No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam by Reza Aslan (PDF)

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Though it is the fastest growing religion in the world, Islam remains shrouded by ignorance and fear. What is the essence of this ancient faith? Is it a religion of peace or war? How does Allah differ from the God of Jews and Christians? Can an Islamic state be founded on democratic values such as pluralism and human rights? A writer and scholar of comparative religions, Reza Aslan has earned international acclaim for the passion and clarity he has brought to these questions. In No god but God, challenging the “clash of civilizations” mentality that has distorted our view of Islam, Aslan explains this critical faith in all its complexity, beauty, and compassion.Contrary to popular perception in the West, Islam is a religion firmly rooted in the prophetic traditions of the Jewish and Christian scriptures. Aslan begins with a vivid account of the social and religious milieu in which the Prophet Muhammad lilved. The revelations that Muhammad received in Mecca and Medina, which were recorded in the Quran, became the foundation for a radically more egalitarian community, the likes of which had never been seen before.Soon after his death, the Prophet’s successors set about the overwhelming task of defining and interpreting Muhammad’s message for future generations. Their efforts led to the development of a comprehensive code of conduct that was expected to regulate every aspect of the believer’s life. But this attempt only widened the chasm between orthodox Islam and its two major sects, Shiism and Sufism, both of which Aslan discusses in rich detail.Finally, No god but God examines how, in the shadow of European colonialism, Muslims developed conflicting strategies to reconcile traditional Islamic values with the social and political realities of the modern world. With the emergence of the Islamic state in the twentieth century, this contest over the future of Islam has become a passionate, sometimes violent battle between those who seek to enforce a rigid and archaic legal code and those who struggle to harmonize the teachings of the Prophet with contemporary ideals of democracy and human rights. According to Reza Aslan, we are now living in the era of “the Islamic Reformation.” No god but God is a persuasive and elegantly written account of the roots of this reformation and the future of Islamic faith.

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Editorial Reviews: From The New Yorker Aslan, a young Iranian emigrant, lucidly charts the growth of Islam from Muhammad’s model community in Medina—depicted as a center of egalitarian social reform—through the chaotic contest to define the faith after the Prophet’s death. Within generations, seven hundred thousand hadith—accounts of Muhammad’s words and deeds—were in circulation, many “fabricated by individuals who sought to legitimize their own particular beliefs.” Out of this muddle was born the primacy of the ulema, Islam’s clerical establishment. The ulema, in Aslan’s view, foreclosed Koranic interpretation, detoured from the Medinan ideal, and obscured Islam under a thicket of legalistic decrees. Fifteen centuries after Muhammad, Islam has reached the age at which Christianity underwent its reformation; Islam’s renewal, Aslan attests, “is already here.” However, both modernizers and their “fundamentalist” opposites call themselves reformers, and the victory of the former is not assured. Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker From Booklist Aslan’s introduction to the history of Islam, which also devotes several chapters to the place of Islam in the contemporary world, tackles its subject with serious and well-informed scholarship. But, miracle of miracles, it’s actually pretty fun to read. Beginning with an exploration of the religious climate in the years before the Prophet’s Revelation, Aslan traces the story of Islam from the Prophet’s life and the so-called golden age of the first four caliphs all the way through European colonization and subsequent independence. Aslan sees religion as a story, and he tells it that way, bringing each successive century to life with the kind of vivid details and like-you-were-there, present-tense narration that makes popular history popular. Even so, the depth and breadth here will probably be a bit heavy for some, who might better enjoy Karen Armstrong’s shorter, if less authoritative, Islam (2000). That said, this is an excellent overview that doubles as an impassioned call to reform. John GreenCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Review “This is a fascinating book. Reza Aslan tells the story of Islam with one eye on faith and another on history. The result is a textured, nuanced account that presents a living, breathing religion shaped by centuries of history and culture.”