No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam
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Product Description
Though it is the fastest-growing religion in the world, Islam remains shrouded in ignorance and dread for much of the West. In No god but God, Reza Aslan, an internationally acclaimed scholar of religions, clarifies this faith in all its beauty and complexity. Beginning with a plain account of the social and religious milieu in which the Prophet Muhammad forged his message, Aslan paints a portrait of the first Muslim community as a radical conduct experiment in religious pluralism and social egalitarianism. He demonstrates how, after the Prophet’s death, his successors attempted to interpret his message for future generations–an overwhelming task that broke the Muslim community into competing sects. Finally, Aslan examines how, in the shadow of European colonialism, Muslims developed conflicting strategies to reconcile traditional Islamic values with the realities of the modern world, thus launching what Aslan terms the Islamic Reformation. Timely and persuasive, No god but God is an elegantly written account of a magnificent yet misunderstood faith.
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(Sorry for mistake: I give this book 5 STARS!!!!!!)
We live in very secular world. This is time of fantastic confusion, ignorance, and many fantastic prejudices. For instance, in Islam, homosexuality is considered fantastic sin, but in Western thought, today in especially very liberal thinking, homosexuality is not even a taboo and fully accepted. Living out of wed-lock is also considered morally acceptable today, as is fornication at will with no consideration of consequence to image, society, or health.
The result? Today, copious STDs are rampant, among them herpes, chlamydia, gonorrhea, and HIV, as well as diseases considered archaic such as syphilis and NGU. These diseases have made alarming combacks and all are on the rise, and moreover this corresponds particularly well with the current times of the so-called post-sexual revolution.
Society needs a moral code. Society needs a framework that recognizes the importance and preciousness of family tree and the inter-relatedness of the community. And society needs a means of protecting that ediface, in which family tree structure is preserved.
Sadly, this is all too regularly absent.
Islam has as its pivotal devotion Allah, from which family tree and society is maintain and the balance of life kept. Islam teaches tolerance, like, and devotion, and the importance of fulfilling duties to not only oneself but to family tree and society. This later obligation gets lost in the immensely commettive worldly dog-eat-dog world, where concern for self is the only real concern.
Mr. Asian has shown the gorgeous archetectural fruitfulness of Islamic teachings, its championing for life, and for the common binds of humanity: family tree and spiritual well-being.
Finally, Mr. Asian shows that a few extremists do not speak on behalf of the entire Islamic community, who do not share the warped ideaologies of intolerance and jihadism.
For instance, Mr. Timothy McVeigh, a Christian, certainly did not represent either Christian doctrine or Christian sentiment when he commited the worst instance of domestic terrorism–and by an American no less. The few do not represent the many.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Reza Asla writes well. This book provides an appealing history of Islam BUT it dose small to defend any of the cruelty and ridiculousness in the Quran.
Cruelty and ridiculousness in the Quran
The Cow:
Kill disbelievers wherever you find them. If they attack you, then kil them. Such is the reward of disbelievers. 2:191
Allah stamped wretchedness upon the Jews at the time of Moses because they killed the prophets and disbelieved Allah’s revelations. But what prophets could they have killed and what revelations could they have rejected? Most of the prophets and revelations came later, didn’t they? 2:61
Allah turned Sabbath breakers into apes. 2:65-66
The Sovereignty
Allah made the stars as missiles to throw at devils. 67:5
The Family tree of ‘Imran:
1.We shall cast terror into the hearts of persons who disbelieve. Their occupation is the Fire 3:151
2.All non-Muslims will be rejected by Allah after they die. 3:85
The Women:
If the unbelievers do not offer you peace, kill them wherever you find them. Against such you are agreed clear warrant. 4:91
Have no unbelieving friends. Kill the unbelievers wherever you find them. 4:89
Believers fight for Allah; disbelievers fight for the devil. So fight the minions of the devil. 4:76
Allah will bestow a vast reward on persons who fight in religious wars. 4:74
To Mr. Reza Asla I say…… nice try
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
I am not sure why I didn’t like this book. It just seemed to have so many names about who did what that I couldn’t keep all the information straight. It’s like reading a novel with way too many characters. I haven’t retained much of the information in the book, and am still a small confused about the difference between Sunnis and Shiites. He did make Sufism reasonably clear though. I reflect I will have to do more reading on the theme to make the facts stick.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
To answer Doris’ question (Feb 3, 2006) not more than, Sam Harris tackles this in The End of Faith while slso addressing the darker side of additional religions as well.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
The following is tribute to the unfortunate sentiment of many Muslims in the world, whose pugnacious outspokenness aside, represents the very real sentiments of many in the Islamic world today:
(…)
July 21, 2005
CAIRO The father of one of the hijackers who commandeered the first plane that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, praised the recent terror attacks in London and said many more would follow. Language to CNN producer Ayman Mohyeldin Tuesday in his apartment in the upper-middle-class Cairo suburb of Giza, Mohamed el-Amir said he want to see more attacks like the July 7 bombings of three London subway trains and a bus that killed 52 people, plus the four bombers.
