God is Not One: Eight Rival Religions That Run the World and Why Their Differences Matter, Stephen Prothero, Harper Collins, New York, 2010 This masterpiece is not about one message. The author lays down the gauntlet, demonstrating precisely why revealed faith is not and has never been inoffensive balderdash. Stephen Prothero's path-breaking work is replete with entertaining anecdotes. Simply put, it is hard to put down. The Quran is the first locus amoenus in the Islamic tradition. The key repository of Hinduism, the Mahabharata "Great India" at 100,000 verses and roughly two million words, dwarfs the Bible and the Quran combined. "Duty is the Mahabharata's central preoccupation, but drama is its draw," Prothero pointedly remarks. "Renounce any desire for reward. Fear no punishment. Devote your actions and their consequences alike to God. And remember that even the fiercest warrior cannot actually kill anyone, since we are not our perishable bodies but our immortal souls," rhymes the exquisite poetry of the Mahabharata. Who honestly is to say that Hinduism, Buddhism or any of the great Oriental religions of South and East Asia are any less divine in vision and inspiration than their Monotheistic counterparts? The Bhagavad Gita (Sacred Song), in the ancient Sanskrit tongue, conveys a sublime philosophical tradition no less refined than any admonition revealed in either the Bible or the Quran. The reader can spend an awful lot of time marveling at the wonder, the fastidious detail of the different religions Prothero examines in his God Is Not One before worrying about what it all means. This plausibly argued cream of the crop saves the reader having to look back at the very distant origins of religious beliefs. Prothero rather calls on us to focus on how the mindsets that crafted Confucianism, Buddhism and Hinduism differ radically from those that have given rise to the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the Quran. His seminal work shows long-term continuities and radical divergence, or even mutations. The distinction is in the diversity of the human conception of the Divine. God Is Not One is no atheist's guide to religion. This work, written by an American academician in a rather jocund, passionate American English, is at once insightful, enlightening and highly entertaining. The author delights in retelling choice anecdotes. "The ideal of religious tolerance has morphed into the straitjacket of religious agreement. Yet we know in our bones that the world's religions are different from one another," the author extrapolates. He approaches the crux of the matter heartily and head-on. "We pretend these differences are trivial because it makes us feel safer, or more moral. But pretending that the world's religions are the same does not make our world safer. Like all forms of ignorance, it makes our world more dangerous." In broad terms, Prothero's inquiry engages with the theoretical, historical and empirical literature on the nature of religion and the definition of the religious especially when it coincides with the downright political. "What we need on this furiously religious planet," the author ventures bravely, "is a realistic view of where religious rivals clash and where they can cooperate. Approaching this volatile topic from this new angle may be scary. But the world is what it is. And both tolerance and respect are empty virtues until we actually know something about whomever it is we are supposed to be tolerating or respecting." This in a nutshell is the most perplexing puzzle of our time. Even if one -- atheist, agnostic or religious -- is determined to stay sensible and open-minded, one could still be done for. Fortunately there are exceptions to these troubling trends. In this context, it is imperative to take a closer look at the nature of exchanges and interactions between believers of the various religious traditions. Prothero's is an exceptionally captivating treatise. Some religions, such as Islam, insist that Scripture -- or Divine verse -- should touch us physically, move us to the core and unleash a powerful sense of the omnipotence of the Creator, Allah. One of my own concerns is to draw out the terms through which religiosity gives shape to forms of governance in everyday life. This is a particularly pertinent question in this part of the world -- the Muslim Heartlands. It is an especially indispensable notion at this particular historical juncture when Arab uprisings have done away with outmoded dictatorial regimes as in Egypt and Tunisia and are about to do away with autocratic regimes elsewhere as well. Against this backdrop it is of critical concern to stress that the two states that seem most potentially capable of weathering the storm of democratisation are precisely those that have grounded their very legitimacy on religious foundations -- Israel and Saudi Arabia. The author is too dexterous a writer to accede to the hazards of didacticism and dogma. He observes how those who profess different faiths practice their respective religions. He compares and contrasts, but does not judge. "All religions make use of a wide variety of the senses, shaping the body in this direction or that for the purposes of prayer or penitence E We become and remain Muslims by prostrating in prayer, or Zen Buddhists by sitting in meditation. The Yoruba are particularly adept at putting religion in motion, however. Here spirit and matter dance cheek to cheek. Wisdom is embodied." The world religions Prothero selected for closer scrutiny are the eight he deems most influential and representative of paramount geographical spread and cultural scope. He canvasses the select religions in eight separate chapters. First, Islam: The Way of Submission. Second, Christianity: The Way of Salvation. Third, Confusianism: The Way of Propriety. Fourth, Hinduism: The Way of Devotion. Fifth, Buddhism: The Way of Awakening. Sixth, Yoruba Religion: The Way of