Tag Archives: Islam

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Reza Aslan’s new book on the historical Jesus gets celebrated by left-wing media

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Fox News reports. (H/T Melissa P.M.)

Excerpt

Reza Aslan, author of the new book, “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth” has been interviewed on a host of media outlets in the last week. Riding a publicity wave, the book has surged to #2 on Amazon’s list.

Media reports have introduced Aslan as a “religion scholar” but have failed to mention that he is a devout Muslim.

His book is not a historian’s report on Jesus. It is an educated Muslim’s opinion about Jesus — yet the book is being peddled as objective history on national TV and radio.

Aslan is not a trained historian. Like tens of thousands of us he has been formally educated in theology and New Testament Greek.

He is a bright man with every right to hold his own opinion about Jesus—and to proselytize his opinion.

As a sincere man, Aslan’s Muslim beliefs affect his entire life, including his conclusions about Jesus. But this is not being disclosed. “Zealot” is being presented as objective and scholarly history, not as it actually is—an educated Muslim’s opinions about Jesus and the ancient Near East.

“Zealot” is a fast-paced demolition of the core beliefs that Christianity has taught about Jesus for 2,000 years. Its conclusions are long-held Islamic claims—namely, that Jesus was a zealous prophet type who didn’t claim to be God, that Christians have misunderstood him, and that the Christian Gospels are not the actual words or life of Jesus but “myth.”

These claims are not new or unique. They are hundreds of years old among Muslims. Sadly, readers who have listened to interviews on NPR, “The Daily Show,” Huffington Post or MSNBC may pick up the book expecting an unbiased and historic report on Jesus and first century Jewish culture. (I will let my Jewish friends address Aslan’s statement on MSNBC that, “there were certainly a lot of Jewish terrorists in first century Palestine.”)

I took a look at the  author’s CV and I don’t see a single degree in ancient history on it. He is a professor of creative writing, though. Studying “religion” is not the same thing as studying ancient history, by the way.

Here is his faculty page at UC Riverside:

Professor Aslan joins UCR from the Center of Public Diplomacy at University of Southern California. He has Degrees in Religions from Harvard University, and the University of California, Santa Barbara, as well as a Masters in Fine Arts from the University of Iowa, where he was named the Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction. He is currently working on his Ph.D. at University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of the New York Times Bestseller, No god but God: The origins, Evolution, and the future of Islam which has been translated into half a dozen languages, short-listed for the Guardian (UK) First Book Award, and nominated for a PEN USA award for research Non-Fiction.

He has a PhD in sociology of religions. SOCIOLOGY. Not history.

A search of publications on Google Scholar turns up no academic articles on the historical Jesus.

Here are his recent non-academic publications from his web site – see if you see any in academic history journals:

The Devastating Consequences of the anti-Morsi Revolution
Vocative, July 2, 2013

Bahrain’s Fake Sectarian War
Foreign Affairs, June 30, 2013

Missing Mahmoud
Foreign Policy, June 12, 2013

The impact of the Arab Spring on the Palestinian Authority’s foreign policy.
Council on Foreign Relations, April 24, 2013

Israel risks its place in America’s affections by its tone-deaf policy
The National, February 4, 2013

Divided by the Same Father
Tony Blair Faith Foundation, November 30, 2012

Rejected by Religions, but Not by Believers
New York Times, October 4, 2012

Political Islam in the Middle East
Council on Foreign Relations, December 7, 2012

Grand Ayatollah or Grand Old Party?
Foreign Policy, February 29, 2012

Fire This Time
Los Angeles Review of Books, September 11, 2011

Ibn Battuta: World Wanderer
Time Magazine, July 21, 2011

Backward Glances: Islamic Erotica, Then and Now
Playboy Magazine, January 2011

Now, I do think it’s possible for someone without formal training to write a book on the historical Jesus. But I would regard such books with skepticism. Especially when he dates the Gospel of Mark to later than 70 A.D. – definitely not a mainstream view. The atheist scholar James Crossley dates Mark to the late 30s to early 40s, for example. But a plausible case can be made (by an actual historian) that the Gospel of Mark is dated sometime in the mid-50s.

