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Reza Aslan: How to Win a Cosmic War

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America’s Cultural Fixation with Good vs. Evil Mentality

04 min 22 sec

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Reza Aslan, religious scholar and author of How to Win a Cosmic War, and Phil Bronstein, editor-at-large for the San Francisco Chronicle, discuss the American cultural obsession with the conflict between good versus evil.

The notion that "our wars are god’s wars" is a "deep aspect of our national character," says Aslan. "As a nation of immigrants, we are not a country that can define our nationality according to ethnicity."
Reza Aslan: The Future of Religious Nationalism

05 min 17 sec

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Reza Aslan, religious scholar and author of How to Win a Cosmic War, and Phil Bronstein, editor-at-large for the San Francisco Chronicle, discuss the problematic nature of religious nationalism. "It's a force that cannot be control by the state, no matter how hard the state tries," says Aslan. Instead of suppressing religious nationalist groups, he advocates allowing them the opportunity to fail.
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43 min 29 sec

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There are 9 comments on this program

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Previous FORAtv comments:

kikl

Posted: 12.30.10, 01:01 PM

This war is about imposing shariah onto the whole world. This is the goal of Al Qaida. Unless we defend our liberties, they are going to be taken from us. So not engaging is a sure path to defeat. However, this does not answer the question how to react to the mujahidin. The war is being fought on several fronts. 1. We must engage in a propaganda response to Islam. We must demonstrate to the Islamic world the falsehoods of Islam. TV and radio must demonstrate the falsehood and moral depravity of Islam and its prophet. We must shut down the mosques and schools in our countries that brainwash people into becoming mujahidin. 2. We must engage militarily with groups that attack us violently. But, full fledged occupation of muslim countries is not effective. It is enough if continuous military strikes using intelligence from the ground disrupts mujahidin regimes to the point of collapse, thereby rendering these regimes essentially powerless. This would save us lives and money.

browser111

Posted: 06.26.10, 04:56 PM

Thomas Jefferson didn't back off. He played the "cosmic" game and won. America suppressed the Barbary pirates and the Mediterranean became safe for American shipping. We shouldn't back off either.

browser111

Posted: 06.26.10, 04:46 PM

Reza Aslan is trying to reassure, obfuscate, and put us to sleep. Apparently, according to Aslan Islamism "is a movement not an organization". There is no hierarchy. But couldn't the same be said of Islam in general, yet Islam has grown to over a billion. (Don't all movements necessarily have some organization?) "unlike nazi germany and communism ... there is no entity here to defeat any longer. It's just and idea ... and an idea that feeds off this cosmic war mentality ... we defeat the enemy by not playing" This entity or (islamic) entities that don't exist are killing real people, throwing acid in the faces of real children, beheading those who give up Islam, and stoning real women. The Taliban, the Iranians, and the Saudis were doing this kind of thing long before 9/11. Oh excuse me, America has been involved even longer. Here's Jefferson: In 1786, Thomas Jefferson, then the ambassador to France, and John Adams, ambassador to Britain, met in London with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, a visiting ambassador from Tripoli. The Americans asked Adja why his government was hostile to American ships, even though there had been no provocation. They reported to the Continental Congress that the ambassador had told them "it was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave," but he also told them that for what they considered outrageous sums of money they could make peace. from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_corsairs Aslan wants us to back off and not play this war because he is a muslim and he wants Islam to win. Instead of buying this silly book try a new book by Bruce Bawer: Surrender Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom http://www.amazon.ca/Surrender-Appea.../dp/038552398X

kaiwai

Posted: 06.23.09, 06:38 AM

The fails to address the fact that with Islam, there is no concept of seperation between religion and politics; Muslims are instructed to emulate Muhammad and the 2 generations that follow him - which cover the four rightly guided caliphs. You can't then turn around and there fore dismiss the issue of religion and politics when the corner stone Islam is that there can't be seperation between the two. There is a reason why Muslim donomiated countries have the worst human rights record - and it has everything to do with religion fusing with politics. I might actually believe him about Islam being about 'peace' and 'find ones position in the world' when I see every Muslim majority country sign up to the treaty outlawing the persecution of GLBT people. The day I see that will be a day when I can see the Muslim world move from the dark ages into 2009.

toosinbeymen

Posted: 06.18.09, 08:43 AM

Good point but I think what he meant was further explained later in the video. That is, societies and governments can't control fundamentalism and as in the Saudi case, it will come back to bite you.

brayfield

Posted: 05.29.09, 02:52 PM

My audio cut out from 32:24 - 32:40 . Does anyone know what was being said?

brayfield

Posted: 05.29.09, 02:49 PM

When did he say that? I only heard him say that we have a harder time establishing bonds based on common ethnicity. ( 30:14 )

moeriscus

Posted: 05.28.09, 10:38 PM

Wow, Reza Aslan doesn't have a clue in this interview. He is totally false in asserting that "there can't be a successful religious state," and that "religion does not successfully bind people in a geographic space." Although I wish that were true (as I'm an atheist), religion has probably been the most important part of a society's collective identity since the beginning of history. The civic gods of ancient Greece and Rome, Zoroastrianism in pre-Islamic Persia, Christianity in the later Roman Empire (Constantine's conversion, of course, is seen as one of the most profound events in all of Western history), Islam in the Caliphate and Sultanates of the Middle East, Hinduism in the subcontinent, etc. In fact, one of the most vexing questions of the modern era is how to maintain social and cultural cohesion WITHOUT religious uniformity. I like Reza Aslan, but he doesn't know what he's talking about here.

Hartson

Posted: 05.27.09, 11:34 PM

Your points are well taken. There is a NEED for the people of the world to see themselves as ONE race, the human race and the earth as one country with all it's peoples as it's citizens. The Baha'i Faith, with it's world centre in Haifa, Isreal , has this as one of it's basic beleifs.