{"product_id":"no-god-but-god-isbn-9780812982442","title":"No god but God","description":"\u003cb\u003eA twentieth-anniversary edition of the fascinating, accessible introduction to Islam with a new preface and study guide, from the #1 bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eZealot\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFINALIST FOR THE \u003ci\u003eGUARDIAN\u003c\/i\u003e FIRST BOOK AWARD\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e“Wise and passionate . . . an incisive, scholarly primer in Muslim history and an engaging personal exploration.” —\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTwo decades after its original publication, \u003ci\u003eNo god but God\u003c\/i\u003e remains a landmark work in understanding Islam’s rich history and profound impact on the world. This 20th anniversary edition revisits the book that challenged the simplistic “clash of civilizations” narrative and offered a bold, nuanced portrait of a faith rooted in justice, equality, and compassion.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this modern classic, Reza Aslan traces Islam’s origins, from the revelations of Muhammad in Mecca and Medina to how the Prophet’s vision of a radically egalitarian community was shaped, challenged, and interpreted by generations of Muslims, resulting in a faith of remarkable diversity and resilience. Moving through history to the modern era, Aslan confronts the politicization of Islam, the rise of extremist ideologies, and the pervasive Islamophobia that has distorted the religion’s image, particularly in the post–9\/11 world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFully revised and with a new preface and study guide, this edition connects Aslan’s timeless insights to the profound changes shaping Islam today—from the emergence of a global digital community to the ongoing struggles between tradition and modernity\u003ci\u003e. \u003c\/i\u003eAccessible yet deeply researched,\u003ci\u003e No god but God\u003c\/i\u003e remains a vital resource for anyone seeking to understand the past, present, and future of Islam.\u003cp\u003e“Grippingly narrated and thoughtfully examined . . . a literate, accessible introduction to Islam.”\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e—The New York Times\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[Reza] Aslan offers an invaluable introduction to the forces that have shaped Islam [in this] eloquent, erudite paean to Islam in all of its complicated glory.”\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—Los Angeles Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Wise and passionate . . . an incisive, scholarly primer in Muslim history and an engaging personal exploration.”\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—The New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Acutely perceptive . . . For many troubled Muslims, this book will feel like a revelation, an opening up of knowledge too long buried.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Independent\u003c\/i\u003e (U.K.)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Thoroughly engaging and excellently written . . . While [Aslan] might claim to be a mere scholar of the Islamic Reformation, he is also one of its most articulate advocates.”\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—The Oregonian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eReza Aslan\u003c\/b\u003e is an acclaimed writer and scholar of religions whose books include \u003ci\u003eNo god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eZealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth\u003c\/i\u003e. He is also the author of \u003ci\u003eHow to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror\u003c\/i\u003e (published in paperback as \u003ci\u003eBeyond Fundamentalism\u003c\/i\u003e), as well as the editor of \u003ci\u003eTablet \u0026amp; Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East\u003c\/i\u003e. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and three sons.1. The Sanctuary in the Desert\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eArabia. The Sixth Century C.E.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIN THE ARID, desolate basin of Mecca, surrounded on all sides by the  bare mountains of the Arabian desert, stands a small, nondescript  sanctuary that the ancient Arabs refer to as the Kaaba: the Cube. The  Kaaba is a squat, roofless edifice made of unmortared stones and sunk  into a valley of sand. Its four walls--so low it is said a young goat  can leap over them--are swathed in strips of heavy cloth. At its  base, two small doors are chiseled into the gray stone, allowing  entry into the inner sanctum. It is here, inside the cramped interior  of the sanctuary, that the gods of pre-Islamic Arabia reside: Hubal,  the Syrian god of the moon; al-Uzza, the powerful goddess the  Egyptians knew as Isis and the Greeks called Aphrodite; al-Kutba, the  Nabataean god of writing and divination; Jesus, the incarnate god of  the Christians, and his holy mother, Mary.