Reza Aslan is not a Hadith Scholar or Islamic Studies Scholar

So Reza Aslan questioned the historicity of Hadith literature on Twitter and Muslims on the Internet went into an uproar. He is no stranger to dismissive hyperbole and we Muslims are no strangers to overreacting. This makes for an unfavorable combo. I have said time and time again that Twitter with its 140 character limit is no place for such discussions. It forces people to make impetuous statements sorely lacking nuance. But the problem isn't just Reza's statement. I'm not too keen on the reactions I've seen either.

First of all, Reza Aslan is a secular academic scholar of sociology and religious history who happens to be Muslim. He is not an Islamic cleric and scholar. He is not "Shaykh Reza Aslan". He has never claimed to be any of that. So if he expresses his personal opinions and beliefs that are unorthodox in Islam then there is no need to freak out. If any orthodox Sunni or Shi`i Muslim considered, or considers, him an authority from whom one should learn Islam then the problem is with them, and not him.

He has some incredible value to offer when it comes to politics, society and history. But if you intend to study the Qur'an and Sunnah then he's not the guy you're supposed to be going to. And if anyone did then, as I said, the fault was theirs, not his. Secondly, look at the CONTEXT of his controversial Tweet. Who was it in response to? Did any of you who are outraged bother to go on Twitter and read the entire Tweet chain? He made this statement in an exchange with the atheist maniac Sam Harris and his groupies. Sam Harris is the nut who mused whether Muslim nations should be preemptively nuked and also said he'd rather get rid of religion rather than rape. They were using Hadith citations to discredit Islam and, out of frustration, Reza dismissed Hadith literature in toto. THAT is what happened.

So, yes, he said (and, apparently, believes) something that is wrong according to the overwhelming majority of Muslims, but please understand that he did so in the context of defending you! We get all giddy and cheer for Glenn Greenwald when he defends Muslims' rights and speaks out against injustices towards them and he's a non-Muslim. Why should we treat Reza so differently?

Finally, in regards to Reza's dismissive contentions with Hadith literature, I present that God says in the Qur'an: “Naught but men divinely inspired were sent before you. So ask the People of Remembrance (of the previous scriptures) if you do not know.” [16:43]

 Aside from the obvious moral of asking only those who are qualified when one does not know something, there is a more critical nuance in this verse. When God cites His divinely elect prophets who came before the Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ), such as Abraham, Moses, Jesus and the many, many others like them (peace and blessings be upon them all), he says to ask the people knowledgable in the previous scriptures...scriptures which happen to be transmitted by a far, far less rigorous standard than Hadith literature with its Isnad transmission system and the methods of censuring and exonerating thousands upon thousands of thoroughly documented narrators. So if God is instructing in the Qur'an itself that the believers are to ask the experts in the Bible —for most of which the authors are not even known!— then how can one fault the far more rigorously verified Hadith literature? So everyone, Reza, outraged Muslims, go back to your corners and reflect a little. Try and understand one another better and don't be dismissive towards one another.

And for the love of God don't engage in such high level discussions on any medium where you have to limit your responses to 140 characters!

From Shibli Zaman's FB

Reza Aslan on Gospel Writers, Luke and Matthew

Jews had their versions of AlQaeda and ISIS (Extremists)

Title "Son of God" does not mean Divinity

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Reza Aslan on Gospel Writers, Luke and Matthew

Professor Reza Aslan believes Gospel writers, Matthew and Luke, were making up narratives about Jesus in order to fit what they believed to be prophecies in the Hebrew Scriptures about the Messiah.

Matthew has Jesus flee to Egypt to escape Herod's massacre not because it happened, but because it fulfills the words of the prophet Hosea: "Out of Egypt I have called my son" (Hosea 11:1).

Luke places Jesus's birth in Bethlehem not because it took place there, but because of the words of the prophet Micah: "And you Bethlehem...from you shall come to me a ruler in Israel" (Micah 5:2).

Zealot, The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, Reza Aslan, The Westbourne Press p32-33

Using the New Testament as an inerrant record and a wholly faithful transmission of Jesus's teachings and his life is not an approach I would encourage. I believe we must look to Islam to understand Jesus (p) and his teachings fully.

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Jews had their versions of AlQaeda and ISIS (Extremists)

Professor Reza Aslan describes a group of Jews who used terrorism and assassinations for furthering their cause. I doubt anybody American Christian fundamentalist will be accusing Judaism responsible for groups such as the Sicarii.

Perhaps the Jewish revolutionary Menahem will be seen as the Bin Laden or Al Baghdadi of the Jewish people in the first century.


The Sicarii were zealots fuelled by an apocalyptic worldview and a fervent devotion to establishing God's rule on earth. They were fanatical in their opposition to the Roman occupation, though they reserved their vengeance for those Jews, particularly among the wealthy priestly aristocracy, who submitted to Roman rule. Fearless and unstoppable, the Sicarii murdered their opponents with impunity: in the middle of the city, in broad daylight, in the midst of great hordes, during feast days and festivals...

...The leader of the Sicarii at the time was a young Jewish revolutionary named Menahem, the grandson of none other than the failed messiah Judas the Galilean. Menahem shared his grandfather's hatred for the wealthy priestly aristocracy in general, and the unctuous high priests in particular. To the Sicarii, Jonathan son of Ananus was an imposter: a thief and a swindler who had grown rich exploiting the suffering of the people...

