact, jewish tribes continued to live in medina in harmony with the muslim and pagan tribes for generation after the prophet muhammad's death. it was really not until -- [inaudible] in which the jewish tribes were expelled from the arabian peninsula. but during the prophets' lifetime, the jews maintained cordial relations with muslims and with the prophet muhammad's community. indeed, one great scholar has shown that for at least 200 years after the death of the prophet, muslims were required to read the torah alongside the

quran as a single document. so it wasn't for religious reasons that the members of the tribe were executed, it was simply for treason. now, you can say that's barbaric. you may be right. we are, of course, talking about the seventh century and, you know, seventh century morality is a little bit different than, i think, 21st century morality. and you can certainly judge the prophet muhammad for the actions of agreeing to the execution of his political enemies in medina. but it's important to understand it as a historical event, not a religious event. that's, i think, what i would say about that. >> host: shirley e-mails this to you, professor aslan, please speak about why muslims such as yourself do not forcefully speak out against the violence some muslims carry out in the name of god. >> guest: how does shirley know that i don't speak out against

violence against, you know, by muslims? how does shirley know that there are muslims who do not speak out against violence? i'm going to tell you something. i'm going to let you in on a little secret. shirley is not asking a question. okay? she's making a statement. and it's a absolutely false statement, one that is so imperically proven false, it would take five seconds for shirley to do a google search -- and i'm just going to assume that shirley has heard of google -- and she can just simply go to google right now, shirley, and punch in muslims' statements against violence. try that. try that for a moment. and what you will see is hundreds of thousands of fatwas, of declarations by institutions, by clerical groups, by

individuals, by imams all over the world condemning violence in the name of islam. indeed, don't take their word for it. go to gallup, if you will. gallup did a very interesting survey two years ago among american religious communities. they asked every religious community in the united states, including atheist groups, ten simple questions about the use of violence. in all ten questions, muslims were by far the religious community that was least accepting of violence in the name of religion. in fact, by sometimes 20-30 points over christians and jews. in fact, the only community whose tolerance for -- or lack of tolerance for violence came close to muslims were atheists,

as a matter of fact. this notion that i hear all the time, why aren't muslims condemning violence, is absurd. in fact, as i say, it's not a question. you are not asking me a question, shirley. you are just similarly regurgitating something that you have been told over and over and over to again. something that can be proven wrong with almost no effort on your part. at all. so instead of asking me that question, ask the question of yourself and find the answer. >> host: from reza aslan's 2010 book "beyond fundamentalism: confronting religious extremism in an age of globalization," he writes: by treating the global war on terror like a cosmic war, we have not only played into the hands of these radical muslim militants, we may have set the

groundwork for a new and terrifying age of religious war. >> guest: and i think we're there. as i said earlier, what these jihadists are fighting is a war of the imagination. i'm not saying that it's not bloody and brutal and catastrophic and destructive. it is. but it's not a war for land. it's not a war for money, it's not a war for political gain. it's a war for the triumph of good over evil. when we in the united states begin to adopt that same rhetoric, when we refer to the war against al-qaeda as a battle between good and evil, when we begin to infuse our political rhetoric with the same kind of theological rhetoric that one hears from these that gnattics -- fanatics who are fighting these cosmic wars, we empower them.

because by adopting their language, we are also legitimating their world view. we're saying, you're right, this is a battle between good and evil, except that we're good and you're evil. that is an unwinnable conflict. we have to understand that we will never outthat gnat size these fanatics. what we need to do is bring this cosmic conflict back down to earth. we need to address the very real grievances that create support for these cosmic groups like al-qaeda, like isis, and we have to recognize -- whether we want to hear this or not -- that these militants, these al-qaeda militants, these isis militants are not fighting a real war. in other words, they don't want anything concrete. what they want is unachievable

in this world. and so the only response is their destruction. we must wipe out al-qaeda, we must wipe out isis. but it's not enough to just simply kill militants. we have to get rid of the ideology that supports them, and the only way to do that is to address the grievances that these militants use to draw people to their cause. >> host: ali e-mails in: what would happen to you in the airport if you decided to fly to tehran tomorrow? >> guest: i'd be let in without any problem because i have, you know, the proper paperwork. whether i'd be let out -- [laughter] that's a different issue. you know, iran -- and i hate to use this word -- is a third world bureaucracy. and like most third world bureaucracies, there is no opportunity to appeal to some kind of rule or some kind of

