It's a shame that ignorance can be so entertaining

[thewayne]

"You're a Muslim, so why did you write a book about the founder of Christianity?"
-- Fox News' Lauren Green to religious scholar Reza Aslan

"Well, to be clear, I am a scholar of religions with four degrees, including one in the New Testament, and fluency in biblical Greek, who has been studying the origins of Christianity for two decades, who also just happens to be a Muslim. It's not that I'm just some Muslim writing about Jesus. I am an expert with a Ph.D. in the history of religions."
-- Aslan

"It still begs the question. Why would you be interested in the founder of Christianity?"
-- Green

Ignoring the fact that it's Fox News, I guess a lot of people don't know that Islam is built upon both the Old and New Testament and believe that Jesus was a prophet, culminating in Mohammed being the last prophet. Or at least the last until The Last, it gets a little weird with some guy living in a cave for 1400 years.

Comments

[silveradept]

...and then, just when you thought things couldn't be any more stupid...

[moiraj.livejournal.com]

She definitely shouldn't have asked the question twice. I feel like she was trying to get the "Muslim guy" to admit Jesus is the One True Prophet and the only route to salvation. But maybe she's just ignorant.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

I don't see any reason why she can't be both. ;-)

[maegwin-of-hern.livejournal.com]

Even if Jesus wasn't an important figure in Islam (just as a Prophet, not as the son of God), it is entirely possible to be interested in a) other religions and b) historical figures, and Jesus was the latter. Green doesn't know how academics work, does he? You can be academically interested in a religion without being or becoming a devoted follower. There are also Christians studying Islam! It's no big deal!

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Exactly! I love studying comparative religion, I used to have a wonderful little book that unfortunately vanished that was on comparative religion, the cool thing about this was that a chapter on Religion X was written by scholars of Religion X, so you got an informative view that was not hostiley biased against said religion. I quite liked it, sadly it disappeared and I've never seen one quite like it since.