Sean appeared to deny converting when he said he didn’t “feel like I have become a Muslim.”
He said he has “accepted Mohammed,” but he also made clear he hasn’t rejected any other religion.
Stone, 27, has spoken somewhat confusingly on the issue ever since announcing in Esfahan last month that he had become a Shiite.
He appeared to accept a view not uncommon in California and other sectors of America that all religions are equal and that one can be a member of all faiths.
“I happen to agree with what Mahatma Gandhi said. He said ‘I’m Hindu, a Jew, a Christian, a Muslim and a Buddhist,’” Stone told CNN in an interview.
Stone referred to himself as a Muslim, calling Islam “an extension of the Judeo-Christian heritage. Mohammed is a prophet in that same line going back to Abraham.”
In another interview, this one on Fox News, Stone said he did not believe he was converting when he was worshipping the same God today as before. “I’ve always believed in the same Judeo-Christian God,” he explained. “And it’s a misunderstanding of Islam to say Allah is a different God.” So, he didn’t feel he had converted but rather “accepted” a new religion.
But in the interview last Wednesday with CNN, Stone also said confusingly that he did not “feel like I have become a Muslim.”
“I don’t feel Muslim any more than I am Christian or Jewish,” Stone said. Stone’s mother is Christian and his film director father is Jewish.
Stone said he believes he now worships the same god as he always has.
“I reaffirmed my faith in that one God,” he said. “And I think my purpose in this sense is to help explain Islam to Americans and to the West.”
Stone was educated at Princeton University and Oxford University and studied the Qoran at both schools. He said those experiences, coupled with his opportunity to see Islam practiced on a day-to-day basis while he was filming a documentary in Iran, put him on the path toward Islam.
Stone told CNN that he believes that what he did was to state his belief in Islam publicly, but not to renounce his former faith. He said his decision stemmed from a desire to educate people about Islam, to “let them see it is not a religion of fanaticism.”
While in Iran, Stone was able to meet with President Ahmadi-nejad. “He told me personally, no bomb, no bomb,” Stone said.
“I do defend the nation state, their national right to have nuclear power. And, if that means a nuclear bomb as well, I defend that right,” Stone said without apparently knowing that the Islamic Republic acknowledges it has no right to nuclear weapons under the Non-Proliferation Treaty it has signed.
When asked by Fox News if he was okay with Iran having nuclear weapons, he said, “I am.”
Stone told CNN his main concern above all else was to prevent war. “My issue, really, is I don’t want to see our country go to war and, you know, if it’s going to be over the potential threat that Iran is to Israel, I would say that’s a complete lie.… If Israel gets the green light and attacks Iran preemptively, the way that we preemptively attacked Iraq, that’s what I’m most concerned about.”
He told Fox News that when speaking with people in Iran, he would suggest that they cut out “this ‘Down with America’ nonsense.” But he didn’t say he told Ahmadi-nejad that when they met.
Stone also told Fox News he has been invited to meet with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi the next time he is in Iran. “The idea is to get financing for projects we want to shoot there,” he said.