November 30, 2025 • 52 mins
We trace Reza Aslan’s journey from Iran to American academia, and look back at the two decades since the publication of his bestselling book “No God But God,” an exploration of the origins, evolution, and future of Islam.
Purchase the book here: https://a.co/d/3IYBWoL
We are thrilled about the global reach of this podcast; we currently have listeners in more than 650 cities across over 50 countries! We would be delighted to hear from our listeners, wherever you may be in the world. Send us a message on our dedicated Telegram channel:
https://t.me/+23EKRv8eAWVlZDFh
We are always looking for new guests to interview, so please pitch us your suggestions. If we end up interviewing them, we will recognize you on the show and send you some show swag.
If you enjoyed this episode, please consider giving us a five-star rating and making a donation. Your generosity helps support our limited budget, enabling us to continue producing high-quality content. Click here to donate.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:02):
Welcome to the Hang Out Podcast.
I'm your host, David Sheretta.
Come on in and hang out.
In this episode, I wasprivileged to have a
conversation withinternationally acclaimed author
(00:22):
and scholar, Dr.
Reisa Aslan.
Dr.
Aslan wrote No God But God, TheOrigins, Evolution, and Future
of Islam 20 years ago.
He also wrote Zealot, The Lifeand Times of Jesus of Nazareth,
God of Human History, and anAmerican Martyr in Persia.
This conversation iswide-ranging.
(00:43):
We had a fascinating explorationabout what happens when a
scholar writes a best-sellingbook, what that does to a career
in academia.
Spoiler alert, it's not greatfor that career.
We talked about what ishappening with the impact of the
Internet on Islam worldwide interms of the flattening and the
(01:06):
democratization of the religionand edicts and fatwas and much,
much more.
I was fascinated by ourconversation, and I hope you are
as well.
Welcome, Dr.
Oslan.
Thank you so much for joining usfor this conversation today.
SPEAKER_01 (01:28):
Oh, thanks for having me, David.
It's great to be here.
SPEAKER_00 (01:31):
I I thought we could get started with the most
logical place to start, which iswith your origin story, uh where
you come from and what are thecurrents in your life that bring
you to this to this moment, andthen we'll dive into your
writing.
SPEAKER_01 (01:47):
Sure.
I was born in Iran.
Um my family uh fled the IranianRevolution in 1979.
So I was about seven years oldat the time.
Um and, you know, looking backon that, it was a pretty
formative experience for me.
I have a fairly clear memory ofthe two years or so during which
(02:07):
that revolution took place andwas really aware of what was
going on, what the stakes werefor this revolution, which has
been, I think, mischaracterizedfor much of the last 40 years as
a quote-unquote Islamicrevolution, uh, but which was
anything but that.
(02:28):
It was an anti-imperialistrevolution that brought every
sector of Iranian societytogether.
Um, my father, who was acommunist and an ardent uh
atheist who had a very healthydislike of anything religious,
uh, kind of saw the writing onthe wall in the
(02:50):
post-revolutionary chaos andthought that it might be a good
idea to get out for a bit untilthings settled down.
Um so we came to the US.
Things obviously didn't settledown in Iran, so we ended up
just staying here.
Um, but I think that experiencegave me a real fascination with
(03:11):
religion and the way thatreligion can transform a society
for good and for bad.
And so I think growing up, eventhough I didn't come from a
religious family at all, I mean,I think we were sort of, you
know, culturally Muslim the wayso many people are culturally
religious, until we came to theU.S.
And then that became the excuseto just kind of strip ourselves
(03:35):
of any kind of uh religiosity.
But I had always been reallyfascinated by it, by myth and by
origin stories and by religiousphenomenon and spirituality.
Um in high school, I I went toan evangelical youth camp and
heard the gospel story for thefirst time.
(03:57):
That was kind of the, I'd say,the second formative experience
of my life, um, and converted tothis very conservative brand of
evangelical Christianity.
And then when I went to college,I decided that I would um study
religion.
I was very good at it.
It was really interesting.
Um and it didn't take long forme to be confronted with the
(04:21):
fact that almost everything Iunderstood, not just about
Christianity, but aboutreligion, um, was wrong.
And that was, I'd say, the thirdformative uh experience of my
life.
And um and I became even morefascinated by ideas of belief,
an identity, and decided that Iwas just gonna dedicate my life
(04:43):
to these concepts.
Um and uh, you know, it's been ait's been a fun, crazy, somewhat
tumultuous journey ever since.
SPEAKER_00 (04:53):
You know what thank you for sharing that.
I I in doing a little bit ofresearch on your life, I had
learned about the uh Islam,Christianity, Islam from a from
a religious scholarshipstandpoint, kind of um I don't
know if I want to call itflip-flop because that's not the
right word, but it's a differentdifferent signposts in your
(05:15):
life, different transitions.
Um I just was curious, like, isit did you see those as being so
opposite, or was it like uhadjustments of a few degrees on
on the ship, like from what yougrew up with to the then the
Christianity to where you arenow?
SPEAKER_01 (05:34):
That's a really good question.
And I guess I guess the answeris yes and no.
So yes, in the sense that whatevangelical Christianity brought
to me was this the idea of ofspirituality and spiritual
edification, right?
This constant notion of umstriving for a personal
(05:58):
relationship with God.
And that was something thatdidn't really exist in the Islam
that I grew up with.
Um and then the flip side ofthat, however, is that the heart
of Christianity is this ideathat the God of heaven and earth
uh is just a man and a man wholived in a particular time and
(06:23):
space.
And there's this kind ofoverfamiliarity in in
evangelical Christianity.
You know, the God of heaven andearth, the creator of the
universe is your buddy, is yourfriend.
You know, you can pal aroundwith him.
And honestly, that it neverworked for me.
(06:45):
I don't know what it was.
Maybe it was my childhood, youknow, Jungian uh experience of
thinking about God as holyother, um, which is how he is
defined in Islam.
That it I it always bugged me.
It never it never worked for me.
And I think in the end, that wasa big part of I think why it
(07:09):
never stuck, why evangelicalChristianity never stuck.
Indeed, uh what I never what Irarely talk about is that there
was a bridge between evangelicalChristianity and me returning to
a particular mystical brand ofIslam.
And that bridge was Catholicism.
I went to a uh a Jesuituniversity, and for the first
(07:29):
time in my life, I experienced adifferent kind of Christianity,
a Christianity in which Godisn't your buddy, a Christianity
in which awe is at the center ofthe experience of the divine.
And that felt much morecomfortable and real to me.
(07:51):
And then fundamentally, I thinkthe the return to Islam had a
lot to do with the metaphor atthe heart of Christianity, which
is God, if you want tounderstand the greatest mystery
in the universe, it's prettyeasy.
Just think about the mostperfect man you can think of,
and that's God.
And um, that's not the metaphorthat really hit me.
(08:14):
Um, the metaphor that hit me wasone that was offered to me by
Sufi Islam.
And the metaphor is the conceptof oneness, the idea that God is
about as unlike human beings asit possibly gets, right?
That whatever else God is, he isutterly unhuman-like.
(08:36):
Um and indeed he is not even, hedoesn't have a body, he doesn't
have a personality, he doesn'thave characteristics, he is pure
creative force.
And that's also, by the way,just a metaphor.
These are all metaphors, right?
It's just, you know, whichmetaphor hits you more?
And that's the metaphor that Ialways kind of gravitated
(08:59):
towards.
SPEAKER_00 (09:00):
I I'd imagine there were some interesting family
conversations between you andand your folks, right?
Uh uh immigrant, immigrantfamily and a new country, um, uh
societal pressures, societalperhaps discrimination or
misunderstandings.
I mean, that must have beeninteresting.
SPEAKER_01 (09:20):
Well, there was certainly a lot of pressures and
misunderstandings.
And I mean, of course, this was,you know, I came we came to the
United States right before theIran hostage crisis.
So there was an enormous amountof anti-Iranian and anti-Muslim
sentiment.
And, you know, we were more thanhappy to just kind of hide our
identity as either of thosethings.
(09:40):
Right.
It's funny, it's people alwaysask, oh, you know, were your
parents upset that you when youconverted to Christianity?
Um yes, but not for the reasonsthat you think.
My father was upset at me, notbecause I had abandoned, you
know, the religion of myforefathers for a different
religion.
He was upset at me because I wasreligious.
That any religion, as far as hewas concerned, was problematic.
(10:05):
Um and and then when I said thatI was gonna, you know, basically
study this as a as a living, Ithink there was a lot of
confusion about that as a as apath.
Um, but it's worked out okay.
They've they've they've gottenthey've gotten used to the idea.
SPEAKER_00 (10:22):
So his reaction was more almost just a almost a I
don't know if I want to call ita political reaction, but a
reaction to what he was leavingbehind in Iran, right?
With a with a uh anultra-conservative um regime
having taken over.
SPEAKER_01 (10:40):
And indeed, I remember that what he said, it
was something along the linesof, we came here so you wouldn't
have to be religious.
And you know, I think it washard for him to understand that.
No, actually, I'm I'm choosingthis.
This is uh no one's forcing thisupon me.
I'm choosing it.
Um and I think he, you know, thethe world that he grew up in,
(11:00):
that was this strange idea.
SPEAKER_00 (11:04):
Right.
There were there was noseparation of church and state.
unknown (11:08):
Yes.
SPEAKER_00 (11:09):
In the world he grew up in, at least on some level,
probably, right?
SPEAKER_01 (11:12):
Yeah.
I mean it's a it's a little bitdifferent.
I think I think this is, youknow, one of the probably the
biggest misconceptions of umIslam or even sort of Muslim
majority states.
And you hear it a lot fromAmericans that uh the problem
with you know these sort ofMuslim-majority countries is
that there's no separation ofquote, mosque and state.
(11:34):
And what's funny about thatstatement is while it while it's
true of, say, you know, SaudiArabia or Iran post-revolution,
it certainly wasn't true Iranpre-revolution.
On the contrary, like the ideaof public displays of religion,
uh, particularly in politics oractivism or or social movements,
(11:55):
was violently suppressed.
And that's still the case in themajority of Muslim, you know,
majority states.
You know where there isn't aseparation of church and state?
In America.
That's where there isn't aseparation of church and state.