law, you know? the rule, the law is in the hands of the bureaucrat sitting across from you. if he's had a bad day or if he's fought with his wife, you're not going home. if he's in a good hood, you are going home. -- good mood, you are going home. you could protest all you want to. you could say, but i have the paperwork that says x, y and z. it's not that kind of country. it's not the kind of country in which the rule of law is what matters. and so, look, i mean, i'll just be honest with you, it's a crap shoot. you show up and hope that you can just sort of go under the radar, that nobody will notice, that people won't make a big deal and that you'll get to leave. that's what happened to me my last trip there, and, you know, when i go back -- which i will, certainly, in a couple of years with my family -- i just kind of cross my fingers. [laughter] >> host: have you visited israel? >> guest: oh, many times, many

times. yes, i've been to israel a large number of times. you know, i've done research there, i've gone there for vacation, i've done a lot of work there. you know, i -- i'm not trying to toot my own horn, but i'm fairly well known in israel. i've had a lot of articles written about me in israel. as i say, my books have been published in israel. and so i think people think that because i am very critical of this israeli government, the government of benjamin netanyahu and his party and the disturbing right-wing lurch of the knesset that somehow that makes me anti-israel. it's such an unsophisticated, you know, way of talking. i mean, it's like saying that if i criticize american policy, then i'm anti-american. or if i criticize barack obama, then i'm racist.

it's, frankly, idiotic. i think that the reason that i'm so critical of israel is because i truly do believe in israel. i do believe in the promise of what israel was supposed to be, what it can be. but this 40-year, brutal, unjust, immoral occupation of the pal the stint january people -- palestinian people, an occupation that is accelerating, not decelerating, an occupation that is nothing less than collective national suicide on the part of israel itself, has sullied everything that israel was supposed to be. everything that it sets itself up to be. and until that occupation is dealt with, then the promise of israel is going to be nothing

more than just a promise. it'll never be fulfilled. >> host: what's it like going through ben-gurion airport? [laughter] >> guest: well, it's not easy as an iranian, it certainly is not. i'm an hearn citizen, but it -- an american citizen, but it doesn't really help. as i say in "beyond fundamentalism," i don't blame israel for its paranoia. i mean, look, it's received a real battering by people who look just like i do. but i also understand that if israel wants to truly have the peace and prosperity that it deserves, that most of its seem want unconditionally, then it has to figure out a way to live side by side and in peace and in equality with its palestinian neighbors and its palestinian citizens. what is happening right now in israel is an abomination. it's an abomination to human

rights, to constitutionalism, to what we expect among modern democratic states. but most of all, it's an abomination to everything that is true and good about judaism and the jewish people. >> host: from "beyond fundamentalism," the problem is not with israel, the problem is with me, with the sum of my identities, my citizenship as american, my nationality, iranian, my ethnicity, persian. my culture, middle eastern, my religion, muslim, my gender, male. all the multiple signifiers of my identity, the things that make me who i am, are in one way or another viewed as a threat to the endless procession of perfectly pleasant, perfectly reasonable immigration officers whose task it is to maintain a safe distance between people like them and people like me. even so, throughout the entire exercise i could not help but thinking of the famed french theorist, ernest rennon, who

years ago defined the nation as, quote, a group of people united in a mistaken view about the past and a hatred of their neighbors. nowhere is that sentiment borne out her tully or with more -- fully or with more force than among the relatively new nations scattered along the broad horizon of the middle east. mary in tucson, arizona, you are on with reza aslan on booktv on c-span2. >> caller: hello. i'm really appreciating this very simple, extremely articulate conversation. earlier in the program you had mentioned that there is no completely wrong or completely right religion, and so my question for you is that would that not exclude christianity? because christ himself had said i am the way, the truth and the light, no man comes to the father except through him, me, he said? so since jesus is the very cornerstone of christianity, would that not make christianity

