Reza Aslan on Why Islam is Not a Violent Religion

This clip is relatively old (in internet age, at least). Last September, Reza Aslan, a religious scholar and teacher at the University of California, appeared on CNN to talk about whether Islam promotes violence (it does not) and whether people are wrong in their attempts to categorize all 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide as adhering to the same cultural beliefs (they are, and because they do not, respectively).

Aslan makes a point that the majority of people who believe (incorrectly) that Islam promotes violence. In the clip, when posed with the question, Aslan says,

Islam doesn't promote violence, or peace. Islam is just a religion — and like every religion in the world, it depends on what you bring to it. If you're a violent person, your Islam, your Christianity, your Judaism, your Hinduism, is going to be violent. There are Buddhist...monks in Myanmar slaughtering women and children. Does Buddhism promote violence? Of course not. People are violent or peaceful, and that depends on their politics, their social world, the way that they see their communities, the way they see themselves. 

Remember, Anders Behring Breivik, the man who killed 77 people in Norway in 2011, did so to 'save Norway from Islam' (not a direct quote).

Aslan then proceeds to ether both hosts for repeatedly saying "Muslim countries" are primitive or repressive after giving repeated evidence to the contrary. He further states, to great effect, I believe,

This is the problem is that these types of conversations that we're having aren't really being had in any kind of legitimate way. We're not talking about women in the Muslim world, we're using two or three examples to justify a generalization — that's actually the definition of bigotry. 

In an interview around the same time with The Washington Post (Aslan was promoting his latest book),  he further explained the relationship between religion and personhood.

It’s not [that] I think Islam is correct and Christianity is incorrect. It’s that all religions are nothing more than a language made up of symbols and metaphors to help an individual explain faith. 

Check out Aslan on The Daily Show this past May, and follow the man on Twitter.