We literally, you know, I mean,yes, we're supposed to, we have
this anti-establishment law thatsays, well, uh, your taxes can't
(12:16):
go to support any church.
But the truth is, because noreligion pays any taxes, our
taxes go to pay for everyreligion in the United States.
Uh in the United States, it'sinconceivable to run for high
office, certainly for president,if you cannot speak the language
(12:37):
of religion, even if you are themost irreligious human being on
earth, like the currentpresident.
Um, whereas in, say, Egypt, ifyou are running for office and
you start putting your argumentsin terms of the Quran, you're
never heard from again.
That's the last time anyone seesyou.
So Interesting, you know, thisthis idea is a little bit more
(12:59):
complicated than I thinksometimes it gets.
SPEAKER_00 (13:01):
Yeah.
And I it and now that you yousaid it in those terms, you
know, in my in my world as aschool leader, we're in a
charter school leader, we saw avote of the sub actually, it
wasn't a they they never voted.
The Supreme Court uh split on uhlet's see, did they vote or not?
They did, but they they onemember um recused herself
(13:24):
because of a conflict ofinterest, but they were one vote
away from approving a Catholiccharter school uh somewhere in
the South this past this past umyear.
And so, you know, this had beenappealed all the way up to the
Supreme Court, and and I waswatching the case and thinking,
wow, if Coney Barrett, JusticeConey Barrett doesn't have that
(13:46):
conflict of interest, it mighthave gone 5'4 and and the
Supreme Court has endorsedpublic monies for uh for a
religious charter school.
So that's right.
I stand corrected on my on thaton that part of it.
Um let's dive into your to the20th anniversary uh of of your
uh seminal work.
(14:08):
Um well, why don't you just kindof set the stage for the writing
of No God But God?
I really I really was reflectingon like how the world was 20
years ago.
SPEAKER_02 (14:19):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (14:19):
Uh interesting time to interesting time to dive into
uh the topic.
And uh so why don't you set thestage for how this idea came
about and what the writing waslike and what the what the reach
of the book has been in theensuing 20 years.
SPEAKER_01 (14:34):
It's funny.
It I mean, you know, look,there's uh this anniversary of
uh Nogaba God has brought up awhole host of emotions, one of
which is this sort of confusion,because I'm also a teacher, I
teach college.
Um, and my students have noconnection whatsoever to 9-11.
(14:55):
Like it's they read about 9-11the way that like you and I read
about Pearl Harbor.
It's kind of an interestingturning point in history, you
know.
Um But I mean, you remember andI remember like it was it was
apocalyptic.
Like I thought this was, youknow, uh the end of everything.
(15:15):
Um and obviously, you know,there was, as we all remember,
this incredible amount of notjust demonization, but sort of
misinformation andmischaracterization about Islam
as a religion, and sort of goingalong the lines of what we were
talking about with regard to theidea of the separation of church
(15:39):
and state, a real kind ofdoubling down on Americans at a
very confusing time, evenpre-9-11, figuring out that, oh,
we could actually now defineourselves, define what it means
to be Americans simply bycreating an imaginary opposite,
(16:01):
an imaginary negative pole thatwe can uh define ourselves
against.
Let's just call it Islam andwe'll call ourselves the West,
even though those two categoriesare utterly nonsensical.
Like what is the West?
That makes no sense whatsoever.
If there is a West, guess whatreligion arose out of the West?
(16:22):
Islam.
And on the flip side of that,there's no such thing as Islam.
Like there's Islam's.
This is the second largestreligion in the world, nearly
two billion adherents.
It comes in a thousand flavors.
And so the idea that you couldcall something Western
civilization and something elseIslamic civilization was both
utterly idiotic, and yet it hadbecome foundational to
(16:48):
understanding the dawn of the21st century.
And I think that, you know, whenI sat down to write this book,
that was my principal goal wasto shatter that simple
dichotomy, the sort of close theclash of civilizations narrative
that had completely taken holdon all sides of the political
(17:10):
spectrum in the United States.
And instead to sort of presentthis religion, not positively or
negatively, but as just areligion.
I think that was that washonestly and truly what I think
was probably the mostrevolutionary part about this
book and why it became such aglobal phenomenon, is that the
(17:32):
argument of the book is thatthere's nothing all that unique
or extraordinary or differentabout Islam.
It's a religion like any otherreligion.
It's been influenced by uh, youknow, 1,500 years of culture and
history and and politics and allthe other things that that
(17:53):
influence the great religions ofthe world.
And that, like any religion,it's all about what you bring to
it, not what you take from it.
Um and the book was writtenprimarily.
I mean, I have a very clearmemory.
Like when I was writing this, itwas for non-Muslims.
And then what was, I think,surprising about it is how it
(18:16):
became a kind of manifesto forMuslims, particularly young
Muslims, the so-called kind of,you know, millennial Muslims,
you know, Muslims who had neverreally given their faith and
their practice all that muchthought, but then were bombarded
by these outside noises aboutwhat their beliefs are, what
(18:39):
they actually believe, both youknow, from the the two extremes
on either side, and weredesperate for someone to just
simply say, this is the thing,this is the religion that you
believe, and this is where yourideas and your beliefs come
from.
And so, you know, I that was areal surprise to me, but it's
it's been translated into dozensof languages.
(19:02):
It's it was a uh you know,bestseller in India and in
Pakistan.
It's available in Iran.
There's you know, Arabictranslations of it.
So it it it was so it wasnothing like I'd I'd
anticipated.
And it was my first book, and sothat was kind of a a new
experience for me as well.
Um, but you know, I I couldn'tbe more pleased with it.
(19:25):
And then and then the otheraspect of it that I thought was
really unexpected is the waythat it became a kind of
guidebook for the Americanmilitary.
That I never thought was.
SPEAKER_00 (19:38):
Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that.
That because I heard that inyour introduction to the to the
new edition, and I thought, hmm,I'm gonna ask him that.
SPEAKER_01 (19:45):
Yeah, I honestly never in a million years did I
did I anticipate that.
But I cannot tell you how manyvets have come up to me and
said, you know, your book waswas required reading at West
Point.
Your book was required readingat the Air Force Academy, you
know, like we all had to readit.
And uh and it changed everythingabout the way that I sort of
(20:08):
understood the parameters of theconflict and my in my sort of
role in it, and as and indiplomatic circles too.
So, you know, it's look when youwrite a book, you're the best
case scenario is that it doesfairly well.
You make a little bit of money,and after a few years, that's
it.
(20:29):
The book goes away.
The idea that a book wouldremain in print for 20 years is
in and of itself kind of amiracle.
The idea that it's still sellingso much that the publisher wants
a new 20th anniversary edition,that is my wildest dreams.
I never, never thought that thatwould that would be a thing.
SPEAKER_00 (20:50):
And just even the idea of I mean, uh writing about
religion is not exactly a recipefor you know uh barn burning,
you know, uh bestseller saleslike you know, right off the
bat, right?
And so uh I mean it, you know,you think, okay, who's gonna
(21:10):
read this?
Some scholars, some some uh mymy colleagues uh at the
different universities, and thisthing takes off in a way that
you never would have expected.
Were there any unexpectednegative uh impacts or uh after
effects of writing this book?
In other words, like did you geta accused of perhaps being the
(21:31):
spokesman for, I mean, that's ayou know, that's you just put a
big load on your shoulders,intentionally or
unintentionally, right?
Like you said uh going on twobillion adherents worldwide.
Like, are you you know that's alot to carry.
Talk to us about tell us that'sa lot to carry.
Tell us about if if you had anykind of pushback that was not
(21:53):
positive.
SPEAKER_01 (21:54):
Oh, yes, a lot.
Look, it turns out that youknow, when you write about
religion and and politics andthe intersection of the two,
people tend to take those twothings kind of seriously.
Who knew?
SPEAKER_02 (22:06):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (22:07):
Um, look, uh first of all, it's it's interesting
that you you talk aboutscholarship because the biggest
pushback and sort of the mostnegative response was from
academia.
Um and, you know, now it nowI've I've come to understand
this and and accept it.
And I think any academic who'shad any kind of popular success
(22:27):
will tell you the same thingthat it's the death of your
career.
Um you would think, you wouldthink publishing a best-selling
book would be good for yourcareer.
And it turns out no, no, itdoesn't.
Uh, you know, I'm reminded of umI think it's at it it's usually
attributed to Kissinger, but thequote is something along the
lines of the politics ofacademia are so cutthroat
(22:51):
because the stakes are so low.
Um, so that was that wasunusual.
That it that this book, in inall seriousness, put an end to
my any kind of real academiccareer that I could have pursued
for myself, which is great,which is fine.
That was a great reason to stepoff uh the academic uh cycle.
(23:16):
Um and then and then obviouslythere was the what you would
expect, right?
The right wing uh andparticularly the right wing
Christian community uh lambastedthe book.
It's all a bunch of lies.
You're just a propagandist andan apologist.
The conservative Muslim uhgroups around the world hated
(23:38):
the book because, you know, ittreats Muhammad like a human
being who did human things.
You know, it it actually daresto suggest that maybe there's a
level of historical context thatmight go into the interpretation
of a religion, which, you know,uh sort in certain uh corners is
(23:59):
uh a crazy thing to say.
Um but you know, I've had a avery long career writing about
religion, and so I've bothgotten used to the extreme
negative reaction that tends tocome from it, and I've also
gotten used to the delight thatoften comes when I hear from
(24:26):
non-religious people, especiallyatheists, uh you know,
agnostics, people who have nevergiven religion a second thought,
um, who say that, you know, mymy books and the way that I
write about them in this kind ofvery reasonable but also um uh
(24:46):
compassionate way has made themcompletely rethink how they view
religion and uh religioushistory and religious people.
So, you know, there's good andthere's bad, as as you can
imagine.
SPEAKER_00 (25:02):
And it's just this reflection about academia where
if you write something that'spopular and readable and
enjoyable and thought-provokingfor the the average not person
who doesn't have a PhD in the inthe topic, like myself, um, that
somehow that means that the thatthe work just isn't isn't a
value.
(25:22):
That's just such an interesting,interesting thing.
Because I had on my note, mynotes, ask him how to write
about a scholarly topic and makeit interesting.
Ooh.
