Host reza aslan, where does the phrase no god but god come guest ing there is no god but god, and muhammad is gods messenger. Its, essentially, the phrase that initiates a convert into the muslim faith. Convert into the muslim faith. Host you also write it not look that now, islam is available to all muslims and every muslim can speak for islam. Guest of scholars, the learned ones as theyre known who have maintained a monopoly over the meaning and message of islam for most of the last 14 centuries. Host how did that evolve from muhammad into the freedom to interpret . Guest you know, its interesting. This, in many ways, is the same process that all great religions go through. You have a prophet who is primarily a reformer, not a creator of a religion. I think thats the very important thing for people to understand. We have this misperception that what a rough fete is, is prophet is, is somebody who invents a new religion, but thats not what a prophet is. A prophet forms the religion. Jesus was a jew preaching about judaism. The buddha was a hindu. He was reforming hinduism. And the same is true of the Prophet Muhammad as the quran repeatedly reminds people. This is not a new religion, this is the same message that was given to all the prophets that came before muhammad, etc. , etc. But what happens is eventually the prophet passes, and now its the respondent of the prophets responsibility of the prophets followers to figure out how to make sense of the words and actions of this prophet, and thats when religion is first founded. And be religion as a manmade institution requires a power structure. And who becomes in charge of that religion . Well, first its the prophets initial follow beers, and then its the second generation, and then that power structure is based not so much on whether you knew the rough fete or not, but on how much you can accumulate about the traditions, the theology that was espoused by the prophet and, hence, these massive institutions that we see of religion. Now, if you follow that timeline on, it doesnt take a long time for individuals to start complaining about that institution and to start recognizing that theres a bit of a gap between what the institution has to say and what the prophet had to say. And thats when you have this grand clash between individuals and institutions that happens in all great religious traditions over who dependents to define faith. Can who gets to define faith. The term that scholars use for that clash is reformation. Host and in no god but god, you write that religion is by definition interpretation and by definition all investigations, all interpretations are valid. Finish be how how does that play out in the contemporary middle east, especially some of whats going on in iraq . Guest people dont like that saying. Religious people dont like it. Religious people like to think that there is one version of christianity, one version of judaism, and its their version, correct . But, of course, the problem is that when you are confronted with say sacred scriptures, what you have in front of you doesnt really exist in a vacuum. I mean, scripture without interpretation, its just words on a page. Thats all it is. It requires someone to encounter it and interpret it. And in doing so, one cannot help but bring ones own preconceived notions, ones political and economic and social views. Why are there a thousand different versions of christianity, thousands of different versions of islam . Precisely for that reason. And so as interpretation, it becomes very difficult to say this interpretation is wrong and this interpretation is right. Be now, i do want to say one very important thing. You can say that one particular interpretation is more reasonable. You can say that its more historically accurate. But theres a reason why in this countrys history just a couple of hundred years ago both slave owners and abolitionists not only used the same bible to argue their differing viewpoints, they used the exact same verses to argue their different view poips. Thats the viewpoints. Thats the power of scripture, thats the power of religion. Now, in an institutionalized religion, one in which there is a papacy, what have you, whatever you want to call it, that has a complete monopoly over the interpretation of faith, then you can maintain a level of control. I mean, the pope can actually say to a catholic theologian you are wrong. Your interpretation is incorrect, and, indeed, if you continue to pursue your interpretation, i will excommunicate you, and you are no longer a part of this community. There is nothing like that in islam or in judaism, for that matter. There is no centralized religious authority. And what that means is that thinking goes. Any interpretation is now a valid interpretation. There is no one, theres no referee. Theres no one to say youre wrong and youre right. And so it becomes a great shouting match. Again, i keep parallelling judaism and islam. The problem, of course, is that there are about 15 million jr well,e well, s. So it is happening not at the same global stage you have the 1. 5 billion muslims having this argument. But when you have muslim democrats and muslim autocrats, muslim peacemakers and muslim warmakers arguing against each other, what you are seeing is precisely the result of this reformation process, thiss individualization of islam. The process whereby themusl authority to define this faith e is being removed seized, i should say, from the hands of these institutions that have gripped et for most of gripped it for most of the lastd 14 centuries and are now beinge led by any individual with a megaphone. Host be reza aslan, what are the similarities between the that mood, the quran and the bible . Guest well, there are, i think, two ways to answer thati question. Mythically, they are very muchka representative of a singlere v prophetic history. In other words, what you arere seeing is an understanding that prophetic consciousness, if i can use that phrase, is something that can be passed ono from prophet to prophet. Sed on m prophet to profit, from adam to moses, from adam to abraham to moses to jesus to the prophet mohammed. That is certainly the way the koran presented. They see the prophet mohammed as a continuation and indeed aco is a prophetic consciousness that is just sort of moving along through history. Sort of been historical account of gods self revelation to humanity. That