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Reza Aslan
Reza Aslan
Born	1972 (age 36–37) Tehran, Tehran Province, Iran
Occupation	Writer, Scholar
Nationality	American

Reza Aslan (Persian: رضا اصلان , born 1972 in Tehran, Iran), ^[1][2] is an Iranian-American writer.^[2][3]

Dr. Reza Aslan is an internationally acclaimed writer, a scholar of religions, Professor at the University of California, Riverside, a Shia Muslim, and a contributing editor for The Daily Beast.

His books include No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam (published 2005) and How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization and the End of the War on Terror (published 2009).

Contents 1 Background 1.1 Currently 2 Written and spoken works 2.1 Other publications 3 Educational background 4 Quotes 5 Works 6 See also 7 References 8 External links 8.1 Video and Audio

[edit] Background

Aslan has been both Visiting Assistant Professor of Islamic and Middle East Studies at the University of Iowa and the Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Aslan has written for numerous newspapers and periodicals including Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Slate, Boston Globe, the Washington Post, the Guardian, Chicago Tribune, the Nation, and others.

He has also appeared on several TV programs, including The Rachel Maddow Show, Meet the Press, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, Anderson Cooper 360°, Hardball, Nightline, Real Time with Bill Maher and Fareed Zakaria GPS.

He has served as a legislative assistant for the Friends' Committee on National Legislation in Washington D.C., and was elected president of Harvard's Chapter of the World Conference on Religion and Peace, a United Nations Organization committed to solving religious conflicts throughout the world. He is a member of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities and serves on advisory boards of both the Council of Foreign Relations and the Ploughshares Fund, which distributes grants to further peace and diplomacy throughout the world.

Aslan also taught courses during the early 1990s at De La Salle High School located in Concord, California.

He moved to the United States in 1979, during the Iranian Revolution^[1] and currently lives in Santa Monica, California.

His aunt is Iranian singer Leila Forouhar.^[4]

[edit] Currently

Aslan is an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside. In addition, he is a Research Associate at the University of Southern California's Center on Public Diplomacy in Santa Monica.

He has, with Amanda Fortini, founded Detox Films, a production company founded with a number of television and film projects in pre-production.

He is writing a historical novel set a thousand years ago, about a caravan traveling from the Arabian peninsula to India, but the date of publication is unknown at this time. ^[5]

[edit] Written and spoken works

His first book, No god but God, (Random House, 2005), has been translated into thirteen languages, was short-listed for the Guardian (UK) First Book Award, and nominated for a PEN USA award for research Non-Fiction. ^[2]

His next book, How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror, was released by Random House on April 21, 2009. During an interview by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show on April 20, 2009 to promote the book, he discussed as its themes the intrinsic irrationality of fundamentalist Islamic objectives, the dangers posed by the lack of understanding of Jihadists by the American military and Christian evangelical movement, and the utility of free elections and participatory democracy in containing the spread of Jihadist movements (a goal for which he complimented George W. Bush).

As well as writing books, Aslan has written numerous articles ^[6], commentaries (for radio and newspapers) ^[7], book reviews ^[8] internationally.

He has also appeared on the radio ^[9] and television ^[10] and has appeared numerous times in documentaries on Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. ^[11]

He tours the world giving talks ^[12], and has written many press articles. ^[13]

[edit] Other publications

• 'The Struggle for Islam's Soul', essay in With All Our Might: A Progressive Strategy for Defeating Jihadism and Defending Liberty, Will Marshall, ed. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006
• 'From Here to Mullahcracy', essay in My Sister, Guard Your Veil; My Brother, Guard Your Eyes: Uncensored Iranian Voices, Lila Azam Zanganeh, ed. Beacon Press, 2006

[edit] Educational background

Reza Aslan has a BA in Religion from Santa Clara University, a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School, and a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction from the University of Iowa. He is currently a Doctoral Candidate in Sociology of Religions at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

