Download or read book Freedom Modernity and Islam written by Richard K. Khuri and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 1998-02-01 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Freedom, Modernity, and Islam provides a discussion of the philosophical origins of the notions of freedom in both a Western and Islamic context. Richard K. Khuri maintains that our standard theories of modernization do not fully explain the global resurgence of fundamental religion. Only with a new analysis of freedom, using Western and non-Western sources, can we have a spontaneous synthesis that will inspire genuine freedom for all individuals and societies in the Arab-Muslim world. In the West, in post-Enlightenment times, the definition of freedom has shrunk; it is now irreducibly enmeshed with narrow notions of rationality and a "morality" of self-interest. He challenges this conception and explicates other dimensions of freedom: quality, transcendence, and the conditions under which community might enhance freedom. Khuri then applies that analysis to his examination of the status of freedom in the Arab Muslim world, past and the present. He determines which ideas have led to the considerable lack of freedom that marks many Middle Eastern societies today.
Download or read book Religious Freedom in Islam written by Daniel Philpott and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since at least the attacks of September 11, 2001, one of the most pressing political questions of the age has been whether Islam is hostile to religious freedom. Daniel Philpott examines conditions on the ground in forty-seven Muslim-majority countries today and offers an honest, clear-eyed answer to this urgent question. It is not, however, a simple answer. From a satellite view, the Muslim world looks unfree. But, Philpott shows, the truth is much more complex. Some one-fourth of Muslim-majority countries are in fact religiously free. Of the other countries, about forty percent are governed not by Islamists but by a hostile secularism imported from the West, while the other sixty percent are Islamist. The picture that emerges is both honest and hopeful. Yes, most Muslim-majority countries are lacking in religious freedom. But, Philpott argues, the Islamic tradition carries within it "seeds of freedom," and he offers guidance for how to cultivate those seeds in order to expand religious freedom in the Muslim world and the world at large. It is an urgent project. Religious freedom promotes goods like democracy and the advancement of women that are lacking in the Muslim-majority world and reduces ills like civil war, terrorism, and violence. Further, religious freedom is simply a matter of justice--not an exclusively Western value, but rather a universal right rooted in human nature. Its realization is critical to the aspirations of religious minorities and dissenters in Muslim countries, to Muslims living in non-Muslim countries or under secular dictatorships, and to relations between the West and the Muslim world. In this thoughtful book, Philpott seeks to establish a constructive middle ground in a fiery and long-lasting debate over Islam.
Download or read book Islam without Extremes A Muslim Case for Liberty written by Mustafa Akyol and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-07-18 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “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.
Download or read book Tradition and Modernity written by David Marshall and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-20 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tradition and Modernity focuses on how Christians and Muslims connect their traditions to modernity, looking especially at understandings of history, changing patterns of authority, and approaches to freedom. The volume includes a selection of relevant texts from 19th- and 20th-century thinkers, from John Henry Newman to Tariq Ramadan, accompanied by illuminating commentaries.
Download or read book Freedom and Orthodoxy written by Anouar Majid and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that the clash of civilizations that is supposed to be a feature of the post-Cold War environment is not necessarily caused by the dogma of world religions or cultural incompatibilities but by the inflexible and hegemonic universalisms that have characterized world history since 1492a cultural outlook that Majid terms post-Andalusianism. The all-encompassing worldviews of Euro-American ideologies have resulted in the retreat of Islam and other non-European traditions into dangerous orthodoxies and a growing climate of suspicion, fear, and terror. Freedom and Orthodoxy offers an alternative to perennial discord, suggesting that the world needs a philosophy of the provincial, one that reattaches individuals and societies to their heritages and memories but connects them to the rest of the world in solid, non-alienating, meaningful ways. For this to happen, Majid contends, globalization must be reimagined as a network of human solidarities and rigorous conversations across the worlds multiple cultures, not as a mechanical process of economic expansionism.
Download or read book Freedom written by Lucinda Mosher and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays, historical and scriptural texts, and reflections in Freedom: Christian and Muslim Perspectives consider how these two faith communities have historically addressed freedom, providing needed context for deeper understanding of interfaith relations from ancient to modern times.
Download or read book New Thinking in Islam written by Katajun Amirpur and published by Gingko Library. This book was released on 2016-11-15 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Rethinking Islam, Katajun Amirpur argues that the West’s impression of Islam as a backward-looking faith, resistant to post-Enlightenment thinking, is misleading and—due to its effects on political discourse—damaging. Introducing readers to key thinkers and activists—such as Abu Zaid, a free-thinking Egyptian Qur’an scholar; Abdolkarim Soroush, an academic and former member of Khomeini’s Cultural Revolution Committee; and Amina Wadud, an American feminist who was the first woman to lead the faithful in Friday Prayer—Amirpur reveals a powerful yet lesser-known tradition of inquiry and dissent within Islam, one that is committed to democracy and human rights. By examining these and many other similar figures’ ideas, she reveals the many ways they reject fundamentalist assertions and instead call for a diversity of opinion, greater freedom, and equality of the sexes.