SPEAKER_01 (25:32):
And so I love this question.
I get it all the time,especially from you know,
younger academics, peoplestarting their um, you know,
their academic journey.
The rest of your listeners maynot find this interesting at
all, but I love I love answeringthis question because I actually
have the answer, which is it'stwofold.
Number one, scholarly writing,academic writing, it's all
(25:56):
methodology.
It's a ha it's like 90%methodology.
It's 90%, let me tell you whateverybody who has ever thought
anything about this topic has tosay about it.
And then the other 10% is here'smy thoughts about it.
And popular writing, you justflip that around.
(26:16):
90% is just what you think aboutit, and 10% is what other people
have said about it, and maybeyou even save that 10% for the
end notes, you know?
And then the second uh thingabout it is that scholars learn
facts, they learn data.
(26:36):
And our job is to memorize thosefacts and that data and to
regurgitate them.
That's not how normal peoplelearn.
That's not how the generalpublic learns.
The general public learnsthrough stories.
You wrap your facts instorytelling and they absorb
(26:57):
those facts better than honestlythan many scholars end up doing.
So dress your facts in storiesand put the methodology in the
end of the book.
That's the main difference.
That's how you do it.
SPEAKER_00 (27:15):
Interesting.
So um, yeah, because there's athere's a scene, I think it's at
the start of your book whereyou're on a on a train in uh I
think in Morocco.
Morocco, yeah.
And yeah, and I read that scene,I'm like, is it this doesn't
even feel like a scholarly bookat this point, you know?
And then I I read your book, butI also listened to it because I
on my commutes and I thought, ohmy God, I'm getting pulled into
(27:37):
this whole thing.
And so that's what that's howyou kicked it off, right?
You kicked it off with amidnight ride and and a quarrel
in a in a in an adjoining traincar.
And uh, and then you got to thethe some of the more factual
stuff.
So I found that so engaging.
SPEAKER_01 (27:54):
That's right.
Yes, you know, I'm a scholar ofreligions.
You know, I have all the thewhatever the dig academic uh
background for all of that.
But first and foremost, I'm astoryteller.
And I and I take that veryseriously.
I do a lot of different things,you know, a lot of yeah, wear a
(28:15):
lot of hats, but really it'sjust one hat.
Um and that hat is the hat of astoryteller.
Because stories aren't just sortof entertaining tales that we
tell ourselves.
Stories are how we understandwho we are, what our role is in
an indeterminate world.
History is just storytelling.
(28:37):
Politics is just storytelling,religion is just storytelling.
That's what this is.
Um, and I think sometimes theconcept of stories becomes
devalued and even criticized,but certainly by uh academia.
But I think of myself as astoryteller, and the stories
(29:01):
that I tell are about the humancondition.
And some of them are historicaland some of them are religious,
some of them are political, butfundamentally it's just all
story.
SPEAKER_00 (29:13):
What what do you think it's changed in the last
two decades about Islam?
Uh in other words, your studentsdon't even they were barely born
when when when uh 9-11 happened,for example.
And so where the world has movedin different ways.
Like are the understandingsdifferent today than they were
then?
SPEAKER_01 (29:33):
Yeah, and it's certainly true that Islam has,
you know, it's no longer on thefront pages of the newspapers.
It's still there, but it's it'snot kind of top of mind um the
way that it was for so much ofum the 21st century here in the
United States.
I think what I would say isdifferent now is that kind of
(30:00):
Where we began thisconversation.
The idea that whatever Islam is,it is nothing more than the
negative poll for what the Westis or what America is.
That prevailing sentiment thatwas so robust, you know, in the
early 2000s.
(30:21):
I don't see that in Gen Z atall.
Regardless of their politicalpersuasion, there's a
simplisticness to that idea thatis just simply not appealing to
this generation anymore.
They could be anti-Muslim, theycould be very, you know,
religious, uh, they could beevangelical, they could see
(30:44):
Islam as both, you know, athreat to their way of life and
a threat to their faith.
But that notion that whateverIslam is, it is quintessentially
other.
It is that thing which is notus.
Um, the the primary uh issuethat I was fighting against when
(31:05):
I when I wrote this book, thatdoesn't seem to be a prevailing
sentiment any longer.
And frankly, that that's kind ofa big deal.
You know, I always say this thatI think sometimes we have this
idea that bigotry is the resultof ignorance.
(31:26):
You hear it all the time,particularly, you know, amongst,
you know, liberal intellectuals,that, oh, well, if you're
prejudiced against a group or apeople or whatever the case may
be, then the answer to that iseducation.
I'll just in give youinformation and you'll stop
being prejudiced.
You'll stop being bigoted.
But that's not true.
(31:46):
Any s any psychologist will tellyou that that's not true.
Bigotry is not the result ofignorance.
Bigotry is the result of fear.
And fear is impervious to data.
Fear is impervious toinformation.
The only thing that can combatfear is relationships.
(32:07):
And I think that however wedefine Gen Z and all of its
problems, the one thing thatthey understand because they
they came into this world that aworld that was already deeply
interconnected, you know,through internet, social media,
and all of that.
And so this sort of simplifieddemonization that comes from
(32:34):
fear of the other isn't asprevalent in this generation as
it was in, for instance, mygeneration.
SPEAKER_00 (32:43):
Yeah.
My generation.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And perhaps one manifestation ofthat, you know, my myself having
a a daughter who just graduatedfrom college is really the where
you saw the reaction of uhcolleges and universities to uh
uh Israel-Palestine uh conflictand just the I don't know if the
(33:06):
powers that be in the UnitedStates or Israel ever
anticipated that that was goingto be a thing in the US,
certainly on universitycampuses.
SPEAKER_01 (33:16):
Even more fascinating was the response to
those protests and sentimentsfrom our generation.
Because the response was almostuniversally, oh, these kids are
ignorant.
They don't really know the truthabout Israel and Palestine.
(33:38):
When the reality is, is thatit's our generation that doesn't
know the truth about Israel andPalestine, because we have been
so cloistered that we have spentmost of our adult lives uh
having this information filteredthrough gatekeepers who were
(33:58):
solely giving us the Israelinarrative.
The truth of the matter is thatthose young people protesting on
college campuses, they're theones who actually know the truth
and the facts about what istaking place in Israel-Palestine
because they are uh they they'reuh they're exposed to it.
(34:21):
They're exposed to the realityof it without the media filter,
without the media bias, withoutthe political gatekeepers.
They don't need those people totell them what's happening over
there.
They can access it instantlythemselves through internet and
social media.
SPEAKER_00 (34:41):
Yeah, it's a fascinating.
And I, you know, I have toprofess my complete ignorance,
at least in terms of or lack ofanticipation that that was at
all going to be a thing.
You know, my my daughterssuddenly I started to get
recommendations for podcastsfrom my daughter.
Hey, listen to this, listen tothat, and I'm following this guy
on YouTube.
(35:01):
And, you know, as you say, noneof it mainstream media, either
from the left or the right inthe United States.
That's right.
It was really interesting.
Um as I think about and as Ireflect back on your book, one
of the things that was sofascinating to me that I did not
um really know anything aboutwas the impact of the Internet
(35:23):
on what you might call kind ofthe most recent changes,
evolutions, whatever you want tocall them in Islam.
Can you talk about thattransition from learned
gray-haired men kind of issuinguh being the guide rails to the
(35:44):
World Wide Web for lack of abetter term?
SPEAKER_01 (35:48):
Yeah.
No, this was probably the mostrevolutionary part of No God But
God was this foundationalargument, which is that people
kept talking about, oh, when iswhen is Islam going to have its
reformation?
Christianity has had itsreformation.
When is Islam gonna have itsreformation?
(36:09):
And the argument of the book isyou are living in it.
It's happening in front of you.
Open your eyes and look around.
And partly I think that has todo with a fundamental
misunderstanding of whatreformation means, right?
I think when people thinkreformation, they think, oh,
it's just this Christianphenomenon that happened, that
there was this kind of argumentbetween Protestant reform and
(36:30):
Catholic intransigence, and theProtestants won.
And so therefore, Christianitybecame this modern, you know,
pluralistic religion.
And that's obviously not justhistorically false, but it fails
to miss it fails to understandtruly what reformation is, which
is a universal religiousphenomenon.
All great religious traditionshave reformation moments,
(36:55):
because what reformation trulymeans is an argument between the
institutions of a faith and theindividuals of that faith over
who gets to define that faith.
It's an argument aboutauthority.
Judaism had its own reformationin the first century.
(37:16):
Indeed, Christianity kind ofcame out of the Jewish
Reformation, uh, in which therabbinic class uh individuals
had this fundamental fight withthe priestly class over which
one of them gets to say whatJudaism is.
That argument, by the way, endedwhen the temple was burned to
the ground by Rome.
So that was a pretty easy winfor the rabbinic class.
(37:40):
In Christianity, same thing.
This was fundamentally anargument over who gets to define
what Christianity is.
Is it the Pope or is it theindividuals who can access the
scripture on their own?
And that reformation process hasbeen taking place, as I argue in
the book, for the last century,really, in Islam.
(38:01):
Because for most of the first1400 years of Islam, the
authority to define the meaningand message of this faith has
rested exclusively in the handsof the clerical class, the
schools of law, the institutionsof Islam.
And partly that has to do withthe fact that they're the only
(38:23):
ones who could actually accessthe Quran.
Um but the sort of enormous uhimprovements in education and
literacy around the world, theability to access the scripture
in your own languages.
The Quran has been translatedinto more languages over the
last 50 years than it has in theprevious 1400 years combined.
(38:47):
Um, and of course, the Internet,which I argue plays very much
the same role in the IslamicReformation that the printing
press played in the ChristianReformation, in that it allows
access to new ideas, new sourcesof knowledge, new sources of
(39:08):
authority in a way that wouldhave been inconceivable even a
few decades ago.
And all of that has created asituation in which that
authority that used to rest inthe hands of clerical
institutions now rests in thehands of everyone.
Any, anyone, you know, withaccess to the Quran and a URL
(39:31):
can become a source of authorityuh in and of themselves.
And yes, that can cause trouble,for sure.
I mean, it always does.