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn all, there are said to be three hundred sixty idols housed in and  around the Kaaba, representing every god recognized in the Arabian  Peninsula. During the holy months, when the desert fairs and the  great markets envelop the city of Mecca, pilgrims from all over the  Peninsula make their way to this barren land to visit their tribal  deities. They sing songs of worship and dance in front of the gods;  they make sacrifices and pray for health. Then, in a remarkable  ritual--the origins of which are a mystery--the pilgrims gather as a  group and rotate around the Kaaba seven times, some pausing to kiss  each corner of the sanctuary before being captured and swept away  again by the current of bodies.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe pagan Arabs gathered around the Kaaba believe their sanctuary to  have been founded by Adam, the first man. They believe that Adam's  original edifice was destroyed by the Great Flood, then rebuilt by  Noah. They believe that after Noah, the Kaaba was forgotten for  centuries until Abraham rediscovered it while visiting his firstborn  son, Ismail, and his concubine, Hagar, both of whom had been banished  to this wilderness at the behest of Abraham's wife, Sarah. And they  believe it was at this very spot that Abraham nearly sacrificed  Ismail before being stopped by the promise that, like his younger  brother, Isaac, Ismail would also sire a great nation, the  descendants of whom now spin over the sandy Meccan valley like a  desert whirlwind.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOf course, these are just stories intended to convey what the Kaaba  means, not where it came from. The truth is that no one knows who  built the Kaaba, or how long it has been here. It is likely that the  sanctuary was not even the original reason for the sanctity of this  place. Near the Kaaba is a well called Zamzam, fed by a bountiful  underground spring, which tradition claims had been placed there to  nourish Hagar and Ismail. It requires no stretch of the imagination  to recognize how a spring situated in the middle of the desert could  become a sacred place for the wandering Bedouin tribes of Arabia. The  Kaaba itself may have been erected many years later, not as some sort  of Arab pantheon, but as a secure place to store the consecrated  objects used in the rituals that had evolved around Zamzam. Indeed,  the earliest traditions concerning the Kaaba claim that inside its  walls was a pit, dug into the sand, which contained \"treasures\"  magically guarded by a snake.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt is also possible that the original sanctuary held some  cosmological significance for the ancient Arabs. Not only were many  of the idols in the Kaaba associated with the planets and stars, but  the legend that they totaled three hundred sixty in number suggests  astral connotations. The seven circumambulations of the Kaaba--called  tawaf in Arabic and still the primary ritual of the annual Hajj  pilgrimage--may have been intended to mimic the motion of the  heavenly bodies. It was, after all, a common belief among ancient  peoples that their temples and sanctuaries were terrestrial replicas  of the cosmic mountain from which creation sprang. The Kaaba, like  the Pyramids in Egypt or the Temple in Jerusalem, may have been  constructed as an axis mundi, sometimes called a \"navel spot\": a  sacred space around which the universe revolves, the link between the  earth and the solid dome of heaven. That would explain why there was  once a nail driven into the floor of the Kaaba that the ancient Arabs  referred to as \"the navel of the world.\" As G. R. Hawting has shown,  the ancient pilgrims would sometimes enter the sanctuary, tear off  their clothes, and place their own navels over the nail, thereby  merging with the cosmos.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlas, as with so many things about the Kaaba, its origins are mere  speculation. The only thing scholars can say with any certainty is  that by the sixth century C.E., this small sanctuary made of mud and  stone had become the center of religious life in pre-Islamic Arabia:  that intriguing yet ill-defined era of paganism that Muslims refer to  as the Jahiliyyah--\"the Time of Ignorance.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e TRADITIONALLY, THE JAHILIYYAH has been defined by Muslims as an era  of moral depravity and religious discord: a time when the sons of  Ismail had obscured belief in the one true God and plunged the  Arabian Peninsula into the darkness of idolatry. But then, like the  rising of the dawn, the Prophet Muhammad emerged in Mecca at the  beginning of the seventh century, preaching a message of absolute  monotheism and uncompromising morality. Through the miraculous  revelations he received from God, Muhammad put an end to the paganism  of the Arabs and replaced the \"Time of Ignorance\" with the universal  religion of Islam.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn actuality, the religious experience of the pre-Islamic Arabs was  far more complex than this tradition suggests. It is true that before  the rise of Islam the Arabian Peninsula was dominated by paganism.  