Reza Aslan: When the Personal Seeps into the Professional

This past July, a clip from FOX News circulated the Internet, dubbed as perhaps “the most embarrassing interview FOX News has ever done”.  Reza Aslan, a well-known and published religious scholar, was featured for an interview with anchor Lauren Green to discuss his new book titled Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. Aslan’s qualifications that he lists on his personal website include:

...a Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies (New Testament; minor in Greek) from Santa Clara University, a Master of Theological Studies (History of Religions) from Harvard University, 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's first book is the International Bestseller, No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, which has been translated into thirteen languages, and named one of the 100 most important books of the last decade. He is also the author of How to Win a Cosmic War (published in paperback as Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in a Globalized Age), 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.

Green introduces Aslan as a "Christian who converted back to the religion of his forefathers, Islam”, and then jumps into a series of question that all fall under a single premise: that Aslan has little credibility to write a book about Christianity because he practices Islam as a personal religion. Aslan responds to her by clarifying that he is an accomplished and revered scholar in religions, with four degrees to qualify his credibility to write a book about the life of Jesus.  His response was: "To be clear, I am a scholar of religions with four degrees including one in the New Testament and fluency in Biblical Greek who has been studying the origins of Christianity for two decades who also just happens to be a Muslim, so it's not that I'm just some Muslim writing about Jesus. I am an expert with a PhD in the history of religions".  Aslan also notes that both his wife and mother are Christians, and his brother-in-law is an Evangelical pastor, to clarify that he does not have bias or intentions to attack Christianity in his book. The public was outraged at the anchor's questioning and the fact that she spent the entire interview attacking Aslan's credentials rather than discussing his book's material.  Zealot soon topped Amazon's Bestseller List.   
                                       

Green's interview with Aslan brings up a fundamental question about intellectualism and who the profession is reserved to. Does religion automatically disqualify an individual from knowledgeably preaching about an issue or proposing political ideas? Some may ask how this is this possible when the foundations of this country were built by those with strong religious ideals.  Is there a fundamental element that religious individuals lack, or rather possess, that changes the public's perception of their credibility?  A potential reason for this conception is that some do not think of the religious as intellectually advanced, or that religion compromises the ability to think analytically. In a recent academic review of studies performed throughout history, it was concluded that religiosity and intelligence are negatively correlated:

The review, which is the first systematic meta-analysis of the 63 studies conducted in between 1928 and 2012, showed that of the 63 studies, 53 showed a negative correlation between intelligence and religiosity, while 10 showed a positive one.  Only two studies showed significant positive correlations and significant negative correlations were seen in a total of 35 studies.  

The authors of the review looked at each study independently, taking into account the quality of data collection, the size of the sample and the analysis methods used.  The three psychologists carrying out the review defined intelligence as  the “ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly, and learn from experience”.

Religiosity is defined by the psychologists as involvement in some (or all) facets of religion.... The paper concludes that: "Most extant explanations (of a negative relation) share one central theme —the premise that religious beliefs are irrational, not anchored in science, not testable and, therefore, unappealing to intelligent people who 'know better'."

The essence of this study aims to prove the common belief that religion is not based on reason, and those who continue to hold religious beliefs cannot simultaneously attempt to bring forth advanced or rational theories in other fields.  But how far can this be taken? Are religious individuals incapable of intellectualism in every aspect? What about scholars like Aslan, who write about religion while practicing their own religion? Having this in mind, an analysis of Aslan's life and profession can allow us to determine whether or not Aslan is qualified to write intelligibly about the life of Jesus in Zealot.

Aslan was born in Tehran, Iran and came to the United States at the age of 7 in 1979, when the Iranian Revolution was taking place.  He grew up in the Bay Area of California.  When he was 15, he converted to Evangelical Christianity, and as he explains on The Daily Show with John Oliver, he was very passionate and committed to his religion. In an excerpt from Zealot, Aslan shares the draw he felt to Jesus, after coming from  a family of "lukewarm Muslims" who had recently escaped an Islamic Resolution:

After the Iranian revolution forced my family to flee our home, religion in general, and Islam in particular, became taboo in our household. Islam was shorthand for everything we had lost to the mullahs who now ruled Iran.  My mother still prayed when no one was looking, and you could still find a stray Quran or two hidden in a closet or a drawer somewhere. But, for the most part, our lives were scrubbed of all trace of God. That was just fine with me. After all, in the America of the 1980s, being Muslim was like being from Mars. My faith was a bruise, the most obvious symbol of my otherness; it needed to be concealed. Jesus, on the other hand, was America. He was the central figure in America’s national drama. Accepting him into my heart was as close as I could get to feeling truly American. I do not mean to say that mine was a conversion of convenience. On the contrary, I burned with absolute devotion to my newfound faith. I was presented with a Jesus who was less “Lord and Savior” than he was a best friend, someone with whom I could have a deep and personal relationship. As a teenager trying to make sense of an indeterminate world I had only just become aware of, this was an invitation I could not refuse.

