About this item
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 Muhammads passing in 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.
About the Author
Mustafa Akyol is a columnist for Turkish newspaper Hürriyet Daily News, the website Al-Monitor: The Pulse of the Middle East, and a monthly opinion writer for The International New York Times.
His articles have also appeared in Foreign Affairs, Newsweek, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian and many other publications. He studied political science and history at the Bo?aziçi University in Istanbul, where he still lives.
His book, Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty, an argument for "Muslim liberalism," was published by W.W. Norton in July 2011. The book was long-listed for the 2012 Lioner Gelber Prize literary prize, along with other titles by Henry Kissinger, Francis Fukuyama and Niall Ferguson.
