No God But God Read online

  Praise for

  No god but God

  “Precise … acutely perceptive … a revelation,

  an opening up of knowledge too long buried.”

  —The Independent (U.K.)

  “[Reza Aslan] is among a growing number of Muslim writers and intellectuals born or educated in the West who bring a rare intimacy, born of experience, to their analysis of Islam in the world, and can also translate it into terms comprehensible to their Western readers.”

  —PANKAJ MISHRA, The New York Review of Books

  “Just the history of Islam I needed, judicious and truly illuminating.”

  —A. S. BYATT in The Guardian (U.K.)

  “Thought-provoking … At this fateful juncture, Aslan has provided a masterful interpretative reading of Islam.”

  —The Globe and Mail

  “Sympathetic … engaging … sensitive and generous.”

  —Financial Times

  “Fun to read … [Brings] each successive century to life with the kind of vivid details and like-you-were-there, present-tense narration that makes popular history popular.… An excellent overview that doubles as an impassioned call to reform.”

  —Booklist

  “A lively and accessible introduction to Islam … Readers will gravitate toward No god but God not only because of its stimulating arguments, but also because it’s so well put together as a literary work.… As evocative as it is provocative.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “This is a fascinating book. Reza Aslan tells the story of Islam with one eye on faith and another on history. The result is a textured, nuanced account that presents a living, breathing religion shaped by centuries of history and culture.”

  —FAREED ZAKARIA,

  author of The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad

  “Elegant, accessible, and informed by historical scholarship, No god but God offers a wonderful view into the rich world of early Islam. Reza Aslan brings to the life of Muhammad and the story of classical Islam a lyricism and deft touch reminiscent of Roberto Calasso at his best.”

  —NOAH FELDMAN,

  author of After Jihad and What We Owe Iraq

  “Reza Aslan tells a story of Islamic faith, history and culture that comes alive. No god but God is an engaging, creative, insightful, and provocative book. It is a reminder that beyond the terrorism headlines, Islam, like its Abrahamic cousins, has been and remains a rich, dynamic spiritual path for the vast majority of its adherents.”

  —JOHN L. ESPOSITO,

  University Professor and Founding Director of the Center for Muslim-Christian

  Understanding, Georgetown University, and author of Unholy War

  “A fascinating account of Islam’s evolution. Aslan’s book should be required reading for all analysts and policymakers interested in the Muslim world. It’s a terrific read—no easy feat for such a difficult subject.”

  —STEVEN COOK,

  Next Generation Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations

  “Reza Aslan counters superficial notions of a clash of civilizations with a deep and exhilarating exploration of the fifteen-hundred-year-old clash within the civilization of Islam. Distinguishing concepts like faith and religion, Islamism and Islamic fundamentalism, in ways that shed vital new light on the morning’s headlines, No god but God is a passionate argument for the shared history of the world’s religions. An essential contribution to the most important issue of our time.”

  —TOM REISS,

  author of The Orientalist

  Also by Reza Aslan

  Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism

  in the Age of Globalization

  (originally published as How to Win a Cosmic War)

  2011 Random House Trade Paperback Edition

  Copyright © 2005, 2006, 2011 by Reza Aslan

  Maps copyright © 2011 by David Lindroth, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks,

  an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group,

  a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACKS and colophon are

  trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2005 and subsequently in trade paperback by Random House Trade Paperbacks, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2006 in slightly different form.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Aslan, Reza.

  No god but God : the origins, evolution, and future of Islam / Reza Aslan.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  eISBN: 978-0-679-64377-7

  1. Islam. 2. Islam—Essence, genius, nature. 3. Islam—History. I. Title.

  BP161.3.A79 2005

  297—dc22 2004054053

  www.atrandom.com

  Cover design: Anna Bauer, based on the original design by Allison Saltzman

  Cover photograph: Nabeel Turner/Getty Images

  v3.1_r1

  For my mother, Soheyla,

  and my father, Hassan

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you, Mom and Dad, for never doubting me; Catherine Bell, for getting me started; Frank Conroy, for giving me a shot; Elyse Cheney, for finding me; Daniel Menaker, for trusting me; Amanda Fortini, for fixing me; my teachers, for challenging me; and Ian Werrett, for absolutely everything else.

