Reza Aslan's Rare Common Sense

Reza Aslan, the brilliant and articulate author of No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, (which is the Kennedy Center book of the semester) spoke to a full house in the JSB auditorium this afternoon. As a well-read and well-accredited scholar of religion and sociology and also an Iranian-American (he actually said Iranian instead of Persian), he was very qualified to speak about Iranian-American relations in his lecture, "Revolution, Reformation, and Regime Change: Contemporary Iran."

It was fascinating. For instance, he recently visited Iran to do some research and visit some family. When she heard he lived in the United States, one woman asked, "What's it like to live in a theocracy?" So the misunderstanding goes both ways, as he says, "Iran is no more a theocracy than America is." However, since America has begin to threaten Iran, the clerical regime has grown stronger—in the name of national security, of course—and Iran has become paranoid. They think American missiles may rain down on them at any moment.

I'm not doing the lecture justice. I'll post a link to the video version when/if it's available. Basically, Mr Aslan's thesis was that, since thirty years of US sanctions against Iran have only strengthened the clerical regime, employing the China policy is the only way to break the regime. "Revolutions are undertaken by the middle class," he said. "No middle class, not revolution. No middle class, no democracy." Since Iran already has a democratic infrastructure, the transition to true democracy would be quick and relatively easy.

During the question and answer session, a man named Ben from my history and Arabic classes asked Mr Aslan why his book took such a "different approach towards Islam." Mr Aslan kindly explained that the moderate voice of Islam is not the minority, it is not even close to the minority. However, extremists make better TV, so they are featured frequently on American media. I was happy to be one of the ten people in the entire auditorium to raise their hands when he asked who had heard of the recent letter from a representative of every Islamic sect to the Pope and the Christian world. "If you are still looking for the moderate voice in Islam, and have not found it," he said, "you're not looking very hard." We are no longer spoonfed information by the media. We have the capacity to find out things for ourselves.

(So I don't want to attract from how brilliant Mr Aslan is, but I can't not mention how attractive he is: very.)