No God but God: Visions of an Islamic reformer

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown reviews No God but God by Reza Aslan, in The Independent:

For many troubled Muslims, this book will feel like a revelation, an opening up of knowledge too long buried, denied and corrupted by generations of men (all men, like in all religions) who have succeeded in turning a religion of hope, liberation, imagination, spirituality and mercy into a heartless rule-book of control freakery.

Muslim keepers of the latter will rage against Reza Aslan as his careful scholarship and precise language dismantles their false claims and commands. Orthodoxies bite back when the daring interrogate them. For non-Muslim readers, the author is a fascinating guide who takes them through 1400 years of a complicated and exhilarating journey, starting with the birth of Islam, with animated debates about what it means to be a Muslim, and the tensions between eternal divine laws and human evolution.

More here.