Reza Aslan - How Al Qaeda Spins America's Image Abroad

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/fora/showthread.php?t=1544

Reza Aslan, religion scholar and Middle East Analyst for CBS News, discusses how Al Qaeda and related terrorist groups use the idea of "jihad" to distort the image of the United States in the eyes of global muslims.

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The Face of Terrorism: Global Movement or Global Network? with discussants Reza Aslan, Dalia Mogahed, Husain Haqqani speaking at the 2007 Aspen Ideas Festival. Christopher Isham moderates the discussion.

Some of the most inspired and provocative thinkers, writers, artists, business people, teachers and other leaders drawn from myriad fields and from across the country and around the world all gathered in a single place - to teach, speak, lead, question, and answer at the 2006 Aspen Ideas Festival. Throughout the week, they all interacted with an audience of thoughtful people who stepped back from their day-to-day routines to delve deeply into a world of ideas, thought, and discussion.

Reza Aslan is a writer and scholar of religions. Born in Iran, he is currently a research associate at the University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy. He was a visiting assistant professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Iowa and the Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. A frequent commentator on television, radio, and in print, he is a graduate of Santa Clara University, Harvard University, and the University of Iowa. He is the author of No god but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam and How to Win a Cosmic War: Why We're Losing the War on Terror, forthcoming in 2008.

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[thespeez]

I wish there were more Muslim spokespeople like him! The world needs it!

[willhum]

Reza Aslan is only someone I have discovered recently... yet he seems to articulate brilliantly the sort of thinking I had on many of the issues within and without the Muslim world. He also gets me thinking about areas I had not considered. A voice of reason and clarity in a wilderness of media us-versus-them simplifications IMHO.

[JennaSmith987]

@mittROMNEY666 OR we can shoot u and a few of ur kind, save the world.

[mittROMNEY666]

i want to see ww3 usa, europe, russia, japan, canada, austailia vs. muslims, chinese, indians, and africans!!! wouldnt that be great ? we could blast them all to glass.

[xlunax86]

Sometimes, I find Reza to be extremely annoying, but on Al Qaeda we could agree more.

@schmusabear No I don't think he's hot. I find him too much of a weasel to be attractive.

[sodapoprags]

@MsBaystater No, you're the reason we're losing the fight against Reza's losing the fight against "the movement"! Your long-winded and poorly thought out critique of Reza's critique of the Jihadist tactics is wasting valuable time you could be blindly fighting extremists without any plan! As if to talk about defeating them will defeat them...

[sodapoprags]

@seabear145 Yes, CBS... the American government's Christian-Zionist Broadcasting Service......

[Rassgatibala]

@schmusabear Who knows, if I was one to smoke the cock I think I would consider him a candidate.

[Xzibillionaire]

@vapidwords

nope he is not. 100% straight

[vapidwords]

@MrGrandDragon well if he said ashari vs athari or maturidi vs athari it would be theological.

[vapidwords]

is reza aslan gay? lol he's smart otherwise

[FoolMagazine]

Not exactly, you seem to be overwhelmed by the distraction of a 'movement'... you seem to forget key criticisms of a postmodern worldview in your postmodern interpretation. To think that an Afghani, a Iraqi, or similiar thinks in a 'unified' narrative is precisely what is the con. An Al Queda does not promote such a perception, as much as deconstructing it into more local subtext and then assign it various contexts. What you see is the 'American political machine' translated and used elsewhere.