completely wrong or completely right? >> guest: no. [laughter] not at all. there are, of course, multiple ways to understand jesus' saying that i am the way, the truth, the life, no one comes to the father except through me. the first way to understand it is its historical way. i would say it's not jesus who said that, it's john who said that. that verse is from the gospel of john, as i was talking about earlier, the gospel of john written sometime between 100 and 120 a.d. has a completely different understanding of who jesus was than matthew, mark and luke. john, as i say, thinks jesus is literally god which is not what matthew, mark and luke say about jesus. and the synoptic gospels, there is no phrase in which he says he is himself god. whereas he says this in john all the time. that doesn't mean it's incorrect. that's a faith statement. a christian can be as much a

christian in believing that jesus is literally god incarnate as he can be if he believes that jesus is just a man. there are many, many christians -- the aryan christians are many of them -- who believe that jesus was not god. by the way, there are many, many christians who believe that jesus was not a man. the copts, for instance, in egypt believe this jesus was pure -- that jesus was pure god, that he had no human nature whatsoever. so that verse which seems, in your mind and in the minds of many, many christians around the world, to be self-explanatory and to require no kind of interpretation, that it can only be understood in one way, in reality has been understood in hundreds and hundreds of different ways. so i ask you again, how do we decide which way is right? how do we decide which

interpretation of that saying is correct and which is not? now, i would posit that there is no way to decide, that there is no arbitrator, there is no one who gets to say your interpretation is correct and that person's interpretation is incorrect. religion becomes a deeply individualistic thing which is, of course, why there are so many different sects and schisms of all religious tradition. that may seem uncomfortable. i totally get it. i really understand why that statement may make people of faith uncomfortable, because there is something comforting this believing that what -- in believing that what you believe, your particular interpretation of scripture, is the correct one. in fact, it's the only one. and that anyone else who interprets that verse differently is simply wrong. that's a comforting thought, but

it's historically inaccurate. it's empirically inaccurate unless you believe that just you and anyone who agrees with you is a christian and anybody who doesn't agree with you is not a christian, and i'm certain, mary, that you don't believe that. so we have to come to the opposite conclusion which is that every one of the multiple ways in understanding that verse are equally valid. maybe they're not equally reasonable, maybe they're not equally historically accurate, but they're equally valid. >> host: majiv is calling in from lancaster, california. good afternoon. >> caller: good afternoon, sir. first of all, i would like to commend you on the distinction you made earlier between the -- [inaudible] of religion and faith. i am from africa, so i have a little bit of a english accent. if you don't understand

anything, you can always ask me to repeat it. >> guest: i understand you perfectly. [laughter] >> caller: all right. so my question is simple and short. in islam there is this notion from the quran that there is no compulsion in religion. yet we know what happens when -- [inaudible] people try to, i don't know how you -- [inaudible] to honor their religion. is it this notion, this son sent of -- concept of there is no compassionate religion, does it not have any significant meaning in islam? >> guest: of course it does. but that means is, once again, contingent upon whatever your political or social or cultural persuasions may be. you're right, the quran says

this black -- in black and white there can be no compulsion in religion, to you your religion, to me my religion. indeed, as i said earlier, the quran over and over again calls jews and christians part of the uma, part of the larger community, what i refer to as monotheistic pluralism. it validates the torah and the gospels. but you wouldn't believe that, you wouldn't know that if you listen to a lot of muslims talk about kris chaps or jews -- christians or jews. this is the problem with scripture, is that it can mean whatever you want it to mean. why is it that we still pay attention to writings that were composed 5,000 years ago? it's not because they are true, although their truth has very little to do can with the facts that they espouse. it's because they are infinitely

malleable. the torah addresses every aspect of the human condition. the same torah that says love your neighbor as yourself also says slaughter every man, woman and child that does not believe in yahweh. the same gospel that says turn the other cheek also says that jesus did not come to preach peace, he came to preach the sword. the same quran that says there can be no compulsion in religion, that if you kill one person, it is as though you have killed all of mankind also says find and slay the believer wherever you may find them. you see, scripture can mean thinking you want it to mean because it has everything in it that you need. if if you are a misogynyst, you will find plenty of evidence in all the scriptures to validate

your view. if you are a feminist, you will find plenty of material in the same scripture to validate your view. if you're a believer in peace, you can use the quran, the gospels and the torah to argue your view. if you were a believer in war, you could use the same exact scriptures to argue your view. be this becomes fundamentally a problem that, you know, there is a conflict between the scripture and interpretation, the way that we approach scriptures. so unfortunately, it becomes almost impossible to appeal to scripture when trying to argue against misogyny, against totalitarianism, against violence because those who espouse those views can simply use the same scripture to argue for them.