Download or read book Islam and Modernity written by N. Hanif and published by Sarup & Sons. This book was released on 1997 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Present Title Is A Descriptive Analysis Of The Nature, Motivation And Changes In Islam In Modern Indian Perspectives. It Has Been Studied From Three Point Of Views Metaphysical Institutional And Historical. Metaphysical Studies Deals With The Concept Of Truth And Its Ultimate Destiny, However Institutional Study Involves In Mode Of Belief And Worship. Both Studies Are Challenged By Modern Islamic Historians. All Islamic Modernists Have Raised Question Mark On The Traditional Islamic Thought And Theology. The Creation Of New Values And Preservation Of Old Tradition Has Created Some Problem Among Islamic Modernists. In Context Of Indian Muslims, Such A Fresh Outlook By Indian Islamic Scholars, Is Absolutely Essential For Giving Enlightment And Guidance Of Lay Muslims, Who Stand Totally Confused By The Antagonistic Ideas.
Download or read book Why as a Muslim I Defend Liberty written by Mustafa Akyol and published by Cato Institute. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Islam, the second largest religion in the world, has several authoritarian interpretations today that defy human freedom—by executing “apostates” or “blasphemers,” imposing religious practices, or discriminating against women or minorities. In Why, as a Muslim, I Support Liberty, Mustafa Akyol offers a bold critique of this trouble, by frankly acknowledging its roots in the religious tradition. But Akyol also shows that Islam has “seeds of freedom” as well—in the Qur'an, the life of the Prophet Muhammad, and the complex history of the Islamic civilization. It is past time, he argues, to grow those seeds into maturity, and reinterpret Islamic law and politics under the Qur'anic maxim, “No compulsion in religion.” Akyol shows that the major reinterpretation Islam needs now is similar to the transformation that began in Western Christianity back in the 17th century, with the groundbreaking ideas of classical liberal thinkers such as John Locke. The author goes back and forth between classical liberalism and the Islamic tradition, to excavate little-noticed parallels, first highlighted by the “Islamic liberals” of the late Ottoman Empire, unknown to many Muslims and non-Muslims today. In short chapters, Akyol digs into big questions. Why do Muslims need to “reform” the Sharia? But is there something to “revive” in the Sharia as well? Should Muslims really glorify “conquest,” or rather believe in social contract? Is capitalism really alien to Islam, which has a rich heritage of free markets and civil society? Finally, he addresses a suspicion common among Muslims today: What if liberty is a mere cover used by Western powers to advance their imperialist schemes? With personal stories, historical anecdotes, theological insights, and a very accessible prose, this is the little big book on the intersection of Islam and liberty.
Download or read book Reason Freedom and Democracy in Islam written by Abdolkarim Soroush and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2000-04-20 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abdolkarim Soroush has emerged as one of the leading moderate revisionist thinkers of the Muslim world. He and his contemporaries in other Muslim countries are shaping what may become Islam's equivalent of the Christian Reformation: a period of questioning traditional practices and beliefs and, ultimately, of upheaval. Presenting eleven of his essays, this volume makes Soroush's thought readily available in English for the first time. The essays set forth his views on such matters as the freedom of Muslims to interpret the Qur'an, the inevitability of change in religion, the necessity of freedom of belief, and the compatibility of Islam and democracy. Throughout, Soroush emphasizes the rights of individuals in their relationship with both government and God, explaining that the ideal Islamic state can only be defined by the beliefs and will of the majority.
Download or read book Islamic Ethos and the Specter of Modernity written by Farzin Vahdat and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2015-06-15 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on the work of Hegel, this book proposes a framework for understanding modernity in the Muslim world and analyzes the discourse of prominent Muslim thinkers and political leaders with reference to some of the most significant markers of modernity. This study closely examines the works of nine major Islamic thinkers in twentieth and twenty-first centuries: Mohammad Iqbal, Abul Ala Maududi , Sayyid Qutb , Fatima Mernissi, Mehdi Haeri Yazdi, Mohammad Mojtaehd Shabestari, Mohammad Khatami, Seyyed Hussein Nasr and Mohamad Arkoun. By discussing these thinkers, the book traces the genealogy of major strands of consciousness in some crucial parts of the contemporary Islamic world and their relations to significant features of the modernity, such as human and individual subjectivity and agency, freedom, domination, culture of mass democracy, human rights, women’s rights, political activism and participation, economic ethos and views on forms of property ownership, as well as social and cultural pluralism.
