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his nonfiction work includes no god but god, beyond fundamentalism in his most recent release. where does the phrase no god but god comgod butgod come from? >> guest: it's the first halfn, of the muslim profession of god faith called the shahadad and mohammed is god's messenger. it is essentially the phrasefai. that initiates a convert into the muslim faith. a c >> host: you also write in the book though god but god howith islam can be available to all

muslims and every muslim canllms speak. musl >> guest: it's a strange phenomenon because it is what i referred to earlier as is gone though it is not a priestly religion, it has -- it is more like the pinnacle in a sense that there are a whole host of different schools of law and interpretations a have certain individuals who because of a lifetime of learning have achieved a level of knowledge that allow them to speak authoritatively about islamic theology and islamic jurisprudence but as with judaism those individuals don't have authority over one another. >> you get the rabbis in a room and have five opinions the same is true about the imams it's about the individual and god and again because like judaism is a

legalistic religion that has resulted in the creation of this class of scholars who've maintained a monopoly over the meaning and message of islam for most of the last 14 centuries. >> how did that default from mohammed into the freedom to interpret? >> guest: it's interesting in many ways this is the same process that all great religions go through. you have a prophet who is barely a reformer not a creator of a religion that someone who forms the religion and the cultural and social in which he lives. jesus for instance didn't create

christianity. he was preaching about judaism. buddha didn't predate buddhism. the same is true of the prophet mohammed as it repeatedly a reps people this is not a new religion. this is the same religion that is given to all of the profits that came the hind him etc. that'butwhat happens is eventuae prophet passes they figure out a way to make sense of the words and actions of this prophet and that's when religion is first founded in religion as a man-made institution requires a power structure in who becomes in charge of that religion? firsthand it is the profits and initial followers and then it's the second generation and then back power structure is based not so much on whether you knew the prophet or not, but on how much knowledge you can

accumulate. it doesn't take a long time for individuals to start complaining about that institution and recognize that there is a bit of a gap between what the institution has to say and what the prophet had to say. it's th the individuals and institutions that happens in all great religious traditions over who gets to define faith. the terms of scholars use for the backlash is reformation. >> host: in no god but god you write that religion is by definition interpretation and by definition all investigations, all interpretations are valid.

how does that play out in the contemporary middle east especially what's going on in iraq? >> guest: people don't like what i said there. religious people don't like it. religious people like to think that there is one version of christianity, one version of islam and its their version. but of course the problem is that when you are confronted with sacred scripture what you have in front of you doesn't really exist in a vacuum. scripture without interpretation is just words on a page. it requires someone to encounter it and interpret it and in doing so one cannot help but bring one's own preconceived notions, one's political and economic social views why are there a

thousand different versions of christianity and thousands of different versions of islam clacks precisely for that reason and so as interpretation and becomes difficult to see this ss interpretation is wrong and this interpretation is right. i do want to say one very important thing. you can say that one particular interpretation is more reasonable. you can say that it's more historically accurate but there's a reason why in this country's history just a couple of hundred years ago both slaveowners and abolitionists not only use the same bible to argue the differing viewpoints, they used the exact same verse to argue the different viewpoints. that's the power of scripture and religion. now in an institutionalized religion one in which there is an authority structure whatever you want to call it, that has a complete monopoly over the

interpretation then you can maintain a level of control. the pope can actually say to a catholic theologian you are wrong. your interpretation is correct and indeed if you continue to pursue your interpretation i will excommunicate you and you are no longer a part of this community. there is nothing like that in islam or judaism for that matter. there is no centralized religious authority and what that means is that anything goes. any interpretation is now valid. there is no referee. there is no one to say you're wrong and you're right so it becomes a great shouting match. again i think that putting them in parallel the problem of course is there are about 15 million jews, so it is an argument that is happening not at the same global stage that

