Read Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty Online
Authors: Mustafa Akyol
59.
Later the term came to imply all Christians living under Muslim rule. Menocal,
Ornament of the World
, p. 69.
60.
One should even note that Charles lived four centuries after al-Hakam. Fernand Braudel,
A History of Civilizations
(New York: Penguin Books, 1993), p. 72.
61.
Wheatcroft,
Infidels
, p. 47.
62.
Tariq Ramadan,
Radical Reform
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 168.
63.
Daniel Pipes,
In the Path of God: Islam and Political Power
(New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2002), p. 177.
CHAPTER THREE: THE MEDIEVAL WAR OF IDEAS (I)
1.
Leonard Binder,
Islamic Liberalism: A Critique of Development Ideologies
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 4.
2.
Taha Akyol,
Hariciler ve Hizbullah:
Islam Toplumlarında Terörün Kökenleri[Kharijites and Hezbollah: The Origins of Terror in Islamic Societies] (Istanbul: Dogan Publishing, 2000), p. 7.
3.
Ismail A. B. Balogun, “Relation Between God and His Creation: Revelation and Authority,” in
The Concept of Monotheism in Islam and Christianity,
ed. Hans Köchler. Papers of the International Symposium on “The Concept of Monotheism in Islam and Christianity,” held in Rome, Italy (Vienna: Wilhelm Braumüller, 1982), p. 82.
4.
Qur’an 5:48, Bewley translation, with Arabic words anglicized.
5.
Speaking of different claims of truth by “Arminians,” and Calvinists, John Locke wrote: “The controversy between these churches about the truth of their doctrines and the purity of their worship is on both sides equal; nor is there any judge, either at Constantinople or elsewhere upon earth, by whose sentence it can be determined. The decision of that question belongs only to the Supreme judge of all men, to whom also alone belongs the punishment of the erroneous. In the meanwhile, let those men consider how heinously they sin, who, adding injustice, if not to their error, yet certainly to their pride, do rashly and arrogantly take upon them to misuse the servants of another master, who are not at all accountable to them.” John Locke,
A Letter Concerning Toleration
(Indianapolis: Liberal Arts Press, 1955), pp. 25–26).
6.
Al-Shahrastani, Al-Milal Wa’1-Nihal; quoted in Majid Fakhry, ed.,
A History of Islamic Philosophy
, 3rd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), p. 40.
7.
Duncan B. MacDonald,
Development of Muslim Theology, Jurisprudence and Constitutional Theory
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1903). p. 126.
8.
Fakhry,
History of Islamic Philosophy
, p. 41.
9.
Ibid., p. 40.
10.
The Murjiites have been unjustly accused for their political leanings: “In some early sources and older orientalist studies, they have been described both as loyalist supporters of the Umayyads and as political quietists. This is clearly mistaken. Their suspension of judgment concerning Ali clashed with the official Umayyad condemnation of him, and their insistence on their right to criticise the injustice of the rulers quickly led to conflict.”
The Encyclopedia of Islam
, vol. 7 (Leiden/New York: E. J. Brill, 1993), p. 606.
11.
“Fatalism, the supreme negation of human free will, was the most noticeable metaphysical concept embraced by pre-Islamic Arabs.” Rosenthal,
Muslim Concept of Freedom
, p. 12.
12.
Küng,
Islam
, p. 222.
13.
Rosenthal,
Muslim Concept of Freedom
, p. 78.
14.
Esposito, ed.,
Oxford History of Islam
, p. 277.
15.
Küng,
Islam
, p. 225.
16.
Patricia Crone and Martin Hinds,
God’s Caliph: Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 68; Afsaruddin,
First Muslims
, p. 86.
17.
Encyclopedia of Islam
, vol. 12, p. 312.
18.
John L. Esposito,
Islam: The Straight Path
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 79.
19.
