Reza Aslan on religion in America: “Whenever someone wishes me a Merry Christmas I am obligated to

[cbayer]

Last edited Fri May 15, 2015, 03:33 PM - Edit history (1)

Reza Aslan on religion in America: “Whenever someone wishes me a Merry Christmas I am obligated to say ‘f*ck you’”

http://www.salon.com/2015/05/14/reza_aslan_on_religion_in_america_whenever_someone_wishes_me_a_merry_christmas_i_am_obligated_to_say_fck_you/

THURSDAY, MAY 14, 2015 11:49 AM EDT

7 out of 10 Americans identify as Christians -- but that doesn't necessarily mean those 7 know anything about Jesus

COLIN GORENSTEIN


(Credit: Comedy Central)

The God business has been very good to Reza Aslan lately because, as the religion scholar puts it best, “there’s always something to talk about.” Aslan joined Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” Wednesday night to discuss what religious identity looks like in the modern age. It looks kinda weird.

“I’ve always said, religion has given people great comfort in a world torn apart by religion,” Stewart quipped in the opening of the interview segment. “Why hasn’t God just settled this?”

“What people have to understand,” Aslan responded, “is that religion is far more a matter of identity than it is just a matter of beliefs and practices.”

Case in point: A recent Pew Research Center study found that roughly seven-in-ten Americans identify as Christians. Aslan explained that this doesn’t necessarily mean that 7 out of 10 Americans go to church or read the bible or know anything about Jesus Christ, really.

more at link

editing to add that the actual video of the show is at the link and might bear watching before judging…. or not.

[Humanist_Activist]

1. What he says is true, I know plenty of people who identify as Catholics who haven't...

set foot in a church in years, if not decades.

Being culturally Christian is interesting, I actually do say Merry Christmas to people at that time of year, and Happy Easter, etc. To me, and I'm sure many others, there's no religious connotation to those holidays at all. It brings back memories of "Santa" setting up toys around the Xmas tree, of going to Grandma's for some home cooked turkey, ham, pumpkin pie. Seeing all my cousins, getting even more presents, etc. Love the atmosphere of the holiday.

Easter was similar, but it was egg hunts and baskets full of candy. At neither of these events, at least growing up, do I remember Jesus being mentioned outside of songs played in the background.

[cbayer]

2. I am liking this idea of culturally catholic and culturally christian

more and more.

It has been used for a long time by jews, and I think a lot of muslims can identify with it as well.

It allows for some flexibility, which is often a good thing, particularly when it comes to families and communities.

[Humanist_Activist]

4. It does lead to the secularization of religious holidays...

several examples would be All Hallow's Eve and All Saints Day, St. Patrick's day and Valentine's day. These are all religious holidays, one has morphed into Halloween, a decidedly non-religious holiday, one was practically forgotten in the larger culture, even among Catholics, and the other two are completely secular to most people today.

Christmas is following this path, Easter less so.

It would be interesting if other religious holidays, from, for example, Judaism and Islam, were to be adopted by the larger culture. I think their influence would have to be increased drastically for that to happen. The culture will, at least for the foreseeable future, remain largely culturally Christian, but the beliefs themselves will fall by the wayside, because parties are more fun.

[cbayer]

5. The secularization of religious holidays is ok with me.

Those that hold them sacred will continue to do so.

In Mexico All Hallow's Eve and All Saints Day retain their deeply religious roots, but everyone participates religious or not. In southern Europe, All Saints Day is so sacred that it is one of the only 3 days a year many historical places are closed.

Agree about St. Patrick's and Valentines, but for the others it all depends where you are.

I would love to see a more general adoption of holidays form other religions. When living in primarily Jewish places, I learned a lot, but I have not lived in a primarily islam area.

It's kind of like what we are seeing with races - as there is more mixing, things begin to take on meanings that apply to more than just one group. I can see the same thing happening with religion as there are more and more interfaith couplings.

Should be interesting, but, FWIW I generally find beliefs much more interesting than parties.

[okasha]

8. Me, too. I like parties kept small.

But I'll celebrate almost any holiday with almost anyone.

[cbayer]

12. I particularly like holidays in places unfamiliar to me.

I think Mexico's Day of the Dead is one of my favorites so far.

