Description
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, newsfrom 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.
About the Author
“Mr Akyol shares with writers like Karen Armstrong and Reza Aslan an aptitude for writing in an engaging way about arcane theology.” — The Economist
Mustafa Akyol is a Turkish journalist, author, and public speaker. He is the author of "Reopening Muslim Minds: A Return to Reason, Freedom, and Tolerance" (2021), "The Islamic Jesus: How the King of the Jews Became a Prophet of the Muslims" (2017), and Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty (2011).
Akyol worked for more than a decade as an opinion columnist for two Turkish newspapers, Hurriyet Daily News and Star. Since 2013, he has also been a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, covering politics and religion in the Muslim world. In 2018, he joined the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C, as a senior fellow focusing on the intersection of public policy, Islam, and modernity.
Since the early 2000 s Akyol s articles have appeared in a wide range of other publications, including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Newsweek, Al-?Monitor, First Things, The Forward, the Weekly Standard, the Financial Times, the London Times, The Guardian, the Washington Times, and Pakistan’s The Dawn. He has appeared frequently on CNN, BBC, NPR, and Al-?Jazeera English and on prominent TV shows such as Fareed Zakaria GPS and HARDtalk. His TED talk on “Faith versus Tradition in Islam” has been watched by more than 1.2 million viewers.
He is married — as not only the husband to a most amazing wife, but also the father of three lovely boys. He thanks God for them.
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