Heather Hastie on Reza Aslan

January 14, 2016 • 11:30 am

Rather than whale on Reza Aslan, I’ll defer to reader Heather Hastie, who’s done a lot more study of the man than I ever have. I’ll just say that I really dislike how Aslan misrepresents his credentials and, more important, distorts the effect of Islam on human behavior. Like Karen Armstrong, he’s determined to show that Islam causes no harm; and to do that he repeatedly misrepresents the history of the faith (as he did in No God But God) as well as recent surveys of Muslim deeds and beliefs.

These subjects are taken up in a post at Heather’s Homilies, “Reza Aslan in the Media.” The centerpiece is a 25-minute video (see below), and I’ll excerpt Heather’s comments (indented below). You’ll have to go to her site to watch that video.

The reason I’m bringing [Aslan] up again is that the David Pakman Show released the video below on 11 January. It’s called Reza Aslan Cannot Be Trusted. It covers much of the same ground other bloggers and I have covered before, and brings it all together in a 25:45 video.

[See video on Heather’s site]

In the US, Aslan is frequently the “Muslim of Choice” when commentary is needed on anything related to Islam. He’s good looking, intelligent, and sounds authoritative – ideal for the TV. The problem is he’s pretty good at Lying for Mohammed, whether through ignorance, duplicity, fear, or some other reason. The inaccurate information he presents is accepted as true by the audience, and repeated as such. This leads to an ill-informed audience repeating what he says under the assumption he is a thoroughly vetted expert.

I consider that potentially dangerous. There is currently an environment of religious tension in relation to Islam, and that makes it particularly important that people are debating the facts. Oftentimes, they’re instead debating Aslan’s talking points as if they’re facts.

The way Aslan distorts his credentials is by now well known, so if you’re already familiar with that, skip the first 9 minutes and go to Pakman’s indictment of how Aslan distorts data on female genital mutilation (I was unaware of its high frequency among Muslims in countries like Indonesia, Kurdish Iraq, and Malaysia), as well as on sex slavery in the Qur’an, on the use of human shields in Gaza, and on the degree of discrimination against women in places like Indonesia and Malaysia.

Note that at the end Pakman himself misstates the results of the Pew study: the data he gives about the percentage of Muslims who favor stoning for adultery and death for apostasy is not among all Muslims in a country, but among those who believe that sharia should be the law of the land.

Aslan11
Aslan, lion from Narnia
reza-aslan-headshot
Aslan, lyin’ from Riverside

45 thoughts on “Heather Hastie on Reza Aslan”

  1. “Rather than whale on Reza Aslan” — I think you mean “wail”. Feel free to delete this comment, it’ll be our little secret!

      1. I always though it was ‘wale on’ so I for one am ever-so-slightly educated by the prior poster’s pedantry and your response. Thx for that PCC! B^)

  2. This is a good summary video for those unfamiliar with Aslan, although Pakman could have condensed the first 9 minutes of credential critique into 3 or 4. The real meat of the takedown is dissecting his data points and I’m afraid some casual viewers may have tuned out by then.

  3. I wish Zappa were alive. He could write the Balad of Aslan:

    Lyin’ man,
    Tall and tan,
    Rhyme or reason,
    Play your hand —
    Lion on this — Lyin’ on that
    Oh, you naughty theocrat!

  4. What I find most dishonest about Reza Aslan’s apologism for Islam and Muslims is that he had unashamedly left the Middle East for the comforts and freedoms of the Western World. If he *truly* believed that Islam and Muslims were so peaceful and really like all other people why didn’t he choose to live in a Muslim-majority country?

    Actions really do speak louder than words!

    1. I’d guess one reason is that in the Islamic part of the world he would not stand out. He’d be a nobody. Here, he can parade in front of millions on TV.
      On the other hand, he just might be a very sincere scholar, motivated by the purest form of integrity.

          1. From what I read, his family moved out from Iran fleeing the Iranian Revolution, but it is telling that they didn’t find a new home in some other Muslim country, like Afghanistan or Pakistan to the east, or Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia to the west of Iran. Such is the great hospitality of Muslim countries apparently…

  5. So, we know that this guy is a sham and a lying sack of feces. Good video.

    The question must be is – Why does an organization such as CNN, reported to be in the journalism business and most trusted, continue to drag this fellow out and put him on the air? Even though Bill Maher is not professional journalism, I would think he should find someone else to do comedy with. Putting his face on the screen simply gives him credibility he does not deserve.

    1. Surely you know the answer. It’s all about the “benjamins.” Call me a pessimist, but I’m afraid that we’ve reached a point where journalistic ethics are wholly subordinate to making a buck. Journalists have a product to sell, and if voyeuristic reality shows, manufactoversies, sensationalistic reporting or Reza Aslan help sell air time or newspapaers, that’s all that matters.

        1. They could certainly do better and should. The loss to retirement of Lear did not help. I had his “advice to young journalist” list but may have lost it. The last bit was – I am not in the entertainment business.

          CNN however, could just as well change their name to the Donald Trump channel.

  8. Like, if Jesus were alive, he’d be the pacifist hippie we all rolled our eyes at.

    If Mohammed were alive, he’d be declaring war and raising a holy army. You know, because that’s what he did when he *was* alive.

  9. The question of *who* PEW asked the questions to about apostasy and adultery is actually a little bit complicated.

    In the 2013 PEW report, the graphs they show for those questions restrict the answers about adultery and apostasy to sharia-supporting Muslims. Thus when they ask about adultery and apostasy, the percentages shown are only for sharia-supporters.