[edit] Quotes

• "I believe we are living in the time of the Islamic reformation. In fact, I think we are living in the twilight of that reformation. For me, the word reform is defined by its inevitability. This process cannot be stopped; it can be slowed down for a time but reform is inevitable. It's an historic reformation taking place within Islam — it's adapting itself to the realities of the world around it. I think we'll see the same process we saw in the Christian reformation from doctrinal absolutism to doctrinal relativism; toward a truly indigenous Islamic enlightenment. And it's up to us as Muslims in the US to give voice to that for our brothers and sisters who don't have the voice or the same ability to speak out as we do."^[14]

• "It is pluralism—the peaceful coexistence and legal equality between different ethnic, religious or political ideologies—that defines democracy, not secularism."^[15]

• "The veil is seen as a symbol of Islam but like all symbols, it's meaningless unless interpreted. The veil is as much a symbol of oppression of women as it is an expression of Muslim femininity. The strangeness of this is that if you go to a country where the veil is either mandatory or there is a lot of pressure to wear it, you'll find the vast majority of women are against it. But, if you go to a country like Turkey where the veil is outlawed in much of the public realm — in the latest polls, 70 percent of the Muslim women want to remove that law."^[14]

• "Iraq should look to Israel for a model that combines democracy and religious belief."^[16]

• "Despite the apartheid state that has resulted from over half a century of bloody territorial conflicts with its neighboring Palestinian territories, few would deny that the state of Israel is a democracy. At the same time, Israel is a country founded upon an exclusivist Jewish moral framework, which offers all the world's Jews — regardless of their nationality — immediate citizenship, providing them with a host of benefits and privileges over its non-Jewish citizens. It is a country in which the Orthodox rabbinical courts have jurisdiction over all matters relating to Judaism (including who is a Jew); where religious schools (yeshivas) are subsidized by the state, and marriages are religious, rather than civil affairs (meaning no official will marry a Jew to a non-Jew); and the government is dominated by religious parties such as the ultra-Orthodox Shas, the Yahadut Hatorah, and of course the ruling Likud. In short, Israel is, in every sense of the term, a Jewish democracy. However, don't ask anything about your rights if you're an Arab citizen of Israel."^[16]

• "If we don't figure out a way to strip these conflicts of their religious connotations, then we will never figure out a way to put an end to them. Because as long as these remain cosmic conflicts, they will go on for eternity."^[17]

• "A lot of scholars, myself included, believe the future of Islam, especially Islamic democracy, rests in the Shia world. It’s Iran and Iraq where the most exciting experiments are being carried out."^[5]

[edit] Works

• No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam (Random House, 2005)
• How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror (Random House, 2009)

[edit] See also

• List of Islamic scholars

[edit] References

This article needs references that appear in reliable third-party publications. Primary sources or sources affiliated with the subject are generally not sufficient for a Wikipedia article. Please add more appropriate citations from reliable sources. (November 2007)

[edit] External links

• Reza Aslan's Website
• at Levantine Cultural Center
• Interview with Reza Aslan from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Reza Aslan's Intellectual Groupie's on Livejournal
• Reza Aslan's Intellectual Groupie Fan site on MySpace
• His biography
• The Islamic reformation Reza Aslan speaks with Madrid11.net
• LA Weekly Interview
• Reza Aslan Interview with Islamica Magazine
• Aslan's articles in the Public Diplomacy Blog

[edit] Video and Audio

• Reza Aslan is a keynote speaker in the upcoming conference December 4-6, 2009 Los Angles, USC CA
• Reza Aslan interviewed by Bree Walker March 30, 2008
• Reza Aslan talks about The Future of U.S./Iran Relations (video)
• Reza Aslan in Conversation with Jack Miles (video)
• Reza Aslan vs. Sam Harris Debate
• Video debates featuring Aslan on Bloggingheads.tv
• Raza's talk, "How to Get Out of the Cosmic War in the Middle East."
• Reza talks to Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks.