The Hangout with David Sciarretta
Conversations with interesting people.
The Hangout with David Sciarretta
#110: Dr. Reza Aslan on the 20th Anniversary of his bestseller “No God But God”
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.
Welcome to the Hang Out Podcast. I'm your host, David Sheretta. Come on in and hang out. In this episode, I was privileged to have a conversation with internationally acclaimed author and scholar, Dr. Reisa Aslan. Dr. Aslan wrote No God But God, The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam 20 years ago. He also wrote Zealot, The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, God of Human History, and an American Martyr in Persia. This conversation is wide-ranging. We had a fascinating exploration about what happens when a scholar writes a best-selling book, what that does to a career in academia. Spoiler alert, it's not great for that career. We talked about what is happening with the impact of the Internet on Islam worldwide in terms of the flattening and the democratization of the religion and edicts and fatwas and much, much more. I was fascinated by our conversation, and I hope you are as well. Welcome, Dr. Oslan. Thank you so much for joining us for this conversation today.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, thanks for having me, David. It's great to be here.
SPEAKER_00:I I thought we could get started with the most logical place to start, which is with your origin story, uh where you come from and what are the currents in your life that bring you to this to this moment, and then we'll dive into your writing.
SPEAKER_01:Sure. I was born in Iran. Um my family uh fled the Iranian Revolution in 1979. So I was about seven years old at the time. Um and, you know, looking back on that, it was a pretty formative experience for me. I have a fairly clear memory of the two years or so during which that revolution took place and was really aware of what was going on, what the stakes were for this revolution, which has been, I think, mischaracterized for much of the last 40 years as a quote-unquote Islamic revolution, uh, but which was anything but that. It was an anti-imperialist revolution that brought every sector of Iranian society together. Um, my father, who was a communist and an ardent uh atheist who had a very healthy dislike of anything religious, uh, kind of saw the writing on the wall in the post-revolutionary chaos and thought that it might be a good idea to get out for a bit until things settled down. Um so we came to the US. Things obviously didn't settle down in Iran, so we ended up just staying here. Um, but I think that experience gave me a real fascination with religion and the way that religion can transform a society for good and for bad. And so I think growing up, even though I didn't come from a religious family at all, I mean, I think we were sort of, you know, culturally Muslim the way so many people are culturally religious, until we came to the U.S. And then that became the excuse to just kind of strip ourselves of any kind of uh religiosity. But I had always been really fascinated by it, by myth and by origin stories and by religious phenomenon and spirituality. Um in high school, I I went to an evangelical youth camp and heard the gospel story for the first time. That was kind of the, I'd say, the second formative experience of my life, um, and converted to this 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 for me to be confronted with the fact that almost everything I understood, not just about Christianity, but about religion, um, was wrong. And that was, I'd say, the third formative uh experience of my life. And um and I became even more fascinated by ideas of belief, an identity, and decided that I was just gonna dedicate my life to these concepts. Um and uh, you know, it's been a it's been a fun, crazy, somewhat tumultuous journey ever since.
SPEAKER_00:You know what thank you for sharing that. I I in doing a little bit of research on your life, I had learned about the uh Islam, Christianity, Islam from a from a religious scholarship standpoint, kind of um I don't know if I want to call it flip-flop because that's not the right word, but it's a different different signposts in your life, different transitions. Um I just was curious, like, is it did you see those as being so opposite, or was it like uh adjustments of a few degrees on on the ship, like from what you grew up with to the then the Christianity to where you are now?
