Mo News Interview: Inside the 2022 Iranian Revolution

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Hi everyone,

The authoritarian Iranian regime is currently up against the biggest threat in its four-decade history -- supercharged by the death of Mahsa Amini. Can it succeed?!

In this edition of Mo News, we spoke to Iran expert and NY Times bestselling author, Reza Aslan, who has a new book out called An American Martyr in Persia.

Aslan was born in Iran and his family escaped the rise of the Islamic regime in 1979. We discuss his family history, what led us to the current revolution, his disappointment with the lack of support for the protesters in the west (he called it "absolutely pathetic"). We go through various scenarios on how this revolution can successfully bring down the regime as well as what might cause it to fail.

Key Quote: "This is a profoundly entrenched regime. And it's going to take a Herculean effort to dislodge them from the positions of power that they've entrenched themselves in."

We also discuss his book, which tells the extraordinarily compelling, true story of Howard Baskerville, 22-year old Christian missionary from Nebraska who became a commander in the Iranian Revolution of 1907. "The only difference between me and these people is the place of my birth," Baskerville declared, "and that is not a big difference." His story has lessons for the latest revolution, more than a century later.

And finally, Reza talks about the evolution Islam is currently going through and how it compares to how Christianity and Judaism changed over time.

☕️ But first, a few headlines this AM before our interview...

• President Biden promised Tuesday that the first bill he sends to Capitol Hill next year will be one that writes abortion protections into law — if Democrats control enough seats in Congress to pass it — as looks to energize his party just three weeks ahead of midterm elections.The President urged people to remember how they felt in late June when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. It is part of White House efforts to ensure the issue stays front of mind for Democratic voters this year as he faces more negative headlines on the economy and inflation. ~NPR

• A jury on Tuesday found Igor Danchenko — a private researcher who was a primary source for the 2016 “Steele dossier” of allegations about former president Trump’s ties to Russia — not guilty of lying to the FBI about where he got his information.The verdict is the latest blow to special counsel John Durham, who has now lost two cases that have gone to trial as part of his nearly 3½-year investigation. Trump predicted Durham would uncover “the crime of the century” inside the U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies that investigated his campaign’s links to Russia.The dossier had been paid for by the Clinton campaign and contained a bunch of unproven innuendo linking Russia and Trump. But so far, no one charged by the special counsel has gone to prison, and only one government employee has pleaded guilty to a criminal offense. ~Washington Post

• A jury on Tuesday convicted Paul Flores in the murder of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo student Kristin Smart, ending a more than two-decade mystery that both captivated and outraged the California college town. Flores was found guilty of first-degree murder even though authorities never found Smart’s body, an issue long considered a stumbling block in the case. ~ LA Times

• A person in Fort Myers, Florida got a life-changing win in the wake of Hurricane Ian. A lottery ticket sold in Fort Myers matched all six numbers in last week’s Mega Millions drawing. That ticket is worth more than $200 million. ~WINK News

Now, to our interview with Reza Aslan.

Aslan explains what's different about today's uprising and whether or not it's enough to ultimately succeed. Could the west be doing more to help?

Key quote: "The idea that they have managed to put all of that diversity and disparate issues under a single catchphrase, a single goal -- 'down with the regime.' That is the recipe for revolution."

Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

The full conversation will be available later this week via the Mo News Podcast. Apple | Spotify | More Platforms

MOSH: As we speak, we are in the fourth week of unrest . Some are calling it demonstrations, some calling it protests. You've been using the word revolution. Why?

REZA ASLAN: Well, I hate to get all academic about it. But the factors necessary in order to elevate an uprising or a demonstration into what we can say qualifies as a revolution are twofold.

Number one, can you expand your coalition beyond the initial uprising? People always talk a lot about the difference between 2009 (the Green Movement), and what's happening now. The problem with the 2009 Green Movement is that it never really expanded beyond the kind of middle class young urbanized youth who, more or less, had these demonstrations in large urban population centers. It never expanded to the poor. It never expanded to the place where it began to bring in business interests. And so as a result, and in the face of unrestrained violence by the government at the time, it kind of fizzled out. The success of a revolution requires creating coalitions. And while there is no question that the current revolution began as a feminist uprising, and that there's no question that it is still led by women who are baring their bodies to the bullets of the Revolutionary Guard, in order to achieve their most basic human rights.

