God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World (50 page)

17
. World Religion Database, http://www.worldreligiondatabase.org. Unless otherwise noted, the demographic data on the world’s religions in this book comes from this resource.

18
. “The List: The World’s Fastest-Growing Religions,”
Foreign Policy
, May 2007, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3835. Islam’s growth rate is 1.84 percent. Christianity, which is benefiting from both high birth rates and mass conversions in the Global South, is growing 1.38 percent per year.

19
. Christopher Hitchens,
God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
(New York: Twelve Books, 2007).

20
. Max Hastings, “Mohammed Is Now the Third Most Popular Boy’s Name in England,” MailOnline, September 10, 2009, http://www.tiny.cc/8ET3Y.

21
. David Masci, “An Uncertain Road: Muslims and the Future of Europe,” The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, October 2005, http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=60.

22
. The index to Axel Michaels,
Hinduism: Past and Present
, trans. Barbara Harshav (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2004) has ten separate entries on “salvation,” and Michaels refers throughout to “sin” (see, e.g., p. 16). In the Buddhist context, Ninian Smart refers to “salvation” in his
Religions of Asia
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993), 107; and D. T. Suzuki refers to “sin” in his
Essays in Zen Buddhism: (Second Series)
(London: Luzac, 1933), 243. Even Daoism is routinely enlisted into the “sin” and “salvation” camp. See, e.g., Julia Ching, “East Asian Religions,” in
World Religions: Eastern Traditions
, 2nd ed., ed. Willard G. Oxtoby (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2001), 392.

23
. Smith,
World’s Religions,
73.

24
. James Fadiman and Robert Frager, eds.,
Essential Sufism
(New York: HarperCollins, 1999), 82.

25
. Rainer Maria Rilke,
Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties
, trans. John J. L. Mood (New York: Norton, 1975), 25; Walt Whitman, “The Wound-Dresser,” in his
Leaves of Grass
(Philadelphia: David McKay, 1891–92), 242.

26
. Richard Rorty, “Religion as a Conversation Stopper,”
Common Knowledge
3, no. 1 (1994): 1–6. Here Rorty is taking on Stephen L. Carter,
The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion
(New York: Basic Books, 1993).

27
. Augustine,
Confessions
, 10.33.50 in
Augustine of Hippo: Selected Writings
, trans. Mary T. Clark (New York: Paulist Press, 1984), 150.

Chapter One: Islam: The Way of Submission

1
. “Public Expresses Mixed Views of Islam, Mormonism,” The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, September 25, 2007, http://pewforum.org/surveys/religionviews07. The top ten single words associated with Islam (in order) were: “devout/devoted,” “fanatic/fanatical,” “different,” “peace/peaceful,” “confused/confusing,” “radical,” “strict,” “terror/terrorism,” “dedicated,” “violence/violent.”

2
. “The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other,” Pew Global Attitudes Project, June 22, 2006, http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=253.

3
. Laurie Goodstein, “Top Evangelicals Critical of Colleagues over Islam,”
New York Times
, May 8, 2003, http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/08/us/top-evangelicals-critical-of-colleagues-over-islam.html.

4
. All quotations from the Quran are, unless otherwise noted, from A. J. Arberry,
The Koran Interpreted
(New York: Touchstone, 1996).

5
. World Religion Database, http://www.worldreligiondatabase.org. China is not typically listed in the top ten, largely because it is notoriously difficult to gather data on religious affiliation there, but China could well be one of the most populous countries in the Muslim world.

6
. “Islamic Extremism: Common Concern for Muslim and Western Publics, Pew Global Attitudes Project, July 14, 2005, http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?PageID=809; “Islam and the West: Searching for Common Ground,” Pew Global Attitudes Project, July 18, 2006, http://pewglobal.org/commentary/display.php?AnalysisID=1009; “Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other,” Pew Global Attitudes Project, June 22, 2006, http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=253.

7
. See Jack Shaheen,
Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People
(New York: Olive Branch Press, 2003).

8
. William C. Chittick,
The Sufi Doctrine of Rumi
(Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2005), 82.

9
. Seyyed Hossein Nasr,
Ideals and Realities of Islam
(London: George Allen & Unwin, 1985), 22.

10
. Some Western critics claim that Islam has six pillars rather than five, and that jihad is that sixth pillar. Some contemporary Islamist groups, most notably al-Qaeda and the Taliban, also hold this view. But the overwhelming majority of Muslims, both past and present, restrict these practices to five.

