About The Book
The book, a culmination of more than four years of research effort, is a bold new attempt to provide a comprehensive, in-depth description of the message of Islam, based on the Quran alone. It seeks to promote a new way of thinking about Islam that can reconcile all Muslims and create the civil, moral Islam the Quran dictates. It is intended to serve as not just a strong retort to Islam’s usual stereotyping by the Western world (as fanatic and militant), but a marked departure from traditionally practiced Islam - a powerful voice against “Islamic fundamentalism,” and an agenda for much-needed, fundamental reform of the traditional faith. It applies a rational, thoughtful approach the Quran encourages, keeping in view the social, political, and economic demands of the modern world. The book presents a persuasive logic against accepting the much-revered Hadith as religious authority. It contends that the Hadith rather seriously misrepresents, undermines, and enormously distorts the true meaning of Islam. Islam is best understood if one focuses on the Quran alone and sincerely strives to grasp its complete, easy, and straightforward message. The book scrutinizes numerous misconceptions that have crept into the practiced faith, and calls for its essential, overdue reform.
The book’s central focus is on how humankind can achieve its overall moral, ethical, and spiritual progress. Islam is a spiritual, humane, and intellectual practice – one that emphasizes righteousness on the part of all human beings. Righteousness on one's part includes cultivation of appropriate and progressive mindset attitudes, and just and decent behavior to fellow human beings. Islam promotes living in peace and harmony with others, being tolerant, good, just, and compassionate to them with special kindness to parents, orphans, the poor, and the needy, and service to humanity at large. Contrary to what many scientists would have us believe, God exists, and we have a special purpose to fulfill in life. This book’s focal point is that we, human beings, are here to serve only God Who really is the supreme Ideal for us. Serving Him really amounts to emulating Him in all of our thoughts and deeds. Prayer to God has a special meaning. Prayer is nothing but sincere endeavor on one’s part to upgrade oneself into a better self. It helps us keep away from indecency and evil (29:45). It serves to accelerate the process of human evolution, which is taking place anyway inescapably. God is ever present in all of our work. God helps those who help themselves. We accelerate our progress by seeking God’s help (2:45, 107, 153, 286; 1:4–7; 3:147, 160; 17:19; 72:22). This is the real meaning of salat or prayer.
People generally overlook the fact that to follow the path of religion is essentially a spiritual quest to understand God and His attributes, and understand how He creates or acts. They overlook that it is a spiritual quest to understand one’s own purpose in life, and the latent potential self-development. Religiosity is really one’s sincere endeavor to attain self-purification, and acquire spiritual wisdom to lead a flawless, enriched, progressive, and blissful life, and enjoy a still better afterlife.
The book cites some fundamental building blocks of spiritual progress or evolution: Ego, Love, Will, and Knowledge. These factors or faculties underlie all creative action or evolution. Ego refers to the individual self or personality, not egotism, that can think, decide, and act. Love is a major propelling factor. At the same time, one needs to develop one's Will, and increase one's Knowledge to go forward spiritually. Love and Knowledge are two most precious gifts with which God’s righteous believers are blessed (19:96; 2:269).
The book also calls for understanding Heaven and Hell in a new light. This might appear to be a very radical thought, but the Quranic ideas as analyzed in the book do suggest that God does not really create any Heaven or Hell for us; it is we who create them by our own deeds. It is through our deeds that we can transform this troubled, dull, and dreary earth into a Heaven, and create a still better afterlife. On close reflection, this might be construed as the real purpose of religion.
The most emphasized, recurrent theme of the Quran is that righteousness is the key to success. True righteousness or religion consists in emulating the virtues and qualities that define God. To be righteous, just observing some liturgies is not enough; one needs also to be morally and ethically fully upright. One needs to have a right iman or mindset, which involves much more than a mere belief in One God and His Messenger Muhammad. The process involves embracing various elements of beliefs and thoughts, and nurturing the right attitudes of modesty and tolerance, as well as getting rid of wrong attitudes such as fatalism, intolerance, greed, fear, etc. The Quran wants us to be right, just, and kind to all. The true image of Islam countenances neither intolerance nor violence nor harsh punishments. The Quran condemns violence and terrorist acts in the strongest possible terms. The rigid application of the so-called shariah (traditional Islamic) law is also not justified in the light of the Quran.
