Daily Times

After 9/11 and the rising wave of “Islamophobia” in the West, writing or reading about Islam is regarded as a taboo. To pull the West out of their ingrained prejudice against Islam was almost impossible, and all attempts made so far had miserably failed, with just one exception. Reza Aslan’s No god but God published some years ago and revised and updated recently, has shaken the hostile sections of the western world from their deep prejudices against Islam, by giving them the correct insights into the true image and perspective of the Prophet of Islam, un-sullied by what the Clerics have made out of this great religion over the following centuries. This book has the distinction of earning universal acclaim from reviewers of the New York Time, Financial Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and Guardian etc. Some time back, on a suggestion of a friend of mine I did the daunting task of reading this voluminous book in close print and found it extremely interesting. I did so on finding some reviews of this book by some known detractors of Islam who too had glowingly praised the book because it had objectively answered with credible historical evidence some of the prickly objections raised by Western intellectuals.

The author Reza Aslan is an Iranian-American who left Iran after Imam Khomeini’s revolution and had settled in America. This book extensively deals with the origin, evolution and future of Islam in all its beauty and complexity, by also analyzing how the important happenings of the last two decades have influenced Islam’s culture in modern life.

The author states that the original message of Islam was one of individual moral accountability and social egalitarianism. But as time passed its original message was lost by legalistic and sectarian institutionalization and later by the deep destruction of nineteenth-century colonialism which necessitated intellectual, philosophical, and other kinds of reforms, which were the only ways to bring it back to its original glory. He describes the pre-Islamic period as “jahiliyyah”, based on polytheism, and idol-worshiping. Jews were more integrated religiously and politically and had a strong nexus with non- Jewish Arabs because of their belief in common descent from Abraham (Jews through Isaac and Arabs through Ismail). However, Christian communities in this era were deeply divided over theological issues.

His narrative of the Prophet of Allah’s striving against the inequities of contemporary life in Mecca, for example, is parallel to that of St. Paul in his struggle against the inequities of the Roman Empire

Muhammad (PBUH) was born into this rich religio-cultural mix in the 7th century CE. Muslim tradition has often stated that the Prophet was illiterate and argued that his illiteracy was further proof of the veracity of the Qur’an: an illiterate man, it is argued, could not invent such a rich text. Aslan believes that the Qur’an was calling him a Prophet for the unlettered, rather than personally illiterate. This, according to him, fits with the Qur’an’s argument that it is the first scripture for the unlettered Arab community.

The early revelations delivered to The Prophet were about the goodness and majesty of God and on the urgency of correcting the moral wrongs of Meccan society, especially the mistreatment of the poor and the vulnerable.

The present-day western intellectuals, due to their superficial knowledge of Islam, thought that Muslims are followers of some brand offanatical Wahabism, the impression which needs to be urgently corrected that the author took upon himself through the task of writing this book for the audience living in the western world.

To drive his point home to his overwhelming Christian public, he drew some parallels with Christianity, by saying that the Holy Prophet used the same strategy as St. Paul in creating a ‘super-tribe’ of equal members open to all by simple affirmation of a fundamental tenet. Just as in Christianity many political doctrines later emerged, in the same way, in Islam, several collections of Hadiths, and interpretations of the main tenet of Islam emerged, most of which were used to further political aims by the leading Muslims. And just as it happened in Christianity, the initial religious thrust in Islam toward social justice and mutual regard succumbed quickly and persistently to the interests of the religious establishment in maintaining its position of power.

“Religion, it must be understood, is not faith,” says Aslan. He goes on to point out an essential aspect of this fact: “With the exception of a few remarkable men and women, no Jew, Christian, Zoroastrian, or Muslim of this time would have considered his or her religion to be rooted in the personal confessional experiences of individuals. Quite the contrary, your religion was your ethnicity, your culture, and your social identity.” Religion, in other words, was a fact of human existence, and not a set of beliefs which other people had perceived as divine revelation.

The paradox of Christianity claims its truth as universal divine love; while the paradox of Islam recognizes the gift of human life as divine. Thus according to him, ‘faith’ itself, and not any particular belief, is the key to understand these religions of faith.

Aslan adds that doctrinal faith is also inherently prone to fragmentation. That is to say, it promotes conflict, often intense, where none had previously existed. Such fragmentation is not promoted or maintained by the rank and file believer who typically has no idea of the content or complexity of doctrinal pronouncements. Rather, it is the result of religious leaders’ political ambitions justified on the basis of alternative interpretations of foundational texts. To put it in a simple form: doctrinal religion is necessarily ideological and essentially divisive.

His narrative of the Prophet of Allah’s striving against the inequities of contemporary life in Mecca, for example, is parallel to that of St. Paul in his struggle against the inequities of the Roman Empire.

One prominent feature of the book is that Aslan has bitterly criticized the Ulema (conservative interpreters of the Quran) without any exception, which makes a mockery of the entire class of religious Divines. There were many exceptions to this general practice, who made liberal and judicious interpretation of the Holy Quran, but whose names do not find mention in his book.

According to Aslan, Islamic jihadist movement base their authority in direct opposition to the Ulama, just as during Christian Reformation, Martin Luther and his associates had advocated a similar anti-institutional reading of the scriptures and traditions of Christianity.

Aslan regards bigotry and fanaticism as the false idols of Islam of today that have replaced the Holy Prophet’s original vision of tolerance and unity with their own ideals of hatred and discord. And according to him the cleansing of this rust is unavoidable, which is bound to happen by the young generation of Muslims who are fully equipped with internet and other scientific devices to fight their war against orthodoxy and conservatism.

No god but God by Reza Aslan has been declared as the best seller of our time, and an excellent book, readable, relevant, profound, subtly ideological but also very persuasive.

The writer is a former member of the Provincial Civil Service, and an author of Moments in Silence