Aslan also later explains as to why he reverted to Islam after his Christian experience:

I’m a Muslim not because I believe Islam is more correct than other religions, or that it’s more “true.” On the contrary! I’m a Muslim because the symbols and metaphors that Islam uses to talk about God and humanity, the relationship between creator and creation, are the symbols and metaphors that work best for me. That makes sense to me. They are not more valid, or more true, than the symbols of Judaism, or Christianity, say, but they just make more sense to me.

Aside from Aslan's personal transitions to and from Christianity, he has taken a close look at the life of Jesus as a man rather than Jesus as a religious founder. In Zealot, he explores Jesus in an unconventional way, with a historic focus rather than a religious one. Aslan depicts Jesus as a passionate political actor.  While some Christian followers seem to be outraged at this new Jesus that Aslan is presenting and consider the book an attack on the religion, much of what Aslan says in his book is actually supported by many scholars, as he mentions in his interview with Green. However, much about the book is also contentious and has been red-flagged by other religious scholars. It has been said that Aslan makes sweeping assumptions and is careless with his words and implications. Greg Carey, a professor of the New Testament, shares in his Huffington Post piece:

...I have some serious reservations about Aslan's portrait of Jesus, and I suspect that most professional biblical scholars will share some of them. First, the book contains some outright glitches, things a professional scholar would be unlikely to say. Aslan suggests there were "countless" revolutionary prophets and would-be messiahs in Jesus' day. Several did appear, but "countless" is a bit much. Aslan assumes near-universal illiteracy in Jesus' society, an issue that remains unsettled and hotly contested among specialists. At one point Aslan says it would seem "unthinkable" for an adult Jewish man not to marry. He does mention celibate Jews like the Essenes, but he seems unaware that women were simply scarce in the ancient world. Lots of low-status men lacked the opportunity to marry. Aslan assumes Jesus lived and worked in Sepphoris, a significant city near Nazareth. This is possible, but we lack evidence to confirm it.

With regards to Zealot, the bottom line seems to be that while Aslan makes some controversial statements in a controversial field, the dispute among scholars is not about whether or not Aslan had the right or qualifications to write such a book. Dale Martin, a professor of religious studies at Yale, concludes that while Aslan "uncritically accepts [some things] as fact", he is actually "too credulous when reading the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles".   
                                             

Reza Aslan's most famous book is No God But God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam.  In this book, Aslan gives a historical, political and cultural context to the religion of Islam that is not fully align with, and often contradicting, the traditional Muslim perspective. What is most interesting is Aslan's personal experience with Islam and how it gives him some insight into the religion.  While he was born into a Muslim household, he states in an interview on NPR that his father was disillusioned with Islam after the Islamic Revolution in Iran, which is a common sentiment of many Iranian immigrants in the United States. However interestingly enough, Aslan has not only returned to Islam but also writes to explain, or perhaps in a way defend, Islam as compared to how the religion is perceived by most of the non-Muslim world.  For example, as Aslan also discusses in the interview, the supposed mandated veil that many Muslim women wear has no explicit presence in the Qur'an, and the garment was actually originally introduced as more of a cultural and social element than a religious one. The book was widely praised and minimally criticized as compared to the response Zealot received. Maybe because this time Aslan is a Muslim writing about Islam, and therefore he is more trusted to talk about his "own" subject area. 

A few days after the interview with Green, Aslan appeared on Piers Morgan and stated that he "completely understands where Lauren Green comes from" and that he "kind of feels bad for her". Aslan seems to understand how the concept of a Muslim introducing something unfamiliar to many about Jesus is uncomfortable for many Americans. Then again, it is interesting how questions of Aslan's qualifications only come up after he publishes his first book relating to Christianity.   

My first time meeting Aslan at a panel discussion at USC