An excellent article by Sam Harris, but one caveat must be recorded. Reza Aslan is wrongly described as "a polished, Iranian-born scholar of Islam."  His parents brought him to America when he was small, and he grew up among Iranian exiles who may have called themselves "Muslims" but were people who had fled the Islamic Republic of Iran. Reza Aslan has had no experience of living within a society or state suffused with Islam -- unlike Ayaan Hirsi Ali, or the many Iranians in exile, such as Ali Sina, who tell unpleasant home truths about Islam.

Nor is Reza Aslan a "scholar of Islam." He hardly knows a thing about it. Look at his books. Where is the truthful discussion of what is contained in the Qur'an, the Hadith, the Sira? Where is there any discussion of Jihad, or the dhimmi, that corresponds to something like the truth?  Where is anything that shows any familiarity with the great Western scholars of Islam -- Joseph Schacht, or Snouck Hurgronje, or Arthur Jeffery -- or for that matter, with the main Muslim commentators on the Qur'an, through time and space? Where is there any indication that Reza Aslan has learned about the history of Muslim conquest, or of the subsequent treatment of non-Muslim peoples conquered, from Spain to East Asia, over the past 1300 years? There are only the vaporings of...Reza Aslan, who in his very own website describes himself, baselessly I'm afraid, as an 'internationally-acclaimed scholar of Islam." It's all a fabrication. Reza Aslan is a creature fabricated by Reza Aslan, and the young female bookers on talk shows, asked to come with a personable "Muslim-American" who doesn't have an accent, keep going back to young lochinvar, Reza Aslan -- though whenever he comes up against someone who knows something, such as Sam Harris, Reza Aslan exposes himself as the guide to nothing and to nowhere that he is.

Publishers, eager to have a "young Muslim tell the (comforting) truth about his faith, gave him a $400,000 advance for his first, worthless book, and he hasn't looked back since. He's been collecting degrees -- a true American in that respect, a devout believer in the degree as validation -- and also appearances, that he carefully records and lists at his website, so that you too may be impressed. Why, a half-dozen years ago he tried to learn a little Arabic at a summer course in Cairo, but he's abandoned that. He doesn't need more than a few words for street cred. And now its Iowa, and the Writers' Workshop. Can a professorship in Creative Writing be far behind? For this one of the quadruplets -- the other Bright Young Experts On Islam, from whom Reza Aslan was separated at birth, are Khaled Abou El Fadl, Mark LaVine, and Dinesh D'Souza -- are similarly making out like gangbusters. Here are four easy pieces, previously posted:

A Tribute to Reza Aslan

A Tribute to Mark LaVine 

A Tribute to Scholar of the House Khaled Abou El Fadl

A Tribute to Dinesh D’Souze 

You can see the similiarities of the websites, and of the self-promoters doing all the self-promoting. World's Greatest Authority on Islam, says each one, of himself, at his very own website. At least three of the four must have it wrong. But which three? Or might it, just possibly, be all four?