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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
People
Bigots
Justify
Ideology
Religion
Use
Doesn
Make

More quotes by Reza Aslan

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The way you confront an organization like that is twofold. No. 1, you kill their militants. There is no room for discussion or negotiation when it comes to an ISIS or an Al Qaeda militant. They don’t want anything concrete. And if you want nothing that’s measurable or concrete, there is nothing to talk about. You must be destroyed.
Reza Aslan
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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.
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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.
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The idea that education will lead to a lessening of bigotry is just factually incorrect.
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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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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We have to remember that the United States has certain principles, certain values that bind us all together, that make us all American. And if we allow those values, those rights to be rescinded for one group of individuals, then we are essentially opening the door to having all of our rights, all of our privileges rescinded.
Reza Aslan
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What's happened in the United States is something that has already happened in Europe and that is that Islam is become 'otherised', it has become a kind of receptacle into which fears and anxieties about the political or economic situation, about the changing racial landscape of this country are being thrown.
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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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.
Reza Aslan
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Why? Why not? Why not you? Why not now?
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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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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The language of religion holds the most currency for the masses.
Reza Aslan
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In times of economic distress, it's only natural for people - and Americans have done this for many years - to look for a scapegoat. Depending on where you live in this country, the scapegoats are either, frankly, Mexicans or Muslims. So, you know, God save you if you happened to be a Mexican Muslim in America right now.
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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Should I act violently in defense of my religion, absolutely.
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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I think if you place Jesus firmly in the historical context... you can make very educated hypotheses and guesses about how he lived.
Reza Aslan
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Religion, it must be understood, is not faith. Religion is the story of faith.
Reza Aslan