When FoxNews.com’s Lauren Green repeatedly pressed Reza Aslan, a Muslim, on why he wrote a book on Jesus, she was, without knowing it, putting the role of religious studies scholarship on a grand stage.
With apologies to Reza Aslan, he is not an unbiased scholar of the historical Jesus, or of the history of Islam, or of any other phenomenon in the study of religion. Nor is any Christian or Jewish scholar, or any liberal or conservative scholar. I just wish he had said so.
To these guys, the idea of women working outside the home is destroying American culture. They’re saying that a society in which a majority of women support their families cannot possibly be compatible with a strong, traditional, vibrant society. Yet we need only look to the traditional Jewish culture of Eastern Europe of less than two centuries ago in order to find an example that gives the lie to conservative handwringing over women’s work.