Eric E. F. Bishop, “Al-Shafi’i (Muhammad ibn Idris) Founder of a Law School,”
The Muslim World
19, no. 2 (April 1929): 160.
20.
Richard C. Martin et al.,
Defenders of Reason in Islam
(Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 1997), p. 32.
21.
Majid Fakhry,
Ethical Theories in Islam
(Leiden: Brill, 1991), p. 47.
22.
Ibid., p. 49.
23.
“Without Islamic Aristotelianism there would certainly be no Christian Aristotelianism,” and “the influence of Averroes (and also of Avicenna) on the development of Later Medieval Christian thought is therefore unequivocal. But this intellectual debt to Islam is very rarely mentioned in our times.” Jones Irwin, “Averroes’ Reason: A Medieval Tale of Christianity and Islam,”
The Philosopher
90, no. 2 (Autumn 2002). For the influence of Averroes and Avicenna on St. Thomas Aquinas, see also Lyons,
House of Wisdom
, pp. 190–93.
24.
Martin et al.,
Defenders of Reason in Islam
, p. 11.
25.
Rémi Brague,
The Law of God: The Philosophical History of an Idea
, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). p. 152.
26.
Steven Wasserstrom,
Between Muslim and Jew: The Problem of Symbiosis under Early Islam
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 142–43.
27.
“Like many of the philosophers of the Enlightenment, the Mu‘tazili mutakallimun were also men of religious faith, although their faith and status as good Muslims was constantly criticized by their opponents.” Martin et al.,
Defenders of Reason in Islam
, p. 12.
28.
Ibid., p. 29.
29.
John Mikhail, “Islamic Rationalism and the Foundation of Human Rights,” Georgetown University Law Center, Public Law & Legal Theory Working Paper Series, no. 777026.
30.
Sunni theologian Fakhr al-Din al-Razi had identified this argument as a Mutazilite view, and prominent Qadari and Mutazilite scholars, such as Hasan al-Basri and Zamakhshari, were known to support it. Patricia Crone,
Medieval Islamic Political Thought
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), p. 381; Yohanan Friedmann,
Tolerance and Coercion in Islam: Interfaith Relations in the Muslim Tradition
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 106 (note 97).
31.
Qur’an 2:256, Shakir translation. “Action of the heart” is from Friedmann,
Tolerance and Coercion in Islam
, p. 106.
32.
Crone,
Medieval Islamic Political Thought,
p. 381; Friedmann,
Tolerance and Coercion in Islam
, p. 100.
33.
Crone,
Medieval Islamic Political Thought
, p. 381.
34.
Al-Farabi’s views are summarized in Rosenthal,
Muslim Concept of Freedom
, pp. 100–101.
35.
Ibid., p. 100.
36.
Ibid., p. 101.
37.
Arnold J. Toynbee,
A Study of History
, vol. 3, 2nd ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1935), p. 322.
38.
Ibn Khaldun notes: “Greater production and maximum efficiency can be obtained by trade and specialization through profit-seeking entrepreneurs who bear the consequences of their actions in terms of gains and losses . . . . [And] the best State is the one that has minimal bureaucracy, minimum mercenary armies to keep law and order, and minimal taxation on its citizens to finance the activities of the State.” Selim Cafer Karatas
,
“The Economic Theory of Ibn Khaldun and the Rise and Fall of Nations,” MuslimHeritage .com, May 18, 2006.
39.
Stephen Glain, “Islam in Office,”
Newsweek International
, July 3, 2006.
CHAPTER FOUR: THE MEDIEVAL WAR OF IDEAS (II)
1.
Christopher Melchert, “The Adversaries of Ahmad Ibn Hanbal,”
Arabica
, tome 44, fasc. 2 (April 1997), pp. 234–37.
2.
Ibid., p. 240.
3.
Ibid., p. 236.
4.
Qur’an 39:12, Bewley translation.
5.
Noel James Coulson,
A History of Islamic Law
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994), p. 71.