SPEAKER_01:That's a really good question. And I guess I guess the answer is yes and no. So yes, in the sense that what evangelical Christianity brought to me was this the idea of of spirituality and spiritual edification, right? This constant notion of um striving for a personal relationship with God. And that was something that didn't really exist in the Islam that I grew up with. Um and then the flip side of that, however, is that the heart of Christianity is this idea that the God of heaven and earth uh is just a man and a man who lived in a particular time and space. And there's this kind of overfamiliarity in in evangelical Christianity. You know, the God of heaven and earth, the creator of the universe is your buddy, is your friend. You know, you can pal around with him. And honestly, that it never worked for me. I don't know what it was. Maybe it was my childhood, you know, Jungian uh experience of thinking about God as holy other, 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 was a big part of I think why it never stuck, why evangelical Christianity never stuck. Indeed, uh what I never what I rarely talk about is that there was a bridge between evangelical Christianity and me returning to a particular mystical brand of Islam. And that bridge was Catholicism. I went to a uh a Jesuit university, and for the first time in my life, I experienced a different kind of Christianity, a Christianity in which God isn't your buddy, a Christianity in which awe is at the center of the experience of the divine. And that felt much more comfortable and real to me. And then fundamentally, I think the the return to Islam had a lot to do with the metaphor at the heart of Christianity, which is God, if you want to understand the greatest mystery in the universe, it's pretty easy. Just think about the most perfect man you can think of, and that's God. And um, that's not the metaphor that really hit me. Um, the metaphor that hit me was one that was offered to me by Sufi Islam. And the metaphor is the concept of oneness, the idea that God is about as unlike human beings as it possibly gets, right? That whatever else God is, he is utterly unhuman-like. Um and indeed he is not even, he doesn't have a body, he doesn't have a personality, he doesn't have 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, which metaphor hits you more? And that's the metaphor that I always kind of gravitated towards.
SPEAKER_00:I I'd imagine there were some interesting family conversations between you and and your folks, right? Uh uh immigrant, immigrant family and a new country, um, uh societal pressures, societal perhaps discrimination or misunderstandings. I mean, that must have been interesting.
SPEAKER_01: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 the Iran hostage crisis. So there was an enormous amount of anti-Iranian and anti-Muslim sentiment. And, you know, we were more than happy to just kind of hide our identity as either of those things. Right. It's funny, it's people always ask, oh, you know, were your parents upset that you when you converted to Christianity? Um yes, but not for the reasons that you think. My father was upset at me, not because I had abandoned, you know, the religion of my forefathers for a different religion. He was upset at me because I was religious. That any religion, as far as he was concerned, was problematic. Um and and then when I said that I was gonna, you know, basically study this as a as a living, I think there was a lot of confusion about that as a as a path. Um, but it's worked out okay. They've they've they've gotten they've gotten used to the idea.
SPEAKER_00:So his reaction was more almost just a almost a I don't know if I want to call it a political reaction, but a reaction to what he was leaving behind in Iran, right? With a with a uh an ultra-conservative um regime having taken over.
SPEAKER_01:And indeed, I remember that what he said, it was something along the lines of, we came here so you wouldn't have to be religious. And you know, I think it was hard for him to understand that. No, actually, I'm I'm choosing this. This is uh no one's forcing this upon me. I'm choosing it. Um and I think he, you know, the the world that he grew up in, that was this strange idea.
SPEAKER_00:Right. There were there was no separation of church and state.
unknown:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:In the world he grew up in, at least on some level, probably, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I mean it's a it's a little bit different. I think I think this is, you know, one of the probably the biggest misconceptions of um Islam or even sort of Muslim majority states. And you hear it a lot from Americans that uh the problem with you know these sort of Muslim-majority countries is that there's no separation of quote, mosque and state. And what's funny about that statement is while it while it's true of, say, you know, Saudi Arabia or Iran post-revolution, it certainly wasn't true Iran pre-revolution. On the contrary, like the idea of public displays of religion, uh, particularly in politics or activism or or social movements, was violently suppressed. And that's still the case in the majority of Muslim, you know, majority states. You know where there isn't a separation of church and state? In America. That's where there isn't a separation of church and state. We literally, you know, I mean, yes, we're supposed to, we have this anti-establishment law that says, well, uh, your taxes can't go to support any church. But the truth is, because no religion pays any taxes, our taxes go to pay for every religion in the United States. Uh in the United States, it's inconceivable to run for high office, certainly for president, if you cannot speak the language of religion, even if you are the most irreligious human being on earth, like the current president. Um, whereas in, say, Egypt, if you are running for office and you start putting your arguments in terms of the Quran, you're never heard from again. That's the last time anyone sees you. So Interesting, you know, this this idea is a little bit more complicated than I think sometimes it gets.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And I it and now that you you said it in those terms, you know, in my in my world as a school leader, we're in a charter school leader, we saw a vote of the sub actually, it wasn't a they they never voted. The Supreme Court uh split on uh let's see, did they vote or not? They did, but they they one member um recused herself because of a conflict of interest, but they were one vote away from approving a Catholic charter school uh somewhere in the South this past this past um year. And so, you know, this had been appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court, and and I was watching the case and thinking, wow, if Coney Barrett, Justice Coney Barrett doesn't have that conflict of interest, it might have gone 5'4 and and the Supreme Court has endorsed public monies for uh for a religious charter school. So that's right. I stand corrected on my on that on that part of it. Um let's dive into your to the 20th anniversary uh of of your uh seminal work. Um well, why don't you just kind of set the stage for the writing of No God But God? I really I really was reflecting on like how the world was 20 years ago.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Uh interesting time to interesting time to dive into uh the topic. And uh so why don't you set the stage for how this idea came about and what the writing was like and what the what the reach of the book has been in the ensuing 20 years.
