Life is a business with gains and losses.
It is in that sense that Islam became the religion of underprivileged merchants and traders and the poor. Muhammad was not a member of the Meccan trading elites, and the only written section of the Koran extant in his own lifetime concerned commerce. What is underplayed in this book is the social and economic crisis in the peninsula that determined the founding moment of Islam. It's an amusing idea that misses the whole point about the processions, designed by the Shia clergy to encourage obedience, inculcate the idea of an eternal martyrdom and maintain their grip. The reform solution is to ban the self-flagellation and instead encourage participants to donate their blood to hospitals. Shia mythology (some of it uncritically recycled here) transformed a crude bid for power by Ali's son, Hussain, and his defeat and death at the hands of the Caliph Yazid, into a sacred martyrdom commemorated to this day with an annual display of self-flagellation and blood-spilling. An Iranian equivalent of Monty Python's Life of Brian will deconstruct all this one day. The Shia sects and some of their more esoteric beliefs have little to do with Islamic theology. Ali was, without doubt, a sophisticated theorist and leader, but his heirs were weak-willed and easily manipulated. Some decades after Muhammad's death the wars of succession led to the birth of the faction (Shia) that insisted on treating Muhammad as more than a simple messenger and demanded that his family alone supplied the caliphs, ie his son-in-law Ali and his heirs.
The picture presented is that of an ideal Prophet and mostly unworthy successors. He is a true moderate, and if western elites are in search of a more user-friendly Islam, this book will be much more helpful than the bearded moderates paraded on television after each new atrocity.Īslan's account of early Islam is too literalist. Aslan, who regards the US occupation of Iraq as a "liberation", provides a much more nuanced and cultured view of Islam than the more dogmatic Islamists representing Shia or Sunni orthodoxy. Its aim is to appease western ideologues who have embraced the "clash of civilisations" thesis. In reality this book is designed for the west.
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