YouSaid · the spoken record

Reza Aslan

lines on the record: 64
first: 2022-10-19
most recent: 2022-10-19
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Novel Well, okay, well, I'll tell you. So there is a thousand year old Persian epic called The Shahnameh, or the Book of Kings. And it's essentially the Central Asian Iliad Odyssey. It's a 100,000 rhyming couplets written by a poet named Ferdosi, more than a thousand years ago. And I would like to tackle that in some way. Perhaps.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Declare martial law and will be in charge for a little while, and suddenly Iran looks like Pakistan in the eighties. It looks a little bit like Egypt for a while, and you go from religious rule to military rule. That could happen. I'm not saying that's a good thing. I'm just saying it is not an unlikely scenario in Iran.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the generals are like generals everywhere in the world, utterly pragmatic. They will pretend to be pious if that's what is needed. They will give up on piety if that's what is needed. I'm really glad that you said that because I think most Iran watchers will tell you that the real power in Iran isn't the Ayatollahs. It seems that way from the outside, but that's not where the real power is. The real power is the IRGC, the revolutionary guards who prop up that regime. And for better or worse, they can be the biggest influence in what happens next. It's not impossible to think that the revolutionary guard, which craves stability above all else, would say at a certain point, we agree with the protesters. It's time for the clerics to go back to their mosques. And in the name of stability, we're going to...”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But the younger clerics, the seminary students, the mid level clerics, the soapbach preachers, the sort of the imams at your mosque, there is an enormous amount of frustration and I would even say rejection of the theology behind clerical rule.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The elite that you're talking about, the governing elite. Yeah, is different. The elite there is what I would refer to as kind of the mid-level clerics, the seminary students, etc. Iran is a country in which it's under clerical rule. So the clerics are the political leaders. But that is a very new and frankly heretical idea in Shia Islam. There's no history in 1400 years of Islamic and Shia thought about direct clerical rule. That just doesn't exist. This was something that Khomeini thought up out of whole cloth. It's just a complete newly new innovation. And what people I think don't understand is that it's not a very popular theology in Shiism. And so for the most part, the sort of upper echelon, you know, of the clerical regime, those in power, those enjoying sort of the benefits of power, they're entrenched in that ideology.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The sort of traditional conservative Islamic dress, chanting slogans against the government standing next to young women in jeans and t-shirts who are unveiled. And now we're seeing strikes being called, the oil industry is going under strike, the bizarre merchants are going under strike. This morning we saw protests break out in the city of Om, which is the Vatican of Iran, the religious city of Iran. And there were thousands of people on the streets calling for an end to the regime. So I don't think we've seen anything quite like this since the revolution that I fled and where it'll go, it's hard to say, but it's hard to imagine that this isn't going to lead to some kind of profound and perhaps fundamental change in Iran.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm optimistic about the current, I would only call it a revolution that's happening right now. You can't really call it an uprising anymore or demonstrations anymore. What we're seeing right now is a revolution. And I'm optimistic for a couple of reasons. One, because of who is leading it because it's women-led and it's youth-led and it's Gen Z. And this is a generation that unlike the millennial generation in Iran just has no tolerance for the usual answers. Go back home. You can wear jeans. Everything will be fine, which is what the regime would say every time the youth rose up. And this generation has had it. But what I think is remarkable is the way in which these protests have managed to bring in all these other sectors of Iranian society. So you're seeing old people and young people, conservatives and progressives. You're seeing women dressed head to toe in Chador.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Messiah has always seen Cyrus this sort of elevated light, and many, many Jews stayed in the Persian Empire. So the Jews in Iran will tell you whether this is factually correct or not, that their presence in the land predates Islam, that they were there before there was any such thing as Islam. They're deeply rooted in the culture and tradition there, though, as I say, it is a small community now and definitely a diminishing community.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, people might be surprised to learn that even today, right now, the second largest Jewish community in the Middle East is in Iran. It's not gigantic. It's probably about 25,000 Jews. But they have been there for centuries. I think there are some historians that say that it can go all the way back to the Babylonian exile. And this now we have to go back into ancient history. But for people who remember, at a certain point, the Babylonians destroyed Israel and scattered the Jews across the Near East. And then in the 6th century, Cyrus the Great, the first sort of king of the Persian Empire, destroyed Babylon and sent the Jews back to their homeland with treasure in order to rebuild their temple. And so Judaism has always seen Cyrus. In fact, Cyrus is the only non-Jew in the Bible who is called”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I love that question, and while it is true that Zoroastrianism as a religion is dying and there's every reason to think that maybe a century from now there probably won't be any Zoroastrians left. I think currently right now, if you're talking about the entire globe, there's probably about 250,000 Zoroastrians left in the world, which is horrifying because this is one of the primal religions, right? There would be no Christianity if it wasn't for Zoroastrianism. But Zoroastrianism is so deeply embedded in Persian culture that the vast majority of Iranians probably don't even know that the things they're doing are Zoroastrian. It's kind of like Americans. And, you know, when you celebrate Christmas and you don't realize that you're doing these sort of pagan Germanic, you know, rituals, it's the same thing. But our New Year's ceremony.