I mean, the ChristianReformation, you know, that the
argument that sola scriptura,that any individual should be
able to go to the um, you know,uh, the uh scripture and read it
(39:53):
and interpret it for themselves,led to the 30 Years' War, in
which half the population ofGermany alone died.
Um and so the same thing ishappening with Islam.
You know, uh you're gonna havethese individualized
interpretations that promotepeace and tolerance and
compassion and pluralism, andyou're gonna have individual
(40:15):
interpretations that promote warand violence and bigotry and
misogyny.
And because there is no IslamicPope, right?
There's no sort of centralizedreligious authority to say who's
right and who's wrong.
What you have is just thiscacophony of voices fighting
amongst each other over who getsto define the faith.
(40:38):
And that is the Reformation.
That's what's happening righthere before our eyes.
SPEAKER_00 (40:44):
Can you explain what a fatwa is?
Sure, sure.
Yeah, and there's because I Iwas, I was, I was, I had a
completely like, I think,totally biased impression of
what it was.
So if you can explain what thatis, that was fascinating.
SPEAKER_01 (40:56):
Yeah, yeah.
I think I think for like a lotof people, the fatwa has taken
on this specter of like a papalbull, you know, like the like a
the divine command from like therepresentative God on earth, uh,
binding on all people of thisfaith.
That's not what fatwa means.
Fatwa is a juridical opinion.
(41:16):
It's the opinion of a singleIslamic cleric.
Um, and it has absolutely nobinding authority on anyone
except the the individualfollowers of that particular
cleric.
I think people, some people whomight be more familiar with
Judaism might understand howauthority in Islam works, right?
(41:39):
As with Judaism, there is notemple, there's no priesthood,
right?
There's no there's no JewishPope, right?
It's just learned, mostly men,uh uh of authority who use their
learning to make uh declarativejudgments about how to live as a
(42:01):
Jew.
And then you as a Jew can eitherchoose to follow those judgments
or not.
There's no enforcement mechanismfor that.
And that's the same is true withthe fatwa.
These are just individualclerics, they have an opinion,
and then they release thoseopinions in a fat uh in the form
of a fatwa.
SPEAKER_00 (42:22):
Because I grew up in the era of you know, Salman
Rushdis, satanic verses, and andI always thought that fatwa was
like a was like a there's abounty on your head.
Yeah.
Kind of thing, you know, andthen I I yeah, go go ahead.
SPEAKER_01 (42:38):
No, I was just gonna say it so in that case, of
course, that fatwa came from theAyatollah Khomeini.
Right.
Who, you know, again, there arethere are clerics and there are
clerics, right?
Right.
One cleric has 50 milliondollars.
Heavy duty cleric.
Yeah.
Yeah.
One cleric has five millionfollowers, you know.
Right.
Um and so yeah, that the specterof that fatwa, I think the
(43:00):
reason it got the attention thatit got is because of who issued
it.
But you know, the thing aboutfatwas is that everyone's got a
dozen fatwas, you know, like yougive me a fatwa on any subject,
literally any subject, give me24 hours, I'll find you a fatwa
that argues the exact oppositeof that subject.
(43:21):
That's how it goes, you know.
SPEAKER_00 (43:24):
It it's interesting.
I interviewed a surgeon who's aworldwide leader in in
transplant from animals tohumans, uh, heart transplants.
And so the animal that is is uheasiest to grow the heart and to
match the human chest cavity andto genetically modify the heart
(43:47):
is a pig.
And of course, he's Muslim anduh uh grew up in Pakistan, and
so he we talked about this wholelike wrestling with that, you
know, like could he even touchthe pig and the whole thing?
And so he said, yeah, and I wentto a cleric and I got a I he
issued a ruling is the way heput it to me, and I thought
(44:08):
that's a fun one.
And so that that must be whatthat what that was.
So I think this this idea oflike these competing opinions,
right?
Like give me 24 hours and I'llfind a separate opposing
viewpoint on something, like Ijust it's fascinating to me.
And then you as a as someonewho's just learning about this,
(44:31):
I say, well, so how does what isthat what does that say about
the future of Islam?
SPEAKER_01 (44:38):
That's a great question.
Because it used to be that ifyou wanted a fatwa, that guy,
let's let's talk about your youryour physician.
unknown (44:49):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (44:49):
She needs a fatwa.
She needs a cleric to tell himwhether he can or cannot do what
he's doing.
So he goes to his mosque or hegoes to, you know, maybe he goes
to some great, you know, uhcleric with, you know, dozens of
years of learning.
Maybe he goes all the way toEgypt and goes to Al-Azhar, the
the oldest university in theworld, one the sort of one of
(45:12):
these eminent institutions ofIslam.
And uh he finds a cleric, andthe cleric says, uh, yes, you
can you can get a pig's heart uhif you're a Muslim and that's
okay, and here is my fatwa.
Great.
Nowadays, you don't even need todo that.
(45:32):
Why would you go all the way toEgypt when you can just go to
fatwaonline.com and just go tothey have a fatwa database of
tens of thousands of fatwas.
You know, go to the searchengine and punch in a pig heart
transplant.
And you're gonna get 14 fatwas.
(45:54):
Seven of them are gonna say it'sokay.
Seven of them are gonna say it'snot okay.
Pick the one you like.
It this is what is happeningright now in the world.
And so you're right to sort ofrecognize that and think to
yourself, holy cow, well thenwhat comes next?
(46:16):
And it's hard to say.
But what is important to note isthat this isn't new, this is how
it's always been.
It's just that now the access isso much easier for anyone.
Um, and you can kind of pick andchoose.
(46:38):
You know, in the old days, youknow, you you'd go to your
mosque and the and the fatwa theguy would issue a fatwa saying,
no, you're not allowed to use uhpig heart, and then you would
just be like, okay, I'm gonna goto a different mosque, and you
go to a different mosque, andthat guy would say it's okay.
But now, again, what do you needthe mosque for?
You have if you all you need isan internet connection.
SPEAKER_00 (47:00):
Does this level the playing field for for women, for
example?
Perhaps you know, people whoweren't sitting in those circles
of white-haired men with beards.
SPEAKER_01 (47:10):
Yes.
Indeed, what we have been seeingover the last three or four
decades is this newly muscularuh Islamic feminism that is no
longer just simply about tryingto create a, let's say, excuse
me, a feminist interpretation ofIslam.
(47:34):
It's instead seizing the powerthat men have monopolized to
define the religion for you knowcenturies, and seizing that
power for themselves anddeclaring themselves imams.
Uh, and indeed the sort offemale imam uh this this kind of
(47:56):
movement that we're seeing allover the world, you know, not
just in the in the US and NorthAmerica and in Europe, but in
Indonesia, in Malaysia, andPakistan, and India, and these
sort of very traditionallyMuslim uh countries is
extraordinary.
It's I think probably the mostexciting movement taking place
(48:18):
within Islam is the this newsource of authority that is uh
fully female, right?
Women who are being trained bywomen, who are training other
women, who are issuing fatwasfocused solely on issues
(48:39):
concerning women instead ofrelying on centuries of
male-dominated interpretations.
SPEAKER_00 (48:46):
Yeah, it's that's a fascinating thing to think
about.
The future is going to be umwell, it's still being written
every day.
SPEAKER_01 (48:52):
Yeah, and to just connect it to what we were just
saying five minutes ago.
So imagine this, okay?
So you are a 19-year-old uhMuslim woman in Egypt, in in
Cairo.
And maybe you don't have accessto a female imam.
You don't know one.
There's no one around you,right?
Uh it's a very male-dominatedsociety.
(49:14):
So what?
Again, get online.
Go online.
15 female uh imams in New Yorkthat you have access to, and
they can be your spiritualsource of authority.
And that's brand new.
That is absolutely brand new.
SPEAKER_00 (49:30):
It's just, it's yeah, it's just flattened
everything and cut down thosethose those barriers.
It's that's really interesting.
Um, you've been very generouswith your time, and I'm I do
have an eye on the clock, but Iwanted to see.
I have one more question foryou.
But before we get there, isthere anything that I have not
mentioned about about your aboutyour book, about uh your other
(49:51):
work, uh, where people can findyou uh that you'd like to
mention?
SPEAKER_01 (49:56):
No, I've uh I've the three years ago deleted all of
my social media and have neverbeen happier.
So I'm I'm unreachable in thatregard.
But you know, obviously you cango to rezaaslan.com and and get
in touch with me.
Uh no problem at all.
SPEAKER_00 (50:14):
And and you've you know you've written widely, and
so folks can you know checkcheck out your presence online
with that.
Um and by the book, uh it'sfascinating if you have not yet
read it.
Um I did have a final questionfor you.
Um it's a hypothetical.
(50:35):
Um, but if you had the power orthe ability or the resources,
whatever, to design uh andpublish a um a billboard on the
side of the freeway.
Um and folks are gonna read itgoing by at 70 miles an hour, or
depending on where you live,they might be going by at seven
(50:56):
miles an hour if you're aSouthern California person.
Um what does your billboard sayto the world about what you find
to be important?
SPEAKER_01 (51:07):
Well, that's a really, really good question.
Um I don't know, I don't knowhow well this would fit on a
billboard, but it would besomething along the lines of
stop confusing yourself for God.
God doesn't root for yourfootball team.
God doesn't hate what you hate.
God doesn't love what you love.
(51:28):
You're talking about yourself.
You're not talking about God.
God, if God exists, is about asfar from you and your
personality and characteristicsand interests and concerns as it
possi as it could possibly get.
And you know what?
That's a good thing.
Maybe that billboard would workin Los Angeles because there's,
(51:50):
you know, we're all driving atlike three miles an hour.
SPEAKER_00 (51:53):
That's right.
That's a i you just describedseveral billboards, so we're
gonna have to have a serialbillboard, but but um thank you
so much for that.
I think that's a a fitting codafor today's conversation.
Um, it's been a real honorchatting with you and um and
congratulations again on on thesuccess of your work and having
(52:13):
it, as you say, uh endure andgain new life after two decades,
which is really any author'sbest hope and dream, really.
Thank you, David.
It was a real pleasure being onthe show.
Thanks for joining us on theHangout Podcast.
You can send us an email atpodcastinfo at proton.me.
(52:36):
Many thanks to my daughter Mayafor editing this episode.
I'd also like to underline thatthis podcast is entirely
separate from my day job.
