Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 7, No. 2, 2008, Page 47
Hirsi Ali‘s position stems from her privately letting go of the fear that she says Muslim
culture imbedded in her as a child—fear of losing salvation over disobedience to the god of a
culture that does not listen to the pleas of abused women. In contrast, she views the
advances in civil rights and democracy as products of the liberal Western education that she
came to appreciate. Her chapter title, ―Let us have a Voltaire,‖ is telling. She argues that
history proves her point. In their early centuries, ―the Muslims created a multiethnic,
multiracial culture, and universal world civilization. Yet today, compared with the Christian
West, the Muslim world has become poor, weak, fractious, and ignorant‖ (page 50).
Reza Aslan takes a more sympathetic route to finding within Islam the essential teachings
necessary for reform, and for avoiding the dangerous misinterpretations of holy writ used by
aberrant clerics who influence terrorists. If you choose just one book of the three books to
grasp both the history and beauty of Islamic tradition while seeking to reconcile its value in
a modern context, I would recommend that you read No god but God by Reza Aslan.
The author was born in 1972 in Tehran and is a Muslim believer and an internationally
acclaimed scholar of religions. Aslan is an assistant professor at the University of California
at Riverside. He continues to appear on television news programs as an expert
commentator on Islam. In his book, Aslan recounts the controversial facts that brought the
Quran into being and describes the formation of subsequent Muslim cultures that appeared
during reformations. He recounts how the Prophet truly thought he might be losing his mind
when he first experienced the vision to produce the Quran. Muhammad did not trust the
powers of seers, yet he came to accept that Allah called him to be a special prophet. We can
say ―the rest is history,‖ but it takes a gifted and sensitive historian to bring those events
into focus for modern times. Reza Aslan has done that very well in No god but God.
Aslan explains the difficulties of an ongoing Islamic reformation as traditionalists struggle to
meet modern needs, and lapsed, modernized Muslims return to their family faith with novel
interpretations in ―garage mosques‖ worldwide: ―Reformations, as we know from Christian
history, are bloody events. And though the end is near, the Islamic reformation has some
way to go before it is resolved‖ (page xvii). He writes eloquently about the history and
splintering of Islam while carefully defining words and concepts often misunderstood in the
West. He includes a glossary in the back of dozens of significant terms. For example, Imam
in Shi‘ism is the divinely inspired leader of the community. The role of the Imam in a Shi‘ite
sect is embodied in the Biblical Adam as the first Imam on Earth. The Prophet‘s role was ―to
transmit‖ while the Imam ―translates.‖
We learn from No god but God that after Muhammad established his religion and passed on,
the ―Companions,‖ or those with direct knowledge of the Prophet‘s life and teachings,
created a body of oral anecdotes, or hadith. These anecdotes became a basis for much of
the developing Islamic law however, because of muddled memories and insufficient
regulation, authentication of hadith became almost impossible:
By the ninth century, when Islamic law was being fashioned, there were so
many false hadith circulating through the community that Muslim legal
scholars somewhat whimsically classified them into two categories: lies told
for material gain and lies told for ideological advantage. (page 68)
Aslan points out other difficulties Muslim scholars and clerics face. Islam is not a centralized
religion—it has no Vatican or single governing body to produce a catechism of consistent
teachings. Arabic, the language of the holy Quran, lends itself to various interpretations. For
example, Aslan considers verse 4:34 in two differing translations, Ahmed Ali‘s and Majid
Fakhry‘s. The final word in the verse we can render ―beat them‖ or, equally, ―turn away
from them,‖ ―go along with them,‖ or ―have consensual sex with them.‖ The implications for
treatment of women are profound. ―If one views the Quran as empowering women, then
Ali‘s if one looks to the Quran to justify violence against women, then Fakhry‘s‖ (page 70).
Hirsi Ali‘s position stems from her privately letting go of the fear that she says Muslim
culture imbedded in her as a child—fear of losing salvation over disobedience to the god of a
culture that does not listen to the pleas of abused women. In contrast, she views the
advances in civil rights and democracy as products of the liberal Western education that she
came to appreciate. Her chapter title, ―Let us have a Voltaire,‖ is telling. She argues that
history proves her point. In their early centuries, ―the Muslims created a multiethnic,
multiracial culture, and universal world civilization. Yet today, compared with the Christian
West, the Muslim world has become poor, weak, fractious, and ignorant‖ (page 50).
Reza Aslan takes a more sympathetic route to finding within Islam the essential teachings
necessary for reform, and for avoiding the dangerous misinterpretations of holy writ used by
aberrant clerics who influence terrorists. If you choose just one book of the three books to
grasp both the history and beauty of Islamic tradition while seeking to reconcile its value in
a modern context, I would recommend that you read No god but God by Reza Aslan.
The author was born in 1972 in Tehran and is a Muslim believer and an internationally
acclaimed scholar of religions. Aslan is an assistant professor at the University of California
at Riverside. He continues to appear on television news programs as an expert
commentator on Islam. In his book, Aslan recounts the controversial facts that brought the
Quran into being and describes the formation of subsequent Muslim cultures that appeared
during reformations. He recounts how the Prophet truly thought he might be losing his mind
when he first experienced the vision to produce the Quran. Muhammad did not trust the
powers of seers, yet he came to accept that Allah called him to be a special prophet. We can
say ―the rest is history,‖ but it takes a gifted and sensitive historian to bring those events
into focus for modern times. Reza Aslan has done that very well in No god but God.
Aslan explains the difficulties of an ongoing Islamic reformation as traditionalists struggle to
meet modern needs, and lapsed, modernized Muslims return to their family faith with novel
interpretations in ―garage mosques‖ worldwide: ―Reformations, as we know from Christian
history, are bloody events. And though the end is near, the Islamic reformation has some
way to go before it is resolved‖ (page xvii). He writes eloquently about the history and
splintering of Islam while carefully defining words and concepts often misunderstood in the
West. He includes a glossary in the back of dozens of significant terms. For example, Imam
in Shi‘ism is the divinely inspired leader of the community. The role of the Imam in a Shi‘ite
sect is embodied in the Biblical Adam as the first Imam on Earth. The Prophet‘s role was ―to
transmit‖ while the Imam ―translates.‖
We learn from No god but God that after Muhammad established his religion and passed on,
the ―Companions,‖ or those with direct knowledge of the Prophet‘s life and teachings,
created a body of oral anecdotes, or hadith. These anecdotes became a basis for much of
the developing Islamic law however, because of muddled memories and insufficient
regulation, authentication of hadith became almost impossible:
By the ninth century, when Islamic law was being fashioned, there were so
many false hadith circulating through the community that Muslim legal
scholars somewhat whimsically classified them into two categories: lies told
for material gain and lies told for ideological advantage. (page 68)
Aslan points out other difficulties Muslim scholars and clerics face. Islam is not a centralized
religion—it has no Vatican or single governing body to produce a catechism of consistent
teachings. Arabic, the language of the holy Quran, lends itself to various interpretations. For
example, Aslan considers verse 4:34 in two differing translations, Ahmed Ali‘s and Majid
Fakhry‘s. The final word in the verse we can render ―beat them‖ or, equally, ―turn away
from them,‖ ―go along with them,‖ or ―have consensual sex with them.‖ The implications for
treatment of women are profound. ―If one views the Quran as empowering women, then
Ali‘s if one looks to the Quran to justify violence against women, then Fakhry‘s‖ (page 70).
