I just wanted to remind you of a statement that represents the thinking here at ASH (Abrahamic Study Hall): Alone we can do so little, yet together we can do much. He relies on this in his defense of the early history of Islam and of the peculiarities of Islamic tradition and the challenges of Quranic interpretation. By the ninth century, when Islamic law was being fashioned, there were so many false hadith circulating through the community that Muslim legal scholars somewhat whimsically classified them into two categories: lies told for material gain and lies told for ideological advantage. Philosophy, however, is itself truth; its purpose is merely to express reality through the faculty of human reason., Thus, the Quran promises that all those who believethe Jews, the Sabians, the Christiansanyone who believes in God and the Last Days, and who does good deeds, will have nothing to fear. . Tawhid means that God is Oneness. The front pages of No god But God include the familiar Muslim acclamation, In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. Aslan, however, is a reformist. La Ilaha Illallah: There Is No God but Allah 14th April 2023 La ilaha illallah -There is no god but Allah -is the basis of the unity of God. What is important is what these stories say about our prophets, our messiahs, our kings: that theirs is a holy and eternal vocation, established by God from the moment of creation. Pre-Islamic Background. The French went to great lengths to cultivate class divisions in Algeria, the Belgians promoted tribal factionalism in Rwanda, and the British fostered sectarian schisms in Iraq, all in a futile attempt to minimize nationalist tendencies and stymie united calls for independence. Inshallah. The Arabian desert was the habitation, geopolitically, of warring tribes, and religiously, of waning pluralism. FreeBookNotes has 2 more books by Reza Aslan, with a total of 3 study guides. He cannot offer them wine, which is the essence of the fruit. He was not the lifelong monotheist portrayed in traditional Muslim accounts. But that day will no doubt come. I have to be up front that I knew nothing about Muhammad and so it was great place to begin. He is the copy of God, in the words of al-Arabis greatest disciple, Abdul Karim al-Jili: he is the mirror in which the divine attributes are perfectly reflected; the medium through which God is made manifest., More than a thousand years before Christ, Zarathustra preached the existence of a heaven and a hell, the idea of a bodily resurrection, the promise of a universal savior who would one day be miraculously born to a young maiden, and the expectation of a final cosmic battle that would take place at the end of time between the angelic forces of good and the demonic forces of evil., It is a shame that this word, myth, which originally signified nothing more than stories of the supernatural, has come to be regarded as synonymous with falsehood, when in fact myths are always true. Faith is a way of moving and being in the world; religion is a body of traditions and practices and institutions that preserve the story of how to move and be in the world that way. Very good primer on Islam--it's a thorough and sweeping history and very engaging and well-written. No god but God is a text written by Iranian-American Muslim scholar Reza Aslan. xxxi-xxxii). For example, one chapter is entirely devoted to the controversial, because often misinterpreted, issue of, After Noah the Kaba fell into oblivion for generations, until Abraham rediscovered it by visiting his firstborn son Ishmael, and his concubine Hagar, exiled to this desolate land by the will of Sarah his wife. This should concern us. And yet, like the United States, these countries are considered democracies, not because they are secular but because they are, at least in theory, dedicated to pluralism., The only question that matters with regard to a religion and its mythology is What do these stories mean?, There is absolutely nothing divine about the Shariah and in no way can it possibly be considered fixed and infallible. Men are in charge of women, because Allah has made some of them excel the others, and because they spend some of their wealth. . The final word in the verse, adribuhunna, which Fakhry has rendered as beat them, can equally mean turn away from them, go along with them, and, remarkably, even have consensual intercourse with them. If religion is indeed interpretation, then which meaning one chooses to accept and follow depends on what one is trying to extract from the text: if one views the Quran as empowering women, then Alis; if one looks to the Quran to justify violence against women, then Fakhrys.translators of the Quran.. The fact is that the financial and social advantages of being an Arab Muslim in the eighth and ninth centuries were such that Islam quickly became an lite clique, which a non-Arab could join only through a complex process that involved becoming first the client of an Arab., Because human beings do not have the capacity to attain knowledge of God on their own, the Imam becomes a continuous necessity for all societies and in every era. In their struggle for equal rights, Muslim feminists have consistently drawn inspiration from the legal reforms Muhammad instituted in Medina, while at the same time, Muslim traditionalists have construed those same legal reforms as grounds for maintaining the subjugation of women in Islamic society. The fact is that for fifteen centuries, the science of Quranic commentary has been the exclusive domain of Muslim men. Because of the variability of the Arabic language, both of these translations are grammatically, syntactically, and definitionally correct. Aslan briefly recounts the high points of his childhood, as preserved in traditional Islamic legend (see 1921). Also includes sites with a short overview, synopsis, book report, or summary of Reza Aslans No god but God. That verse, however, was addressed not to women in general, but exclusively to Muhammads wives:, But perhaps the most important innovation in the doctrine of jihad was its outright prohibition of all but strictly defensive wars. This is an online-exclusive from theChristian Research Journal. Para ms informacin o para Who Was Adam? And because each one of these exegetes inevitably brings to the Quran his own ideology and his own preconceived notions, it should not be surprising to learn that certain verses have most often been read in their most misogynist interpretation., There are two distinct methods of interpreting the Quran. It may take another generation or so for this era of anti-Muslim frenzy to be looked back upon with the same shame and derision with which the current generation views the anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish hysterics of the past. I found a copy of No God but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam in my uni's library, and from what I've heard, it's a revisionist take on the origins and codification of Islam that seeks to bridge