I went to Amazon and found this:
Posted on 07/28/2013 12:26:41 PM PDT by EveningStar
Reza Aslan, a religious scholar with a Ph.D. in the sociology of religions from the University of California and author of the new book, “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth,” went on FoxNews.com’s online show Spirited Debate to promote his book only to be prodded about why a Muslim would write a historical book about Jesus.
(Excerpt) Read more at buzzfeed.com ...
Perhaps you can start by explaining why muslims deserve special consideration.
It is not uncommon for outsiders to have excellent insights into the beliefs and concepts of cultures or religions.
Folks I have a flash for you. BREAKING NEWS!!!! There are no news programs anymore. All those so-called news programs are entertainment biased. Designed to entertain and not to inform. And guess what? We are to blame!! The masses refuse to watch programming that does not entertain us.
She did a great job. She believes that his religion makes him more likely to do negative book on Jesus and she pounded away at it. Much like any MSNBC mouthpiece would do to a Christian who wrote a negative book about MoHamMed. I loved it!!
Its also not uncommon for outsiders to seek to mislead followers of religions.
Since muslims kill christians who evangelize in countries they control and muslims who convert I’m not quite sure what insights they might have to offer.
I watched it. Green was off her game, but he was playing Eddie Haskell with his innocent wide-eyed who-me looks, citing his credentials defensively and repeatedly, protesting too much.
“Why would a muslim write a book about Jesus” is not only a fair question, it’s the obvious question everyone wants answered. He chose not to answer it simply and move on, but rather dug in and wasted air time. We learn nothing from this interview except that he feels aggrieved by islamophobes.
The issue is deception. The man who wrote the book about Jesus pretended he was Christian - he was not.. He pushed a book based on a lie.
It's similar to liberals coming to conservative site and pretending they're conservatives. Or Madeoff pretending he was an honest broker. Or any random con artist attempting to 'take' a mark... it's lowlife stuff.... From what I understand, critics who loved the book because it bashed Christianity also hid the fact the writer was Muslim.
Obviously the reason he chose NOT to tell his readers he was Muslim was because he's a person who 'wins' by lying. That's not a recommendation for most of us...
I went to Amazon and found this:
The book is about the historical Jesus, not the Jesus of faith.
Jesus being a Zealot is a common theme surrounding the historical Jesus.
I still have a book, Jesus and the Zealots, that I read 20 years ago, that was published in the 60s.
For a liberal it would be like an oil executive pretending to be an ecologist - writing a 'green' book - that comes to the sad conclusion the ONLY answer is to 'drill baby drill'. Would you feel that was 'deceptive'?
FYI -from the link: about Reza Aslan - author - Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth..
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/07/29/scholarly-misrepresentation/
Nor is “professor of religions” what he does “for a living.” He is an associate professor in the Creative Writing program at the University of California, Riverside, where his terminal MFA in fiction from Iowa is his relevant academic credential. It appears he has taught some courses on Islam in the past, and he may do so now, moonlighting from his creative writing duties at Riverside. Aslan has been a busy popular writer, and he is certainly a tireless self-promoter, but he is nowhere known in the academic world as a scholar of the history of religion. And a scholarly historian of early Christianity? Nope.
What about that Ph.D.? As already noted, it was in sociology. I have his dissertation in front of me. It is a 140-page work titled “Global Jihadism as a Transnational Social Movement: A Theoretical Framework.” If Aslan’s Ph.D. is the basis of a claim to scholarly credentials, he could plausibly claim to be an expert on social movements in twentieth-century Islam. He cannot plausibly claim, as he did to Lauren Green, that he is a “historian,” or is a “professor of religions” “for a living.”
Well, well. Along with misrepresenting his religion, and trying to pass himself off as still Christian in the first two pages of this book, this guy seriously misrepresented his credentials in the interview:
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/07/29/scholarly-misrepresentation/
Thank you. I’m passing that along.
I agree, and I would add that Reza Aslan's publishers would have wanted the same thing. Controvesy sells.
There was someone in England who wrote a book called "The Head of God". Aside from having an odd title, it was all full of fanciful theory and folklore. The author caught a real lucky break when an Anglican clergyman got into the media and denounced it.
That Anglican clergyman must have been the author's best friend from school, or his brother-in-law, or something.
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