Literature offers not just a window into the culture of diverse regions, but also the society, the politics; it's the only place where we can keep track of ideas.
Religion doesn't make people bigots. People are bigots and they use religion to justify their ideology.
What the printing press is to Christianity in the 16th century, that's what the Internet is doing to Islam now. It has opened up the monopoly over the interpretation of Islam that used to solely belong to the religious class.
I think if you place Jesus firmly in the historical context... you can make very educated hypotheses and guesses about how he lived.
Many poets in Iran have learned to speak almost a secret language, where political issues are talked about in allegorical ways.
Many of the prophets of Jesus's time were thought to just be mad men, just sort of crazy people who were claiming to channel the divine. Perhaps that means we should be a little less judgmental of some of our own crazies talking about God on the corner. They might actually have found a pretty comfortable place in Jesus's time.
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 happens to be Muslim.
I'm a person of faith, and the language that I use to define my faith, the symbols and metaphors that I rely upon to express my faith, are those provided by Islam because they make the most sense to me.
The truth of the matter is that when you write about religion like I do, you're writing about something that people take very seriously.
Islamophobia has become so mainstream in this country that Americans have been trained to expect violence against Muslims - not excuse it, but expect it. And that's happened because you have an Islamophobia industry in this country devoted to making Americans think there's an enemy within.
The idea that education will lead to a lessening of bigotry is just factually incorrect.
Anyone who says that Iran will commit suicide with its nuclear power is a moron and has no business in discussion.
The more I started studying the historical Jesus, the man who lived 2,000 years ago... the more I started to realize that there was this chasm between the historical Jesus and the Jesus that I had been taught about in church.
There's nothing more distasteful than an academic having to, like, trot out his credentials. You really come off as a jerk when you do that.
Whether you're talking about MSNBC or Fox or CNN, it's all about getting enough interest out there, sensationalizing the story in such a way that people are compelled to tune in.
When you forcefully suppress religious nationalism, you radicalize it.
I have watched Muslims chant 'Death to America!' on the streets of Tehran, then privately beg me to help them get a visa to the United States.
The idea of literalism in the Bible is a very new phenomenon. In many ways, it's a product of the scientific revolution.
The key to recognizing who Jesus was is to recognize this fundamental truth: He was a Jew.
I believe in God, which means I am open to some absurd possibilities. But I understand the power of that faith, and I understand the metaphor of that belief.
