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

xx Prologue complete “Islamization” of society. With the end of colonialism and the birth of the Islamic state in the twentieth ...

�� Author’s Note While there is a widely recognized system for the transliteration of Arabic into English, along with specific d ...

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�� Chronology o f Key Events 570 Birth of the Prophet Muhammad 610 Muhammad receives first Revelation at Mt. Hira 622 Muslim emi ...

xxiv Chronology of Key Events 750–850 The Abassid Dynasty 756 Last Umayyad prince, Abd al-Rahman, establishes rival Caliphate in ...

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������ 1. The Sanctuary in the Desert PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA Arabia. The Sixth Century C.E. IN THE ARID, desolate basin of Mecca, su ...

4 No god but God In all, there are said to be three hundred sixty idols housed in and around the Ka‘ba, representing every god r ...

�� The Sanctuary in the Desert 5 It is also possible that the original sanctuary held some cosmolog- ical significance for the a ...

6 No god but God In actuality, the religious experience of the pre-Islamic Arabs was far more complex than this tradition sugges ...

The Sanctuary in the Desert 7 Greek counterpart, Zeus, Allah was originally an ancient rain/sky deity who had been elevated into ...

8 No god but God the Kahins did not communicate directly with the gods but rather accessed them through the Jinn and other spiri ...

The Sanctuary in the Desert 9 The Jewish presence in the Arabian Peninsula can, in theory, be traced to the Babylonian Exile a ...

10 No god but God stone upon which Jacob rested his head during his famous dream of the ladder. The pagan Arab connection to Jud ...

The Sanctuary in the Desert 11 Ever since the Nicene Council in 325 C.E.—which declared Jesus to be both fully God and fully man ...

12 No god but God which version of Christianity was taking hold in Arabia. According to the traditions, the image of Jesus resid ...

The Sanctuary in the Desert 13 Ahura Mazda (“the Wise Lord”), who fashioned the heavens and earth, the night and the day, the li ...

14 No god but God while the Meccans were celebrating a pagan festival at the Ka‘ba, four men named Waraqa ibn Nawfal, Uthman ibn ...

The Sanctuary in the Desert 15 included Khalid ibn Sinan, called “a prophet lost by his people,” and Qass ibn Sa’idah, known as ...