The book also represents an attempt to effectively respond to the social, political, and economic challenges of modern time. The ideal relationship between husband and wife, according to the Quran, is one of equality and complementarity, characterized by mutual love, respect, and understanding. God is gender-neutral. So the status of women in Islam cannot be subordinate to that of men. The book delves at some length into the question of the deplorable status of women in Muslim countries, and how we can elevate it to that of men. Monogamous relationship is to be normally preferred. Polygamy can be seen as permissible only as a safety device in exceptional circumstances. Divorce, according to the Quran, is only a gradual process with a human face. The system that requires a divorced wife to marry another person in order to remarry her former husband after taking divorce from the second husband often found to be practiced in some Muslim societies is a despicable practice. Such a practice is not really sanctioned by the Quran. Islam condemns slavery and modern-day slavery-like practices in unequivocal terms. A good Muslim will never enslave a person, but will rather free him or her, or keep him or her as an equal member of his family.
In fact, God never discriminates between human beings, whether male or female, by any criterion whatsoever – race or ethnicity, color, gender, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property or wealth, manpower, birth or name any other similar status – except righteousness. To Him, the only thing that really counts for a man or a woman is righteousness, i.e., right or good conduct (7:26; 49:13; 2:62; 5:69). The Quran demands utmost tolerance on the part of all men and women toward all their fellow beings, ignoring differences in race or ethnicity, color, gender, language, religion, etc., as mentioned above.
Reformed Islam, according to this book, calls for an efficient and dignified way of ridding the world of the problems that create poverty. This includes embracing a free competitive capitalistic system with socialistic overtones – free and competitive because restrictions and controls on the movement of capital, goods and services, and monopolistic practices create inefficiencies and injustices in an economy and stifle economic growth. One important implication of the Quranic directions is that there should be an equitable distribution of economic resources, especially land, if these are found to be starkly unequal in a society. An important message of Islam is that none should fully enjoy his own fruits of labor, but should share them with his fellow beings through an appropriate distribution system. Such a system must necessarily encompass public welfare and development expenditures. Spending in God’s way (zakat or sadaqa) must be understood in a much broader sense than is generally being understood by Muslims. The purpose of such spending should be to alleviate poverty, help people stand on their own feet, and bring about other human and social development. And it should embrace in a significant way public taxation and spending.
Contrary to what is generally believed among Muslims, the Quran does not really condemn interest per se that is being universally used for lending and borrowing purposes, and also as a monetary policy instrument, and an essential device for efficient allocation of productive resources. What it condemns is interest that is charged to people who deserve humanitarian treatment. So-called Islamic interest-free banking is a misnomer, an unsound institution, and a drag on the development of Muslim countries.
The book details how the Hadith has perpetuated the harsh, extremist version of Islam, and created the fanaticism, violence, strife, and inequality seen so often in western portrayals of Islam. Using theological, historical and objective arguments, it persuasively challenges the authority and reliability of the Hadith, denouncing it as a major distraction from the spiritual goodness of the “Quran-only” Islam. It demonstrates that there are serious problems with the so-called prophetic traditions. Numerous texts in the so-called Sahih Hadith are found that contradict the Quran, science, or reason, or send conflicting, confusing messages. The criteria used to authenticate the Hadith are inherently flawed, and simply inadequate. The Hadith and sunnah, falsely attributed to the Prophet's holy name, has long been misguiding Muslims in their mindset attitudes, beliefs and practices, and in their approaches to many issues such as the status of women relative to that of men, marriage and divorce, dispensation of criminal justice, and maintenance of justice, peace, and harmony in society. The ideas that seriously distort religious conceptions and practices, insult and at the same time idolize the Prophet of Islam, demonize and weaken women’s position in society, encourage fanaticism and fatalism, encourage archaic, barbaric, or harsh punishments, block progress and modernization, encourage intolerance, violence, and terrorism, and extol the virtues of aggressive jihad against other communities—all come from the Hadith.
The book also calls attention to the ominous rise of religious fanaticism and extremism among some Muslims, who are shamelessly responsible for orchestrating violent and terrorist acts, and crimes against humanity in the name of "Islam", and are thereby tarnishing the image of Islam in the Western world. To combat this menacing problem, the book calls for a thorough reform of religious education in the Muslim world – for remodeling of the madrasah education on the pattern of modern education, retaining reformed religious education after stripping out spurious teachings of traditions as an additional subject. It maintains that the true revival of Islam can come only when Muslims return to, and understand, their only Holy Book, the Quran.
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