No God But God

by Reza Aslan

  The best translations of Rumi include Colman Barks, The Essential Rumi (1995), and the two-volume Mystical Poems of Rumi translated by A. J. Arberry (1968); see also Reynold Nicholson’s Rumi: Poet and Mystic (1950). For more on Rumi’s life see Annemarie Schimmel, I Am Wind, You Are Fire: The Life and Works of Rumi (1992). For Hafiz see Nahid Angha, Selections (1991) and Ecstasy (1998). General treatises on Sufi poetry include Ali Asani and Kamal Abdel-Malek, Celebrating Muhammad (1995), and J.T.P. de Bruijn, Persian Sufi Poetry (1997).

  With regard to Sufism in India I suggest Muhammad Mujeeb, Indian Muslims (1967) and Carl W. Ernst, Eternal Garden: Mysticism, History, and Politics at a South Asian Sufi Center (1992). See also Bruce Lawrence, “The Early Chisti Approach to Sama’,” in Islamic Societies and Culture: Essays in Honor of Professor Aziz Ahmad, edited by Milton Israel and N. K. Wagle (1983).

  Iqbal’s quote is from Ali Shariati’s commentary, Iqbal: Manifestations of the Islamic Spirit (1991). See also Muhammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (1960).

  9. An Awakening in the East

  Frederick Cooper’s description of the execution of the 26th Native Infantry is excerpted in Edward J. Thompson, The Other Side of the Medal (1925), though for historical context and literary enhancement I have had to add a little bit to Cooper’s account and rearrange the order of his narrative. Trevelyan’s comment to the House of Commons is quoted in Thomas R. Metcalf, The Aftermath of Revolt (1964); see also C. E. Trevelyan, On the Education of the People of India (1838). Benjamin Disraeli and Alexander Duff are both quoted in Ainslee T. Embree’s collection 1857 in India (1963). Bahadur Shah’s appeal to the Indian people is from the Azimgarh Proclamation, printed in Charles Ball, The History of the Indian Mutiny (1860). For firsthand accounts of the British response to the Indian Revolt see C. G. Griffiths, Siege of Delhi (1912), and W. H. Russell, My Indian Diary (1957). Cecil Rhodes’s description and quote are from The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed., 2001.

  For Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan’s writings and views see his The Causes of the Indian Revolt (1873), and his “Lecture on Islam,” excerpted in Christian W. Troll, Sayyid Ahmed Khan: A Reinterpretation of Muslim Theology (1978). For more on the Aligarh, see The Aligarh Movement: Basic Documents, 1864–1898, collected by Shan Muhammad (1978). Moulavi Chiragh Ali’s quote is from The Proposed Political, Legal, and Social Reforms in the Ottoman Empire and Other Mohammadan States (1883). For more on Abu-l Ala (Mawlana) Mawdudi see Nationalism and Islam (1947) and The Islamic Movement (1984).

  For texts on colonialism in Egypt, see Joel Gordon, Nasser’s Blessed Movement (1992); Juan R. I. Cole, Colonialism and Revolution in the Middle East (1993); and William Welch, No Country for a Gentleman (1988). Al-Afghani’s life and works are analyzed in Nikki R. Keddie, Sayyid Jamal al-Din “al-Afghani”: A Political Biography (1972); M. A. Zaki Badawi, The Reformers of Egypt (1979); and Charles C. Adams, Islam and Modernism in Egypt (1933). For Muhammad Abdu, see Osman Amin, Muhammad ‘Abduh (1953), and Malcolm H. Kerr, Islamic Reform: The Political and Legal Theories of Muhammad ‘Abduh and Rashid Rida (1966). For Hasan al-Banna I suggest his Memoirs of Hasan al-Banna Shaheed (1981) as well as Richard P. Mitchell, Society of the Muslim Brothers (1969) and Pioneers of Islamic Revival, edited by Ali Rahnema (1995).

  Good texts on Pan-Arabism include Sylvia G. Haim’s collection Arab Nationalism (1962); Nissim Rejwan, Arabs Face the Modern World (1998); Abd al-Rahman al-Bazzaz, Islam and Nationalism (1952); Michael Doran, Pan-Arabism Before Nasser (1999); and Taha Husayn, The Future of Culture in Egypt (1954).

  For Sayyid Qutb see his masterpiece, Milestones (1993), and his Social Justice in Islam, translated by William Shepard as Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism (1996). See also Jalal-e Ahmad, Gharbzadeghi (1997).

  Saudi Arabia’s history is recounted in Madawi al-Rasheed, A History of Saudi Arabia (2003). For Wahhabism I suggest Hamid Algar’s short introduction Wahhabism: A Critical Essay (2002). It should be noted that Wahhabis prefer to call themselves ahl al-tawhid, or al-Muwahhidun.