–Fareed Zakaria, author of The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad“Elegant, accessible, and informed by historical scholarship, No god but God offers a wonderful view into the rich world of early Islam. Reza Aslan brings to the life of Muhammad and the story of classical Islam a lyricism and deft touch reminiscent of Roberto Calasso at his best.”–Noah Feldman, author of After Jihad and What We Owe Iraq“Reza Aslan tells a story of Islamic faith, history, and culture that comes alive. No god but God is an engaging, creative, insightful, and provocative book. It is a reminder that beyond the terrorism headlines, Islam, like its Abrahamic cousins, has been and remains a rich, dynamic spiritual path for the vast majority of Muslims.” –John L. Esposito, university professor and founding director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Georgetown University, and author of Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam and What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam“A fascinating account of Islam’s evolution. Aslan’s book should be required reading for all analysts and policymakers interested in the Muslim world. It’s a terrific read–no easy feat for such a difficult subject.”–Steven Cook, Next Generation Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations“Reza Aslan counters superficial notions of a clash of civilizations with a deep and exhilarating exploration of the fifteen-hundred-year-old clash within the civilization of Islam. Distinguishing concepts like faith and religion, Islamism and Islamic fundamentalism, in ways that shed vital new light on the morning’s headlines, No god but God is a passionate argument for the shared history of the world’s religions. An essential contribution to the most important issue of our time.”–Tom Reiss, author of The Orientalist About the Author REZA ASLAN has studied religions at Santa Clara University, Harvard University, and the University of California, Santa Barbara. He holds an MFA in fiction from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, where he was also visiting assistant professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies. His work has appeared in USA Today, U.S. News & World Report, and The Chronicle of Higher Education as well as a number of academic journals. Born in Iran, he lives in Santa Barbara and New Orleans. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 1. The Sanctuary in the DesertPRE-ISLAMIC ARABIAArabia. The Sixth Century C.E.IN THE ARID, desolate basin of Mecca, surrounded on all sides by the bare mountains of the Arabian desert, stands a small, nondescript sanctuary that the ancient Arabs refer to as the Kaaba: the Cube. The Kaaba is a squat, roofless edifice made of unmortared stones and sunk into a valley of sand. Its four walls–so low it is said a young goat can leap over them–are swathed in strips of heavy cloth. At its base, two small doors are chiseled into the gray stone, allowing entry into the inner sanctum. It is here, inside the cramped interior of the sanctuary, that the gods of pre-Islamic Arabia reside: Hubal, the Syrian god of the moon; al-Uzza, the powerful goddess the Egyptians knew as Isis and the Greeks called Aphrodite; al-Kutba, the Nabataean god of writing and divination; Jesus, the incarnate god of the Christians, and his holy mother, Mary.In all, there are said to be three hundred sixty idols housed in and around the Kaaba, representing every god recognized in the Arabian Peninsula. During the holy months, when the desert fairs and the great markets envelop the city of Mecca, pilgrims from all over the Peninsula make their way to this barren land to visit their tribal deities. They sing songs of worship and dance in front of the gods; they make sacrifices and pray for health. Then, in a remarkable ritual–the origins of which are a mystery–the pilgrims gather as a group and rotate around the Kaaba seven times, some pausing to kiss each corner of the sanctuary before being captured and swept away again by the current of bodies.The pagan Arabs gathered around the Kaaba believe their sanctuary to have been founded by Adam, the first man. They believe that Adam’s original edifice was destroyed by the Great