Reza Aslan: commitment

Transcript context

…Howard Baskerville, the subject of your latest book — he’s an American missionary in Iran in the early 20th century. He’s shot, he dies. Is that an effective martyrdom story? Or have we just forgotten about him because the external trappings were too weak to sustain our interest? We have definitely forgotten all about him. Actually, I’d say it’s more proper to say that Iranians have forgotten all about him. Americans never knew him to begin with. His story never really took hold in the United States, although there were front-page stories about his death and his decision to join the revolution. But in Iran, the facts of his martyrdom, which is that he was living in a city that was besieged by the shah’s soldiers, a city that was slowly starving to death, a city that had run out of food. And he and his students at the time made this fateful decision to try to break through that siege and bring help and food to the city. And he died in that process, which, going back to what we were just saying is the quintessential notion of Shi’a martyrdom — this is a suicide mission. There is no way that this will succeed, but I’m going to do it anyway because it is to free people from suffering and injustice. In a funny way, it’s not a Christian enough story for the Western audiences.…

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