And as such, all opinionsexpressed herein are mine and
mine alone.
Thanks for coming on in andhanging out.
Welcome to the Hang Out Podcast.
I'm your host, David Sheretta.
Come on in and hang out.
In this episode, I wasprivileged to have a
conversation withinternationally acclaimed author
(00:22):
and scholar, Dr.
Reisa Aslan.
Dr.
Aslan wrote No God But God, TheOrigins, Evolution, and Future
of Islam 20 years ago.
He also wrote Zealot, The Lifeand Times of Jesus of Nazareth,
God of Human History, and anAmerican Martyr in Persia.
This conversation iswide-ranging.
(00:43):
We had a fascinating explorationabout what happens when a
scholar writes a best-sellingbook, what that does to a career
in academia.
Spoiler alert, it's not greatfor that career.
We talked about what ishappening with the impact of the
Internet on Islam worldwide interms of the flattening and the
(01:06):
democratization of the religionand edicts and fatwas and much,
much more.
I was fascinated by ourconversation, and I hope you are
as well.
Welcome, Dr.
Oslan.
Thank you so much for joining usfor this conversation today.
SPEAKER_01 (01:28):
Oh, thanks for having me, David.
It's great to be here.
SPEAKER_00 (01:31):
I I thought we could get started with the most
logical place to start, which iswith your origin story, uh where
you come from and what are thecurrents in your life that bring
you to this to this moment, andthen we'll dive into your
writing.
SPEAKER_01 (01:47):
Sure.
I was born in Iran.
Um my family uh fled the IranianRevolution in 1979.
So I was about seven years oldat the time.
Um and, you know, looking backon that, it was a pretty
formative experience for me.
I have a fairly clear memory ofthe two years or so during which
(02:07):
that revolution took place andwas really aware of what was
going on, what the stakes werefor this revolution, which has
been, I think, mischaracterizedfor much of the last 40 years as
a quote-unquote Islamicrevolution, uh, but which was
anything but that.
(02:28):
It was an anti-imperialistrevolution that brought every
sector of Iranian societytogether.
Um, my father, who was acommunist and an ardent uh
atheist who had a very healthydislike of anything religious,
uh, kind of saw the writing onthe wall in the
(02:50):
post-revolutionary chaos andthought that it might be a good
idea to get out for a bit untilthings settled down.
Um so we came to the US.
Things obviously didn't settledown in Iran, so we ended up
just staying here.
Um, but I think that experiencegave me a real fascination with
(03:11):
religion and the way thatreligion can transform a society
for good and for bad.
And so I think growing up, eventhough I didn't come from a
religious family at all, I mean,I think we were sort of, you
know, culturally Muslim the wayso many people are culturally
religious, until we came to theU.S.
And then that became the excuseto just kind of strip ourselves
(03:35):
of any kind of uh religiosity.
But I had always been reallyfascinated by it, by myth and by
origin stories and by religiousphenomenon and spirituality.
Um in high school, I I went toan evangelical youth camp and
heard the gospel story for thefirst time.
(03:57):
That was kind of the, I'd say,the second formative experience
of my life, um, and converted tothis very conservative brand of
evangelical Christianity.
And then when I went to college,I decided that I would um study
religion.
I was very good at it.
It was really interesting.
Um and it didn't take long forme to be confronted with the
(04:21):
fact that almost everything Iunderstood, not just about
Christianity, but aboutreligion, um, was wrong.
And that was, I'd say, the thirdformative uh experience of my
life.
And um and I became even morefascinated by ideas of belief,
an identity, and decided that Iwas just gonna dedicate my life
(04:43):
to these concepts.
Um and uh, you know, it's been ait's been a fun, crazy, somewhat
tumultuous journey ever since.
SPEAKER_00 (04:53):
You know what thank you for sharing that.
I I in doing a little bit ofresearch on your life, I had
learned about the uh Islam,Christianity, Islam from a from
a religious scholarshipstandpoint, kind of um I don't
know if I want to call itflip-flop because that's not the
right word, but it's a differentdifferent signposts in your
(05:15):
life, different transitions.
Um I just was curious, like, isit did you see those as being so
opposite, or was it like uhadjustments of a few degrees on
on the ship, like from what yougrew up with to the then the
Christianity to where you arenow?
SPEAKER_01 (05:34):
That's a really good question.
And I guess I guess the answeris yes and no.
So yes, in the sense that whatevangelical Christianity brought
to me was this the idea of ofspirituality and spiritual
edification, right?
This constant notion of umstriving for a personal
(05:58):
relationship with God.
And that was something thatdidn't really exist in the Islam
that I grew up with.
Um and then the flip side ofthat, however, is that the heart
of Christianity is this ideathat the God of heaven and earth
uh is just a man and a man wholived in a particular time and
(06:23):
space.
And there's this kind ofoverfamiliarity in in
evangelical Christianity.
You know, the God of heaven andearth, the creator of the
universe is your buddy, is yourfriend.
You know, you can pal aroundwith him.
And honestly, that it neverworked for me.
(06:45):
I don't know what it was.
Maybe it was my childhood, youknow, Jungian uh experience of
thinking about God as holyother, um, which is how he is
defined in Islam.
That it I it always bugged me.
It never it never worked for me.
And I think in the end, that wasa big part of I think why it
(07:09):
never stuck, why evangelicalChristianity never stuck.
Indeed, uh what I never what Irarely talk about is that there
was a bridge between evangelicalChristianity and me returning to
a particular mystical brand ofIslam.
And that bridge was Catholicism.
I went to a uh a Jesuituniversity, and for the first
(07:29):
time in my life, I experienced adifferent kind of Christianity,
a Christianity in which Godisn't your buddy, a Christianity
in which awe is at the center ofthe experience of the divine.
And that felt much morecomfortable and real to me.
(07:51):
And then fundamentally, I thinkthe the return to Islam had a
lot to do with the metaphor atthe heart of Christianity, which
is God, if you want tounderstand the greatest mystery
in the universe, it's prettyeasy.
Just think about the mostperfect man you can think of,
and that's God.
And um, that's not the metaphorthat really hit me.
(08:14):
Um, the metaphor that hit me wasone that was offered to me by
Sufi Islam.
And the metaphor is the conceptof oneness, the idea that God is
about as unlike human beings asit possibly gets, right?
That whatever else God is, he isutterly unhuman-like.
(08:36):
Um and indeed he is not even, hedoesn't have a body, he doesn't
have a personality, he doesn'thave characteristics, he is pure
creative force.
And that's also, by the way,just a metaphor.
These are all metaphors, right?
It's just, you know, whichmetaphor hits you more?
And that's the metaphor that Ialways kind of gravitated
(08:59):
towards.
SPEAKER_00 (09:00):
I I'd imagine there were some interesting family
conversations between you andand your folks, right?
Uh uh immigrant, immigrantfamily and a new country, um, uh
societal pressures, societalperhaps discrimination or
misunderstandings.
I mean, that must have beeninteresting.
SPEAKER_01 (09:20):
Well, there was certainly a lot of pressures and
misunderstandings.
And I mean, of course, this was,you know, I came we came to the
United States right before theIran hostage crisis.
So there was an enormous amountof anti-Iranian and anti-Muslim
sentiment.
And, you know, we were more thanhappy to just kind of hide our
identity as either of thosethings.
(09:40):
Right.
It's funny, it's people alwaysask, oh, you know, were your
parents upset that you when youconverted to Christianity?
Um yes, but not for the reasonsthat you think.
My father was upset at me, notbecause I had abandoned, you
know, the religion of myforefathers for a different
religion.
He was upset at me because I wasreligious.
That any religion, as far as hewas concerned, was problematic.
(10:05):
Um and and then when I said thatI was gonna, you know, basically
study this as a as a living, Ithink there was a lot of
confusion about that as a as apath.
Um, but it's worked out okay.
They've they've they've gottenthey've gotten used to the idea.
SPEAKER_00 (10:22):
So his reaction was more almost just a almost a I
don't know if I want to call ita political reaction, but a
reaction to what he was leavingbehind in Iran, right?
With a with a uh anultra-conservative um regime
having taken over.
SPEAKER_01 (10:40):
And indeed, I remember that what he said, it
was something along the linesof, we came here so you wouldn't
have to be religious.
And you know, I think it washard for him to understand that.
No, actually, I'm I'm choosingthis.
This is uh no one's forcing thisupon me.
I'm choosing it.
Um and I think he, you know, thethe world that he grew up in,
(11:00):
that was this strange idea.
SPEAKER_00 (11:04):
Right.
There were there was noseparation of church and state.
unknown (11:08):
Yes.
SPEAKER_00 (11:09):
In the world he grew up in, at least on some level,
probably, right?
SPEAKER_01 (11:12):
Yeah.
I mean it's a it's a little bitdifferent.
I think I think this is, youknow, one of the probably the
biggest misconceptions of umIslam or even sort of Muslim
majority states.
And you hear it a lot fromAmericans that uh the problem
with you know these sort ofMuslim-majority countries is
that there's no separation ofquote, mosque and state.
(11:34):
And what's funny about thatstatement is while it while it's
true of, say, you know, SaudiArabia or Iran post-revolution,
it certainly wasn't true Iranpre-revolution.
On the contrary, like the ideaof public displays of religion,
uh, particularly in politics oractivism or or social movements,
(11:55):
was violently suppressed.
And that's still the case in themajority of Muslim, you know,
majority states.
You know where there isn't aseparation of church and state?
In America.
That's where there isn't aseparation of church and state.
We literally, you know, I mean,yes, we're supposed to, we have
this anti-establishment law thatsays, well, uh, your taxes can't
(12:16):
go to support any church.
But the truth is, because noreligion pays any taxes, our
taxes go to pay for everyreligion in the United States.
Uh in the United States, it'sinconceivable to run for high
office, certainly for president,if you cannot speak the language
(12:37):
of religion, even if you are themost irreligious human being on
earth, like the currentpresident.
Um, whereas in, say, Egypt, ifyou are running for office and
you start putting your argumentsin terms of the Quran, you're
never heard from again.
That's the last time anyone seesyou.
So Interesting, you know, thisthis idea is a little bit more
(12:59):
complicated than I thinksometimes it gets.
SPEAKER_00 (13:01):
Yeah.