you have the 1.5 billion muslims having this argument but when you look at the conflict in the middle east and have muslim democrats and muslim autocrats fighting against each other, muslim peacemakers and more makers are doing against each other what you are seeing is precisely the result of this reformation process, this individualization of islam and the process whereby the authority to define the state is being removed from the hands of these institutions that have gripped it for most of the last 14 century and are now being led by any individual with a megaphone. >> host: what are the similarities between the koran and the bible? >> guest: there are two ways to answer that question created mythically they are very much represented of a single

prophylactic history. in other words what you are seeing is an understanding that the prophetic consciousness if i can use that phrase is something that can be passed on from prophet to profit from ad on to moses and adam and abraham to moses and jesus to the prophet mohammed. that's certainly the way that occur on presents it. it sees islam and the prophet mohammed as a continuation. the consciousness that is moving along through history and a sort of historical account of the self revelation to humanity. that is one sort of mythic element. certainly the values and the moores are almost identical but the notion of man's responsibility to demand the

idea of the relationship between the creator and creation the duty that humanity has to words the creator to worship and praise and okay, concepts of an afterlife are very similar, concepts of the cosmos are very similar but more importantly what you see. it should be to bring the expanse between the humanity and god closer together. this is the sort of mythic quality that god is physically apart from us. he's up in the heavens as the highest god and i guess if you want to put it in its simplest way the history of religion the history of religion is dedicated

to the predicate along this long arduous attempt. it's to bring this gap to a close in many ways that is what jesus represents. it's an attempt to say that there is no gap between humanity and god. that is why christianity is so profoundly successful as a global religion, but these abraham face are intertwined medically and historically and morally. >> host: can these be read as political books? >> guest: that's a very good question.

these are a very new idea. it's important to understand that religion -- and i'm talking about all religion in all parts of the world is far more a matter of identity than it is a matter of beliefs and practices. but we giv may give you an examf what i mean by this. >> guest: seven out of ten americans go to church on sunday? seven out of ten americans read the bible on a regular basis and let alone follow the precepts. seven out of ten americans can tell you anything about jesus except that it was born on a manger and died on the cross. of course not. the vast majority of the 70% when they say i am a christian

are not making so much a faith declaration. its individuals how they see themselves in the indeterminate world and as a matter of identity your religion subsumes your politics and economic views into social views has always been the case and is still the case now we only pretend that religion and politics are separate things but they are not. they are very much a part of the same multifaceted identity theft individuals espouse with regard to christianity and islam and certainly buddhism and everything else it's a very important thing to recognize that the phrase imho you i am a christian i am a muslim has nothing to do.

this is how i see myself as a person and how i understand my role and relationship to the creator. >> host: as far as mohammed was concerned the jews and the christians were people of the book spiritual cousins who as opposed to the pagans and the polytheists worship the same god and scriptures and to share the same values as the muslim community. mohammed outlined his community with the jews because he considered them as well as the christians to be part of his ummah. what is ummah? >> guest: is a community that they kind of made up. we are not exactly sure where the word came from. nobody really knows. but there was no way for the early muslim community to define the kind of new group church

they were trying to create because if you think about it in this extended seventh century arabia, there were over the two possible ways to organize yourself. either monarchy which is something the airwaves had a great distaste for which ride. those are the choices. neither of those worked for the muslim community. and certainly tried was limited because you can't comfort to the tribe. you can't join a tribe you just have to be born into the tribe so this was the way to kind of create a new wave of understanding social organizations. a social organization based on religious identification and perhaps the most surprising aspect about the way that the prophet mohammed and the community viewed this new social organization is that it is

inclusive of other faiths. if you worship other gods you were an outsider and you did not belong. but, if you were what they call people of the book by which it meant jews and christians and included a believe it or not [inaudible] in that group, then they saw you as part of this larger community, as part of this ummah. and that is in the history of religion in fact the koran is the mother of books basically what it's saying is that there is this kind of heavenly text and scripture. the physical book from which all scriptures of the world come.