SPEAKER_01:It's funny. It I mean, you know, look, there's uh this anniversary of uh Nogaba God has brought up a whole 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 no connection whatsoever to 9-11. Like it's they read about 9-11 the way that like you and I read about Pearl Harbor. It's kind of an interesting turning point in history, you know. Um But I mean, you remember and I remember like it was it was apocalyptic. Like I thought this was, you know, uh the end of everything. Um and obviously, you know, there was, as we all remember, this incredible amount of not just demonization, but sort of misinformation and mischaracterization about Islam as a religion, and sort of going along the lines of what we were talking about with regard to the idea of the separation of church and state, a real kind of doubling down on Americans at a very confusing time, even pre-9-11, figuring out that, oh, we could actually now define ourselves, define what it means to be Americans simply by creating an imaginary opposite, an imaginary negative pole that we can uh define ourselves against. Let's just call it Islam and we'll call ourselves the West, even though those two categories are utterly nonsensical. Like what is the West? That makes no sense whatsoever. If there is a West, guess what religion arose out of the West? Islam. And on the flip side of that, there's no such thing as Islam. Like there's Islam's. This is the second largest religion in the world, nearly two billion adherents. It comes in a thousand flavors. And so the idea that you could call something Western civilization and something else Islamic civilization was both utterly idiotic, and yet it had become foundational to understanding the dawn of the 21st century. And I think that, you know, when I sat down to write this book, that was my principal goal was to shatter that simple dichotomy, the sort of close the clash of civilizations narrative that had completely taken hold on all sides of the political spectrum in the United States. And instead to sort of present this religion, not positively or negatively, but as just a religion. I think that was that was honestly and truly what I think was probably the most revolutionary part about this book and why it became such a global phenomenon, is that the argument of the book is that there's nothing all that unique or extraordinary or different about Islam. It's a religion like any other religion. It's been influenced by uh, you know, 1,500 years of culture and history and and politics and all the other things that that influence the great religions of the 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 written primarily. I mean, I have a very clear memory. Like when I was writing this, it was for non-Muslims. And then what was, I think, surprising about it is how it became a kind of manifesto for Muslims, particularly young Muslims, the so-called kind of, you know, millennial Muslims, you know, Muslims who had never really given their faith and their practice all that much thought, but then were bombarded by these outside noises about what their beliefs are, what they actually believe, both you know, from the the two extremes on either side, and were desperate for someone to just simply say, this is the thing, this is the religion that you believe, and this is where your ideas and your beliefs come from. And so, you know, I that was a real surprise to me, but it's it's been translated into dozens of languages. It's it was a uh you know, bestseller in India and in Pakistan. It's available in Iran. There's you know, Arabic translations of it. So it it it was so it was nothing like I'd I'd anticipated. And it was my first book, and so that was kind of a a new experience for me as well. Um, but you know, I I couldn't be more pleased with it. And then and then the other aspect of it that I thought was really unexpected is the way that it became a kind of guidebook for the American military. That I never thought was.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that. That because I heard that in your introduction to the to the new edition, and I thought, hmm, I'm gonna ask him that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I honestly never in a million years did I did I anticipate that. But I cannot tell you how many vets have come up to me and said, you know, your book was was required reading at West Point. Your book was required reading at the Air Force Academy, you know, like we all had to read it. And uh and it changed everything about the way that I sort of understood the parameters of the conflict and my in my sort of role in it, and as and in diplomatic circles too. So, you know, it's look when you write a book, you're the best case scenario is that it does fairly well. You make a little bit of money, and after a few years, that's it. The book goes away. The idea that a book would remain in print for 20 years is in and of itself kind of a miracle. The idea that it's still selling so much that the publisher wants a new 20th anniversary edition, that is my wildest dreams. I never, never thought that that would that would be a thing.