And I it and now that you yousaid it in those terms, you
know, in my in my world as aschool leader, we're in a
charter school leader, we saw avote of the sub actually, it
wasn't a they they never voted.
The Supreme Court uh split on uhlet's see, did they vote or not?
They did, but they they onemember um recused herself
(13:24):
because of a conflict ofinterest, but they were one vote
away from approving a Catholiccharter school uh somewhere in
the South this past this past umyear.
And so, you know, this had beenappealed all the way up to the
Supreme Court, and and I waswatching the case and thinking,
wow, if Coney Barrett, JusticeConey Barrett doesn't have that
(13:46):
conflict of interest, it mighthave gone 5'4 and and the
Supreme Court has endorsedpublic monies for uh for a
religious charter school.
So that's right.
I stand corrected on my on thaton that part of it.
Um let's dive into your to the20th anniversary uh of of your
uh seminal work.
(14:08):
Um well, why don't you just kindof set the stage for the writing
of No God But God?
I really I really was reflectingon like how the world was 20
years ago.
SPEAKER_02 (14:19):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (14:19):
Uh interesting time to interesting time to dive into
uh the topic.
And uh so why don't you set thestage for how this idea came
about and what the writing waslike and what the what the reach
of the book has been in theensuing 20 years.
SPEAKER_01 (14:34):
It's funny.
It I mean, you know, look,there's uh this anniversary of
uh Nogaba God has brought up awhole host of emotions, one of
which is this sort of confusion,because I'm also a teacher, I
teach college.
Um, and my students have noconnection whatsoever to 9-11.
(14:55):
Like it's they read about 9-11the way that like you and I read
about Pearl Harbor.
It's kind of an interestingturning point in history, you
know.
Um But I mean, you remember andI remember like it was it was
apocalyptic.
Like I thought this was, youknow, uh the end of everything.
(15:15):
Um and obviously, you know,there was, as we all remember,
this incredible amount of notjust demonization, but sort of
misinformation andmischaracterization about Islam
as a religion, and sort of goingalong the lines of what we were
talking about with regard to theidea of the separation of church
(15:39):
and state, a real kind ofdoubling down on Americans at a
very confusing time, evenpre-9-11, figuring out that, oh,
we could actually now defineourselves, define what it means
to be Americans simply bycreating an imaginary opposite,
(16:01):
an imaginary negative pole thatwe can uh define ourselves
against.
Let's just call it Islam andwe'll call ourselves the West,
even though those two categoriesare utterly nonsensical.
Like what is the West?
That makes no sense whatsoever.
If there is a West, guess whatreligion arose out of the West?
(16:22):
Islam.
And on the flip side of that,there's no such thing as Islam.
Like there's Islam's.
This is the second largestreligion in the world, nearly
two billion adherents.
It comes in a thousand flavors.
And so the idea that you couldcall something Western
civilization and something elseIslamic civilization was both
utterly idiotic, and yet it hadbecome foundational to
(16:48):
understanding the dawn of the21st century.
And I think that, you know, whenI sat down to write this book,
that was my principal goal wasto shatter that simple
dichotomy, the sort of close theclash of civilizations narrative
that had completely taken holdon all sides of the political
(17:10):
spectrum in the United States.
And instead to sort of presentthis religion, not positively or
negatively, but as just areligion.
I think that was that washonestly and truly what I think
was probably the mostrevolutionary part about this
book and why it became such aglobal phenomenon, is that the
(17:32):
argument of the book is thatthere's nothing all that unique
or extraordinary or differentabout Islam.
It's a religion like any otherreligion.
It's been influenced by uh, youknow, 1,500 years of culture and
history and and politics and allthe other things that that
(17:53):
influence the great religions ofthe world.
And that, like any religion,it's all about what you bring to
it, not what you take from it.
Um and the book was writtenprimarily.
I mean, I have a very clearmemory.
Like when I was writing this, itwas for non-Muslims.
And then what was, I think,surprising about it is how it
(18:16):
became a kind of manifesto forMuslims, particularly young
Muslims, the so-called kind of,you know, millennial Muslims,
you know, Muslims who had neverreally given their faith and
their practice all that muchthought, but then were bombarded
by these outside noises aboutwhat their beliefs are, what
(18:39):
they actually believe, both youknow, from the the two extremes
on either side, and weredesperate for someone to just
simply say, this is the thing,this is the religion that you
believe, and this is where yourideas and your beliefs come
from.
And so, you know, I that was areal surprise to me, but it's
it's been translated into dozensof languages.
(19:02):
It's it was a uh you know,bestseller in India and in
Pakistan.
It's available in Iran.
There's you know, Arabictranslations of it.
So it it it was so it wasnothing like I'd I'd
anticipated.
And it was my first book, and sothat was kind of a a new
experience for me as well.
Um, but you know, I I couldn'tbe more pleased with it.
(19:25):
And then and then the otheraspect of it that I thought was
really unexpected is the waythat it became a kind of
guidebook for the Americanmilitary.
That I never thought was.
SPEAKER_00 (19:38):
Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that.
That because I heard that inyour introduction to the to the
new edition, and I thought, hmm,I'm gonna ask him that.
SPEAKER_01 (19:45):
Yeah, I honestly never in a million years did I
did I anticipate that.
But I cannot tell you how manyvets have come up to me and
said, you know, your book waswas required reading at West
Point.
Your book was required readingat the Air Force Academy, you
know, like we all had to readit.
And uh and it changed everythingabout the way that I sort of
(20:08):
understood the parameters of theconflict and my in my sort of
role in it, and as and indiplomatic circles too.
So, you know, it's look when youwrite a book, you're the best
case scenario is that it doesfairly well.
You make a little bit of money,and after a few years, that's
it.
(20:29):
The book goes away.
The idea that a book wouldremain in print for 20 years is
in and of itself kind of amiracle.
The idea that it's still sellingso much that the publisher wants
a new 20th anniversary edition,that is my wildest dreams.
I never, never thought that thatwould that would be a thing.
SPEAKER_00 (20:50):
And just even the idea of I mean, uh writing about
religion is not exactly a recipefor you know uh barn burning,
you know, uh bestseller saleslike you know, right off the
bat, right?
And so uh I mean it, you know,you think, okay, who's gonna
(21:10):
read this?
Some scholars, some some uh mymy colleagues uh at the
different universities, and thisthing takes off in a way that
you never would have expected.
Were there any unexpectednegative uh impacts or uh after
effects of writing this book?
In other words, like did you geta accused of perhaps being the
(21:31):
spokesman for, I mean, that's ayou know, that's you just put a
big load on your shoulders,intentionally or
unintentionally, right?
Like you said uh going on twobillion adherents worldwide.
Like, are you you know that's alot to carry.
Talk to us about tell us that'sa lot to carry.
Tell us about if if you had anykind of pushback that was not
(21:53):
positive.
SPEAKER_01 (21:54):
Oh, yes, a lot.
Look, it turns out that youknow, when you write about
religion and and politics andthe intersection of the two,
people tend to take those twothings kind of seriously.
Who knew?
SPEAKER_02 (22:06):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (22:07):
Um, look, uh first of all, it's it's interesting
that you you talk aboutscholarship because the biggest
pushback and sort of the mostnegative response was from
academia.
Um and, you know, now it nowI've I've come to understand
this and and accept it.
And I think any academic who'shad any kind of popular success
(22:27):
will tell you the same thingthat it's the death of your
career.
Um you would think, you wouldthink publishing a best-selling
book would be good for yourcareer.
And it turns out no, no, itdoesn't.
Uh, you know, I'm reminded of umI think it's at it it's usually
attributed to Kissinger, but thequote is something along the
lines of the politics ofacademia are so cutthroat
(22:51):
because the stakes are so low.
Um, so that was that wasunusual.
That it that this book, in inall seriousness, put an end to
my any kind of real academiccareer that I could have pursued
for myself, which is great,which is fine.
That was a great reason to stepoff uh the academic uh cycle.
(23:16):
Um and then and then obviouslythere was the what you would
expect, right?
The right wing uh andparticularly the right wing
Christian community uh lambastedthe book.
It's all a bunch of lies.
You're just a propagandist andan apologist.
The conservative Muslim uhgroups around the world hated
(23:38):
the book because, you know, ittreats Muhammad like a human
being who did human things.
You know, it it actually daresto suggest that maybe there's a
level of historical context thatmight go into the interpretation
of a religion, which, you know,uh sort in certain uh corners is
(23:59):
uh a crazy thing to say.
Um but you know, I've had a avery long career writing about
religion, and so I've bothgotten used to the extreme
negative reaction that tends tocome from it, and I've also
gotten used to the delight thatoften comes when I hear from
(24:26):
non-religious people, especiallyatheists, uh you know,
agnostics, people who have nevergiven religion a second thought,
um, who say that, you know, mymy books and the way that I
write about them in this kind ofvery reasonable but also um uh
(24:46):
compassionate way has made themcompletely rethink how they view
religion and uh religioushistory and religious people.
So, you know, there's good andthere's bad, as as you can
imagine.
SPEAKER_00 (25:02):
And it's just this reflection about academia where
if you write something that'spopular and readable and
enjoyable and thought-provokingfor the the average not person
who doesn't have a PhD in the inthe topic, like myself, um, that
somehow that means that the thatthe work just isn't isn't a
value.
(25:22):
That's just such an interesting,interesting thing.
Because I had on my note, mynotes, ask him how to write
about a scholarly topic and makeit interesting.
Ooh.
SPEAKER_01 (25:32):
And so I love this question.
I get it all the time,especially from you know,
younger academics, peoplestarting their um, you know,
their academic journey.
The rest of your listeners maynot find this interesting at
all, but I love I love answeringthis question because I actually
have the answer, which is it'stwofold.
Number one, scholarly writing,academic writing, it's all
(25:56):
methodology.
It's a ha it's like 90%methodology.
It's 90%, let me tell you whateverybody who has ever thought
anything about this topic has tosay about it.
And then the other 10% is here'smy thoughts about it.
And popular writing, you justflip that around.
(26:16):
90% is just what you think aboutit, and 10% is what other people
have said about it, and maybeyou even save that 10% for the
end notes, you know?
And then the second uh thingabout it is that scholars learn
facts, they learn data.
