ISLAM WITHOUT EXTREMES - A MUSLIM CASE FOR LIBERTY IN SOUTH AFRICA

This item is sold brand new. It is ordered on demand from our supplier and is usually dispatched within 24 hours 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. Features Summary "A delightfully original take on...the prospects for liberal democracy in the broader Islamic Middle East."-Matthew Kaminski, Wall Street Journal Author Mustafa Akyol Publisher W W Norton & Co Inc Release date 20131125 Pages 364 ISBN 0-393-34724-9 ISBN 13 978-0-393-34724-1