Download or read book Reason Freedom Democracy in Islam written by ʻAbd al-Karīm Surūsh and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Soroush and his contemporaries in other Moslem 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.".
Download or read book Reason Freedom and Democracy in Islam Essential Writings of Abdolkarim Soroush written by Abdolkarim Soroush and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2000-04-20 with total page 254 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 Islam And Democracy written by Fatima Mernissi and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2009-03-05 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is Islam compatible with democracy? Must fundamentalism win out in the Middle East, or will democracy ever be possible? In this now-classic book, Islamic sociologist Fatima Mernissi explores the ways in which progressive Muslims--defenders of democracy, feminists, and others trying to resist fundamentalism--must use the same sacred texts as Muslims who use them for violent ends, to prove different views. Updated with a new introduction by the author written in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, Islam and Democracy serves as a guide to the players moving the pieces on the rather grim Muslim chessboard. It shines new light on the people behind today's terrorist acts and raises provocative questions about the possibilities for democracy and human rights in the Islamic world. Essential reading for anyone interested in the politics of the Middle East today, Islam and Democracy is as timely now as it was upon its initial, celebrated publication.
Download or read book Islam and the Challenge of Democracy written by Khaled Abou El Fadl and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2004-03-28 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The events of September 11 and the subsequent war on terrorism have provoked widespread discussion about the possibility of democracy in the Islamic world. Such topics as the meaning of jihad, the role of clerics as authoritative interpreters, and the place of human rights and toleration in Islam have become subjects of urgent public debate around the world. With few exceptions, however, this debate has proceeded in isolation from the vibrant traditions of argument within Islamic theology, philosophy, and law. Islam and the Challenge of Democracy aims to correct this deficiency. The book engages the reader in a rich discourse on the challenges of democracy in contemporary Islam. The collection begins with a lead essay by Khaled Abou El Fadl, who argues that democracy, especially a constitutional democracy that protects basic individual rights, is the form of government best suited to promoting a set of social and political values central to Islam. Because Islam is about submission to God and about each individual's responsibility to serve as His agent on Earth, Abou El Fadl argues, there is no place for the subjugation to human authority demanded by authoritarian regimes. The lead essay is followed by eleven others from internationally respected specialists in democracy and religion. They address, challenge, and engage Abou El Fadl's work. The contributors include John Esposito, Muhammad Fadel, Noah Feldman, Nader Hashemi, Bernard Haykel, Muqtedar Khan, Saba Mahmood, David Novak, William Quandt, Kevin Reinhart, and Jeremy Waldron.
Download or read book Islam and Democracy written by John L. Esposito and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1996-05-09 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are Islam and democracy on a collision course? Do Islamic movements seek to "hijack democracy?" How have governments in the Muslim world responded to the many challenges of Islam and democracy today? A global religious resurgence and calls for greater political participation have been major forces in the post-Cold War period. Across the Muslim world, governments and Islamic movements grapple with issues of democratization and civil society. Islam and Democracy explores the Islamic sources (beliefs and institutions) relevant to the current debate over greater political participation and democratization. Esposito and Voll use six case studies--Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Sudan--to look at the diversity of Muslim experiences and experiments. At one end of the spectrum, Iran and Sudan represent two cases of militant, revolutionary Islam establishing political systems. In Pakistan and Malaysia, however, the new movements have been recognized and made part of the political process. Egypt and Algeria reveal the coexistence of both extremist and moderate Islamic activism and demonstrate the complex challenges confronting ruling elites. These case studies prove that despite commonalities, differing national contexts and identities give rise to a multiplicity of agendas and strategies. This broad spectrum of case studies, reflecting the multifaceted relationship of Islam and Democracy, provides important insight into the powerful forces of religious resurgence and democratization which will inevitably impact global politics in the twenty first century.
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 Democracy in Islam written by Sayed Khatab and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Challenging the view of Islamic extremists and critics of Islam, this book explores the very topical issue of Islam’s compatibility with democracy. It examines: principles of Islam's political theory and the notion of democracy therein the notion of democracy in medieval and modern Muslim thought Islam and human rights the contribution of Islamic legal ideas to European legal philosophy and law. The book addresses the pressing need for a systematic show of an Islamic politics of human rights and democracy grounded in the Qur’an. The West wonders about Islam and human rights, and its own ability to incorporate Muslim minority communities. Many Muslims also seek to find within Islam support source for democratic governance and human rights.
Download or read book Islam and the Challenge of Democracy written by Khaled Abou El Fadl and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forfattere: Khaled Abou El Fadl. Nader A. Hashemi. Jeremy Waldron. Noah Feldman. M.A. Muqtedar Khan. A. Kevin Reinhart. Saba Mahmood. Bernard Haykel. Mohammad H. Fadel. David Novak. John L. Esposito. William B. Quandt.
