Reza Aslan quotes

The key to recognizing who Jesus was is to recognize this fundamental truth: He was a Jew. (Reza Aslan)
I believe in God, which means I am open to some absurd possibilities. But I understand the power of that faith, and I understand the metaphor of that belief. View quote
Reza Aslan
A politician is a politician whether he's wearing a suit or a funny hat. View quote
Reza Aslan
Religion, it must be understood, is not faith. Religion is the story of faith. View quote
Reza Aslan
Islamophobia has become so mainstream in this country that Americans have been trained to expect violence against Muslims - not excuse it, but expect it. And that's happened because you have an Islamophobia industry in this country devoted to making Americans think there's an enemy within. View quote
Reza Aslan
Religion doesn't make people bigots. People are bigots and they use religion to justify their ideology. View quote
Reza Aslan
Im a person of faith, and the language that I use to define my faith, the symbols and metaphors that I rely upon to express my faith, are those provided by Islam because they make the most sense to me. View quote
Reza Aslan
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 happens to be Muslim. View quote
Reza Aslan
The idea that education will lead to a lessening of bigotry is just factually incorrect. View quote
Reza Aslan
Religion is never going to go away, and anyone who thinks it will doesn't understand what religion is. It is a language to describe the experience of human nature, so for as long as people struggle to describe what it means to be alive, it will be a ready-made language to express those feelings. View quote
Reza Aslan
The New Testament is not a historical document. (Reza Aslan)
When you're a brown Muslim from Iran talking about Jesus on TV, you need to keep your cool at all times, OK? That's not rocket science. View quote
Reza Aslan
Whether you're talking about MSNBC or Fox or CNN, it's all about getting enough interest out there, sensationalizing the story in such a way that people are compelled to tune in. View quote
Reza Aslan
A cosmic war is like a ritual drama in which participants act out on Earth a battle they believe is actually taking place in the heavens. View quote
Reza Aslan
In the history of the prophetic biblical canon that starts with Genesis, the Koran is by far the most tolerant of the views of other religions. View quote
Reza Aslan
You can be a follower of Jesus and not necessarily be a Christian. View quote
Reza Aslan
The Revolutionary Guard controls almost everything in Iran, and this is hurting the people. View quote
Reza Aslan
Many of the prophets of Jesus's time were thought to just be mad men, just sort of crazy people who were claiming to channel the divine. Perhaps that means we should be a little less judgmental of some of our own crazies talking about God on the corner. They might actually have found a pretty comfortable place in Jesus's time. View quote
Reza Aslan
The truth of the matter is that when you write about religion like I do, you're writing about something that people take very seriously. View quote
Reza Aslan
Mike Huckabee and indeed many of the Christian conservatives in the U.S. have far more in common with the Muslim Brotherhood than they'd like to admit, in that all of them very much want to see a role of religion in society. View quote
Reza Aslan
It is the job of the historian to say what is likely, and of faith to say what is possible. (Reza Aslan)
Anyone who says that Iran will commit suicide with its nuclear power is a moron and has no business in discussion. View quote
Reza Aslan
I think if you place Jesus firmly in the historical context... you can make very educated hypotheses and guesses about how he lived. View quote
Reza Aslan
My biography of Jesus is probably the first popular biography that does not use the New Testament as its primary source material. View quote
Reza Aslan
When you forcefully suppress religious nationalism, you radicalize it. View quote
Reza Aslan