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Saturday, August 17, 2013

Reza Aslan Iranian Critic of Christians


Reza Aslan is an Iranian propagandist and anti-Israel terrorist apologist pretending to be an academic critic of Christianity. There are a number of pro-Iranian websites with similar critiques of Christians. His credentials are doubtful, perhaps his materials actually come from a ministry of disinformation of a national intelligence agency?









.References 

.Critics

  • CIF watch  "there is precious little that would prevent a reader from concluding that it’s Israel’s arbitrary maltreatment of Palestinians that turns nice young British Muslims into murderous terrorists."
  • Glenn Beck  RILES CHRISTIAN CRITICS WITH CLAIMS JESUS NEVER CONSIDERED HIMSELF GOD, SOMETIMES PROMOTED VIOLENCE
  • rg
  • mah29001 "Islamic Supremacist Apologist And Anti-Israel Nutcase" and "Iranian Puppet"
  • Pamela Geller " Jew-Hating Terror Apologist"
  • Zuhdi Jasser "zionist neocon"

.Supporters

  • Ahmadinejad
  • Atlantic magazine 
  • Colbert Report.  appearance
  • Daily Beast
  • Daily Show appearance 
  • Guardian interview
  • Loonwatch (pro-Islam)
.Facts
  • Evangelical: Aslan became an evangelical Christian in his teens, but his faith severed at college, partly after reading The Brothers Karamazov.
  • Harvard Divinity School
  • Immigrant born in Iran born in 1972 entered United States in 1979 at the age of 7 after Shah deposed
  • Parents religion: "mother was a less than enthusiastic Muslim and whose father was a more than enthusiastic atheist. "

 .Ahmadinejad

 http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/01/a-little-ahmadinejad-revisionism-for-you/69505/

A Little Ahmadinejad Revisionism for You

More
Right here on the Atlantic website, Reza Aslan writes:
It might seem shocking to both casual and dedicated Iran-watcher that the bombastic Ahmadinejad could, behind Tehran's closed doors, be playing the reformer. After all, this was the man who, in 2005, generated wide outrage in the West for suggesting that Israel should be "wiped from the map." But even that case said as much about our limited understanding of him and his context as it did about Ahmadinejad himself. The expression "wipe from the map" means "destroy" in English but not in Farsi. In Farsi, it means not that Israel should be eliminated but that the existing political borders should literally be wiped from a literal map and replaced with those of historic Palestine. That's still not something likely to win him cheers in U.S. policy circles, but the distinction, which has been largely lost from the West's understanding of the Iranian president, is important.
Hmmm. So Israel should be replaced by Palestine, which is different than removing Israel from the map. Got it. What Ahmadinejad has been trying to say all along, then, is  "Shabbat Shalom, Jews!"
































.CIF watch 

Reza Aslan | CiF Watch

cifwatch.com/tag/reza-aslan
Reza Aslan is a highly ... al-Qaeda Alan Rusbridger Ali Abunimah anti-ZionismAntisemitism Antony Lerman BBC BDS Benjamin Netanyahu Ben White Biased

Creative Writing on Terrorism

Reza Aslan is a highly successful author, whose first book on the “Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam” won international acclaim and was short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award. According to his website, the Iranian-born Aslan studied “Religions” at several US universities, though he is now an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside.
I have to admit that I’m not familiar with Aslan’s work, but that is likely true for many other people who followed CiF’s “Best of the Web” recommendation that featured at the top of the list Aslan’s blog at the “Daily Beast” where he had posted an excerpt from his second book that has just been published in paperback.
As can be seen from the screenshot above, CiF’s one-sentence summary provided the title of Aslan’s post: “Jihadists’ Palestinian rallying cry” and promised “[an] excerpt from Reza Aslan’s book, in which he writes about the 7/7 bombers’ radicalization after a visit to Israel-Palestine.”
Indeed, the passage Aslan chose to entice readers to buy his new book opens with the (creatively written) claim:
“Two years before Mohammed Siddique Khan, the soft-spoken second-generation Pakistani-Briton from West Yorkshire, led three of his friends on a suicide mission that would end in the murder of more than 50 of his fellow British citizens on July 7, 2005, he stood at the wall dividing Israel and Palestine, at one of its 500 or so security checkpoints. In all of the material published about the so-called 7/7 bombers, all of the documents and studies and conferences meant to discover what could have led to the radicalization of those four seemingly benign British youths, Khan’s trip to Israel is rarely, if ever, mentioned. But there can be little doubt that it was the decisive moment in his young life—the pivot in his journey from husband and father and, by all accounts, well-adjusted, well-integrated, well-educated youth worker to radical jihadist bent on mass murder.”