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, if you want Pheasant Jun, then you probably go to Shamshiri or Shole. If you want really great lamb, I would say, maybe Javon, if you want great Tadig, maybe Darya, see, this is the thing, is when you're talking about Tarangelis. There are dozens of restaurants to choose from, you get to decide which one, depending on kind of what you're in the mood for.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To hear your pick, of course, the separation is good. I was going back a little bit more. I was thinking like taste of cherry or the color of paradise. Those are very good, yeah. The white balloon.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And, frankly, the interference of external forces. Those two things, I think, for the last hundred years, have spelled a situation in which here we are, women and children and men on the streets in Iran right now clamoring for the exact same rights that they were clamoring for in 1906. It's like, wow, here we are 116 years later and Iranians are asking for the same thing and they still don't have it. As an Iranian, it's absolutely heartbreaking.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This was first of all nineteen fifty three, and Kermit Roosevelt and four others showed up in Tehran with a suitcase full of cash and in a very, very brief amount of time with the help of the allies that they had in Iran who wanted the Shah back, created a fake counter-revolution that brought Mohammed Mossadegh back down and brought the Shah back in power. It was the most extraordinary success. It actually gave birth to the CIA as we know it, Operation Ajax, if anybody's interested in it. That's a crazy story. And then, of course, you know, in 79, you had a post-revolutionary chaos that was essentially hijacked by the clerics and Khomeini itself. So it's a combination of things. It's a combination of the internal structure and the conflicts in Iranian society, the inability to sort of come together and unify under a common cause.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The CIA Take it for all of the whole country. Your listeners, if they are interested in this, please Google Operation Ajax because it literally was five people from Langley. Literally led by Kermit Ross.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'd say there's two factors, and we've kind of touched upon them. The first factor is external interference. The Russian Empire brutally fought against the constitutional revolution. And despite the fact that the Constitutional Revolution did end up succeeding, the Russians nevertheless made sure that until the run-up to the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, that the government, the constitutional government, would fail. And I outlined this in the book, the occupation of northern parts of Iran, the demand for concessions and et cetera, et cetera. Then in 1953, the Iranians rose up again and created a democratic country very briefly in the nationalist revolution with the Prime Minister Mohamed Mossadegh and kicked the Shah out of the country. I'm sure you remember what happened then, the CIA showed up and put the Shah back on the throne.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Declared himself the next Shah, created what we now know as the Pahlavi dynasty, he became Reza Shah, and Iran went right back to absolute monarchy after, you know, a decade of a somewhat successful but definitely unstable constitutional monarchy. And then, of course, the Pahlavi regime that Reza Shah created ultimately he gets thrown out at the run-up to the Second World War because he made some friendly overtures to Nazi Germany. And so the Allies removed him and put his son on the throne. And that son, Mohamed Reza Pahlavi, is the man who was overthrown in the 1979 revolution.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was a couple of factors. First of all was the First World War broke out very soon afterwards, and Iran became the principal staging ground for Russian and British troops. So Russia occupied the entirety of the North, and Britain occupied the entirety of the South. The war was a devastation for humanity across the board, but in Iran, it led to famine and devastation. The Spanish flu killed nearly 20% of the population, the economy collapsed. So by the time you get to 1921, you have a constitutional monarchy, but an absolutely unstable one. And in 1921, a military commander by the name of Reza Khan was with the backing of the British Empire declared a military coup. He tore up the Constitution, got rid of Parliament, and then really surprising everyone.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it didn't fail. It actually ended up succeeding. And in 1909, the revolutionaries were able to remove the Shah into exile, the Shah who was fighting against the Constitution, put his son on the throne instead. The Constitution became part of law. An elected parliament began making laws and for a very brief while Iran was a constitutional monarchy.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Has kind of diminished to the point where it's really hard to find anyone under the age of 50 in Iran who could tell you who Howard Baskerville was anymore. Even the constitutional revolution itself hasn't been taught with the same rigor since the 79 revolution as it used to be, primarily. For a while it was because these are people fighting against the Shah, right? And so I think post-79 there was this idea that, hey, look, you know, in the same way that, you know,”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, Iran has had three major revolutions of the 20th century, the constitutional revolution of 1906, the Nationalist Revolution in 1953, and of course the Revolution of 1979. And those three moments are sort of part of the history of the country. You know, it's what you learn in school. Now, of course, depending on the time, what you learn about it sometimes changes. The heroes change, you know. For instance, there was a time in which Howard Baskerville, who fought in the Constitutional Revolution, was taught in schools. There were schools named after Howard Basketball, streets named after Howard Basketball. You know, he was part of the traditional teaching of 20th century history for most Iranian school children, myself included when I was there. But not anymore. You know, really since 1979, that part of 20th century history.