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Muslim World Book Review, volume 33, issue 3, spring 2013, pp. 44-47

Book Review:

Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

Mustafa Akyol

New York, W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 2011

P.p. 352. ISBN 978-039070866

Reviewed by Dr Mansur Ali

Cardiff University

Since the emergence of Islam on the modern political scene starting; from the Islamic
revolution of Iran through the Rushdie affair to September 11 and beyond, a plethora of
apologetic literature, both popular and academic, were produced to balance the existing bias
with regards to public perception of Islam. Akyol’s Islam Without Extreme: A Muslim Case
for Liberty attempts to go beyond apology. It is an attempt by the author to show to the world
that where Islam has become synonymous with extremism, at least an interpretation of Islam
can conform to ideas of Western liberal democracy.

The book is divided into three sections. Starting with autobiographical anecdotes, the author
sets the contours of the book. As an eight year old, the author frequented his grandfather’s
place to learn Arabic and the fundamentals of his religion. One day in his grandfather’s
library he stumbled upon a prayer book which had three quotes written on the back. The two
from the Qur’an deeply touched him whereas the one from the hadith (about beating children
when they don’t pray) horrified and troubled him. He could not fathom his grandfather
talking rudely to him let alone beat him. Not satisfied with his grandfather’s explanation, the
author, 30 years later, after extensive study of Islam comes to realise that this oppressive
mind-set has permeated the core of Muslim scholarship and society. He asks, ‘is this what
really Islam enjoins?’

After thorough research, he comes to the conclusion that Islam is not to be blamed for this
oppressive mind-set. Under two further sub-headings: ‘understanding just how brutal Islam
is,’ and ‘understanding how brutal non-Islam can be’, he comes to the conclusion that
authoritarianism is not associated with Islam a priori. Rather authoritarianism is a symptom
of an illiberal mind-set due to deep seated political cultures and social structures in that part
of the world. This is also the case with non-Muslim countries such as Russia and China. In
other words could authoritarian Muslims be authoritarians who just happened to be Muslims?
Through personal experience, the author is convinced that the only way that Muslims will
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flourish is through embracing liberty in all its manifestations. The rest of the book is an
attempt to prove why this is not impossible.

In part 1, Akyol explains how Islam started off as an apolitical movement and how
throughout the life of the Prophet a spirit of pluralism dominated the teachings of the Prophet.
He then goes onto to discuss how Muslims, post- the Prophet, developed an illiberal
reductionist understanding of the religion. The culprit to be blamed for this is Mr Hanbal (sic)
‘the radical cleric’ and a ‘petty landlord’ the chief of the literalists (ahl al-Hadith). A literalist
reading of the Qur’an coupled with excessive reliance on hadith texts, which was like a
‘telephone game’, created a culture that heavily imposed limitations on the intellect. In
contrast, the Murji’ites (postponers) in particular Abu Hanifa (?) were true pluralists as they
postponed judgements about people to God. Their offshoot the Qadrites and the Mu’tazilites
(the rationalists), through their arguments for the freedom of will and ontological truth and
justice sowed the first seed towards an Islamic liberalism. However with the literalist gaining
the upper hand Islamdom was reduced to a ‘Hadith wasteland’.

The defenders of reason stood no chance against their opponents. How could they when even
the forces of nature were against them? Akyol believes that the war of ideas between the
rationalists and their opponents is only the tip of the iceberg. The real cause of difference lies
in the ‘desert beneath the iceberg’ and even as deep down as the environment. To put it
simply, hadith scholars where of Arab Bedouin stock, fatalistic, tribal, ‘dislike changes as per
Arab culture’ , ‘communal in nature’, ‘anti-luxurious’ had a penchant for the concrete and an
aversion for the abstract iqta’ loving landlords who lacked dynamism and were followed by
the less-educated classes. In contrast, the rationalists where non-Arabs from the merchant
class who were well-educated, cosmopolitan intellectuals with an exposure to various
traditions, philosophies and people. The arid land of the Middle East with its flat topography
is also, at rock bottom, a perpetrator in fashioning this illiberal mind-set.

This analysis leads the author to ask that if the lack of economic dynamism was a cause for
the stagnation of Islam, can Islamic liberalism be revived through a rebirth of economic
dynamism in the Islamic lands? To answer this question the author turns his attention, in part
two of the book, to the case of modern Turkey.

For the author, Turkey is a synthesis of Islam, democracy and capitalism with its free market
economy. The reason for this is that the seat of the Ottoman power was in a geo-strategic
position as it was on the fringe of the Muslim world bordering Christendom. Since Turkey
didn’t have the same experience of being colonized like the Arab countries it was able to
learn from the West the value of freedom and liberty. He blames colonization for the
disintegration of ijtihad and individualism and the rise of jihad and communitarianism in the
Muslim world. The author believes that Turkey is the new way forward towards a middle-
class culture which revitalises Islamic values with the modern context. However, this will not
come without any hindrance. And in the next section the author posits some ‘signposts on the
liberal road.’
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Section three is an exposition of three key areas which the author had identified as hindrance
towards a theology of liberty: They are freedom from the State, freedom to sin and freedom
from Islam. Through an analysis of textual and historical sources, he arrives at the conclusion
that for an individual to prosper in spiritual growth, no outside forces can interfere with his
relation to God. Hence the Islamic State is not a requirement, a person should not be coerced
into leaving sins which is not synonymous to crime and a person should be given the liberty
of renouncing Islam without the fear of execution.

At this point a few observations are in order. First and foremost, this book is trying to do
more than the pages would allow and therefore a lot of the discussions are superficial and not
nuanced. For example any discussion on environmental determinism in understanding the
mind-set of hadith scholars has to explain the fact that six out of six of the authors of the
canonical hadith collections were not Arabs but Central Asians. The author gives the
impression that the al-Maturidi was sympathetic towards the Mu’taziltes whereas al-Maturidi
wrote no less than five refutations on the Mu’tazilites. There is also an issue of the sources
that the author uses. One wonders why the author confines himself to the studies carried out
by Schacht, Crone, Lewis on hadith and not consult the works of scholars such as Motzki,
Jonathan Brown, Lucas to get the other side of the story. The author argues that the roots of
individualism and liberalism are found in the Qur’an. One can argue that this is merely
reading into the Qur’an what the author holds to be of value. This is not new, Ameer Ali
found in the Qur’an the whole moral code of Victorian England and Muhammad Qutb read
the Qur’an through socialist lens. In the last section the author states that alcohol should not
be banned and in a country where alcohol is banned it cannot be proven if people are
observant of the law. Whilst in theory this is true, how pragmatic is it? Why criminalise drugs
or prostitution if it is consensual and there is no exploitation involved?

In conclusion it can be said that if this is an apology for Islam the author has done a good job.
On the other hand if this is a serious attempt to reform Islam and is meant for practicing
Muslims, the author needs to carry out original research and not weave a narrative out of
secondary sources especially the works of anti-Muslims like Bernard Lewis and Bat Ye’or
and the tabloid press. One has good examples of this in high quality research carried out by
Muslim scholars such as Sherman Jackson.