American History is not about Americans

Copy of Quran only book saved from Union’s 1865 burning of UA | TuscaloosaNews.com. A copy of the Quran dating from 1853, its spine missing, its pages browning and its front cover almost detached, sits today in a library at the University of Alabama.  While Islam’s holy book now appears safe from a Florida pastor’s plan for a bonfire, the Quran at UA had its own dramatic rescue from the flames. It was the only book saved from burning of the university library at the hands of Union troops in 1865.

I just finished reading Reza Aslan’s recently published book entitled “No God But God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam” I enjoyed it and would recommend it to others. Aslan makes the argument that Islam is, and continues to be, in a constant state of evolution and has been for 1400 years. He shows from that from the earliest revelations, the Prophet was a social reformer and that the ideologies of egalitarianism, human rights and popular sanction of governing bodies is not outside the values of Islam. Aslan goes on to make the case that Islamic terrorism for the…