Download or read book Islam and Good Governance written by M. A. Muqtedar Khan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-04-08 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book advances an Islamic political philosophy based on the concept of Ihsan, which means to do beautiful things. The author moves beyond the dominant model of Islamic governance advanced by modern day Islamists. The political philosophy of Ihsan privileges process over structure, deeds over identity, love over law and mercy and forgiveness over retribution. The work invites Muslims to move away from thinking about the form of Islamic government and to strive to create a self-critical society that defends national virtue and generates institutions and practices that provide good governance.
Download or read book Civil Democratic Islam written by Cheryl Benard and published by Rand Corporation. This book was released on 2004-03-25 with total page 89 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the face of Islam's own internal struggles, it is not easy to see who we should support and how. This report provides detailed descriptions of subgroups, their stands on various issues, and what those stands may mean for the West. Since the outcomes can matter greatly to international community, that community might wish to influence them by providing support to appropriate actors. The author recommends a mixed approach of providing specific types of support to those who can influence the outcomes in desirable ways.
Download or read book Spring Fever written by Andrew C McCarthy and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2012-09-18 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first fundamental truth about the "Arab Spring" is that there never was one. The salient fact of the Middle East, the only one, is Islam. The Islam that shapes the Middle East inculcates in Muslims the self-perception that they are members of a civilization implacably hostile to the West. The United States is a competitor to be overcome, not the herald of a culture to be embraced. Is this self-perception based on objective truth? Does it reflect an accurate construction of Islam? It is over these questions that American officials and Western intellectuals obsess. Yet the questions are irrelevant. This is not a matter of right or wrong, of some posture or policy whose subtle tweaking or outright reversal would change the facts on the ground. This is simply, starkly, the way it is. Every human heart does not yearn for freedom. In the Islam of the Middle East, "freedom" means something very nearly the opposite of what the concept connotes to Westerners – it is the freedom that lies in total submission to Allah and His law. That law, sharia, is diametrically opposed to core components of freedom as understood in the West – beginning with the very idea that man is free to make law for himself, irrespective of what Allah has ordained. It is thus delusional to believe, as the West's Arab Spring fable insists, that the region teems with Jamal al-Madisons holding aloft the lamp of liberty. Do such revolutionary reformers exist? Of course they do . . . but in numbers barely enough to weave a fictional cover story. When push came to shove – and worse – the reformers were overwhelmed, swept away by a tide of Islamic supremacism, the dynamic, consequential mass movement that beckons endless winter. That is the real story of the Arab Spring – that, and the Pandora's Box that opens when an American administration aligns with that movement, whose stated goal is to destroy America.
Download or read book Why the West is Best written by Ibn Warraq and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2011-12-13 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We, in the West in general, and the United States in particular, have witnessed over the last twenty years a slow erosion of our civilizational self-confidence. Under the influence of intellectuals and academics in Western universities, intellectuals such as Gore Vidal, Susan Sontag, Edward Said, and Noam Chomsky, and destructive intellectual fashions such as post-modernism, moral relativism, and mulitculturalism, the West has lost all self-confidence in its own values, and seems incapable and unwilling to defend those values. By contrast, resurgent Islam, in all its forms, is supremely confident, and is able to exploit the West's moral weakness and cultural confusion to demand ever more concessions from her. The growing political and demographic power of Muslim communities in the West, aided and abetted by Western apologists of Islam, not to mention a compliant, pro-Islamic US Administration, has resulted in an ever-increasing demand for the implementation of Islamic law-the Sharia- into the fabric of Western law, and Western constitutions. There is an urgent need to examine why the Sharia is totally incompatible with Human Rights and the US Constitution. This book , the first of its kind, proposes to examine the Sharia and its potential and actual threat to democratic principles. This book defines and defends Western values, strengths and freedoms often taken for granted. This book also tackles the taboo subjects of racism in Asian culture, Arab slavery, and Islamic Imperialism. It begins with a homage to New York City, as a metaphor for all we hold dear in Western culture- pluralism, individualism, freedom of expression and thought, the complete freedom to pursue life, liberty and happiness unhampered by totalitarian regimes, and theocratic doctrines.
