Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

Author: Mustafa Akyol
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393081974
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 353

Book Description
“A delightfully original take on…the prospects for liberal democracy in the broader Islamic Middle East.”—Matthew Kaminski, Wall Street Journal As the Arab Spring threatens to give way to authoritarianism in Egypt and reports from Afghanistan detail widespread violence against U.S. troops and women, news from the Muslim world raises the question: Is Islam incompatible with freedom? In Islam without Extremes, Turkish columnist Mustafa Akyol answers this question by revealing the little-understood roots of political Islam, which originally included both rationalist, flexible strains and more dogmatic, rigid ones. Though the rigid traditionalists won out, Akyol points to a flourishing of liberalism in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire and the unique “Islamo-liberal synthesis” in present-day Turkey. As he powerfully asserts, only by accepting a secular state can Islamic societies thrive. Islam without Extremes offers a desperately needed intellectual basis for the reconcilability of Islam and liberty.

The Islamic Jesus

Author: Mustafa Akyol
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250088704
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
“A welcome expansion of the fragile territory known as common ground.” —The New York Times When Reza Aslan’s bestseller Zealot came out in 2013, there was criticism that he hadn’t addressed his Muslim faith while writing the origin story of Christianity. In fact, Ross Douthat of The New York Times wrote that “if Aslan had actually written in defense of the Islamic view of Jesus, that would have been something provocative and new.” Mustafa Akyol’s The Islamic Jesus is that book. The Islamic Jesus reveals startling new truths about Islam in the context of the first Muslims and the early origins of Christianity. Muslims and the first Christians—the Jewish followers of Jesus—saw Jesus as not divine but rather as a prophet and human Messiah and that salvation comes from faith and good works, not merely as faith, as Christians would later emphasize. What Akyol seeks to reveal are how these core beliefs of Jewish Christianity, which got lost in history as a heresy, emerged in a new religion born in 7th Arabia: Islam. Akyol exposes this extraordinary historical connection between Judaism, Jewish Christianity and Islam—a major mystery unexplored by academia. From Jesus’ Jewish followers to the Nazarenes and Ebionites to the Qu’ran’s stories of Mary and Jesus, The Islamic Jesus will reveal links between religions that seem so contrary today. It will also call on Muslims to discover their own Jesus, at a time when they are troubled by their own Pharisees and Zealots.

Reopening Muslim Minds

Author: Mustafa Akyol
Publisher: St. Martin's Essentials
ISBN: 1250256070
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
A fascinating journey into Islam's diverse history of ideas, making an argument for an "Islamic Enlightenment" today In Reopening Muslim Minds, Mustafa Akyol, senior fellow at the Cato Institute and opinion writer for The New York Times, both diagnoses “the crisis of Islam” in the modern world, and offers a way forward. Diving deeply into Islamic theology, and also sharing lessons from his own life story, he reveals how Muslims lost the universalism that made them a great civilization in their earlier centuries. He especially demonstrates how values often associated with Western Enlightenment — freedom, reason, tolerance, and an appreciation of science — had Islamic counterparts, which sadly were cast aside in favor of more dogmatic views, often for political ends. Elucidating complex ideas with engaging prose and storytelling, Reopening Muslim Minds borrows lost visions from medieval Muslim thinkers such as Ibn Rushd (aka Averroes), to offer a new Muslim worldview on a range of sensitive issues: human rights, equality for women, freedom of religion, or freedom from religion. While frankly acknowledging the problems in the world of Islam today, Akyol offers a clear and hopeful vision for its future.

My Isl@m

Author: Amir Ahmad Nasr
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250016487
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 334

Book Description
Amir Ahmad Nasr is a young Muslim man with something explosive in his hands: a computer connected to the Internet. And it has the power to help ignite a revolution and blow apart the structures of ignorance and politicized indoctrination that too often still imprison the Muslim mind. Part memoir, part passionate call for liberty, reason and doing work that matters, My Isl@m tells the tale of how the internet opened the eyes and heart of a once fearful young Muslim to a world beyond the dogmatism of his upbringing, and recounts his transformation into a defiant digital activist. In his honest, provocative, and courageous debut, Nasr–a popular Afro-Arab Sudanese blogger–steps out from behind the curtain of anonymity and emerges as a voice of a new generation of tech-savvy liberal Muslims. Set in war-ravaged Sudan, oil-rich Qatar, multi-cultural Malaysia, the United States, Turkey and the new frontiers of cyberspace, My Isl@m is a fascinating prelude to the Arab Spring and a disarming and uplifting tale of doubt, soul-searching, Islam, and finding freedom in the Middle East and the rest of the Muslim world. A poignant, honest, and uplifting memoir of how blogging and the internet opened the eyes and heart of one young Muslim man to a world beyond his religious fundamentalist upbringing.