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was French and British, but what's really fascinating is the way in which it's so seamlessly integrated traditional Persian political thought and Islamic ideas into the kind of Western conception of constitutionalism. But it was heavily influenced by the British model because what they were actually asking for was a constitutional monarchy. They weren't saying we want to get rid of the Shah. We want to get rid of the throne altogether. There were some more sort of radical elements, social democrats who were actually asking that. But in general, what the call was was to have something akin to what the UK is, a monarchy that is limited by a constitution and an elected body that can curtail this sort of absolute power of the throne.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“especially sort of the low level mid level clergy began to clamor for the creation of a constitution that would outline the rights and privileges of all the citizens, just as importantly, the creation of a parliament with an elected body, a legislature that would have the ability to curtail the absolute authority. Was the influence British?”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This was an era the early twentieth century in which all around the world there were these protests and uprisings by people demanding what everyone was kind of referring to as constitutionalism, right? And they had different ideas of what that actually meant. For some people it meant lower prices. For some people it meant popular sovereignty. For some people it meant the freedom to do or say whatever you wanted to. constitutionalism as a movement was a flame in Russia, in Turkey, in Mexico, in China. But in 1906, sort of where it kind of really began was in Iran, in the sort of what's now referred to as the constitutional revolution of 1906. And this involved a band of young, zealous revolutionaries who, together with the business and merchant class and the clerical class, the clergy.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm exaggerating. Or, okay, we get to talk about India. Okay, so then I guess Hinduism isn't conducive to democracy because India has a billion people, 900 million of them Hindus and their democratic situation even right now is completely unstable under the leadership of the BJP. Again, I think we can look at political stability or instability around the world, including here in the United States, where almost half of us now, according to most polls, seem to be no longer all that much in favor of democracy. And to then tie that instantly to whatever the majority religion happens to be, I think is a false connection.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, at least Richard Tayapan has autocratic tendencies, just like Trump did, but wasn't a megalomaniac, possibly narcissistic sociopath. Yes, Indonesia is having difficulty. Indonesia has a billion people. It's one of the most diverse. No, it's not a billion people. That's why, too.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The UAE has created the wealthiest societies in the world. That's one thing. The second thing is I think there's a mistake in trying to see like a moral code or a moral foundation to a political philosophy like democracy, right? The political philosophy of democracy is that the majority vote gets to basically make the decisions. And if the majority of the people are Muslims, then obviously the democracy itself and the laws that they pass and the principles that they espouse are going to be tinged with the sort of majority morality, if you will, of the population itself. And so there are countless examples. I mean, you talk about Turkey. Yeah, okay. So Turkey is having difficulty with authoritarianism. I will take Turkey today to America under Trump any day of the week.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Canada. Canada is a pretty good one. I don't know if that would say that. Here's what I would say to the first point of that, which is that all religion is good for commerce. I mean, capitalism is the opposite of literally everything Jesus ever said about the topic of money or profit or anything. And yet capitalism is almost a religion in Christian countries. Whereas, you know, Islam and Judaism both forbid the charging of interest and usury and yet both of them have been used very, very easily in order to promote business and in some cases, certainly when you're talking about”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In your pocket. Jesus was way up there on the cross and you went to him with fear and trembling and distance. And I gotta say, I liked it. It appealed to me, and maybe it's because of the fact that, you know, I was raised Muslim, even though at the time I wouldn't have really understood what that meant. That I like, you know, that I want to approach God with that level of reverence, you know, that makes God other in a sense. I don't know if that makes sense. Just my personal opinion on it.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The distance appeals to me, and I'm getting a little bit personal here, but when I was in high school, an evangelical Christian for a brief while. And it was a very, you know, real and emotionally resonant conversion for me. You know, I heard the gospel story and I thought it was great and I believed it. But I will say that when I look back on that time, the one thing that I always had a hard time with was this idea that Jesus was my best friend, you know, that like God is my buddy. It's a joke that my friends and I do all the time. But, you know, they gave us this little card with Jesus' picture on it. And it said, Jesus in my pocket. And you were supposed to keep it in your pocket all the time. And I remember thinking to myself, do I want Jesus in my pocket? There's something that doesn't feel right about that. When I went to college, I happened to go to a Catholic university and I thought, oh, I don't know anything about Catholicism. I'll go and check out this Mass. And there, Jesus was...”