A clarion call to restore long-diminished traditions in Islamic thought.
A cogent appeal for an Islamic enlightenment based in Islamic values.
Akyol, author of Islam Without Extremes and The Islamic Jesus, presents a well-prepared argument for “finding Enlightenment values—reason, freedom and tolerance—within the Islamic tradition itself.” The author explains that early Islamic history spawned two broad ethical schools, one of which he characterizes as “ethical objectivism theory,” the other as “divine command theory.” The latter rose to prominence in the form of Ash'arism, a Sunni school of theology that stresses the role of scriptural and clerical authority. Ash’arism, writes Akyol, “won the day not because of its merits, but because of the support of the states that ruled the medieval Muslim world.” The author shows how authoritarian states have dominated Islamic history, using the divine command theory of ethics to uphold their power. According to Akyol, this trend has continued into the modern day, supporting authoritarianism and its attendant lack of freedoms. The author, who has spent much of his career studying and clarifying many aspects of Islam, calls on readers to ponder the early Islamic scholars who championed reason, science, personal liberties, and self-determinism, showing the importance of implementing these values in a modern Islamic enlightenment. Akyol especially highlights the 12th-century philosopher Ibn Rushd, known to the West as Averroes. He also calls on believers to mine the Quran for lessons in peace and personal freedoms that Ash’arism has suppressed through the centuries. “The big remedy we need…is really having ‘no compulsion in religion.’ It is, in other words, giving up coercive power in the name of Islam,” writes the author. “This means no more religious and moral policing, no threats to apostates and ‘innovators,’ no blasphemy laws, no public flogging or stoning, and no violence or intimidation in the family.” An exchange of liberalism for legalism, he maintains, will solve this dilemma.
A clarion call to restore long-diminished traditions in Islamic thought.Pub Date: April 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-25606-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's Essentials
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2021
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.
An examination of how the U.S. can revitalize its commitment to freedom.
In this ambitious study, Snyder, author of On Tyranny, The Road to Unfreedom, and other books, explores how American freedom might be reconceived not simply in negative terms—as freedom from coercion, especially by the state—but positive ones: the freedom to develop our human potential within sustaining communal structures. The author blends extensive personal reflections on his own evolving understanding of liberty with definitions of the concept by a range of philosophers, historians, politicians, and social activists. Americans, he explains, often wrongly assume that freedom simply means the removal of some barrier: “An individual is free, we think, when the government is out of the way. Negative freedom is our common sense.” In his careful and impassioned description of the profound implications of this conceptual limitation, Snyder provides a compelling account of the circumstances necessary for the realization of positive freedom, along with a set of detailed recommendations for specific sociopolitical reforms and policy initiatives. “We have to see freedom as positive, as beginning from virtues, as shared among people, and as built into institutions,” he writes. The author argues that it’s absurd to think of government as the enemy of freedom; instead, we ought to reimagine how a strong government might focus on creating the appropriate conditions for human flourishing and genuine liberty. Another essential and overlooked element of freedom is the fostering of a culture of solidarity, in which an awareness of and concern for the disadvantaged becomes a guiding virtue. Particularly striking and persuasive are the sections devoted to eviscerating the false promises of libertarianism, exposing the brutal injustices of the nation’s penitentiaries, and documenting the wide-ranging pathologies that flow from a tax system favoring the ultrawealthy.
An incisive, urgently relevant analysis of—and call to action on—America’s foundational ideal.Pub Date: Sept. 17, 2024
ISBN: 9780593728727
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
Progressive Christians and secular activists alike will find this a useful handbook in battling the religious right.
A lawyer and religious activist squares off against Christian nationalism and its far-right-wing tenets.
“A large and diverse community of people is eager to challenge the political ideology of Christian nationalism,” writes Tyler. This community comprises many faith traditions. In the case of her former Southern Baptist alignment, one argument against nationalism holds that “every person must have the freedom to respond to God and that no governmental authority should interfere with that relationship.” Speaking from that tradition, Tyler argues that the conflation of Christianity and government is idolatrous, and in its us-against-them stances, with “us” being able to tell “them” how to live their lives, it violates what Tyler holds to be the most important tenet of Christianity: that one should love one’s neighbor as oneself. Tyler depicts Christian nationalism as an effort to impose state-backed theocratic authority on the entire nation; nationalists, she holds, believe a range of propositions from the sanctity of the Second Amendment to the relegation of women to subservient positions, to say nothing of suppressing religious minorities. Tyler holds that these views have come as part of a package that has dogged Americans from the earliest days but has gathered force in the past few decades, including white supremacist assumptions and the insistence that God favors the United States above all other nations—more idolatry, that. With each prose narrative chapter closing with biblical readings and workbooklike exercises, Tyler’s book offers both good news and bad. The good news is that “large and diverse community.” The bad news, she allows, is that it will take generations to entirely root out Christian nationalism, beginning with one central task: “to directly confront a persistent myth: that the United States is a Christian nation.”
Progressive Christians and secular activists alike will find this a useful handbook in battling the religious right.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9781506498287
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Broadleaf Books
Review Posted Online: Oct. 11, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
