In an Exclusive Interview with the Prominent Religious Scholar

Reza Aslan: Greatest Obstacle to Islamic Reform is Lack of Political Participation

 

Conducted by Mohammad F. Almutawa

 

 

When I first came to the United States, I thought I was the only person ready to fight to stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims. Among my first few days in America, I remember turning on the Television to watch the Daily Show with John Stewart. He had interviewed a Muslim scholar, a guy named Reza Aslan. I thought to myself, “This should be interesting, lets see what he gets wrong about Islam.” And here I am almost three years later, writing up an interview with one of the most engaging and outspoken scholars of religion. Personally, I have been giving out copies of his first book, No god but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam, to family and friends. I was honored when Dr. Reza Aslan granted me a sit down for an interview with Nebras.

In terms of background, Dr. Reza Aslan, is an internationally acclaimed writer and scholar of religions. Reza Aslan has degrees in Religions from Santa Clara University, Harvard University and the University of California – Santa Barbara, as well as a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, and the Pacific Council on International Policy. Aslan’s first book is the New York Times Bestseller, No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, which has been translated into thirteen languages. His most recent book is How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror. Born in Iran, he now lives in Los Angeles where he is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California – Riverside.

 

Islam has Become the New Counterculture

 

Prior to 9/11 you had 34 students attend your class on Islam at the University of Iowa, and after the dreadful attacks you had 278 students. What does that tell about the American public and what do you think is the perception right now? How has the image changed

Well, today in the US, some opinions have solidified. Those who thought of Islam as a threat are more certain of that. Those who believe in the clash of civilization have become more certain about it. The majority of Americans, however, who never had an opinion, want to learn more. Islam has become the new counterculture and they want to know more about it.

 

President Obama signed three bills: the first to end torture, the second to close Guantanamo Bay prison camp and the third to try those held in Guantanamo. Are we about to witness a “change” in American foreign policy, which many have argued has not been affected by who is in the oval office

I believe that any democratic president would have done the same thing. Even the Bush administration wanted to close Guantanamo prison. As for the foreign policy, there is a machinery in place that depends on our vested interest, both security and economic interest in that part of the world. The truth of the matter is that it does not require massive changes for the tenor of the relationship with that region to change in meaningful ways. The Bush administration is a prime example, they were able to shift the dialogue to the right just a bit and in that disrupted the balance that previously existed between the United States and countries in the Middle East. Some things in our foreign policy will not change. Such as our support for Israel, our support for the Saudi regime and our support for some of the dictators in that region. However, I do think that the way American foreign policy is going to be presented to the Muslim world will be different. Instead of being presented as a clash between “us and them” and between “good and evil”. There is a genuine attempt to build a new relationship based on genuine respect, which is something president Obama is committed to. It is going to make a big difference and it already has.

 

Opening up Society is the Best

Way to Moderate Extremist Tendency

 

To what extent do autocracies, i.e. non-democratic regimes, play a role in shaping the identity

They do have a large effect. A perfect example of that would be the sentiment for the imposition of Shariya. Part of that has to do with the idea that Islamic law represented some sense of accepted law that it is not based in the hands of a single person, or based on the whims of a dictator. I think that the greatest obstacle to religious reform in the Middle East is the lack of political reform. I think that opening up the society and giving people the opportunity to make their political aspirations known and to have a say in their government and society is the best way to moderate the extremist tendency.

 

 

What do you believe is at the root of Islamic extremism and how does it play a role in the shaping of religious consciousness in the Middle East

Islam is the most diverse religion in the world, and there is no unified monolithic Islamic identity and therefore, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as Islamic extremism. There is defiantly political, religious and social extremism in the region. The primary factor that is fueling those extreme tendencies is the lack of political participation. If you live in a society where your ideals and beliefs can be injected into the larger society, then the process of making those ideals palatable to the rest of society moderates those ideals. When however, there is no avenue for political participation, when the ideals and social customs are suppressed, then it is only natural for those tendencies to radicalize. So, societies with greater political participation tend to deal with far less radical roots than societies that do not.

 

There was Never Tension Between

the Secular and Religion in Islamic Tradition

 

An article in the New York Times says that there is no longer a war between religion and secularism in the Middle East; it says that religion has won. What are your thoughts

There was never a tension between the secular and religion in the Islamic traditions in the Middle East. That is a western conduct to simplify what is going on “over there”. It is not a war. There is no movement called secularism. What is meant is dictatorship, and that is what secularism means: secular dictatorships. In those cases, religious identity naturally forms the oppositional identity and becomes the counterculture, and the youth anywhere in the world will always gravitate towards the counterculture, just like socialism was the counter culture here in the sixties or communism in the fifties and Islamism in Jordan and Egypt right now. There is nothing unusual about it.

