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

The Battle of Badr proved that God had blessed the Messenger. There were rumors that angels had descended onto the battlefield to slay Muhammad’s enemies. After Badr, Muhammad was no longer a mere Shaykh or a Hakam; he and his followers were now the new political power in the Hijaz. And Yathrib was no longer just an agricultural oasis, but the seat

regardless of whether one is labeled a Modernist or a Traditionalist, a reformist or a fundamentalist, a feminist or a chauvinist, all Muslims regard Medina as the model of Islamic perfection. Simply put, Medina is what Islam was meant to be.

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The soldiers quickly took control of Delhi and set up the deposed Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah, as their leader. The octogenarian emperor released a written proclamation to the country, urging both the Hindu and Muslim populations to help him “liberate and protect the poor helpless people now groaning” under colonial rule. The proclamation reached

Almost immediately, the sacred land where Muhammad had received the gift of revelation miraculously burst forth with another gift from God—oil—giving the tiny Saudi clan sudden dominion over the world’s economy. They now felt it was up to them to respond to this blessing from God by spreading their puritanical doctrine to the rest of the world and

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However, these women, celebrated as they are, were no match for the indisputable authority of early Companions like Umar, the young, brash member of the Quraysh élite who would eventually take over the leadership of the Muslim community after Muhammad’s death. The Prophet had always admired Umar, not just for his physical prowess as a warrior, but

However, by far the most significant challenge to Khomeinism has come from outside of Iran, in neighboring Iraq. The 2002 U.S.–led war to depose Saddam Hussein had the somewhat unexpected effect of liberating the other major Shi‘ite school of law, in the holy Iraqi city of Najaf. Led by the Iranian-born Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, a man many co

The fact is that nearly one out of five people in the world are Muslims. And while some of them may share bin Laden’s grievances against the Western powers, very few share his interpretation of jihad.