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

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THE OPINION PAGES | OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Bill Maher Isnt the Only One Who
Misunderstands 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 Obamas
assertion 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 your
neighbor 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 of
humanity (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 still
debate 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 professor of 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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