E-mail a friendReza Aslan
airdate May 20, 2009
Reza Aslan is a comparative religions scholar. Born in Iran, he studied at Harvard, where he was president of the World Conference on Religion and Peace, a U.N. organization committed to global understanding. Aslan is also a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and was Visiting Assistant Professor of Islamic and Middle East Studies at the University of Iowa. His work has appeared in several publications, including USA Today and U.S. News & World Report. An award-winning writer, his latest book is How to Win a Cosmic War.
Islam expert talks about Iran's reasons for firing off the test missile today. (2:35)
Full interview. (10:07)
Reza Aslan
Tavis: So tonight, we begin with the news of the day in Iran. Reza Aslan is an acclaimed author and religious scholar whose notable books include the international best seller, "No god but God." His latest is called "How to Win a Cosmic War: God Globalization and the End of the War on Terror." Reza, nice to have you back on the program.
Reza Aslan: Great to see you again, Tavis.
Tavis: We'll get to the book in just a second because I want to start with what you mean by a "cosmic war." But the news of the day, Iran says that they have now successfully test-fired another missile that we are told is within reach of Israel. What do you make of this announcement today, the timing of it, the content of it? What do you make of it?
Aslan: Yes, so this is a missile that can reach probably about 1,200 miles as far as its radius goes. In some ways, it's not all that different from another test that Iran successfully put together in November.
But the larger issue here is what kind of message is Iran trying to send? That's a little hard to grasp because, as you know, Iran's about to have its own elections right now and in some ways this test launch was a way for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to sort of re-emerge and kind of strengthen his credentials as a foreign policy hawk.
So it remains to be seen exactly what Iran's motivations are, but whether this is a step forward in their nuclear weapons program or not, I'm not exactly sure about that just yet.
Tavis: How would - theoretically speaking, how does this help him outside of his country in the Muslim world and how does this help him politically, strategically with elections looming inside the country to the extent that it does?
Aslan: Right. Well, domestically speaking, of course, Ahmadinejad is in kind of a bit of a problem right now. He became president four years ago running solely on a campaign about fixing the economy. Four years later, the economy is on the verge of utter collapse.
I think Iran needs oil to be about $97 a barrel in order to balance its budget and I think oil is now, what, $44 or $45 a barrel. So Iran's economy is in shambles, so he's sort of in a bit of a bind right now. He can't bring that up.
The issue of sort of national security has kind of gone by the wayside with the new president here in the United States who doesn't talk in the same hawkish terms when it comes to the so-called military option with regard to Iran. So in some ways, Ahmadinejad is grasping at straws.
These kinds of tests are in some ways helping to just kind of burnish his credentials, but also what I find very interesting is that he's beginning to kind of reformulate himself in this campaign as the man who can most effectively reach out to Barack Obama. So that kind of gives you a sense as to how much the global politics have changed based on the new American president.
Tavis: But how would a test-firing of a missile like this in any way advance his standing for being able to have access to Barack Obama who clearly can't be happy - given what the Secretary of State said today - can't be happy with this test-firing?
Aslan: I think you're absolutely right here. You have to sort of think of this from the Iranian perspective. I know from our perspective, we see Iran as the threat to Israel because, of course, the rhetoric that they've employed, et cetera, and their weaponization program and the possibility that they may in the future possibly have a nuclear weapons program.
But from Iran's perspective, it's Israel that's the threat to Iran. I mean, after all, Israel already has nuclear weapons, many of them pointed at Tehran as we speak. And, of course, Benjamin Netanyahu, a huge part of his campaign for Prime Minister was a very hawkish stance against Iran. He had, on a number of occasions, said that he would be willing to actually use Israel's weapons preemptively against Iran.
So in some ways, this is Ahmadinejad's way of kind of flexing Iran's muscles at a time in which it does seem to be in a weakened position. But on a broader scale, on an international scale, Iran wants to be taken seriously. It doesn't want to go back to the days in which it was seen as some kind of rogue nation on the verge of another popular revolution, the way the Bush administration saw it.
It wants to be seen as the new power in that region. Whether its nuclear program or its weapons testing or whether its meddling in Iraq and Afghanistan or, for that matter, its support for Hamas and Hezbollah, this in some ways is Iran's way of saying that we're here to stay and the sooner that you recognize us as the new regional power that we are, the sooner we can have a conversation. Now it remains to be seen how the new president actually deals with that.