The Way of the Strangers

Author: Graeme Wood (Journalist)
Publisher:
ISBN: 0812988752
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Book Description
"The Way of the Strangers is an intimate journey into the minds of the Islamic State's true believers. From the streets of Cairo to the mosques of London, Wood interviews supporters, recruiters, and sympathizers of the group...Wood speaks with non-Islamic State Muslim scholars and jihadists, and explores the group's idiosyncratic, coherent approach to Islam...Through character study and analysis, Wood provides a clear-eyed look at a movement that has inspired so many people to abandon or uproot their families.

Jihad in Islamic History

Author: Michael Bonner
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400827388
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 218

Book Description
What is jihad? Does it mean violence, as many non-Muslims assume? Or does it mean peace, as some Muslims insist? Because jihad is closely associated with the early spread of Islam, today's debate about the origin and meaning of jihad is nothing less than a struggle over Islam itself. In Jihad in Islamic History, Michael Bonner provides the first study in English that focuses on the early history of jihad, shedding much-needed light on the most recent controversies over jihad. To some, jihad is the essence of radical Islamist ideology, a synonym for terrorism, and even proof of Islam's innate violence. To others, jihad means a peaceful, individual, and internal spiritual striving. Bonner, however, shows that those who argue that jihad means only violence or only peace are both wrong. Jihad is a complex set of doctrines and practices that have changed over time and continue to evolve today. The Quran's messages about fighting and jihad are inseparable from its requirements of generosity and care for the poor. Jihad has often been a constructive and creative force, the key to building new Islamic societies and states. Jihad has regulated relations between Muslims and non-Muslims, in peace as well as in war. And while today's "jihadists" are in some ways following the "classical" jihad tradition, they have in other ways completely broken with it. Written for general readers who want to understand jihad and its controversies, Jihad in Islamic History will also interest specialists because of its original arguments.

Militant Islamist Ideology

Author: Cdr Youssef H. Aboul-Enein Usn
Publisher: US Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 9781591140702
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
A top adviser at the Joint Intelligence Task Force for Combating Terrorism argues that winning the war against Militant Islamists requires a more nuanced understanding of their ideology. His book is among the first attempts to deconstruct and marginalize al-Qaida ideology using Islamic based arguments.

Affinities and Extremes

Author: James A. Boon
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226064638
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
Examining representations of Balinese culture in complex contexts of Indonesia's colonial history, Hindu ritual practice as opposed to Islam, and comparative Indo-European hierarchies, Boon offers a powerful critique of doctrinal approaches to culture, religion, literature, politics, and the history of ideas and disciplines.

Far from Mecca

Author: Aliyah Khan
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 1978806647
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
Far from Mecca: Globalizing the Muslim Caribbean is the first academic work on Muslims in the English-speaking Caribbean. Khan focuses on the fiction, poetry and music of Islam in Guyana, Trinidad, and Jamaica, combining archival research, ethnography, and literary analysis to argue for a historical continuity of Afro- and Indo-Muslim presence and cultural production in the Caribbean: from Arabic-language autobiographical and religious texts written by enslaved Sufi West Africans in nineteenth century Jamaica, to early twentieth century fictions of post-indenture South Asian Muslim indigeneity and El Dorado, to the 1990 Jamaat al-Muslimeen attempted government coup in Trinidad and its calypso music, to judicial cases of contemporary interaction between Caribbean Muslims and global terrorism. Khan argues that the Caribbean Muslim subject, the "fullaman," a performative identity that relies on gendering and racializing Islam, troubles discourses of creolization that are fundamental to postcolonial nationalisms in the Caribbean.

Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

Author: Mustafa Akyol
Publisher: W. W. Norton
ISBN: 9780393070866
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Book Description
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.