so in other words if you tickle the scriptures of the world. not onl only does invalidating r scriptures that it's saying something quite unique that all of these religions are intimately connected. 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. it didn't last much longer after the prophet's death within about a generation they very quickly

transformed jews and christians into the unbelievers and really separated islam from the religion as a way of creating independence if you will. in other words what they believed was that the koran in old the previous scriptures but that is not what the koran ever since. thus people says that it completes the other scriptures but it sees those scriptures as part and parcel of this larger. >> host: one more quote before we get into your other books are they bound to the social spiritual and cultural view from which they arose in which they are developed? >> guest: postcode is not the profits that created the religion. they are reformers that redefining to reinterpret theire beliefs and practices of their communities providing fresh symbols and metaphors which the

succeeding generations can describe the nature of reality. indeed, it is most often the successors to take upon themselves the responsibility of fashioning their masters words to unified easily comprehensible religious systems like so many prophets before him you write mohammed never claimed to have invented a new religion. >> guest: again its people of religion that hav to have the bt problem with that kind of notion. first because of course they want to believe that they are religious ideas and values and interpretations can be linked directly to the prophet whether it be mohammed or moses or jesus or what have you and that is rarely the case. people of religion want to be leave that there really just views or static, that they are monolithic.

this is a lot in the large religions with christianity and islam. muslims and christians like to say that they are particular christianity and islam is the correct one and all the other ones are incorrect but when you study the world's religions, you understand very quickly that there is no such thing as correct religion. there is no such thing as islam or christianity. there is only christianity's and islam's and there are almost infinite varieties throughout history and in the beliefs and practices and interpretations of these religions and that each is inextricably tied to the cultural and political out of which they arise.

what i find unusual about what i'm saying is that most rational minded people would say that's true when you think about christianity of course there are 100 ways of understanding christianity but when you make the same statement about islam they say islam is monolithic. but of course like christianity, it 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 and from jakarta and you will never see the same islam twice. >> host: who is the historic mohammed? >> guest: he was a fascinating character. he belonged to a fairly small clan which was an enormous and

extremely he was part of this ruling system but an outcast in that ruling system. he was an orphan in a society in which orphans had no real protection whatsoever and a society that is deeply stratified between the very wealthy and the poor, and he had a sort of figured out through his own social and business acumen 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 really geopolitical system that had an enormous amount of wealth at the very top to its own benefits to its own advantage. it seems to have been a deeply spiritual man that went spirituality was very much steeped in the culture out of which he arose something that a lot of muslims don't like to

think about that mohammed was a part of his society that he was a product of his world that he didn't jusbut hedidn't just drod live in a vacuum for 40 years. they have a list of static experiences which he claims to have had direct messages from god condemning the economic disparity and the social disparity in his society and you notice i keep using the terms of economic and social disparity because the fascinating thing about the prophet mohammed's message is that at least in the first decade or so. they had very little to do with the theological early ballistic concerns. they were overwhelmingly a combination -- condemnation to the judgment of those that would exploit the poor and the marginalized, the weak, the

dispossessed. a commandment to protect those that cannot protect themselves, those that have been left behind by this mass accumulation of wealth and what's very important i think for people to understand command again this is something that muslims just sort of have a hard time recognizing because they want to think of the prophet mohammed as a religious figure that came with this brand-new idea that there was only one god which was not brand-new at all. everyone had heard of this message a thousand times. this was a land that was a wash in religion. there were hundreds of christian groups and jewish groups and another group of monotheists.

they could go to for the supplications. the phrase there is no god but t god would have elicited a corruptive yawn from the pre- islamic arabia. but the condemnation of the economic situation, the political situation, that was intolerable to the ruling powers and that's where the fiction that the prophet mohammed into this massive tribe that ruled originally came from. that's where the conflict and the clash came from but by the way that should sound familiar to people with other histories especially the history of jesus.