11
. Some Muslim countries pay for their citizens to make the hajj. In 2008, Nigerian states sent 84,878 Muslims to Mecca, at a total cost of $127 million. After arguing that their pilgrimages to Jerusalem were at least as worthy of government subsidies as the hajj of Muslims, 17,000 Nigerian Christians received subsidies of $17 million that same year to become “JPs,” or Jerusalem pilgrims. See Gabriel Omoh, “Nigeria: Citizens Spend N35 Billion on Pilgrimages,”
Vanguard
, January 5, 2009, http://allafrica.com/stories/200901051100.html.

12
. It should be noted that few Muslims read the Quran through the
sola scriptura
(scripture alone) strategy of Protestants. More like rabbinic Jews and Roman Catholics, they read this text through a long tradition of interpretation that in many cases softens the hard edges of difficult passages not only on war but also on other controversial topics such as women’s rights.

13
. “A Rising Tide Lifts Mood in the Developing World,” Pew Global Attitudes Project, July 24, 2007, http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=257. American Muslims are far less likely to support al-Qaeda than Muslims in other countries, but even in the United States one in twenty Muslims has a favorable view of that organization. Equally troublingly, only 40 percent of American Muslims believe that Arabs were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The rest either said they did not know or put the blame on Israel or the United States. See “Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream,” Pew Research Center, May 22, 2007, http://pewresearch.org/pubs/483/muslim-americans.

14
. Michael H. Hart,
The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History
(New York: Citadel Press, 1992).

15
. S. H. Pasha pamphlet, undated, but handed out on the streets of Atlanta in the 1990s (personal collection of author).

16
. Wilfred Cantwell Smith,
Islam in Modern History
(New York: New American Library, 1959), 26. Continuing in this line of thinking, the parallel to the Bible in Islam is not the Quran but the Hadith.

17
. Arberry translation, modified from “man” to “the human being” because in the original Arabic the noun is gender neutral.

18
. Abraham J. Heschel,
The Prophets
(New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 12. “The threat of punishment is one of the most prominent themes of the prophetic orations,” Heschel added (187).

19
. See also: “Let not the believers take the unbelievers for friends, rather than the believers” (3:28); “O believers, take not the unbelievers as friends instead of the believers” (4:144); and “O believers, take not My enemy and your enemy for friends” (60:1). I am grateful to Omid Safi and Kecia Ali for email exchanges on this matter.

20
. I once heard a renowned calligrapher of the Quran asked about an infamous Hadith, quoted in the Hamas charter, proclaiming that the Day of Judgment will not come until the Muslims kill the Jews. He dismissed it out of hand as inauthentic because it contradicts Quranic teachings that embrace Jews as fellow “people of the book.” This hadith comes from the Muslim collection, 41:6985, http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/muslim/041.smt.html.

21
. The four are: the Hanafi school, named after Abu Hanifa (d. 767); the Maliki school, named after Malik ibn Anas (d. 795); the Shafii school, named after Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafii (d. 820); and the Hanbali school, named after Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 855). South Asia is largely Hanafi. The Shafii school predominates in Indonesia, the Maliki school in North Africa, and the Hanbali school in Saudi Arabia.

22
. “Al Qaeda’s Fatwa,” The Online NewsHour, February 23, 1998, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/terrorism/international/fatwa_1998.html.

23
. “La Comisión Islámica de España Emite una Fatua Condenando el Terrorismo y al Grupo Al Qaida,” March 10, 2005, http://www.webislam.com/?idn=399. Translation by the author.

24
. Danièle Hervieu-Léger,
Religion as a Chain of Memory
, trans. Simon Lee (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press, 2000).

25
. Omid Safi, “Progressive Islam in America,” in
A Nation of Religions: The Politics of Pluralism in Multireligious America
, ed. Stephen Prothero (Raleigh: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1996), 52–53.

26
. Safi, “Progressive Islam in America,” in Prothero,
Nation of Religions
, 54.

27
. Fadiman and Frager,
Essential Sufism
, 102.

28
. Fadiman and Frager,
Essential Sufism
, 111. Rumi made a similar point: “For them that have attained (to union with God) there is nothing (necessary) except the eye (of the spirit) and the lamp (of intuitive faith): they have no concern with indications (to guide them) or with a road (to travel by).” Quoted in Chittick,
Sufi Doctrine of Rumi
, 20.