Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Aslan's Islam: Kinder, Gentler, and Trickier

“No god but God” offers a sweeping, interpretive view of both the history and future of Islam. The book weaves rapidly from past to present and back again—from the cultural and religious background of pre-Islamic Arabia to the swelling currents of revolt that toppled the Shah and ushered in the age of theocracy in Iran. Aslan’s adroit writing style aside, the scorching pace and chronological zigzags make the reader feel like being caught in a time warp.

Positively, Aslan rejects the violent and misogynistic tendencies historically promulgated by many interpretive schools of Islam. He argues that Islam is marching forward and is now at the point of bridging a spiritual and intellectual divide in an evolutionary process that he asserts has strong parallels to the Protestant Reformation. While the differences between the Protestant Reformation and Aslan’s hoped-for reinvigoration of Islam are vast, the aspiration of peaceful progress is laudable enough.

Aslan’s blithe vision of Islam, in lockstep with democratic values, fully maturated and adapted to the modern world, is nonetheless premised on a severely anemic historiographic approach. There is slight treatment to painful issues such as dhimma, the essentially secondary status assigned to non-Muslim communities such as Jews and Christians in Muslim lands. Astonishingly, the author describes the special taxes required of these groups as “protection money,” a notion that smacks of Mafia-like extortion, and in any case completely ignores the hadith (traditions ascribed to Muhammad) in Sahih Muslim, Sahih Bukhari, and other Muslim commentators that contain openly derogatory references to non-Muslim groups and incitements to oppress and humiliate them. Aslan’s new vision of Islam may reject such widespread, systemic injustice. But his failure to address the indelicate historical realities leaves him open to the charge of trying to repaint the mural of history.

At times, the historical arguments reach the level of the ridiculous. Following a gratuitous note on Muhammad’s active libido, the prophet of Islam’s polygamy is temporalized and excused because as “Shaykh of the Ummah” (the new Muslim community in Medina) it was his “responsibility” to help hold the community together by the political expedient of multiple marriage. The Quran (33:50), however, reveals a different motivation. Muhammad could marry as “many” as he “desired”, cousins on his father’s side, mother’s side, “believing” women, and women whom he had attained as prisoners of war. If Muhammad’s many marriages were altruistic in nature, how could marrying slave girl prisoners benefit the community?

Aslan’s own smug Islamo-centric perspective seems to be lost on him. He parrots criticism in the popular press by condemning the “bigotry” of Christian preachers and pundits, some of whom have legitimate and not uncharitable concerns about the religious violence sanctioned by much (but not all) of Islamic jurisprudence and clergy. And in his opening pages, he caricatures a young missionary couple aiming to share the good news of Jesus Christ with Muslims.

Yet it is precisely this freedom to express unpopular political and religious viewpoints that is suppressed—sometimes violently—in most predominantly Muslim countries. Cast the blame where you will—supposedly misconstruing the concept of jihad, deviant Islamic jurists and commentators, sinister ayatollahs, or Western imperialism. But when the ethos of intolerance is so deeply embedded in the fabric of society, how are we to believe change can be realized? What are the mechanisms that will make renewal and adaptation possible? These are the real questions a book like “No god but God” raises. But Aslan flatly fails to give us answers.

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