Auckland Writers Festival 2014: "A Question of Civilisations" with Jim Al-Khalili, Yasmine El Rashidi, and Reza Aslan

Guest post by Emma, Birkenhead Library.


“Nothing is black and white...”

…was the message from entertaining and engaging physicist Jim Al-Khalili; serious journalist and campaigner Yasmine El Rashidi; and scholar of religions (and interesting numbers man) Reza Aslan, at the “Question of Civilisations” discussion at the Auckland Writers Festival.

Jim Al-Khalili (Furnace Ltd)

Reza Aslan

Yasmine El Rashidi

Get these diverse people together, and what emerged was a very broad discussion. So much so, that at first I wondered if they would even be able to talk about the same thing. The panelists’ first comments were rather disparate. However as the discussion swirled, there arose interesting insights – all pieces in a puzzle that was the picture of this talk.

Why has Arabian scientific study not continued into the present? Al-Khalili is looking forward to a scientific Arab spring, but in the meantime, what is going on in the Arab/Middle Eastern world? This is a place that the media portrays as violent and full of religious extremists, but which once was at the forefront of world learning.

“Middle Easterners have very long memories.” (Aslan). All panelists saw the colonial experience as a major reason for both the loss of the canon of learning and in subsequently “rattling identity” (El Rashidi), making young people today determined to define themselves and their futures on their own terms. The sense of inferiority to the West is shifting and social media has assisted this process. I was surprised to hear how young this part of the world is: Aslan gave the numbers. Median age in Yemen is 18 years, in Syria it is 24. (Compare to the USA - 37, and NZ - 35). Lots of aspiration and determination are likely there, then.

People affected by colonialism in the relatively recent past react against it and resist the Christianising mission by becoming religious (Aslan), also, looking back to religion is one way to reclaim shaky identity (El Rashidi). Aslan also pointed out that Iran has never been colonised, and so people have a stronger identity there than in somewhere like Egypt.

While becoming strongly religious is one way to reject colonialism, it is not universal. Al-Khalili told of his father being shocked at the young women who choose to veil themselves in his presence. However, covering is not equal to powerlessness. El Rashidi gave examples of women running the show, dealing the stock market and taking care of the money in Kuwaiti families. The need to survive, she says, empowers women to take action. Nor is Islam equal to human rights abuses – remember that one third of the world's Moslems live in democratic or progressive nations. As the atheist Al-Khalili said, some things are just basically wrong, no matter what your culture.

The message from all panelists was, I think, that a more subtle and nuanced view is necessary to look at what makes people seek/reclaim a stronger identity. It differentiates between {religion and culture}, which is when people turn to religion as a means to express their cultural roots, and {religious nationalism} which is when religion governs politics.

The other message was of the harsh economic reality for many people in the region. El Rashidi lives in Egypt and had many first-hand accounts of economic necessity driving people’s choices and actions. She observed early in the discussion that the emphasis on extremism masks the economic struggle that drives people. Aslan thankfully picked up this point near the end of the session. People need foremost to survive, but also to have opportunities to pursue their aspirations. While some nations (The Gulf States) are now incredibly wealthy from oil revenue (as Al-Khalili says, “Why don’t they help out?”), others are struggling.

So, youth reclaiming/redefining identity amidst economic struggle…blurred, nuanced reality. The skill is to see through the commercial media storytelling, which often gives an unbalanced, sensationalist or stereo-typed view.

Nothing is black and white.

Auckland Writers Festival 2014: "The Politics of Prophets" with Reza Aslan

Guest post by Hamish, Readers Services, Central City Library.

Reza Aslan is a religion scholar who writes for a mainstream audience without speaking down to them. He comes from “a long line of lukewarm religious people and zealous atheists”. He moved from Iran to California as a 7 year-old and spent the Iran hostage crisis pretending to be Mexican.

Aslan spoke at the Auckland Writers Festival with Waikato Religious Studies professor, Douglas Pratt. Some of the points he raised were:

-   Worldwide, religion is more a matter of identity and community than belief.

-   The power of scripture is infinitely malleable. He pointed out that slave-owners and abolitionists use the same bible and the same verses to argue their cases. In the USA there is a shift in thinking on environmentalism amongst conservative evangelical Christians. Previously they have believed nature is here for our use so we should use it as much as possible, but now younger conservative Christians are pushing scriptures about humans being stewards of the environment. He says religions can adapt to the environmental crisis in the same way religion adapted to the knowledge of the earth not being flat.

-   Religion is a language made up of symbols and metaphors of faith. As an experiment he said the phrase “I am washed by the blood of the lamb” and asked audience members to put their hands up if they understood the phrase. Many of the people who put their hands up felt connected as a community with others who had their hands up, while many who didn't understand the phrase felt as if it was in a foreign language.

-   All of Jesus of Nazareth’s statements were inherently political.

-   There is a chasm between the Christ of faith and the Christ of history. He writes about this in depth in his recent book Zealot: the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth. 

-   Iran and Saudi Arabia are fostering religious violence between Shia and Sunni across the world. The fighting is about group identity, rather than about who succeeded the prophet in the 7th century.

-   He is not convinced of the effectiveness of interfaith councils. He believes organisations such as the Interfaith Youth Core which get people of different faiths to perform charitable actions together build more interfaith connectivity than formal dialog does. He mentioned that USA is the most religious country in the developed world and also the most religiously diverse, so it has an important role to play in building interfaith connectivity.

Reza opened the floor to a generous 45 minutes of questions, which were sometimes interesting and sometimes long rants disguised as questions. He tore apart one questioner’s idea that Islam was inherently vengeful and Christianity inherently forgiving. In answer to a question about religions causing violence, he pointed out that the most bestial acts of violence in human history have been carried out by secular regimes of the 20th Century. While religious violence is bad, he said that humans will kill each other for any reason.

As an atheist, I’ve found Reza Aslan’s books give a fascinating insight into the way the world works, and are much more illuminating than the books from the overrated “new atheism” movement.