  In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Preface to the Updated Edition

  Prologue: The Clash of Monotheisms

  Author’s Note

  Chronology of Key Events

  Maps

  1. The Sanctuary in the Desert

  PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA

  2. The Keeper of the Keys

  MUHAMMAD IN MECCA

  3. The City of the Prophet

  THE FIRST MUSLIMS

  4. Fight in the Way of God

  THE MEANING OF JIHAD

  5. The Rightly Guided Ones

  THE SUCCESSORS TO MUHAMMAD

  6. This Religion Is a Science

  THE DEVELOPMENT OF ISLAMIC THEOLOGY AND LAW

  7. In the Footsteps of Martyrs

  FROM SHI‘ISM TO KHOMEINISM

  8. Stain Your Prayer Rug with Wine

  THE SUFI WAY

  9. An Awakening in the East

  THE RESPONSE TO COLONIALISM

  10. Slouching Toward Medina

  THE QUEST FOR ISLAMIC DEMOCRACY

  11. Welcome to the Islamic Reformation

  THE FUTURE OF ISLAM

  Glossary

  Notes

  Works Consulted

  About the Author

  Preface to the Updated Edition

  TEN YEARS AFTER the attacks of 9/11, anti-Muslim sentiment is at an all-time high throughout Europe and North America, far higher than it was in the immediate aftermath of that tragic day in 2001. Polls show that nearly half the populations in the United States and Canada hold unfavorable views toward Islam. In Europe, the passage of laws curtailing the rights and freedoms of Muslims and the success of avowedly anti-Muslim politicians and political parties have led to an even greater sense of marginalization and disenfranchisement among Muslim communities.

  Many reasons have been given to explain this sudden surge in anti-Muslim hysteria. Certainly the global financial crisis has played a role. In times of ec
onomic distress, it is only natural for people to look for a scapegoat upon whom to thrust their fears and anxieties. In many parts of Europe and North America, fear of Islam goes hand in hand with larger concerns over immigration and the increasingly borderless, increasingly heterogeneous world in which we live.

  It is also true that, a decade after the start of the so-called war on terror, a sense of war weariness has descended upon the United States and its Western allies. Now that the patriotic fervor with which the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq were launched has dissipated and the architect of the 9/11 attacks—Osama bin Laden—killed, many are wondering what exactly has been achieved with the trillions of dollars spent and the thousands of lives lost fighting the so-called “war on terror.” At the same time, a spate of “homegrown” terror attacks in Europe and North America has created a heightened sense of concern, even in the United States, where the economically prosperous, socially integrated, and upwardly mobile Muslim community is no longer thought to be immune to the kind of militant ideology that has found a foothold among some young Muslims in Europe.

  But while these are all important determinants in explaining the tide of anti-Muslim sentiment that has washed over Europe and North America in recent years, there is another, more fundamental factor that must be addressed. It involves a 2010 poll showing that nearly a quarter of Americans continue to believe that President Barack Obama is himself a Muslim, a 10 percent jump from a similar survey taken in 2008. Among registered Republicans, the number is nearly 40 percent; among self-described Tea Party members, it is upward of 60 percent. In fact, polls consistently show that the more one disagrees with President Obama’s policies on, say, healthcare or financial regulation, the more likely one is to consider him a Muslim.

  Simply put, Islam in the United States has become otherized. It has become a receptacle into which can be tossed all the angst and apprehension people feel about the faltering economy, about the new and unfamiliar political order, about the shifting cultural, racial, and religious landscapes that have fundamentally altered the world. Across Europe and North America, whatever is fearful, whatever is foreign, whatever is alien and unsafe is being tagged with the label “Islam.”

  This is not an unexpected development, certainly not in the United States. Indeed, everything that is currently being said about America’s diverse Muslim population—that they are foreign and exotic and un-American—was said about Catholic and Jewish immigrants nearly a century ago. Neither is the otherizing of Islam a new phenomenon in the Western world. On the contrary, from the Crusades to the clash of civilizations, Islam has always played a significant role as the West’s quintessential other. Still, it is dispiriting to note that even in a country founded on the principle of religious freedom, a large swath of the population firmly believes that such freedoms do not apply to Muslims, that Muslims are somehow different.

  When I published No god but God in 2005, my aim was to challenge this assumption. I wanted to demonstrate that there is nothing exceptional or extraordinary about Islam, that the same historical, cultural, and geographic considerations that have influenced the development of every religion in every part of the world have similarly influenced the development of Islam, transforming it into one of the most eclectic, most diverse faiths in the history of religions. And while that message is as important today as it was back then—perhaps even more so—we must recognize that greater knowledge about Islam is not enough to alter people’s perceptions of Muslims. Minds are not changed merely through acquiring data or information (if that were the case it would take no effort to convince Americans that Obama is, in fact, a Christian). Rather, it is solely through the slow and steady building of personal relationships that one discovers the fundamental truth that all people everywhere have the same dreams and aspirations, that all people struggle with the same fears and anxieties.

  Of course, such a process takes time. It may take another generation or so for this era of anti-Muslim frenzy to be looked back upon with the same shame and derision with which the current generation views the anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish hysterics of the past. But that day will no doubt come. Perhaps then we will recognize the intimate connections that bind us all together beyond any cultural, ethnic, or religious affiliations.

  Inshallah. God willing.