..In the year 56 CE, the Sicarii under Menahem's leadership were finally able to achieve what Judas the Galilean could only dream of accomplishing. During the feast of Passover, a Sicarii assassin pushed his way through the mass of pilgrims packed into the Temple Mount until he was close enough to the high priest Jonathan to pull out a dagger and swipe it across his throat.

...the Sicarii had only just begun their reign of terror. Shouting their slogan "No lord but God" they began attacking the members of the Jewish ruling class, plundering their possessions, kidnapping their relatives, and burning down their homes. Zealot, The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, Reza Aslan, The Westbourne Press p51-53

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Title "Son of God" does not mean Divinity

Professor Reza Aslan on the title, "Son of God".

Reza Aslan teaches that Jesus did not call himself by the title "Son of God" but rather others ascribed this title to him and numerous figures are called by this title in the Bible.

Nor, by the way, did Jesus call himself "Son of God," another title that others seem to have ascribed to him. (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. Numerous figures are called "Son of God" in the Bible, none more often than David, the greatest king - 2 Samuel 7:14; Psalms 2:7, 89:26; Isaiah 42:1). Zealot, The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, Reza Aslan, The Westbourne Press, 2013, p136

Prophecies about the Messiah

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Reza Aslan: Illiteracy rates at time of Jesus p

Illiteracy rates in first-century Palestine were staggeringly high, particularly for the poor. It is estimated that nearly 97 percent of the Jewish peasantry could neither read nor write, a not unexpected figure for predominantly oral societies such as the one in which Jesus lived. Certainly the Hebrew Scriptures played a prominent role in the lives of the Jewish people. But the overwhelming majority of Jews in Jesus's time would have had only the most rudimentary grasp of Hebrew, barely enough to understand the scriptures when they were read to them at the synagogue. Hebrew was the language of the scribes and scholars of the law - the language of learning. Zealot, The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, Reza Aslan, The Westbourne Press, 2013, p34-35

What does the Aramaic word name for Jesus tell us?

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Reza Aslan on Prophecies of the Messiah

Professor Reza Aslan reveals the Jews were expecting a human messiah - they were not expecting God. This militates against the Trinitarian view of Jesus being a god-man. It further points to the Islamic view of Jesus (p).

There is, however, one thing about which all the prophecies seem to agree: the messiah is a human being, not divine. Belief in a divine messiah would have been anathema to everything Judaism represents, which is why, without exception, every text in the Hebrew Bible dealing with the messiah presents him  as performing his messianic functions on earth, not in heaven.  Zealot, The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, Reza Aslan, The Westbourne Press, 2013, p32

Is the Gospel of John reliable?

What does the Aramaic word name for Jesus tell us?

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Was Jesus Married according to Christian sources? Professor Reza Aslan

It's inconclusive!

Although there is no evidence in the New Testament to indicate whether Jesus was married, it would have been almost unthinkable for a thirty-year-old Jewish male in Jesus's time not to have a wife. Celibacy was an extremely rare phenomenon in first-century Palestine. A handful of sects such as the aforementioned Essenes and another called Therapeutae practiced celibacy, but these were quasimonastic orders; they not only refused to marry, they completely divorced themselves from society. Jesus did nothing of the sort. Yet while it may be tempting to assume Jesus was married, one cannot ignore the fact that nowhere in all the words ever written about Jesus of Nazareth - from the canonical gospels to the gnostic gospels to the letters of Paul or even the Jewish and pagan polemics written against him - is there ever any mention of a wife or children. Zealot, The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, Reza Aslan, The Westbourne Press, 2013, p37

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Reza Aslan on the Council of Nicaea

While engaging in discussions with Christians we must ensure that the Council of Nicaea is not misrepresented. It really is not a centre-piece in picking apart Trinitarian Christianity.

The balding, gray-bearded old men who fixed the faith and practice of Christianity met for the first time in the Byzantine city of Nicaea, on the eastern shore of Lake Izmit in present-day Turkey. It was the summer of  325CE. The men had been brought together by the emperor Constantine and commanded to come to a consensus on the doctrine of the religion he had recently adopted as his own. Bedecked in robes of purple and gold, an aureate laurel resting on his head, Rome's first Christian emperor called the council to order as though it were a Roman Senate, which is understandable, considering that every one of the nearly two thousand bishops he had gathered in Nicaea to permanently define Christianity was Roman.

...After months of heated negotiations, the council handed to Constantine what became known as the Nicene Creed, outlining for the first time the officially sanctioned, orthodox beliefs of the Christian church. Jesus is the literal son of God the creed declared...

As for those who disagreed with the creed, those like the Arians who believed that "there was a time when [Jesus] was not", they were immediately banished from the empire and their teachings suppressed.

It may be tempting to view the Nicene Creed as an overtly politicized attempt to stifle the legitimate voices of dissent in the early church. It is certainly the case that the council's decision resulted in a thousand years of more bloodshed in the name of Christian orthodoxy. But the truth is that the council members were merely codifying a creed that was already the majority opinion, not just of the bishops gathered at Nicaea, but of the entire Christian community. Indeed, belief in Jesus as God had been enshrined in the church centuries before the Council of Nicaea, thanks to the overwhelming popularity of the letters of Paul. Zealot, The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, Reza Aslan, The Westbourne Press, 2013, p213-214

It's interesting that the Church in the 4th century was not in line with the thinking of liberal Christians today who preach a pacifist and pluralistic Christianity which allows for a spectrum of diversity in belief. The Church back in the 4th century clearly did not share such views.

The Islamophobes amongst such Christian groups today would do well to remember this before they decide to bang on about ISIS and link them with orthodox Islamic practice.

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