Top 100 Reza Aslan Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “The Revolutionary Guard controls almost everything in Iran, and this is hurting the people.”

— Reza Aslan

52. “The Roman Senate determined that the most effective way to retake Jerusalem from Parthian control was to make Herod its client-king and let him accomplish the task on Rome’s behalf. The naming of client-kings was standard practice during the early years of the Roman Empire, allowing Rome to expand its borders without expending valuable resources administering conquered provinces directly.”

— Reza Aslan

53. “It is no exaggeration to say that Syria holds the key for nearly all of Americas foreign policy goals in the Middle East. As Syria goes, so goes the region.”

— Reza Aslan

54. “Indeed, if we commit to placing Jesus firmly within the social, religious, and political context of the era in which he lived – an era marked by the slow burn of a revolt against Rome that would forever transform the faith and practice of Judaism – then, in some ways, his biography writes itself.”

— Reza Aslan

55. “Obama has been the single worst president in modern American history in dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

— Reza Aslan

56. “That actually is true of most of the books in the New Testament. Such so-called pseudepigraphical works, or works attributed to but not written by a specific author, were extremely common in the ancient world and should by no means be thought of as forgeries.”

— Reza Aslan

57. “What most puzzled Rome about the Jews was not their unfamiliar rites or their strict devotion to their laws, but rather what the Romans considered to be their unfathomable sense of superiority. The notion that an insignificant Semitic tribe residing in a distant corner of the mighty Roman Empire demanded, and indeed received, special treatment from the emperor was, for many Romans, simply incomprehensible.”

— Reza Aslan

58. “The very term “theocracy” was coined specifically to describe Jerusalem.”

— Reza Aslan

59. “Unlike their brethren in the Holy Land, Diaspora Jews spoke Greek, not Aramaic: Greek was the language of their thought process, the language of their worship.”

— Reza Aslan

60. “The key to recognizing who Jesus was is to recognize this fundamental truth: He was a Jew.”

— Reza Aslan

61. “Egyptians believed that the Pharaoh would be resurrected, but they did not accept the resurrection of the mases.”

— Reza Aslan

62. “The only way to survive in a community where movement was the norm and material accumulation impractical was to maintain a strong sense on tribal solidarity by evenly sharing all available resources.”

— Reza Aslan

63. “The Romans may not have understood the Jewish religion, with its strange observances and its overwhelming obsession with ritual purity – “The Jews regard as profane all that we hold sacred,” Tacitus wrote, “while they permit all that we abhor” – but they nevertheless tolerated it.”

— Reza Aslan

64. “The census, they argued, was an abomination. It was affirmation of the slavery of the Jews. To be voluntarily tallied like sheep was, in Judas’s view, tantamount to declaring allegiance to Rome. It was an admission that the Jews were not the chosen tribe of God but the personal property of the emperor.”

— Reza Aslan

65. “Is it possible that Jesus, unlike 98 percent of his fellow Jews, was literate and educated? Yes, it’s possible.”

— Reza Aslan

66. “The bad news is that Iran wants to talk about everything except their nuclear program. They want to talk about regional cooperation, they want to talk about the sanctions issues, and it seems like the western powers want to talk about nothing more than the nuclear issue.”

— Reza Aslan

67. “The separation of “church and state” of which America is so proud was established in Islam fourteen centuries ago, when it was decided that no Caliph would have religious authority over the community.”

— Reza Aslan

68. “Mark’s audience was in Rome, where he himself resided. His account of the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth was written mere months after the Jewish Revolt had been crushed.”

— Reza Aslan

69. “Thus began the long process of transforming Jesus from a revolutionary Jewish nationalist into a peaceful spiritual leader with no interest in any earthly matter.”

— Reza Aslan

70. “How could the Law of Retribution function properly when one party in a dispute was so wealthy and so powerful as to be virtually untouchable?”

— Reza Aslan

71. “Perhaps rather than concerning ourselves with trying to form a relationship with God, we should instead become fully aware of the relationship that already exists.”

— Reza Aslan

72. “I think by all accounts in the same way we look back on the anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish sentiments of our history with shame and derision and with a healthy dose of mockery, that’s how we will very likely look back on this sort of anti-Muslim sentiment as well in the next generation.”

— Reza Aslan

73. “Herod did a masterful job of maintaining order on behalf of Rome. His reign ushered in an era of political stability among the Jews that had not been seen for centuries. He initiated a monumental building and public works project that employed tens of thousands of peasants and day laborers, permanently changing the physical landscape of Jerusalem. He built markets and theaters, palaces and ports, all modeled on the classical Hellenic style.”

— Reza Aslan

74. “Anyone who says that Iran will commit suicide with its nuclear power is a moron and has no business in discussion.”

— Reza Aslan

75. “The Samaritans denied the primacy of the Temple of Jerusalem as the sole place of worship. They instead worshiped God on Mount Gerizim. though this was essentially the only religious difference between the two peoples, it was enough for the Samaritans not to be considered Jews.”

— Reza Aslan

76. “My hope with this book is to spread the good news of the Jesus of history with the same fervor that I once applied to spreading the story of the Christ.”

— Reza Aslan

77. “A politician is a politician whether he’s wearing a suit or a funny hat.”

— Reza Aslan

78. “One-fifth of Americans, 20% believe that Barak Obama is, himself, a Muslim and in fact – amongst Republicans that number is almost 40%. Polls show in this country, that the more you disagree with Barak Obama’s domestic policies, the more likely you are to think that he is a Muslim.”

— Reza Aslan

79. “In first-century Palestine, simply saying the words “This is the messiah,” aloud and in public, can be a criminal offense, punishable by crucifixion.”

