There's nothing quite as unattractive as an academic defending his credentials.

Click to enlarge: Reza Aslan, former evangelical Christian, convert to Islam, and author of Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. He is now an associate professor in the Creative Writing program at the University of California, Riverside. His full credentials are here >. I must say, anyone named a Truman Capote Fellow just earned my undivided attention.

I'm not sure why all the kerfuffle over this.

Lots of Christians have written books on other religious figures. I think there is a bit of "because you're Moslem, you have nothing to tell me about a historical Jew," or, "Jesus takes it on the chin every day, let's turn the tables for a moment."

And I understand that. Aslan may have some insight to be sure (he's a former evangelical Christian after all), but I'm skeptical that he could be sufficiently unbiased to interest me. I have that sort if internal dialog every time I pick up a book by any author: Do I care what the writer thinks? If I don't, I don't read it.

(FWIW, from the Amazon reviews - both good an bad - there's nothing here that hasn't already been covered better by others. The novelty is that it was written by a Muslim and former Christian, so perhaps this is like reading a vegetarian review of McDonald's - interesting but incomplete, unless of course you're a vegetarian.)

Reza Aslan with Lauren Green on Fox News

[2013-07-31]]

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A little perspective....

But there's always the other side of the coin, isn't there?

Jesus was a Jew. How would the Moslem world respond to a Moslem that converted to Judaism and wrote a book on Mohamed?

Yeah, there's a fatwah for that.

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I don't mind seeing responses to Fox News motivated by a sense of fairness, but let's stow the incredulity and understand the sensitivities that led to the conversation in the first place.

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What's really strange? That Lauren Green is being widely depicted as "attacking" Islam because she challenged a Moslem's understanding of Christianity. I think the conversation (if not the tone) is a good one. And vice versa.

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Denying history to support a belief...

Too many folks are not content to believe what they want, but need to change history to support what they want to believe[1]. Unfortunately, desperation can be just as loud and effective as the truth.

For example: "Jesus Christ, never got crucified, nor was he ever killed." > 

If you're going to use someone else's holy book against them, at least make an effort to know what you're talking about.

[2013-06-30]

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For the record, I juxtaposed Reza Aslan with answering-christianity.com to provide some contrast; I am not in any way equating them or suggesting one taints or enhances the other. I wrote them a month apart.

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[1]
Introspective self-critique: That is a very good sentence.

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