Break down the walls between cultures

Interview with Reza Aslan - Why did you originally decide to make Believer?

I think we created something that was utterly unique. There really isn’t any show out there like it, and it took us a long time to figure out exactly what it was that we were doing, that we wanted to go into these religious communities with an attitude of openness, to participate in their world and in their experiences. We could give an audience an experience, unlike anything that they would normally have, to confront some of their own misconceptions and their prejudices, and to take them from a place of uncomfortableness to a place of understanding. It was one of the greatest joys of my life to see the overwhelmingly positive response that this show had on people, that it really did just blow people’s minds. My career has been based on trying to break down the walls that separate us into different religions, or ethnicities, or races. In the back of my mind for years was always this germ of an idea to do a show in which I immerse myself in various religious traditions around the world as a way of opening up windows to other ways of thinking, other ways of believing, and to force people to recognize just how much they have in common with people that they think couldn’t be more different than them