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10/9/14 3:22 PMBill Maher Isnt the Only One Who Misunderstands Religion - NYTimes.com

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THE OPINION PAGES | OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Bill Maher Isnt the Only One WhoMisunderstands Religion

By REZA ASLAN OCT. 8, 2014

BILL MAHERs recent rant against Islam has set off a fierce debate about the

problem of religious violence, particularly when it comes to Islam.

Mr. Maher, who has argued that Islam is unlike other religions (he thinks

its more like the Mafia), recently took umbrage with President Obamasassertion that the terrorist group known as the Islamic State, or ISIS, does not

represent Islam. In Mr. Mahers view, Islam has too much in common with

ISIS.

His comments have led to a flurry of responses, perhaps none so

passionate as that of the actor Ben Affleck, who lambasted Mr. Maher, on Mr.

Mahers own HBO show, for gross and racist generalizations about

Muslims.Yet there is a real lack of sophistication on both sides of the argument

when it comes to discussing religion and violence.

On one hand, people of faith are far too eager to distance themselves from

extremists in their community, often denying that religious violence has any

religious motivation whatsoever. This is especially true of Muslims, who often

glibly dismiss those who commit acts of terror in the name of Islam as not

really Muslim.

On the other, critics of religion tend to exhibit an inability to understand

religion outside of its absolutist connotations. They scour holy texts for bits of

savagery and point to extreme examples of religious bigotry, of which there

are too many, to generalize about the causes of oppression throughout the

world.

What both the believers and the critics often miss is that religion is often

far more a matter of identity than it is a matter of beliefs and practices. The

phrase I am a Muslim, I am a Christian, I am a Jew and the like is, often,
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not so much a description of what a person believes or what rituals he or she

follows, as a simple statement of identity, of how the speaker views her or his

place in the world.

As a form of identity, religion is inextricable from all the other factors that

make up a persons self-understanding, like culture, ethnicity, nationality,

gender and sexual orientation. What a member of a suburban megachurch in

Texas calls Christianity may be radically different from what an impoverished

coffee picker in the hills of Guatemala calls Christianity. The cultural practices

of a Saudi Muslim, when it comes to the role of women in society, are largely

irrelevant to a Muslim in a more secular society like Turkey or Indonesia. The

differences between Tibetan Buddhists living in exile in India and militant

Buddhist monks persecuting the Muslim minority known as the Rohingya, in

neighboring Myanmar, has everything to do with the political cultures of

those countries and almost nothing to do with Buddhism itself.

No religion exists in a vacuum. On the contrary, every faith is rooted in

the soil in which it is planted. It is a fallacy to believe that people of faith

derive their values primarily from their Scriptures. The opposite is true.

People of faith insert their values into their Scriptures, reading them through

the lens of their own cultural, ethnic, nationalistic and even political

perspectives.After all, scripture is meaningless without interpretation. Scripture

requires a person to confront and interpret it in order for it to have any

meaning. And the very act of interpreting a scripture necessarily involves

bringing to it ones own perspectives and prejudices.

The abiding nature of scripture rests not so much in its truth claims as it

does in its malleability, its ability to be molded and shaped into whatever form

a worshiper requires. The same Bible that commands Jews to love yourneighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18) also exhorts them to kill every man

and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey, who worship

any other God (1 Sam. 15:3). The same Jesus Christ who told his disciples to

turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:39) also told them that he had not come to

bring peace but the sword (Matthew 10:34), and that he who does not have a

sword should sell his cloak and buy one (Luke 22:36). The same Quran that

warns believers if you kill one person it is as though you have killed all ofhumanity (5:32) also commands them to slay the idolaters wherever you


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find them (9:5).

How a worshiper treats these conflicting commandments depends on the

believer. If you are a violent misogynist, you will find plenty in your scriptures

to justify your beliefs. If you are a peaceful, democratic feminist, you will also

find justification in the scriptures for your point of view.

What does this mean, in practical terms? First, simplistic knee-jerk

response among people of faith to dismiss radicals in their midst as not us

must end. Members of the Islamic State are Muslims for the simple fact that

they declare themselves to be so. Dismissing their profession of belief

prevents us from dealing honestly with the inherent problems of reconciling

religious doctrine with the realities of the modern world. But considering that

most of its victims are also Muslims as are most of the forces fighting and

condemning the Islamic State the groups self-ascribed Islamic identity

cannot be used to make any logical statement about Islam as a global religion.

At the same time, critics of religion must refrain from simplistic

generalizations about people of faith. It is true that in many Muslim countries,

women do not have the same rights as men. But that fact alone is not enough

to declare Islam a religion that is intrinsically more patriarchal than

Christianity or Judaism. (Its worth noting that Muslim-majority nations have

elected women leaders on several occasions, while some Americans stilldebate whether the United States is ready for a female president.)

Bill Maher is right to condemn religious practices that violate

fundamental human rights. Religious communities must do more to counter

extremist interpretations of their faith. But failing to recognize that religion is

embedded in culture and making a blanket judgment about the worlds

second largest religion is simply bigotry.

Reza Aslan, a professorof creative writing at the University of California, Riverside, is the author, most

recently, of Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.

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bill maher isn’t the only one who misunderstands religion - nytimes.com

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