Sociology of Islam

What does a sociological reading of Islam tell us?

Reza Aslan, the author of No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, and  Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, shows that it explains the essence of Mohammad’s message and the nature of Islam’s divine truth.

Jahanzeb Hussain interviewed Aslan in Vancouver where the writer was participating in the Indian Summer Arts festival.

We learn, for example, the significance of the social context in the rise of early Islam. Aslan say that:

…it shows that there is nothing unique or unusual about Islam; that it is privy to all the same cultural influences that every religion in the world is privy to; that it is deeply embedded in the soil out of which it arises; and that to truly have a better understanding of the origins of the religion, you have to have a better understanding of the society, the culture, the politics, and religion of the world in which Mohammad lived, because whatever else the Prophet Mohammad was, he was a product of that world.