SPEAKER_00:And just even the idea of I mean, uh writing about religion is not exactly a recipe for you know uh barn burning, you know, uh bestseller sales like you know, right off the bat, right? And so uh I mean it, you know, you think, okay, who's gonna read this? Some scholars, some some uh my my colleagues uh at the different universities, and this thing takes off in a way that you never would have expected. Were there any unexpected negative uh impacts or uh after effects of writing this book? In other words, like did you get a accused of perhaps being the spokesman for, I mean, that's a you know, that's you just put a big load on your shoulders, intentionally or unintentionally, right? Like you said uh going on two billion adherents worldwide. Like, are you you know that's a lot to carry. Talk to us about tell us that's a lot to carry. Tell us about if if you had any kind of pushback that was not positive.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yes, a lot. Look, it turns out that you know, when you write about religion and and politics and the intersection of the two, people tend to take those two things kind of seriously. Who knew?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, look, uh first of all, it's it's interesting that you you talk about scholarship because the biggest pushback and sort of the most negative response was from academia. Um and, you know, now it now I've I've come to understand this and and accept it. And I think any academic who's had any kind of popular success will tell you the same thing that it's the death of your career. Um you would think, you would think publishing a best-selling book would be good for your career. And it turns out no, no, it doesn't. Uh, you know, I'm reminded of um I think it's at it it's usually attributed to Kissinger, but the quote is something along the lines of the politics of academia are so cutthroat because the stakes are so low. Um, so that was that was unusual. That it that this book, in in all seriousness, put an end to my any kind of real academic career that I could have pursued for myself, which is great, which is fine. That was a great reason to step off uh the academic uh cycle. Um and then and then obviously there was the what you would expect, right? The right wing uh and particularly the right wing Christian community uh lambasted the book. It's all a bunch of lies. You're just a propagandist and an apologist. The conservative Muslim uh groups around the world hated the book because, you know, it treats Muhammad like a human being who did human things. You know, it it actually dares to suggest that maybe there's a level of historical context that might go into the interpretation of a religion, which, you know, uh sort in certain uh corners is uh a crazy thing to say. Um but you know, I've had a a very long career writing about religion, and so I've both gotten used to the extreme negative reaction that tends to come from it, and I've also gotten used to the delight that often comes when I hear from non-religious people, especially atheists, uh you know, agnostics, people who have never given religion a second thought, um, who say that, you know, my my books and the way that I write about them in this kind of very reasonable but also um uh compassionate way has made them completely rethink how they view religion and uh religious history and religious people. So, you know, there's good and there's bad, as as you can imagine.
SPEAKER_00:And it's just this reflection about academia where if you write something that's popular and readable and enjoyable and thought-provoking for the the average not person who doesn't have a PhD in the in the topic, like myself, um, that somehow that means that the that the work just isn't isn't a value. That's just such an interesting, interesting thing. Because I had on my note, my notes, ask him how to write about a scholarly topic and make it interesting. Ooh.
