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Religion doesn't make people bigots. People are bigots and they use religion to justify their ideology.

Reza Aslan

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Reza Aslan
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: May 3
Trekkie
Writer
Teheran
Raza Aslan
Riza Aslan
Justify
Ideology
Religion
Use
Doesn
Make
People
Bigots

More quotes by Reza Aslan

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A majority of Israelis want to give up the West Bank for peace, and obviously the same thing is desired by the Palestinians. The strong voice of the president of the United States will have a major impact on public opinion, not only in this country, but also in Israel and also in Palestine.
Reza Aslan
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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.
Reza Aslan
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Even the Quran, which Sufis respect as the direct speech of God, lacks the capacity to shed light upon God’s essence. As one Sufi master has argued, why spend time reading a love letter (by which he means the Quran) in the presence of the Beloved who wrote it?
Reza Aslan
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Authoritarians tend to consolidate support by using fear, but more importantly by driving a wedge among the people that they want to control.
Reza Aslan
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It is no exaggeration to say that Syria holds the key for nearly all of Americas foreign policy goals in the Middle East. As Syria goes, so goes the region.
Reza Aslan
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Religion, it must be understood, is not faith. Religion is the story of faith.
Reza Aslan
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Well I wouldn't want to tell Obama specifically what to do, but obviously he's already promised publicly and privately, both before and after he was elected president, that he was going to open up communications with Iran.
Reza Aslan
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The bad news is that Iran wants to talk about everything except their nuclear program. They want to talk about regional cooperation, they want to talk about the sanctions issues, and it seems like the western powers want to talk about nothing more than the nuclear issue.
Reza Aslan
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Should I act violently in defense of my religion, absolutely.
Reza Aslan
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Obama has been the single worst president in modern American history in dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Reza Aslan
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I have not ever met Donald Trump, and I plan to go my entire life without ever actually having to breathe the same air that he breathes.
Reza Aslan
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Maybe when the President tells you that you should be afraid of Mexicans or Muslims or Jews or black people or gay people or trans people, you'll realize that those are just labels, that underneath it all we're all the same people, we all have the same aspirations, the same hopes, the same desires, that we all share the same values.
Reza Aslan
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I think that in many ways, some of those who did vote for Trump are sorry that they did so. But the hope, at least, is that we have a chance to make up for those kinds of mistakes.
Reza Aslan
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One-fifth of Americans, 20% believe that Barak Obama is, himself, a Muslim and in fact - amongst Republicans that number is almost 40%. Polls show in this country, that the more you disagree with Barak Obama's domestic policies, the more likely you are to think that he is a Muslim.
Reza Aslan
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You can be a follower of Jesus and not necessarily be a Christian.
Reza Aslan
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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.
Reza Aslan
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Anyone who says that Iran will commit suicide with its nuclear power is a moron and has no business in discussion.
Reza Aslan
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When you forcefully suppress religious nationalism, you radicalize it.
Reza Aslan
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It is the job of the historian to say what is likely, and of faith to say what is possible.
Reza Aslan
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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.
Reza Aslan