No, Christianity and Islam are not two paths to the same God. . His strategy is to document the history of Islam, describe inner tensions within that historical context, and relate the resulting picture to current conditions, in a manner that is neither reckless nor misleading. His books include No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam (published 2005) and How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization and the End of the War on Terror (published 2009). Islam is no different than Judaism or Christianity in being human responses to the religious imperative. It was fascinating to see the overlap between Islam and Judaism. He envisions a courtyard roofed in palm leaves, with living quarters made of wood and mud lining the walls. vocabulary. Author of No god but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam to speak on campus, God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror, No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, George Gurdjieff: the remembrance of the true self. . Offers quick summary / overview and other basic information submitted by Wikipedia contributors who considers themselves "experts" in the topic at hand. He came upon a small federation of villages and an oasis where he wished to settle, a region called Yathrib. The argument that the Shariah derives its divine nature from its first and primary source, the Quran, falls flat when one recognizes that the Quran, unlike the Torah, is not a book of laws. I have extremely mixed feelings about this book. . (with Bonus Content) A Former Muslim Investigates the Evidence for Islam and Christianity Author: Nabeel Qureshi Publisher: Zondervan ISBN: Category: Religion Page: 319 View: 182 DOWNLOAD NOW BONUS: This eBook includes downloadable videos and a Q&A with Nabeel Qureshi that are not found in the print edition. Whether man made or heavenly sent, timeless or bound to a specific era, there's a thing or two about Islam that one can learn to appreciate. . . Why, then, should we be alarmed? Aslan is an excellent writer, and the book isn't too academic, but his command of Arabic and, at the same time, comprehensive familiarity with not one but at least three or four different English translations of the Quran (and the misunderstandings that result therefrom) makes this well worth reading. I just wanted to remind you of a statement that represents the thinking here at ASH (Abrahamic Study Hall): Alone we can do so little, yet together we can do much. What are we, especially those of us who are traditional Christian believers, to make of this, or of the rest of Aslans book? Not that I totally trusted Aslan's account. We are informed the Prophet was "indecisive", an "empty vessel", a "hooked nose" Arab, that the Quran *was dictated by* its environment, that the 5 daily prayers are apocryphal, and for that matter the entire hadith corpus should be thrown out the window, etc. Belief in the existence of God (or gods) is definitional of theism and characteristic of many (though not all) religious traditions. Resources for Greater Impact: During a period of exile, Muhammad gathered supporters and received additional revelations, summed up in the shahadah: There is no god but God, and Muhammad is Gods messenger.. If the husband died, his wife would inherit a portion of his property; if he divorced her, the entire dowry was hers to take back to her family. But the cleansing is inevitable, and the tide of reform cannot be stopped. He wrote about this journey in the New York Times bestselling book Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus. This in my language is stafil, said the Greek. Third, Aslans account of the origin and development of Islam follows a dubious principle of secular historical practice. One wonders what was in those variant editions of the Quran that were burnt. certainly are nothing but names, images and forms. Muhammad married an older woman, Khadija, a wealthy and respected businesswoman. One could argue that the clash of monotheisms is the inevitable result of monotheism itself. A two-page chronology marks key events from the birth of the Prophet Muhammad in 570 up to Al-Qaeda's attack on New York and Washington in 2001 (pp. No! Nabeel Qureshi seeks to remedy this dilemma in his latest book, No God but One: Allah or Jesus. This led to a series of increasingly violent clashes between Muhammad and his entourage and the Quraysh. I am not certain how useful the comparison is for Aslan today, especially with his desire for an Islamically informed, indigenous democracy. I adored Zealot and was charmed by Aslans ability to present a complicated history and an important mythology with clarity and precision. I want to write two reviews for this book. It took many years of violence and devastation to cleanse the Hijaz of its false idols. It will take many more to cleanse Islam of its new false idolsbigotry and fanaticismworshipped by those who have replaced Muhammeds original vision of tolerance and unity with their own ideals of hatred and discord. Brenna Clarke Gray, . Is he a supernaturalist? Get help and learn more about the design. A very good, eye-opening, mind-blowing read on the foundation and development of Islam as a religion, movement, identify, community, or in short, the. In No god but God, internationally acclaimed scholar Reza Aslan explains Islamthe origins and evolution of the faithin all its beauty and complexity. The sporadic revelations that came to Muhammad were recounted orally, addressing injustices in Arabian society, such as the distribution of