A conversation with author Reza Aslan
By Hilary Jones/Random House
Reza Aslan, author of "How to Win A Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and The End of The War on Terror."
GateHouse News Service
Thu Jul 02, 2009, 03:39 PM CDT
Reza Aslan is a Los Angeles-based educator, writer, commentator and Islamic scholar. His new book is, “How to Win A Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and The End of Terror.”
In your book, you argue that religion is not in decline but is a “stronger, more global force today than it has been in generations.” Why do you think that is and what does it mean for people of different faiths working together?
There are a number of reasons why religion, or religious identity, is on the rise – such as the failures of secular nationalism. There was an idea that, if we just get religion out of the public realm, there will be no more horrible wars as in the past. But some of the most horrific acts of violence [as in the reign of Stalin in the Soviet Union] have been in the name of secular ideology.
Explain what you mean by a "cosmic war."
A cosmic war is a religious war. Globalization has opened up a vacuum to more primal forms of identity to rise to the surface. Many people identify with their religion, and if you live in a society where religion and politics are becoming blurred, you begin to view conflicts in religious terms. Then you turn these conflicts into cosmic wars – wars of good and evil. These ideas can’t be contained or won in any real sense.
Is there a place for religion and state to work together, or should they be kept separate?
It depends on what you mean. There is no way for religion to be moved completely out of the public realm. It’s only natural and inevitable that religion be in the marketplace of ideas – as long as you are promoting pluralism, including whether or not to have religion as an idea, then you are fine.
In your book you call Ayaan Hirsi Ali and other writers "pseudointellectual." Please explain what you mean.
In the case of Ayaan Hirsi Ali [author of “Infidel”], I wouldn’t even call her an intellectual. She has no intellectual credentials whatsoever. She does some important work for women’s rights …but she does no research, no serious investigation. She is someone who had a horrible life experience [growing up in Somalia] but she makes absurd generalities…she’s become a darling of the west, because she represents a number of frankly Islamophobic concepts many identify with.
In The History Channel’s "Secrets of the Koran," you spoke about Islam and global conflict, but also about a movement not getting nearly as much attention -- a rise in the number of women reading and studying the Koran worldwide. What do you think this will mean for the Islamic world?
For most of the last 14 centuries, Koranic study was the sole pervue of the clerical class -- who were all, without exception, men. So only men were able to read and define and interpret what the Koran means. When women began to study the Koran with the increases in literacy, they had greater ideas and access to knowledge. They have begun to define the Koran in a new era.
There is even a new translation of the Koran by a woman [English-language translator Laleh Bakhtiar.] Thanks to scholars such as Leila Ahmed [professor of women’s studies and religion at Harvard Divinity School, and author of “Women and Gender in Islam”], we are seeing an emerging new trend of who interprets the text. There is whole new voice…just as we saw in biblical studies, there is feminist criticism emerging.
This is a whole voice that has been missing for 14 centuries, so it is going to have a huge effect.
Please explain your concept of God.
For me, God is transcendence -- something that is beyond ourselves. I have a very Sufi concept, based on divine unity and the oneness of God and the oneness of creation. For me -- as a scholar and a person of faith -- religion is a language that we use to communicate about something that is beyond human conception.
Margaret Smith is Arts and Calendar editor at GateHouse Media New England’s Northwest Unit. E-mail her at msmith@cnc.com.
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