(26:36):
And our job is to memorize thosefacts and that data and to
regurgitate them.
That's not how normal peoplelearn.
That's not how the generalpublic learns.
The general public learnsthrough stories.
You wrap your facts instorytelling and they absorb
(26:57):
those facts better than honestlythan many scholars end up doing.
So dress your facts in storiesand put the methodology in the
end of the book.
That's the main difference.
That's how you do it.
SPEAKER_00 (27:15):
Interesting.
So um, yeah, because there's athere's a scene, I think it's at
the start of your book whereyou're on a on a train in uh I
think in Morocco.
Morocco, yeah.
And yeah, and I read that scene,I'm like, is it this doesn't
even feel like a scholarly bookat this point, you know?
And then I I read your book, butI also listened to it because I
on my commutes and I thought, ohmy God, I'm getting pulled into
(27:37):
this whole thing.
And so that's what that's howyou kicked it off, right?
You kicked it off with amidnight ride and and a quarrel
in a in a in an adjoining traincar.
And uh, and then you got to thethe some of the more factual
stuff.
So I found that so engaging.
SPEAKER_01 (27:54):
That's right.
Yes, you know, I'm a scholar ofreligions.
You know, I have all the thewhatever the dig academic uh
background for all of that.
But first and foremost, I'm astoryteller.
And I and I take that veryseriously.
I do a lot of different things,you know, a lot of yeah, wear a
(28:15):
lot of hats, but really it'sjust one hat.
Um and that hat is the hat of astoryteller.
Because stories aren't just sortof entertaining tales that we
tell ourselves.
Stories are how we understandwho we are, what our role is in
an indeterminate world.
History is just storytelling.
(28:37):
Politics is just storytelling,religion is just storytelling.
That's what this is.
Um, and I think sometimes theconcept of stories becomes
devalued and even criticized,but certainly by uh academia.
But I think of myself as astoryteller, and the stories
(29:01):
that I tell are about the humancondition.
And some of them are historicaland some of them are religious,
some of them are political, butfundamentally it's just all
story.
SPEAKER_00 (29:13):
What what do you think it's changed in the last
two decades about Islam?
Uh in other words, your studentsdon't even they were barely born
when when when uh 9-11 happened,for example.
And so where the world has movedin different ways.
Like are the understandingsdifferent today than they were
then?
SPEAKER_01 (29:33):
Yeah, and it's certainly true that Islam has,
you know, it's no longer on thefront pages of the newspapers.
It's still there, but it's it'snot kind of top of mind um the
way that it was for so much ofum the 21st century here in the
United States.
I think what I would say isdifferent now is that kind of
(30:00):
Where we began thisconversation.
The idea that whatever Islam is,it is nothing more than the
negative poll for what the Westis or what America is.
That prevailing sentiment thatwas so robust, you know, in the
early 2000s.
(30:21):
I don't see that in Gen Z atall.
Regardless of their politicalpersuasion, there's a
simplisticness to that idea thatis just simply not appealing to
this generation anymore.
They could be anti-Muslim, theycould be very, you know,
religious, uh, they could beevangelical, they could see
(30:44):
Islam as both, you know, athreat to their way of life and
a threat to their faith.
But that notion that whateverIslam is, it is quintessentially
other.
It is that thing which is notus.
Um, the the primary uh issuethat I was fighting against when
(31:05):
I when I wrote this book, thatdoesn't seem to be a prevailing
sentiment any longer.
And frankly, that that's kind ofa big deal.
You know, I always say this thatI think sometimes we have this
idea that bigotry is the resultof ignorance.
(31:26):
You hear it all the time,particularly, you know, amongst,
you know, liberal intellectuals,that, oh, well, if you're
prejudiced against a group or apeople or whatever the case may
be, then the answer to that iseducation.
I'll just in give youinformation and you'll stop
being prejudiced.
You'll stop being bigoted.
But that's not true.
(31:46):
Any s any psychologist will tellyou that that's not true.
Bigotry is not the result ofignorance.
Bigotry is the result of fear.
And fear is impervious to data.
Fear is impervious toinformation.
The only thing that can combatfear is relationships.
(32:07):
And I think that however wedefine Gen Z and all of its
problems, the one thing thatthey understand because they
they came into this world that aworld that was already deeply
interconnected, you know,through internet, social media,
and all of that.
And so this sort of simplifieddemonization that comes from
(32:34):
fear of the other isn't asprevalent in this generation as
it was in, for instance, mygeneration.
SPEAKER_00 (32:43):
Yeah.
My generation.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And perhaps one manifestation ofthat, you know, my myself having
a a daughter who just graduatedfrom college is really the where
you saw the reaction of uhcolleges and universities to uh
uh Israel-Palestine uh conflictand just the I don't know if the
(33:06):
powers that be in the UnitedStates or Israel ever
anticipated that that was goingto be a thing in the US,
certainly on universitycampuses.
SPEAKER_01 (33:16):
Even more fascinating was the response to
those protests and sentimentsfrom our generation.
Because the response was almostuniversally, oh, these kids are
ignorant.
They don't really know the truthabout Israel and Palestine.
(33:38):
When the reality is, is thatit's our generation that doesn't
know the truth about Israel andPalestine, because we have been
so cloistered that we have spentmost of our adult lives uh
having this information filteredthrough gatekeepers who were
(33:58):
solely giving us the Israelinarrative.
The truth of the matter is thatthose young people protesting on
college campuses, they're theones who actually know the truth
and the facts about what istaking place in Israel-Palestine
because they are uh they they'reuh they're exposed to it.
(34:21):
They're exposed to the realityof it without the media filter,
without the media bias, withoutthe political gatekeepers.
They don't need those people totell them what's happening over
there.
They can access it instantlythemselves through internet and
social media.
SPEAKER_00 (34:41):
Yeah, it's a fascinating.
And I, you know, I have toprofess my complete ignorance,
at least in terms of or lack ofanticipation that that was at
all going to be a thing.
You know, my my daughterssuddenly I started to get
recommendations for podcastsfrom my daughter.
Hey, listen to this, listen tothat, and I'm following this guy
on YouTube.
(35:01):
And, you know, as you say, noneof it mainstream media, either
from the left or the right inthe United States.
That's right.
It was really interesting.
Um as I think about and as Ireflect back on your book, one
of the things that was sofascinating to me that I did not
um really know anything aboutwas the impact of the Internet
(35:23):
on what you might call kind ofthe most recent changes,
evolutions, whatever you want tocall them in Islam.
Can you talk about thattransition from learned
gray-haired men kind of issuinguh being the guide rails to the
(35:44):
World Wide Web for lack of abetter term?
SPEAKER_01 (35:48):
Yeah.
No, this was probably the mostrevolutionary part of No God But
God was this foundationalargument, which is that people
kept talking about, oh, when iswhen is Islam going to have its
reformation?
Christianity has had itsreformation.
When is Islam gonna have itsreformation?
(36:09):
And the argument of the book isyou are living in it.
It's happening in front of you.
Open your eyes and look around.
And partly I think that has todo with a fundamental
misunderstanding of whatreformation means, right?
I think when people thinkreformation, they think, oh,
it's just this Christianphenomenon that happened, that
there was this kind of argumentbetween Protestant reform and
(36:30):
Catholic intransigence, and theProtestants won.
And so therefore, Christianitybecame this modern, you know,
pluralistic religion.
And that's obviously not justhistorically false, but it fails
to miss it fails to understandtruly what reformation is, which
is a universal religiousphenomenon.
All great religious traditionshave reformation moments,
(36:55):
because what reformation trulymeans is an argument between the
institutions of a faith and theindividuals of that faith over
who gets to define that faith.
It's an argument aboutauthority.
Judaism had its own reformationin the first century.
(37:16):
Indeed, Christianity kind ofcame out of the Jewish
Reformation, uh, in which therabbinic class uh individuals
had this fundamental fight withthe priestly class over which
one of them gets to say whatJudaism is.
That argument, by the way, endedwhen the temple was burned to
the ground by Rome.
So that was a pretty easy winfor the rabbinic class.
(37:40):
In Christianity, same thing.
This was fundamentally anargument over who gets to define
what Christianity is.
Is it the Pope or is it theindividuals who can access the
scripture on their own?
And that reformation process hasbeen taking place, as I argue in
the book, for the last century,really, in Islam.
(38:01):
Because for most of the first1400 years of Islam, the
authority to define the meaningand message of this faith has
rested exclusively in the handsof the clerical class, the
schools of law, the institutionsof Islam.
And partly that has to do withthe fact that they're the only
(38:23):
ones who could actually accessthe Quran.
Um but the sort of enormous uhimprovements in education and
literacy around the world, theability to access the scripture
in your own languages.
The Quran has been translatedinto more languages over the
last 50 years than it has in theprevious 1400 years combined.
(38:47):
Um, and of course, the Internet,which I argue plays very much
the same role in the IslamicReformation that the printing
press played in the ChristianReformation, in that it allows
access to new ideas, new sourcesof knowledge, new sources of
(39:08):
authority in a way that wouldhave been inconceivable even a
few decades ago.
And all of that has created asituation in which that
authority that used to rest inthe hands of clerical
institutions now rests in thehands of everyone.
Any, anyone, you know, withaccess to the Quran and a URL
(39:31):
can become a source of authorityuh in and of themselves.
And yes, that can cause trouble,for sure.
I mean, it always does.
I mean, the ChristianReformation, you know, that the
argument that sola scriptura,that any individual should be
able to go to the um, you know,uh, the uh scripture and read it
(39:53):
and interpret it for themselves,led to the 30 Years' War, in
which half the population ofGermany alone died.
Um and so the same thing ishappening with Islam.
You know, uh you're gonna havethese individualized
interpretations that promotepeace and tolerance and
compassion and pluralism, andyou're gonna have individual
(40:15):
interpretations that promote warand violence and bigotry and
misogyny.
And because there is no IslamicPope, right?
There's no sort of centralizedreligious authority to say who's
right and who's wrong.
What you have is just thiscacophony of voices fighting
amongst each other over who getsto define the faith.
(40:38):
And that is the Reformation.
That's what's happening righthere before our eyes.
SPEAKER_00 (40:44):
Can you explain what a fatwa is?