Download or read book The Awakening of Muslim Democracy written by Jocelyne Cesari and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-14 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why and how did Islam become such a political force in so many Muslim-majority countries? In this book, Jocelyne Cesari investigates the relationship between modernization, politics, and Islam in Muslim-majority countries such as Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, Tunisia, and Turkey - countries that were founded by secular rulers and have since undergone secularized politics. Cesari argues that nation-building processes in these states have not created liberal democracies in the Western mold, but have instead spurred the politicization of Islam by turning it into a modern national ideology. Looking closely at examples of Islamic dominance in political modernization, this study provides a unique overview of the historical and political developments from the end of World War II to the Arab Spring that have made Islam the dominant force in the construction of the modern states, and discusses Islam's impact on emerging democracies in the contemporary Middle East.
Download or read book Islam and Modernity in Turkey written by B. Silverstein and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-01-31 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In contrast to much of the Muslim world, a majority of Turks consider Islam to be primarily a matter of personal choice and private belief. How did such an arrangement come about? Moreover, most observant Muslims in Turkey do not see such a conception and practice of Islam as illegitimate. Why not? Islam and Modernity in Turkey addresses these questions through an ethnographic study of Islamic discourses and practices and their articulation with mass media in Turkey, against the background of late Ottoman and early Republican precedents. This ground-breaking book sheds new light on issues of commensurability and difference in culture, religion, and history, and reformulates our understanding of Islam, secularism, and public life in Turkey, the Muslim world, and Europe.
Download or read book Reopening Muslim Minds written by Mustafa Akyol and published by St. Martin's Essentials. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Islam and Muslim Resistance to Modernity in Turkey written by Gokhan Bacik and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-08-24 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how traditional Sunni Muslim conceptions have informed or shaped Islamization strategies in contemporary Turkey. In particular, the author proposes to examine the teaching curriculum of the Ministry of Education, which oversees Turkish public religious education; the activities and teachings of Diyanet, the constitutional organ responsible for managing all religious affairs; and the ideas and activities of three Muslim religious groups currently operating in Turkey. The monograph explains how the interpretation and practice of Islam affects various situations in the Muslim world and analyzes the concept of nature in Islam, which has been an indivisible component of Islamic tradition since the beginning.
Download or read book Islam in Liberalism written by Joseph A. Massad and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-01-06 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Demonstrates that Western liberal ‘democracy’, portrayed as foreign to ‘Islam’, necessarily serves an imperial project. . . . timely and controversial.” —Politics, Religion & Ideology Islam is often associated with words like oppression, totalitarianism, intolerance, cruelty, misogyny, and homophobia, while its presumed antonyms are Christianity, the West, liberalism, individualism, freedom, citizenship, and democracy. In the most alarmist views, the West’s most cherished values—freedom, equality, and tolerance—are said to be endangered by Islam worldwide. Joseph Massad’s Islam in Liberalism explores what Islam has become in today’s world. He seeks to understand how anxieties about tyranny, intolerance, misogyny, and homophobia, seen in the politics of the Middle East, are projected onto Islam itself. Massad shows that through this projection Europe emerges as democratic and tolerant, feminist, and pro-LGBT rights—or, in short, Islam-free. Massad documents the Christian and liberal idea that we should missionize democracy, women’s rights, sexual rights, tolerance, equality, and even therapies to cure Muslims of their un-European, un-Christian, and illiberal ways. Along the way he sheds light on a variety of controversial topics, including the meanings of democracy—and the ideological assumption that Islam is not compatible with it while Christianity is. Islam in Liberalism is an unflinching critique of Western assumptions and of the liberalism that Europe and America present as salvation to Islam. “Essential reading for all scholars of Islam and Middle East politics.” —Cambridge Review of International Affairs “Reminds us that in order to move beyond scholarship revolving around a simplistic binarism between West and non-West, we must never forget how this opposition has shaped and continues to actively influence scholarship today.” —Los Angeles Review of Books
Download or read book Modernity Religion and the War on Terror written by Richard Dien Winfield and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-15 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The war on terror cannot be truly understood without investigating the legitimacy of modernity, the challenge that religion presents to modernization, the inescapable conflicts attending the emergence and expansion of modernity, and the post-colonial predicament from which Islamist reaction arises. Richard Dien Winfield illuminates the war on terror in light of these issues, presenting an anti-foundationalist justification of the rationality and freedom of modernity, while assessing how religion can stand in opposition to modernity and why Islam has been a privileged vehicle of anti-modern religious revolt. Winfield shows that the privatization that religion must undergo to be compatible with modern freedom involves no capitulation to relativism, but rather is a theological imperative on which the truth of religion depends. Exposing the limits of any purely secular modernization of Islam, Winfield shows how Islam can draw upon its core tradition to repudiate the oppression of Islamist reaction and become at home in the modern world.
