No god but God (Updated Edition): The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam

Drunk without wine, sated without food, a king beneath a humble cloak, a treasure within a ruin, Sufism is to Islam what the heart is to the human being: its vital center, the seat of its essence. It is, in Majnun’s words, “the pearl hidden in the shell, the face beneath the veil.” Sufism is the secret, subtle reality concealed at the very depths o

Using his unquestioned religious authority, Muhammad instituted a mandatory tithe called zakat, which every member of the Ummah had to pay according to his or her means. Once collected, the money was then redistributed as alms to the community’s neediest members. Zakat literally means “purification,” and was not an act of charity but of religious d

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An individual enters the final stages of the Way when the nafs begins to release its grip on the qalb, thus allowing the ruh—which is present in all humanity, but is cloaked in the veil of the self—to absorb the qalb as though it were a drop of dew plunged into a vast, endless sea. When this occurs, the individual achieves fana: ecstatic, intoxicat

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Reliable or not, the Sunna was grossly inadequate for addressing the myriad legal issues that arose as Islam expanded into an empire. A number of other sources had to be developed to cope with those concerns not expressly dealt with in the Quran and the Sunna. Chief among these was the use of analogical arguments, or qiyas, which allowed the Ulama

what made Muhammad unique was his claim to be “the Messenger of God.” He even went so far as to identify himself repeatedly with the Jewish and Christian prophets and messengers who had come before him, particularly with Abraham, whom all Meccans—pagan or otherwise—regarded as a divinely inspired prophet. Put simply, the difference between Muhammad

After the revolution of 1952, Nasser asked Qutb to join his government, but Qutb refused, preferring to continue his social activities with the Brothers. That decision would have devastating consequences. After the attempt on Nasser’s life, Qutb was one of countless Muslim Brothers who…

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Muhammad understood what the Hanifs could not: the only way to bring about radical social and economic reform in Mecca was to overturn the religio-economic system on which the city was built; and the only way to do that was to attack the very source of the Quraysh’s wealth and prestige—the Ka‘ba.