false 25307 0812971892 9780812971897 791 215 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1167674857m/25307.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25307.No_god_but_God_The_Origins_Evolution_and_Future_of_Islam 14210 Reza Aslan 916 265 5 9 false Wed Aug 15 12:02:42 -0700 2007 Wed Sep 05 13:15:57 -0700 2007
Aslan makes a strong case for the Hijaz as a place of prelapsarian cultural intermingling for Jews, Christians, and Muslims; his portrait of Muhammad makes the Prophet both a divinely inspired revolutionary and a reformer with secular concerns and family problems of his own for whom it would be impossible not to feel sympathy. Aslan also touches on the liberalizing effect of the spread of Islam, which allowed adherents of the three monotheistic religions to live peaceably in Spain for a time, introduced strict laws limiting legal retribution and encouraging forgiveness, redistributed wealth with an eye to enriching the impoverished, and spurred reforms in the way women were treated in inheritance laws.

The book also discusses the Iranian revolution, and the vexed relations between Iran and the United States. Aslan seems to think that the aims of Iran's revolutionaries and those of American liberals were/are more alike than either group bothers to recognize now. This is a perspective that I would imagine is unlikely to make Aslan many friends in either country, both of which are now run by cynical men. How unfortunate.

My only objection to the book, and it is a minor one, is that Aslan spends a lot of ink criticizing the Ulama (conservative academic interpreters of the Qu'ran) over the past several hundred years, but he does not specify exactly who these people are, saying only that the Ulama did this and the Ulama did that and everything they did was always all wrong. This could use a little more parsing; I find it hard to believe that the Ulama is quite as univocal as that, even if it is as stultifying and traditionalist as he suggests.

Anyway, this is an excellent book, readable, relevant, profound, subtly ideological but also very persuasive. Prepare to leave this book with a very different perception of what it means to be Muslim than you will ever get from Christiane Amanpour.]]>