Quotes from Reza Aslan

A prophet, claim the Shi'ah, is someone who has, by the divine will, become conscious of God's eternal message, which forever envelops creation like a numinous ether we cannot escape, while the Imam is someone who explicates that message for those who possess neither the prophetic consciousness necessary to recognize it nor the power of reason to understand it. Put another way, the prophet transmits the Message of God, while the Imam translates it for human beings.

Certainly, Muhammad understood that there were distinct theological differences between Islam and the other Peoples of the Book. But he saw these differences as part of the divine plan of God, who could have created a single Ummah if he had wanted to but instead preferred that "every Ummah have its own Messenger" (10:47).

But no religion is inherently violent or peaceful; people are violent or peaceful.

twofold profession of faith, or shahadah, that would henceforth define both the mission and principles of the movement: There is no god but God, and Muhammad is God's Messenger.

Zeal, the spirit that had fueled the revolutionary fervor of the bandits, prophets, and messiahs, was now coursing through the population like a virus working its way through the body.

The Jesus that is uncovered in the process may not be the Jesus we expect; he certainly will not be the Jesus that most modern Christians would recognize. But in the end, he is the only Jesus that we can access by historical means. Everything else is a matter of faith.

Islam and Judaism in seventh-century Arabia operated within "the same sphere of religious discourse," in that both shared the same religious characters, stories, and anecdotes, both discussed the same fundamental questions from similar perspectives, and both had nearly identical moral and ethical values.

The first century was an era of apocalyptic expectation among the Jews of Palestine, the Roman designation for the vast tract of land encompassing modern-day Israel/Palestine as well as large parts of Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. Countless prophets, preachers, and messiahs tramped through the Holy Land delivering messages of God's imminent judgment. Many of these so-called false messiahs we know by name.

Such statements are commonplace in John, the last of the four canonized gospels, composed between 100 and 120 C.E. John shows no interest at all in Jesus's physical birth, though even he acknowledges that Jesus was a "Nazarean" (John 18:5–7). In John's view, Jesus is an eternal being, the logos who was with God from the beginning of time, the primal force through whom all creation sprang and without whom nothing came into being (John 1:3).

Contrary to Christian conceptions, the title "Son of God" was not a description of Jesus's filial connection to God but rather the traditional designation for Israel's kings.

Muhammad's male followers were disgruntled about the new inheritance laws, they must have been furious when, in a single revolutionary move, he both limited how many wives a man could marry and granted women the right to divorce their husbands.

Jesus called himself "the Son of Man.

Either the threat posed by Jesus to the stability of Jerusalem is so great that he is one of only a handful of Jews to have the opportunity to stand before Pilate and answer for his alleged crimes, or else the so-called trial before Pilate is pure legend. There is reason to suspect the latter.

Religion, it must be understood, is not faith. Religion is the story of faith. It is an institutionalized system of symbols and metaphors (read rituals and myths) that provides a common language with which a community of faith can share with each other their numinous encounter with the Divine Presence.

If you cannot change the kings," the Sufis argued, "then change yourself.

Yet if one wants to uncover what Jesus himself truly believed, one must never lose sight of this fundamental fact: Jesus was not a Christian. Jesus was a Jew preaching Judaism to other Jews. His

the Religious Zionists have shown that they would prefer civil war in Israel to peace with the Palestinians. That is because these Jews define their national identity in terms not of civic loyalty to the state but of religious obligation to the land.

Let your yes be yes and your no be no.

of observable and verifiable events in the past is a product of the modern

Rhodes, founder of the De Beers diamond company and at one time the virtual dictator of modern-day South Africa, famously declared, "We Britons are the first race in the world, and the more of the world we inhabit, the better it is for the human race." Among

Arise! Arise! Put on your strength, O Zion! Put on your beautiful garments, Jerusalem, the holy city; for the uncircumcised and the unclean shall never again enter you. Shake off the dust from yourself, stand up, O captive Jerusalem; release the bonds from your neck, O captive daughter of Zion.

Acesta este locul in care vei fi cel mai aproape de Dumnezeu. Duhoarea carnagiului este imposibil de ignorat. Intra in piele si in par ca o povara otravitoare de care vei scapa cu greu. Preotii ard tamaie pentru a alunga duhoarea si boala, dar amestecul de mirt, scortisoara, sofran si tamaie nu poate masca mirosul pestilential al macelului.

There are two distinct methods of interpreting the Quran. The first, tafsir, is primarily concerned with elucidating the literal meaning of the text, while the second, ta'wil, is more concerned with the hidden, esoteric meaning of the Quran.

The Prophet himself sometimes openly suppressed or negated older verses, considering them to have been replaced by newer ones. That is because Muhammad did not consider the Quran to be a static Revelation, which may be why he never bothered to authorize its collection into a codified book. The Quran was for Muhammad a living scripture that consciously evolved alongside the Ummah, continually adapting itself to meet the specific needs of the developing community.