REZA ASLAN| Iran’s youth have to be divided into three categories. I think the older generation, to which I belong, spent their twenties working tirelessly at great cost to create a freer, more democratic Iran. The Iran that their parents envisioned. That group has fractured into three. There are those who have simply become revolutionary and who believe that the only way to cure Iran is to raze it to the ground and start all over again. Many of these youth that I met were actually welcoming the possibility of a U.S. invasion.

 
These were middle class, 30-year-olds who kept saying “let the bombs rain down because that is the only way we will be able to start again.” It is very sad actually. There are also those who believe that the way to make change is through the political sphere but who say we still we need to kick these Mullahs out and create an entirely new, secular government. Finally there are those who say we can continue to work with this government, we can continue to work within the confines of what we have to create: lasting, democratic change. My generation has really fractured along those three lines.

 
What I found most interesting when I went there is that the younger generation is completely beyond this debate. They have no interest in this debate at all. What they want is to just live the lives that they have already eked out for themselves. They have managed to create this private space within Iran in which they have certain freedoms and certain rights. They can mingle with each other in ways they have not been able to, they have access to the internet in ways that the older generation did not. They have access to movies and to American culture. They themselves do not want to be a part of this debate. Instead they say that rather than talk about how Iran needs to be changed, we are just going to live as though Iran has been changed. At first when I saw that I thought this is a bad thing because this is going to be the future generation of Iran. But then the more I thought about it I realized that this is a sign of how inevitable political change and reform is in Iran and that this generation is living as though it is already there. They ignore their elders and have decided we are going to change society from the ground up instead of from the top down. And that I think is a very exciting thing.

 
ISLAMICA |Do you think this applies to women’s issues, and specifically, the chador/hijab?

 
REZA ASLAN | Absolutely. What is interesting is that after the revolution, after the initial period in which women’s rights were severely curtailed, women had to come together to assess and determine what it means to have a genuine women’s movement. During the Shah, the Iranian women’s movement was basically mimicking the western feminist movement. At that time all modernist movements were westernized in nature. But since the revolution, women have had access to education and literacy in far greater ways than they did under the Shah. In fact, literacy rates in Iran are almost compar able to the west. There are far more women who are in government now than were in government during the Shah. I think what’s happened in many ways is that women were forced to confront, in post-revolutionary Iran, what it is that they hold dear and value. While it is true that the issue of the hijab does occupy a number of their minds, it is simply not an important issue. There are so many things that far outweigh how one can dress in public. This is true at least among the Iranian women that I know and even among the younger generation.

 
ISLAMICA |You write that “the Islamic reformation is already here.”How can we as Muslim Americans be a vanguard in that movement?

 
REZA ASLAN | I think if the Islamic reformation is going to come to fruition in our lifetime, then it is going to be led by Muslim Americans. The thing about Islam in America, and this has much more to do about America than it does about Islam, is that Islam since its inception has been constantly adapting and reforming. The reason why Islam is one of the great religions of the world is because it so seamlessly absorbed disparate cultures, traditions, religious beliefs and values throughout the world, from India to China to the United States. But I think what’s wonderful about American culture is that because it is a culture already so steeped in faith, a lot of the problems that Muslims in Europe face with their identity, such as the debate of whether they are European or Muslims is not the case here. I think that a lot of Muslims see that to be American and Muslim is a profoundly simple thing. That sense of reconciliation— of bridging tradition with the modern world—is essentially what American Muslims are: an example of that successful reconciliation, of blending tradition with American values. It is up to us, because we have the voice, and because we have the power to do so, to provide the language, the tools, the methodology and the theory to help our brothers and sisters who do not have the same voice because that we do because of the various political and religious bondage that they experience.

 
Now the problem with the Islamic reformation is if it is a western phenomenon, how is it going to make any difference to the people in the Middle East? It is true that there is going to be somewhat of a disconnect. However, I think that disconnect is highly exaggerated because, 1) I know that our brothers and sisters look to American Muslims as an example. They really look at us to understand how we can reconcile these values with the modern world; and 2) even if you look at the very foundation of Islamic modernism, the very beginning of it 150 years ago, this was a process that did not begin in the colonized lands. In other words, it did not really begin in places like Egypt or India (although that’s where it came to fruition) but rather it began in the Ottoman empire, it began amongst the Young Turks. These were people who were not colonized and were able, because of freedom and access to education, to help define what this would look like.

 
They provided the language, they provide the tools and then it was Egyptian and Indian Muslims who took that language and put it into practice. And that’s precisely where we are now.