No god but God

Reza Aslans mass, No god But theology, is a comprehensive telling of the composition and the tale of one of the major devotions in the human organism today. Going through the 352 pages of the phonograph record, even a person who had no knowledge of Arabias pre- Muslim history, no familiarity with Islamic rise, and no previous comprehension of the conf employ teachings and philosophical factors, is a great experience of exploration in the domain of a function of Islam and the Muslim look of thought. What makes this book unique is that it connects some(prenominal) of what is going on in the Islamic world with the latest events concerning terrorism and militant Islamic groups in disparate places of the world.Knowing that Aslan is a Muslim who earned different degrees in Religions and humanities in the United States gives us an topic about the amount of info that each reader nonify obtain. Throughout the book, the reader is being command by an insider who is knowledg eable in what concerns al together the related elements. And, from the different side, this tail assembly be early(a) component in highlighting the fact that the book is written in a way that is easy to understand and that is alone comprehendible.CONTENTS AND THOUGHTSThe author of the book begins by explaining the rationalnesss that led him to write the book and to create such a volume about Islam. He explains that the main(prenominal) reason is not to go through the history and present conflicts at heart the religion, but to attempt to foresee its future and how it will evolve. This book is not just a critical reexamination of the origins and evolution of Islam, nor is it merely an account statement of the current struggle among Muslims to define the future of this magnificent yet misunderstood faith. This book is, above all else, an argument for reform (Prologue).The book is shared out into ten distinct factionions each one goes through a authoritative stage of the b irth and development of the religion. And in many of these chapters, many discipline references and explanations are make concerning events that we see today and their origin and impact on the Muslim world of today in relation to a categorisation of subjects.The first section of the book The clash of monotheisms, is an introductory fall apart in which the author states the reasons that led him to writing the book. He states that Islam is not, as some claim, a violent religion that cannot co-exist with modern values of democracy and human rights.A few well-respected academics carried this argument further by suggesting that the failure of democracy to go forth in the Muslim world was due in large part to Muslim culture, which they claimed was intrinsically incompatible with Enlightenment values such as liberalism, pluralism, individualism, and human rights. It was therefore simply a matter of time to begin with these two great civilizations, which have such conflicting ideologie s, clashed with each other in some catastrophic way. And what better example do we pauperism of this inevitability than September 11? (Prologue). He claims, kinda, that certain circumstances were the reason why the Muslim world is so much behind in these fields.In the first chapter of the book, The sanctuary in the desert pre-Islamic Arabia, the reader can virtually live through the conditions and events that were taking place in Arabia onward the emergence of the religion. Here we find many indications to the fact that, contrary to the world of today, the Arabian Peninsula was populated by the followers of many religions Jews, Christians, and others.It is here, inside the fix 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 k new-made 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 h oly mother, bloody shame (Aslan 3).And in reference to the Jewish community the author states The Jewish getment in the Arabian Peninsula can, in theory, be traced to the Babylonian Exile a thousand years earlier, though subsequent migrations whitethorn have taken place in 70 C.E., after(prenominal) Romes sacking of the Temple in Jerusalem, and again in 132 C.E., after the messianic uprising of Simon Bar Kochba. For the virtually part, the Jews were a thriving and highly influential diaspora whose culture and traditions had been thoroughly compound into the social and ghostly milieu of pre-Islamic Arabia (9).The following three chapters, The keeper of the keys Muhammad in Mecca, The city of the prophet the first Muslims, and Fight in the way of God the meaning of Jihad, give the reader an in-depth clarification about how Islam came to life, from the raiseoff of the story of the prophet of Islam, Muhammad, his life in front recognizing the mission that he was set to accompl ish and the various events that shaped the era of the beginning of the new religion and how the Muslim believers, including the prophet himself, were treated by the people of their tribe and all the conditions that led the Islamic state to be established in Medina instead of Mecca, the original city of the prophet.What is interesting in this book is that it makes, during the telling of the story, references to many things that we see today in the Muslim world. One of the examples of this is the reference made to the story of the Hijab or the Islamic clothes and head cover of Muslim women, which has became an identifying characteristic of Muslim women today. It is surprising to find out that the whole imagination is not even brought by the Quran or the original Islamic