Over the last few weeks, what we have seen is that initial protests began to expand. Certainly, it's included men. But it's also begun to include the older generations, not just the Gen Z. And more interestingly, it's begun to pull in more conservative elements in society. We're seeing women dressed in the traditional black chador, the most conservative dress a woman could wear, holding hands with young girls wearing jeans, t-shirts, and whose hairs are completely unveiled. Both of them are calling not for reform, but for the downfall of the regime. That's extraordinary.

Secondly, it's got to go beyond the major urban centers, because it needs to bring in the working class, the pious masses, those kinds of groups. And currently, we are seeing these sort of violent backlashes against the government take place in a majority of the provinces in Iran, including some fairly conservative provinces. And we're seeing, you know, uprisings in Mashhad, in Qom. Qom is kind of the religious capital of Iran. And we are seeing massive protests there.

MOSH: For context, these are the locations where we would expect the people to be most loyal to the regime.

ASLAN: Exactly. And we're not seeing some massive counter demonstration. You know, not even the fake grassroots ones that the government is so good at making.

So an expanding coalition, disparate interests, disparate grievances, nationwide protests, all united under a single goal. I mean, they all have different goals. They all have different desires. They all probably have different ideas about what should replace the regime. But the idea that they have managed to put all of that diversity and disparate issues under a single catchphrase, a single goal, 'down with the regime.' That is the recipe for revolution. Now, whether it succeeds or not, we'll see. But I think that insofar as what is required to to term something truly a revolution, Iran has achieved that in less than four weeks.

MOSH: These protests sort of officially started over the killing of Mahsa Amini, the 22 year old woman who was arrested by the morality police and showed up in a coma at the hospital and died. But the grievance runs deep, clearly. Can you give folks a sense of what people are protesting after these 43 years of rule in Iran?

ASLAN: Not to be technical here, but yeah, the protests didn't begin with the death of Mahsa Amini. It was supercharged by the death of Mahsa Amini. What we've been watching happening in Iran for the last six, seven months, is the sporadic protests and uprisings taking place around the country, by farm workers and factory workers, retirees, school teachers, primarily against the crumbling economy, the almost 300% price hikes in foodstuffs over the last six months as a result of the removal of food subsidies, the 50% inflation rate that Iran has.

MOSH: We complain about an 8% inflation rate.

ASLAN: 50% is hard to imagine. The sudden disappearance of entire retirements. And so we've been seeing very bloody, very active protests all around the country, they just haven't really caught the imaginations of the outside world because those are complex economic issues. What the death of Mahsa Amini did, however, is it supercharged the already roiling dissatisfaction that was in Iran, and gave it a face, gave it a sense of purpose, and in some ways, gave it some leadership. Because it's one thing to have old men complaining about their retirement funds having suddenly disappeared. It's another thing to see 13 year old girls standing in the front of the firing line, and saying, I will sacrifice myself for the same freedom that I want, but also for what you're calling for. I don't want to confuse the issue, because it is very important to understand that this is a female-led movement. But there was already this kind of foundation of anger and dissatisfaction that was on the ground that allowed this female-led movement to suddenly supercharge into what I'm now referring to as a nationwide revolution.

MOSH: We have seen images of 13 year old standing in front of firing lines, school girls yelling at government leaders who have come to speak to them -- defying the government. For those who live in the West, who live in the U.S., can you put it into context? How remarkable it is to be seeing the images we are right now from Iran.

ASLAN: It's beyond inspiring. I have an 11 year old child. The idea that I could see them standing in front of soldiers and baring their bodies, not just to free themselves, but to free their fellow countrymen. It's hard to put it into words. And if America is looking at these images, in awe and in confusion, then that's the right response. Frankly, it is awe-inspiring. And it is confusing. Because I think the thing that's important to understand is that these protesters in Iran are not asking for anything all that complicated. They're asking for a say in the decisions that rule their lives. That is about as basic a human right as it gets. ‘Let me make my own decision’ is a very clear message. The clarity of that message is what has allowed it to rise above the dim and be heard by everyone around the world. We all get it. We all understand what is being asked for.

Again, I would say that's another big difference between today and 2009. The message there was the election was unfair...the election was stolen. And I think a lot of people were saying, well, the elections are always unfair. But what is the argument against ‘leave us alone, let us make our own decisions?’ There is no argument against that. And it is precisely the clarity of the message here. That is the greatest threat that this regime has faced in the last four decades.

MOSH: Let's talk about that regime. They took power in 1979....