I loved these as a kids, too. Being invited to a seder fascinated me.

But a big party with no purpose? Not so much.

[okasha]

18. The Art Dept. always creates an altar for the Day of the Dead

just outside the gallery. This year it will be in honor of the founding department chair, who died recently.

[cbayer]

19. Those are so cool.

We were in La Paz this year and they have a 3 day event where about 100 altars are on display. Many of them include live actors and performances.

There was one this year dedicated to Joan Rivers, I kid you not. It was both very touching and very humorous.

Can we talk?

What a great testament to you department chair.

[trotsky]

3. Well isn't that nice and interfaithy of him. n/t

[rug]

10. It's actually very droll.

His full statement is:

"Well, as a Muslim, whenever anyone says Merry Christmas I am obligated to say 'Fuck you!"

It pays to watch the links. 2:38.

[okasha]

13. I wish somebody would explain to me

why people who don't believe in Jesus' divinity become so dyspeptic over scholars' examinations of his human life.

[rug]

16. I dunno. He seems more upset by thinking people are telling atheists not to tell jokes.

[okasha]

17. ".....and dost thou laugh?"

Needless suffering, now that Nexium is OTC.

[okasha]

6. I knew when I saw the headline

that there'd be some who didn't get the joke--and who those "some" would be. A few of our dear ones here are really Puritans-- desperately afraid that someone, somewhere is having fun.

[cbayer]

7. Ah, and I'm missing it.

[okasha]

9. It translates to "Bah, humbug!"

[trotsky]

11. Oh rest assured, dear okasha, the joke was understood.

Why Aslan is allowed to joke like that but atheists aren't is what I'm not laughing at.

[tanyev]

14. Saw that the other night and laughed out loud.

I was kind of meh on his book Zealot, but I enjoyed that interview with Jon.

[cbayer]

15. I think he's a better speaker than a writer.

His writing tends to be a little droll. This interview was fun.

[MellowDem]

20. "Heritage not Hate"...

I remember seeing those bumper stickers with the Confederate flag on them in Maryland. Reza is making a similar statement, and his actually makes even less sense.

[rug]

21. I bet he's buying up cotton plantations with his royalties.

[MellowDem]

25. He identifies with a...

Misogynsitic, homophobic, bigoted religion. It's only religious privilege that makes this all seem quite normal.

It's similar to why identifying with the Confederacy just for fun is quite normal in some parts of the south.

[rug]

28. Ah, he's a Muslim, therefore he identifies with the Confederate States of America.

Logic!

[MellowDem]

29. No, he's Muslim but doesn't want to be accountable for his own belief system....

Therefore he's using the same bullshit excuse as those who identify with the Confederacy to avoid having to be accountable for identifying with a bigoted belief system.

"Sure, I identity with an explicitly bigoted belief system, but it's all about heritage for me, not hate!" It's laughable.

[rug]

32. What's laughable is your analogy.

Although . . . Lee had a beard and Mohammed likely had a beard. Hmm, I'd better go find a picture of Mohammed to make sure.

[MellowDem]

34. How is the analogy laughable?

I don't expect a substantive response, just more "self-evidently I'm right!"

I think it's a good analogy, I've stated why, and you've stated exactly zero reasons as to why you disagree with it.

[rug]

38. It's also ignorant.

You are comparing situations 1200 years and 12,000 miles apart.

[MellowDem]

40. Again, you didn't address any points...

The same reasoning is being used. How is it not? People want to identify with something they admit explicitly advocates terrible things for cultural reasons.

Miles and time doesn't change that it's the same reasoning.

[cbayer]

23. Yeh, you got it. Reza is just like the confederate flag waving bigots in Marlyand.

Just like them.

[MellowDem]

26. Worse actually...

Even the Confederate flag wavers don't have an explicit dogma of bigotry they're necessarily identifying with.

Reza identifies with an explicitly brutal, bigoted belief system that condones slavery, so there's that.

[cbayer]

27. Yep, that's Reza Azlan. An explicitly brutal, bigoted individual who condones slavery.

So much for separating beliefs from believers. This will be a post I will refer to in the future.