asserted the mythic element. Sort of the values in the moores are sort of identical. The notions of answers on stability to man. The idea of the relationship between creator and creation, the duty that humanity has towards the creator to worship, to praise, to obey, concept seven afterlife are very similar. Concepts of the cosmos are very similar. More importantly, what you see with these three religions is a desperate attempt to i guess i was very brave between humanity and god close together. Theres this a quality that is physically apart for months, the highest god. I guess if you want to put it in its simplest way, the history of religion, be it the monotheistic religions, the history of religions is predicated upon this long arduous attempt to create less of a distance to train god and humanity, to bring this gap to a close. In many ways massachusetts represents is the incarnate god. Its an attempt to say there is no gap between humanity and god because god became a human, is why christianity is so profoundly successful as a global religion. But these three religions come in this abraham are intimately intertwined, mythically, historically, morally really. Host kidneys three tax be read as political books . Guest thats a very good question and im going to answer it in a different way. This notion that religion and politics are separate things is a very new idea. I think it is important to understand that religion and im talking about on religion in all parts of the world is far more a matter of identity then it is a release and practice is. Let me give you an example of what i mean by this. According to the pew forum, about seven out of 10 americans self identify as krishan. But think about that for a moment shall we . Seven out of 10 americans . Really seven out of 10 americans go to church on sunday . Seven out of 10 read the bible on a regular basis let alone actually follow its precepts . Seven out of 10 americans can tell you anything about cheap success that he was born in a manger and died on the cross . The course. The vast majority about 70 , when they say i am a christian are not making so much if faith declaration. They are making a statement of identity. It is about who they are as individuals, how safe they see themselves in an indeterminate world. As a matter of identity, your religions assumes your politics from your economic views, your social views. That has always been the case and it is still the case now. What am i pretend religion and politics are separate things, but they are not. They are very much a part of the same multifaceted identity that individuals espouse. With regard to judaism, christianity and everything else, its a very important thing to recognize the phrase iem a jews, i am a christian, i am a month on has less to do with the circuit i believe commended for the rituals i followed than it does with this is how i see my self as a person. This is how i unders and my role in the world and my relationship to the creator. Host as far as our hominid whiskers turned, the jews and christians are people of the book. Who is supposed to the pagans and polytheists of arabia worship the same god, read the same scriptures and share the same moral falla says Muslim Community . Mohammed align his community with the jews and medina because he considered them as well as the christians to be part of hezbollah. What is oman . Guest ummah is a word that unity. We are not exactly sure where the word comes from. Bbc brew, maybe aramaic. Nobody really knows. But theres no way to define that kind of new group, the church that they were trying to create. The way that the prophet views the organization is that it was inclusive of other faiths. Not poly theistic faiths. If were a pagan, your worshiped other gods, an outsider, you did not belong. But if you were people of the book, which by which it meant jews and christians and also included zorra austrians in the group, you were seen as part of the ummah, and that is really unique in the history of religions. In fact, the koran refers to something called thei ummal katalb, the mother of books. Its saying that there is this kind of heavenly scripture, in god, a physical book in heaven with god, from which all scriptures of the world come, and so, in other words, if you talk all the scriptures of the world, the torah, the gospel, the koran, the gotha and combine them together you get this one heavenly book. Thats quite a remarkable statement for a scripture to make. Not only is it validating other scriptures but saying something quite unique that all these religions are intimately connected. The koran says something along the lines of god could have given you one prophet and one scripture if he wanted to, but he chose to make you into different communities, quote, so that you may know one another. Now, this notion of jews and christians as fellow believers did not last much longer after the prophet mohammads death. Within a generation or so the scriptural scholars very quickly transformed jews and christians into unbelievers and separated islam from its parent religion as a way of creating independence, if you will, in other words, what they believed was that the koran annulled the previous scriptures. But thats not what the koran ever says. The koran says it completes the other scriptures, but it sees those scriptures as part and parcel of this larger mother of books in heaven. Quite unusual in the history of religion. Host one more quote allings are bound to the social, spiritual, and cultural milieu from which they arose and developed. It is not the prophets to create religions. Prophets redefine and reinterpret the existing beliefs and practices of the commune,ni proving fresh setsf symbols and metaphors in which succeeding generations can describe the nature of reality. Indeed it is most often the prophets successors who take upon themselves fashioning their masters words into deeds into comprehendible religious systems, and muhammad never claimed to have invented a new religion. Guest right. Right. Again, its people of religions who have the biggest problem with that kind of notion. First because, of course, they want to believe that their religious ideas, their values, their interpretations, can be linked directly to the prophet, whether it be mohammad or moses or jesus or the buddha or what have you and that is rarely, rarely the case. But most importantly, because