Influential author challenges misconceptions of Islam as inherently violent

The lure of a prominent author speaking on a sensitive topic filled the 300-seat Jordan Auditorium, as well as four additional classrooms, in Mendoza College of Business on the evening of February 4.

The speaker that had attracted so many—including students attending simply out of curiousity and others fulfilling a course assignment—was Reza Aslan, an internationally-acclaimed writer and scholar of religions who currently serves as Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside.

Aslan is the author of the two bestsellers: Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, and No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam. He has been a correspondent for Fox News, CNN, Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show,” and the New York Times, and is filming a television show “Believer,” which will premiere this year on CNN.

Sponsored by the Dean’s Fellows and moderated by Gabriel Said Reynolds, Professor of Islamic Studies and Theology, Aslan’s talk, “Islam and ISIS,” explored the “actual relationship between radical Islam and terrorism,” according to the Dean’s Fellows’ website.

“Harmful generalizations regarding the Muslim population’s involvement in terrorism have spread rapidly,” since recent attacks in the Middle East, Paris, and San Bernadino, the site explained. “ISIS’s quest for global terror has further exacerbated these misconceptions, allowing the continued proliferation of global Islamophobia and xenophobia towards Middle Eastern individuals.”

Aslan began by drawing attention to current anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. He cited statistics such as the 57 percent of Americans who agreed with Ben Carson that being a Muslim should disqualify a person from being president, the 40 percent who want Muslims to be recorded in a registry, and the 49 percent who, according to Gallup polls, are afraid of becoming victims of terrorism.

“Clearly, we are at this place where the country has been seized by fear,” Aslan continued. Although it is necessary to “differentiate between Islam as a religion and Islam as an ideology of violence,” there is a “very real threat” of violence at the hands of Muslims that cannot be ignored.

Furthermore, it is a mistake to dismiss these acts of violence as having nothing to do with Islam. “A Muslim,” Aslan explained, “is whoever says he or she is a Muslim.” Those who claim to be acting in the name of Islam are, in fact, doing just that.

Nevertheless, Aslan insisted that the United States has a double standard regarding religious violence. Citing the example of the November Planned Parenthood shooting in Colorado, Aslan suggested that, in a country that is predominantly Christian, it is very easy to reject Christians’ violent actions as disconnected from Christianity, but difficult to do the same with Islam.

“We can’t be fooled into thinking that [violence] is intrinsic to Islam or that it is unique to Islam,” Aslan said. Such an answer is “incredibly unsophisticated,” because although many of the violent groups, including ISIS, are Muslim, so are many of those who are opposed to violence.

Therefore, there is clearly “a much larger … global conflict taking place within Islam.” This conflict, Aslan explained, is the result of two global trends that have arisen in the last century.

One of these trends, “religious nationalism,” is common to many religious groups and holds that the citizens of a nation-state should establish their national identity based on religion, and thus the state should be predicated upon a single religious tradition.

This trend is “by no means a uniquely Islamic phenomenon,” Aslan continued. Religious nationalism has increased around the world: Islamists in predominantly Muslim countries, the Hindutva in India, Zionists in Israel, and in the United States, “Christianists” or “dominionists.”

Christianists, Aslan explained, believe “that the United States is a distinctly Christian nation” founded on Christian values, and that it should be run accordingly. Aslan’s examples of Christianists in the United States included former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum. Politicians such as Huckabee and Santorum generally want to implement Christianist ideals through democratic means, but others, such as the “dozens of Christian militias” forming in the United States, are not as peaceful.

“Religious nationalism is a universal phenomenon … and Islamism is nothing more than the Islamic form of this universal phenomenon,” Aslan reiterated. All forms of religious nationalism can be found “in both peaceful and violent varieties,” but because the majority of people in the United States consider themselves at least nominally Christian, and because there are many misconceptions about Islam among Americans, Islamist violence is viewed as the norm, rather than the exception, for Muslims.

Aslan maintained that a “failure of secular nationalism” occurred internationally in the twentieth century. Violence perpetrated in the name of secular ideologies, such as communism, Marxism, and socialism, caused people to look elsewhere—namely, toward religious identity.

As national identities diminished, “primal identities,” as Aslan described them, such as tribe and religion were seized and given primacy. According to Aslan, religious nationalism and resulting violence occurs when “primal identities” are valued above national identity. This is especially a problem with Islam because the nation-state was such a late phenomenon in the Islamic world.

Nevertheless, Aslan reminded the audience, religious violence that results from religious nationalism happens in “every religion” and has both violent and nonviolent forms.

Specific to Islam, however, is Aslan’s second trend, jihadism. Jihadists, Aslan explained, are not religious nationalists because, unlike the Islamists who want to establish Muslim values and ideals in Muslim countries, jihadists want to eliminate all national identities in order “to reconstitute the globe under a single world order,” the Caliphate. Like religious nationalism, jihadism can be both peaceful—such as those who want to establish the Caliphate through preaching—and violent.

People drawn to jihadism—even violent jihadism—tend to be well-educated and fairly well-off, Aslan said. They are idealistic and attracted to jihadism’s “Utopian ideal.” This is the reason that thousands of Europeans have sought to join ISIS. Why do so many young, well-educated European Muslims flock to serve the Islamic State? Aslan’s answer was simple: Americans wrongly assume that religion can be reduced to a simple creed, but in reality, “religion is not just a matter of beliefs and practices … It is primarily about identity.”

Aslan claimed that religious identity and national identity are no longer distinguishable. In the United States, a majority identifies as Christian, but “for them, the cross and the flag have essentially melded into a single icon.

“We have to stop pretending that religion is something unique or unusual, that it’s separate from the other things that make us who we are,” he continued.

Aslan advocated promoting a robust counter-argument within religious communities. To suppress religious nationalism is to radicalize it, whereas to allow it to express itself is to allow it to be moderate. Concluding with a series of “it’s up to you” statements, Aslan insisted that “every single person in this room has a responsibility” to reject fear and to engage in sincere and open dialogue.

In an Observer Viewpoint, Gabriel Said Reynolds echoed Aslan’s plea for a united effort and sought to apply these ideas concretely. “Notre Dame should constantly look for ways to defend those—Christians and others—who are persecuted for their religious identity,” he wrote. “In the beautiful Vatican II document Dignitatis Humanae, the Church declares that all people have a right to religious freedom, which ‘has its foundation in the very dignity of the human person’ … We who live in the security and comfort of the West should not be silent about the fate of those (Christians and others) who live under the shadow of groups such as ISIS. We must tirelessly advocate for religious freedom everywhere and for everyone—for Christians, for Muslims and even for ex-Muslims who are threatened by the Islamic law of apostasy.”

Nicole O’Leary is a sophomore theology and history major living in McGlinn. She was stuck in one of the four overflow rooms during this talk. To learn more about her experience, contact her at noleary@nd.edu.