But, like \"Hinduism,\" \"paganism\" is a meaningless and somewhat  derogatory catchall term created by those outside the tradition to  categorize what is in reality an almost unlimited variety of beliefs  and practices. The word paganus means \"a rustic villager\" or \"a  boor,\" and was originally used by Christians as a term of abuse to  describe those who followed any religion but theirs. In some ways,  this is an appropriate designation. Unlike Christianity, paganism is  not so much a unified system of beliefs and practices as it is a  religious perspective, one that is receptive to a multitude of  influences and interpretations. Often, though not always,  polytheistic, paganism strives for neither universalism nor moral  absolutism. There is no such thing as a pagan creed or a pagan canon.  Nothing exists that could properly be termed \"pagan orthodoxy\" or  \"pagan heterodoxy.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat is more, when referring to the paganism of the pre-Islamic  Arabs, it is important to make a distinction between the nomadic  Bedouin religious experience and the experience of those sedentary  tribes that had settled in major population centers like Mecca.  Bedouin paganism in sixth-century Arabia may have encompassed a range  of beliefs and practices--from fetishism to totemism to manism  (ancestor cults)--but it was not as concerned with the more  metaphysical questions that were cultivated in the larger sedentary  societies of Arabia, particularly with regard to issues like the  afterlife. This is not to say that the Bedouin practiced nothing more  than a primitive idolatry. On the contrary, there is every reason to  believe that the Bedouin of pre-Islamic Arabia enjoyed a rich and  diverse religious tradition. However, the nomadic lifestyle is one  that requires a religion to address immediate concerns: Which god can  lead us to water? Which god can heal our illnesses?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn contrast, paganism among the sedentary societies of Arabia had  developed from its earlier and simpler manifestations into a complex  form of neo-animism, providing a host of divine and semi-divine  intermediaries who stood between the creator god and his creation.  This creator god was called Allah, which is not a proper name but a  contraction of the word al-ilah, meaning simply \"the god.\" Like his  Greek counterpart, Zeus, Allah was originally an ancient rain\/sky  deity who had been elevated into the role of the supreme god of the  pre-Islamic Arabs. Though a powerful deity to swear by, Allah's  eminent status in the Arab pantheon rendered him, like most High  Gods, beyond the supplications of ordinary people. Only in times of  great peril would anyone bother consulting him. Otherwise, it was far  more expedient to turn to the lesser, more accessible gods who acted  as Allah's intercessors, the most powerful of whom were his three  daughters, Allat (\"the goddess\"), al-Uzza (\"the mighty\"), and Manat  (the goddess of fate, whose name is probably derived from the Hebrew  word mana, meaning \"portion\" or \"share\"). These divine mediators were  not only represented in the Kaaba, they had their own individual  shrines throughout the Arabian Peninsula: Allat in the city of Ta'if;\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eal-Uzza in Nakhlah; and Manat in Qudayd. It was to them that the  Arabs prayed when they needed rain, when their children were ill,  when they entered into battle or embarked on a journey deep into the  treacherous desert abodes of the Jinn--those intelligent,  imperceptible, and salvable beings made of smokeless flame who are  called \"genies\" in the West and who function as the nymphs and  fairies of Arabian mythology.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere were no priests and no pagan scriptures in pre-Islamic Arabia,  but that does not mean the gods remained silent. They regularly  revealed themselves through the ecstatic utterances of a group of  cultic officials known as the Kahins. The Kahins were poets who  functioned primarily as soothsayers and who, for a fee, would fall  into a trance in which they would reveal divine messages through  rhyming couplets. Poets already had an important role in pre-Islamic  society as bards, tribal historians, social commentators, dispensers  of moral philosophy, and, on occasion, administrators of justice. But  the Kahins represented a more spiritual function of the poet.  Emerging from every social and economic stratum, and including a  number of women, the Kahins interpreted dreams, cleared up crimes,  found lost animals, settled disputes, and expounded upon ethics. As  with their Pythian counterparts at Delphi, however, the Kahins'  oracles were vague and deliberately imprecise; it was the  supplicant's responsibility to figure out what the gods actually  meant.