  Prologue

  THE CLASH OF MONOTHEISMS

  MIDNIGHT, AND FIVE hours to Marrakech. I have always had trouble sleeping on trains. There is something about the unrelenting rhythm and hum of the wheels as they roll over the tracks that always keeps me awake. It is like a distant melody that’s too loud to ignore. Not even the darkness that inundates the compartments at night seems to help. It is worse at night, when the stars are the only lights visible in the vast, muted desert whizzing by my window.

  This is an unfortunate quirk, because the best way to travel by train through Morocco is asleep. The trains are flooded with illegal faux guides, who shift from cabin to cabin searching for tourists with whom to share their recommendations for the best restaurants, the cheapest hotels, the cleanest women. The faux guides in Morocco speak half a dozen languages, which makes them difficult to ignore. Usually, my olive skin, thick brows, and black hair keep them at bay. But the only way to avoid them completely is to be asleep, so that they have no choice but to move on to the next beleaguered traveler.

  That is precisely what I thought was taking place in the compartment next to mine when I heard raised voices. It was an argument between what I assumed was a faux guide and a reluctant tourist. I could hear an inexorable cackle of Arabic spoken too quickly for me to understand, interrupted by the occasional piqued responses of an American.

  I had witnessed this type of exchange before: in grands-taxis, at the bazaar, too often on the trains. In my few months in Morocco, I’d become accustomed to the abrupt fury of the locals, which can burst into a conversation like a clap of thunder, then—as you brace for the storm—dissolve just as quickly into a grumble and a friendly pat on the back.

  The voices next door grew louder, and now I thought I grasped the matter. It wasn’t a faux guide at all. Someone was being chastised. It was difficult to tell, but I recognized the garbled Berber dialect the authorities sometimes use when they want to intimidate foreigners. The American kept saying “Wait a minute,” then, “Parlez-vous anglais? Parlez-vous français?” The Moroccan, I could tell, was demanding their passports.

  Curious, I stood and stepped quietly over the knees of the snoring businessman slumped next to me. I slid open the door just enough to squeeze through and walked into the corridor. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I glimpsed the familiar red-and-black conductor’s uniform flashing across the glass door of the adjoining compartment. I knocked lightly and entered without waiting for a response.

  “Salaam alay-kum,” I said. Peace be with you.

  The conductor halted his diatribe and turned to me with the customary “Walay-kum salaam.” And to you, peace. His face was flushed and his eyes red, though not, it seemed, from anger. His uncombed hair and the heavy creases in his uniform indicated he had only just awakened. There was an indolent quality to his speech that made him difficult to understand. He was emboldened by my presence.

  “Dear sir,” he said in clear and comprehensible Arabic, “this is not a nightclub. There are children here. This is not a nightclub.”

  I had no idea what he meant.

  The American gripped my shoulders and turned me toward him. “Will you please tell this man we were sleeping?” He was young and remarkably tall, with large green eyes and a shock of blond hair that hung down over his face and that he kept combing back with his fingers. “We were only sleeping,” he repeated, mouthing the words as though I were reading his lips. “Comprendez-vous?”

  I turned back to the conductor and translated: “He says he was sleeping.”

  The conductor was livid and, in his excitement, dropped once more into an incomprehensible Berber dialect. He began gesticulating wildly, his movements m
eant to indicate his sincerity. I was to understand that he would not be in such a fit over a sleeping couple. He had children, he kept saying. He was a father; he was a Muslim. There was more, but I stopped listening. My attention had fallen completely on the other person in the cabin.

  She was sitting directly behind the man, purposely obscured by him: legs crossed casually, hands folded on her lap. Her hair was disheveled and her cheeks radiated heat. She wasn’t looking directly at us, but rather observing the scene through the bowed reflection we cast on the window.

  “Did you tell him we were sleeping?” the American asked me.

  “I don’t think he believes you,” I replied.

  Though taken aback by my English, he was too shocked by the accusation to pursue it. “He doesn’t believe me? Great. What’s he going to do, stone us to death?”

  “Malcolm!” the woman cried out, louder than it seemed she’d meant to. She reached up and pulled him down next to her.

  “Fine,” Malcolm said with a sigh. “Just ask him how much he wants to go away.” He fumbled in his shirt pockets and took out a wad of tattered multicolored bills. Before he could fan them out, I stepped in front of him and put my arms out to the conductor.

  “The American says he is sorry,” I said. “He is very, very sorry.”

  Taking the conductor’s arm, I led him gently to the door, but he would not accept the apology. He again demanded their passports. I pretended not to understand. It all seemed a bit histrionic to me. Perhaps he had caught the couple acting inappropriately, but that would have warranted little more than a sharp rebuke. They were young; they were foreigners; they did not understand the complexities of social decorum in the Muslim world. Surely the conductor understood that. And yet he seemed genuinely disturbed and personally offended by this seemingly inoffensive couple. Again he insisted he was a father and a Muslim and a virtuous man. I agreed, and promised I would stay with the couple until we reached Marrakech.