instead, all we can do is argue our particular interpretation with the same full-throated confidence as the hi song wrist -- my song wrists -- misogynysts and the war amongers do. i think a lot of people would say, look, if religion is responsible for a lot of these acts of violence, let's just get rid of religion, and the violence will go away. no sophisticated person actually believes that will be the case. if you w57b9 to combat religious bigotry, you need religious pluralism. if you want to combat religious violence, you need religious peace, religious tolerance. if you want to combat religious hatred, you need religious love. so it depends on all people of faith around the world to really latch on to those aspects of their religion that promote compassion and tolerance and love and peace and to argue for

those views, for those values with the same intensity as the extremists argue for their particular interpretation. >> host: dr. ike rah him e-mails in to you, dr. aslan, it is interesting to listen to your interpretations of religions and your beliefs. what is your position on who are the international muslim brothers movement and what they are doing all over the middle east? >> guest: if you're referring to the muslim brotherhood, i think it's important not to view them as an international movement. yes, there are muslim brothers in tunisia and egypt, hamas used to be part of a muslim brotherhood organization. one can say that even the ruling party in turkey had its roosts in the muslim brotherhood. there are muslim brothers in sake saudi arabia, there are muslim brothers in venezuela.

but it is a mistake to think that these different groups represent one giant, connected umbrella organization. they do not. the muslim brotherhood in egypt has nothing to do with the muslim brotherhood in turkey or the muslim brotherhood even in neighboring due tease ya. -- tunisia. again, the muslim brotherhood is an islamist organization. and as i mentioned earlier, islamism is a nationalistic ideology. it is solely concerned with the nation-state. that's why when you hear scholars and media professionals refer to the muslim brotherhood, they will always say the egyptian muslim brotherhood or the tunisian muslim brotherhood or the algerian muslim brotherhood because they are different. the algerian muslim brotherhood only cares about algeria. they couldn't care less about egypt. the muslim brotherhood in egypt

only cares about egypt, they don't care about turkey. their concerns are nationalistic. jihadistism, the opposite of islamism, jihaddism is a transnational organization. that's a movement that can be seen as having a kind of umbrella ideology even when they are against each other. i've mentioned isis and al-qaeda a couple of times because those are the two most famous jihadist organizations. but what is really fascinating is that they hate each other. that isis and al-qaeda actually see each other as the enemy. isis began as an al-qaeda movement but was divorced from al-qaeda because it was too violent, too extreme even for al-qaeda, if you can imagine that. >> host: next call for you comes from andrea in palm springs, california. hi, andrea. >> caller: yes, hello.

thank you for the privilege of talking to you, professor. i just have a comment or a question here. have you any thoughts on the emerging studies in neuroscience that are indicating there may be a hard wiring in the brain for one to be predisposed to either fundamentalist or conservative beliefs and behaviors versus a liberal, the liberal shades of gray type mentality and how that might impact the concept of faith? >> guest: yes, yes. very good. so there are actually two emerging studies, and they're interconnected but sort of separate. one of them says that the very conception of faith, faith experience is a product of chemical inducements in the brain. and, indeed, there have been hult billion studies in which -- multiple studies in which those chemicals were affected by scientists to produce a

spiritual experience. connected to that are these other it'ds that show -- studies that show there may be a genetic component that is maybe even hard wired in our dna that predispose us to extreme beliefs, what could be termed fundamentalism if you'd like, as opposed to more skeptical or perhaps one can even say as you put it, more liberal beliefs. let me address these two studies separately, because they are scientific studies. they are absolutely true. there's no reason to deny them whatsoever. but i don't think that we should exaggerate the significance of them. to the first one, what you hear from a lot of secular-minded people -- scientists, so-called new atheists -- is that this notion that faith can be proved to be a chemical experience, therefore, denies the reality of

faith, that it means that religion and faith is nothing more than a human construct, and so it doesn't need to be taken seriously think longer. any longer. that is kind of a ridiculous statement. after all, every experience, every experience without exception is a result of chemical experiences. everything that you see, feel, understand, everything that happens to you, everything that you know or have ever experienced is a result of chemicals in your brain. love, faith, these are, of course, a result of chemical experiences. i don't understand why knowing the mechanism whereby one has an ecstatic experience negates the experience. that doesn't make any sense at all. of course it's a chemical experience.