Mar 5, 2003 – Haifa: 17 people were killed and 53 wounded in a suicide bombing of an Egged bus in the Carmel neighborhood. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.
Apr 30, 2003 – Tel Aviv: Three people were killed and 60 wounded by a British Muslim suicide bomber, sent by Hamas, at a beachfront pub “Mike’s Place”.
None of this really matters for Aslan, because he is interested in presenting Khan’s “narrative” that justifies Islamist terrorism by blaming Israel – and the fact that Israel is actually blamed for trying to protect its civilians against a murderous wave of terror is conveniently left out. You see, if those nervous sweaty young Israeli soldiers hadn’t searched the elderly Palestinian, Mohammed Siddique Khan would never ever have thought of launching a deadly terror attack in London.
It may well be that elsewhere in his book, Aslan provides a more critical perspective that addresses how utterly contrived the kind of narrative exemplified with Khan’s story really is. But in the excerpt he chose to represent his book – and that CiF chose to endorse as “Best of the Web” – there is precious little that would prevent a reader from concluding that it’s Israel’s arbitrary maltreatment of Palestinians that turns nice young British Muslims into murderous terrorists.

.Credentials

 http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/reza-aslan-a-jesus-scholar-whos-hard-to-pin-down/2013/08/08/2b6eee80-002b-11e3-9a3e-916de805f65d_story.html
he’s eager — perhaps overeager — to present himself as a formidable academic with special bona fides in religion and history.
The boy who posed as something that he was not has become the man who boasts of academic laurels he does not have. Aslan, 41, has variously claimed to hold a doctorate in “the history of religions” or a doctorate in “the sociology of religions,” though no such degrees exist at the university he attended. His doctorate is in sociology, according to the registrar’s office at the University of California at Santa Barbara.
Aslan, who has an undergraduate degree in religious studies and a master’s in theological studies, is not currently a professor of religion or history. He is an associate professor in the creative writing department of the University of California at Riverside. He has asserted a present-day toehold in the field of religion by saying he is “a cooperative faculty member” in Riverside’s Department of Religious Studies.
Yet this is not so, according to Vivian-Lee Nyitray, the just-retired chair of the department. Nyitray says she discussed the possibility last year with Aslan but that he has not been invited to become a cooperative faculty member, a status that would allow him to chair dissertations in her former department. Aslan dismisses criticism of his credentials — which has reached a feverish pitch on the Internet and in parts of the academic world — as the result of misinterpretation of his unconventionality more than anything else. 

.Glenn Beck

  • Who is Reza Aslan? Glenn exposes his progressive record – …

    www.glennbeck.com/2013/07/31/who-is-reza-aslan-glenn-exposes-his...
    Reza Aslan: To be clear, I am a scholar of religions with four degrees, including one in the New Testament. ... (anti-zionist) its in no way a bad thing.
    The media went has been going nuts over Reza Aslan’s new book about the “historical” Jesus, “Zealot”. It’s gotten plenty of praise from the left, and anyone upset over it has been portrayed as being anti-Muslim. But the manufactured uproar over Aslan’s Islamic faith is only a distraction from the real issues: he has obscured the facts about his educational background and his deep ties to progressive organizations. Aslan is first and foremost a progressive, whose goal is to raise doubts in believes in Jesus and ultimately have the leave the faith like he did. 




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.Zuhdi Jasser




.Sources 



Reza Aslan on Zealot, Fox News and Richard Dawkins
"Just to be clear, this is not some attack onChristianity," he said of Zealot, a book describing Jesus of Nazareth as an illiterate, trouble-making social revolutionary (and a very inspirational one at that), to an anchor who could not get past his suspicious Muslimness. "My mother is a Christian, my wife is a Christian, my brother-in-law is an evangelical pastor." The anchor was undeterred, determined to reveal a secret Muslim agenda. "My job as a scholar of religions with a PhD in the subject is to write about religions," he insisted. The clip was watched and cheered by millions – it was extraordinary.
But then, as I discover when I arrive at Aslan's home in Los Angeles to interview him, the Iranian-American's life as an academic is already extraordinary.
Aslan was born to ostensibly Muslim parents in Tehran in 1972 and fled to the US with his family seven years later when the revolution removed the Shah from power. , but tThey lived a fairly secular life and he had no religious instruction as a child. Yet he was gripped by religion, eventually attending Harvard Divinity School and holding various teaching posts. He sees himself first and foremost as a storyteller, and is associate professor of creative writing at University of California, Riverside.

