It's not that hard to get yourself in hot water these days. What, with social media and all. And it's even easier when you eat human brains, or allegedly mock a religion.
That's what has many people angry at CNN's Reza Aslan, after the author/scholar/TV host ate a piece of human brain tissue with a group of cannibals in India, during the premiere of his new six-episode documentary style show, Believer, which aired on Sunday night.
According to The Washington Post, Aslan met up with The Aghori, a sect of religious nomads. As The Post writes:
The Aghori, as they are known, reject the Hindu caste system and the notion of untouchables, and espouse that the distinction between purity and pollution is essentially meaningless. In the Aghori view, nothing can taint the human body, Aslan said.
"Kind of a profound thought. Also: A little bit gross," Aslan said of this practice. He was then convinced by the Aghori to take a dip in the Ganges River, which is considered sacred by Hindus. He also drank alcohol from a human skull, and ate a little bit of a dead guy's brain.
There's got to be some sort of cable news metaphor there.
He later wrote on Facebook: "Want to know what a dead guy’s brain tastes like? Charcoal. It was burnt to a crisp!"
The interview eventually (inevitably?) went south, and one of the Aghori men told the host "I will cut off your head if you keep talking so much." From there things went even further south, as an Aghori guru who had previously smeared cremated ashes on his face began to eat his own feces and throw them at Aslan. That caused him and his camera crew to vacate the area.
In addition to that group of Aghori, Aslan also interviewed non-cannibal practitioners of the sect who cared for people with leprosy, and others who ran an orphanage. Still, the critics came out in full force as they thought he aired the bit with the flesh-eating group for pure shock value.
Aslan was accused of "Hinduphobia" for his mischaracterization of the world's third largest religion. Lobbying group U.S. India Political Action Committee, for one, didn't appear to be all that amused. "With multiple reports of hate-fueled attacks against people of Indian origin from across the U.S., the show characterizes Hinduism as cannibalistic, which is a bizarre way of looking at the third largest religion in the world," they said, according to a statement they sent to the Times of India.
Vamsee Juluri, a media studies professor at the University of San Francisco, also didn't have nice things to say about Aslan/CNN in The Huffington Post. "It is unbelievably callous and reckless of CNN to be pushing sensational and grotesque images of bearded brown men and their morbid and deathly religion at a time when the United States is living through a period of unprecedented concern and fear," Juluri wrote.
Aslan, for his part, stated that the episode was about the Aghori, not all of Hinduism:
But many of Twitter accused him of not making that clear when it mattered (a.k.a. on the air):
Episode two will air on Sunday night, March 12.