teachings Although long seen as the most distinctive emblem of Islam, the veil is, surprisingly, not enjoined upon Muslim women anywhere in the Quran.The tradition of veiling and seclusion (known together as hijab) wa s introduced into Arabia long before Muhammad, primarily through Arab contacts with Syria and Iran, where the hijab was a sucker of social status. After all, only a woman who need not work in the fields could afford to remain secluded and hide the veil was neither compulsory, nor for that matter, widely adopted until genesiss after Muhammads death, when a large body of male scriptural and legal scholars began using their religious and political authority to regain the dominance they had lost in guild as a result of the Prophets egalitarian reforms (65-66).The future(a) chapter, The rightly guided ones the successors to Muhammad, goes through the events that took place after the death of the prophet, and how conflicts appeared on the succession in what concerns the position of Islamic leader of Caliph, or successor.The ordinal chapter, This religion is a science the development of Islamic theology and virtue, is the one that contains most of the information about the teachings , the myths, the different philosophical views, and the various rituals that make up the religion. Here, the reader will have an idea about the different schools of thought.The following chapter, In the footsteps of martyrs from Shiism to Khomeinism, presents the story of how the Shiite Muslim sect appeared as a result of the killing of Ali, the fourth Caliph after Muhammad and the political and religious consequences of this appearance that we can see in our world today. It relates the new factors of faith that were introduced into Islam by the Shiite sect and how those factors were always being used according to desires and wishes of the leaders, such as Kommeini in what concerns modern Iran.Next, the chapter Stain your orison rug with wine the Sufi way is a description of another sect of Islam, which is Sufism. It goes through many of the different sentiments that Sufis use and believe in which are completely different than those of mainstream Islam and Shiite Islam.The ninth c hapter, An awakening in the atomic number 99 the response to colonialism, talks about the effects of European colonialism on Muslim countries and the way that it was faced the nationalists sought to battle European colonialism through a secular countermovement that would replace the Salafiyyahs aspiration of religious unity with the more hardheaded goal of racial unity in other words, Pan-Arabism (Aslan 233)The final chapter, Slouching toward Medina the Islamic reclamation, discusses the establishment of the Muslim states after the end of colonialism. An interesting idea that the author presents in this chapter is the comparison between the reforms that took place within the Christian history which led Christian societies to move towards democracy, human rights, and pluralism and the conditions that are being shaped today within Islamic societies. And he states that Islamic societies may need to go through violent and extremely shaky conditions before reaching the final desired de stination that others in the Western world reached.According to the author, there is an ongoing struggle taking place in the Muslim world between the forces of traditional religious beliefs and those that want to move their societies into the modern foundations of democracy and human right. He states that in the developing capitals of the Muslim world Tehran, Cairo, Damascus, and Jakarta and in the cosmopolitan capitals of Europe and the United States unseasoned York, London, Paris, and Berlin where that message is being redefined by scores of first and second generation Muslim immigrants. By merging the Islamic values of their ancestors with the democratic ideals of their new homes, these Muslims have formed a mobilizing force for a Muslim reformation that, after centuries of stony sleep, has finally awoken and is now slouching toward Medina to be born (Aslan 254).In many parts of the book, there is a mentioning of terrorism and the reasons that led to its creation. Ben crock ed is mentioned several times, even though the concepts that the author wants to express are not presented in the level that a reader expects. Aslan states that Ben Ladens concept of Islam is wrong and that it is not the conception of the majority of Muslims Muslims may share store Ladens grievances against the Western powers, but they do not share his interpretation of Jihad (87). shuttingThe book is a rich source of information about the history of Islam and the about the Muslim societies of today. It gives the reader a full, even though not detailed, description of everything that led the reality of those societies into what is being seen today.The writer tried to understand the true face of Islam and to explain to everyone that what extremists stand for today is something that has nothing to do with religion, and that they have their own version and interpretation of the Quran. The author, to a certain extent, succeeded in clearing many points about the religion and to underli ne the idea that Islam is sooner a peaceful religion.The book was certainly worth writing and print especially in this time when everyone should know more about the other in order to avoid and prevent further confrontation.Works CitedAslan, Reza. No god but God The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam. New York Random House, 2005.