Download or read book Scientific and Political Freedom in Islam written by Uriya Shavit and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-02-24 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The modernist-apologetic approach to the relation between revelation and science and politics has been a central part of Arab discourses on the future of Muslim societies for over a century. This approach introduced historical and theological narratives and interpretative mechanisms that contextualize reason and freedom in Islamic terms to argue that, unlike with Christianity, it is possible for Muslim societies to be technologically and politically advanced without forfeiting revelation as an all-encompassing, legally-binding guide. ‘Scientific and Political Freedom in Islam’ critically examines the coherence and consistency of modernist-apologetic scholars. This is done through a discussion of their general theorizing on reason and freedom, which is then followed by discussions of their commentaries on specific scientific and political issues in light of their general theorizing. Regarding the former, the focus is Darwin’s theory of evolution, while the universality of the "Biblical flood," the heliocentric model, the Big Bang model and Freudianism are also discussed. Regarding the latter, the focus is Islam’s desired structure of government and concept of participatory politics, while individual freedoms are also discussed. The book argues that the modernist-apologetic approach has great potential to be a force for liberalization, but also possesses inherent limitations that render its theory on the relation between revelation and freedom self-contradictory. Introducing a significant body of new information on the reasons for the failure of secularism and democracy and the attitudes towards Darwinism in the Arab world, this book is a valuable resource for students and scholars of Islamic Studies, comparative religion, democracy studies and evolution studies.
Download or read book Reason Freedom Democracy written by 'Abd al-Karim Surush and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Islam and Democracy in the Middle East written by Larry Diamond and published by . This book was released on 2003-08-07 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive assessment of the origins and staying power of Middle East autocracies, as well as a sober account of the struggles of state reformers and opposition forces to promote civil liberties, competitive elections and a pluralistic vision of Islam. Drawing on the insights of some 25 leading Western and Middle Eastern scholars, the book highlights the dualistic and often contradictory nature of political liberalization. Yemen suggest, political liberalization - as managed by the state - not only opens new spaces for debate and criticism, but is also used as a deliberate tactic to avoid genuine democratization. In several chapters on Iran, the authors analyze the benefits and costs of limited reform. There, the electoral successes of President Mohammad Khatami and his reformist allies inspired a new generation but have not as yet undermined the clerical establishment's power. By contrast, in Turkey a party with Islamist roots is moving a discredited system beyond decades of conflict and paralysis, following a stunning election victory in 2002. force for change. While acknowledging the enduring attraction of radical Islam throughout the Arab world, the concluding chapters carefully assess the recent efforts of Muslim civil society activists and intellectuals to promote a liberal Islamic alternative. Their struggles to affirm the compatibility of Islam and pluralistic democracy face daunting challenges, not least of which is the persistent efforts of many Arab rulers to limit the influence of all advocates of democracy, secular or religious.
Download or read book Islamic Democratic Discourse written by M. A. Muqtedar Khan and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2006 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This wide-ranging set of essays explores the multi-faceted relationship between Islam and democracy. Each essayist's unique viewpoint on contemporary Islam provides insight into Islamic political thought and its connection to Western democracy.
Download or read book Temptations of Power written by Shadi Hamid and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-17 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1989, Francis Fukuyama famously announced the "end of history." The Berlin Wall had fallen; liberal democracy had won out. But what of illiberal democracy--the idea that popular majorities, working through the democratic process, might reject gender equality, religious freedoms, and other norms that Western democracies take for granted? Nowhere have such considerations become more relevant than in the Middle East, where the uprisings of 2011 swept the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups to power. In Temptations of Power, Shadi Hamid draws on hundreds of interviews with leaders and activists from across the region to advance a new understanding of how Islamist movements change over time. He puts forward the bold thesis that repression "forced" Islamists to moderate their politics, work in coalitions, de-emphasize Islamic law, and set aside the dream of an Islamic state. Meanwhile, democratic openings in the 1980s--and again during the Arab Spring--pushed Islamists back toward their original conservatism. With the uprisings of 2011, Islamists found themselves in an enviable position, but one for which they were unprepared. Groups like the Brotherhood combine the features of both political parties and religious movements, leading to an inherent tension they have struggled to resolve. However pragmatic they may be, their ultimate goal remains the Islamization of society. When the electorate they represent is conservative as well, they can push their own form of illiberal democracy while insisting they are carrying out the popular will. This can lead to overreach and significant backlash. Yet, while the Egyptian coup and the subsequent crackdown were a devastating blow for the Islamist "project," obituaries of political Islam are premature. As long as the battle over the role of religion in public life continues, Islamist parties in countries as diverse as Egypt, Tunisia, and Jordan will remain an important force whether in the ranks of opposition or the halls of power. But what are the key factors driving their evolution? A timely and provocative reassessment, Hamid's account serves as an essential compass for those trying to understand where the region's varied Islamist groups have come from and where they might be headed.
