Is Muslim Academic Reza Aslan More Biased Than a Christian Scholar

Anyone looking for a case study in how not to interview an author can look no further than this painful encounter between Reza Aslan the writer of a new book on Jesus and Fox News host Lauren Green. Aslan a scholar of religion has written a new book called Zealot The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth and it has inspired some backlash particularly on the right. Among many other condemnations and mockeries BuzzFeed's Andrew Kaczynski suggested it might be the most embarrassing interview Fox News has ever done.

The video speaks for itself but a few thoughts follow below.

1. Anyone who brags about their degrees is almost immediately laughed out of a room and for good reason. In this case however that's misguided. Greene's line of questioning is such that it's practically impossible for Aslan to do anything but list his credentials. I've seen the interview characterized as anti intellectual but that's a misreading of the issue at stake here which is that Green and others subscribe to a mistaken view of how academic research works. The nature of research is that scholars make arguments about the material they study. When that's about say William Makepeace Thackeray's views on marriage it's not controversial enough to make cable news but more politically contested fields like 20th century history or Jesus are no more immune to legitimate disagreements of interpretation and scholarship than comparative literature. But the root of this controversy seems to be an objection to Aslan making arguments about Jesus in the first place.

2. Setting that question aside here's what Aslan's assailants get right his portrayal of his qualifications was misleading. From First Things

Aslan does have four degrees as Joe Carter has noted a 1995 B.A. in religion from Santa Clara University where he was Phi Beta Kappa and wrote his senior thesis on The Messianic Secret in the Gospel of Mark a 1999 Master of Theological Studies from Harvard a 2002 Master of Fine Arts in Fiction from the University of Iowa and a 2009 Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California Santa Barbara.

None of these degrees is in history so Aslan's repeated claims that he has a Ph.D. in the history of religions and that he is a historian are false. 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 ...

What First Things fails to note is that the sociology degree is in the sociology of religion. Aslan may not have a graduate degree in history but he does have a Ph.D. and an M.T.S. that bear on the topic at hand. He has also published extensively on religion. Arguing he's somehow not a scholar as John S. Dickerson did isn't really credible.

3. Green's main thrust is that it's somehow wrong for Aslan a non Christian to discuss Jesus. (Throughout the interview she demurely insists that she's just passing along questions that others have asked but that's a canard Just because a silly question exists doesn't mean she's obligated to amplify it.) Quoting from a viewer's note she likens Aslan to a liberal political scientist writing a book about how Reagan wasn't a good Republican. That's misleading in two ways first Aslan isn't discussing how Jesus could have been a better messiah and second plenty of lefty political scientists have written about the Gipper

4. Aslan remains impressively calm and collected throughout the interview. Yet I find myself wishing he'd flipped the argument around on Green After all isn't any Christian too hopelessly biased to write a serious book on Jesus Most folks would say no it's as spurious as the attack against Aslan. But for a network that defines itself against a liberal media it insists is too biased to offer a clearheaded fair interpretation of current events there's a glaring double standard.

5. Aslan might also have mentioned the many non Muslims who have written books about Muhammad and Islam. Fox has happily given a platform to Christians and Jews who have been critical of the prophet and the religion from the scholarly (Bernard Lewis) to the hysterical (Frank Gaffney) to the ... also hysterical (Andrew McCarthy). In addition although Aslan noted his conclusions conflicted with Islamic positions on Jesus for example he argues that the crucifixion which Islam denies actually happened it might have been helpful to point out that Muslims revere Jesus as an important prophet though refuting his divinity.

6. It's hardly unusual for scholars of Christianity to question the historicity of orthodox religious beliefs many of whom describe themselves as devout Christians. Meanwhile plenty of non Muslim scholars like Patricia Crone have questioned the historical accuracy of the official account of Islam held by the religion (eliciting negative reactions from Muslims not dissimilar to the backlash against Aslan ).

7. Finally this is a great example of the Fox News hype cycle. Green's top example of the backlash against Aslan is a John S. Dickerson's column that appeared on you guessed it FoxNews.com. We report then we decide then we prime the outrage machine for another run It's nice work if you can get it.

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