wealth among the Quraysh. prophet/messenger. A religious state of Islamic orientation also most likely would be rife with internal struggles, since there has never been a successful attempt to establish a monolithic interpretation of the meaning and significance of Islamic beliefs and practices (265). If you decide to subscribe to our newsletter, it will be a way to stay in touch, without being bothered by frequent emails. By his own admission, Muhammads message was an attempt to reform the existing religious beliefs and cultural practices of pre-Islamic Arabia so as to bring the God of the Jews and Christians to the Arab peoples., A Persian, a Turk, an Arab, and a Greek were traveling to a distant land when they began arguing over how to spend the single coin they possessed among themselves. Muhammad also forbade a husband to touch his wifes dowry, forcing him instead to provide for his family from his own wealth. (266). The narrative begins in seventh-century Arabia, where the Prophet Muhammad set out to create a society based on social egalitarianism and equality of the sexes. The Islamic Reformation is already here. (Ephesians 2:4-6 RSV) Howeverand this is the most important aspect of the parablethe linguist can offer the travelers only the grapes and nothing more. You will have a direct line to ASH, for any questions you have: you will only be one email away from ASH. But returning home after one of his painfully violent revelatory experiences, or after suffering another indignity from the Qurayshhis head covered in dirt, his tunic defiled with bloodand not having Khadija there to wrap him in her cloak and hold him in her arms until the terror subsided must have been an unimaginable sorrow for the Prophet., Yet lost in the debate about Americas true intentions in the Middle East was the fact that large majorities in every Muslim-majority state surveyed told pollsters they wanted to see their countries move toward greater democracy. R. Douglas Geivet, PhD, is professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, California. And they believe that in this very place Abraham was on the point of sacrificing Ishmael, before being stopped by the promise that he too, like his brother Isaac, would beget a great nation, whose descendants now roam the sandy valley of Mecca like a whirlwind in the desert., Religion, it must be understood, is not faith. A fascinating, accessible introduction to Islam from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Zealot and host of Believer FINALIST FOR THE GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD In No god but God, internationally acclaimed scholar Reza Aslan explains Islamthe origins and evolution of the faithin all its beauty and complexity. But it was never meant to function as a legal code, which is precisely why scholars had to rely so heavily on extra-Quranic sources like ijma (consensus), qiyas (analogy), istislah (which refers to the common good of the people), and ijtihad (independent juristic reasoning)all of them, by definition, reliant on human judgment and historical contextin order to construct the Shariah in the first place. They present radically different views of God and salvation and only one can be true. I also thought it shameful the glancing way he wrote about Sept. 11. Counter it with cruelty, and it gains adherents. The atom, the sun, the galaxies and the universe, . Chapter 7, In the Footsteps of Martyrs: From Shiism to Khomeinism, brings this sectarianism up-to-date. Or: at the end of the show Orel turns out okay somehow and still has his faith despite everything. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016. Islamic Modernists like the Egyptian writer and political philosopher Ali Abd ar-Raziq (d. 1966) pointed to Muhammads community in Medina as proof that Islam advocated the separation of religious and temporal power, while Muslim extremists in Afghanistan and Iran have used the same community to fashion various models of Islamic theocracy. BlogCritics reviews use emotional language to describe the feel and content of the book, relying on colorful language and an informal tone. Are they now going to inherit just like men who have worked to earn that money? Muhammads response to these complaints was both unsympathetic and shockingly unyielding. According to Aslan, Islam is experiencing an internal struggle between individualistic reform and traditional clerical authority similar to what took place during the 16th century Reformation in Christianity. Myth typically includes miracles, and heroic portrayals of people involved. Fifth, there is an eerily sanctimonious thread in the final chapter that may be grounds for concern. My impression is that he is a sincere monotheist who believes that Islam is greatly in need of reform, that this reform requires reinterpretation of Islams history and sources of authority (the Quran and sharia law), that reinterpretation along these lines is nevertheless faithful to Muhammads original vision, which included, most fundamentally, a commitment to social egalitarianism, and that being a Muslim is more a matter of ethnic orientation and cultural conditioning than it is of maintaining allegiance to a particular creed, beyond the shahadah. It concludes with enthusiastic expression of hope for reform in the direction of a democratic Islamic culture, but Aslan offers little reason to believe that this is the likely outcome, to say nothing of its inevitability. His prognostication and current realities are utterly discordant. 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