Combating Islamophobia in America

“If you are painting 1.5 billion people with the same brush of violence and extremism [as al Qaeda], you’re a bigot,” said Reza Aslan, in one of his passionate television appearances discussing the American impressions of al Qaeda, which are frequently transferred onto the Muslim community as a whole.

A popular commentator on a heated controversy in New York – he says that the issue should not be spoken of as “a proposed mosque at ground zero” but rather an “Islamic cultural center (much like the Jewish cultural centers we see across the country) a few blocks away from ground zero” – Aslan aims to expose an unknown side of the Muslim world to the American people.

His intention to reveal the diversity of the Muslim population is apparent in his commentary, including one of his recent columns on The Daily Beast titled “Why Obama Can Be Proud of Indonesia”:

At a time when most Americans believe that Islamic values and democratic ideals cannot be reconciled, Indonesia has proved otherwise. Home to nearly 15 percent of all Muslims on earth, as many Muslims as there are in the entire Arab world, Indonesia is not only the richest, most stable, and most populous county in the Muslim world. It is the Muslim world. While Muslims in the Middle East are still fighting each other over whose vision of Islam will rule them all, Muslims in Indonesia have almost effortlessly fused their Islamic identity with the requirements of a modern constitutional state.”

Aslan is a scholar of religions and a contributing editor at online news site The Daily Beast. He will be speaking Monday, November 29 at the Club office in San Francisco. The Inforum program will begin at 6:30 p.m.

Frank Gaffney on Shariah Law and Westerners

Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, conservative radio host, and former Reagan administration official, came to The Commonwealth Club earlier this year to talk about shariah law. He expressed his fears that it was quickly spreading fundamentalist Islamic law around the world.

Listen to the audio here. Do you agree or disagree with Gaffney's views? Why? Click on the "comments" link above, and join the conversation.

And: If the topic of Islamic law and religious issues interest you, you might be interested in an upcoming Commonwealth Club program about modern women's interpretation of the Qur'an. And check out scholar Reza Aslan's Club program from last year, in which he discussed Islamic identity in the United States.

Reza Aslan: No "Clash of Civilizations"

Reza Aslan at The Commonwealth Club, where he discussed Iranian-American identity and politics with journalist Jonathan Curiel on September 1. (Photo by Beth Byrne.)

Despite the high levels of religious identification by Americans, this country remains quite ignorant about -- and sometimes fearful of -- minority religions, especially Islam, scholar Reza Aslan told The Commonwealth Club last night. During a conversation with journalist Jonathan Curiel, Aslan said that someday, Americans will accept Muslims the same way they think of Catholics; but when John F. Kennedy was running for president in 1960, he had to face public skepticism about whether his Roman Catholicism would entail him being more loyal to the Vatican than to the United States. Today, that accusation sounds laughable.

That attitude (and the hope embedded in it) are a good summary of Aslan's attitude toward the world's conflicts and the various intersections of religion and politics around the globe. In short, he said there is no "clash of civilizations," to use the phrase popularized by historian Samuel Huntington; he argued instead that the chief source of mistrust and misunderstanding was religious.

For a thoughtful and extensive overview of Aslan's program, read The Majlis report by Evan Hill.

For more about the Iranian-American experience, you might want to attend the upcoming event with popular author Firoozeh Dumas, who returns to The Club September 10. There's more event information here.

And on October 28, Haleh Esfandiari, founder and director of the Woodrow Wilson Center's Middle East Program, will discuss her time as a prisoner in Iran (a story she wrote about in her book, My Prison, My Home: One Woman's Story of Captivity in Iran). More on her event information here.

Not a Kinder, Gentler Khamenei

Looks like Reza Aslan's sources might be wrong. Aslan, we noted yesterday, suggested that Friday's prayer message from Iran's leaders would be a reflection of whether attempts by opponents and reformers (not necessarily the same people) to forge a compromise were making headway. A softer tone in his Friday message would suggest the efforts were bearing fruit.

Well, the fruit is spoiled. The New York Times reports today:

At Friday Prayer in Tehran University, the senior cleric, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami [not related to reformist former president Mohammad Khatami], referred to the demonstrators as rioters and declared, “I want the judiciary to punish leading rioters firmly and without showing any mercy to teach everyone a lesson.” Reuters quoted him as saying that demonstrators should be tried for waging war against God. The punishment for such offenses under Islamic law is death, Reuters said.

This morning at a press conference with visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Barack Obama repeated his condemnation of the violence against Iranian protestors. And he rejected the call for him to apologize to Iran, saying that he doesn't take Iranian President Ahmadinejad seriously when he makes such demands, and that Ahmadinejad should think more about apologizing to the families of the demonstrators who have been attacked.

Aslan will address The Commonwealth Club on September 1 in San Francisco.

Reza Aslan: A Deal in the Works in Iran?

There are reports of a deal forming in Iran that would end the current turmoil there, Reza Aslan writes on The Daily Beast today. He says that it's looking like there may be a run-off election between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi. This is apparently the work of former president Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, who heads up the council that picks the supreme leader, currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Rafsanjani has reportedly been in the religious center of Qum negotiating with other religious leaders in an attempt to put pressure on Khamenei and President Ahmedinejad.

Though the government's brutal crackdown has quieted things today in Tehran, Aslan says things are still raging in the provinces: "[D]espite the fact that protests in the capital city of Tehran have diminished, there are still reports of massive protests taking place in other parts of the country, including in Tabriz, Isfahan, Kermanshah, Mashad and Shiraz. These protests have been significantly smaller due to the brutal security crackdown, but they have also been much more forceful and violent."

He says that Khamenei's Friday prayers tomorrow should be a good indication of a softening of tone and therefore whether these reports of a compromise are real or not.

For some background, listen to this audio of Aslan's May 16, 2009, speech to The Commonwealth Club. And don' t miss his return engagement here when he comes to our San Francisco headquarters on September 1. See event and ticket information.