really the conflict with the authorities of his time had far less to do with the theological doctrine than it had with social and economic issues. a prophet is a reformer, not a creator of religion. >> host: when did he live? >> guest: say that he was born in the year 570 that's most certainly not historical in accurate date. the fact of the matter is that in arabia they were not significant events so nobody knew when the prophet was born until he was declared to be a prophet, but we deal with 570 as the traditional date so that just say near the end of the sixth century. then he died somewhere sort of in the first third of the seventh century. what's unique and it comes to

the history that many people are familiar with is that we usually hear about the profits being failures. that's the history that one expects the prophet get a messagprophet gets amessage froy listens to him. he usually buys in disgrace and then after he dies, people say he was right and we should have listened to him all along. what's unique about the prophet is that while he was disadvantaged and disgraced for the first half of his prophetic experience, the second half was enormously successful. he created a state based on his revelations and interestingly enough, it's that success that i think creates the greatest amount of suspicion among the non-muslims about the prophet

mohammed. he couldn't have possibly been a prophet of god because he succeeded because his message took because people listened and agreed whereas we want a prophet that is rejected and tortured and killed and that's an interesting phenomenon to me the way in which the prophets success is seen as proof of his nonprofit status. >> host: how established was he? >> guest: the christianity of course starts around the mi mido the end of the first century until the start of the century when the emperor constantine converts to christianity and begins the process he doesn't do

it himself but "-begin-double-quotes it's a turning christianity into the official religion of rome. the problem for constantine, however, is that there are about 100 different kinds of christianity coming at you can't have christianity be the imperial religion of the worlds most powerful empire unless it comes in one flavor. so she takes the leaders of the christian movement within a smalif in a smalltown and essent come out of this room until you figure out what christianity is because it can only be one thing and of course the bishops at the time come up with what is known as a nice creed defining more or less what happens immediately after the scene in the council is that all of these versions of

christianity become a legal and anyone that espouses those views has a centrally three choices. either get out of rome, converted to orthodox christianity or die. what happens is you have this flooding into the land of the middle east of these christian communities who want to maintain their faith but cannot do so. but in the prophet mohammed arises, she is living in a world that is full of christians but not the kind of orthodox christians that you see in rome, certainly not to the orthodox version of christians. these are referred to sometimes

as those that believe that jesus only had a singular niche or be it only human or only divine who rejected the notion of the trinity and so for the prophet mohammed, he would have been very familiar with this one particular version of christian thoughts. just as he would have been extremely familiar with judaism were also many and quite successful and well established. all of this is to say that the prophet mohammed was born and grew up in a world steeped in jewish and christiathe jewish an thoughts and 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 the story is with the word recall or remember. recall when moses received the commandments, remember what happened to joseph when he fled from his brothers. the reason for that 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 because these stories were part of the new view of pre- islamic arabia. >> host: how political this constantine's move to christianity? >> guest: i get asked that question a lot. i think most historians most scholars would say that it's purely a political decision. constantine was immersed in a civil war over the claimants.

it's whether it was intended to or not. the one element that pushed him over the top and allowed him to claim the throne for himself. we should kic should kick people words of constantine said that he has an ecstatic 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 political ideas behind this conversion? certainty so. >> host: good afternoon and welcome to booktv monthly program called in depth or we talk to one author about his or her body of work. this past year we've had and it

usually is, luis rodriguez and this month we have international best seller raza aslan. here are his nonfiction books. he began in 2005 with the origins evolution and future of islam beyond fundamentalism conferencing religious extremism in the age of globalization came out in 2010 and a zealot came out last year the life and times of jesus of nazareth. professor raza aslan teaches creative writing and got his bachelor's degree at santa clara his masters at the university of iowa writers workshop and finally a phd at uc santa barbara and that was a religion and phd right-click the >> guest: i got my degree in the sociology department because my dissertation was about jihad as a social movement but i did

all of my close work in the department of religion. >> host: you write in the book i can confidently say that two decades of the rigorous academic research into the origins of christianity has made me a more genuinely committed disciple than i ever was of jesus christ. when i was 15-years-old i went to an evangelical camp with some friends in northern california and heard the gospel story for the first time. it was a transformative experience for me. the story of heaven and earth coming down in the form of a child of dying for the sins and the promise that all that belief in him should also never die but have eternal life. i've never heard anything like

