No god But God, by Reza Aslan. ISBN 1400062136. Are Islam and the West on a collision course, or headed toward a new era of understanding and cooperation? The brilliant young scholar Reza Aslan is one of a handful of thinkers developing a compelling—and profoundly hopeful—alternative to the widely accepted “clash of civilization” theory that pits East against West in an apocalyptic struggle. He makes the powerful and persuasive argument that the violence and extremism currently seizing the Middle East are the last gasps of small, doomed religious factions, not the beginning of a horrific future, as many have predicted. In NO GOD BUT GOD: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, Aslan explains Islam in all its complexity, beauty, and compassion. He re-emphasizes, irrefutably, that Islam has as much in common with Christianity and Judaism and bears seeds of egalitarianism and social reform at its core.This is a book both timely and timeless. In it the author explains the faith of Islam, presenting its battles and schisms as part of an ongoing evolution as it responds to the social, cultural, political, and temporal circumstances of those who are telling it. Aslan writes that what is taking place now in the Muslim world is an internal conflict between Muslims, not an external battle between Islam and the West. The West is merely a bystander—an unwary yet complicit casualty of a rivalry that is raging in Islam over who will write the next chapter in its story.
More than one billion Muslims in the world readily accept the fundamental principles of democracy – constitutionalism, government accountability, pluralism, human rights. What is not necessarily accepted is the distinctly Western notion that religion and the state should be entirely separate, that secularism must be the foundation of a democratic society. “It may be too early to know who will write the next chapter of Islam’s story, but it is not too early to recognize who will ultimately win the war between reform and counterreform.” NO GOD BUT GOD is an argument for the Islamic Reformation that is already taking place.