BookReivew: History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

In this book, Karen Armstrong compares the concept of God in Judaism, Christianity and Islam as it appears in the Old Testament, New Testament and Quran. She offers examples of great perversion, debauchery and violence from Jewish Scriptures that make up the image of a God, Who is radical, petty and hopeless. She expresses the inherent confusion and contradictions from Christian Scriptures that make up the mystery and absurdity of Trinity. She notes that representation of Allah in the Qur’an is more Merciful than that of Yahweh in the Old Testament. Furthermore, belief in Allah is explicitly more clear and simple through the Qur’an than belief in the Trinity through the New Testament. 

Quran stresses not just Allah’s encompassing mercy, but also the themes of repentance and forgiveness. The theology of the Quran is fairly straightforward in comparison with the Old and New Testaments. The Old and New Testaments came into being over thousands years of change, editions and deletions. They are wrought with human dialogue, corrupt emotions and inept logic. 

The Quran came into being as 20 years of revelation to the Prophet Muhammad (saws) from the year 610 to the year 632. So, there is much greater consistency in the portrayal of the Nature of Allah. He is more moral than YAHWEH and more exact than Jesus. This provides a kind of appeal, a kind of fascination which is free from complication, conflict and falsification.

The Quran corrects much of the Old and New Testaments. YAWEH is obsessed with a small race of people who disappoint Him and even defeat Him. Allah addresses all human beings in a loving, awe-inspiring, logical oratorical preaching and rhythmic eloquence, which is the Qur’anic recital. The listeners of the Quran are called to change thinking and their lives and move forward in a moral way. 

Jesus is not the son of Allah, and actually there’s a scene in the Qur’an in which Allah and Jesus are speaking and Jesus explicitly repudiates any notion that during his life on earth he ever claimed such as a blasphemous thing. No, he is not the son of God. God had no son, or spouse, and no one is His Partner in His Powers or His Attributes. 

For the most part, this book was shocking, the various beliefs in God around the world are utterly disappointing; historical views about God from ancient Greeks, Romans, to Jews, Christians and post-modern Philosophers are nothing short of disgusting and absolutely offensive. The book became twisted, messed up, disparging with every page. I had to stop reading for my own good. I felt my heart was darkening; I felt horrible. I completely get why people are cynical about God in our age. I would be too if I grew up reading the kind of debased stories and vile logic some philosophers and so called scholars of religion have regarding God.

I am so glad I read this book before Ramadan, so I can re-read, rediscover and fall in love again with the God of the Qur’an.

BookReview: Kingmakers: the Invention of the Modern Middle East

⚔️In the first quarter of the twentieth century, the British Government, the banks, and leading individuals in London made historic decisions that determined the name, shape, kings, political climate and future of the Middle East. 

⚔️In this extremely depressing yet fascinating read, the origin story of the Middle East is narrated through ‘the medium individuals’ (p. 18) responsible for ‘Middle East kingmaking business’ (p. 158). These thirteen men, ten British and three American, and two women (both British) such as Churchill, Lloyd George, Curzon, Cromer, Lawrence, Sykes, Philby Gertrude Bell among others were ‘instrumental in building nations, defining borders, and selecting or helping to select local rulers’ (p. 18). 

⚔️Issues of protecting colonial rule in India, garnering power and prestige over Russia, France and Germany, and territorial expansionism were at the heart of Britain’s Middle Eastern policy. The British made decisions about the region out of greed and imperial arrogance, and often wholly without reference to local interests.

⚔️The term "Middle East" was coined in 1901 by Adm. Alfred Thayer Mahan, the American advocate of naval power. It was popularized in speeches in 1916 by Sir Mark Sykes, a British member of Parliament.

⚔️The initial designer of the Middle East was Britain's War Minister, Lord Kitchener employed Lord and Lady Lugard’s “recipe for Indirect Rule” - a very significant strategy of ‘rent a sheikh, buy an emir’ template for all future [British] adventure[s] in the Middle East.’ (p.32) This was the practice in Egypt, where Kitchener was serving as British Agent, "advising" a khedive. In Sykes's words, "We deprecated the Imperative, preferring the Subjunctive, even the wistful Optative mood."

😭 I cried over 139 years of Middle Eastern history that started with the arrival of Lord Cromer, Sir Evelyn Baring, the scion of the Baring banking family, in Cairo in 1883, as Queen Victoria’s Plenipotentiary and Consul-General in Egypt. 

😭 I cried as the British defeated and divided the Ottoman caliphate in 1918, —its capital, Constantinople, occupied, its sovereign held captive, and much of its territory partitioned. The British didn’t just undo any ordinary sovereign or sultan; they destroyed the united rule and caliphate of Sunni Islam, that dated back to the caliphate of Abu Bakr (r.a) in 632 A.D. During its nearly thirteen centuries, the caliphate had gone through many vicissitudes between the Ummayads, Abbasids and Saljuks, but it remained a potent symbol of Muslim unity, power, identity and religious practice. 

☪️Since the time of the Prophet Muhammad (saw) the Islamic community was one state under one ruler.
☪️Even after that community split up into many states, the ideal of a single Islamic polity persisted.
☪️The states were almost all dynastic, with shifting frontiers. In the immensely rich historiography of the Islamic world in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, there are histories of dynasties, of cities, and, primarily, of the Islamic state and community, but no histories of Arabia, Persia, or Turkey.
☪️They never referred to their own side as Arab or Turkish; they identified themselves as Muslims.
☪️The Ottoman Empire was the final House of Islam, in which a Muslim government ruled and Muslim law prevailed.

😭 I cried as the British sowed the seeds of discord and discontent among Muslims in the Ottoman Empire, harvesting violent separatists and nationalists who betrayed the caliphate by helping the British dismantle the Ottoman Empire from within. 

😭 I cried as the British broke the Muslims into pieces in Iraq, Transjordan, Kuwait, the small Persian Gulf states, Syria and Lebanon. The British promoted the Sharif Hussein, the Hashemite ruler of Makkah; dressed his sons as kings and installed them in Syria, Jordan and Iraq as rulers to carry out British interests. 

😭 I cried as Kitchener’s successor, the new British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George promoted British invasion and occupation of the Middle East on the premise of liberating oppressed peoples in the rotting Ottoman Empire, and to materialize Zionist dream of restoring Jews to their ancient homeland.

😭 I cried as the British established a "national home" for Jews by stealing Muslim land and evicting Muslims from their ancestral home.

😭 I cried former US deputy-secretary of defence, Paul Wolfowitz, instigated the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Instead of being punished for war crimes and crimes against humanity, he went on to become the President of the World Bank. 

😭I cried thinking about the ethnic, racist and nationalist antagonism that was planted by the British in the hearts of Muslims still continues to plague us internationally to this day.