[MellowDem]

30. No, he just identifies with that belief system....

and says it's okay because "heritage no hate". Why, sometimes he'll even say Islam, despite explicitly being quite bigoted, isn't "really" bigoted to the true Muslims. Just like Confederate apologists will say over and over in offended tones that the Civil War wasn't about slavery, despite secession declarations explicitly saying so. It's all the same bullshit reasoning, meant to allowed a privileged group to continue identifying with hateful bullshit for their own comfort and benefits.

[cbayer]

31. Lol, you never fail to entertain.

If being a mellow dem means carrying around this much hostility and being a muslim leads to an attitude like Reza Aslan's, I'm going with the muslim.

Real mellowness is a good predictor for longevity, btw.

[MellowDem]

33. You never fail to resort to personal attacks...

instead of discussing an issue, and when you resort to it, I know you've conceded. Real discussions address points, real bullies get frustrated and attack people.

[cbayer]

39. Your overwhelming negative hostility brings out the worst in me and I admit that

making it personal is a concession.

But you are really out of line to call anyone else a bully.

I will try to do better.

[MellowDem]

41. Thank you...

Think of it this way, I have the same hostility towards bigoted religions as I do bigoted conservative ideologies, but no one on here gets attacked for having hostility to the latter, and they shouldn't for either, these are ideas I'm hostile towards. It's OK to be hostile towards ideas and critical of people that try to defend or promote those ideas because they are defending or promoting them.

[cbayer]

42. This site is committed to pushing a liberal/progressive/democratic ideology and is

decidedly opposed to conservatives.

OTOH, the rules of this site prohibits attacking people based on their religious beliefs or lack of beliefs.

There are sites where you can spew hate towards religious believers all day long. This is not one of them.

You may have that hostility, but the people here who identify with the religions that you hate are protected by the site's rules from your overt hostility.

Yet, you continue to express it.

[MellowDem]

43. Many religions contradict progressive ideology...

I'm not attacking people for having religious beliefs, I'm criticizing them for promoting or defending conservative beliefs that also happen to be religious.

My overt hostility is only toward the beliefs themselves. But the privilege of religion means many people think criticizing beliefs is the same thing as a personal attack.

Me thinking that Reza is disingenuous and dishonest for trying to avoid the problems of identifying with a belief system that promotes violent misogyny is not hatred towards Reza. This should be obvious.

[cbayer]

44. And many religions support and are totally in line with progressive ideology.

The key is to be able to recognize and distinguish between them, which I have really never seen you do.

You put them all in the same bucket and piss on them equally.

I'm totally with you in criticizing religions or religious beliefs that are in line with conservative ideology, but I'm going to support those that are in line with a progressive ideology.

I think your hostility is very much towards the believers. You repeatedly condemn people for identifying with a specific religion. That' an attack on them, not the ideas, no matter how hard you try to justify it.

I understand why you criticize Reza, but I see it very differently. I think his points are not only valid but very important. It is important to support muslims who reject the violent misogyny that some under the same umbrella embrace. I'm fully with him in that regard.

[MellowDem]

45. Not the one that is the subject of the OP...

The key is to not make up strawmen arguments or throw out red herrings.

Can you provide any proof that I judge every single religion exactly the same in every respect? You can't, because it's bullshit. I think all religions have some fundamental problems with how they find truth, but I readily understand some have much more negative influences than others.

I criticize people for identifying with bigoted belief systems and then defending those belief systems. This is not an attack on them personally, but on their ideas and their reasoning for supporting those ideas.

I don't see how pointing out the hypocrisy Reza is exhibiting is somehow denying support for Muslims that reject their own belief system.

You are defending one of the greatest privileges of religion, being able to identify with terrible shit for benefits and not having to answer for it.

[cbayer]

46. I disagree. I think there are many positive things about Islam in general and muslims in particular

There are muslims in my life who I love and respect. Can you say that?

I would love for you to show that you don't judge all religions the same. I would love to see you show me some evidence of anything positive you have said about religion or religious believers. Saying that you think some are worse than others isn't going to cut it.

What you say here is that you support muslims that reject their belief systems, right? Does that mean that you don't support any muslims who continue to embrace their belief system but are critical of certain aspects of it.?

Islam really doesn't have a lot of religious privilege in our culture. This whole privilege argument when it comes to Islam is just about the biggest straw man in this group. It might also be a red herring, but I'll leave that on the table.

