Reza Aslan on the Paula Gordon Show

Who has the authority to define faith? A religion's institutions? Or its individuals? Answering that core question is the focus of today's Islamic Reformation, or reawakening or renaissance. Call it what you will, this revolutionary challenge to centuries of clerical control is widely understood to be an important part of the current Muslim world, a natural, predictable stage in the evolution of all religions, says Reza Aslan, a scholar of comparative religions. It's eerily similar to the Christian Reformation Luther led, he says, noting that the Judaic reformer most clearly remembered is Jesus Christ, whose ultimate message was that authority rests in the hands of the individual, not in the grip of institutions.

Islam's Reformation -- millions of individuals challenging the authority of clerical institutions -- has been going on for a good century or so, Mr. Aslan reports. Colonialism, an era that only ended about 50 years ago, plays a major role. Ninety per cent of the world's Muslims lived under colonial rule and were profoundly influenced by centuries of domination. Anything that smacks of the colonialist endeavor -- whether cultural, economic or military colonialism -- strikes a raw nerve. Colonialism also left devastating geopolitical rifts in its wake, including who has the authority to define what "Islam" means for the modern world.

Geopolitical fragmentation also plays its part. It's only been 50 years or so that Muslims have had to stop thinking of themselves as members of a world-wide community of faith. Instead, they've been forced to think of themselves as citizens of arbitrarily fabricated nation-states. Congratulations, you're now Iraq.

Other changes coincided. The Koran has been translated into more languages in the past half-century than in all the 14 centuries that went before. Literacy has skyrocketed -- Iran is 90% literate. People now read and understand the Koran for themselves and come up with their own interpretations. Women are being educated. Authoritative women scholars, excluded from clerical institutions for 1400 years, now can show that Islam is not misogynistic. Muslim men are and the Internet gives the Muslim world greater access to novel theories and opinions.

Our prophets -- Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha -- are all reformers, Mr. Aslan says, with prophetic voices calling the faithful to the inexpressible, not to the institutional fundamentals resistant to change. Case in point, Mr. Aslan believes it is puritanical Arab fundamentalists who want to foment a civil war between the Shiåah and Sunni in Iraq and everywhere. Why? Because in spite of the Koran's repeated preaching against Muslim on Muslim violence, he sees reactionary fundamentalists intent on the massacre of Shiåism -- Shiåah they consider sinners -- and of mystical Sufism.

How do we interpret the global movement of Islamic terrorism? What tends to get lost in this discussion, Mr. Aslan says, is that these groups have deliberately set themselves up in opposition to the clerical institutions, calling bin Laden a bizarre kind of Martin Luther. Among the millions re-forming Islam, unfortunately only the loudest voices gets heard, this one slamming airplanes into skyscrapers. Mr. Aslan says Bin Laden's true innovation, says, is in telling Muslims, "You don't have to listen to your clerics any more, they no longer speak for God,"seizing these powers to himself, then disseminating it to his individual followers, declaring a radical individualism which is, ironically, very Western.

What of the future? In spite of 50-plus years of US alliances with authoritarian dictators in the region, Mr. Aslan celebrates the religious and ethnic pluralism which is both very much a part of Islamic history modern and a requirement for a democratic state. And Israel? Nothing's changed, he says, it's still the Number One Issue in the region, a crutch to autocrats and theocrats. We must take care of the dramatically oppressive situation under which the Palestinians are living, he says, certain that the road to peace in the Middle East still runs through Jerusalem.

[This Program was recorded February 24, 2006, in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.]