SPEAKER_01:And so I love this question. I get it all the time, especially from you know, younger academics, people starting their um, you know, their academic journey. The rest of your listeners may not find this interesting at all, but I love I love answering this question because I actually have the answer, which is it's twofold. Number one, scholarly writing, academic writing, it's all methodology. It's a ha it's like 90% methodology. It's 90%, let me tell you what everybody who has ever thought anything about this topic has to say about it. And then the other 10% is here's my thoughts about it. And popular writing, you just flip that around. 90% is just what you think about it, and 10% is what other people have said about it, and maybe you even save that 10% for the end notes, you know? And then the second uh thing about it is that scholars learn facts, they learn data. And our job is to memorize those facts and that data and to regurgitate them. That's not how normal people learn. That's not how the general public learns. The general public learns through stories. You wrap your facts in storytelling and they absorb those facts better than honestly than many scholars end up doing. So dress your facts in stories and put the methodology in the end of the book. That's the main difference. That's how you do it.
SPEAKER_00:Interesting. So um, yeah, because there's a there's a scene, I think it's at the start of your book where you'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 book at this point, you know? And then I I read your book, but I also listened to it because I on my commutes and I thought, oh my God, I'm getting pulled into this whole thing. And so that's what that's how you kicked it off, right? You kicked it off with a midnight ride and and a quarrel in a in a in an adjoining train car. And uh, and then you got to the the some of the more factual stuff. So I found that so engaging.
SPEAKER_01:That's right. Yes, you know, I'm a scholar of religions. You know, I have all the the whatever the dig academic uh background for all of that. But first and foremost, I'm a storyteller. And I and I take that very seriously. I do a lot of different things, you know, a lot of yeah, wear a lot of hats, but really it's just one hat. Um and that hat is the hat of a storyteller. Because stories aren't just sort of entertaining tales that we tell ourselves. Stories are how we understand who we are, what our role is in an indeterminate world. History is just storytelling. Politics is just storytelling, religion is just storytelling. That's what this is. Um, and I think sometimes the concept of stories becomes devalued and even criticized, but certainly by uh academia. But I think of myself as a storyteller, and the stories that I tell are about the human condition. And some of them are historical and some of them are religious, some of them are political, but fundamentally it's just all story.
SPEAKER_00:What what do you think it's changed in the last two decades about Islam? Uh in other words, your students don't even they were barely born when when when uh 9-11 happened, for example. And so where the world has moved in different ways. Like are the understandings different today than they were then?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and it's certainly true that Islam has, you know, it's no longer on the front pages of the newspapers. It's still there, but it's it's not kind of top of mind um the way that it was for so much of um the 21st century here in the United States. I think what I would say is different now is that kind of Where we began this conversation. The idea that whatever Islam is, it is nothing more than the negative poll for what the West is or what America is. That prevailing sentiment that was so robust, you know, in the early 2000s. I don't see that in Gen Z at all. Regardless of their political persuasion, there's a simplisticness to that idea that is just simply not appealing to this generation anymore. They could be anti-Muslim, they could be very, you know, religious, uh, they could be evangelical, they could see Islam as both, you know, a threat to their way of life and a threat to their faith. But that notion that whatever Islam is, it is quintessentially other. It is that thing which is not us. Um, the the primary uh issue that I was fighting against when I when I wrote this book, that doesn't seem to be a prevailing sentiment any longer. And frankly, that that's kind of a big deal. You know, I always say this that I think sometimes we have this idea that bigotry is the result of ignorance. 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 a people or whatever the case may be, then the answer to that is education. I'll just in give you information and you'll stop being prejudiced. You'll stop being bigoted. But that's not true. Any s any psychologist will tell you that that's not true. Bigotry is not the result of ignorance. Bigotry is the result of fear. And fear is impervious to data. Fear is impervious to information. The only thing that can combat fear is relationships. And I think that however we define Gen Z and all of its problems, the one thing that they understand because they they came into this world that a world that was already deeply interconnected, you know, through internet, social media, and all of that. And so this sort of simplified demonization that comes from fear of the other isn't as prevalent in this generation as it was in, for instance, my generation.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. My generation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And perhaps one manifestation of that, you know, my myself having a a daughter who just graduated from college is really the where you saw the reaction of uh colleges and universities to uh uh Israel-Palestine uh conflict and just the I don't know if the powers that be in the United States or Israel ever anticipated that that was going to be a thing in the US, certainly on university campuses.