The real story here though is media bias. Why is the liberal media so interested in promoting a book about the historical Jesus which questions the orthodox view of Jesus, whereas they were not doing anything to promote Darwin’s Doubt, which questioned the orthodox view of Darwinism? I think there is a double standard here. Meyer did his PhD work on these issues and has the relevant academic publications in science journals. (Here is one that was published in a peer-reviewed journal) And Meyer has actually debated his thesis with his opponents.

My previous post on media bias explains a bit more about what the left-wing media is really like.

UPDATE: Mathetes posted a link to this article on First Things.

Excerpt:

Aslan does have four degrees… a 1995 B.A. in religion from Santa Clara University, where he was Phi Beta Kappa and wrote his senior thesis on “The Messianic Secret in the Gospel of Mark”; a 1999 Master of Theological Studies from Harvard; a 2002 Master of Fine Arts in Fiction from the University of Iowa; and a 2009 Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

None of these degrees is in history, so Aslan’s repeated claims that he has “a Ph.D. in the history of religions” and that he is “a historian” are false.  Nor is “professor of religions” what he does “for a living.” He is an associate professor in the Creative Writing program at the University of California, Riverside, where his terminal MFA in fiction from Iowa is his relevant academic credential. It appears he has taught some courses on Islam in the past, and he may do so now, moonlighting from his creative writing duties at Riverside. Aslan has been a busy popular writer, and he is certainly a tireless self-promoter, but he is nowhere known in the academic world as a scholar of the history of religion. And a scholarly historian of early Christianity? Nope.

What about that Ph.D.? As already noted, it was in sociology. I have his dissertation in front of me. It is a 140-page work titled “Global Jihadism as a Transnational Social Movement: A Theoretical Framework.” If Aslan’s Ph.D. is the basis of a claim to scholarly credentials, he could plausibly claim to be an expert on social movements in twentieth-century Islam. He cannot plausibly claim, as he did to Lauren Green, that he is a “historian,” or is a “professor of religions” “for a living.”

Well that settles it. His PhD has nothing to do with the historical Jesus. He’s unqualified.

News

We should not be ignoring the continued threat of radical Islam

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I was surprised to find a strongly-worded article like this at the Christian web site Breakpoint, of all places.

Excerpt:

Overnight, following the inauguration of Barack Obama, problematic phrasing such as the “global war on terror” (itself a euphemism) and “Muslim extremism” were expunged from the national lexicon in favor of generic terms such as “man-caused disasters.” Explained Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, “We want to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur.”

[…][E]vents on the ground continue to belie the administration’s euphemisms, parsings, and happy talk. The grisly murder of a British soldier in broad daylight by two machete- and knife-wielding Muslims in London came within mere days. Yet the Obama administration remains committed to its narrative, which it knows to be untrue, and is more than willing to twist the facts to keep it going. Worse, the administration has done all this at the risk of American lives and security. Let’s go down the short list:

Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Hasan faces the death penalty or life without parole if convicted on 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder in his 2009 rampage. Hasan, who shouted “Allahu Akbar!” (“God is great!”) during the attack against his unarmed fellow soldiers, now says he was defending the Taliban. U.S. prosecutors are treating the bloodletting as an incident of “workplace violence,” denying victims both Purple Hearts and certain combat-related medical benefits. Hasan, meanwhile, is preparing to defend himself in a court of law.

Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev scribbled a message on the boat in which he was captured that said the Americans killed were collateral damage in U.S. wars in Muslim lands, and that an attack on one Muslim is an attack on all. The FBI, of course, failed to prevent his butchery, which killed three people and wounded 275, even after a warning from Russian intelligence about the Tsarnaev brothers.

Then of course there is Benghazi. Seeking to maintain the pre-election fiction that the drone-happy President Obama had al Qaeda on the run (“The tide of war is receding,” the president told the U.N.), the administration ignored months of warnings from Ambassador Chris Stevens and others about inadequate security at the U.S. consulate and the strengthening of Islamist forces in Libya. On September 11, Islamists linked to al Qaeda launched a coordinated assault on the consulate, killing four Americans, including Stevens. (Many more would have died if two former Navy SEALs had not disobeyed orders and rescued consulate staff.) Despite repeated calls to Washington for help and a rescue team that was ready to intervene, that night administration officials did nothing.

