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Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome Reza Aslan back to this program. The Islamic scholar and UC Santa Barbara fellow is the author of the best-selling book, "No god but God, The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam.' The book is now out in paperback. Reza, nice to have you on the program again.

Reza Aslan: Thanks, nice to be back.

Tavis: Congrats on the paperback. That means the hardback must have done well.

Aslan: I guess so, yeah.

Tavis: Yeah, good for you. Let me start with the news that everybody's been talking about the last few days. The tape. So, bin Laden resurfaces, we know he is still alive and well and still talking. What did you make of the tape? Much has been made of it. What did you make of it?

Aslan: Well, I think the strangest thing about the tape is how sophisticated bin Laden has gotten, in the sense that he has now gotten to the point where he's speaking to the American public, rather than to his own jihadist allies. That is not that unusual, really. I mean, I think that all along, his message has been one of fear and anger towards the American public, as an opportunity to get the kind of support that he's trying to garner from those outside of the Islamic world.

But in this case, I think it was unusual in the sense that he seems to be, at least wherever he is, very much in tune with some of the political conflicts taking place, even domestically in the United States.

Tavis: Tell me why you think, though, that he's speaking directly to the American people in this tape represents a level of new sophistication.

Aslan: Well, I think because he understands that what he has done, essentially, is really an innovation in Islam. He's created a sense of individualism right now. This jihadist mentality that has no kind of group element. No institutional element to it whatsoever. It's just a group of individuals who are linked by this ideology, this puritan ideology, if you will.

And essentially, they are at the point where they don't need bin Laden anymore. I know we have this idea that if we could just cut off the head, then the body will die. But I don't think that that's the case at all. So I think bin Laden has really turned his attention to trying to foment some of the internal conflicts taking place with regard to the war on Iraq, with regard to the war on terror, in the United States.

Tavis: To your latter point about this individual notion that he's created, should I believe that bin Laden is becoming more important or less important against that backdrop?

Aslan: Well, he's becoming less important as a political force, in the sense that he doesn't really have control over what he has begun. But he's becoming more important in the sense that we are starting to realize what kind of historic force bin Laden is shaping up to be. We may, in three, four, 500 years from now, look back at this time and see bin Laden, counter-intuitively as it may seem, as part of this move towards the Islamic reformation.

Part of this move towards greater individualization in Islam. Here is a man who has essentially set himself in opposition to the institutional authority in Islam, who has said that the clerics, the institutions, the traditional sources of authority in Islam, no longer matter. It's the individual that matters. And quite frankly, this is a very profoundly reformation-like statement to make.

Of course, his idea of the individual is far different. He has a much more violent, much more extremist notion of what that means. But it is an idea that is taking root in the Muslim world.

Tavis: Set aside for the moment, which is obviously very difficult to do, your point about his individual notions being one based in violence and evil. Set that aside for just a moment. Talk to me about what it means, though, that a few years from now, we might, to your point, look back on this moment and see how he pushed us toward this reformation around this notion of the individual. Is that a good thing or a bad thing long term, is what I'm trying to get at here.

Aslan: Well, I don't know if that's the best way to think about it, but you bring up a very good point. You know, we now look at those reformation radicals of the Christian reformation, men like Thomas Munser, or even Martin Luther, as these profoundly provocative individuals who really took the reformation principle of individualism to its extreme.

To its absolute extreme. I think in many ways, bin Laden is doing the same kind of thing. He has taken the sense of individualism, which a lot of Muslims are talking about, both reformist and modernist and extremist and militants. Everyone is saying that it is no longer the institutions of the Muslim world that matter, it's the individual.

But of course, whenever you take authority from institutions to individuals, you're going to have individuals who are going to shape their idea of religion based on their own political or social agendas. And that's precisely what bin Laden is doing. So we may, as strange as it may sound, 500 years from now, look back on bin Laden the same way that we look back on some of the great figures of the Christian reformation.

Tavis: Wow, that's fascinating to consider. Let me move to the other part of this tape before I move off of this tape. The idea of the truce that he put forth. He basically says to the American people, to your earlier point, that if you and your government come out of Iraq, come out of Afghanistan, maybe there'll be some peace here. Your thoughts about the truce that he offered?

Aslan: Well, I mean, I don't think we can take anything like that very seriously. The difference between what's happening in Iraq with regard to the nationalist Sunni insurgency and the jihadists who are there who have infiltrated that country, and who represent, I think, the most murderous and the most violent elements of the insurgency in Iraq, is that one has a political agenda.

The Sunnis, the Bathists, they want to make sure that they are not removed from the political process in the future of Iraq. The jihadists have no agenda in Iraq. They cannot be negotiated with. So to think that we can somehow provide some sort of truce with them, I think most rational people would know that that's an absurd thing.

Their only idea in Iraq is to create enough chaos, to sow enough discord, hopefully start a civil war, one based on religious lines, that the United States will just simply wash its hands of it and walk away, and they can claim a sort of victory, in the same way that they claimed victory when they forced the Soviets to withdraw from Afghanistan.

