Some two years ago, I wrote about Reza Aslan’s gushing
praise for a book by Max Blumenthal under the title
“No Truth in Advertising: Max Blumenthal’s New Book on Gaza.” But now Aslan is
involved in a major project that has actually been advertised quite truthfully,
because the way CNN has promoted
their new series “Believer” reveals right away that it is just a sensational
show intended to boost ratings: “In this new spiritual adventure series, renowned
author and religious scholar Reza Aslan immerses himself in the world’s most
fascinating faith-based groups to experience life as a true believer.” While
I’m not religious, I don’t know any sincere “true believer” who would like to
see his or her deeply-held faith presented in a “spiritual adventure series”
featuring a “religious scholar” who “immerses himself” for every episode in
another – preferably exotic – “faith-based group.” It’s a bit like making the
now fashionable donning
of a “hijab for a day” into a lavishly produced series, and the message is
inevitably: just dress up appropriately and participate in some rituals, and
voilà – you’ll “experience life as a true believer” of whatever beliefs are
deemed telegenic enough to be featured by Reza Aslan on CNN.
An excellent
critique under the very appropriate title “Reza Aslan’s Cynical Careerism
and CNN’s ‘Believer’”, written after Aslan’s first (truly atrocious) episode on
Hinduism, notes that “creating
controversy seems to be all part of the plan too; during the premiere of Believer
Aslan tweeted a link to an interview on the Huffington Post entitled
‘Every Episode of
Reza Aslan’s ‘Believer’ Will Piss Somebody Off (And It’s Awesome).’ It is essentially click-bait for TV.”
However,
originally Aslan apparently didn’t think that “every episode” will “piss
somebody off,” because when he was busy filming the episodes some two years ago
(i.e. not long after he had warmly endorsed Blumenthal’s glorification of
Hamas), he tweeted: “Just wrapped episode 3 in LA (which everyone
will love) and off to Israel for episode 4 (which everyone will hate).”
Apparently, Aslan
still feels that this episode will be particularly controversial; his pinned tweet at the time of this writing reads: “No matter what I say, no matter what I
do someone is going to get pissed off in this episode;” an embedded short clip shows
him in Jerusalem with the same message.
I’m writing this
before the episode is airing on Sunday evening (conveniently at a time when
most Jews will be very busy preparing for Passover), but the promotional
material shows already that, as usual, Reza Aslan will dress up to ‘immerse
himself’ in Judaism…
But I’ll also admit that I don’t need to watch the episode
to be pissed off – just reading the title of Aslan’s CNN article promoting
this installment is enough for me: “Reza Aslan: Why I worry about Israel’s
future.” Well, when people who cheer Blumenthal and other antisemitic
Israel-haters profess “worry about Israel’s future,” it usually means they’re
worried that Israel has a future.
To be sure, Aslan focuses on an issue that actually also
worries me and many secular Israelis: fundamentalist tendencies among
ultra-orthodox Jews and their political influence. But with his trademark
superficiality, Aslan dramatizes what serves his agenda and ignores whatever
doesn’t fit his desired “narrative” – after all, while he likes to describe
himself as a “scholar of religions,” he
is “a tenured Professor of Creative Writing at the University of
California, Riverside.” So it is hardly surprising that Aslan claims to have
spoken “to a number of secular Jews in Israel who openly worried that the
ultra-Orthodox are on the verge of turning Israel into a Jewish version of
Iran;” but if he really found people who worry “that the ultra-Orthodox are on
the verge of turning Israel into a Jewish version of Iran,” he perhaps
mingled with the same people Max Blumenthal met with when he was in Israel.
From Aslan’s Twitter timeline, one can see that he greatly
appreciates Ha’aretz as a source of material for denigrating Israel, but
for once, I have good tidings from Ha’aretz for Reza Aslan: he doesn’t
have to lose sleep over his worries for Israel’s future – as Anshel Pfeffer
concluded in a recent
article under the title “In Israel the Age of the Rabbis Is Ending”: “No,
Israel isn’t becoming more religious. It’s actually becoming more flexible as
the lines that used to divide among the secular, traditional, religious-Zionist
and ultra-Orthodox − and clearly demarcate the sects and streams − have become
blurred.” Pfeffer even threw in a line criticizing the media for overlooking
the trends he described: “The media as usual is finding it hard to drop its old
habits.” Looking at you, Reza Aslan…
So here’s how Aslan concludes his article:
“Whether the ultra-Orthodox are in
fact able to one day transform Israel into a religious state remains to be
seen. But what cannot be denied is that their influence over Israeli society
and the Israeli government is only growing. And as someone who lost his own
country to a small but powerful group of religious zealots, I genuinely worry
about the future of Israel.”
But Aslan is genuinely lying when he claims to worry about
the future of Israel, because he doesn’t want Israel to have any future. As he
said in a Twitter exchange with notorious
Israel-haters some two years ago, he rejects a two-state solution “as a fantasy;”
at the same time, he indulges the fantasy that the Arab-Muslim majority state
that should replace Israel can work out swell if there’s “1to1 interaction thru
art/culture.”
Yeah, maybe Reza Aslan will do his part by teaching a free
workshop on creative writing?
But the truth about Aslan is that he has for years promoted
antisemitic Israel-haters. Here’s a selection of his relevant tweets and
statements from the past few years.
In fall 2013, Aslan promoted Max
Blumenthal’s antisemitic
screed “Goliath.”
Less than two years later, Aslan
endorsed Blumenthal’s next book, which glorified the Islamist terror group
Hamas; Aslan’s
praise is downright obscene: “Max Blumenthal has spent the last decade
transforming himself into one of the most vital voices in journalism today,
always speaking truth to power with fearlessness and integrity. As with his
previous books, The 51 Day War is sure to be talked about for years to come.”
Astonishingly, Aslan didn’t think that, given his new role
as a CNN star, it might be prudent to tone down his ardent support for
the Israel-hating fringe. A few weeks ago, he backed
Rania Khalek, who – just
like Blumenthal – had come under severe
criticism from erstwhile fans for her whitewashing of the murderous Assad
regime. Together with notorious anti-Israel activists like Ali Abunimah and
several other contributors to the Electronic Intifada and various other
anti-Israel sites, Aslan even signed a statement
in support of Khalek. Among several other notorious Israel- and Jew-haters,
Aslan’s co-signatories also include the cartoonist Carlos Latuff, the proud
winner of a prize in the 2006 International Holocaust Cartoon Competition sponsored
by the Iranian regime, who is well
known for using “’Judeophobic stereotypes’ in his attacks on Israel.”
That’s the kind of company Aslan chose when he endorsed
Blumenthal a few years ago, and that’s the kind of company Aslan chose now when
he backed the notorious
Khalek. Apparently, CNN has no problem with that, but to provide a
person with this record a prominent platform to claim that he worries about
Israel’s future is utterly misleading: like the Israel-haters Aslan has
repeatedly endorsed, his main worry about the world’s only Jewish state is
clearly that Israel has a future.