No god but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam — Reza Aslan

Reza Aslan’s “No god but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam” had been on my list for a long time and it was totally worth the wait. The author shows a snapshot of Islam from its origin to its evolution. The book very elegantly explains this magnificent yet misunderstood faith, Islam.

The clash of monotheism is from the earliest days of the Islamic expansion to the bloody wars and inquisitions of the Crusades to the tragic consequences of colonialism and the cycle of violence in Israel/Palestine, the hostility, mistrust and often violent intolerance that has marked relations among Jews, Christians and Muslims has been one of Western history’s most enduring themes.

Religion is an institutionalized system of symbols and metaphors that provides a common language with which a community of faith can share their numerous encounters with the Divine presence and each other. They become institutions when the myths and rituals that once shaped their sacred histories are transferred into authoritative models of orthodoxy (the correct interpretation of myths) and orthopraxy (the correct interpretation of rituals).

God was originally an ancient rain/sky deity who had elevated into the role of the supreme God of pre-Islamic Arabs. God’s three daughters — Allat (the goddess), al Uzza (the mighty) and Manat (goddess of fate) were usually called upon by both Arabs and Jews. The relationship between the Jews and Arabs was symbiotic in not only were the Jews heavily Arabized but the Arabs were also significantly influenced by Jewish beliefs and practices. Quraish’s dominance came when an ambitious young Arab name Qusayy managed to gain control of the Ka’ba. He became the ‘King of Mecca’ and ‘the keeper of the keys’. Muhammad understood that in order to bring about radical social and economic reforms in Mecca he had to attack the very source of Quraysh’s wealth and prestige — the Ka’ba.

After Muhammad’s death caliphate was not meant to be a position of great religious influence rather the Caliph was responsible for upholding the institutions of the Muslim faith. Throughout Islamic history, only the Ulema in their capacity as the link to the tradition of the past have managed to retain their self-imposed role as the leaders of the Muslim society.

Islam now is primarily an orthopraxis religion however because the Ulema have tended to regard Islamic practice as informing Islamic theology, orthopraxy and orthodoxy are intimately bound together in Islam, meaning questions of theology are impossible to separate from questions of law. The five pillars are meant as a metaphor, whereas the message of the Quran is vital to living a proper life. The memory of Karbala transformed the Shi’atu Ali from a political faction with the aim of restoring the leadership of the community to the family of the Prophet into an utterly distinct religious set in Islam.

The Shi’ah are a community born not ‘by the profession of belief in dogmas’ but rather ‘through the process of performing the rituals’ that sprang around the Karbala myth. The Shi’te imam though lacking any political power holds a spiritual authority that sets him above any earthly ruler. It was precisely this authority that allowed Ayatollah Khomeini to impose his will upon the social, economic and political forces that led to the Iranian Revolution in 1979.

For Sufis, Islam is neither law nor theology, neither creed nor ritual; it is merely the means through which the believer can destroy his ego so as to become one with the creator of the heavens and the earth. Sufism like Shi’sm was a revolutionary movement against both the Imperial Islam of the Muslim Dynasties and the rigid formalism of Islam’s orthodox learned class, the Ulema.

The current conflicts within the Muslim world are more related to their internal conflicts rather than between Islam and the West. Though the West tried to impose democracy on the Muslim countries which failed miserably, democracy must be nurtured from within, founded upon familiar ideologies and presented in a language that is both comprehensible and appealing to the indigenous population for it to work within the Muslim countries. The function of the clergy in an Islamic democracy should be not be to rule rather to reflect the morality of the state.