Reza Aslan gets to say what most of us wish we could. The man who condemns the ‘unsophisticated argument’ against Islam, on CNN that is, struck the right chord with most Muslims with his rational rebuttals to the West’s ‘Islamophobia’. Criticised for being an apologist for Islam he is, nonetheless, followed by Muslims worldwide.

The Iranian-American author who has recently emerged as the international face of liberal Islam is a believer in religious diversity. He has spoken fervently against what he calls the bigoted criticism of Islam.

A Harvard educated scholar of religions, his first and most acclaimed book, No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam (2005) is an international bookseller and named by Blackwell among the hundred most important books of the last decade. So is his latest Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (2013) which is viewed as a welcoming challenge to prevalent assumptions about Jesus.

One of the eminent American Muslim scholars of his age, Reza almost always approaches religion in conjunction with history.

Here, in his interview with The News on Sunday in California a few weeks back, he talks about Islam’s universal appeal, the improbability of an absolute interpretation of religion, Pakistan’s problems and failures to assimilate Islam and so on.

Excerpts follow.

The News on Sunday: We see an ongoing debate about the need to reform Islam into a modern religion. The first step could be acknowledging and considering the complications within the scripture. Do you think the Muslim world is ready for it?

Reza Aslan: People have been calling for a reformation in Islam for a very long time. They don’t realise that reformation has been taking place for almost a hundred years. I think for some reason people think that reformation is some wonderfully peaceful event where all the Muslims in the world hold hands and sing songs together. Reformations are cataclysmically violent events; they are ultimately a fight between institutions and individuals over who has the authority to define a faith. This is what the Christian reformation was all about.

That same argument has been taking place in Islam since the twilight of the colonial experience. Even if you look at groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS, don’t people realise these are not mullahs or scholars? These are engineers, teachers, mathematicians. But by taking upon themselves the authority to define Islam and by removing that authority from traditional authorities that maintained an iron grip with the meaning and message of this religion for fourteen centuries, they are also reforming it.

TNS: But isn’t that idea of reformation questionable?

RA: Reformation is not good or bad, positive or negative; it just is. So the individual who is going to the Quran on his or her own and coming up with these innovative interpretations that promote peace and feminism and tolerance and democracy is a reformer. But so is the individual who goes to the same source and comes up with an individual interpretation that promotes violence, bigotry and terror. They are both reformers because they are both seizing for themselves the authority that has been vested in the hands of the ulema for fourteen centuries to define Islam.

As protestants will tell you, when you put that authority into the hands of individuals what you are going to come up with is a thousand different interpretations; many of them in conflict with each other. In that situation, it’s usually the loudest voices that are ever heard. But the loudest voices, as anyone who has even given it a moment’s thought can tell you, is not the majority voice.

So stop talking about an Islamic reformation and open your eyes to the reformation that is already under way!

TNS: You argue that the likes of Al-Qaeda and ISIS do not represent a religion of 1.5 billion people. While that seems like a reasonable argument, the fact is that these factions have been using violence to promote their agenda very successfully. Isn’t Islam a religion of peace?

RA: Islam is not a religion of peace or war. Islam is just a religion. And like every religion in the world, it could be used to promote peace and to promote violence; it could be used to promote bigotry and to promote pluralism. Religions don’t mean anything unless someone believes in them and the very act of believing in a religion necessarily requires that person to bring to that religion all of his own preconceived notions and prejudices. That is why two Muslims can look at the exact same piece of scripture and come away with two absolutely opposite interpretations of it. Which one is right? Neither. They are both right.

So Al-Qaeda and ISIS don’t represent Islam because nobody represents Islam. There is no such thing as a Muslim Pope or a Muslim Vatican. We don’t have a single authority who gets to decide who is and who isn’t a good Muslim, and what’s not proper Muslim behaviour. That is not how it works and, therefore, a Muslim is whoever says is a Muslim. Anyone who says they are working according to Islam, we have to take their word for it. So, while it is true that ISIS doesn’t represent Islam because as I said nobody represents Islam, it’s equally true that ISIS is Muslim for the simple fact that they call themselves Muslim.

TNS: You have said that Christianity is a "malleable idea", and that it is the world’s biggest religion because of its ability to be "whatever a worshipping community wants it to be". Islam doesn’t seem to allow that freedom. Is that one of the reasons why it fails to connect with people who are not familiar with it?

RA: All religions fail to connect with people who are outside of that religion. If I were to take a Muslim in Pakistan and explain to them Judaism or Mormonism, he would probably think it’s the weirdest thing he’s ever heard. And if I would sit down with a Mormon and explain Islam to him, he’d probably think the same thing. So that’s not unusual.