Flood, then rebuilt by Noah. They believe that after Noah, the Kaaba was forgotten for centuries until Abraham rediscovered it while visiting his firstborn son, Ismail, and his concubine, Hagar, both of whom had been banished to this wilderness at the behest of Abraham’s wife, Sarah. And they believe it was at this very spot that Abraham nearly sacrificed Ismail before being stopped by the promise that, like his younger brother, Isaac, Ismail would also sire a great nation, the descendants of whom now spin over the sandy Meccan valley like a desert whirlwind.Of course, these are just stories intended to convey what the Kaaba means, not where it came from. The truth is that no one knows who built the Kaaba, or how long it has been here. It is likely that the sanctuary was not even the original reason for the sanctity of this place. Near the Kaaba is a well called Zamzam, fed by a bountiful underground spring, which tradition claims had been placed there to nourish Hagar and Ismail. It requires no stretch of the imagination to recognize how a spring situated in the middle of the desert could become a sacred place for the wandering Bedouin tribes of Arabia. The Kaaba itself may have been erected many years later, not as some sort of Arab pantheon, but as a secure place to store the consecrated objects used in the rituals that had evolved around Zamzam. Indeed, the earliest traditions concerning the Kaaba claim that inside its walls was a pit, dug into the sand, which contained “treasures” magically guarded by a snake.It is also possible that the original sanctuary held some cosmological significance for the ancient Arabs. Not only were many of the idols in the Kaaba associated with the planets and stars, but the legend that they totaled three hundred sixty in number suggests astral connotations. The seven circumambulations of the Kaaba–called tawaf in Arabic and still the primary ritual of the annual Hajj pilgrimage–may have been intended to mimic the motion of the heavenly bodies. It was, after all, a common belief among ancient peoples that their temples and sanctuaries were terrestrial replicas of the cosmic mountain from which creation sprang. The Kaaba, like the Pyramids in Egypt or the Temple in Jerusalem, may have been constructed as an axis mundi, sometimes called a “navel spot”: a sacred space around which the universe revolves, the link between the earth and the solid dome of heaven. That would explain why there was once a nail driven into the floor of the Kaaba that the ancient Arabs referred to as “the navel of the world.” As G. R. Hawting has shown, the ancient pilgrims would sometimes enter the sanctuary, tear off their clothes, and place their own navels over the nail, thereby merging with the cosmos.Alas, as with so many things about the Kaaba, its origins are mere speculation. The only thing scholars can say with any certainty is that by the sixth century C.E., this small sanctuary made of mud and stone had become the center of religious life in pre-Islamic Arabia: that intriguing yet ill-defined era of paganism that Muslims refer to as the Jahiliyyah–“the Time of Ignorance.” TRADITIONALLY, THE JAHILIYYAH has been defined by Muslims as an era of moral depravity and religious discord: a time when the sons of Ismail had obscured belief in the one true God and plunged the Arabian Peninsula into the darkness of idolatry. But then, like the rising of the dawn, the Prophet Muhammad emerged in Mecca at the beginning of the seventh century, preaching a message of absolute monotheism and uncompromising morality. Through the miraculous revelations he received from God, Muhammad put an end to the paganism of the Arabs and replaced the “Time of Ignorance” with the universal religion of Islam.In actuality, the religious experience of the pre-Islamic Arabs was far more complex than this tradition suggests. It is true that before the rise of Islam the Arabian Peninsula was dominated by paganism. But, like “Hinduism,” “paganism” is a meaningless and somewhat derogatory catchall term created by those outside the tradition to categorize what is in reality an almost unlimited variety of beliefs and practices. The word paganus means “a rustic villager” or “a boor,” and was originally used by Christians as a term of abuse to describe those who followed any religion but theirs. In some ways, this is an appropriate designation. Unlike Christianity, paganism is not so much a unified system of beliefs and practices as it is a religious perspective, one that is receptive to a multitude of influences and interpretations. Often, though