this before in my life. i immediately converted to this conservative brand of evangelical christianity but christ faith that i had learned about him in my church and jesus of history athejesus of historys studying him at the university fees for different individuals. we think that they are the same. the history and christ of faith are the same person but they are not the same person. it is derived from the history certainly don't base

revolutionary that lived in the backwards to thousand years ago became so much more real to me and accessible and appealing but while i left christianity as a faith, i became absolutely obsessed with learning everything that i could about this man and found him to be -- what is more extraordinary, and indeed i would say so much more worth following up and the fai faith. >> host: were you raised a muslim? >> guest: i came from a fairly lukewarm family in iran. we were culturally muslim that way so many people around the world are culturally religious. when we moved to the united states in 1979 of course this was the height of the hostage crisis and it wasn't the easiest thing to be in the united

states. ie and my family really sort of scrubbed our lives of anything that hinted at islam. for me especially if as a way of absorbing into american culture. that was a seven or 8-year-old boy and i wanted to be normal. i didn't want to stand out in any way but i've always been deeply interested in religion despite the fact i didn't come from a religious family or receive any kind of religious or spiritual edification in my household. partly it has to do with my experience of revolutionary ir iran, those images that the power of the religion had to transform a society for good and for bad never left me and it created this indelible deep desire to know more about religion and spirituality. as i say despite the fact that i didn't really have an opportunity to do so until i was 15-years-old and first had an

opportunity to express it, but you know i've always been interested in religion. i've always been interested in religious history and archaeology and literature into the phenomenon and spirituality. these are things that fascinates me to no end. >> host: (585)285-3880 if you would like to participate in the conversation this afternoon and he lived in east and central time zones 585-3881 if you lived out west. by the way you can also contact us if the phone lines are busy through social media. e-mail booktv@c-span.org. you can send us a tweak and finally you can make a comment on the facebook page facebook.com/booktv. you are shia? >> guest: i do not accept a designation at all. again i think for me -- let me put it this way when you study

the real legends of the world it becomes a very difficult to take any religion all that seriously because what you recognize and discovered very early on is that all of these religions are basically saying the same thing. they are expressing the same aspirations and desires and answers often using the same mythology to do so but really what you see are different symbols and metaphors expressing the same sentiment. now most of my colleagues would say well then why bother choosing one of those if they are all saying the same thing let's just ignore it all and indeed i think what would surprise wassurprising was the t the study of religion and the scholars of religion like myself is that we are all pretty much atheists but a few of us are not. i'm an exception. i'm one of these scholars of

religion that takes faith very seriously. most of my colleagues viewed as a waaway that a biologist viewsa microbe. it's something to be studied from afar from a distance but not something that is absorbed or taken personally by any means. i studied the world's religion and i am a person of faith and i follow something that buddha once said which is that if you want to draw water, you do not take 1 foot wells, you dig a 6-foot while. islam is my 6-foot while it is the path of the symbols into the metaphors that i use to understand my place in the world and to experience the reality of transcendence that's what he meant is that while he may be separate you are drawing the water that every other while

around you is drawing. the water is the same and that is something that i never forget. my identity as a muslim comes primarily from my acceptance of the islamic metaphors and symbols as a comfortable and viable way of expressing the incompressible experience of the divine but that's all it is it's just a language in the symbols and metaphors. those symbols and metaphors are not more true. they are not more right they are just more appealing. that's all. >> host: how significant is the split and what has it created cracks >> guest: it's a lot more significant nowadays than i think ithen ithink it has been . certainly as the main dividing line in islam.

they make around 15%. very much historical shifts like the catholic protestant shift in has as much to do with social issues and economic issues. they tended to be far less economically successful than the sunnis maintained into the power and this sure of the first islamic empire. but nevertheless in the same way that many christians would say catholic protestant it's all christianity and many christians would say no, catholics are right if protestants are wrong. it's very much individual experience. i've seen muslims who say they are irrelevant and i've seen muslims who say that though if you are a shia you are an unbeliever.

