Following a surreal interview on with Fox News religion correspondent Lauren Green, religious scholar and author Reza Aslan hit the No. 1 spot on Amazon with Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.
We’ve embedded the complete interview below–what do you think? Aslan will also host a Ask Me Anything interview on Reddit later today.
Zealot currently has 141 five-star reviews and 100 one-star reviews, highlighting the extreme reactions provoked by the interview.
The New Republic has a great article about the Internet’s response to the interview. Here’s an excerpt:
Fox News, which like U.S. Steel is vertically integrated, ginned up “controversy” over the book by publishing an article claiming that the “liberal media” routinely fails to disclose that Aslan is a “devout Muslim,” and then reported on the (again, auto-fabricated) “controversy” by having host Lauren Green confront him with this. Having established Aslan’s Muslim-ness, Green conspiratorially asks, “It still begs the question: Why would you be interested in the founder of Christianity?” She then accuses him of obfuscating his faith, and he responds by noting that a statement of his religion appears on “the second page of my book” (page xviii, to be more precise).
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