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlthough considered the link between humanity and the divine, the  Kahins did not communicate directly with the gods but rather accessed  them through the Jinn and other spirits who were such an integral  part of the Jahiliyyah religious experience. Even so, neither the  Kahins, nor anyone else for that matter, had access to Allah. In  fact, the god who had created the heavens and the earth, who had  fashioned human beings in his own image, was the only god in the  whole of the Hijaz not represented by an idol in the Kaaba. Although  called \"the King of the Gods\" and \"the Lord of the House,\" Allah was  not the central deity in the Kaaba. That honor belonged to Hubal, the  Syrian god who had been brought to Mecca centuries before the rise of  Islam.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDespite Allah's minimal role in the religious cult of pre-Islamic  Arabia, his eminent position in the Arab pantheon is a clear  indication of just how far paganism in the Arabian Peninsula had  evolved from its simple animistic roots. Perhaps the most striking  example of this development can be seen in the processional chant  that tradition claims the pilgrims sang as they approached the Kaaba:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHere I am, O Allah, here I am.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou have no partner,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eExcept such a partner as you have.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou possess him and all that is his.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis remarkable proclamation, with its obvious resemblance to the  Muslim profession of faith--\"There is no god but God\"--may reveal the  earliest traces in pre-Islamic Arabia of what the German philologist  Max Muller termed henotheism: the belief in a single High God,  without necessarily rejecting the existence of other, subordinate  gods. The earliest evidence of henotheism in Arabia can be traced  back to a tribe called the Amir, who lived near modern-day Yemen in  the second century B.C.E., and who worshipped a High God they called  dhu-Samawi, \"The Lord of the Heavens.\" While the details of the  Amirs' religion have been lost to history, most scholars are  convinced that by the sixth century C.E., henotheism had become the  standard belief of the vast majority of sedentary Arabs, who not only  accepted Allah as their High God, but insisted that he was the same  god as Yahweh, the god of the Jews.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Jewish presence in the Arabian Peninsula can, in theory, be  traced to the Babylonian Exile a thousand years earlier, though  subsequent migrations may have taken place in 70 C.E., after Rome's  sacking of the Temple in Jerusalem, and again in 132 C.E., after the  messianic uprising of Simon Bar Kochba. For the most part, the Jews  were a thriving and highly influential diaspora whose culture and  traditions had been thoroughly integrated into the social and  religious milieu of pre-Islamic Arabia. Whether Arab converts or  immigrants from Palestine, the Jews participated in every level of  Arab society. According to Gordon Newby, throughout the Peninsula  there were Jewish merchants, Jewish Bedouin, Jewish farmers, Jewish  poets, and Jewish warriors. Jewish men took Arab names and Jewish  women wore Arab headdresses. And while some of these Jews may have  spoken Aramaic (or at least a corrupted version of it), their primary  language was Arabic.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlthough in contact with major Jewish centers throughout the Near  East, Judaism in Arabia had developed its own variations on  traditional Jewish beliefs and practices. The Jews shared many of the  same religious ideals as their pagan Arab counterparts, especially  with regard to what is sometimes referred to as \"popular religion\":  belief in magic, the use of talismans and divination, and the like.  For example, while there is evidence of a small yet formal rabbinical  presence in some regions of the Arabian Peninsula, there also existed  a group of Jewish soothsayers called the Kohens who, while  maintaining a far more priestly function in their communities,  nevertheless resembled the pagan Kahins in that they too dealt in  divinely inspired oracles.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe relationship between the Jews and pagan Arabs was symbiotic in  that not only were the Jews heavily Arabized, but the Arabs were also  significantly influenced by Jewish beliefs and practices. One need  look no further for evidence of this influence than to the Kaaba  itself, whose origin myths indicate that it was a Semitic sanctuary  (haram in Arabic) with its roots dug deeply in Jewish tradition.  Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Aaron were all in one way or another  associated with the Kaaba long before the rise of Islam, and the  mysterious Black Stone that to this day is fixed to the southeast  corner of the sanctuary seems to have been originally associated with  the same stone upon which Jacob rested his head during his famous  dream of the ladder.#1 New York Times bestselling author of Zealot","brand":"Random House Trade Paperbacks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303807701221,"sku":"NP9780812982442","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780812982442.jpg?v=1767733794","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/no-god-but-god-isbn-9780812982442","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}