Well-known Islamic apologist Reza Aslan, who can be seen on MSNBC, CNN and other mainstream media networks blaming atheists for violence against Muslims and claiming that religion has nothing to do with Islamic terrorism, happens to be a giant fraud.
Aslan regularly bills himself as a professor of religion and claims to have a Ph.D. in history and Western religions. This could not be further from the truth.
In an expose on the apologist published by FrontPage Magazine:
In actuality, Reza Aslan is not a “professor of religion,” and what he claims he does “for a living” is an outrageous inaccuracy. Reza Aslan is an associate professor in the Creative Writing program at the University of California, Riverside. He teaches there based on his Master of Fine Arts degree in fiction from Iowa, his relevant academic credential.
Reza Aslan received his PhD in sociology – not “History of Religions” – from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2009.
Update:
Fellow Patheos blogger Mattew Facciani has defended Aslan’s credentials saying:
Reza Aslan has a B.A. in religion from Santa Clara University, an M.T.S in Theological Studies from Harvard; an M.F.A. in Fiction from the University of Iowa; and received his Ph.D in sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
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Now a few atheists (and even Glenn Beck) have pointed out that his PhD is in sociology and not in religion. Therefore, he must be lying and is a fraud! Well, it’s a little more complicated than that. Academia is weird and sometimes the name on your degree does not match up with your expertise. What really matters is what area your research is in (i.e. your dissertation).
He lies and conflates his credentials to be something they are not. Why not just stand by the credentials you have?
No matter how you slice it, Aslan is misleading people about his credentials.