Mustafa Akyol, BestSemester Middle East Studies Program speaker and author of Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty Interview by David Holt, Director, CCCU's BestSemester Middle East Studies Program CCCU Institutions interested in engaging Mustafa Akyol as a potential speaker on campus, in churches, or at conferences should contact him at akyol@mustafaakyol.org. Akyol is also on Twitter (@AkyolinEnglish). His website is www.thewhitepath.com. David Holt: Some pro-Israel audiences in the U.S. might consider the anti-Israel tone of the current Turkish government headed by the religiously (Islamic) inspired AK party to mask a hidden agenda aimed at supporting Islamist movements in the Middle East. In short, they might be skeptical of your argument for a moderate political Islam even in the Turkish case. While your book does not deal directly with the complex relationship between religious ideas and immediate policy agendas in the real world, how would you deal with such skeptics? Mustafa Akyol: First, let me differ a bit on "the anti-Israel tone of the current Turkish government”: it certainly has a tough stance on some particular policies of Israel, which include the killing of nine Turkish civilians on the Mediterranean, but I would not define it as categorically "anti-Israel." No matter how angry the Turkish government is with its Israeli counterpart, it respects Israel's right to exist and supports a two-state solution in the Holy Land. And it might actually be helpful to the Israelis if this Turkish line becomes more and more popular in the Arab world, rather than the irresponsible and unacceptable calls for Israel's destruction. Moreover, we should also see that Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan uses his huge popularity in the Arab world, which partly comes from his staunch pro-Palestinian stance, for really good causes: he has supported the Arab Spring, condemned the Baath regime in Syria for its brutality on its own people, and promoted the secular state as a good idea for Muslims. The term “liberal Muslim,” I must also remind, is not synonymous with “pro-Western Muslim.” Liberals in the Muslim world will agree with the West on many political principles but will probably oppose some of the policies of the United States and especially Israel. This is not only much justified, but also helpful to preserve their credibility among fellow Muslims. Holt: Western media coverage of current political conflict and regional instability in the Middle East tends to reinforce Western views, however well or poorly informed, about Islamic culture as violent, authoritarian, tribal, or sectarian. How can your book help speak to these impressions? Akyol: I try to help those impressions in several ways. First, the media focuses on now, but I look at history and show that a millennium ago it was actually Christendom which looked "violent, authoritarian, tribal, or sectarian" when compared to the world of Islam. What has happened since then, and why it has happened so, is a question I probe in the book. Secondly, I am "deconstructing" the troubles in the Muslim world, in a sense, and showing that quite a few of them come from non-religious roots, such as pre-Islamic traditions, social structures, and even modern forces such as nationalism. In Turkey, for example, the main threat to Christians' religious freedom is not Islam but Turkish nationalism, which is a secular and modern idea. Thirdly, I am demonstrating the liberal trends within Islam, both in the pre-modern and modern periods. The medieval Islamic school called Postponers, for example, built a theological argument for religious pluralism that British liberal John Locke would repeat some nine centuries later. They were called Postponers because instead of warring over contradictory religious interpretations, they decided to postpone such judgments until the afterlife when God would resolve all things. Holt: Some critics might argue that because you are a Turkish author and Islam in Turkey is not a model acceptable to most Sunni or Shiite Muslims around the world, the central message of your book is therefore limited to the particulars of Turkish society. How would you respond to such thinking? Akyol: Well, first of all, much of my book has nothing to do with Turkey. Rather, I address questions relevant to all Muslims who live in the modern world. I only have one chapter that focuses on Turkey, and I do this to use Turkey as a case study to observe the liberating influence of democracy and the market economy on the Muslim mind. Secondly, Turkey has actually become more relevant to other Muslims in the past decade. The incumbent Justice and Development Party (JDP) of Tayyip Erdogan, which has been in power since 2002, has underlined Turkey's Muslim identity and its connections with other Muslim nations. Some regard this as bad news, whereas I think in quite the opposite way: Turkey now looks closer to other Muslim societies, so the democratic experience of Turkey becomes more inspiring for them. No wonder many liberal-minded Arab Islamists who have participated in the Arab Spring have explicitly said they take Turkey’s JDP as an example. Holt: Especially since 9/11, many Muslim intellectuals around the world have written apologetic pieces arguing that Islam is a religion compatible with moderation, democracy, and pluralism. What motivated you to write this book and how do you see its contribution to this literature overall? Akyol: You are right to point out the apologetic nature of some of the post-9/11 Muslim rhetoric, and that's one reason I wanted to avoid that in my book. Instead, I tried to be more explicit about the troubles in the Muslim world and even the Islamic tradition. In other words, my book is not saying that everything in Islam is okay; I am rather acknowledging the problems and offering arguments on how they can be overcome. Of course, I believe that Islam, at its very core, is a noble religion with a liberating message. I would not be a Muslim if I did not believe so. But I see a big difference between the divine core of this religion and the historical trajectory it has followed, which has, in my view, brought some authoritarian elements to it. The ban and punishment of apostasy, for example, is totally post-Quranic and reflects the political conflicts of the early Muslim community, not the everlasting principles they were asked to subscribe to. |