 

What solution do you propose to Islamic extremism

Personally, I propose political participation. If the Islamic Action Front had a chance to participate in government in Jordan, then there would not have been be any reason for extremism to exist in the country. The best example of this is the AKP party in Turkey. It was outlawed for a decade and when the rules changed the party ran for office. They were compelled to moderate their ideologies and moderate their political platform in order to reach out for the largest constituency possible, and in doing so they had enormous political success. The AKP have been in charge of the country for the past eight years, and the country has had eight very good years of economic and political growth. More importantly, there is no hint of any extremist movements left in turkey because whatever grievances these extremist may have had are being presented now in the government. If you were a kid, you won’t have a problem reconciling your Islamic and Turkish identity; therefore you will not go looking for alternate forms of identity.

 

Best Example of Islamic Political

Movement is AKP Party in Turkey

 

What about the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis in other parts of the region

The Muslim Brotherhood has transformed itself into one of the more democratic parties ever seen in Egypt. Even though President Mubarak had police literarily shooting people voting for them at booths, they still got 88 seats in parliament. They have worked across party lines and advocated greater freedoms of speech and religion, and they have proven to their skeptics that they are able to function in a democratic society. That is why they have been suppressed, because Mubarak can no longer blackmail the United States into thinking that if it weren’t for him, the crazy extremists would take over the country. Well the crazy extremists are in government and are doing a good job.

Salafism is traditionally an apolitical movement and I think it is very good news that they are taking part in the political process. That is what happened to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is what drove them away from their previous tendency to millatantism. When Islamism (understood as Islamic religious nationalism) is suppressed, it radicalizes into Jihadism and a movement for global dominance. If we want to combat Al-Qaeda, the way we combat it is with groups more moderate groups like that. You give the Muslim Brotherhood an avenue and they sap support for Al-Qaeda. You shut down Muslim Brotherhood and they turn into Al-Qaeda.

 

 

In one of the early chapters of the book No God but God, you claim that All Muslims from all sects and backgrounds have a goal of recreating what the Prophet created in Al-Madina. What did the prophet create, and do you think the model can still withstand in the present world and amidst the conditions of globalization

The first community in Al-Madina is the golden era in Islam. It is not a physical recreation, but Muslims strive to emulate the first community in Al-Madina. There are multiple implication of what that means, but certain elements of that time can be adopted into modern times, such as equality of the sexes and the breakdown of racial, ethnic and kingship barriers. And more significantly, constitutionalism, for the first constitution was written in Al-Madina.

 

Islam has been in Process of

Reformation for more than a Century

 

Is Shariah still in play in the moderation of extremism tendencies

The thing about Shariah is that it is talked about a lot as if there actually is such a thing. I think that, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as Shariah. This is a utopian, divine, non-existent moral code. When you apply it in the real world, you are talking about Fiqh, you are talking about jurisprudence. Fiqh in itself can have multiple connotations, economic, political and penal issues. The Muslim Brotherhood has abandoned the idea of Shariah, and so has Hamas because they understand that the vast majority of constituencies do not want the imposition of Islamic law, in so far as certain penal codes or bands on behavioral or moral issues.

What people mean by Shariah is the idea of a code of law that stands in opposition to the society they live in, because originally there is no code of law. The law today, lays in the hand of the person in charge. It is understandable why they call for Shariah. However, it is a recipe for failure for political parties. No party runs on a platform of imposing Shariah. It was a recipe for losing in Pakistan, even in the northwest frontier province where Bin Laden lives! The party advocating Sharia has lost embarrassingly to the more national secular party.

 

Do you still see Islam as heading towards reformation and moderation

Islam has been in a process of reformation for more than a century. We are in the twilight of that process and we are watching the ends of it. Reformation is a process of authority, it is who gets to define the faith, it is not a positive or a negative thing, it is not a good or bad thing, it can have positive effects such as the moderation movements, and pluralism, but it also can have negative effects, such as jihadism. Jihadism is an inevitable byproduct of the reformation of Islam.

 

The Only Way to Win a

Cosmic War is not to Fight One

 

What is the pressing issue for Muslim intellectuals who want reform these days

Literacy, education and access to information. We are witnessing dramatic rises in literacy and education. In terms of access to information, Iran has seen a 5000 percent jump in internet usage, Pakistan 3000 percent. We are in a position where the groundwork is set for what is going to come out of the reformation process.

 

The title of your new book is How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror. What is a cosmic war and how can it be won

A cosmic war is a religious war, a war in which God is believed to be engaged in one side against the other. It is different than a holy war because a holy war is a battle of physical adherence of rival religions, while a cosmic war is a war of the imagination. The blood is real, but in the mind of the warrior, the war takes place on a different plane. It is the war between the angels of light versus the demons of darkness, it is about the good versus the evil, and not a war of armies. The argument of the book is this: the war that Al-Qaeda is fighting is not a real war, but a war that has no end, that cannot be won and cannot be lost. The criticism is that the war on terror as was defined by the Bush administration is also a cosmic war, and by adopting the same rhetoric of the Jihadists, by accepting their world view and engaging in their cosmic conflict, we have essentially validated their view. The problem with the cosmic war is that it seeks to end evil in this world, which is an absurd notion. That is why a cosmic war cannot be won. The only way to win a cosmic war is not to fight one; instead we are supposed to focus on the grievances that lie behind the cosmic impulse.

 

 

 

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Reza Aslan on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

  

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M – Th 11p / 10c
Reza Aslan
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