One of the most intriguing political writers today is Mustafa Akyol of Turkey, a journalist and commentator in Istanbul, whose book, Islam Without Extremes: An Islamic Case for Liberty, has just been published by W. W. Norton. It is Akyol’s argument that freedom in the ways recognized in the Western tradition, will be best promoted in Islamic countries if the government is in some sense Islamic rather than secularist.
He has a point, indeed, several points. Most 20th and 21st century Arab dictatorships have been secular and have feared and siuppressed Islamists–Syria, Iraq, even Egypt and Tunisia. These regimes have been ruthless, as we see now in the cities of Syria.
But we also see a different extreme in Iran, and, for that matter, in de facto daily governance in Pakistan. There Islamists cruelly attack people of other faiths and impose a tyrannous brand of Islam on their own co-religionists.
Unfortunately, Akyol’s model of a beth path in contemporary life is Turkey. Its government has repudiated many of the excesses of the former secular government and turned its economy, at least, toward the West. However, Turkey is also a poor model on many accounts; press censorship, for example.
Akyol therefore is most interested in historic examples of the kind of liberty-loving government he thinks is possible for Muslims. For these one must go back a long ways, and the record isn’t clear.
On the other hand, the models of republican freedom for the American Founders were not untainted, either. Think of democratic Athens and Reublican Rome. In other words, the American Founders had to invent the system they wanted. The historic “models” were mainly points of reference.
At his strongest, Akyol holds out the hope for a brand new version of government within an Islamic context.
via Discovery News – Islam–With Institutions of Liberty.
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