But it’s just false that Islam is remotely static. Islam is very likely the most diverse religion in the world. All you have to do is take a plane from Karachi to Baghdad, from Baghdad to Tehran, from Tehran to Jakarta, from Jakarta to London and you will see how enormously diverse and eclectic the lived experience of Islam actually is. Muslims, like all people of faith, like to pretend that their version of religion is the right version and anyone who has a different version of their religion is wrong in some way.

TNS: In Pakistan, like in many other countries, religious education focuses on the literal study of the Quran, Hadith and Sunnah. How flawed or otherwise, in your opinion, is this method to approach religious teachings?

RA: Because religious education is left primarily in the hands of religious leaders, whether you are talking about Christianity, Judaism or Islam, religious leaders are not there to teach you history or sociology or philosophy. They are there to teach you doctrine and dogma. Now, it’s not fair to say there is no value in learning doctrine and dogma but that can’t be the only thing that you learn, which is why we need scholars and professors both Muslim and non-Muslim who are experts in history, theology and sociology as well as the lived experience of Islam to supplement that kind of religious teachings that so many people get.

It’s not enough just to lean on theology. It’s important but it is not enough. You need to learn about the history and cultural influences that gave birth to Islam and the way in which the unique cultural and literary influences of South Asia gave birth to a very particular kind of Islam that is in Pakistan. I think the most important thing to learn is that all religions are deeply rooted in the soil in which they are planted. This Wahabisation of Islam that we see taking place in large parts of the Middle East is grotesque not only because Wahabism is only 150 years old; so any attempt to say that this is the original version of Islam or the original preaching of Prophet Mohammad is factually incorrect. But most importantly to say that there is just one central Arabic version of Islam which is the right one and all the millions of other Muslims who follow their religion according to their own cultural ideals and practices are wrong is, as I said, grotesque.

TNS: Pakistan is constantly criticised for its human rights abuses especially towards minorities and women. Do you think this has more to do with some aspects of the culture or is it deeply rooted in a misinterpretation of religion?

RA: There is no such thing as misinterpretation of religion. Religion is by definition interpretation no matter how irrational the interpretation may be. Some interpretations are better, some more rational, some more historically correct. But I am not the Muslim Pope; I don’t get to decide which interpretation is right or wrong. That said, I do think that what you are seeing is the result of Wahabisation of Pakistani or South Asian Islam resulting in all of these horrific human rights practices.

Pakistan is a cosmopolitan, complex, urbane, highly literate and very sophisticated population. To pretend that this modern state, the first Islamic state in the world and a constitutional democracy with a robust political environment, should be under some kind of draconian penal system that existed 14 centuries ago as though the world we live in now has any bearing to the 7th century world, just doesn’t make any sense.

I think what we really need is an empowerment of Muslims in Pakistan who are proud of their culture, their nationality and their unique experience as Pakistanis and who absolutely have no problem marrying those local traditions and values with Islam. Any outsider who shows up in any community and claims to have the truth should be kicked out of that community as fast as possible

TNS: Pakistan has some of the most stringent blasphemy laws including death penalty. How do you view that?

RA: Let me ask a question. Who gets to decide what blasphemy is and what isn’t? Is the government the premier religious authority in Islam? Is it the Mullahs? You get four Mullahs in a room, you get five opinions on Islamic law. It’s absolutely and utterly clear this is nothing more than an excuse to be able to persecute and condemn people you don’t like or disagree with, and that’s what’s appalling. It’s a disgrace to Islam itself to say that we are going to use this word as a means of promoting our own social, political, even economic agenda.

There are a number of countries that have blasphemy and apostasy laws on the books but very few of them actually take those laws seriously for the reasons I described. Mostly what you see is local or village communities far removed from the federal government who take advantage of these statutes and laws. Pakistan can say that it’s not us enforcing these laws, it’s the local communities. But that does not remove the blame from the federal government because if the laws are on the books, of course people are going to use them for their own advantage.

TNS: You said that religion is arguably a greater force in the world today than ever before. But the world seems to be more disoriented and destructive than ever. Has religion failed humanity or is it the other way round?

RA: The instability that we are seeing in the world doesn’t have to do with religion. Religion is taking up the vacuum that is left behind by that instability. As the world becomes more globalised, secular nationalism begins to fade away the borders and boundaries that separate us into nation states, often nation states created by outsiders. As those things begin to fade away, identity is in flux. Then of course religion takes up the empty space and that’s what is happening.