not always, polytheistic, paganism strives for neither universalism nor moral absolutism. There is no such thing as a pagan creed or a pagan canon. Nothing exists that could properly be termed “pagan orthodoxy” or “pagan heterodoxy.”What is more, when referring to the paganism of the pre-Islamic Arabs, it is important to make a distinction between the nomadic Bedouin religious experience and the experience of those sedentary tribes that had settled in major population centers like Mecca. Bedouin paganism in sixth-century Arabia may have encompassed a range of beliefs and practices–from fetishism to totemism to manism (ancestor cults)–but it was not as concerned with the more metaphysical questions that were cultivated in the larger sedentary societies of Arabia, particularly with regard to issues like the afterlife. This is not to say that the Bedouin practiced nothing more than a primitive idolatry. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that the Bedouin of pre-Islamic Arabia enjoyed a rich and diverse religious tradition. However, the nomadic lifestyle is one that requires a religion to address immediate concerns: Which god can lead us to water? Which god can heal our illnesses?In contrast, paganism among the sedentary societies of Arabia had developed from its earlier and simpler manifestations into a complex form of neo-animism, providing a host of divine and semi-divine intermediaries who stood between the creator god and his creation. This creator god was called Allah, which is not a proper name but a contraction of the word al-ilah, meaning simply “the god.” Like his Greek counterpart, Zeus, Allah was originally an ancient rain/sky deity who had been elevated into the role of the supreme god of the pre-Islamic Arabs. Though a powerful deity to swear by, Allah’s eminent status in the Arab pantheon rendered him, like most High Gods, beyond the supplications of ordinary people. Only in times of great peril would anyone bother consulting him. Otherwise, it was far more expedient to turn to the lesser, more accessible gods who acted as Allah’s intercessors, the most powerful of whom were his three daughters, Allat (“the goddess”), al-Uzza (“the mighty”), and Manat (the goddess of fate, whose name is probably derived from the Hebrew word mana, meaning “portion” or “share”). These divine mediators were not only represented in the Kaaba, they had their own individual shrines throughout the Arabian Peninsula: Allat in the city of Ta’if;al-Uzza in Nakhlah; and Manat in Qudayd. It was to them that the Arabs prayed when they needed rain, when their children were ill, when they entered into battle or embarked on a journey deep into the treacherous desert abodes of the Jinn–those intelligent, imperceptible, and salvable beings made of smokeless flame who are called “genies” in the West and who function as the nymphs and fairies of Arabian mythology.There were no priests and no pagan scriptures in pre-Islamic Arabia, but that does not mean the gods remained silent. They regularly revealed themselves through the ecstatic utterances of a group of cultic officials known as the Kahins. The Kahins were poets who functioned primarily as soothsayers and who, for a fee, would fall into a trance in which they would reveal divine messages through rhyming couplets. Poets already had an important role in pre-Islamic society as… Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐As a Muslim, I learned most of Islam’s history through my parents who learned from their parents. Finally I took it upon myself to educate myself on Islam. Reading about the origins of Islam from the little details on the foundation of the people and the birth of religion was amazing. I genuinely learned so much from this book alone than what my parents have ever taught me in all my years! Mashallah.

⭐For people like myself, No god but God offers a persuasive and refreshing understanding of Islam from an insider’s perspective. Not only does one get here a history of Mohammed and Islam’s first hundred years, but also one finds enlightening summaries of the religions different sects – the Sunites, Shiites, Sufism, and Wahabiism. I especially valued the author’s perspective on the struggles (jihads) currently occurring within and without Islam and now see more clearly than ever how profoundly colonialism poisoned the well for the relationship between Muslim and non-Muslim countries. Finally, thanks to this book, for the first time, I begin to understand why Islam is such an attractive and persuasive religious alternative.