— Reza Aslan

80. “The gospels present Pilate as a righteous yet weak-willed man so overcome with doubt about putting Jesus of Nazareth to death that he does everything in his power to save his life, finally washing his hands of the entire episode when the Jews demand his blood. That is pure fiction. What Pilate was best known for was his extreme depravity, his total disregard for Jewish law and tradition, and his barely concealed aversion to the Jewish nation as a whole.”

— Reza Aslan

81. “Luke would have had no idea what we in the modern world even mean when we say the word “history.” The notion of history as a critical analysis of observable and verifiable events in the past is a product of the modern age; it would have been an altogether foreign concept to the gospel writers for whom history was not a matter of uncovering facts, but of revealing truths.”

— Reza Aslan

82. “It is a miracle that we know anything at all about the man called Jesus of Nazareth. The itinerant preacher wandering from village to village clamoring about the end of the world, a band of ragged followers trailing behind, was a common sight in Jesus’s time – so common, in fact, that it had become a kind of caricature among the Roman elite.”

— Reza Aslan

83. “But Jesus’s message was designed to be a direct challenge to the wealthy and the powerful, be they the occupiers in Rome, the collaborators in the Temple, or the new moneyed class in the Greek cities of Galilee. The message was simple: the Lord God had seen the suffering of the poor and dispossessed; he had heard their cries of anguish. And he was finally going to do something about it.”

— Reza Aslan

84. “Festus allowed Paul to go to Rome because Paul claimed to be a Roman citizen. Paul was born in Tarsus, a city whose inhabitants had been granted Roman citizenship by Mark Anthony a century earlier. As a citizen, Paul had the right to demand a Roman trial. a Festus, who would serve as governor for an extremely brief and tumultuous period in Jerusalem, seemed happy to grant him one, if for no other reason than simply be rid of him.”

— Reza Aslan

85. “There would be no more record of who was rich and who was poor. Everyone in this new and divinely inspired world order would begin anew.”

— Reza Aslan

86. “The idea of literalism in the Bible is a very new phenomenon. In many ways, it’s a product of the scientific revolution.”

— Reza Aslan

87. “Despite two millennia of Christian apologetics, the fact is that belief in a dying and rising messiah simply did not exist in Judaism. In the entirety of the Hebrew Bible there is not a single passage of scripture or prophecy about the promised messiah that even hints of his ignominious death, let alone his bodily resurrection.”

— Reza Aslan

88. “To begin with, with the possible exception of the gospel of Luke, none of the gospels we have were written by the person after whom they are named.”

— Reza Aslan

89. “Scattered across the Roman Empire, it was only natural for the gospel writers to distance themselves from the Jewish independence movement by erasing, as much as possible, any hint of radicalism or violence, revolution or zealotry, from the story of Jesus, and to adapt Jesus’s words and actions to the new political situation in which they found themselves.”

— Reza Aslan

90. “As for the high priest – the wretch who betrayed God’s chosen people to Rome for some coin and the right to prance about in his spangled garments? His very existence was an insult to God. It was a blight upon the entire land. It had to be wiped away.”

— Reza Aslan

91. “The reformation of Christianity was a terrifying process, but it was not, as it has so often been presented, a collision between Protestant reform and Catholic intransigence. Rather, the Christian Reformation was an argument over the future of the faith – a violent, bloody argument that engulfed Europe in devastation and war for more than a century.”

— Reza Aslan

92. “Of course, in Jerusalem, “landed aristocracy” more or less meant the priestly class, and specifically, that handful of wealthy priestly families who maintained the Temple and who, as a result, were charged by Rome with collecting the taxes and tribute and keeping order among the increasingly restive population – tasks for which they were richly compensated.”

— Reza Aslan

93. “There’s no question that homophobia is rampant among the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims – but that doesn’t negate the fact that there are huge groups of Muslims who have easily reconciled their faith and sexual orientation, like LGBT people in other faith communities.”

— Reza Aslan

94. “However, Saudi Arabia quickly discovered what the rest of the world would soon learn. Fundamentalism, in all religious traditions, is impervious to suppression. The more one tries to squelch it, the stronger it becomes. Counter it with cruelty, and it gains adherents. Kill its leaders, and they become martyrs. Respond with despotism, and it becomes the sole voice of opposition. Try to control it, and it will turn against you. Try to appease it, and it will take control.”

— Reza Aslan

95. “As noted, naming a book after someone significant was a common way of honoring that person and reflecting his views.”

— Reza Aslan

96. “But what is most desperately needed is not so much a better appreciation of our neighbor’s religion as a broader, more complete understanding of religion itself.”

— Reza Aslan

97. “It took many years to cleanse Arabia of its “false idols.” It will take many more to cleanse Islam of its new false idols – bigotry and fanaticism – worshipped by those who have replaced Muhammad’s original vision of tolerance and unity with their own ideals of hatred and discord. But the cleansing is inevitable, and the tide of reform cannot be stopped. The Islamic Reformation is already here. We are all living in it.”

— Reza Aslan

98. “Zeal implied a strict adherence to the Torah and the Law, a refusal to serve any foreign master – to serve any human master at all – and an uncompromising devotion to the sovereignty of God.”

— Reza Aslan

99. “Those who did know Jesus – those who followed him into Jerusalem as its king and helped him cleanse the Temple in God’s name, who were there when he was arrested and who watched him die a lonely death – played a surprisingly small role in defining the movement Jesus left behing.”

— Reza Aslan

100. “The single most important factor in the performance of any Muslim ritual is the believer’s intention, which must be consciously proclaimed before the ritual can begin.”

— Reza Aslan