Status Updates From No God but God: The Origins...

I didn't mean to pair this with the Nietzsche but I'm really enjoying reading the two at the same time

I thought Chapter 10 had a perfect closing paragraph, so 11’s total summation of the future of Islam is about the Internet and how reformation now is in its infancy again, but still cyclical like older religions. I love the part about online forums, fatwas, and how if one doesn’t like one fatwa, they can post elsewhere until they get the result they were seeking. Hilarious and may have dangerous consequences.

Bringing Islam into modernity has been a struggle not only due to extremist sects but from within as well as young Muslims no longer seek advice from the elderly, scholarly Ummlah(?) clerics. The Internet age and globalization is a natural cause for the “Islamic Reformation”, not unlike the other major religions.

What an incredible history of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Really interesting to see fundamentalism rise, fall, rise w/ new inspired learners hip, get assassinated again, then be backed by Britain in WWI and 90s by US to overthrow Ottoman Empire and Soviets only to then have the tables turned against the hands that feed (&thieve). Power and money have corrupted everything in human history.

This chapter on Sufism isn’t really grabbing me as much as it’s similar to other religions like Buddhism and Hinduism. I do appreciate the mystical aspects of trying to read deeper into the Quran though, but I’d like to know more about how the originators came by their understandings and what gives them credibility to then found a new sect of Islam. What gave them divine insights? I just have trust issues, ha!