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

Certain moments define a generation’s memory. Ask most Americans who were adults at the time where they were when they learned the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor or that JFK had been shot, and they will be able to tell you. The 2001 terrorist attacks on 9/11 that destroyed New York City’s World Trade Center are one of those moments. When Reza Aslan published No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam in 2005, he had no need to explain the historical context that led him to write: Contemporary culture was saturated with it. Aslan only directly mentions those attacks and Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network five times (xv-xvii, 86-87, 247-8, 259-60, and 266), each time assuming the reader has prior knowledge. In a deliberate rhetorical move, the brevity of his treatment of 9/11 structurally makes bin Laden’s radicalism peripheral to mainstream Islam. Aslan nonetheless is clear that this event and the subsequent anti-Islamic American reaction are what prompted and shaped this book: “Considering how effortlessly religious dogma has become intertwined with political ideology since September 11, how can we overcome the clash-of-monotheisms mentality that has so deeply entrenched itself in the modern world?” (xvii).