Islamic Identity | Reza Aslan | Big Think

Islamic Identity

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Islam accepts all other religions, and sees, for example, the Bible, the Torah, and the Koran as all being part of one huge book.

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Reza Aslan:

Reza Aslan is an internationally renowned writer, commentator, professor, producer, and scholar of religions. His books, including his #1 New York Times Bestseller, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, have been translated into dozens of languages around the world. He is also a recipient of the prestigious James Joyce Award. His newest book God: A Human History (2017) is out now.

Aslan’s first book, International Bestseller No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, has been translated into seventeen languages, and was named one of the 100 most important books of the last decade by Blackwell Publishers. He is also the author of Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in a Globalized Age (originally titled How to Win a Cosmic War), as well as editor of two volumes: Tablet and Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East, and Muslims and Jews in America: Commonalties, Contentions, and Complexities.

In 2006, Aslan co-founded BoomGen Studios—the premiere entertainment brand for creative content from and about the Middle East—which has provided an array of targeted services ranging from strategic messaging to grassroots marketing to publicity and social media outreach, to producers, studios, and filmmakers—including Jon Stewart’s Rosewater, Netflix’s The Square, Disney’s Aladdin on Broadway and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, The Weinstein Company’s Miral, Discovery and TLC’s All American Muslim, and National Geographic’s Amreeka.

Aslan’s degrees include a Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies from Santa Clara University (Major focus: New Testament; Minor: Greek), a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard University (Major focus: History of Religions), a PhD in the Sociology of Religions from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa, where he was named the Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction.

Aslan is a tenured Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside and serves on the board of trustees for the Chicago Theological Seminary and The Yale Humanist Community, which supports atheists, agnostics, and humanists at home and abroad.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Reza Aslan: Islam sees itself very much as part of the long Judeo-Christian, biblical, prophetic tradition with which most Americans are familiar. Muslims accept the Torah and the Hebrew bible in its entirety, as well as the gospels and the rest of the New Testament, as part of the self-revelation of God that comes from Adam, the first man, and according to Islam, the first prophet to Muhammad, the seal of the prophets. They see this as one, long narrative – a master narrative – in which the revelation of God, the self-communication of God, is passed down through the prophetic consciousness of one prophet after another, after another, after another. And in fact, Islam takes this one step further and talks the concept called the Umm al-Kitab, the mother of books. This notion that exists in the Koran that all revealed scriptures – whether they be the Hebrew bible, or the New Testament, or whether they be the Bagadavita, or the Upanishads or the ___________ – all revealed scriptures are essentially derived from a singled source in heaven called the mother of books. And that God’s self-communication has been passed down to humanity not in its entirety, but in pieces. And as the Koran says “deliberately so” for God could have as the Koran says “created one nation, one book and one prophet”; but He chose instead to create many nations, and many books, and many laws, and many prophets, “so that,” the Koran says, “the nations may know one another.” So there is this concept within Islam that all religions are inextricably linked to each other through this passing on of a prophetic consciousness. I think, to me, that’s a really beautiful way of thinking about religion. Now of course Muslims believe that comes to an end at the prophet Muhammad, but I think an argument could be made that the revelation of God did not stop with the prophets’ last breath. That God is ever-present and eternal, and that the human societies, the human nations that He made are in a constant state of evolution. They did not come to a stop 14 centuries ago.

Recorded on:7/5/07