ASLAN: Well, 1980. If you don't mind, this is a very important thing to clarify, because the 1979 revolution is often referred to as an Islamic Revolution. But that's post-revolutionary propaganda. I was there in 1979. The people on the streets were Marxists and communists and liberals and progressives and conservatives and religious folks, but also Jews and Christians on the streets. This was, kind of what we're seeing now, a nationwide coalition focused on a single goal: remove the shah from power. It's just that in post-revolutionary Iran, in the chaos of the Iran hostage crisis, in the midst of a war, people forget that a few months after the revolution, Saddam Hussein (Iraq) invaded Iran. In the midst of all of that, the government of secular technocrats collapsed. And Ayatollah Khomeini used that moment, that vacuum, to take total control. So let's not call it an Islamic revolution. It was an anti-imperialist revolution. And let's not say it gave birth to the Islamic Republic. It was hijacked by Khomeini to create Islamic Republic.

This is a profoundly entrenched regime. And it's going to take a Herculean effort to dislodge them from the positions of power that they've entrenched themselves in. And I don't mean to be dismissive of the fact that yes, you will have to figure out what comes later. But I really do feel like right now, what comes later is secondary to the current urgency, which is to get these guys out of the halls of government, and back to the mosques, where they belong.

MOSH: We're looking at a neighborhood where we saw an Arab Spring nearby, a little over a decade ago. And we've seen the results/failures in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria, among others following their revolutions. There is no prominent leader of this movement in Iran. How does that make this process more challenging and more difficult?

ASLAN: It's very difficult when you're talking about the individual countries of the Middle East in a collective term, because, as you rightly said, the culture the politics, the history is so vastly different. In 2011, where you saw similar uprisings take place in multiple Arab countries, the results were dramatically different in each case.

And I think that the problem here is that Iran has had, for better or worse, a century of a vibrant protest culture. And an experience, at least in the last four decades, have some expression of representative government. Again, obviously, you know, the representative aspect of Iran, the government is tightly controlled and manipulated by the clerical regime. But there have been elections, and those elections have had very little effect on the lives of Iranians. But they were meaningful differences in the various leaders. And so in a way, you're talking about a population that, unlike in Egypt, or Syria, or Libya, already has this kind of innate understanding of what people can actually achieve when they’re united. In the summer of 2011, these governments (across the region) began to fall and everybody was just kind of trying to figure out what happens next.

It's hard to imagine the same kind of descent into an even worse, authoritarian experience, like in Syria or an Egypt happening in Iran, because of that vibrant history of protests and people power that is almost genetically a part of the Iranian identity. Again, this is by no means any kind of guarantee, or not making a prediction. But I just say that because of that, I feel somewhat more optimistic about the ability of post-revolutionary Iran. If there is going to be a post-revolutionary Iran, assuming there's some success here, (I am hopeful) stability that can come out of that.

MOSH: I was just reading an analysis saying the Iranian regime, sort of like Bashar Assad in Syria, will preserve power no matter what. They're laying out a Syria-like scenario where we've seen the destruction of a country and a decade of civil war. Your feeling is that Iran is different.

ASLAN: It runs different. I don't think that we were okay. If I'm going to be pessimistic, let's just say what kind of quote unquote worst case scenarios look like.

Worst case scenario: we see (the regions of) Baluchistan and Kurdistan call for independence. And Iran begins to fracture in the way that we saw in Iraq and in some parts of Syria, into different ethnic enclaves. That would be fairly disastrous.

Second worst case scenario: A takeover by the military in Iran, the Revolutionary Guard, which most Iran watchers will tell you is the real power in Iran. Yes, there is the Ayatollah, but behind the Ayatollah in the shadows is the Revolutionary Guard pulling most of the strings, politically and with foreign affairs, but also economically. The Revolutionary Guard in Iran, it's hard for non-Iranians to understand, because this isn't the military. Imagine if the military, the FBI, the CIA, and the mafia were one organization. That's the Revolutionary Guard. And they control everything.

And the one thing that I think is important to know about the military, and this is true in military anywhere in the world, is that they tend to be highly pragmatic. The generals care far less about what your hijab looks like than they do about stability and control. Is it possible that at a certain point, if these protests continue to expand and become bloodier and more out of control, it is possible that the Revolutionary Guard would step in and say something along the lines of, ‘we have heard the cries of the people, and we have come to your rescue.’ It's time for these mullahs, you know, to go back to their mosques. And oh, by the way, we'll need a period of transition here (that might never end).

Is that great for Iran? No. Would those teenagers who are dying on the streets for their most basic rights, would they take Egypt over the Islamic Republic right now? Maybe. Would they take Myanmar or Pakistan over clerical rule right now? Maybe.