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Separated from the self of God. That means the Word of God is God in some form. And so that's why no matter what language you speak, you have to learn to read the Torah in Hebrew. Same with Islam. It doesn't matter what language you speak. You have to learn to recite the scripture in Arabic. Even if you don't understand it, it's the words themselves, the sound of the words, the recitation of the words that gives you divine power. Obviously, Christians don't believe that for Christians, it's just words on a page and who cares what language it is and it's the meaning behind it that matters. The words themselves don't have any power. It's what the words mean that have power. But you can really see this divide between Judaism and Islam on one side and Christianity on the other.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Correct the actual physical pages, the physical words themselves are endowed with divine authority. Obviously, more conservative Jews believe the exact same thing, which is why you have to maintain the Torah in a box and you have to be careful who can touch it and who can't touch it and you can't touch it with your hands. You get a lot of that with Islam as well. You can't destroy the Torah. Like you have to burn it. You can't throw it in the ground, all of those things. I think Christians kind of look at that and think, wait a minute, it sounds like you're focusing on the physical scripture instead of what the scripture itself says. And that's not incorrect, actually. And it has a lot to do with the way that both Jews and Muslims understand the speech of God. So the theory is this, that if the Torah, if the Quran is the Word of God, then the Word of God can't be.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“much more in common with the ways that Jews understand their scripture. For Muslims and Jews, the scripture itself is holy and divine. I don't mean to say the meaning of it, the interpretation of it. I mean literally the words on the page.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, Islam does have obviously a conception of an end of time, obviously a notion that there will be a moment in which all of creation will come to an end and a perfected society will arise. Islam does have a messianic figure that called the Mahdi, although that figure, to be perfectly frank, plays a much larger role in Shia Islam than it does in Sunni Islam. I mean, Sunnis will say, well, yeah, sure, I believe in the Mahdi. Shiaism begins with belief in the Mahdi, the end times and the Messiah to come. In fact, many Sunnis would say, well, the Messiah is Jesus. Jesus will come back as the Messiah. And then the Mahdi will maybe come before or after him. It's very confused. The traditions. But you have this really interesting point because the way that Muslims understand their scripture is quite different than the way that Christians understand their scripture. It has actually much”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“the richest nation on earth, the Saudi clan and Korsaudi Arabia, the Saudi clan was able to take control over the Arabian Peninsula and defeat all of the other clans by marrying itself to this puritanical form of Islam called Wahabism. And then that clan learned the lesson that everyone eventually learns, which is there's no such thing as controlling fundamentalism. You may think that you're in charge of it, but you're not. And so just look at the last 60, 70 years of history, and that will tell you what Wahhabism with Saudi funding and control and power has done not just to Islam, but to the world. So I said, one nice thing about it.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Assumptions about the workings of the universe are being openly questioned, and all around the world there are religious groups that are reacting to this movement by reverting, right? Let's revert to the fundamentals of our faith. This is where the term fundamentalism came from. Let's purify our religion of all of these innovations that have crept inside of it. And so the same sense that gives you sort of the puritanical version of Christianity gave birth to the Puritanical version of Islam. This Puritanical version of Islam, however, had one very big advantage, which is that it became the state religion of what very quickly became”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's good. That's good. Okay. No, I pride myself in being a scholar of religions, and so I should be able to talk about the beauty of all religious traditions. What Wahhabism has in common with a lot of these religious revivalist movements of the 19th century? Remember, Wahhabism arose at the same time as the Second Great Awakening was happening in the United States. And what they all have in common is this desire to return to the pure form of the religion. This is a time of modernization and societies look different and mores are different. It's funny because we are talking about the middle of the 19th century, but we're talking about a time of great technological advances. We're talking about coming out of a period of the enlightenment in which some of our most basic”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I guess what I would say is the difference between monism and pantheism and Spinoza's idea is that all things are made of the same thing, which by the way, he was right, as far as we know so far, that everything that exists today has always existed and will always exist as long as the universe exists. That's a scientific statement, not a religious one. But it sounds a lot like Sufism to me that everything that exists always existed and will always exist as long as the universe exists as long as you define the universe as God. That's what I would say is the difference between your sort of delineation of secular pantheism and religious pantheism.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I am an unapologetic pantheist. I don't have a problem being called a pantheist at all. I do believe that all things are united, that all things are one. And I do believe that, you know, if there is a thing called God, whatever that thing is, it's pure existence. And I share in that existence.