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When you forcefully suppress religious nationalism, you radicalize it.

Reza Aslan

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Reza Aslan
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: May 3
Trekkie
Writer
Teheran
Raza Aslan
Riza Aslan
Radicalize
Forcefully
Suppress
Nationalism
Religious

More quotes by Reza Aslan

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The language of religion holds the most currency for the masses.
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Obama has been the single worst president in modern American history in dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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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.
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You can be a follower of Jesus and not necessarily be a Christian.
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[Islam] is the dynamic conviction that a person's spiritual and worldly responsibilities are one and the same, that an individuals duty to the community is indistinguishable from his or her duty to God.
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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.
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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 And if we allow those values, those rights to be rescinded for one group of individuals, then we are essentially opening the door to having all of our rights, all of our privileges rescinded.
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If the resistance is going to bring Trump down, it will require Democrats to follow the people, not the other way around. My hope is that the Democrats will realize where their power lies, and will start taking their cues from the people on the ground and not the other way.
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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.
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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?
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Religion doesn't make people bigots. People are bigots and they use religion to justify their ideology.
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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.
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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.
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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 idea that education will lead to a lessening of bigotry is just factually incorrect.
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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For those who simply voted because Donald Trump was the Republican and you should vote for the Republican: it's baffling to me, how you can call yourself a Christian and support a man who embodies everything that Christ fought against.
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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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But every year you grow, you will find me bigger.
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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