Reza Aslan

Dr. Reza Aslan will return to the podium of the Colorado Foothills World Affairs by popular demand. Dr. Aslan, an internationally acclaimed writer and scholar on the Middle East, enthralled our membership a few years ago . 

After his death and resurrection, Jesus has become the most international figure in world history.  Reza Aslan writes about Jesus in the context of the times in which Jesus lived. 

Aslan has degrees in religion from Santa Clara University, Harvard University, and the University of California, Santa Barbara, as well as a Master of Fine Arts from the Univ. of Iowa, where he was named the Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction. He is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities and the Pacific Council on International Policy. He serves on the boards of directors of the Ploughshares Fund (which gives grants for peace and security issues), Narrative Four (which connects people through the exchange of stories), 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).

Aslan's first book the International Bestseller, No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, which has been translated into thirteen languages, and was 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. His most recent book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth published this July immediately leaped to the #1 spot in the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list. 

In addition to Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, Reza Aslan's books No god, but God and Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in the Age of Globalization will be for sale at the event."