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That, yeah. That is not to say that there aren't other religions that hold something similar to this notion. You know, Buddhism also believes that all things are the same, except that in Buddhism the thing that all things are is an illusion, right? All things are nothing. There is nothing, nothing exists, you don't exist, nothing exists. Sufism is sort of like the opposite end of that. Yes, all things are the same. But all those things are one thing and that one thing is God.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is that at the heart of Sufism is this notion that God, if God is anything, is all things, that God is all and all is God, that you and me and this desk and this microphone, if a thing exists, it exists only insofar as it shares in the existence of the only thing that exists. And so there's this concept of divine unity at the heart of Sufism that I've always found very appealing spiritually speaking. And that's why I was drawn to it.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, no, no, no. I couldn't care less about the imams at all. I am not Shia. I would not refer to myself as Shia at all. But what appealed to me about Sufism, beyond the fact that as I'd already said before, that it really does think of religion as sort of the starting point. And I often say when you study the world's religions for a living, it becomes very difficult to take any one of those religions all that seriously anymore. It makes it very hard to take their claims to absolute truth seriously anymore, that's for sure. And what I love about Sufism is that it doesn't take religion or those claims to absolute truth seriously anymore. But one thing that Sufism does do, which is very appealing to me,”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I began to read about Sufi Islam, which is a tradition that I didn't know that much about. And it not only appealed to me, the way that I put it is that I was reading things that I already believed. I just didn't know there was a word for it, you know? And so Sufi Islam kind of gave me the words for these ideas and these feelings and these beliefs that I felt like I already had. And so that's why I associate myself with Sufism.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was seven. It was 1979. I was seven years old. And my father was never a religious man. So when he came to America, he thought, great, now we don't even need to go on holidays anymore. So we're done now with all religion. And maybe that's partly why I became so interested in religion, you know, because when you live in a household where there's no religion anymore, you just suddenly start to wonder why. And so I had a very kind of roundabout spiritual journey, but for me, as an adult when I was studying the world's religions and still longing for some kind of spiritual, you know, edification of my own,”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, you know, I grew up in Iran, so I grew up in a Shia family, but my religion was more a matter of my identity than really anything else. Most people, you just kind of, you go to mosque or you go to temple or you go to church on the holidays. And it's kind of how you understand yourself. By any means, I don't think I came from a very pious family, that's for sure. And certainly when we left Iran, my dad, who”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, right. The imams with the capital I's in Shiism are supposed to be infallible. And the sixth Imam before he died designated one of his sons, Ishmael, to become the seventh Imam and then before the sixth Imam died, the seventh Imam died. The Ishmael died. And so the sixth Imam said, okay, never mind. then it'll be this other imam and the vast majority of the Shia just kind of said okay and they continued with that seventh imam but a minority of the Shia scratched their head and said wait a minute that doesn't make any sense you're infallible you chose this person and if you chose that person then that's the imam so maybe he's not really dead maybe he is just an occultation maybe he's just in hiding maybe in fact he's a sort of messianic figure who will return at”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, but I mean, Christian debates over the nature of Jesus resulted in massacres because one person said, no, he's God but in man form. And one person would say, no, but he's man, but he has God inside of him. And the next thing you know, you know, there are thousand dead people on the battlefield. The way that this worked was the sixth imam. Now remember the imams are infallible. That's the very important if they're imams though, right? So”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What's wrong with those emons? This is one of those historical arguments that I'm sure it was so important at one point. And nowadays we look at it and we think, seriously, that's what you guys broke up for.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Part of the religious ceremony, whereas Ishmaelis will have Gazals, these sort of songs that are very spiritual. Exactly, exactly. And they'll have concerts that will go on for hours and hours and hours where people will be dancing and falling into an ecstatic state. Very much looks like Sufism.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the kind of Shiism that one finds in South Asia is primarily what we refer to as Ishmaeli Shiism or Sevener Shiism. Remember earlier I said it depends on how many imams you accept. And the Ishmaelis accept seven imams and in Iran they accept twelve imams. And 12 or Shi'ism is by far the majority Shiism. But the Ishmaelis are a very robust and expanding religious community. A lot of Ishmailis here in the United States actually and in Canada, but they are primarily focused in South Asia. And they tend to be much more into music and dancing and movement, something you don't see that often in sort of the traditional Shiism of Iran, right? There's not a lot of music and dancing in the religious ceremony. There's music and dancing, but it's not.”
2022-10-19 · Conversations with Tyler · Reza Aslan on Martyrdom, Islam, and Revolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source