Tavis: To the text now, and thanks for indulging those questions of the news of the day. To the book, "How to Win a Cosmic War." When you say "cosmic war," you are saying what?
Aslan: Yeah. A cosmic war is a war of the imagination. Tavis, it's a war in which participants believe they're acting out on earth a battle that's actually taking place in heaven between the forces of good and evil. I mean, the bloodshed is real, the carnage is real, but our actions aren't ours. Our actions are actually being manipulated by God. We're just actors in a divine script.
The argument of the book is that this is the war that Al Qaeda is fighting, that its goals, its agenda, its ideology, is so beyond the possible that it can't be achieved in any kind of real or measurable terms, that they really do believe that this is a conflict between the angels of light and the demons of darkness. Unfortunately, the United States, by adopting the same kind of religiously polarizing rhetoric, the same sort of Manichean good versus world view, that we've validated their viewpoint.
So, in other words, we have turned the war on terror into a cosmic war and that, I think, goes a long way to describing why we've done such a poor job in adequately confronting these radical forces in the Muslim world.
Tavis: So once we recognize that, in many respects, while we think we are in an actual war, we are engaged in a cosmic war, that realization helps us how?
Aslan: Well, I think a couple of things. One, it helps us to strip these conflicts of their religious connotations because there are some very real material matters that fuel the Jihadist movement and those grievances have to be addressed because we can't make Ben Laden go away. What we can do is make him irrelevant.
You make him irrelevant by actually dealing with the issues that he uses to kind of, you know, rally people to his cause, the suffering of the Palestinians, American support for Arab dictatorships, the lack of political or social or economic development in large parts of the region, the fact that we've treating the Middle East like a giant gas station for 50 years. These are real issues that have to be addressed so that these kinds of movements no longer seem to matter anymore.
But also more importantly, and this goes back to the Obama administration again, we've got to stop playing this game. This isn't about good versus evil. We're not engaged in a conflict with some kind of metaphysical, transcendent evil that seeks to destroy human civilization. This is an intelligence investigation of an international criminal conspiracy.
They are not soldiers. This is not a war. They're crooks and we're the police and we need to bring them to justice. The more we talk about this conflict in these grand cosmic terms, the more we legitimize their viewpoint, the more we validate their self-identification.
Tavis: I'm thoroughly confused now. If your argument earlier was as I heard it to be, that this is how these Jihadists - this is how they see themselves fighting this cosmic war, they see themselves fighting a war of good and evil, how then do you argue that that's not the war that we're in?
Aslan: Well, see, this is what I'm saying is that we can't legitimize the imaginary conflict that they think they're having. When I talked about these grievances, the Palestinians and Arab support, et cetera, it's not as though these are real grievances for Al Qaeda.
It's not as though they feel like, look, if we bring down the Twin Towers, suddenly there'll be peace in Palestine. Of course not. They are fighting a war whose goals don't exist on this world. I mean, they really do believe that they are on the side of the angels.
Well, when we say, as President Bush said, that this is a crusade against evil, that this is a battle between, you know, the forces of good and evil, that the goal of this war, as President Bush said, is to "rid the world of evil," these kinds of words only sort of serve to legitimize their viewpoint, Al Qaeda's viewpoint. We're saying, "Yeah, this is about good and evil except we're good and you're evil." That doesn't work.
Tavis: Got it. So our approach then ought to be what?
Aslan: Let's strip it. Let's forget about these concepts of good versus evil. Let's figure out what are these earthly grievances, these very real material matters that are at stake that make young people look to Al Qaeda and to these Jihadist movements as the only forces in the world that are actually addressing those issues that are of concern to them.
Let's focus on those issues so that we can make these kinds of movements irrelevant. That's what I mean by saying strip the conflict of the religious connotations.
Tavis: I get it now. I've just not even barely scratched the surface of Reza's book. He always has some insightful stuff for us to consider, as he does in his new book. It's called "How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization and the End of the War on Terror." Reza, nice to have you on. Thanks for sharing with us.
Aslan: Any time, Tavis.
Tavis: I appreciate it.
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