The Pacifica Institute invited Dr Reza Aslan, the author of the book titled “No God but God” and an upcoming book “How to Win a Cosmic War?” which will be published in the fall of 2008. He is also the associate professor of Creative Writing at UC Riverside.
The forum started with the introduction of the mission of the luncheons and then Dr Reza was invited to the podium to speak about “Diversity in .”
The below paragraphs are some parts of his half an hour speech.
It is a great pleasure to be here at the PI, which I was looking forward to, especially this topic which I don’t talk about quite often the issue of diversity, which allows me to relate my own experience which may or may not mirror the other experiences in this room. I came to in 1979 not long after the revolution in along with hundreds of thousands of Iranians. But it is sort of an interesting experience for me kind of think about how I went experiencing the diversity that makes United States such a special country. Before I came here I was remembering my experience as a citizen.
I was in the not too long ago with some friends of mine and I told them that in the almost every day in every city children give this pledge of allegiance. Their heads almost exploded that this idea was so foreign to them this idea is a recipe, a pledge, an oath essentially pounded the school children every day to give them a sense of unity, the idea that they belong to some kind of larger idea.
A nation of immigrants that is of course what we are, with very very few exceptions, a nation of immigrants that can not rely on common, ethnical and even common sense of religious unity in order to bind us as one. There is no such thing as being ethnically American.
American sense of acceptance has no ethnicity. What does it mean to be culturally American? It is a difficult thing to answer. The same time the question of being nationally American, American nationalism is not that hard. And indeed if I were to say, what does it mean to be American, I might get different answers.
Few people would have difficult time answering that question and it goes back to this idea, a set of ideological postulates, regardless of your faith, your background, ethnicity and etc. If you accept these postulates, the pledge that you make to this country, the country makes a pledge to you, that pledge is quite simply accept you as an American. There is an idea in the United States that your nationality is not based on any kind of ethnicity, there is nothing like ethnically American, a series of principles, a series of ideology that make you American as referred to earlier on the civic rules of America.
According to an Islamic World Poll in all the countries of the world only in one country in the world, the Muslims refer to themselves first nationally then religiously and that is the . I am an American and I am a Muslim.
The luncheon forum continued with the Q&A session and after that Dr Aslan was presented with a hand made Turkish ceramic plate on which his name was calligraphed.
PI thanked everybody who participated the forum and thehe event came to a formal end with the guests invited to have their lunch.