People, don't email me, okay? I'm not calling for military rule in Iran.

What I am saying is, there appears to be an easier path to go from military rule to some kind of representative government than it is to go from religious rule to some kind of representative government. So given the opportunity, given the option, military rule or clerical rule, which would you take? Obviously, I haven't polled the people on the ground in Iran, but I would guess that the majority of them would say we'll take military rule right now.

MOSH: You mentioned it earlier. You were there in Iran in 1979. I want to talk about your family story. You were born there and your family fled. Take us through what happened and how your family departed Iran.

ASLAN: I came from a fairly middle, upper class family. We owned land. I think fairly soon we realized that this was going to be a problem. Whatever the new regime was, it was going to come for us.

When Ayatollah Khomeini first got to Iran, he made these big speeches about how he has no interest in politics, he has no interest in the government. He just misses his family and his home, he just wants to go back to his home and his ministry and be left alone. My father, who never trusted anything, anyone wearing a turban on any topic, heard that and said, 'bullshit, it's time to go.' And I remember very clearly, being awakened early in the morning and told to get my stuff. And we were amongst the very last to be able to leave Iran before the airports closed down. And I remember the insanity of that airport. And I remember very clearly this kind of heartbreaking moment in which trying to get through customs in order to get on that plane and having these customs officials open up our suitcases and rifle through all of our valuables and just take the things that they wanted. And I remember my mother complaining, and I remember the customs officials saying, Do you want to stay with them? You want to stay with your stuff, because you can. And so we left with nothing. We left with a suitcase of clothes each and came to America and moved into a one room motel. And then the hostage crisis happened. We watched that on our televisions and realized that we were lucky that we got out, because the vast majority of my family did not. And indeed, they are still there.

And everything that I do today, 40 something years later, every speech that I give, every podcast interview that I do, is predicated on making sure that the family that I left behind lives in peace and freedom. And, not under the threat of military war.

MOSH: What are they able to tell you, if you can share, about what's been going on there in the last couple of weeks?

ASLAN: I'm going to be honest with you and say that we rarely talk about it. And I think, you know, the people who are in Iran that I speak to - and I appreciate this - oftentimes will just tell me, I just can't talk about what's happening right now. I can't talk about what I saw. If I talk about it I’ll break down, and I just need a minute. I just need to be free from it. You know, we have two hours of internet access, I would just like to do something else besides focus on the fact that I'm watching people die in front of me. And I respect that decision.

MOSH: And I imagine something that plays into it is just fear of the regime itself. You don't know who's monitoring you and it can get you in trouble.

ASLAN: Iran is a police state. There's no question about it. I'll tell you a very funny story. The last time I was in Iran was in 2005. And this was after Mohammed Ahmadinejad was elected. And you know, Iran goes up and down depending on who's in office, so I can be a little bit freer in the way I dressed. And nope, now I can't anymore. I mean, before Ebrahim Raisi became president (he is currently in charge), the so-called morality laws had been very loosely applied for a few years. And I think a lot of Iranians got used to just being able to be a little bit freer with their self expression. And then a new president shows up and then suddenly, it's like, 'Nope, that's over, back to making sure your hijab is right.'

I remember when I was there, in 2005, I was very nervous. I didn't want to stick out like a sore thumb. So I cropped my hair very short, and I grew a beard, and I wore fairly conservative clothes, to quote unquote, fit in. Every time I would get into a cab, everyone in the cab would freeze and stiffen. And like, the cab driver would turn the music down. I would walk into a cafe, and people would fix their hijabs, and sort of sit up tall. And I realized, 'Oh, my God. They think I am the morality police.' They thought it was me! They thought I was the guy. I'm trying my hardest to, like, avoid that guy, and everyone else thinks I'm that guy! You know, the absurdity of life. For most people in Iran. I mean, God if it weren't so sad and pathetic, it'd be hilarious.

MOSH: What have you made of the reaction so far from the west? What are they doing? How can they best support this revolution?

ASLAN: The international response to the revolution in Iran has been, the answer would be pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. Now, let's break it down a little bit. The American government has no influence in Iran whatsoever. Really nothing else that we could do. We just released the more targeted sanctions against Iranian officials - good. Okay, fine. Nobody thinks that that's going to make any difference whatsoever, because they're already sanctioned to the maximum ability. Europe has a little bit more influence because it purchases Iranian exports. And so it has the ability to use their purchasing power in order to punish the government for their actions. But I've yet to see any real attempt by the EU to do that yet.

