Wednesday, February 14, 2007
No God But God - Reza Aslan
I was was excited when this book arrived at my door last week so I absorbed the whole book over a weekend. At first glance it is a daunting compilation of the long and complex history of Islam. However, I was surprised by how much fun it was to read. I did not feel like I was in a boring history class. The book does a great job of explaining the history behind all the terms that we hear constantly on the news these days and it really opened my eyes and my heart.
The first realization I made is that the roots of Islam are the roots of every religion. Muhammad's goal, like Moses and Jesus, was to create a just society. Whoever thinks that religion and politics are separate topics never bothered to understand the Torah, the New Testament, or the Qur'an. All of these documents are radical political calls for justice. He spends a great deal of time discussing pre-Islamic Arabia including the vast array of religious and political issues that set the stage for the development of Islam.
The first realization I made is that the roots of Islam are the roots of every religion. Muhammad's goal, like Moses and Jesus, was to create a just society. Whoever thinks that religion and politics are separate topics never bothered to understand the Torah, the New Testament, or the Qur'an. All of these documents are radical political calls for justice. He spends a great deal of time discussing pre-Islamic Arabia including the vast array of religious and political issues that set the stage for the development of Islam.
The most interesting observation that I made while reading this book is that I now see the dramatic parallel in the problems of both Islam and Christianity. I’m now able to sympathize with moderate and liberal Muslims as they live in the shadow of their fundamentalist brothers. All of us are struggling to deal with the problem of religious fundamentalists that make the following mistakes:
They mistake sacred texts for God’s words
They give power to religious authorities
They don’t read scripture in context of its authors
They believe unbelievable things
They value ancient beliefs over modern understanding
Rezan Aslan makes the central point that Islam is in search of its own reformation similar to the protestant reformation that followed the enlightenment. He implies that this would solve many of these problems as it has to some extent worked in Christianity. He makes the valid point to compare the fundamentalist Islamic believers with the pre-enlightenment Christians Crusades. In many ways radical fundamentalist Islam is a pre-enlightenment mentality struggling to exist in a post-enlightenment world.
The one argument I have with this notion is that fundamentalism in both religions is on the rise not the decline. The enlightenment has if anything increased the rigid beliefs of fundamentalism as both Christian and Islam traditionalists fight to reject the modern world. I hope the Islamic reformation happens much faster and goes much deeper. I wonder if he is being too optimistic. Either way, this book is well written and is effective at communicating a complicated series of events over the course of the last 1400 years.
They mistake sacred texts for God’s words
They give power to religious authorities
They don’t read scripture in context of its authors
They believe unbelievable things
They value ancient beliefs over modern understanding
Rezan Aslan makes the central point that Islam is in search of its own reformation similar to the protestant reformation that followed the enlightenment. He implies that this would solve many of these problems as it has to some extent worked in Christianity. He makes the valid point to compare the fundamentalist Islamic believers with the pre-enlightenment Christians Crusades. In many ways radical fundamentalist Islam is a pre-enlightenment mentality struggling to exist in a post-enlightenment world.
The one argument I have with this notion is that fundamentalism in both religions is on the rise not the decline. The enlightenment has if anything increased the rigid beliefs of fundamentalism as both Christian and Islam traditionalists fight to reject the modern world. I hope the Islamic reformation happens much faster and goes much deeper. I wonder if he is being too optimistic. Either way, this book is well written and is effective at communicating a complicated series of events over the course of the last 1400 years.
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6 comments:
I meet him tomorrow at our monthly Interfaith breakfast at the University Religious Center -- I'll post my reflections sometime tomorrow -- I'm going to a monastery for part of the day as well!
mike, it warms my heart to come across people reading and/or thinking about islam, since most americans seem to have so little interest in it. i've just finished "infidel" by ayaan hirsi ali, which is an incredible story. i'm also reading "muhammad" by robert spencer, which i think is an accurate but critical look at muhammad. he has a website at jihadwatch.org that i check daily.
ed
I read the book a few months ago and found it to be an excellent introduction to the history of Islam. It is a good book for disabusing some people of their stereotypes about what Islam is about.
Interesting the mention of the book Infidil. In a conversation with Reza this morning (see my blog post) he said the problem with her book is that it's made up. Apparently she was thrown out of the Netherlands for making up a story to get refugee status. Her view of Islam is, according to Reza, bizarre.
reza's response to dr. bob was, unfortunately, all too typical. number one: attack the credibility of the author. number two: use hyperbole "bizarre" to attack her position. but avoid, at all costs, an honest reply to her accusations.
Ed,
I must first of all say that the word bizarre is mine. The point is, there are questions about Hirsi Ali's story that apparently don't mesh with reality. But that's not my point, not having read the book, but having seen other similar attacks on Islam. You read through the Koran, find the worst sounding things and gather them up and say, here, this is Islam. You can, and people do, do the the same thing with Judaism or Christianity and the Bible. Are there problems in Islam, most assuredly, but, I think you'll find all kinds of Muslims in the world, as well as all kinds of Christians.
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