but ultimately the reason that these sectarian differences have risen to the forefront over the last decade and it has been just the last decade or so. it's because there has been this deep political divide in the middle east. you see this with the cold war between iran and saudi arabia they see themselves as the banner of islam and saudi arabia sees itself as the banner of sunni islam. these nations have been fighting a cold war in the region for far more than a decade and a half deliberately stoked sectarian

tensions for their own benefit. in many cases they've become no longer controllable for either country. but for bahrain in lebanon and syria, even the united states there is this idea that you can control religious extremism you can use to your advantage and i'm hoping one day we are going to learn that is simply not the case that you can't control fanatics no matter how hard you try. >> host: in your booklet was the original title and why did it change? >> guest: the original title is how to win a cosmic more. why did it change? these are one of the mysteries of the publishing world that authors are never privy to. it was a publisher's decision to

change the title. >> host: in the current version of the john fundamentalism in the age of globalization you write that it's a religious war ended conflict in which god disputed to be directly and aged on one side or the other. other. its partitions the world into black and white good and evil, up and down. there is no middle ground. everyone must choose a side. it's a simple vacation if you are not us you must be then. this notion of cosmic more is something that exists in all great religious traditions. in the west of course it can be traced to precisely the kind of war god demands of the israelites in which they themselves are not really even participants and. they are essentially nothing more than the palms whereby god

destroys his enemies himself. when you look at the war of the hebrew bible whether it was the conquest of canaan or the distraction of the sites or any of these tribes that they destroyed that the bible makes it very clear these enemies did not fall to israel. israel's arms and weapons and might was a relevant. it was god who destroyed his armies. these armies. and indeed it wasn't so much that the god of the jews into the israelites destroyed these different tribes. it's that god destroyed the gods of these other tribes. the very concept in the very ancient mind has less to do with armies fighting each other than it did with god fighting each other. when the israelites destroyed,

what was actually happening was that the god of israel was destroying the god of canaan. that's how it worked. and to take it to the next level when they destroyed the israelites it wasn't the two armies fighting each other it was the god of babylon beast writing the god of the israelites. and indeed the very notion of the mono c. is on the way that we understand it, the notion that there is just one god and no other is a fairly late notion in the bible. it doesn't really show up until after the captivity in 586 bc. abraham was not a monotheist. he believed that his god was the highest god. he believed his god was the highest god and by the way,

moses's got .-full-stop abrahams. he was called al and moses. he was a canaanite and he was an egyptian. it's only after the captivity that they become a single god as the scholars sometimes refer to them and the concept is born. all of this is to say that notion of the define war that we human beings are merely pawns in the cosmic conflict between the forces of good and evil, between angels and demons that this battle is not really taking place on earth. it's taking place in the heavens but in deed it is an eternal battle one in which the forces of good will eventually defeat the forces of evil. this is a phenomenon that you

find turning itself out right now in a large part of the conflicts around the world of northeast of all in the middle east. it's a conflict that al qaeda is fighting and a great many jewish extremists in israel are fighting and many people in the u.s. military themselves think that they are fighting a war between the forces of good and evil doctor between the armies on earth. that's a cosmic war and the great fear about the cosmic war as i say in the book is that they are unwinnable. >> host: paul e-mails from california health and islam ever be at peace with the western democracies when one goal is for all the world to be ruled by islamic law? it says fight with them until there is no persecution and

religion should be only for allah. >> guest: first of all that is not a goal of islam the notion that the whole world has to be under islam. and the diverse is of course a historically context will verse. what's important to understand as for the latter half he was at war with the tribes of arabia. second, it's also important to understand that as a proselytizing faith of muslims of course believe that their message should be viewed by all people and proselytizing 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 but it was