The Guardian ‎
Daily Beast‎ - 5 days ago
The Atlantic Wire‎ - 1 day ago

Reza Aslan—Historian? | The Nation

www.thenation.com/article/175688/reza-aslan-historian‎
Aug 9, 2013 - Yes, the author was attacked on Fox News for daring to be a Muslim writing about Jesus. But does his book actually meet the historical standards he claims?

Reza Aslan: A Jesus scholar who's hard to pin down - The ...

www.washingtonpost.com/.../reza-aslan.../2b6eee80-002b-11e3-9a3e-91...‎
Aug 8, 2013 - Author of the bestselling “Zealot” confronts questions about his credentials and religious upbringing.

Iranian-born immigrant mastered break dancing and embraced the nickname “El Pinguino,” (The Penguin) a nod to his bowlegs. Assuming an alternate ethnic identity suited a singular purpose for the young Aslan, who came to the United States in 1979 at the age of 7. “I was scrubbing myself clean of any hint of my ethnicity or my religion,” says Aslan, whose mother was a less than enthusiastic Muslim and whose father was a more than enthusiastic atheist. “It was not the best time to be Iranian in America.”











In Defense of Reza Aslan - NYTimes.com

douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/14/in-defense-of-reza-aslan/‎ The latest historical Jesus bestseller isn't very good, but it also could have been worse.






In Defense of Reza Aslan


Since I wrote about the latest “real Jesus” bestseller two weeks ago, its author, Reza Aslan, has taken a fairly comprehensive beating in a variety of outlets. The Washington Post ran a skeptical piece about Aslan’s tendency to overemphasize his academic credentials even when he isn’t being cross-examined on Fox News, and his interpretation of Jesus’s life has been treated dismissively by a wide range of informed reviewers, from The Nation to The Jewish Review of Books. The consensus in these pieces is that Aslan’s book makes a hash of more careful scholarship on its way to preordained conclusions, and that his portrait of Jesus as a political revolutionary is just another predictable example of the way that the Nazarene’s contemporary biographers almost aways produce (as The Nation’s reviewer puts it) “theological Rorschach tests that tell us far more about those who create them than about the elusive historical Jesus.”

Reza Aslan (rezaaslan) on Twitter

https://twitter.com/rezaaslan‎
The latest from Reza Aslan (@rezaaslan). I write books: No god but God. Beyond Fundamentalism. Tablet & Pen. Order Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of ...

The Book That Changed Reza Aslan's Mind About Jesus - The Atlantic

www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/...reza-aslans.../278410/‎
Aug 6, 2013 - The religious scholar from the viral Fox News interview explains how Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov taught him the difference between ...

Reza Aslan Tells an Old Story about Jesus | Christianity Today

www.christianitytoday.com › Media+Culture › Books › Reviews‎
Aug 9, 2013 - The author's portrait of a would-be political revolutionary relies on outdated scholarship and breathtaking leaps in logic.

Biblical Archeology Filmmaker Blasts Jesus Book Author Reza Aslan

www.theblaze.com/.../biblical-archeology-filmmaker-blasts-jesus-book-a...‎
5 days ago - Simcha Jacobovici is a Canadian-Israeli adjunct religion professor and filmmaker known for his biblical archaeology History Channel series ...




MUSLIM AUTHOR’S ‘ZEALOT’ BOOK RILES CHRISTIAN CRITICS WITH CLAIMS JESUS NEVER CONSIDERED HIMSELF GOD, SOMETIMES PROMOTED VIOLENCE

Jul. 31, 2013 1:44pm Billy Hallowell
  • Dr. Reza Aslan’s book “Zealot” sparks major controversy among the faithful
  • Author, a Muslim, claims that Jesus never considered himself God and that he was a revolutionary
  • Aslan claims the Bible is “replete with the most blatant and obvious errors”
  • Christian faith leaders respond to his claims that the holy book is not historically accurate
Dr. Reza Aslan has sparked a plethora of controversy with his new book, “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.” The author, a Muslim, says he penned the book in an effort to shed light on the Christian savior’s life. Since its release, though, controversy has abounded — and for good reason.
Some of the conclusions Aslan comes to in the book are frustrating followers of Jesus who contend that the academic is misrepresenting facts and recycling old and debunked theories and ideas generally embraced by Islamic adherents. His views and the accusations being waged against him are complex, so TheBlaze consulted with a number of Christian experts to better understand them.
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