    BUT, if you go to the appendices of the report (Q92c, d, etc) the data there is NOT constrained like that. They actually asked everyone those questions about apostasy and adultery, regardless of whether they indicated support for sharia. They just didn’t show that wider analysis in the graphs – they only chose to report on the views of sharia-supporters. (presumably on the, in my opinion faulty, assumption that only sharia supporters views on adultery and apostasy matter).

    The easiest way to see that this is true is to compare the data contained in the appendix tables (Q92c, d, etc) to the graphs on adultery and apostasy – you’ll find the percentages do not match up. This is because the graphs were made for the views of sharia-supporters, but the original data for the adultery and apostasy questions was obtained for all Muslims.

    Hopefully that made sense…

    The good thing is that this means we can redo the graphs for the views of ALL Muslims covered by the study, not merely sharia-supporters. After all, someone could easily answer that they don’t want sharia as the law of the land and still think that adulterers should be executed.

    It often turns out not to make a *massive* difference. E.g. whereas 89% of sharia-supporting Muslims in Pakistan favor death for adultery, 86% of all Muslims in Pakistan favor it.

    Similarly, whereas 62% of sharia-supporting Muslims in Malaysia favor death for apostates, 58% of all Muslims in Malaysia favor death for apostates. (obviously, all Muslims includes the answers from sharia-supporting Muslims).

    You can find the wider analysis of Pews data here: http://www.atheoryofus.net/islam-statistics

    Plot summary though (for those who don’t like clicking):

    * 40% of 1123.6 million Muslims covered by the study question support death for apostasy
    * 52% of 1123.6 million Muslims covered by the study question support death for adultery
    * 51% of 1123.6 million Muslims covered by the study question support corporal punishments, such as the amputation of hands, for crimes such as theft.

    1. That’s interesting. I have a copy of this report, and I even read most of it, but I didn’t check this.

      I’d be interested to know the % of Muslims that support death for apostasy etc among those who don’t want Sharia.

      It is noticeable in the report that countries that don’t have Sharia, the support for Sharia punishments is much lower even amongst those who want Sharia.

      1. I bet those who don’t want Sharia don’t dare let themselves be clearly identified. And, I can’t blame them. I’d be afraid, too, very afraid.

        1. The extortionary nature if Islam makes me wonder if much can be inferred from polls like this. That deep terrifying voice echoing from the back of the skull must expect only certain boxes be checked.

      2. Yeah it was easy to miss unless you dug into the appendix data (and the only reason I did that was because I was looking to get overall statistics out of it that wasn’t provided by PEW itself).

        But to your question: let’s take Pakistan as our example.

        According to PEW data, we know three things:

        1) 75% of *all* Pakistani Muslims favor death for apostasy
        2) 76% of *sharia-supporting* Pakistani Muslims favor death for apostasy
        3) 84% of Pakistani Muslims favor sharia
        4) 4% of Pakistani Muslims are against sharia

        (the two bottom figures don’t total to 100 because someone could say they don’t know if sharia should be implemented, or they could refuse to answer the question.)

        There is bound to be some mathematical way of working out precisely what percentage of non-sharia-supporting Pakistani Muslims support death for apostates based upon these three figures. I don’t know what it is, sadly. Maybe someone here does.

        Not all countries were so close in %. Scanning through the data… ok here’s one: 18% of all Tunisian Muslims favor death for apostates, while 29% of sharia-supporting Tunisian Muslims favor death for apostates. Bit of a bigger difference. Because 56% of Tunisian Muslims support sharia and 41% oppose it, this would tend to indicate that the difference between sharia and non-sharia Tunisian Muslims on the issue of apostasy is quite a bit different: sharia supporters are more for death than non-sharia supporters are.

        2. Thanks so much. There probably is a way from that. I’ll look at the report myself later, but as long as it has the number of people interviewed from each country, it would be possible to work out. Those numbers are usually in the appendix of Pew reports, so I’m sure they’re there this time too. Cheers.

  10. Nice job, Heather! I saw your post yesterday and I’m just getting around to reading it!

    2. One can never be too late to good parties!

      Yes, nice job Heather! I’ve never had the energy to dig into what R.A. says, and now I got it served on a platter.

      1. And I found out that I *should* have taken the energy, the man is either a fool or a scammer. And the video may have it right when it notes the man is dangerous.

        1. He’s a nasty piece of work imo. He’s one of the group that deliberately misquotes Sam Harris to make him seem bigoted against Islam. My annoyance at him getting away with that is a big reason I write stuff about him.

  11. It’s not merely that Aslan lies about his credentials it’s the way he overemphasizes them to the point of comedy whenever he appears in front of a camera. I love how his eyes light up, “Well, I AM an EXPERT…” A little self-awareness would have probably saved him some of the magnifying glass and the ridicule.

  12. To provide another window into the WTFery that is Aslan Reza, he and his producer for “Believer”, his new CNN fuzzy feel good goddy series, contacted Karen de la Carriere to appear on a show about Scientology. He presented himself as a scholar of religions and then failed spectacularly at having done any research at all about the person he sought to interview. Or maybe it demonstrates some kind of mental failure on his part. I don’t know. http://tonyortega.org/2016/01/02/scientologys-2016-cnn-plans-to-give-l-ron-hubbard-his-best-press-in-decades/

      1. Since when were the two mutually exclusive? 😛

        Mostly I think it’s a result of that mental shortcut he has of all religion is always good, and all normal people love religion. Or maybe he wanted to have a gotcha interview to try to convince her that Scientology wasn’t responsible for her son’s death, so he could be the hero standing up for a maligned cult against one of its accusers.

    2. I didn’t know about that.

      I’d decided to give Aslan the benefit of the doubt and not assume anything about the new show before I saw it, but this is ominous. I’ll be keeping that link for when the show starts – it looks like I’ll be doing more posts on Aslan!

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