First Tuesday Speaker: Reza Aslan

Oxy hosts few speakers in Thorne Hall like Reza Aslan, and that isn’t without reason. There are few speakers out there who are regulars on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show (let alone six appearances), few speakers who might call on a member of the audience using the epithet “that dude” (and keep a straight face), and few speakers with titles and publications as varied and extensive as his (degrees from Santa Clara to Harvard, two books, and numerous articles published online and in print). Perhaps it is simpler and more appropriate to say that there are few people out there like Reza Aslan, period.

Aslan made a return visit to Occidental’s campus on October 6 as part of the First Tuesday Speaker Series. With his two books—No God but God and more recently, How to Win a Cosmic War—as a backdrop, the journalist, professor, and scholar spoke about the perils of generalizing in the Middle East, the decisions to be made in Afghanistan, and how Oxy’s most famous alumnus, President Obama, is faring as commander-in-chief.

Perhaps Aslan’s most crucial take-home message for concerned citizens and decision makers alike was the oft-neglected choice to distinguish the truly incorrigible enemy in the Middle Ease from those who simply don’t like us around. Central to his argument was the difference between Islamism and Jihadism and the willingness to see the vast gulf between the two ideologies. Islamism, on the one hand, is a form of ethnic nationalism—an effort to instill in the state the spirit and law of Islam. For those reasons, Islamism is not unlike the Zionism that resulted in the creation of the state of Israel, though the two are rarely compared. An Islamist’s interest in politically concrete goals—that is, an Islamic state—makes him a candidate for dialogue, said Aslan. The proof is in the pudding, he went on, as historically, when Islamist groups like Hamas have been invited to the “marketplace of ideas,” they have inevitably moderated.

Aslan’s contrasting category includes the Jihadists, those for whom a state is “anathema” and the goal, as opposed to that of the Islamists, is a utopian, Islamic world without borders or limits. According to Reza Aslan, these groups “want nothing and cannot be dealt with.” For that reason, he suggested, they must only be destroyed.

With that clear distinction in mind as a “necessary prelude,” Aslan turned to Afghanistan. Like with his previous topic, Aslan asserted that the discussion of Afghanistan requires the establishment of some basic facts. For one, the Taliban is not a uniform entity: its original followers were, as the translated name implies, students. Today these Taliban are present in Afghanistan and ultra-conservative. They are not, however, interested in fighting, as Aslan might call it, a “cosmic war” with the West. Instead, “thugs, crooks, and thieves” have brandished weapons all over Afghanistan calling themselves Taliban. The distinction, muddled as it is, is one we have to see. Only five percent of Taliban have gone the way of Jihadism. That sliver, while dominating American television, is the minority. The question then becomes what to do with the Islamist majority.

The simple answer is, don’t make them jihadists.

And how do we do that? Albeit hard for an American to digest, Aslan’s response: don’t “trample” on Islamist aspirations; invite them to a place in Afghani government. Our victory in Afghanistan might look as feeble as a stable Kabul with modest clout beyond its city limits.

These very difficult policy decisions face Obama squarely, and Aslan didn’t shy away from levying judgment on the President’s record so far. There were, no doubt, moments when Aslan’s support seemed unabashed. But he did not leave his enthusiasm unsubstantiated. Aslan praised the President for his speeches in Cairo and Istanbul; he lauded Obama’s choice to eliminate the phrase “War on Terror” from his rhetorical vocabulary and to describe Israeli settlement action as “occupation;” he even went so far as saying that Obama has already begun to “change the fabric of the relationship” between the United States and the Islamic world.

But that’s not to say Aslan’s comments fit to a T the usual pattern of left- and right-wing criticism. In fact, amid the bits of disapproval of the President’s choices was—albeit finite—some commendation of the second Bush administration. Aslan asserted that Bush’s call for democracy in the Middle East, while implemented incorrectly, was praiseworthy. The people on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere, the scholar said, do in fact want a voice through democracy.

So Aslan’s talk was not always conventional. Above all, it was clear that he is not an archetypical scholar. For having written two books, he is not bookish. For having appeared with Jon Stewart, he is no clown. Aslan seemed, by and large, both pragmatic in policy and relaxed in manner. There was a sense of urgency and action in his prescriptions, of passion and dedication. But beside that devotion to study was the bigger-picture, laid-back demeanor that made him a Californian. And perhaps that facility in both dimensions is what makes Aslan unique and emblematic for the liberal arts aspirations espoused by Occidental College.