Connection. And, just in case this gives reader pause, permit me to quote the author directly. "Yoruba religion varies widely across time and space -- from the traditional practices of West Africa to the contemporary Yoruba-derived adaptations of Candomble in Brazil and Santeria in Cuba." The most controversial, in my humble opinion, is the Seventh, Judaism: The Way of Exile and Return. "Judaism begins and ends with a story. If Christianity is to a great extent about doctrine and Islam about ritual, Judaism is about narrative. To be a Jew is to tell and retell a story and to wrestle [like Jacob] with its key symbols: the character of God, the people of Israel, and the vexed relationship between the two," the author surmises in a rather unflattering fashion. "This story has everything you could ever want in a good read," he adds, tongue-in-cheek. "It has sex, deceit, love, murder, transgression, and tragedy of biblical proportions. It has some of the greatest characters in world literature, not least the adulterer and murderer King David and the capricious and irascible God of the Hebrew Bible." Need I say more? Arguably, the most important omission in Prothero's God Is Not One, following his magnum opus Religious Literacy, is as the author so eloquently concedes Sikhism. He admits that he had to draw the line somewhere. "Much is missing here. Shinto is not covered. Neither is Jainism, Zaroastrianism, Wicca, or the Bahai faith. Also neglected are new religious movements such as Rastafarianism and Scientology. But the religion I most regret excluding is Sikhism." The religious beliefs of Native Americans and Australian Aborigines are likewise omitted for lack of space. Covered, however, is the mystical, metaphysical and mythological manual for life so central to the Chinese mindset -- Daoism, or Taoism. Eighth, Daoism: The Way of Flourishing. This last religion Prothero picks for investigation differs dramatically from the Monotheist faiths. "Whereas Christians and Muslims tend to view this world as a dress rehearsal for the world to come, 'This is it' is the Daoist mantra." The author also reserves a final chapter for Atheism: The Way of Reason. This work represents man in myriad moods and covers an astonishing range of religious, spiritual and sensory experience. Prothero extrapolates about the persisting rapture of religious conviction and of its extraordinary capacity to adaptation from one age to the next and from one place to another. Different religions generate specific aesthetic agendas, artistic and intellectual forms of communication -- spiritual and mundane -- and media networks. The fascination with faith can lay claim to being the quintessential international phenomenon. The author explores the myriad dimensions in as concise a fashion as space allows to illuminate the innumerable manifestations in which the eight religions he selects have impacted over the millennia on the global cultural fantasia and imagination. I hasten to write this review before the Muslim Brotherhood or the Salafis come to power through the ballot box in Egypt; then, perhaps, the religious censors would ban freethinking books such as Prothero's God Is Not One. Or is that a platitude? First, let me make clear that this seminal work is no advocate of polytheism. Prothero merely makes plain the obvious: that people all over the world do not have the same conception of God. The Monotheistic religions -- Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- fundamentally believe in one omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient Creator. Christianity, in particular, perhaps the least strictly speaking monotheistic of the three and the one most susceptible to pagan influences and ideas, stands apart as the most widespread of world religions. Not only does it claim more adherents than any other religion but it is also the most diverse, with myriad sects and denominations. "The case for Christianity's preeminence is compelling," as the author aptly puts it. Islam, the world's fastest growing religion, and second only to Christianity is more of a monolith and uniquely combines a sense of persuasive authenticity with an overwhelming onus on continuity with the revealed religions of Judaism and Christianity. The perceived affinities, however, of the three monotheistic religions cannot hide the blatant conceptual and canonical distinctions and discrepancies that differentiate them. "There is one and only one Allah in Islam and He does not take human form." It is almost a cliché that in Christianity, by contrast, Christ is often confused with God, or the son of God, or that as God he becomes literally at once both human and divine as in the Monophysite doctrine of Coptic Orthodox Christians. But it is not only doctrinal questions that divide Muslims from Christians. The signs, as the author observes, do not augur well. "Christianity and Islam are the world's greatest religions. Together they account for roughly half of the world's population, and for more than half of the world's suicide bombers and drone attacks. The history of Christian-Muslim relations is of course fraught." If there are grounds for scepticism about the true nature of the relationship between Christianity and Islam they lie in the fact that the West's Christianity has become associated with Imperialism and Islam has become analogous with its antithesis anti-Imperialism. Meanwhile, the crux of the matter is that, while Christianity is less about Jesus than Christ, Islam is less about Mohamed than about the Quran. The political awakening of the Arab world has brought political Islam to the fore of Arab politics. As revolutionary change sweeps across the Arab world, and until the dust settles on North Africa and the Middle East, the question of the place of Islam in the political establishment of the region remains vague and indeterminate. The political establishments in the Arab world need to revisit