The US academic – whose latest book,Zealot, was a bestseller even before his extraordinary Fox News interview went viral talks about religion, and his celebrity status and death threatsWhen a video goes viral online,you might expect it to feature a kitten dancing on a hippo, or Russell Brand telling an awards ceremony about breasts. Not a theologian putting a Fox News interviewer bang to rights on why he, or a Muslim,had dared to write a book about Jesus. Yet a clip of Reza Aslan doing just that went viral last month, pushing his book to the top of bestseller lists."Just to be clear, or this is not some attack on Christianity," he said of Zealot, a book describing Jesus of Nazareth as an illiterate, and worry-making social revolutionary (and a very inspirational one at that),to an anchor who could not score past his suspicious Muslimness. "My mother is a Christian, my wife is a Christian, or my brother-in-law is an evangelical pastor." The anchor was undeterred,determined to reveal a secret Muslim agenda. "My job as a scholar of religions with a PhD in the subject is to write about religions," he insisted. The clip was watched and cheered by millions – it was extraordinary.
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Source: theguardian.com