Unfortunately, the only two powers in the world that have actual, real, meaningful influence over the Iranian government are China and Russia. And Russia right now is not listening to anyone, obviously. And China's whole policy is that 'we do not interfere in other autocracies because we're an autocracy.'

But what I'm really annoyed by, what I'm really upset by, is the inaction of the United Nations. You know, just a couple of days ago, the United Nations voted almost universally to condemn Russia's annexation of parts of eastern Ukraine. And that's great. Good for them. They've been calling for investigations on Russian human rights, atrocities, the slaughter of civilians, war crimes - that's what the UN's job is.

But the same thing is happening in Iran right now. It's just by its own government. And I've yet to see a similar vote from the United Nations. The Iranian government has openly and unapologetically announced that it has detained hundreds of teenage girls and sent them to what they call psychological camps for re-education. That is a crime against humanity, that they are openly admitting. And I have yet to see a call by the United Nations or bye International Criminal Court, even to say that is a crime against humanity, there will be a price to pay.

MOSH: But if they did, the regime doesn't care. We're not surprised that the UN has been pretty toothless, are we? Do statements like that matter?

ASLAN: Here's one thing that's very important to understand about the Iranian regime. It may seem like they are impervious to outside pressure, because they act that way. But for decades, it has shown us that that's not the case when there is global pressure on Iran. Iran didn't want to give up its nuclear program. But the outside pressure forced it to when we are united as a globe.

When we can get the weight of the UN Security Council, it does matter. I'm not saying that the UN is going to wag its finger at Iran, and Iran is going to suddenly crumble. What I am saying is that we cannot deny the fact that the UN can influence Iran's behavior. It's done it in the past. And it can now. And even if, you know, the Ayatollah is still thumbing their nose at the UN....that kind of global solidarity is an invaluable message. It's an invaluable message to those revolutionaries themselves, who are desperate to make sure that the world hears them, that the world is on their side. And we need the United Nations. We need a vote count. We need every one of those countries to stand up and raise their hand. Are you with the Iranian people or not? And that hasn't happened yet.

MOSH: Let's talk about your book, which takes us back not to the ‘79 revolution, not to the ‘53 revolution, but back to 1906, where it all started. The first of what now appears to be four revolutions over the course of just more than a century.

The book is ‘An American Martyr in Persia,’ and you tell the story of a 22-year old American missionary from Nebraska, who ends up in Iran. How did he get there?

ASLAN: Howard Baskerville is a 22 year old Christian missionary. He graduated from Princeton, with a degree in Christian Ministry in 1907, and is expected to just go back to South Dakota where his family was living and to take up the profession of his father and grandfather, which is just to become a Presbyterian country preacher. But he has a different idea. He wants to experience the world. He wants an adventure. And back then, the only way that a 22 year old Christian from the Black Hills could possibly have a global adventure is to become a missionary. He desperately wants to go to China and Japan. They send him to Persia in order to do ‘The Mohammadan’ work-- which is to convert Muslims to Christianity. His other job is to teach. He gets a job at the missionary school in the city of Tabriz, where he teaches English and American history. And he arrives in the middle of, as you say, the first democratic revolution in the Middle East.

A few years earlier...a coalition had helped to achieve a constitution that would lay out the rights and privileges of all Iranians, and an elected parliament that would have the ability not just to pass legislation, but to curb the unchecked powers of the Shah, the king of Iran. They get those things in 1906. But then, the Shah, who signs the Constitution, dies, and his son, who succeeds him, tears up the Constitution, rolls cannons to the parliament building and destroys it with the parliamentarians inside and declares war on the revolutionaries. What began as a revolution quickly became a civil war. The Shah wins. He manages to reconquer almost the whole of the country for the crown, except for the city of Tabriz, which becomes the last bastion of the revolutionary militant movement.

And this is when Howard Baskerville suddenly arrives in this town. And it takes a while. He's there for a good year and he's being told constantly to mind his own business, that the politics of the situation are not his business. His job is to save souls. He's an American, and he can have no direct participation in a foreign nation's Civil War, which is how it was referred to then.

But, because of a series of remarkable things that happen and experiences that Baskerville has, and horrors that he witnesses, eventually gives up his teaching position, abandons his missionary post, even gives up his American citizenship, and joins the Iranians in this revolution against the Shah. He ends up dying in that cause. And he's widely considered to be sort of a hero and a martyr of that revolution, though, and since the 79 revolution, his name has pretty much disappeared from Iranians collective memories. This biography that I've written about him is an attempt to change that. Not just to remind the Iranians of this American hero, but to also introduce him to Americans in the first place. While he may have been forgotten about inIran, he was never remembered in America to begin with. And it's just a shame, especially right now, because he's such a reminder to us all of what Iranians and Americans have in common with each other. And he's a reminder to us all the responsibilities that we in the privileged world have to actually reach out and do something when people around the world are dying for the rights that we ourselves take for granted.

