変わる イスラーム by REZA ASLAN

"No god but God is a rare combination of great detail and fascinating reading, two sets of words rarely found in the same sentence about any book. Prior to reading this book, for westerners like me, understanding Islam and its people seemed difficult to impossible." "Over the past 20 years or so I have read various books which were written to explain Islam to Westerners, and I have not been able to understand the appeal of Islam, until now. I thank Reza Aslan for going beyond the facts and practices and giving the reader a sense of the theology and spirituality of Islam, which is obviously very powerful and important."
 "イスラームというと何をイメージするだろうか。ニュースで聞くのは、原理主義、ジハード、女性の人権、ヴェールなどであろうか。あるいは、礼拝や断食（ラマダーン）、メッカ（本書ではマッカと表記）巡礼、偶像崇拝の禁止などを考えるかもしれない。もう少し詳しい人は、アラーは神の名前ではなくて「神（God）」という意味だということや、イスラームはキリスト教を引き継いでいてそのためコーランにゼウスやイエスが登場することを指摘するかもしれない ..." "　9.11以来、世界情勢の中で非常に重要な位置を占めながら実はよく分からないイスラム教。。イラン人の若き学者がイスラム教の歴史をなぞりながら、現在のイスラム教を説明していく" "女にとってのイスラムってどうよ、は今一つわからなかったけれど、イスラムの内側でもイスラムのとらえ方は一通りではないんだという当たり前のことをしっかりと認識させてくれる本..."

영어원서의 제목에 소문자 g 와 대문자 G 가 눈에 띄는 반면에(god 와 God 의 차이를 알고 있을 거라는 점에서 ...) 일본원서는 '変わる(변하다, 바뀌다)' 라는 단어가 눈에 들어온다. '이슬람' 문화는 서구권의 시각으로 전달된 지식에 익숙하기 때문에 사실 편견이 없다고는 말할 수 없다. 처음에 읽기 시작했을 때 힘들다는 생각을 했다. 이름이나 지명 등에서 부터 이 책에서 언급하는 다양한 고유명사들은 어렵게 다가왔다. 생소한 표현들은 인터넷을 검색하면서 읽어야 하는 어려움이 있었고, 정말 어떤 내용은 저자의 주장에 대해서 의심을 가지면서 읽을 수 밖에 없었다(아마 서구적 관점에 익숙해서 일거다). 이 책만을 가지고 '이슬람' 을 다 이해하는데는 한계가 있겠지만 다음에 영화를 보거나 책을 읽을때 도움이 되지 않을까 싶다. 이 책은 '이슬람' 에 대한 새롭고 교육적인 정보를 많이 제공하는 거 같아서 읽기를 잘했다는 생각을 했다. Youtube 를 보면 작가의 인터뷰 장면을 볼 수 있다.

 

  ABSTRACT

 

- In times of economic distress, it is only natural for people to look for a scapegoat upon whom to thrust their fears and anxieties.

- Across Europe and North America, whatever is fearful, whatever is foreign, whatever is alien and unsafe is being tagged with the label "Islam." ........immigrants nearly a century ago.

- Minds are not changed merely through acquiring data or information ....

- one could argue that the clash of monotheisms is the inevitable result of monotheism itself. Whereas a religion of many gods posits many myths .....

- What is most desperately needed is not so much a better appreciation of our neighbour's religion as a broader, more complete understanding of religion itself. Religion, it must be understood, is not faith. Religion is the story of faith.

- After all, religion is, by definition, interpretation ; and by definition, all interpretations are valid. However, some interpretations are more reasonable than others ...

- Like his Greek counterpart, Zeus, Allah was originally an ancient rain/sky deity who had been elevated into the role of the supreme god of the pre-Islamic Arabs ...

- Like so many prophets before him, Muhammad never claimed to have invented a new religion.

- Medina is simultaneously the archetype of Islamic democracy and the impetus for Islamic militancy..

... Muhammad's actions in Medina serve as the model ....

- .... Muslim literally, "those who submit" to God .... The problem with this term, however, is that no one is certain what it meant or where it came from .....

- While the only way to become a memeber of a tribe was to be born into it, anyone could join Muhammad's community simply by declaring, "There is no god but God ,and Muhammad is God's Messenger." .....

- Quran acknowledges that men and women have distinct and separate roles in society.....

- Whether a Muslim man may have more than one wife, however, remains a contested issue to this day.

- The most shocking aspect of Muhammad's marriages ........it is not how many wives he had, but rather the regulations that were imposed on them ...

- Although long seen as the most distinctive emblem of Islam, the veil is, surprisingly, not enjoined upon Muslim women anywhere in the Quran .......

- ... verse of hijab suddenly descended upon the community. That verse, however, was addressed not to women in general, but exclusively to Muhammad's wives .....

- no doubt the plight of women in places like Iran, Afghanistan, the Sudan, and Somalia is appalling and must be urgently ...... Islam's treatment of women would be grossly simplistic ....

- Islam has so often ..... as "military religion ..... stereotypes .....

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