Sure, sure.
Yeah, and there's because I Iwas, I was, I was, I had a
completely like, I think,totally biased impression of
what it was.
So if you can explain what thatis, that was fascinating.
SPEAKER_01 (40:56):
Yeah, yeah.
I think I think for like a lotof people, the fatwa has taken
on this specter of like a papalbull, you know, like the like a
the divine command from like therepresentative God on earth, uh,
binding on all people of thisfaith.
That's not what fatwa means.
Fatwa is a juridical opinion.
(41:16):
It's the opinion of a singleIslamic cleric.
Um, and it has absolutely nobinding authority on anyone
except the the individualfollowers of that particular
cleric.
I think people, some people whomight be more familiar with
Judaism might understand howauthority in Islam works, right?
(41:39):
As with Judaism, there is notemple, there's no priesthood,
right?
There's no there's no JewishPope, right?
It's just learned, mostly men,uh uh of authority who use their
learning to make uh declarativejudgments about how to live as a
(42:01):
Jew.
And then you as a Jew can eitherchoose to follow those judgments
or not.
There's no enforcement mechanismfor that.
And that's the same is true withthe fatwa.
These are just individualclerics, they have an opinion,
and then they release thoseopinions in a fat uh in the form
of a fatwa.
SPEAKER_00 (42:22):
Because I grew up in the era of you know, Salman
Rushdis, satanic verses, and andI always thought that fatwa was
like a was like a there's abounty on your head.
Yeah.
Kind of thing, you know, andthen I I yeah, go go ahead.
SPEAKER_01 (42:38):
No, I was just gonna say it so in that case, of
course, that fatwa came from theAyatollah Khomeini.
Right.
Who, you know, again, there arethere are clerics and there are
clerics, right?
Right.
One cleric has 50 milliondollars.
Heavy duty cleric.
Yeah.
Yeah.
One cleric has five millionfollowers, you know.
Right.
Um and so yeah, that the specterof that fatwa, I think the
(43:00):
reason it got the attention thatit got is because of who issued
it.
But you know, the thing aboutfatwas is that everyone's got a
dozen fatwas, you know, like yougive me a fatwa on any subject,
literally any subject, give me24 hours, I'll find you a fatwa
that argues the exact oppositeof that subject.
(43:21):
That's how it goes, you know.
SPEAKER_00 (43:24):
It it's interesting.
I interviewed a surgeon who's aworldwide leader in in
transplant from animals tohumans, uh, heart transplants.
And so the animal that is is uheasiest to grow the heart and to
match the human chest cavity andto genetically modify the heart
(43:47):
is a pig.
And of course, he's Muslim anduh uh grew up in Pakistan, and
so he we talked about this wholelike wrestling with that, you
know, like could he even touchthe pig and the whole thing?
And so he said, yeah, and I wentto a cleric and I got a I he
issued a ruling is the way heput it to me, and I thought
(44:08):
that's a fun one.
And so that that must be whatthat what that was.
So I think this this idea oflike these competing opinions,
right?
Like give me 24 hours and I'llfind a separate opposing
viewpoint on something, like Ijust it's fascinating to me.
And then you as a as someonewho's just learning about this,
(44:31):
I say, well, so how does what isthat what does that say about
the future of Islam?
SPEAKER_01 (44:38):
That's a great question.
Because it used to be that ifyou wanted a fatwa, that guy,
let's let's talk about your youryour physician.
unknown (44:49):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (44:49):
She needs a fatwa.
She needs a cleric to tell himwhether he can or cannot do what
he's doing.
So he goes to his mosque or hegoes to, you know, maybe he goes
to some great, you know, uhcleric with, you know, dozens of
years of learning.
Maybe he goes all the way toEgypt and goes to Al-Azhar, the
the oldest university in theworld, one the sort of one of
(45:12):
these eminent institutions ofIslam.
And uh he finds a cleric, andthe cleric says, uh, yes, you
can you can get a pig's heart uhif you're a Muslim and that's
okay, and here is my fatwa.
Great.
Nowadays, you don't even need todo that.
(45:32):
Why would you go all the way toEgypt when you can just go to
fatwaonline.com and just go tothey have a fatwa database of
tens of thousands of fatwas.
You know, go to the searchengine and punch in a pig heart
transplant.
And you're gonna get 14 fatwas.
(45:54):
Seven of them are gonna say it'sokay.
Seven of them are gonna say it'snot okay.
Pick the one you like.
It this is what is happeningright now in the world.
And so you're right to sort ofrecognize that and think to
yourself, holy cow, well thenwhat comes next?
(46:16):
And it's hard to say.
But what is important to note isthat this isn't new, this is how
it's always been.
It's just that now the access isso much easier for anyone.
Um, and you can kind of pick andchoose.
(46:38):
You know, in the old days, youknow, you you'd go to your
mosque and the and the fatwa theguy would issue a fatwa saying,
no, you're not allowed to use uhpig heart, and then you would
just be like, okay, I'm gonna goto a different mosque, and you
go to a different mosque, andthat guy would say it's okay.
But now, again, what do you needthe mosque for?
You have if you all you need isan internet connection.
SPEAKER_00 (47:00):
Does this level the playing field for for women, for
example?
Perhaps you know, people whoweren't sitting in those circles
of white-haired men with beards.
SPEAKER_01 (47:10):
Yes.
Indeed, what we have been seeingover the last three or four
decades is this newly muscularuh Islamic feminism that is no
longer just simply about tryingto create a, let's say, excuse
me, a feminist interpretation ofIslam.
(47:34):
It's instead seizing the powerthat men have monopolized to
define the religion for you knowcenturies, and seizing that
power for themselves anddeclaring themselves imams.
Uh, and indeed the sort offemale imam uh this this kind of
(47:56):
movement that we're seeing allover the world, you know, not
just in the in the US and NorthAmerica and in Europe, but in
Indonesia, in Malaysia, andPakistan, and India, and these
sort of very traditionallyMuslim uh countries is
extraordinary.
It's I think probably the mostexciting movement taking place
(48:18):
within Islam is the this newsource of authority that is uh
fully female, right?
Women who are being trained bywomen, who are training other
women, who are issuing fatwasfocused solely on issues
(48:39):
concerning women instead ofrelying on centuries of
male-dominated interpretations.
SPEAKER_00 (48:46):
Yeah, it's that's a fascinating thing to think
about.
The future is going to be umwell, it's still being written
every day.
SPEAKER_01 (48:52):
Yeah, and to just connect it to what we were just
saying five minutes ago.
So imagine this, okay?
So you are a 19-year-old uhMuslim woman in Egypt, in in
Cairo.
And maybe you don't have accessto a female imam.
You don't know one.
There's no one around you,right?
Uh it's a very male-dominatedsociety.
(49:14):
So what?
Again, get online.
Go online.
15 female uh imams in New Yorkthat you have access to, and
they can be your spiritualsource of authority.
And that's brand new.
That is absolutely brand new.
SPEAKER_00 (49:30):
It's just, it's yeah, it's just flattened
everything and cut down thosethose those barriers.
It's that's really interesting.
Um, you've been very generouswith your time, and I'm I do
have an eye on the clock, but Iwanted to see.
I have one more question foryou.
But before we get there, isthere anything that I have not
mentioned about about your aboutyour book, about uh your other
(49:51):
work, uh, where people can findyou uh that you'd like to
mention?
SPEAKER_01 (49:56):
No, I've uh I've the three years ago deleted all of
my social media and have neverbeen happier.
So I'm I'm unreachable in thatregard.
But you know, obviously you cango to rezaaslan.com and and get
in touch with me.
Uh no problem at all.
SPEAKER_00 (50:14):
And and you've you know you've written widely, and
so folks can you know checkcheck out your presence online
with that.
Um and by the book, uh it'sfascinating if you have not yet
read it.
Um I did have a final questionfor you.
Um it's a hypothetical.
(50:35):
Um, but if you had the power orthe ability or the resources,
whatever, to design uh andpublish a um a billboard on the
side of the freeway.
Um and folks are gonna read itgoing by at 70 miles an hour, or
depending on where you live,they might be going by at seven
(50:56):
miles an hour if you're aSouthern California person.
Um what does your billboard sayto the world about what you find
to be important?
SPEAKER_01 (51:07):
Well, that's a really, really good question.
Um I don't know, I don't knowhow well this would fit on a
billboard, but it would besomething along the lines of
stop confusing yourself for God.
God doesn't root for yourfootball team.
God doesn't hate what you hate.
God doesn't love what you love.
(51:28):
You're talking about yourself.
You're not talking about God.
God, if God exists, is about asfar from you and your
personality and characteristicsand interests and concerns as it
possi as it could possibly get.
And you know what?
That's a good thing.
Maybe that billboard would workin Los Angeles because there's,
(51:50):
you know, we're all driving atlike three miles an hour.
SPEAKER_00 (51:53):
That's right.
That's a i you just describedseveral billboards, so we're
gonna have to have a serialbillboard, but but um thank you
so much for that.
I think that's a a fitting codafor today's conversation.
Um, it's been a real honorchatting with you and um and
congratulations again on on thesuccess of your work and having
(52:13):
it, as you say, uh endure andgain new life after two decades,
which is really any author'sbest hope and dream, really.
Thank you, David.
It was a real pleasure being onthe show.
Thanks for joining us on theHangout Podcast.
You can send us an email atpodcastinfo at proton.me.
(52:36):
Many thanks to my daughter Mayafor editing this episode.
I'd also like to underline thatthis podcast is entirely
separate from my day job.
And as such, all opinionsexpressed herein are mine and
mine alone.
Thanks for coming on in andhanging out.
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by Audiochuck Media Company.
The Brothers Ortiz
The Brothers Ortiz is the story of two brothers–both successful, but in very different ways. Gabe Ortiz becomes a third-highest ranking officer in all of Texas while his younger brother Larry climbs the ranks in Puro Tango Blast, a notorious Texas Prison gang. Gabe doesn’t know all the details of his brother’s nefarious dealings, and he’s made a point not to ask, to protect their relationship. But when Larry is murdered during a home invasion in a rented beach house, Gabe has no choice but to look into what happened that night. To solve Larry’s murder, Gabe, and the whole Ortiz family, must ask each other tough questions.