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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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Reza Aslan
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: May 3
Trekkie
Writer
Teheran
Raza Aslan
Riza Aslan
Among
Authoritarians
Control
Consolidate
Support
Wedge
Fear
Wedges
People
Importantly
Driving
Using
Tend

More quotes by 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.
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I really believe that to have a full impression of Jesus, both as Christ as a man, you must know about the world that gave shape to him - the world out of which he arose.
Reza Aslan
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No- one is ever told any story but their own.
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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.
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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.
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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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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Religion, it must be understood, is not faith. Religion is the story of faith.
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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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.
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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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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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[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.
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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We need to do whatever we can, legally and within our power, to remove Donald Trump from office as fast as possible before something serious happens in this country.
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 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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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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Bill Maher is right to condemn religious practices that violate fundamental human rights. Religious communities must do more to counter extremist interpretations of their faith. But failing to recognize that religion is embedded in culture — and making a blanket judgment about the world’s second largest religion — is simply bigotry.
Reza Aslan
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Religion doesn't make people bigots. People are bigots and they use religion to justify their ideology.
Reza Aslan