Skip Navigation

RFH 2010, Colgate News

Understanding Muslims Lecture Topic

Thu, Feb 09, 2012

Understanding Muslims Lecture Topic

Dr. Reza Aslan, author of No god But God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam will speak at Colgate Monday at 5:30 p.m.

The lecture titled Ten Years Later: Fighting Islamophobia and Understanding Muslims will be held in Love Auditorium, 300 Olin Hall on campus. It is presented by the Department of Religion. The lecture is followed by a book signing.

Aslan is the founder of AslanMedia.com, an online journal for news and entertainment about the Middle East and the world. He has degrees in Religions from Santa Clara University, Harvard University, and the University of California, Santa Barbara, as well as a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa, where he was named the Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction.

Aslan is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, and the Pacific Council on International Policy. He serves on the board of directors of the Ploughshares Fund, which gives grants for peace and security issues; Abraham's Vision, an educational, conflict transformation organization for Israeli and Palestinian youths; PEN USA, which champions the rights of writers under siege around the world; and the Levantine Cultural Center, which builds bridges between Americans and the Arab/Muslim world through the arts.

No god but God has been translated into thirteen languages, and named one of the 100 most important books of the last decade.

He is also the author of How to Win a Cosmic War (published in paperback as Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in a Globalized Age), as well as editor of two volumes: Tablet and Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East, and Muslims and Jews in America: Commonalties, Contentions, and Complexities.

Aslan also is co-founder and chief creative officer of BoomGen Studios, which produces creative content from and about the greater Middle East and is president of AppOvation Labs, a mobile applications company.

Born in Iran, he lives in Los Angeles with his wife (author and entrepreneur Jessica Jackley) where he is associate professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside.

 

Please login to post your comments.