SPEAKER_01:Even more fascinating was the response to those protests and sentiments from our generation. Because the response was almost universally, oh, these kids are ignorant. They don't really know the truth about Israel and Palestine. When the reality is, is that it's our generation that doesn't know the truth about Israel and Palestine, because we have been so cloistered that we have spent most of our adult lives uh having this information filtered through gatekeepers who were solely giving us the Israeli narrative. The truth of the matter is that those young people protesting on college campuses, they're the ones who actually know the truth and the facts about what is taking place in Israel-Palestine because they are uh they they're uh they're exposed to it. They're exposed to the reality of it without the media filter, without the media bias, without the political gatekeepers. They don't need those people to tell them what's happening over there. They can access it instantly themselves through internet and social media.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's a fascinating. And I, you know, I have to profess my complete ignorance, at least in terms of or lack of anticipation that that was at all going to be a thing. You know, my my daughters suddenly I started to get recommendations for podcasts from my daughter. Hey, listen to this, listen to that, and I'm following this guy on YouTube. And, you know, as you say, none of it mainstream media, either from the left or the right in the United States. That's right. It was really interesting. Um as I think about and as I reflect back on your book, one of the things that was so fascinating to me that I did not um really know anything about was the impact of the Internet on what you might call kind of the most recent changes, evolutions, whatever you want to call them in Islam. Can you talk about that transition from learned gray-haired men kind of issuing uh being the guide rails to the World Wide Web for lack of a better term?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. No, this was probably the most revolutionary part of No God But God was this foundational argument, which is that people kept talking about, oh, when is when is Islam going to have its reformation? Christianity has had its reformation. When is Islam gonna have its reformation? And the argument of the book is you are living in it. It's happening in front of you. Open your eyes and look around. And partly I think that has to do with a fundamental misunderstanding of what reformation means, right? I think when people think reformation, they think, oh, it's just this Christian phenomenon that happened, that there was this kind of argument between Protestant reform and Catholic intransigence, and the Protestants won. And so therefore, Christianity became this modern, you know, pluralistic religion. And that's obviously not just historically false, but it fails to miss it fails to understand truly what reformation is, which is a universal religious phenomenon. All great religious traditions have reformation moments, because what reformation truly means is an argument between the institutions of a faith and the individuals of that faith over who gets to define that faith. It's an argument about authority. Judaism had its own reformation in the first century. Indeed, Christianity kind of came out of the Jewish Reformation, uh, in which the rabbinic class uh individuals had this fundamental fight with the priestly class over which one of them gets to say what Judaism is. That argument, by the way, ended when the temple was burned to the ground by Rome. So that was a pretty easy win for the rabbinic class. In Christianity, same thing. This was fundamentally an argument over who gets to define what Christianity is. Is it the Pope or is it the individuals who can access the scripture on their own? And that reformation process has been taking place, as I argue in the book, for the last century, really, in Islam. Because for most of the first 1400 years of Islam, the authority to define the meaning and message of this faith has rested exclusively in the hands of the clerical class, the schools of law, the institutions of Islam. And partly that has to do with the fact that they're the only ones who could actually access the Quran. Um but the sort of enormous uh improvements in education and literacy around the world, the ability to access the scripture in your own languages. The Quran has been translated into more languages over the last 50 years than it has in the previous 1400 years combined. Um, and of course, the Internet, which I argue plays very much the same role in the Islamic Reformation that the printing press played in the Christian Reformation, in that it allows access to new ideas, new sources of knowledge, new sources of authority in a way that would have been inconceivable even a few decades ago. And all of that has created a situation in which that authority that used to rest in the hands of clerical institutions now rests in the hands of everyone. Any, anyone, you know, with access to the Quran and a URL can become a source of authority uh in and of themselves. And yes, that can cause trouble, for sure. I mean, it always does. I mean, the Christian Reformation, 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 and interpret it for themselves, led to the 30 Years' War, in which half the population of Germany alone died. Um and so the same thing is happening with Islam. You know, uh you're gonna have these individualized interpretations that promote peace and tolerance and compassion and pluralism, and you're gonna have individual interpretations that promote war and violence and bigotry and misogyny. And because there is no Islamic Pope, right? There's no sort of centralized religious authority to say who's right and who's wrong. What you have is just this cacophony of voices fighting amongst each other over who gets to define the faith. And that is the Reformation. That's what's happening right here before our eyes.