everything is a chemical experience. so that's my thought on the first study. the second study, i think, goes to what i've been saying all along about identity, that religion is not about the things yo i do or the things that you believe -- that you do or the things that you believe, it's about how you define yourself. and much in the same way that you hay be predisposed to certain world views because of, say, the world in which you live, the culture out of which you arose, your dna, your genetics is also going to have a great impact on your identity. so, again, it's not, i don't think, surprising or unusual that how you interpret scripture, whether you interpret it more liberally or more conservatively, how you experience your faith, whether you do so in hutch more, treatment ways or in more sort of, you know, let's say secular

ways has as much to do with nurture as it does with nature. i don't think that that's unusual. but i do think it's important not to go to extremes in trying to intercept this scientific data. it doesn't really say anything about the legitimacy of faith, it just says the he can nhl whereby -- the mechanism whereby people experience faith. >> host: sandra fox tweets in, will you be writing a book tracing mohamed leading to the writing of the quran? >> guest: well, that's what "no god but god" is. the world that gave birth to muhammad and the world that he left behind. if you are interested in that topic, i suggest "no god but god." >> host: are you working on another book? >> guest: i am, or i'm supposed to be working on another book, let me put it that way. yes, i am. i'm work only a book -- working

on a book that is about the very origins and evolution of our very concept of god. i've been fascinated with the origins of religion for a very long time. "no god but god" is about the origins of islam, you know, "zealot" is about the origins of christianity. what i'd like to do now is to expand that search and talk about the very origin toes of god -- the origins of god, the origins of religion. so i'm going back about 125,000 years and starting with the sort of first trace, the first notion that there is something beyond, something other than this world. and how that notion eventually became what we now call god. >> host: jeremy, lawrence, kansas, you are on booktv on c-span2. please go ahead. >> caller: thank you, c-span, so much for the time and space to have such a thorough thinker elucidate his open-hearted ideas. so i want to get your take,

mr. aslan, on my assertion as a jewish-american religion major that what has come of islamic jihaddism is very similar to what was done to the historical jesus' offering of both rooting out the corruption within his own group and offering a spiritual alternative to the roman empire. and that became a con tan stint january, a co-opted form of the jesus narrative by the roman empire in what ultimately became zionism, jewish and christian zionism. and so similarly, i wonder whether you think that it's similar that jihaddism has actually been utilized by the empire, empires of the west and the jewish and christian zionists to divide the natural alliance between islamists and

arab nationalists -- >> guest: yeah. >> caller: -- and the natural alliance with progressives in the west. >> guest: yeah, yeah. >> caller: and what we have seen is that the war on terror is not constructed in the middle, in afghanistan or in iraq. it was constructed in many ways in tel aviv, in london, in washington, d.c., and we can actually see that it is a greater israel plan. and the usage of what our assets of western imperialism -- including al-qaeda, including isis -- to be used to destroy the alliance of islamists and arab nationalists. >> host: all right, jeremy, a lot there there. >> guest: yeah. it's a very sophisticated question, jeremy. it is true that jihaddism as an ideology is an attempt at a sort of puritanical conception of

islam. jihaddism's theological roots, of course, go back to a particularly saudi sect of us ram called -- islam called wahhabism. it's an ultra pure tan call -- puritanical idea. it's a notion that says islam has been corrupted by its various sects and varian i can'ts and that -- variants and that it has to be a return to some sort of unadulterated, perfected and, frankly, totally imagine their past. wahhabism, as any student of contemporary history knows, was exploited by the british to take control over the oil of the arabian peninsula. it was exploited by the cia to fight be the soviets during the cold war and in particular in afghanistan, and it really, you know, gave birth to al-qaeda

as we though it which then came back and bit us in the butt as it always does when you think that you can control religious extremism for your own purposes. but you're right in that this notion that i'm just going to continue to refer to as puritanicallism is a widespread phenomenon, in christianity, in judaism. this notion that, you know, the way that most people understand judaism and that most people understand christianity is wrong, and it has to be returned to some perfected, idealized path. we hear this all the time this traditionalized religion. so i think there is a great deal of connectivity in that regard. you're also right this that american -- in that american foreign policy has, you know, over the last two decades benefited from promoting these kinds of transnational

