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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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Reza Aslan
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: May 3
Trekkie
Writer
Teheran
Raza Aslan
Riza Aslan
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Historian
Likely
Possible
Faith

More quotes by 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.
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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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.
Reza Aslan
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Why? Why not? Why not you? Why not now?
Reza Aslan
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When you forcefully suppress religious nationalism, you radicalize it.
Reza Aslan
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The language of religion holds the most currency for the masses.
Reza Aslan
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I'm interested in the origins of the religious experience, how the history of religion has evolved over the last umpteen thousand years, and where religiosity is going in the future. I think that's a topic I've been chewing on for a few years I would love to eventually work on and produce a book out of it.
Reza Aslan
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God doesn't make you a bigot. You're just a bigot.
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 idea that education will lead to a lessening of bigotry is just factually incorrect.
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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The key to recognizing who Jesus was is to recognize this fundamental truth: He was a Jew.
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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There's no question that homophobia is rampant among the world's 1.5 billion Muslims - but that doesn't negate the fact that there are huge groups of Muslims who have easily reconciled their faith and sexual orientation, like LGBT people in other faith communities.
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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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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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
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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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You can be a follower of Jesus and not necessarily be a Christian.
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