of Harvard's Chapter of the World Conference of Religions for Peace. Aslan also serves on the board of directors of the Ploughshares Fund, which gives grants for peace and security issues, PEN Center USA, a writer's advocacy group, and he serves on the national advisory board of The Markaz (formerly the Levantine Cultural Center), a program to promote peace between Americans and the Arab/Muslim world. He also serves on the board of trustees for the Chicago Theological Seminary and is on the advisory board of the Yale Humanist Community. Religious views Aslan was born into a Twelver Shia Muslim family. He converted to evangelical Christianity at the age of 15, and converted back to Islam the summer before attending Harvard. In 2005, The Guardian called him "a Shia by persuasion". In a 2013 interview with WNYC host Brian Lehrer, Aslan said: "I'm definitely a Muslim and Sufism is the tradition within Islam that I most closely adhere to." In a 2013 article in The Washington Post, Aslan stated: "It's not [that] I think Islam is correct and Christianity is incorrect. It's that all religions are nothing more than a language made up of symbols and metaphors to help an individual explain faith." In 2014, in an interview with Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks, Aslan described Islam as: a man-made institution. It's a set of symbols and metaphors that provides a language for which to express what is inexpressible, and that is faith. It's symbols and metaphors that I prefer, but it's not more right or more wrong than any other symbols and metaphors. It's a language, that's all it is. Career Writing Aslan has published four books, edited two anthologies and writes frequently for different media outlets. Books No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam is a non-fiction book published in 2005. The book describes the history of Islam and argues for a liberal interpretation of the Islamic religion. It blames Western imperialism and self-serving misinterpretations of Islamic law by past scholars for the current controversies within Islam, challenging the "Clash of Civilizations" thesis. How to Win a Cosmic War (a.k.a. Beyond Fundamentalism) In 2009, Aslan published his second book, How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of Terror. The next year, it was rereleased in paperback as Beyond Fundamentalism: