Islamic Ethics and Liberal Democracy: A Critical Analysis of Mustafa Akyol’s Perspectives
Keywords:
Islamic Politics, Political Modernity, Islamic State, LiberalismAbstract
The Arab Spring and its aftermath sparked a renewed interest among scholars and thinkers in exploring the potential compatibility between Islam and liberal democracy. This led to a series of debates both supporting and critiquing this idea. This study focuses on the ideas of Mustafa Akyol, a prominent scholar who actively engaged in the ongoing debate on reforming Islamic political thought over the past decade. By closely examining his primary work, Reopening Muslim Minds, this paper argues that Akyol not only presents a clear intellectual framework for demonstrating the convergence of Islam and liberal democracy but also explores how Islam can contribute to shaping modern multicultural societies. However, this study also suggests that Akyol's failure to critically examine modernity and liberalism as philosophical project to the same extent as he did with Islamic intellectual tradition resulted in a lack of genuine dialogue between Islam and liberal democracy in his work. Additionally, the paper argues that Akyol's analysis of Islamic intellectual tradition is somewhat flawed, particularly in his binary take on classical Islamic theological and philosophical movements.
References
Akyol, M. (2021), Reopening Muslim minds: A return to reason, freedom and tolerance. St. Martin’s Essentials.
Akyol, M. (2021). Why I defend liberty. St. Martin’s Essentials
Al-Attar, M. (2019). Divine command ethics in the Islamic legal tradition. Routledge Handbook of Islamic Law (1st ed., pp. 98-111). Routledge.
Ali, A. B. H. (2021). Mustafa Akyol’s Reopening Muslim Minds: A Return to Reason, Freedom, and Tolerance. Journal of Islamic Philosophy, 12, 75-101. https://doi.org/10.5840/islamicphil2021126.
Bahlul, R. (2018). Religion, democracy and the ‘Dawla Madaniyya’ of the Arab Spring. Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations, 29(3), 331-347.
Bayat, A. (2013). Post-Islamism: The changing faces of Islamism, Oxford University Press.
Campanini M. & Di Donato (Eds) (2021). Islamic political theology. Rowman and Littlefield.
Fadel, M. (2008). The true, the Good and the reasonable: The theological, ethical roots of public reason in Islamic law. Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, 21(1), pp. 05-69.
Guida, M. (2010). The new Islamists’ understanding of democracy in Turkey: The examples of Ali Bulaç and Hayreddin Karaman. Turkish Studies, 11(3), 347-370
Hallaq, W. (2013). The impossible state: Islam, state and modernity’s moral predicament, Columbia University Press.
Isakhan B. & Stockwell S. (2013). The secret history of democracy. Palgrave Macmillan.
Jawad, N. (2013). Democracy in modern Islamic thought. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 40(3), pp. 324-339.
Kaminiski, J. (2021). Islam, liberalism and ontology: A critical revaluation. Routledge.
Khairullin (2021). Trends in political Islam: Transition towards liberalization. Herenld of Russian Academy of Sciences, 92(2), pp. 100-104
Kual, V. (2020). Identity and difficulty of emancipation. Springer.
Kuru. A. (2023). Muslim politics between sharia and democracy. Muslim Politics Review, 1(1), pp.23-39.
MacIntyre, A. (2007). After virtue: A study in moral theory (3rd ed.). University of Notre Dame Press.
Islam, M. N. & Islam, M. S. (2017). Islam and democracy: Conflicts and congruence. Religions, 8(6), pp. 1-19.
Pirsoul, N. (2018): Islam and political liberalism: A Shi’ite approach to the overlapping consensus. The International Journal of Human Rights, 22(8), pp. 1030-1046.
Reinhart, A. K. (1995). Before revelation. State University of New York Press.
Sandel, M. (1998). Liberalism and the limits of justice (2nd ed.). Cambridge, University Press.
Shihadeh, A. (2016). Theories of ethical value in Kalām. In S. Schmidtke (Ed.), Oxford handbook of Islamic theology. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199696703.013.007
Swaine, L. (2009). Demanding deliberation: Political Islam and deliberation. Journal of Islamic Law and Culture, 11(2), 88-106.
Tibi. B. (2010). The politicization of Islam into Islamism in the context of global religious fundamentalism. Journal of the Middle East, and Africa, 1, 153-170.
Vasalou, S. (2016). Ibn Taymiyya's theological