⭐_No god but God_ by Reza Aslan is a fascinating, well-researched, and timely book on the history and future of Islam.In this ambitious work Aslan had three goals. He sought to provide a critical look at the origins and evolution of Islam, not only telling its story but discussing why the religion developed the way it did. Aslan is a big believer in religious scholars and individual worshippers coming to terms with the “spiritual and political landscape” of Muhammad’s time, of understanding how this influenced the origins and development of Islam. Any reasonable interpretation of the rise of Islam and how it should be practiced today must come to grips with the cultural milieu of sixth- and seventh-century Arabia, an understanding of which is vital in tracing how Muhammad’s “revolutionary message of moral accountability and social egalitarianism” was over time reinterpreted by later clerics into various “competing ideologies of rigid legalism and uncompromising orthodoxy,” something which fractured the Muslim community and widened the gap between Sunni Muslims, Shi’ism, and Sufism.A major example Aslan discusses is the rights of women. Islam is often seen as being restrictive and repressive when it comes to women but the author says this was not always so. Muhammad actually introduced many reforms that benefited women, such as a religious view that both sexes were equal in the eyes of God, the right to own and inherit property, divorce their husbands, and limits on the number of wives a man may have, major advances for women when compared to their status in pre-Islamic Arabia. Only after Muhammad’s death, when the hadith were collected and canonized (stories and anecdotes about the Prophet and his earliest companions) did women start to lose their rights. Religious scholars – nearly all men – sought to regain the male political, religious and economic dominance they had had before Muhammad’s reforms. Hadith that were helpful to women were discarded or misinterpreted and those of doubtful authenticity were deemed official when it suited their purposes. The veil for instance was not “enjoined upon Muslim women” anywhere in the Quran but instead arose later. What originally was something that only Muhammad’s wives wore when their home was the community’s mosque became at first a way to emulate those wives and then still later yet another means for males to regain their dominance, an example of the “rampant misogyny” of many early Quranic experts.Aslan also analyzed other important debates within Islam by looking at the context of 7th-10th century Arabia. He wrote that Islam is too often characterized as a “religion of the sword” for instance, but he maintains that at the time religion was not an individual choice as it is now; instead, “religion was your ethnicity, your culture, and your social identity…it was your citizenship.” All religions of the time, including Christianity, were “religions of the sword.” Similarly, the unfortunate and seemingly permanent association of apostasy (denying one’s faith) with treason (punishable by death) dates back to early rebellions against the Caliph shortly after Muhammad’s death, not anything the Quran stated.A second goal of the book was to note the nature of what he termed the Islamic Reformation, something that is going on right now. The insurgency in Iraq and the bombings in Bali, Madrid, and London, should not be seen only as some jihadist war against the West, but also the results of a civil war within Islam, as various divisions within the Muslim world fight over the future of the faith. Many Muslims favor a more moderate and pluralistic Islam, while to others this is “anathema to their own puritanical beliefs.” Not unlike the Christian Reformation, much of the struggle is over who has the authority to define faith, the individual or institutions. As with the Christian Reformation, the first target is not those of other faiths, but those within the faith who do not agree. In many ways the West is but a bystander, if a target at all only so as to galvanize other Muslims to the jihadist cause.The major issue in the Islamic Reformation is the nature of religious authority in Islam. As there is no official, central religious authority, it is instead scattered among a number of smaller, competing though highly influential institutions in the Muslim world, institutions that have maintained a virtual monopoly on interpretation not through any divine decree but instead as the result of scholarship; by maintaining a stranglehold on religious learning, they have kept a tight control over Islam itself. However, dramatic increases in literacy and education and now widespread access to new theories and sources of knowledge as well as a swelling sense of both nationalism and individualism have challenged this monopoly, leading to a variety of “lay” interpretations, from secularizing Western Muslims to Muslim feminists to “veiled-again” Muslims who have rediscovered their faith and traditions. Osama bin Laden is in fact a product of, not a counter to, these newly emerging (and wildly diverging) theories.The Christian Reformation was a violent and bloody contest that embroiled Europe in war and devastation for over a century. It took “fifteen vicious, bloody, and occasionally apocalyptic centuries” for Christianity to progress from pre-Reformation doctrinal absolutism to the doctrinal relativism and pluralism of the modern era; Aslan predicts the Islamic Reformation will be very similar, a “terrifying event, one that has already begun to engulf the world,” its battleground not the deserts of Arabia but Islamic cities such as Baghdad, Cairo, and Damascus and Western cities with Muslim populations such as London and Paris.Finally, Aslan sought to advocate reform within the Muslim world. A practicing Muslim, he wrote that some will be upset with the term reform or Reformation, as they resist the notion that there is any inherent flaw within Islam that needs “reforming,” while others will consider the term too optimistic, perceiving the rise in jihadist violence not as an indication of any evolution but of devolution within the Islamic world.

