As the Middle East continues to feel the tremors of revolution from all across the landscape, Dr. Reza Aslan’s book “Tablet and Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East” offers a timely look at the role of literature in modern Islam.

Reza Aslan, associate professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside and author of  Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East, compares the role of religion in the United States and Egypt as protest continues throughout the Arab world. 

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Reza Aslan, associate professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside, and author of No God But God, discusses the new anthology he edited, Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East.

Reza Aslan, associate professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside, and author of No God But God, discusses the new anthology he edited, Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East.

→ Wednesday: Reza Aslan at Barnard Hall: "Park 51 Reevaluated: Reza Aslan on Islamophobia and Anti-Semitism"

→ Thursday: Reza Aslan reading at Asia Society: "Tablet and Pen, A New Anthology of Literature from the Middle East"

Few legal boundaries stood between Florida Pastor Terry Jones and his plans to burn copies of the Quran on Saturday, the ninth anniversary of the September 11th attacks.

While most of the world voiced dismay at Pastor Jones' political statement, fearing it would incite violence and radicalize religious extremists overseas, Jones argued that was demonstrating against what he calls the extremism of Islam. Yesterday, the pastor decided to call off his campaign to burn the sacred text after reaching what he said was an "agreement" to meet with the people planning an Islamic cultural center and mosque near ground zero.

Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei proclaimed last week that music is incompatible with the values of the Islamic republic, and should not be taught or promoted in the country. Today: how state restriction of music in Iran has inspired a vast underground scene.

President Obama was in part awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his outreach to the Muslim world. The administration has made Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan top priorities, but some analysts say Obama has  neglected much of the Middle East. We ask Reza Aslan, author and contributing editor to the Daily Beast, and Abderrahim Foukara, the D.C. Bureau Cheif of al-Jazeera, to evaluate the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to the president's Middle East diplomacy.

Two émigré writers say that among the Iranian people, poets are the national heroes. But today’s Iranian artists struggle to express themselves in the face of government censorship. Reza Aslan is a religion scholar and wrote No God but God, a brief history of Islam ...

Kurt talks with Reza Aslan and Roya Hakakian about the politics of post-1979 Iran and how poetry helped fuel the Islamic Revolution.