Reza Aslan (, ; born May 3, 1972) is an Iranian-American scholar of sociology of religion, writer, and television host.
A convert to evangelical Christianity from Shia Islam as a youth, Aslan eventually reverted to Islam but continued to write about Christianity.
He has written four books on religion: No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in the Age of Globalization, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, God: A Human History and in 2022 An American Martyr in Persia: The Epic Life and Tragic Death of Howard Baskerville.
Aslan has worked for television, including a documentary series exploring world religions on CNN called Believer, and serving as an executive producer on the HBO drama series The Leftovers.
Aslan is a member of the American Academy of Religion and the International Qur'anic Studies Association.
He is a professor of creative writing at University of California, Riverside, and a board member of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC).
1979
Aslan's family came to the United States from Tehran in 1979, fleeing the Iranian Revolution.
He grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area.
1980
Aslan says that he "spent the 1980s pretending to be Mexican" due to the amount of discrimination faced by Iranian Americans.
1990
He attended Del Mar High School in San Jose, and graduated class of 1990.
In the early 1990s, Aslan taught courses at De La Salle High School in Concord, California.
Aslan holds a B.A. in religious studies from Santa Clara University, a Master of Theological Studies (MTS) from Harvard Divinity School, a Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) in fiction writing from the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop, and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
2000
In August 2000, while serving as the Truman Capote Fellow at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Aslan was a visiting faculty member in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Iowa.
2005
In 2005, The Guardian called him "a Shia by persuasion".
No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam is a non-fiction book published in 2005.
The book describes the history of Islam and argues for a liberal interpretation of the Islamic religion.
It blames Western imperialism and self-serving misinterpretations of Islamic law by past scholars for the current controversies within Islam, challenging the "Clash of Civilizations" thesis.
2009
His 2009 dissertation, "Global Jihadism as a Transnational Social Movement: A Theoretical Framework", discusses contemporary Muslim political activism.
In 2009, Aslan published his second book, How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of Terror.
The next year, it was re-released in paperback as Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in the Age of Globalization.
The book is both a study of the ideology fueling Al Qaeda, the Taliban and like-minded militants throughout the Muslim world, and an exploration of religious violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Aslan argues that the United States is fighting a similar war by infusing the War on Terror with its religiously polarizing rhetoric.
This war, he asserts, cannot be won.
Aslan refers to Al Qaeda's jihad against the west as "a cosmic war", distinct from holy war, in which rival religious groups are engaged in an earthly battle for material goals.
"A cosmic war is like a ritual drama in which participants act out on earth a battle they believe is actually taking place in the heavens."
American rhetoric of "war on terrorism", Aslan says, is in precise "cosmic dualism" to Al Qaeda's jihad.
Aslan distinguishes Islamism and Jihadism.
Islamists have legitimate goals and can be negotiated with, unlike Jihadists, who dream of an idealized past of a pan-Islamic, borderless "religious communalism".
2012
Aslan was the 2012–13 Wallerstein Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Drew University Center on Religion, Culture & Conflict.
An Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations from 2012 to 2013, he is also a member of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, and the Pacific Council on International Policy.
He has served as Legislative Assistant for the Friends Committee on National Legislation in Washington D.C., and was elected President of Harvard's Chapter of the World Conference of Religions for Peace.
Aslan also serves on the board of directors of the Ploughshares Fund, which gives grants for peace and security issues, PEN Center USA, a writer's advocacy group, and he serves on the national advisory board of The Markaz (formerly the Levantine Cultural Center), a program to promote peace between Americans and the Arab/Muslim world.
He also serves on the board of trustees for the Chicago Theological Seminary and is on the advisory board of the Yale Humanist Community.
Aslan was born into a Twelver Shia Muslim family.
He converted to evangelical Christianity at the age of 15, and converted back to Islam the summer before attending Harvard.
2013
In a 2013 interview with WNYC host Brian Lehrer, Aslan said: "I'm definitely a Muslim and Sufism is the tradition within Islam that I most closely adhere to."
In a 2013 article in The Washington Post, Aslan stated: "It's not [that] I think Islam is correct and Christianity is incorrect. It's that all religions are nothing more than a language made up of symbols and metaphors to help an individual explain faith."
2014
In 2014, in an interview with Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks, Aslan described Islam as:
"a man-made institution. It's a set of symbols and metaphors that provides a language for which to express what is inexpressible, and that is faith. It's symbols and metaphors that I prefer, but it's not more right or more wrong than any other symbols and metaphors. It's a language; that's all it is."
Aslan has published four books, edited two anthologies, and frequently writes for different media outlets.
