Apparently the interview was a big sales boost.
hee!
*Since then, the Buzzfeed page featuring the video has been viewed nearly four million times. Mr. Aslan quickly amassed an additional 5,000 Twitter followers. On Monday, Random House, Mr. Aslan’s publisher, said the interview had clearly helped the book: in two days, sales increased 35 percent.
On Friday, “Zealot” was in the No. 8 spot on Amazon.com, the nation’s biggest seller of books; by Sunday, it had hit No. 1.*
(will nobody comment on the author being a Narnian God? )
I’m willing to bet she hasn’t read No God but God either.
The first words out of a writer’s mouth in any interview should be: “Have you read my book?”. It would shut down a lot of stupidity right away.
I think I heard him on “Interfaith Voices.” He has probably done other shows recently as well.
So any work by a white, European-American scholar from a Christian backround about anything non-white, non-European, non-American, or non-Christian is automatically suspect too?
Cue the old song… 
He was on Fox News, so you can make your own joke about Green’s intended audience.
He had no reason to expect he was going to have to deal with anybody’s offense in that interview.
I heard him on Fresh Air recently.
For those who have been saying he’s a Muslim writing about Christianity, in the Fresh Air interview he talked about his family background and childhood, and (as I see Martian Bigfoot has mentioned) he did convert to Christianity as a teenager. (His religious views have shifted since then.) He also said that his father was more or less an atheist and that his mother eventually converted to Christianity herself.
I’ve got to disagree. How can you study sociology of religions without studying history of religions? The two disciplines are intimately intertwined.
But he’s not writing about somebody else’s religion, Jesus is an important person in Islam. He’s writing about his own religion. Are Christian scholars not allowed to talk about Moses, King David or Isaiah now?
You might have a point, but only if you fail to notice the man is a scholar of religions.
Insisting one can only be a scholar and write scholarly work about one’s own religion is just nonsense, pure and simple nonsense.
He converted his mother while he was a very active evangelical!
Fox News missed an opportunity to caption him Ra’s al Ghul during the interview.
This is a good analysis and it bears out in his Daily Show interview. He actually specifically mentions the fact that the people who wrote the bible weren’t going for literal truth but more of a parable. They spend a few minutes on what Colbert would call “truthiness”, about how Jesus was said to be born in Bethlahem but the writers knew he was from Nazareth, but the “truthiness” was that he was an important person so it was necessary to show him as coming from a town that connects him with Solomon or King David or somebody.
The Fox News lady was obviously just trying to score political points by repeatedly mentioning he was a Muslim but luckily John Oliver actually did read the book and didn’t dwell on his religion. It turned out to be a much much more fascinating interview and elucidated the book moreso than that right wing tirade, not that its a surprise to anyone
And add “(D)” after his name.
You contradict yourself. Compare your first comment to your second. Fox is all about controversy and offence. If he didn’t think they might play up the tribal angle, he was being naive.
Strawmanning much? What I said was “The guy may be a religious scholar but if he doesn’t understand why a scholar from a different religion writing realistic and accurate things about somebody else’s religion would offend them, he doesn’t know jack about religion, or he’s pretending he doesn’t.”
I didn’t say he is not allowed to talk about anything, or that one can only write scholarly work about one’s own religion or that his work was automatically suspect.
Anyone who knows a damn thing about religion would or should know it is exceedingly tribal. Anyone who knows a damn thing about religion would or should know also know that if you write something completely reasonable and accurate about the Hero figure from another tribe’s religion, a substantial proportion of the other tribe are going to get huffy about this. The more so if what you say is or can be twisted to be negative. Half of all people are of lower than average intelligence, and amongst the religious, I suspect the figure is greater than half.
Like I said (and you guys might like to try reading for comprehension) if you don’t understand people are going to be offended, you either know jack about religion or you are pretending you don’t.
Whether people should be offended is another question entirely.
Read post 50, if you haven’t already. I haven’t read the book, but I haven’t yet found any context to indicate that he’s examining Jesus as a figure of Christianity, rather than as a figure of Islam.
I’m sure that religious offenderati are going to be completely happy to make that distinction. Wait. No they’re not.
Phew. For a moment there I mistook myself for someone who didn’t have a clue about the reality of many religious people.
Fine, but you’re the one who said he was writing about “somebody else’s religion.”
I get the sense you’re determined to find him at fault for something. Can I ask why?
You’re right that my points were a little consistent, so I’ll revise to say he probably did expect something. In hindsight his response seems pretty well prepared, and it’s likely he’d heard this stupid complaint before. The issue is this: BigT’s complaint (and yours in the same vein) sort of came out of nowhere. Aslan was not acting like he doesn’t understand why people might be bothered by his topic (and if he was, who cares?) The issue here is that he treated Green as if she’d asked a stupid and hostile question because she did. Being offended by what he wrote and challenging his right to discuss the subject at all because of his religion are two different things. The first one is at least related to the content of his work. The second one isn’t. There’s some irony at work there.