No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam

The central figure in Islam is its founder, Muhammad, believed by Muslims to be God’s Messenger and the greatest of God’s prophets. Arabic sources, which Aslan largely accepts, depict him as an imposing man both physically and in personality: broad-chested with piercing black eyes and flowing dark hair and beard. He had a reputation for integrity and charisma even before preaching his new faith. He also had empathy for others, showed mercy when possible (as Aslan emphasizes through his account of Muhammad and the Jews of Medina), and cared deeply about injustice. These characteristics earned him the love of Khadija, his first wife and former employer. Though born into a good family, Muhammad had been orphaned as a child and had few prospects before marrying her. He was a devoted husband.

Muhammad often wandered from his hometown of Mecca out into the desert mountains to think and pray. In Aslan’s reconstruction, the injustices and inequality of Meccan society primarily moved Muhammad to this introspection. His monotheistic beliefs only developed gradually. In traditional Muslim belief, Muhammad had the divine gift of being a devout monotheist from the beginning of his life and distress over the lack of reverence for the one true God drove him out to his solitary prayers. Regardless of why he went out, Muhammad came back to Mecca preaching a message of merciful God and prophesying against the exploitation of the poor. Aslan again disagrees with traditional narratives about the centrality of one God in Muhammad’s early preaching. The Quraysh (the ruling tribe of Mecca) forced Muhammad and his first Companions in 622 CE to flee to Yathrib, later renamed Medina. There Muhammad’s reputation for trustworthiness led the quarreling tribes to accept him as a mediator and eventually leader of the city. He started raiding Meccan caravans and, after a series of battles with the Quraysh, Muhammad returned in triumph to Mecca eight years after being forced into exile. He showed mercy to most of his defeated enemies. Two years later, after continuing to spread his message and power to neighboring Arab tribes, Muhammad died.

For Aslan, Muhammad is an impeccable figure yet still very human in his self-doubt and gradual growth. Ultimately, he always acted with integrity and earned the admiration of those around him. His central motivating characteristic was his desire to protect the poor and the vulnerable.

For Shi’a Muslims, the tradition in which Aslan was raised, Muhammad’s true successor was his cousin and son-in-law Ali. They hold up Ali as “the model of Muslim piety: the light that illuminates the straight path to God” (136). Aslan largely upholds this image of Ali as the perfect Muslim and successor to Ali. He explains why the story of Muhammad designating the young Ali as his successor is plausible. He emphasizes the patience and humility with which Ali accepted Abu Bakr’s seizing of leadership upon Muhammad’s death. Ali didn’t complain even when Abu Bakr kept Muhammad’s property for the community instead of letting Ali and his wife, Fatima, inherit it, and even when the shame of it sent Fatima to an early grave. Ali initially refused the caliphate when it was finally offered to him after Uthman’s murder, though in the end he reconsidered and became the fourth caliph. All of this shows Ali’s humility and commitment to the good of the Ummah over his own good. Ali dramatically demonstrated his Muhammad-like mercy when, instead of killing him, he accepted the surrender of the rebel who later found the Umayyad caliphate. Indeed, he became a martyr for that mercy. His refusal to kill fellow Muslims prompted the Kharijites (an early version of modern fundamentalist fanatics in Aslan’s view) to murder Ali.

Aslan admits that Ali’s views of his role as caliph are hard to reconstruct. He speculates that Ali did not have the belief in the caliph as the ultimate religious authority that later Shi’a Muslims did. Rather he sees Ali’s main preoccupation as restoring the “Ummah as a divinely inspired community that could no longer abide the imperial ideas of the Shi’atu Mu‘awiyah or by the neo-tribal precedents of Abu Bakr and Umar” (133). Islamic society was to be something new that differed essentially from the dominion of oppressive emperors in a Muslim guise or a return to a fossilized version of divided and unequal tribes. Not coincidentally, this is similar to Aslan’s own view of how modern Islamic states need to evolve: “But if one were truly to rely on the Medinan ideal to define the nature and function of the Islamic state, it would have to characterized as nothing more than the nationalist manifestation of the Ummah” (257).

Ali’s rivals were caliphs chosen from the Quraysh tribe, who serve as the main antagonists in the first half of Aslan’s book. The Quraysh authored the social inequality and injustice in Mecca that provoked Muhammad to begin preaching. Under the leadership of their founder Qusayy, they gained an economic, religious, and political stranglehold on Mecca before Muhammad’s time by gaining control of the Ka‘ba. They used this power to enrich themselves, prevent challenges to their power, and so be able to ignore the plight of Meccans who were poor or did not belong to their tribe.

Aslan consistently uses “Quraysh” rather than “Meccans” to describe the opponents who drove Muhammad out of Mecca and then fought him after he started raiding their caravans. The implication is that the average Meccan did not oppose Muhammad and, indeed, welcomed him back with open arms when given the chance. Aslan also suggests multiple times that passages in the Quran urging violence against polytheists were meant to target the oppressive Quraysh, making this group indirectly responsible for the scriptural verses used by subsequent Muslim groups intent on attacking non-Muslims.

Aslan introduces Khadija, Muhammad’s first wife, as an “enigma”: “a wealthy and respected female merchant in a society that treated women as chattel” (33). We know little about her background other than this fact and that she was a widow whose hand many men sought. She ultimately chose Muhammad, who had guided a caravan for her, and so gave Muhammad a secure and respected position in Meccan society before he began his prophetic career. When he had his first revelations, Khadija became one of his first converts.

Aslan argues that Khadija’s moral support played a key role in encouraging Muhammad to overcome his initial doubts. He suggests that her death immediately before Muhammad’s flight from Mecca significantly weakened his ability to remain in the city’s increasingly hostile environment. Their monogamous partnership seems to have been one of love and trust that likely influenced Muhammad’s later teachings on women and marriage.