home of religion want to believe that their religious views are static, they are monolithic, you hear this a lot in large religions with multiple sects by christianity and islam. Muslims and christians like to say their particular christianity, their particular islamism is correct and all the other ones are incorrect. But when you study the worlds religions you understand quickly there is no such thing as correct religion. There is no such thing as islam. There is no such thing as christianity. There are only christianities and islams. And that there are almost infinite varieties through history in the beliefs and practices, the interpretations of these religions, and that each one of these varieties is inextricably tied to the cultural milieu, the political milieu, out of which they arise. Islam is important. By the way, what i find really unusual about what im saying right now is that most rationalminded people would say, well, of course, that sounds true. When you think about christianity, of course there are 100 ways of understanding christianity, but then when you make the same statement about islam, oh, no, no, no, theres islam is monolithic, but of course islam, like christianity, comes in every flavor that you can imagine. Take a plane from new york to london, from london to baghdad, from baghdad to istanbul, from istanbul to jakarta, from jakarta to you will never see the same islam twice. Host who is the historic muhammad . Prophet muhammad was a fascinating character. He belonged to a very small, fairly insignificant clan, which was part of an enormous and extremely significant and wealthy tribe. So, if you will, he was part of this kind of ruling system but an outcast in that ruling system. He was an orphan, in a society in which orphans had no real protection whatsoever. A society that was deeply stratified between the very wealthy and the poor, and he hat sort of figure out through his own social and business acumen how to become a very successful merchant. In other words, by the time he became around 40 years old, he had figured out a way to use this system that had amassed enormous amounts of wealth at the top to its own benefit, its own advantage. He seems to have been a deeply spiritual man, to the his speier to allity was steeped in the pagan culture of which he arose, something that muslims dont like to think about, muhammad was a product of his world, he didnt just drop from heaven and live in a vacuum for 40 years before he became a prophet. But eventually that spiritual longing led him to have a series of ecstatic experiences in which he claims to have had direct messages from god, condemning the economic disparitiy, the special disparity in his society. And you notice i keep using these terms, economic and social disparity, because the fascinating thing about the k prophet, muhammads message, ate least in the first decade or so in which he was receiving these revelations they had very little to do with theological or legalistic concerns. They were overwhelmingly a condemnation of the wealthy and the powerful, a promise of judgment to those who exploit the poor and the marginalized, the weak, the dispossessed, a commandment to protect those who cannot protect themselves, the orphans, the widows, those who have been left behind by this mass accumulation of wealth, and what i think is very important for people to understand again, thissing is something that muslims just sort of have a hard time recognizing because they like to think of the Prophet Muhammad as purely a religious figure, someone who had this brand new idea there was only one god, which was not brandnew at all all. Every area in the Arabian Peninsula heard this message a thousand times. One thing i write about in the book, which is new to a lot of muslims, prearabia were awash in religion. Hundreds of christian groups and jewish groups, and another group of preislamic mono theists, all of whom believed there was only one god, and in fact the pagans themselves more or less believed there was only one god. They just thought that god was just inaccessible and there were these other lower gods that you could go to for your sun mix faces. The phrase, there is no god but god, would have elicited a collective yawn from preislamic arabia, but the condemnation of the Economic Situation in arabia, the political situation, that was intolerable to the ruling powers and that is where the friction between the prophet, muhammad, and the massive tribe that ruled the mecca, originally came from. That is where the conflict and the clash came from, and by the way,88i that should sound familr to people familiar with other prophetic histories, especially the history of jesus. Jesus conflict with the authorities of his time had far less to do with theological doctrine than social and economic issue. Thats what a prophet does. A prophet is a reformer, not a creator, of religion. Host when did muhammad live, which century . Guest well, the traditions say he was born in the year 570, a. D. Thats most certainly not historical an accurate date. The fact of the matter is inco preislamic arabia, birthdays were not significant events so nobody knew when the Prophet Muhammad was born, and nobody cared until he was declared to be a prophet. But we go with 570 as the traditional date so lets just say near the end of the sixth century. Then he died somewhere sort of in the first third of the seventh century. This was really unique about the Prophet Muhammad when it comes to the prophetic hoyt that many people are familiar with, is that we usually hear about our prophets being failures. That is kind of the history of prophethood that one expects, a prophet gets a message from god. Nobody listens to him. He usually dies in disgrace. And then after he dies, people say, oh, he was right, and we should have listened to him all along. What is unique about the Prophet Muhammad is that while he was disadvantaged and disgraced for the first half of his prophetic experience, the second half was enormously successful. He actually succeeded. He created a little statelet based on his revelations, and interestingly enough, its that success that i think creates the greatest amount of suspicion among nonmuslim, about the Prophet Muhammad. He couldnt have possibly been a prophet of god because he succeeded, because his message took, because people listened, s. 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