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a900628
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According to Mark, it was a custom of the Roman governor during the feast of Passover to release one prisoner to the Jews, anyone for whom they asked. When Pilate asks the crowd which prisoner they would like to have released--Jesus, the preacher and traitor to Rome, or bar Abbas, the insurrectionist and murderer--the crowd demands the release of the insurrectionist and the crucifixion of the preacher. "Why?" Pilate asks, pained at the thou..
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history
fiction
pilate
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Reza Aslan |
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d9fa960
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The intention of the United States government in supporting Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war was to curb the spread of Iran's revolution, but it had the more disastrous effect of curbing its evolution.
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Reza Aslan |
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09564d9
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Paul's portrayal of Jesus as Christ may sound familiar to contemporary Christians--it has since become the standard doctrine of the church--but it would have been downright bizarre to Jesus's Jewish followers. The transformation of the Nazarean into a divine, preexistent, literal son of God whose death and resurrection launch a new genus of eternal beings responsible for judging the world has no basis in any writings about Jesus that are ev..
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jesus
paul
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Reza Aslan |
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fd5d66a
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Yet al-Afghani rarely spoke of Islam in religious terms. Perhaps his greatest contribution to Islamic political thought was his insistence that Islam, detached from its purely religious associations, could be used as a sociopolitical ideology to unite the whole of the Muslim world in solidarity against imperialism. Islam was for al-Afghani far more than law and theology; it was civilization. Indeed, it was a superior civilization because, a..
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Reza Aslan |
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71173b8
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It is a miracle that we know anything at all about the man called Jesus of Nazareth.
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Reza Aslan |
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e142b87
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Simply put, the infancy narratives in the gospels are not historical accounts, nor were they meant to be read as such. They are theological affirmations of Jesus's status as the anointed of God. The descendant of King David. The promised messiah.
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Reza Aslan |
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bcbd434
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Despite the common perception in the West, the Muslim conquerors did not force conversion upon the conquered peoples; indeed, they did not even encourage it. The fact is that the financial and social advantages of being an Arab Muslim in the eighth and ninth centuries were such that Islam quickly became an elite clique, which a non-Arab could join only through a complex process that involved becoming first the client of an Arab.
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Reza Aslan |
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1aa5591
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When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the Saudi regime saw an opportunity to rid itself, however temporarily, of the holy warriors it had nurtured for nearly a century. With economic and military support from the United States and tactical training provided by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, the Saudis began funneling a steady stream of radical Islamic militants (known as the Mujahadin, or "those who make jihad") from..
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Reza Aslan |
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34cb202
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they gradually transformed Jesus from a revolutionary zealot to a Romanized demigod, from a man who tried and failed to free the Jews from Roman oppression to a celestial being wholly uninterested in any earthly matter.
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Reza Aslan |
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dbb7301
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Ezekiel declared, "in the center of all nations"
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Reza Aslan |
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3cf49ae
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James's epistle was probably written by someone from within his inner circle. Again, that is true of almost every book in the New Testament, including the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and John, as well as a good number of Paul's letters (Colossians, Ephesians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Titus).
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Reza Aslan |
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37e1594
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The plaque the Romans placed above Jesus's head as he writhed in pain--"King of the Jews"--was called a titulus and, despite common perception, was not meant to be sarcastic. Every criminal who hung on a cross received a plaque declaring the specific crime for which he was being executed. Jesus's crime, in the eyes of Rome, was striving for kingly rule (i.e., treason), the same crime for which nearly every other messianic aspirant of the ti..
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jesus
inri
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Reza Aslan |
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8f88623
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Regardless, the gospels are not, nor were they ever meant to be, a historical documentation of Jesus's life. These are not eyewitness accounts of Jesus's words and deeds recorded by people who knew him. They are testimonies of faith composed by communities of faith and written many years after the events they describe. Simply put, the gospels tell us about Jesus the Christ, not Jesus the man.
