Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty Read Online Free PDF Page A

explore in this book, while presenting a more liberal-minded understanding of Islam—in a long argument divided into three main parts.
    In Part I, I will go to the very genesis of this religion and show how its core message of monotheism—with implications such as the individual’s responsibility before God—transformed the Arabs and then the whole Middle East in remarkable ways. We will see how rationalist and even liberal ideas emerged in those earliest centuries of Islam, and why they failed to become definitive in the long run. We will also examine the distinction between the eternal message of the Qur’an and its temporal implications, even including some of the political and military acts of the Prophet Muhammad.
    Part II deals with more recent history. First, there is a chapter on the Ottoman Empire, the Muslim superpower from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. I will particularly focus on how the Ottoman elite imported liberal ideas and institutions from the West and, most important, reconciled them with Islam. This is a story largely forgotten both in the West and the East, but also a very important one for both.
    Then we will examine the anomaly of the twentieth century, which gave us oppression, militancy, and even terrorism in the name of Islam: Islamism. As we shall see, this modern ideology, which is different from the fourteen-century-old religion to which it refers, is quite misguided in itself but also very much mishandled by its foes, including the West.
    The last chapter of Part II focuses on Islam in modern-day Turkey. The reason for this is not only that I am a part of that story, and thus know it well. It is also that the exceptional story of Turkey, which is largely unnoticed in the West, represents a growing synthesis of Islam and liberalism. The Ottoman legacy certainly plays a role here, along with the lessons Turkey’s Muslims have learned from their interaction with the country’s secular forces. In addition, Turkey has recently become the stage for an experiment unprecedented in the history of “Islamdom”: the rise of a Muslim middle class that has begun to reinterpret religion with a more modern mindset. For centuries, Islam has been mainly a religion of peasants, landlords, soldiers, and bureaucrats, but in Turkey, since the “free-market revolution” of the 1980s, it has also become the religion of urban entrepreneurs and professionals. These emerging “Islamic Calvinists,” as a Western think tank referred to them—alluding to sociologist Max Weber’s famous thesis on the “spirit of capitalism”—strongly support democracy and the free-market economy. 9 Furthermore, they are far more individualistic than their forefathers. Consequently, as a Turkish observer recently put it, they want to hear about “the Qur’an and freedom,” rather than “the Qur’an and obedience.” 10
    Yet these more modern-minded Muslims, and the millions of their co-religionists throughout the world who are concerned about the authoritarian elements within their tradition, still need an accessible synthesis of the liberal ideas they find appealing and the faith they uphold—which, despite all the appearances to the contrary, might actually be compatible.
    They need, in other words, a genuinely Muslim case for liberty—something Part III provides, with religious arguments for “freedom from the state,” “freedom to sin,” and “freedom from Islam.”
    T HIS IS THE BRIEF STORY of why and how this book came to be. It is the fruit of an intellectual and spiritual journey that began in my grandfather’s house thirty years ago and has continued uninterrupted to date. I went to modern, English-language schools, which taught me a great deal about the liberal tradition of the West, but meanwhile I retained my passion to learn, discover, and experience more about my religion. Hence, since the early 1990s, I have engaged with various Islamic groups and have seen firsthand their virtues as well