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A Muslim Case for Liberty
W. W. Norton & Company
July 2011
On Sale: July 18, 2011
352 pages ISBN: 0393070867 EAN: 9780393070866 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Religion
A provocative manifesto for an interpretation of Islam that
synthesizes liberal ideas and respect for the Islamic tradition.
From furious reactions to the cartoons of Prophet Muhammad
to the suppression of women, news from the Muslim world begs
the question: is Islam incompatible with freedom? With an
eye sympathetic to Western liberalism and Islamic theology,
Mustafa Akyol traces the ideological and historical roots of
political Islam. The years following Muhammad's passing in
632 AD saw an intellectual "war of ideas" rage between
rationalist, flexible schools of Islam and the more
dogmatic, rigid ones. The traditionalist school won out,
fostering perceptions of Islam as antithetical to modernity.
However, through his careful reexamination of the currents
of Muslim thought, Akyol discovers a flourishing of
liberalism in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire and the
unique "Islamo-liberal synthesis" of present-day Turkey.
Only by accepting a secular state, he powerfully asserts,
can Islamic societies thrive. Persuasive and inspiring,
Islam without Extremes offers a desperately needed
intellectual basis for the reconcilability of Islam and
religious, political, economic, and social freedoms.
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