No God But God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam

Reza Aslan is brilliant. The book is clear, engaging, beautifully written and very readable. It's a great reference on Islam, works well as a one-stop introductory volume or as a nuanced, thought-provoking overview to combine with other texts. It's arranged in such a way that you can easily pick out chapters on particular issues, such as jihad, Islamic law, Sufism, and women. I particularly enjoyed his discussions of Muslim feminism and the 'Islamic Renaissance'. He is great at dismantling the common misconceptions in a matter-of-fact way while openly and honestly exploring some of the challenges faced by contemporary Muslim communities. This is the level of discussion that we don't see often enough in the press, and which Western societies desperately need if we are going to be able to build healthy relationships with Muslims in our own countries as well as abroad. After reading this I immediately ordered three more copies for my parents and friends.

Reza Aslan is a good writer and a good historian of religion. His 2013 book Zealot on Jesus was excellent, so I had high hopes for this 2011 book on Islam. Many hopes were indeed fulfilled: the historical timeline is clear, the known facts are in place, the conjectures are properly flagged, the context for contemporaries and believers is sketched credibly, and the final result is easy and pleasant to read. Any historian of Islam will be confronted with controversy and compelled to take sides. Aslan takes the side of the Sufis, a relatively gentle and reflective tradition in Islam with mystic leanings, which grew up in the shade of the Shia branch of the Mohammedan faith in lands that had rich and deep traditions of belief and philosophy. In doing so, he distances himself from the Sunni branch and those of its variants such as Wahhabism that have attracted Western anger in recent years. What Aslan does not do, and what diminishes his book for me, is stand back far enough from the entire tradition of veneration for the revelations of the Prophet, and their expression in the series of texts that form the Quran, to see the wood for the trees. Even today, no pious Muslim would dare regard the revelations or their canonical expression as anything but holy, but for a modern Westerner with some respect for science and rational thinking the leap of imagination required to take such affirmed holiness at face value is just too great. This reader at least is driven to taking a remote anthropological stance on the Arab and related societies of a thousand plus or minus a few hundred years ago and regarding their strange belief system as shot through with hardly less nonsense than any other ancient myth or curious narrative. Despite his Muslim roots, Aslan is a modern Western writer, so he must must see the need to keep such rational readers on board, even if in the end he parts company with them in continuing to venerate his holy relics. There may be a learning curve here, for he does a fine job in standing back from Christian or other pieties in discussing Jesus in his later book Zealot; perhaps it is easier to stand back from a faith one feels no residual need to defend or believe in. Modern societies with Christian or Muslim roots are surely robust enough to rise above superstitious awe in face of alleged revelations and the purportedly holy texts that spring from them, or at any rate we can only hope so, if we are to avoid a new clash of civilizations. Like Aslan, I have some sympathy for the Sufi thread in the story of Islam, and feel some distaste for the hardened institutional forms of the Muslim faith, which like their Christian equivalents have led to serial disasters in the societies swayed by them. Unlike him, however, I see little hope for a revival of Sufism in the Muslim world and indeed little hope of sufficient reform within Islam to accommodate it to the constraints of life in an age of global connectivity, robots, and nuclear weapons. Only a clean separation of secular life, including politics, from the inner life of religion can enable us to regulate the modern world, it seems to me, and even a revived Sufism would be of no obvious help in doing so. In summary, then, a modern history of Islam, especially one that like this volume takes us up to contemporary political issues surrounding the ongoing wars in Muslim majority societies, can only work for Western readers if it rises above a partisan perspective. As it is, Aslan seems to feel sympathy for the victim narrative that Western imperialists have cruelly exploited the Muslim world, which must therefore rise up and restore its fortunes by defeating the infidels. This cuts no ice with me, even in the context of a volume of history that otherwise deserves some praise.

Very interesting read for a non Muslim curious about the Faith. I enjoyed reading historical and cultural influence to Islam.

Having read various works on both the history of Islam, and Islam's current issues over it's own identity, this work in particular, stands out. The book has many strengths, but perhaps what stands out is the insight given into the life of Mohammad, and how he was a genuinely universal social reformer. From the early chapters, a portrait of Mohammad as a genuinely tolerant man with universal and all inclusive aspirations, is unveiled, in stark contrast to the intolerant vision of Islam such contemporaries present in the world today. The chapters about the prophets succession, and the Sunni-Shi'a divide are of particular strength, and a notable feature of Aslan's style is how he juxtaposes the work with examples from the present, or recent history. The last chapter is a work on Islam's current identity issues, and how there are many Islam's out there. For a work examining Islam's identity and current issues, it is best to read Ali A Alawi's Crisis of Islamic Civilization, however the strength of Reza Aslan's work is an overall history of Islam. The current edition has been updated and rewritten very well, and it shows that Aslan takes great care in keeping his work up to date. On the whole, this book can be recommended to both those who are familiar with Islam, or those who are just curious, as this book sheds much more light on the history that most contemporary scholarship, and is both readable, accessible, and highly informative. In short, a masterwork!

Such a great read, the author gives context and has introduced this complex and at times controversial topic with ease. Such a pleasure to read. Thank you so much.

This is a good book on the origins, evolution and future of Islam. It is well written, easy to read and a good size (~300 pages). The author analyses the history of Islam with a good deal of commentary so, of course, you will have to keep in mind his American, Iranian, liberal and Shi'i personal persuasions when reading it. The book itself covers the life of the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessing of God be upon him) in the first third, early Islamic history from the rightly guided caliphs onwards in the second third, events from the last century-and-a-half in the final third, and the author's thoughts on the faith's near future in closing. Overall, it a good book in my opinion. What it might lack in objective rigour in parts it makes up for in accessibility.

Excelente libro para conocer más sobre el islam, escrito con claridad por un autor musulmán, aunque la conclusión final sea que el islam ha utilizado la violencia desde su inicio, contra ellos y contra los demás y que sus bases fundamentales son cuestionables (por decirlo de una manera suave).

This book really helped me understand what is happening in Islam. Every muslim should read it because it's a very good start for any healty debate about Islam.

Easy to read, complete, it explains how Islam was born, how it evolved, how it was divided in several branches, and how we got to today's situation and troubles. Plus: the author comes from an Islamic background (and is a Muslim himself), so we have an "inside" vision of the matter. Well worth the purchase.

Es interesante saber él origen y evolución a través del tiempo del Islam. Un pasado caótico lleno de violencia,sangre y mal interpretación y también ver su cambio ahora con las redes sociales.

This history of Islam is written by a true story teller, which makes it very easy to read. Aslan illustrates moments in Islamic history and thus makes them come alive, for example the arrival of the prophet at Yathrib (today's Medina). The skeptic within me automatically questions the detail with which Aslan paints the picture, but the reader in me welcomes this style of writing. Aslan has chosen important moments from 1500 years of Islamic history and presents them very well. He refers to other scholars (calming the skeptic in me somewhat). He shows many strands of Islam and many instances of internal dissent or just differences in opinion and interpretation. The author's conviction that Mohammad came to bring justice to the poor and the marginalized and to create an Ummah in which people would take care of each other pervades the pages of this book. I have a background in Religious Studies and read a lot about Islam and particularly Egypt (I recommend Leila Ahmed if you want yet another perspective, great writer, great scholar), but this is the first time I have begun to understand why people in Egypt would support the Muslim brothers, something that has always evaded me before. I find this kind of understanding very helpful (and obviously that doesn't mean that I have to share their politics). Other topics that I now feel more knowledgeable about include the Sunni / Shi'a split or early Islam. Thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.