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 ♪ ♪

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>> host: set five, salman rushdie, one of your favorite books and authors. >> guest: that's right. satanicber the first time i rad i heard about it and never got around to reading it. 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, which 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. which is actually a tidal

pond a description. there is a defining quality to jesus, and it certainly post resurrection there is a divine nature to jesus but at no point in these three gospels as jesus say i am god. the first verse of john says jesus was not the man. he was a and he turned all divine being responsible for creation. now here is the story. right away what you see is something new completely totally different they were not the only four gospels there were many, many more gospel thomas, mary magdalene, the egyptians ever lost as a and the nicene creed all the other

gospels were eventually destroyed then we found them about 60 years ago in the of the village in upper egypt and readers you could go to barnes & noble and by a copies of the gospels and they are fascinating but it with two fundamental facts about the gospels and indeed effort written about cheeses number one there'll written by people who never met or knew jesus. i will say that one more 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 day gospel

of mark was not written by the man named mark these are not eyewitnesses' accounts but theological reflection about who he was written many years after jesus' death. matthew was not written by somebody named matthew. it is very common in the ancient world to title books in such a way to indicate that they are written by someone who knew the profit but that is just an old ally issue with the exception of luke. but it's how to extract historical information from

second and third generation not the first. >> host: and from "zealot" 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