Reza Aslan: Tell Them, I Am/Fox News (video)

Dr. Reza Aslan, Fox News via YY; Tell Them, I Am; Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly

Reza Aslan on Ep. 5 of "Tell Them, I Am" celebrating Ramadam in the U.S. (SCPR.org)

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The most embarrassing interview Fox News has ever done?

While this formerly-Christian now Muslim author of Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth explains clearly, "I am an expert with a Ph.D. in the history of religions including the New Testament," the Fox News Religion Correspondent Lauren Green still seems to hear "I am Al-Qaeda."

Fox News: where bigotry and Islamophobia are expected. This excruciatingly shameless and abusive interview takes it to a new level. But Christian biblical scholar Dr. Aslan does a solid job pushing back and refuting the interviewer's propaganda (Remi Kanazi).

Prof. Reza Aslan, Ph.D., on The Young Turks with Host Cenk Uygur

(TYT Interviews, Aug. 5, 2013) Reza Aslan became notorious after an interview with Fox News' Lauren Green in what is now thought to be one of the worst, most biased interviews on TV ever. Aslan tried but was ultimately unable to talk about what his book actually says.

A great book on Christianity: Zealot

In an interview segment that has to be seen to be believed, Lauren Green, host of Fox News' faith-oriented program "Spirited Debate," demanded to know how Iranian-American author Reza Aslan -- who is a well-known Muslim -- could have written his book, Zealot, from an unbiased perspective. 

The interview prompted BuzzFeed political writer Andrew Kaczynski to ask, "Is this the most embarrassing interview Fox News has ever done?" Appearing to mistake Christianity and Islam for rival baseball teams rather than intertwined and connected Abrahamic faiths, Hostess Green questioned Dr. Aslan's motives for writing a book about "the founder of Christianity."

"Well, to be clear," Prof. Aslan replied, "I am a scholar of religions with four degrees, including one in the New Testament, and fluency in biblical Greek, who has been studying the origins of Christianity for two decades, who also just happens to be a Muslim."

Reza Aslan on KPCC's "Tell Them, I Am"

He went on to patiently explain to Green that his book is written from the perspective of a historian, NOT that of an advocate for Islam.

But even as he tried to establish to her that his book is not a hit piece against some kind of rival religious figure, Green didn't appear to be listening, but rather scanning her iPad for more antagonistic questions to fire at the historian.

"There's another chat coming," she said, "and I wanted to get this on before we end this interview. Taylor King said, 'So your book is written with clear bias, and you're trying to say it's academic? That's like having a Democrat write a book about why Reagan wasn't a good Republican. It just doesn't work.' What do you say to that?"

"Well, it would be like a Democrat with a Ph.D. in Reagan who has been studying his life and history for two decades, writing a book about Reagan," Dr. Aslan replied.

"But then why would a Democrat want to promote Democracy by writing about a Republican?" Green asks. Dr. Aslan, showing great forbearance, replies that as a scholar who writes about religions, he writes about Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and other faiths.

On Twitter, conservatives are demanding to know why Prof. Aslan didn't write about Mohamed, the Islamic prophet. "C'mon, man, if you wrote a book critical of Mohamed or presenting him differently you could get killed," tweeted one.

Do we have an anti-intellectual streak?

"I already wrote that book," Prof. Aslan replies. "It's called No god but God. And I'm still here." The flap began when FoxNews.com published an opinion piece incorrectly asserting that Dr. Aslan's book is critical of Jesus Christ, but never divulges that Dr. Aslan is of the Islamic faith. In fact, Zealot says on its second page that Dr. Aslan is Muslim.

This was written by David Ferguson, published in his text entitled "Fox News baffled that Muslim author could write book about Jesus" (rawstory.com/rs/2013/07/28...).

• Andrew Kacynski shares this video on Buzzfeed: buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczyns... 
• If one is open to the Islamic view on how to deal with the "prophets," one may read that the depiction of Jesus on his book cover might be unacceptable or aniconic (salon.com/2013/08/03/the_1...)