And in the following weeks, they promulgated the lie that the assault was not an attack of Islamist terror but a “spontaneous demonstration” in response to a YouTube video. Adding insult to injury, Barack Obama has just selected the discredited U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, who repeated the administration lie on numerous Sunday morning talk shows, to be his next national security adviser. Why not, since the bigger lie about the threat we face from radicalized Islam continues?

I was surprised to see so direct an article posted on Breakpoint. It shocked me more than when the Gospel Coalition interviewed old-Earth design theorist Stephen C. Meyer about his new book on the Cambrian explosion. It’s just so encouraging to see Christians rolling up their sleeves and applying their worldview to areas like science and foreign policy. The fact is, we do have to care about this issues, because Christian applies to every area of our lives. It’s not about feeling comfortable in our own hearts by having a private notion of Christianity that is just for our benefit. We should be letting Christian truth claims seep into every area of our lives, so that we continue to promote the good in every area, for everyone. Naturally, we have to study more in order to know how to achieve the good in every area. Some areas like economics and foreign policy are complicated, and not much fun for us, if our goal is personal happiness and comfort. But I think that’s what were are supposed to be doing – learning the truth about God, and then applying it out there in the real world. It’s OK for Christians to study up on these areas and have an informed opinion about them. It’s OK to speak out on these issues, too. We need more of that.

News

Swedish riots continue as police disperse vigilantes and ignore rioters

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Stuart Schneiderman wrote the best article I saw about the London terrorist attack and the Swedish riots.

Excerpt:

In another post Hinderaker described the scene in Stockholm. There the police have taken a laissez-faire attitude toward Muslim rioters. They are too afraid to do anything, so they stand by and let it happen.

One wonders whether Swedes are quite as tolerant of laissez-faire capitalism.

Be that as it may, Hinderaker quotes the account offered by the Swedish publication, Fria Tider:

Since last Sunday, May 19, rioters have taken to the streets of Stockholm’s suburbs every night, torching cars, schools, stores, office buildings and residential complexes. Yesterday, a police station in Rågsved, a suburb four kilometers south of Stockholm, was attacked and set on fire.

But while the Stockholm riots keep spreading and intensifying, Swedish police have adopted a tactic of non-interference. ”Our ambition is really to do as little as possible,” Stockholm Chief of Police Mats Löfving explained to the Swedish newspaper Expressen on Tuesday.

”We go to the crime scenes, but when we get there we stand and wait,” elaborated Lars Byström, the media relations officer of the Stockholm Police Department. ”If we see a burning car, we let it burn if there is no risk of the fire spreading to other cars or buildings nearby. By doing so we minimize the risk of having rocks thrown at us.”

Why would they not riot? If no one has the courage to stop them, then their actions must be righteous.

But, don’t think that the Swedish police are not doing anything. When a meter maid comes across an illegally parked incinerated vehicle, she gives it a parking ticket.

Fria Tider described the scene:

Swedish parking laws, however, continue to be rigidly enforced despite the increasingly chaotic situation. Early Wednesday, while documenting the destruction after a night of rioting in the Stockholm suburb of Alby, a reporter from Fria Tider observed a parking enforcement officer writing a ticket for a burnt-out Ford.

When questioned, the officer explained that the ticket was issued because the vehicle lacked a tag showing its time of arrival. The fact that the vehicle had been effectively destroyed – its windshield smashed and the interior heavily damaged by fire – was irrelevant according to the meter maid, who asked Fria Tider’s photographer to destroy the photos he had taken. Her employer, the parking company P-service, refused to comment when Fria Tider contacted them on Wednesday afternoon.

At least the meter maids are doing their jobs.

[…]Seeing the threat posed by vigilantes the Swedish police are springing into action. Fria Tider has the story:

In the Stockholm suburb of Tumba the police decided to abandon their earlier non-intervention policy as a large group of police officers rounded up and dispersed a group of vigilantes trying to fend off rioters.

The decision to round up vigilantes while, according to Stockholm Chief of Police Mats Löfving, ”doing as little as possible” to stop rioters, met with a wave of protests in various social media and on the Internet. 

Swedish police fighting Swedish citizens for doing what the police refuse to do. Surely, the Muslim population is watching and laughing.

Secularism and leftism is not strength, it’s weakness. It’s postmodernism, moral relativism and dependency. It’s subsidizing your own executioners because you have lost the will to live. I would argue that Sweden is even more advanced in cultural decline than the UK. But we are rapidly catching them up.