[MellowDem]

47. There are positive things about Islam...

And fascism, and any ism and religion out there really, but not to where I would say it's "totally in line" with progressive thought.

I'm talking about ideas, not individuals. I know Muslims who are quite wonderful, and Christians, and etc., but they are that way in spite of their religious identity, not because of it. They ignore their own belief system when it comes to the worst aspects and concentrate on the good, like any human chooses morality. I don't give the credit to the belief system for doing that, but to the individual. I don't think that without Islam, they wouldn't know how to be nice.

I don't have to prove a negative, this is a discussion board, people only tend to discuss things where there is some disagreement, not unanimity, so you're not going to see me saying how Republicans can actually be nice people, and I know many personally, and etc. etc. because it's not relevant. Doesn't mean I hate Republcians personally.

If a Muslim is "critical of certain aspects" of their own belief system, it's another way of saying they reject those aspects.

Islam has a lot of privilege in our culture, because religion does. Not nearly as much as Christianity, but more so than some other minor religions and even non-belief in many cases, and part of that is because it's such a big and powerful religion globally. All religions, no matter how minor, share in the general privilege religion gets in the U.S. as an idea.

[Yorktown]

35. Spot on. US 'Confederates' have given up on slavery. Islam has not.

Slavery is specifically condoned in the Quran.

Which is the perfect word of god, as everybody knows

Qur'an (33:50) - "O Prophet! We have made lawful to thee thy wives to whom thou hast paid their dowers; and those (slaves) whom thy right hand possesses out of the prisoners of war whom Allah has assigned to thee"

Qur'an (24:32) - "And marry those among you who are single and those who are fit among your male slaves and your female slaves..."

[MellowDem]

37. Yep, and Reza is offended...

if you point out that his belief system is bigoted, because it's heritage not hate! How many times must Reza explain to people, he identifies with an explicitly bigoted belief system but you can't criticize him for that because he personally doesn't share those beliefs, he only identifies with them, and what's wrong with that! It's all in the name of culture and hypocrisy! Oh, if only people could understand his cognitive dissonance, his need to have his cake and eat it too. Poor Reza.

[Jim__]

22. Aslan has written an editorial in the NY Times expressing the same opinion as expressed on Jon Stewa

An excerpt from the NY Times editorial:

...

As a form of identity, religion is inextricable from all the other factors that make up a person’s self-understanding, like culture, ethnicity, nationality, gender and sexual orientation. What a member of a suburban megachurch in Texas calls Christianity may be radically different from what an impoverished coffee picker in the hills of Guatemala calls Christianity. The cultural practices of a Saudi Muslim, when it comes to the role of women in society, are largely irrelevant to a Muslim in a more secular society like Turkey or Indonesia. The differences between Tibetan Buddhists living in exile in India and militant Buddhist monks persecuting the Muslim minority known as the Rohingya, in neighboring Myanmar, has everything to do with the political cultures of those countries and almost nothing to do with Buddhism itself.

No religion exists in a vacuum. On the contrary, every faith is rooted in the soil in which it is planted. It is a fallacy to believe that people of faith derive their values primarily from their Scriptures. The opposite is true. People of faith insert their values into their Scriptures, reading them through the lens of their own cultural, ethnic, nationalistic and even political perspectives.

After all, scripture is meaningless without interpretation. Scripture requires a person to confront and interpret it in order for it to have any meaning. And the very act of interpreting a scripture necessarily involves bringing to it one’s own perspectives and prejudices.

The abiding nature of scripture rests not so much in its truth claims as it does in its malleability, its ability to be molded and shaped into whatever form a worshiper requires. The same Bible that commands Jews to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18) also exhorts them to “kill every man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey,” who worship any other God (1 Sam. 15:3). The same Jesus Christ who told his disciples to “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:39) also told them that he had “not come to bring peace but the sword” (Matthew 10:34), and that “he who does not have a sword should sell his cloak and buy one” (Luke 22:36). The same Quran that warns believers “if you kill one person it is as though you have killed all of humanity” (5:32) also commands them to “slay the idolaters wherever you find them” (9:5).

...

It would be interesting to see more of the evidence and reasoning that leads Aslan to this conclusion.

[cbayer]

24. As I said above, I find him much more interesting when he is speaking

than when he is writing.