MOSH: You've had your own journey with faith, which I find interesting to talk about in the context of Baskerville, a missionary. You were born a Muslim. You convert to Christianity. You then convert back to Islam. How does your journey through faith impact how you tell these stories?

ASLAN: I have, not just an academic knowledge of faith, religion, the interplay of them in the world, and how people use religion to express their aspirations and their politics for good - but I also have personal experience. I used to be a Christian, and I used to be Shia. I'm neither of those things now. But it makes me really understand what those two religions have in common with each other. And so a Christian, like Baskerville, in the midst of a Shia revolution, like 1906, it's very clear to me why those two worked - how someone like Baskerville, who came from a completely different faith and tradition, was able to integrate into the very ideology of this revolution.

Near the end of his life Baskerville very famously says ‘I am Persian.’ And I get what he means by that, because having been a Christian, and having been a Shia, I see the sort of linkages that would allow him to make that kind of statement. And I hope that that is reflected in the book. And I've tried to really transform this kid into a living, breathing human being, and really help people understand what his motivations were, why he did what he did and what he could have been thinking in making these incredible decisions. And that has really allowed me to write this story, in a way that comes alive and makes sense to people, even though it's a story that took place 115 years ago.

MOSH: As you look at the last couple of millennia, it's a constant struggle between separation of church and state. Wherever you go in the world, there's this constant back and forth. Is it a pendulum? Is it a progression? Is it an evolution? How do those things continue to coexist? What is the proper balance? Who has it right? And maybe there is no right here.

ASLAN: I don't know if there's a right or wrong answer to this. But I will say this - it begins by understanding what religion actually is. Religion isn't just a matter of beliefs and practices. Although those things are important. Religion is a form of identity. When someone says, I'm a Christian, I'm a Jew, I'm a Muslim...they're not making a faith statement - they're making an identity statement. And as a part of your identity, it's wrapped into all the other markers that are your identity, including your nationalism, your politics, your social or economic position, your gender, your sexual orientation.

And, so religion is whatever you make it to be, because we're all different. It's an ever-present ideology. And yes, you're right. It's constantly changing, because we're constantly changing. But it's always going to have a role in human society. Whether that role is positive or negative has far less to do with religion itself, than it does with--we--human beings and how we integrate religion into our already preconceived ideas about the workings of the world. Religion is what a religious person makes it. Religion doesn't exist in a vacuum.

MOSH: Islam is the youngest of Abrahamic faiths, the Jews are 5783 years old. Christianity is two millennia. Islam is just over 1400 years old. As the youngest faith, where is Islam right now? And are they following the trajectory that you've seen with other faiths?

ASLAN: It is hard to compare these things, though, I will say that all major religions go through moments of reform in which what is fundamentally at stake is, who gets to define this thing?

In the 5,000 plus years of Judaism, there was a moment in which Judaism became something completely different. 70 AD, the temple is gone. And this is no longer a religion of temple and priesthood and sacrifice. So then it was, who has the authority anymore in this religion, and we have the birth of what we now call Rabbinic Judaism, or, frankly, just Judaism.

Now, you look at Christianity. That there is a moment in the 15th and 16th centuries, in which there is this crack, where the idea that there are only a few people who get to define what this faith is begins to crumble, and everyone gets to kind of have their own interpretations. And we call that the Protestant Reformation or whatever. All of a sudden you have this religion that had maybe two or three branches, fracture into thousands of different branches and interpretations.

A similar thing has been taking place in Islam for much of the last 100 years, in which the traditional religious authorities who have, for centuries, maintained a monopoly over the meaning, and the message of Islam has begun to fracture. Individuals are now coming to the religion on their own and interpreting it through their own lens without the need of some outside authority. And so we are seeing the same kind of fracturing in Islam into hundreds of different schisms and interpretations that we saw in Christianity. Where does this go? Who knows.

But I think there is a kind of trend line that global religions do experience. And I do believe that we are sort of in the midst of one of those kind of major moments in Islamic history, where the very understanding of not what the religion means but who gets to say what it means is being redefined.

[Top Banner Photo Credit: Getty Images]

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