organizations. perhaps not necessarily against islamist groups, but certainly for our own needs and desires. i told you earlier that i would trace the origins of jihaddism to about 1989, 1990 and the soviet invasion of afghanistan because if you recall what we did with coordination with the sakis and the pakistanis -- saudis and pakistanis is collect failed islamists from all around the middle east, from syria, from are lebanon, from palestine and egypt, other parts of north africa, and ship them to afghanistan in order to fight the soviets. well, in afghanistan they did something remarkable. they won! they beat one of the two superpowers in the world. how did they do it? they did it by with putting away their nationalistic ambitions and focusing as a global force. it didn't matter if you were syrian fighting for syria or egyptian fighting for egyptian.

these were syrians and egyptians fighting side by side for afghanistan not against their own governments, but against a far enemy, and it worked. and that's where al-qaeda was born, by that victory. the idea that if you set aside your nationalistic concerns, if you come together as a global force and have a transnational or global agenda, then you can succeed. that was born in the battlefields of afghanistan thanks to american foreign policy. so all of those things are correct. that said, let's not bog ourselves down in kind of moral equivalency arguments. there is no moral equivalency between a group like isis which is slaughtering men, women and children, crucifying people, cutting off heads, really taking

part in what can only be described as ethnic cleansing of the shia in iraq. i mean, the genocide is what they are taking part in with even the worst extremists in israel or the worst extremists in the united states. sure, the religious sentiment hay be the same, but let's be -- may be the same, but let's be careful about the way we ascribe any kind of moral equivalency when it comes to action. >> host: tom lindo, tucson, ads. e-mail: what is your advise on how to respond to or deal with the jihadists as you describe them? >> guest: so as i say, it's a two-pronged attack. number one, understand that there are very real, legitimate differences that these groups have is and that they use to draw people to their side.

address those grievances in order to take away the op began da value -- propaganda value, in order to take away what is appealing about these movements. address these grievances, and you remove their audience. but the fighters themselves, the couple of thousand or so according to the cia, the perhaps 10,000 or so members of isis, about 1,000 of them are are currently embroiled in the war in iraq. these individuals do not have real grievances. they exploit the preefnses of people in iraq and syria and large parts of the middle east in order to draw them to their side, but they themselves are not fighting a real world as i

have said. they are fighting a cosmic war. they don't want anything concrete. they don't have any kind of measurable goals. what they want is the world. what they want is to remove all nation-states, all borders, all boundaries and to reconstitute the planet as a single thing under control, under their control. that is laughable. that is an impossible goal to achieve. and by the way, they know it's impossible which is why, despite widespread perception in the west, they never talk about those goals. they never talk about the global caliphate. we talk about the global caliphate. they never talk about their agenda, their ultimate goals because their agenda, their ultimate goals are laughably impossible to achieve. instead, they focus their agenda on the celestial plane. they talk about the triumph of

good over evil, the battle between darkness and light, between the angels of truth and the demons of darkness. and that kind of rhetoric really rings true to people. but when your military -- you're a military force that is not interested in land, not interested in politics, not interested in economic gain, when you are fighting a war of of -- there's no room for negotiation, there's no room for discussion. how do you have a conversation with someone who wants the world? you don't. the militants of of al-qaeda, the militants of isis require a singular response: destruction. that's it. that's the only way to deal with them. but what's important to understand is that simply

killing these militants does not do away with jihaddism. the way to do that is to tackle the root grievances that give it sustenance, and that includes a more robust engagement with the israeli/palestinian conflict, a more social and economic progress for sunnis in iraq, for instance. finish a greater emphasis on political participation and political freedoms in the middle east. all of these things have to be addressed in the political realm in order to remove that which is appealing about jihaddism. but jihadists themselves, there is only one response to them. >> host: from "no god but god," fundamentalism in all religious traditions is impervious to suppression. the more one tries to squelch it, the stronger it becomes. counter it with cruelty, and it gains adherence. kill its leaders, and they become martyrs. respond with despotism, and it