⭐No god but God is a rare combination of great detail and fascinating reading, two sets of words rarely found in the same sentence about any book. Prior to reading this book, for westerners like me, understanding Islam and its people seemed difficult to impossible.Separating (but relating) religion, culture, and the desires of individual people, No god but God makes clear the point that Islam (the tenets of the faith as expressed in the Koran) is no more responsible for the terrorism often inflicted in its name than Christianity and the teachings of the Bible are responsible for the holocaust. Islam and Christianity are drawn clearly to be a code of faith and the behavior of their followers does not inform the Koran, rather the faith, both Islam and Christianity (and others) often becomes corrupted for the personal ambition and gain of individuals and peoples.No god but God traces how this has happened within Islam, the conditions that have led to the rise of extremism, and leaves the reader with a deeper understanding both of Islam and of the people who claim to be its adherants.Three weeks after reading this book, I attended a local mosque open house to learn more. The lectures and exhibits at the (moderate) mosque reflected No god but God’s evidences and conclusions perfectly. Recommended reading!

⭐great book

⭐The book is a good read, however the author emphasizes more on Shia Islam as the author is originally from Iran and belongs to Shia sect for sure. If the title is about Islam then the author should have gone for Islam in general instead of focusing most part of the book about shia islam. Secondly the, “future” part about Islam does not give much information. Anyway, it is a good read but if you are buying the book to know about Islam and its future then i do not recommend this.

⭐The book is very well written. Very easy to read and very informative. Could be used as a supplement or secondary approach on research on Islamic history and contemporary times. I would recommend someone interested in Islamic history to read — Margin Langs: Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest SourcesOne complaint about the book is, it emphasizes too much on ‘shia’ world. And doesnt critque clearly on shia ideologies and formations as he does for the “sunnis’. However, I do recommend everyone/anyone to read this book and form their own opinions.

⭐This is an well written book. Being a Muslim myself, I welcomed the scholarship and analysis that provides much of the interesting content, while leaving space for the miracle of Islamic history to speak for itself where appropriate. In the West, Islamic history suffered from the misplaced cultural superiority of non-Muslim scholars who, at best, reject any part of the Islamic narrative that has no physical corroborating evidence, thereby eliminating the entire oral tradition of Islam, and at worst, simply manufacture history from their own biased and flawed opinions, using their positions of authority to mislead millions of people who don’t know better.However….Reza Aslan is a Shia Muslim, and Shias hold the fourth Caliph, Ali, as almost equal to the Prophet Muhammad, on whom be peace, and lament, frequently and loudly, that he was not served fairly by the establishment of his time, and that he was martyred in a most horrible fashion that should never be forgotten, and should never cease to be mentioned and commemorated and just generally complained about. This annoying aspect of Shia Islam, the obsession with all things Ali, brought my enjoyment of the book to an abrupt end. When the accomplishments of Omar, the second Caliph who oversaw the blazing expansion of Islam into thousands of new communities over a decade, are summed up in 2 paragraphs, and then equal space is devoted to his personal feud with Ali, there is a most unIslamic example of disproportionality, that it’s like I was readin’ a book about Islam, and all of a sudden, it turns into a soap opera about this guy Ali and his tough breaks and raw deals, you know?Give me ein break.I don’t think I will finish reading this book. However, I respect Aslan’s credentials as a scholar in areas outside Ali’s personal life, so I might. And I ‘ve already purchased “How to win a Cosmic War”….

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