Pope Benedict XVI’s recent commentary suggesting religion is being exploited to fuel continuing wars is a concept familiar to award-winning author Reza Aslan.
Aslan, 35, who spoke Monday before a packed audience at the World Affairs Council in San Francisco to promote his latest book How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror, discussed religious ideology and extremism and its destructive impact on the world.
According to Aslan, the former Bush administration’s self-proclaimed “War on Terror” was never about terrorism. If it were, Aslan argues, the war would have included terrorist groups like ETA (Basque separatists), or the Iranian group Mujahideen-e-Khalq, for example. Instead, the US war on terror is specifically targeting Islam and Muslims, in areas of the world where the US has oil and gas reserve interests.
“That is what it is. The war on Islam,” Aslan said. “That is how it was deliberately conceived and it was how it was consciously propagated.”
ByFanny Dassie – Fogcityjpournal