No god but God

Before the controversies over his most recent book, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (2013), Reza Aslan was best known for his book about the other major monotheistic world religion, Islam, which happens to be his own faith. No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam (2005) is an essential primer into the history of Islam.

The first chapter provides a background to the religion's formation by describing the paganism of Arabia before 600 C.E., which included the major god Allah (the name is a contraction of the phrase al-ilah, meaning "the god") and hundreds of minor gods. Innumerable jinns (also spelled genies) and other spirits also supposedly inhabited Arabia. Mecca, with its Ka'ba (a shrine holding 360 idols), was at the center of this paganism, and all of these gods co-existed in a hierarchy, although Allah was generally accepted as the most important. To understand the rise of Islam, Aslan argues, it is important to understand this social context:

All religions are inextricably bound to the social, spiritual, and cultural milieux from which they arose and in which they developed. It is not prophets who create religions. Prophets are, above all, reformers who redefine and reinterpret the existing beliefs and practices of their communities, providing fresh sets of symbols and metaphors with which succeeding generations can describe the nature of reality.

In short, without this pagan background, which is often ignored in biographies of Mohammad, Islam could not have arisen.

After this provocative first chapter, Aslan then sets the stage for the sudden rise of Islam by pointing to the increasing social inequality in Mecca due to the influence of a powerful tribe that controlled the city’s economy and trade. The disenfranchised and poor, he argues, were extremely receptive to Mohammed's message, which the prophet insisted was straight from Allah, that all believers should be treated with respect and dignity. In fact, after the first "pillar of faith," which is that Allah should be worshipped as the sole deity in the universe ("There is no god but God and Mohammad is his Messenger"), showing charity towards the poor and taking care of the weak are central to Islamic belief. It's no surprise, then, that when Mohammad came down from Mount Hira in 610 C.E., where he had been fasting, to tell of his visions expressing the will of Allah, he found a receptive audience.

(Incidentally, Aslan essentially makes the same argument to explain the rapid spread of Christianity: Like Islam, its promise was to cure the sick, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and protect the weak. There was one additional promise to the Jews, however: To expel the Romans from the Holy Land.)

Subsequent chapters trace the growth of Islam, from the first mosque in Medina to its global impact today. One lengthy chapter explains the schism between the Sunni and Shia that puzzles most non-Muslims, while other chapters discuss the tradition of hijab, the definition of jihad, the nature of the Koran (the book is not simply the words of Allah but is Allah himself), and other tenets of Islam. One particularly fascinating chapter explores the Sufi, a mystical sect of Islam based on love and asceticism. Aslan seems particularly sympathetic to this sect, which is loathed as heretical by orthodox Sunnis.

While No god but God isn't going to make you into an expert in Islam, it will give you a basic understanding into the religion, and as such, you'll find it invaluable reading.

Zealot

I’ve seen Reza Aslan on The Daily Show over the years, so I knew that he was an author that I needed to check out. I didn’t find the time, however, until his latest book, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, came out earlier this summer. As I’d expected, he’s an author worth reading.

Aslan, who has degrees in creative writing as well as a master's from Harvard Divinity School and a Ph.D. in Sociology of Religions from the University of California at Riverside, begins by emphasizing that his book, the result of twenty years of research and study, is about the historical Jesus, not about the supposed son of God. In other words, Aslan is interested in finding out as much as he can about the physical man who lived some 2,000 years ago and is not interested in debating whether or not that man was a manifestation of a deity.

Judea of 2,000 years ago, Aslan points out, was aflame with Jewish rebellion against the oppressive rule of Rome. Many prophets wandered through the land, declaring themselves God, or the son of God, and trying to lead a revolt to free the Jewish people. The Romans, and the Jewish ruling class that owed its privilege to the Romans, promptly executed—usually through crucifixion—nearly all of those rebels before they could stir up too much trouble. (Crucifixion, in fact, was the punishment specifically reserved for non-citizens who espoused sedition against Rome.) A problem for any scholar of the period, however, is that almost nothing is known about any one of these prophets, including the most famous of all, Jesus of Nazareth, although a lot is known about them collectively because of the meticulous records-keeping of the Romans. Consequently, to learn about Jesus, Aslan must rely on inference based on his study of the political, economic, religious, and social conditions of that period. Aslan’s central question, then, is how did a Jewish radical, one who advocated for kneeling only to the Kingdom of God, become transformed into the son of God? How did Jesus the man become Jesus the Messiah?

Although his book is rigorously documented (his bibliography runs to sixteen pages), Aslan writes in a colloquial style for the general reader. For example, here he describes what a typical Jewish man arriving at the Temple in Jerusalem would see:

The money changers play a vital role in the Temple. For a fee, they will exchange your foul foreign coins for the Hebrew shekel, the only currency permitted by the Temple authorities. The money changers will also collect the half-shekel Temple tax that all adult males must pay to preserve the pomp and spectacle you see around you: the mountains of incense and ceaseless sacrifices, the wine libations and the first-fruits offerings, the Levite choir belting out psalms of praises and the accompanying orchestra thrumming lyres and belting cymbals.

This straightforward, unadorned style allows Aslan to make his points directly and clearly so that his book's emphasis remains on his argument, which is that Jesus was a dangerous radical who posed a threat to Rome's rule of Judea. He adds, perhaps controversially, that Jesus’s mission should be seen as a failure since, according to Jewish tradition, the messiah would be a living man, proclaimed “King of the Jews,” who would expel the Romans and restore the purity of Judea for the Chosen People. Instead, the Romans crucified Jesus and, following a large-scale rebellion forty years later, razed the Temple in Jerusalem and exiled the Jews from Judea.

Zealot is divided into three parts: Part One covers the birth and early years of Jesus and also explains the rise of zealots during these years (the term refers to Jewish nationalists, full of “zeal,” who swore strict allegiance to the Torah and vowed never to kneel before any but the One God); Part Two begins by describing Jesus’s radical acts, such as attacking the money changers at the Temple, before then explaining exactly why the Jewish and Roman authorities saw such acts as heresies against the Jewish religion and sedition against Rome; and Part Three focuses on the years immediately following Jesus’s crucifixion, in which, Aslan writes, “a failed messiah who died a shameful death as a state criminal” became transformed into “God incarnate.”

Regardless of your faith, or lack of faith, Aslan’s book is a fascinating account of life in Judea 2,000 years ago and, as such, is worth reading.

(After I wrote this review in June, Zealot sparked much controversy, especially following an inflammatory Fox News interview with Aslan).