SPEAKER_00:Can you explain what a fatwa is? Sure, sure. Yeah, and there's because I I was, I was, I was, I had a completely like, I think, totally biased impression of what it was. So if you can explain what that is, that was fascinating.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. I think I think for like a lot of people, the fatwa has taken on this specter of like a papal bull, you know, like the like a the divine command from like the representative God on earth, uh, binding on all people of this faith. That's not what fatwa means. Fatwa is a juridical opinion. It's the opinion of a single Islamic cleric. Um, and it has absolutely no binding authority on anyone except the the individual followers of that particular cleric. I think people, some people who might be more familiar with Judaism might understand how authority in Islam works, right? As with Judaism, there is no temple, there's no priesthood, right? There's no there's no Jewish Pope, right? It's just learned, mostly men, uh uh of authority who use their learning to make uh declarative judgments about how to live as a Jew. And then you as a Jew can either choose to follow those judgments or not. There's no enforcement mechanism for that. And that's the same is true with the fatwa. These are just individual clerics, they have an opinion, and then they release those opinions in a fat uh in the form of a fatwa.
SPEAKER_00:Because I grew up in the era of you know, Salman Rushdis, satanic verses, and and I always thought that fatwa was like a was like a there's a bounty on your head. Yeah. Kind of thing, you know, and then I I yeah, go go ahead.
SPEAKER_01:No, I was just gonna say it so in that case, of course, that fatwa came from the Ayatollah Khomeini. Right. Who, you know, again, there are there are clerics and there are clerics, right? Right. One cleric has 50 million dollars. Heavy duty cleric. Yeah. Yeah. One cleric has five million followers, you know. Right. Um and so yeah, that the specter of that fatwa, I think the reason it got the attention that it got is because of who issued it. But you know, the thing about fatwas is that everyone's got a dozen fatwas, you know, like you give me a fatwa on any subject, literally any subject, give me 24 hours, I'll find you a fatwa that argues the exact opposite of that subject. That's how it goes, you know.
SPEAKER_00:It it's interesting. I interviewed a surgeon who's a worldwide leader in in transplant from animals to humans, uh, heart transplants. And so the animal that is is uh easiest to grow the heart and to match the human chest cavity and to genetically modify the heart is a pig. And of course, he's Muslim and uh uh grew up in Pakistan, and so he we talked about this whole like wrestling with that, you know, like could he even touch the pig and the whole thing? And so he said, yeah, and I went to a cleric and I got a I he issued a ruling is the way he put it to me, and I thought that's a fun one. And so that that must be what that what that was. So I think this this idea of like these competing opinions, right? Like give me 24 hours and I'll find a separate opposing viewpoint on something, like I just it's fascinating to me. And then you as a as someone who's just learning about this, I say, well, so how does what is that what does that say about the future of Islam?
SPEAKER_01:That's a great question. Because it used to be that if you wanted a fatwa, that guy, let's let's talk about your your your physician.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:She needs a fatwa. She needs a cleric to tell him whether he can or cannot do what he's doing. So he goes to his mosque or he goes to, you know, maybe he goes to some great, you know, uh cleric with, you know, dozens of years of learning. Maybe he goes all the way to Egypt and goes to Al-Azhar, the the oldest university in the world, one the sort of one of these eminent institutions of Islam. And uh he finds a cleric, and the cleric says, uh, yes, you can you can get a pig's heart uh if you're a Muslim and that's okay, and here is my fatwa. Great. Nowadays, you don't even need to do that. Why would you go all the way to Egypt when you can just go to fatwaonline.com and just go to they have a fatwa database of tens of thousands of fatwas. You know, go to the search engine and punch in a pig heart transplant. And you're gonna get 14 fatwas. Seven of them are gonna say it's okay. Seven of them are gonna say it's not okay. Pick the one you like. It this is what is happening right now in the world. And so you're right to sort of recognize that and think to yourself, holy cow, well then what comes next? And it's hard to say. But what is important to note is that this isn't new, this is how it's always been. It's just that now the access is so much easier for anyone. Um, and you can kind of pick and choose. You know, in the old days, you know, you you'd go to your mosque and the and the fatwa the guy would issue a fatwa saying, no, you're not allowed to use uh pig heart, and then you would just be like, okay, I'm gonna go to a different mosque, and you go to a different mosque, and that guy would say it's okay. But now, again, what do you need the mosque for? You have if you all you need is an internet connection.