Tavis: Let me move from Iraq to Iran, since we're talking about this axis of evil, to quote the President, who continues, of course, to give speeches about Iran, more specifically. Give me your thoughts on how we are handling, we, of course, being the government, the Bush administration, handling or not handling, as it were, this Iran conflict, particularly where this nuclear weapon conversation, nuclear capability is concerned.

Aslan: Well, I think first of all it's important not to state this too urgently or to make this a greater emergency than it actually is. We are not talking about the smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud, if you will. According to the CIA, even if Iran were given unfettered access to the nuclear market, it would still be a decade before they could create a nuclear weapon.

So, there is plenty of time for negotiations and for diplomacy. But the fact of the matter is is that for two and a half decades, we've basically only had one policy with regard to Iran. Sanctions, isolations, containment. Two and a half decades of this, in the hopes of bringing down the clerical regime when in fact all we have done is made the clerics stronger.

All we have done is accelerated their weapons program because of their isolation. All we have done is really ward off any kind of consequences for their continuing human rights violations. In other words, we can't contain or isolate or sanction Iran any more than we already have. We cannot punish them any more than we already have.

It's really time for a new approach, I think. One that really reverses course, and uses this nuclear issue as a means to actually engage Iran in the kind of dialogue that, that could be really fruitful.

Tavis: Tell me how that would work. And I don't hold my breath, because with all due respect to this administration, I'm not sure that they value diplomacy and negotiations the way other administrations have or might in the coming years. So I won't hold my breath on that. That said, how would negotiation and diplomacy work with a country like Iran, on an issue like nuclear weaponry, with a president like the one Iran has?

Aslan: (laugh) That's true. First of all, I think it's important to recognize that as uncomfortable as this fact may be, that Iran has yet to really violate the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Yes, they've lied, yes, they've cheated, yes, they've tried to hide the extent of their nuclear program...

Tavis: And those things aren't violations?

Aslan: That is, of course, is the problem, is that they are not violations. And that, I think, is the fault of the treaty itself, which gives member states the opportunity to pursue nuclear technology with the promise that they won't pursue nuclear weapons. Now, you know, no one is silly enough to trust Iran's promise on those issues.

But the fact is is that if we are going to punish Iran for having yet to violate this treaty, and yet we are rewarding Pakistan, we're rewarding India with nuclear trade deals, and these are in violation of international law, there are a number of other countries who are in violation of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and they are not being treated in the same way.

So Iran has a point where it says that this is hypocrisy. But I think the more important thing is that we should do with Iran what we're doing with North Korea. What we're trying to do with North Korea is give them a package of security guarantees and economic incentives in return for not just greater international cooperation with the country itself, but a monitoring program that allows the United States, that allows the western worlds to help these countries in a peaceful solution to their nuclear technology research. That, I think, is something that Iran would be very interested in.

Tavis: Let me shift gears again one last time. Since we're in the Middle East, I'll stay there. The Palestinians have a very important vote coming up just days, hours, literally, from now. Your sense of what's going to happen with this vote, and what impact that will have on this process in the Middle East?

Aslan: I think this is going to be a profoundly important vote, for a number of reasons. Not just for the hope of creating some sort of stability in this cycle of violence between Israel and Palestine. But I think the very fact that for the first time, groups like Hamas have been allowed to participate in the political process.

I think this really is the hope, to moderate some of the extremist ideologies of these militant groups. I know that there are a lot of people, both in Israel and the United States, who say that Hamas should not be allowed to participate. That they're a militant group; that they're a terrorist group. These are all true. But the fact of the matter is that there's nothing that we can do about it.

We cannot forcefully disarm Hamas. The only thing we can do is hope that the same process that happened in northern Ireland, with regard to the IRA and Sinn Fein, its political organization, that the more Hamas is allowed to participate in the political hopes and futures of Palestine, the more it'll be forced to moderate its behavior and become part of the solution, and not part of the problem.

Tavis: Let me ask you right quick before I let you go, it occurred to me as you were answering the question about the vote that Palestinians are about to engage in that when you were last here, the elections in Iraq had not taken place. Your sense of what happened there?

Aslan: Well, I think as far as the results go, it was not a surprise. I think we knew that the Kurds and the Shi'ite parties were going to do very, very well. I think what's really a wonderful surprise is the Sunni turnout, and more importantly, I think that there is a sense now amongst the Kurdish and Shi'a alliances, that regardless of what happens with the formation of the government and the amendments of the constitution, that the Sunni political parties must be a part of this process.

Otherwise, they will never have an opportunity to get this political experiment off the ground. That knowledge, I think, is really starting to sink through.

Tavis: His name is Reza Aslan. The book is "No god but God, The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam.' It is now out in paperback. Reza, nice to have you here.

Aslan: It was good to see you.

Tavis: Up next on this program, the creator of Craig's List, Craig Newmark. Stay with us.