Reza Aslan on Religous Violence: The Daily Show

Here, on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, Reza Aslan, author of No God but God, and The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, adresses the issue of violence in Islam and other religions with some interesting observations.

Aslan notes that religion is as much about who each of us are as people as it is about what we believe or what rituals we practice. He argues that it’s an identity.

In addition, he notes that religious scriptures are malleable and can mean anything we want them to mean. For example, “if you are a violent misogynist, you can find plenty in the Koran or the Bible to justify your viewpoint.” Likewise, he adds, ‘if you are a peaceful feminist, you can find just as much to justify your views.”

How you read scripture, Aslan argues, says everything about who you are. You bring your politics, your social ideas, your views, your ethnicity, into the text.

Finally, Aslan suggests that if you argue that religion is violent, then you have “to credit religion for every act of compassion and love in the world.”