NYRB – The Islamic Optimist

Jihad Beyond Islam: open access book | Islam, Muslims, and an Anthropologist. I am pleased to inform you that my publisher Berg has decided to join the Social Science Open Access Repository and to make my first book, Jihad Beyond Islam(2006) available legally for download with no costs but strictly under the Creative Common License.

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…