  A few words are needed about the meaning and function of fundamentalism in Islam. The term “fundamentalism” was first coined in the early twentieth century to describe a burgeoning movement among Protestants in the United States who were reacting to the rapid modernization and secularization of American society by reasserting the fundamentals of Christianity. Chief among these was a belief in the literal interpretation of the Bible—an idea that had passed out of favor with the ascendance of scientific theories such as evolution, which tended to treat biblical claims of historicity with mocking contempt. Considering the fact that all Muslims believe in the “literal” quality of the Quran—which is, after all, the direct speech of God—it makes little sense to refer to Muslim extremists or militants as “fundamentalists.” Nor is this a proper term for those Islamists like Sayyid Qutb whose goal is the establishment of an Islamic polity. Nevertheless, because the term “Islamic fundamentalism” has become so common that it has even slipped into Persian and Arabic (where its literal translations are, somewhat appropriately, “bigot” in Arabic and “backward” in Persian), I will continue to use it in this book—but not to describe politicized Islam. That movement will be called “Islamism,” its proper name. “Islamic fundamentalism,” in contrast, refers to the radically ultra-conservative and puritanical ideology most clearly represented in the Muslim world by Wahhabism.

  There are few better general introductions to the history of political Islam than Gilles Kepel’s Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam (2002) and The War for Muslim Minds (2004). See also Anthony Shadid, The Legacy of the Prophet (2002). Osama bin Laden’s quote is from an interview he gave to ABC reporter John Miller in May 1998.

  For more on the creation and evolution of Jihadism see Reza Aslan, Beyond Fundamentalism (2010).

  According to a 2005 Gallup International poll, 78 percent of people in the Middle East considered democracy “the best form of government.” See http://www.voice-of-the-people.net/. The 2006 Pew poll can be found here: http://pewglobal.org/2006/06/22/the-great-divide-how-westerners-and-muslims-view-each-other/.

  10. Slouching Toward Medina

  There were two draft constitutions after the revolution in 1979. The first draft, which did not give the clerics an important role in the government, was, ironically, rejected by Iran’s leftist parties. The second draft, completed in November by a seventy-three-member Assembly of Experts, revamped the original documents to establish clerical domination of the state.

  The activities of the CDC and the American Type Culture Collection before and during the Iran-Iraq war have been documented by declassified government papers. See “Report: U.S. Supplied the Kinds of Germs Iraq Later Used for Biological Weapons,” in USA Today, September 30, 2002.

  For more on the Taliban see Ahmed Rashid, The Taliban (2000). Harvey Cox’s The Secular City (1966) is essential reading for all students of religion and politics; see also Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew (1955).

  Abdulaziz Sachedina’s The Islamic Roots of Democratic Pluralism (2001) is an excellent discussion of Islamic pluralism. While there are few books by Abdolkarim Soroush in English, a collection of his essential writings has been compiled and translated by Mahmoud and Ahmad Sadri under the title Reason, Freedom, and Democracy in Islam: Essential Writings of Abdolkarim Soroush (2002). The quotation is from his acceptance speech for the “Muslim Democrat of the Year” award given by the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy in Washington, D.C., in 2004.

  11. Welcome to the Islamic Reformation

  “Ruptures” is a term I’ve taken from Muhammad Qasem Zaman’s book The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).

  For a close look at the inner workings of IslamOnline.net see Bettina Gräf, “IslamOnline.net: Independent, Interactive, Popular,” Arab Media and Society 4 (2008), http://www.arabmediasociety.com/index.php?article=576&printarticle. See also Jens Kutscher’s presentation to the 30th
Deutscher Orientalistentag, “Online Fatwas and their Relevance to the European Union,” Freiburg, September 24–28, 2007, http://orient.ruf.uni-freiburg.de/dotpub/kutscher.pdf.

  The Sheikh Abduallah bin Beh quote is from Rasha Elass, “Scholar Condemns ‘Fatwa Piracy,’ ” The National (September 17, 2008), http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/scholar-condemns-fatwa-piracy.

  For more on Luther and the Christian Reformation see Diarmade MacCulloch’s magisterial work, The Reformation: A History (New York: Viking, 2004).

  A 2010 survey by the Pew Research Center showed that more than nine in ten Muslims in Lebanon (94 percent) express negative opinions of al-Qaeda, as do majorities of Muslims in Turkey (74 percent), Egypt (72 percent), Jordan (62 percent), and Indonesia (56 percent). See http://pewglobal.org/2010/12/02/muslims-around-the-world-divided-on-hamas-and-hezbollah/.

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