Showed prominently in the apartment were pictures of el-Amir’s son, Mohamed Atta, the man who is believed to have piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the north tower of the World Trade Center as part of the attacks on the United States.
Religious war
El-Amir said the attacks in the United States and the July 7 attacks in London were the beginning of what would be a 50-year religious war, in which there would be many more fighters like his son. He confirmed that terror cells around the world were a “nuclear bomb that has now been activated and is ticking.” The man, who gave his age as “at least 70,” said he had no sorrow for what happened in London, and said there was a double standard in the way the world viewed the victims in London and victims in the Islamic world. Cursing in Arabic, el-Amir also denounced Arab leaders and Muslims who condemned the London attacks as being traitors and non-Muslims. He passionately vowed that he would do anything within his power to encourage more attacks. When questioned if he would allow a CNN crew to videotape another interview with him, el-Amir said he would give his permission — for a fee of $5,000. That money, he said, would not be kept for himself, but would be donated to a name to carry out another terror attack. El-Amir said that $5,000 was about how much it would cost to finance another attack in London. It is CNN policy not to pay people for interviews.
***
Mr. Asian’s book is a worthwhile read, and I encourage every patriot and Westerner to read it and study it well, for no additional reason than to know your enemy well. Mr. Asian, himself a Muslim, is obviously trying to present a more humanistic face of Islam. The attempt, but noble, is bound to have severe problems for several reasons.
First, the very foundational teachings of Islam do no allow for the open tolerance of diversity that is among the hallmarks of Western practice and thought. Islam teaches that as far as God is concerned there are two broad classifications: believers and non-believers. Moreover, a Muslim is not simply forbidden to linked with non-believers but is directed by Qur’anic scriptures to violently eliminate non-believers. Passages such as the following are reasonably common and readily believed:
[4.89] They desire that you should disbelieve as they have disbelieved, so that you might be (all) alike; therefore take not from among them friends until they glide (their homes) in Allah’s way; but if they turn back, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them, and take not from among them a friend or a helper.
Second, while many judge Islamic terrorists are a minority in their thinking, suffering from an irrational mindset, the truth is that most (if not all) are reasonably sane, rationally thinking individuals whose worldviews are heavily influenced by a group dynamic and global mindset that assert the only guaranteed future for Muslims is a future that is Islamic.
Mohamed Atta, who flew a nearly fully fueled jet airliner into one of the World Trade building on 9/11 unquestionably carried out an extreme form of interpretation of the Qur’an. Yet the underlying ideology of this violence is to be establish in the Qur’on itself, which can be exploited to horrific ends as modern times has proved. The sad, even perhaps frightening truth, is that most Muslims, while adage aloud that what the likes of an Atta did was incorrect, inwardly judge in the same interpretive spirit as Atta.
Furthermore, there are many in the Islamic community, reasonably ordinary and predictable in most if not in all respects the face of Islam itself, who see a name like Atta as a right martyr and hero for Islam. Whereas we in the West see an evil figure who self-terminated his life and used the West as a scapegoat for projected resentments and failures, many (arguably a majority) of Muslims see him as a role model and right Muslim, who engenders something of a sense of guilt for not being more self-sacrificing, but literal or metaphorical, to Islamic teachings.
The truth is that behind a Mohamed Atta lies an El-Amir, who derives an immense sense of satisfaction and genuine belief that the suicidical and homicidal undertakings of such a son is cause for celebration and serves as a hoped for inspiration for additional young Muslims to do the same. This is also in equal measure the real face of Islam today, which Mr. Asian has conveniently left out in terms of full acknowledgment or adequate analysis that is not tainted with the obvious agenda of mollifying some of the harsher aspect of Islamic heart-felt beliefs.
Finally, I would also momentously encourage readers to buy an English version of the Qur’an-but not the politically right, sanitized version so regularly sold in the West or taught in religion and literature courses. Rather, buy the version really read and studied by real, average, “ordinary” Muslims.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5