becomes the sole voice of opposition. try to control it, and it will turn against you. try to appease it, and it will take control. david felty e-mails in to you, professor aslan: i am surprised how literalistic and dualistic reza lance is. few -- aslan is. few experts in literary criticism in the last 50 years would accept his absolutist bifurcation between history and faith, history versus religious and historical versus theological. >> guest: i'm not sure where he has studied, but that's really the foundation of religious study. i'm, i mean, i just have to say that, you know, day one, day one of religious studies is understanding the difference between sacred history and regular history, understanding the difference between faith and religion, understanding underste

difference, of course, between faith and history, so i would have to say i humbly disagree. >> guest: my dream "in depth" would be a discussion between dr. as lab and dr -- aslan and dr. michael shermer. have you ever appeared with him? >> guest: as a matter of fact, i've appeared on a couple of events with him. i like michael shermer. a very -- he's a famous skeptic. he's the editor-in-chief of a magazine called "skeptic," of course. i think skepticism is great, but skepticism can itself become a kind of ideology. in fact, this is probably my greatest complaint about the so-called new atheist movement. i'm not saying michael sherman is an atheist, but this movement that's become popularized by sam

harris and the late christopher hitchens. my biggest problem with the new atheist movement, frankly, is that it gives atheism a bad name. understand that some of my greatest intellectual heroes are atheists, but they're philosophical atheists. even huxley who would call himself an agnostic but nevertheless, i think that atheism is different than what these new atheists are ascribing to. i refer to the new atheism is scientism. it's an attempt to replace religion with science. that's not the role of science, to replace religion. more importantly, however, it's become a new kind of religion itself. indeed, a new kind of fundamentalist religion. i mean, i'm not the first person to note the strange parallels

between religious fundamentalism and atheist fundamentalism. they both have this intense sense of siege when you hear atheists talk. they're constantly talking about how their rights are being trampled upon and how they are under siege by a religious society which is not exactly, i think, true. just because, you know, your money says "in god we trust" doesn't mean that you are under siege. they have a far more literalistic reading of scripture than any literalist i know. sam harris is quite famous for this. he really reads the scriptures in the most literalist sense, and then if he is confronted by people of faith who don't have the same literalist view of the scripture that he does, he simply says that they're not really jews, they're not really christians, they're not really muslims because they don't take

their scripture literally. and certainly, they have the same sense of sole access to the truth. that is the, fundamentally -- or i should say the defining characteristic of fundamentalism for many of these new atheists, particularly richard dawkins. a person of faith is not just wrong, he's stupid that anyone who disagrees with him is not just incorrect, but, you know, dumb. that religion itself is nothing more than pure evil. as christopher hitchens used to like to say. that religion is responsible for all the evil in the world and so, therefore, religion has to be excised from humanity to achieve peace and prosperity. as i reminded christopher hitch ps when he was alive, the most bestial acts of human destruction over the last hundred years, perhaps in all of human history, have been in the last hundred years, and they

have all been in the name of unabashedly, avowing secular itself ideologies. stoll lainism, maouism, communism, marx schism. -- marxism. these are all secular ideologies, and indeed, in some cases they're anti-religious ideologies. and these are ideologies that have been responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people in the last hundred years. so religion doesn't have a monopoly op violence. let's just not forget that. >> host: under the title "another response to reza's diatribe against shirley, i did as the professor suggested and googled muslim statements against violence and found nothing. >> guest: can i use the word bs on tv? >> host: we're cable. [laughter]

>> guest: really? you googled the phrase "muslim statements against violence," and you didn't see the council for american-islamic relations, the islamic society for north america, the muslim-british council, the grand mufti of iraq, the grand mufti of saudi arabia, the grand ayatollah in iraq? you didn't, you didn't hear the american society for muslim advancement? none of those things came up in your google search? i think there's something wrong with your google. >> host: reza aslan has been our guest for the past three hours on booktv's "in depth." "no god but god," came out in 2005. "beyond fundamentalism" originally called "how to win a cosmic war" came out in 2010. the international bestseller, "zealot: the life and times of jesus of nazareth," came out

last year. you've been watching booktv on c-span c-span2. professor aslan, thank you. >> guest: thank you. i really enjoyed it. >> c-span, created by america's cable companies 35 years ago and brought to you as a public service by your local cable or satellite provider. >> next on booktv, john yu argues that international law has very little effect on the behavior of powerful nations when they deal with each other but acts as an impediment when powerful countries try to do things like fight terrorism and stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction. this discussion is about an hour and a half. ..