traditional interpretations of the Qur'an and hadiths with their historical background - almost like a religion-oriented Guns, Gunpowder Those inclined to believe in miracles may have difficulty with this approach, as he says that it doesn't matter whether miracles happened, but what role such myths play in shaping the beliefs of a particular religious community. Alarmists warn of the imminent dissolution of civilization, longsuffering multiculturalists call for sharp discrimination between the militant minority and the peace-loving majority within the Muslim community, and others greet Muslim immigration with the expectation that little will change in American culture as a result of the assimilation of Muslims. I am far more interested in the historical aspect of any religion than I'll ever be in its theology, and Reza Aslan proves to be thought-provoking at best. As one would expect, Muhammads innovations did not sit well with the male members of his community. GoodReads community and editorial reviews can be helpful for getting a wide range of opinions on various aspects of the book. Chapter 1 provides the back story for the emergence of Islam. At the center of these developments were political machinations as well as simple practical exigencies. Counter it with cruelty, and it gains adherents. The person who brought the conversation together began the discussion by saying atheism doesn't imply nihilism and that she was becoming rather impatient with those who imply such a thing, wagging her finger at theists, saying her life without God has been very happyvery happy, indeed. Brenna Clarke Gray, . The intention of the United States government in supporting Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war was to curb the spread of Irans revolution, but it had the more disastrous effect of curbing its evolution., Some have argued, a few of them violently, that the Caliphate should be restored as the emblem of Muslim unity. Is he a supernaturalist? Do read the book. He probes and asks many questions throughout, but he never seems to wonder why Mohammad never appointed a successor, and how the contenders and their descendants have been battling ever since (three of the four successors to Mohammad were poisoned or murdered), or why he didn't write down his revelations of the Quran at the time, which led to it being canonized and codified decades later by Uthman, a leader Aslan himself deems corrupt. But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. All of a sudden, the men realized that what each of them had desired was in fact the same thing, only they did not know how to express themselves to each other. No god but God (Updated Edition) by Reza Aslan: 9780812982442 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books A fascinating, accessible introduction to Islam from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Zealot and host of Believer FINALIST FOR THE GUARDIAN. The story he tells begins in the Arabian desert during the pre-Islamic era of the sixth century AD. Offers quick summary / overview and other basic information submitted by Wikipedia contributors who considers themselves "experts" in the topic at hand. However,it is not merely the tension that exists between the Islamic religion . In Sunni Islam, the imam is merely the person who stands at the head of the mosque and leads the congregation in prayer. The site is known for a sarcastic, irreverent tone and a strong conservative bent. If there is only one God, then there may be only one truth, and that can easily lead to bloody conflicts of irreconcilable absolutisms., One would be tempted to call the members of such a new community Muslims (literally those who are submissive to God). A democratic state can be established upon any normative moral framework as long as pluralism remains the source of its legitimacy. This updated edition addresses the events of the past decade, analyzing how they have influenced Islam's position in modern culture. Resources for Greater Impact: It also would be interesting to know how such a transformation might take place, and what the concrete result would be. So why the four stars? All Right Reserved. Thus, with each successive generation, the chain of transmission, or isnad, that was supposed to authenticate the hadith grew longer and more convoluted, so that in less than two centuries after Muhammads death, there were already some seven hundred thousand hadith being circulated throughout the Muslim lands, the great majority of which were unquestionably fabricated by individuals who sought to legitimize their own particular beliefs and practices by connecting them with the Prophet. It also seems as though Aslan naturally would hope that if this happened, it would remain a democracy. . Too many instances dispute my current knowledge of the prophets life. Oh man. In No god but God, internationally acclaimed scholar Reza Aslan explains Islamthe origins and evolution of the faithin all its beauty and complexity. Get help and learn more about the design. It is not important whether the stories describing the childhood of Muhammed, Jesus, or David are true. You will have a direct line to ASH, for any questions you have: you will only be one email away from ASH. This is a major attraction that Christianity has for me. As for women you feel are averse, talk to them suasively; then leave them alone in bed (without molesting them) and go to bed with them (when they are willing). He segues to this chapter with this brief paragraph: Fourteen hundred years of rabid debate over what it means to be a Muslim; of passionate arguments over the interpretation of the Quran and the application of Islamic law; of trying to reconcile a fractured community through appeals to Divine Unity; of tribal feuds, crusades, and world warsand Islam has finally begun its fifteenth century (248). The book was a best seller. Abdallah politely refused and continued to the house of Amina, where he consummated the marriage that would result in the birth of the Prophet. A SUMMARY CRITIQUE NO GOD BUT GOD: The Reinterpretation of Islam a book review of No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam by Reza Aslan . As such, it is distinguished from polytheism, the belief in the existence of many gods, from atheism, the belief that there is no god, and from agnosticism, the belief that the existence or nonexistence of a god or of gods is unknown or unknowable. Reza Aslan shows a snapshot of Islam from its origin to its evolution. He wrote about this journey in the New York Times bestselling book Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus. The four men left Mecca and went their separate ways, preaching the new religion and seeking out others in the same condition. But if the intent was to present a vision of how muslims should understand their faith under the challenge of modernity, it falls way short. It did seem that Aslan's own let's say, predispositions were coming through. 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