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Reza Aslan |
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6d57ef5
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Yet lost in the debate about America's true intentions in the Middle East was the fact that large majorities in every Muslim-majority state surveyed told pollsters they wanted to see their countries move toward greater democracy. A wave of democratic fervor across the Middle East created a renewed sense of hope for scores of people who had spent their lives in autocratic societies but who now looked forward to the possibility of having a sa..
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Reza Aslan |
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0af1a47
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Considering how effortlessly religious dogma has become intertwined with political ideology, how can we overcome the clash-of-monotheisms mentality that has so deeply entrenched itself in the modern world? Clearly, education and tolerance are essential.
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Reza Aslan |
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284ec82
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For most of the Western world, September 11, 2001, signaled the commencement of a worldwide struggle between Islam and the West--the ultimate manifestation of the clash of civilizations. From the Islamic perspective, however, the attacks on New York and Washington were part of an ongoing clash between those Muslims who strive to reconcile their religious values with the realities of the modern world, and those who react to modernism and ref..
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Reza Aslan |
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c4935c7
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Two thousand years later, the Christ of Paul's creation has utterly subsumed the Jesus of history. The memory of the revolutionary zealot who walked across Galilee gathering an army of disciples with the goal of establishing the Kingdom of God on earth, the magnetic preacher who defied the authority of the Temple priesthood in Jerusalem, the radical Jewish nationalist who challenged the Roman occupation and lost, has been almost completely ..
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Reza Aslan |
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083e79a
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But in the end, he is the only Jesus that we can access by historical means. Everything else is a matter of faith.
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Reza Aslan |
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4cf4216
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If you cannot change the kings," the Sufis argued, "then change yourself."
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Reza Aslan |
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e5f1ce1
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But while these are all important determinants in explaining the tide of anti-Muslim sentiment that has washed over Europe and North America in recent years, there is another, more fundamental factor that must be addressed. It involves a 2010 poll showing that nearly a quarter of Americans continue to believe that President Barack Obama is himself a Muslim, a 10 percent jump from a similar survey taken in 2008. Among registered Republicans,..
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Reza Aslan |
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e461b8b
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of observable and verifiable events in the past is a product of the modern
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Reza Aslan |
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b843291
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Montanist Christians like Tertullian believed that Jesus possessed the same divine quality as God, but not in the same quantity as God.
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Reza Aslan |
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1c18509
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The clash of monotheisms occurs when faith, which is mysterious and ineffable and which eschews all categorizations, becomes entangled in the gnarled branches of religion.
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Reza Aslan |
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02497db
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Modalist Christians conceived of the Trinity as representing God in three successive modes of being: first as the Father, then as the Son, and finally and forevermore as the Holy Spirit.
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Reza Aslan |
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6ac5777
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It has often been noted that the biblical stories recounted in the Quran, especially those dealing with Jesus, imply a familiarity with the traditions and narratives of the Christian faith.
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Reza Aslan |
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e36e9fd
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A la manana siguiente, cuando los romanos llegaron triunfantes a lo alto de la hasta entonces inexpugnable fortaleza de Masada, todo lo que hallaron fue una calma espectral: novecientos sesenta hombres, mujeres y ninos muertos. La guerra, finalmente, habia acabado.
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Reza Aslan |
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8b64e6c
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creciente ira y el descontento entre los judios.
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Reza Aslan |
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8efa67a
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Certainly, Muhammad understood that there were distinct theological differences between Islam and the other Peoples of the Book. But he saw these differences as part of the divine plan of God, who could have created a single Ummah if he had wanted to but instead preferred that "every Ummah have its own Messenger" (10:47)."
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Reza Aslan |
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73eda9f
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must recognize that greater knowledge about Islam is not enough to alter people's perceptions of Muslims. Minds are not changed merely through acquiring data or information (if that were the case it would take no effort to convince Americans that Obama is, in fact, a Christian). Rather, it is solely through the slow and steady building of personal relationships that one discovers the fundamental truth that all people everywhere have the sam..