discouraged because there were financial benefits of conversion that created a situation whereby the first empire which ruled until about 75080 made it difficult for people to convert to islam because you have to pay fewer taxes if he were a muslim and so they didn't want people to pay these taxes. that said, i do think it's important to understand that this notion of a conflict between islam and western democracy is a figment of the imagination. one third of the worlds muslims live in democratic states. the largest most populous muslim country in the world is a democracy. the second most populous country in the world, pakistan is a democracy. malaysia is a democracy. iindeed of the ten most populous countries in the world, the

populist muslim countries in the world. they were not very good democracies certainly egypt cannot be called a democracy any longer that they are democracies. so, there is a notion that islam is somehow inherently antidemocratic is simply and in berkeley and accurate. but one could make the argument that all religion because they rely on the notion of absolutism are anti-democratic. i mean let's be honest we live in a country in the united states in which, again according to about one third of americans, 100 million of us all to designate religious nationalists is the term the scholars use. these are christians who believe that the united states as a christian nation founded exclusively on the christian values and christian principles

and should be as rick santorum has hi said and mike huckabee sd on the campaign trail should be predicated exclusively on biblical values and india to paraphrase that the very constitution of the country needs to be changed so that it aligns with biblical values. now, one could quite easily say that that is an anti-democratic view because it is a centrally prioritizing religion and one version of religion, one interpretation of religion over all others and over all civil society. so, in a sense, all religion arf anti-democratic and democratic which goes back to what i've been saying for the last hour which is that religion is nothing more than

interpretation. 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 is incorrect and mine is right except that that's not true. we are both right and we are both wrong. you have to christian abortion bomber. his version of christianity is as correct as desmond tutu. they are both right and they are both wrong. so, if you have muslims who say democracy is antithetical to islam they are right. if you have muslim muslims thaty democracy is absolutely compatible with islam, they are right. so, stop saying islam is this word that, christianity is this or that.

there is no such thing as this or that it's what all individuals say it is. >> host: this is the dedication for my wife jessica and the entire clan whose love and acceptance have taught me more about jesus and all of my years of research and study. >> guest: anybody that saw the fox news interview knows that my wife is a christian as is my mother. by the way i am the one that converted my mother to christianity. and she's still a very devout christian. and my wife and i have twin boys that we all joke are undeclared but will grow up in all great religious traditions and will decide for themselves what they want to believe. the reason i made the dedication is because my wife's family comes from a very devout evangelical christian backgrou background. and for a lot of people, that

seems incongruent. 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 admit that when they discovered their daughter was, you know, beating and about to marry a muslim man, they were confused. they'd never met a muslim before. you know, my mother-in-law 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 away and what they displayed towards me is a love and acceptance and compassion that is the best expression of christianity.

not the expression of christianity that we so often see in the media that we see from the politicians a religion of exclusion and religion that is all about who is not part of us and who does not receive salvation, but the christianity that is about inclusion and that is about love and about acceptance. and they 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've learned as much from them as he had learned from me. >> host: we have two hours left in our program. raza aslan is our guest and now it's your turn to talk to him. michael from alabama. you are first up. >> caller: thinks tremendously. before my question, i want to apologize sincerely on behalf of

all of us christians for what you and other islam etc. to often in the united states. ..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...

>> you could be an a extreme liberal evangelical christian like my friends to my jim wallace, or you can be and a stream conservative evangelicals christian. in other words, you may have the same beliefs and practices, but they can be expressed in

diametrically opposite ways. the other thing i will just say and i appreciate what you were saying, i have gotten as much love from christians as i have gotten anger and hate. and it goes back to individuals. the individuals think for themselves. the problem for me, we should not confuse religion with faith. they are separate things. religion is not faith. faith is mysterious. it is an affable, it is easily individualistic. if you believe in god you believe in something that is by definition impossible for the human mind to comprehend . begun is if anything utterly transcendent. we do not have the ability to understand what god is, to express what god is. religio? the language that helps us express it.

that's it. it's just auage that is it. it is just a language of symbols and metaphors that give us the opportunity to express to ourselves and to like minded peoples the ineffable experience of faith. 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. it's ♪ ♪