their policies. As political reform achieves lasting results and new constitutions that take civil liberties into account and in which civil society is paramount, the precise nature of the relationship between the state and the religious authorities will have to be fleshed out. Moreover, the differences between Islam and Christianity -- ritual and doctrinal -- will be examined at a considerably more intellectual level and not simply at a doctrinal dimension. It would be his appalling to waste this opportunity, just like so many other religious queries. "As scholar of religion Wilfred Cantwell Smith has observed, the closest parallel to Jesus in the Islamic world is not Mohamed but the Quran. For Christians, the gift God sent to the world is Jesus, who came in the form of a human body. For Muslims that gift is the Quran, which came in the form of the Arabic language. So Mohamed, who is traditionally said to be illiterate, is more like the Virgin Mary than like her son," extrapolates Prothero. Most Muslim readers would object to random statements such as this, but the Arab world is no longer the region we knew a mere couple of years ago. Freedom of expression, including freedom of religious affiliation and other civil liberties, will soon be enshrined in Arab constitutions. As far as Prothero's work is concerned the chapters that most impact us in the Arab world are the first two -- and the seventh, concerning Judaism. A more capricious factor that could work in the Prophet Mohamed's favour is his political stature, which rivals his status as a religious leader. Prothero's reticence is not due to a sudden gushing forth of religious fervour among the inhabitants of the region, but rather his attempt to evaluate objectively the pros and cons of the various religions. "First, Mohamed did more for Islam than Jesus did for Christianity," Prothero explains. Unlocking the psyche of religious leaders past and present can be a contentious procedure. Stung by what seems to be unfair criticism, Muslims counter that the Prophet Mohamed's story encapsulates the qualities for which humankind yearns. "Second, Mohamed was also a great political and military man -- a legislator, diplomat and general. Unlike Jesus, who never married, and the Buddha, who abandoned his wife, Mohamed accomplished all this while maintaining an extended family network that, upon his death, included nine wives." However, perhaps the most important factor is what kind of person is the true representative of contemporary Islam? Prothero has a specific fear, a common consternation. "Among recent developments in Islam, the scariest to Muslims and non-Muslims alike is the rise of Islamism, a radical form of politicized Islam that took the martyr tradition developed by Jews and adapted by Christians in a deadly new direction." The author delves into the various forms of "Islamism" and there are those who might suspect that he does not paint them in a sympathetic light. "Ultraconservative intellectual movements such as Salafism share much with Islamism but are distinguishable from and often antagonistic to it." Prothero then turns to a more sensitive subject, one that preoccupies the vast majority of politicised Muslims and non- Muslim policymakers alike. "One form of Salafism, Saudi Arabia's official theology of Wahhabism, spread globally in the early twenty-first century as Saudi money flowed into new mosques worldwide. Wahhabism is based on the strict teachings of Mohamed ibn Abdel-Wahhab 1703-92), an eighteenth century thinker who opposed innovation but was obsessed with the problem of shirk [or apostasy]. According to Ibn Abdel-Wahhab's uncompromising theology, both Christianity and Judaism are shirk, as are Shiism and Islam's mystical tradition of Sufism." Prothero thus brings up what might be the most political of the current discourses consuming the cerebral faculties of intellectuals in the Arab world. "The greatest intellectual influence on Al-Qaeda itself is likely the Egyptian theologian Sayyid Qutb (1906-66), who urged his followers to fight a holy war against secularism, democracy and the West," the author notes. Prothero's study is underpinned by the unprecedented access he has to the various philosophical and religious doctrines of the Orient. The prophets of the Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions are not exactly analogous or comparable to their Oriental counterparts. The gurus of the East are not so much biblical prophets as visionaries. What kind of a person is that? "Philosophical Hindus had understood God as something beyond our ken -- nirguna Brahman, God without attributes. The only words they were willing to attach to God were sat (existence), chit (consciousness), ananda (bliss). Devotional Hindus, however, happily described their chosen deities as male or female, four-armed or eight-armed, wild or mild. And, they worshipped their unapologetically personal divinity -- saguna Brahman (God with attributes) -- with relish." Prothero speaks of the "sexually explicit sculptures" of North India's Khajuharo temples and the world famous Kama Sutra. The Eastern conception of propriety and impropriety is radically different from that of the West. Moreover, sexual mores changed somewhat over the millennia. "Most Hindus today are uncomfortable with their tradition's eroticism. Many of my Hindu students refuse to see anything sexual whatsoever about the Shiva lingam that to Western eyes at least seems to unite quite explicitly the male and female sex organs." Prothero also notes that "devotional Hinduism addresses the full gamut of these worldly concerns." So does Islam -- Christianity, in sharp contrast, falls far short in this particular, mundane domain. One concept that remains incomprehensible in Islam and Christianity is that of reincarnation, prevalent in several key Asian religions. But it would take another article todelve to deeply into that. Reviewed by Gamal Nkrumah