SPEAKER_00:Does this level the playing field for for women, for example? Perhaps you know, people who weren't sitting in those circles of white-haired men with beards.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. Indeed, what we have been seeing over the last three or four decades is this newly muscular uh Islamic feminism that is no longer just simply about trying to create a, let's say, excuse me, a feminist interpretation of Islam. It's instead seizing the power that men have monopolized to define the religion for you know centuries, and seizing that power for themselves and declaring themselves imams. Uh, and indeed the sort of female imam uh this this kind of movement that we're seeing all over the world, you know, not just in the in the US and North America and in Europe, but in Indonesia, in Malaysia, and Pakistan, and India, and these sort of very traditionally Muslim uh countries is extraordinary. It's I think probably the most exciting movement taking place within Islam is the this new source of authority that is uh fully female, right? Women who are being trained by women, who are training other women, who are issuing fatwas focused solely on issues concerning women instead of relying on centuries of male-dominated interpretations.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's that's a fascinating thing to think about. The future is going to be um well, it's still being written every day.
SPEAKER_01: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 uh Muslim woman in Egypt, in in Cairo. And maybe you don't have access to a female imam. You don't know one. There's no one around you, right? Uh it's a very male-dominated society. So what? Again, get online. Go online. 15 female uh imams in New York that you have access to, and they can be your spiritual source of authority. And that's brand new. That is absolutely brand new.
SPEAKER_00:It's just, it's yeah, it's just flattened everything and cut down those those those barriers. It's that's really interesting. Um, you've been very generous with your time, and I'm I do have an eye on the clock, but I wanted to see. I have one more question for you. But before we get there, is there anything that I have not mentioned about about your about your book, about uh your other work, uh, where people can find you uh that you'd like to mention?
SPEAKER_01:No, I've uh I've the three years ago deleted all of my social media and have never been happier. So I'm I'm unreachable in that regard. But you know, obviously you can go to rezaaslan.com and and get in touch with me. Uh no problem at all.
SPEAKER_00:And and you've you know you've written widely, and so folks can you know check check out your presence online with that. Um and by the book, uh it's fascinating if you have not yet read it. Um I did have a final question for you. Um it's a hypothetical. Um, but if you had the power or the ability or the resources, whatever, to design uh and publish a um a billboard on the side of the freeway. Um and folks are gonna read it going by at 70 miles an hour, or depending on where you live, they might be going by at seven miles an hour if you're a Southern California person. Um what does your billboard say to the world about what you find to be important?
SPEAKER_01:Well, that's a really, really good question. Um I don't know, I don't know how well this would fit on a billboard, but it would be something along the lines of stop confusing yourself for God. God doesn't root for your football team. God doesn't hate what you hate. God doesn't love what you love. You're talking about yourself. You're not talking about God. God, if God exists, is about as far from you and your personality and characteristics and interests and concerns as it possi as it could possibly get. And you know what? That's a good thing. Maybe that billboard would work in Los Angeles because there's, you know, we're all driving at like three miles an hour.
SPEAKER_00:That's right. That's a i you just described several billboards, so we're gonna have to have a serial billboard, but but um thank you so much for that. I think that's a a fitting coda for today's conversation. Um, it's been a real honor chatting with you and um and congratulations again on on the success of your work and having it, as you say, uh endure and gain new life after two decades, which is really any author's best hope and dream, really. Thank you, David. It was a real pleasure being on the show. Thanks for joining us on the Hangout Podcast. You can send us an email at podcastinfo at proton.me. Many thanks to my daughter Maya for editing this episode. I'd also like to underline that this podcast is entirely separate from my day job. And as such, all opinions expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thanks for coming on in and hanging out.
Podcasts we love
Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.