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Reza Aslan |
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e24cf96
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These abiding words of the Beatitudes are, more than anything else, a promise of impending deliverance from subservience and foreign rule. They predict a radically new world order wherein the meek inherit the earth, the sick are healed, the weak become strong, the hungry are fed, and the poor are made rich. In the Kingdom of God, wealth will be redistributed and debts canceled. "The first shall be last and the last shall be first" (Matthew ..
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Reza Aslan |
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bead775
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Your democratically elected governments continuously perpetuate atrocities against my people all over the world," he accused the British nation-state--his nation-state. "And your support of them makes you directly responsible, just as I am directly responsible for protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters."
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Reza Aslan |
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0cd2304
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only the high priest can enter the Holy of Holies, and on only one day a year, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when all sins of Israel are wiped clean. On this day, the high priest comes into presence of God to atone for the whole nation. If he is worthy of God's blessing, Israel's sins are forgiven. If he is not, a rope tied to his waist ensures that when God strikes him dead, he can be dragged out of the Holy of Holies without anyone el..
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temple
palestine
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Reza Aslan |
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5a32393
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Nestorian Christians argued that Jesus had two completely distinct natures--one human, the other divine--while Gnostic Christians, especially those called Docetists, claimed that Jesus only appeared to be human but was in fact fully God.
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Reza Aslan |
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8a806b4
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Belief in a divine messiah would have been anathema to everything Judaism represents, which is why, without exception, every text in the Hebrew Bible dealing with the messiah presents him as performing his messianic functions on earth, not in heaven.)
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Reza Aslan |
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6e704cc
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In recognition of his service, Rome named Herod "King of the Jews", granting him a kingdom that would ultimately grow larger than that of King Solomon"
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israel
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Reza Aslan |
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6827979
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Herod was convert,after all. His mother was Arab. His people, the Idumeans, had come to Judaism only a generation or two earlier.
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israel
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Reza Aslan |
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07d6c44
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The loss of Abu Talib's protection was certainly demoralizing, if not detrimental to Muhammad's physical security. But returning home after one of his painfully violent revelatory experiences, or after suffering another indignity from the Quraysh--his head covered in dirt, his tunic defiled with blood--and not having Khadija there to wrap him in her cloak and hold him in her arms until the terror subsided must have been an unimaginable sorr..
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Reza Aslan |
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c1b36f2
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That Jesus--the eternal logos from whom creation sprang, the Christ who sits at the right hand of God--you will find swaddled in a filthy manger in Bethlehem, surrounded by simple shepherds and wise men bearing gifts from the east.
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Reza Aslan |
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55da60d
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sacred history is like a hallowed tree whose roots dig deep into primordial time and whose branches weave in and out of genuine history with little concern for the boundaries of space and time. Indeed, it is precisely at those moments when sacred and genuine history collide that religions are born.
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Reza Aslan |
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dc5dec6
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Certainly the shahadah contained an important theological innovation, but that innovation was not monotheism. With this simple profession of faith, Muhammad was declaring to Mecca that the God of the heavens and the earth required no intermediate whatsoever, but could be accessed by anyone.
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mohammad
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Reza Aslan |
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a564d42
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All these schools of though gradually transformed into legal institutions, the diversity of ideas and freedom of opinion that characterized their early development gave way to rigid formalism, strict adherence to precedent, and an almost complete stultification of independent though
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religion
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Reza Aslan |
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0c158a8
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From the Islamic perspective, however, the attacks on New York and Washington were part of an ongoing clash between those Muslims who strive to reconcile their religious values with the realities of the modern world, and those who react to modernism and reform by reverting--sometimes fanatically--to the "fundamentals" of their faith."
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Reza Aslan |
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a4845cd
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there can be no a priori moral framework in a modern democracy [...]
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religion
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Reza Aslan |
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26d55e4
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Like most people born into a religious tradition, my faith was as familiar to me as my skin, and just as disregardable.
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religion
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Reza Aslan |