Matthew Kaemingk:
Welcome to Zealots at the Gate, a podcast of Comment magazine. I’m Matthew Kaemingk.
Shadi Hamid:
I’m Shadi Hamid.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Together, we research politics, religion, and the future of democracy at Fuller Seminary’s Mouw Institute of Faith and Public Life.
Shadi Hamid:
We are writing a book together. This podcast represents an informal space where we can talk about how to live with deep difference. Thanks so much for joining us.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Friends, welcome back. It’s good to have you. Just a reminder, please, if you are listening, subscribe and share. Thanks for joining us. Shadi, would you please invite our very special guest?
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. I’m really excited about today. We’ve talked about having Mustafa Akyol on the pod for quite some time, and now it’s finally happening.
Matthew Kaemingk:
I feel like it’s been a year we’ve been wanting to have him on.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah, we’ve talked about you-
Matthew Kaemingk:
This is great.
Shadi Hamid:
… all the time, Mustafa.
Mustafa Akyol:
Honoured to hear that. Hopefully in a good way, yeah.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. Mustafa is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. I’m a little bit biased, but I’d say he’s probably one of the most interesting and original Muslim thinkers writing today. I think it’s fair to say too, Mustafa, that you’re one of the most prominent advocates of an Islamic liberalism, if I can use that phrase. But feel free to push back when we get into that later, if you don’t love that. Mustafa is the author of many books. His previous book, which is quite excellent and I would highly recommend to viewers and listeners, is titled Reopening Muslim Minds: A Return To Reason, Freedom and Tolerance. But what we’ll focus on today is his new book, which also has a pretty compelling title. It’s called The Islamic Moses: How the Prophet Inspired Jews and Muslims to Flourish Together and Change the World. It’s also worth noting that you have another previous book called The Islamic Jesus, so it seems like you’re going for a little pattern here. But I’ll just say about this new book, I really do feel like it’s a monumental accomplishment. I think I’m comfortable saying that. It feels big to me, there’s nothing quite like it.
It’s also a decidedly unfashionable argument, which to me makes it actually more appealing. I want to get into the unfashionability of the argument and why I say that. But maybe just to get us warmed up, could you describe what kind of Muslim you are, and what kind of Islam you believe in and would like more Muslims to follow? Because you’re someone who is really engaged in this question of Islam and liberalism, and whether Islam can be liberal, whether it should be liberal. Maybe you can just lay out a little bit what your starting assumptions are there.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. In terms of the larger project of a Muslim case for democracy, for reason, for liberty, which seems to be in many ways your life’s work. If you could tell us just a little bit about that larger context, I think that’d be great.
Mustafa Akyol:
Well, thank you so much, Matthew and Shadi. This is great. I mean, thank you for your kind words. I’ve written a lot about Islam and liberalism. And by liberalism, I mean not the particularly central left political trend in America, but the classical liberal tradition. The idea of a limited government, equal rights under the law, free speech, freedom of expression, freedom of religion and free markets, and so on, and so forth. I’m coming from Turkey, and therefore actually the Ottoman tradition. When you’re looking at the world from that perspective, it’s not uncommon to try to link Islam and liberalism. This was a serious intellectual effort in the late Ottoman Empire. Ottoman intellectuals like Namik Kemal and the Young Ottomans, they were the ones that actually admired a lot of things they saw in Europe at the time. And they thought this is also compatible with Islam. That’s why they spearheaded a constitutional government in the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman Constitution of 1876, which gave equal rights to all Ottoman citizens, unlike the medieval Islamic system where Muslims were tolerant but superior. So politically the idea of a limited government, equal rights, free markets, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, these values, I believe in these values. I think this is the best political formula that mankind has ever built in centuries. There could be better ones in the future too.
Now, a lot of Muslims will say, well, we don’t want to get into this discussion because Islam has its own system, right? I mean, they would say, there’s a caliphate. There’s Sharia that should rule the land. I see what they call the Islamic system as the historical experience of Muslims. I don’t think Islam as a religion requires a caliphate. Of course, this is a big discussion in itself. But I agree with people like Ali Abdul Razak in Egypt or Said Bay in Turkey, which made this argument a century ago. I do believe Islam has values that certainly can and should inform political action, but I don’t think they offer a governmental model.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. Longtime listeners will remember that we did have an episode on the caliphate and had a really spirited discussion about what a modern caliphate might look like.
Mustafa Akyol:
I know, yeah. I mean, there are scholars who are working on this. Ovamir Anjum has written about that.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah, he’s the one who we had on actually.
Mustafa Akyol:
We had a heated debate with Ovamir on these issues too. But I respect his scholarship. Of course, I don’t share some of his perspectives. I think today across the Muslim world, there is a yearning for an Islamic alternative, an Islamic alternative of governance, a state. There should be an Islamic economy. There should be Islamic politics. There should be Islamic Coca-Cola. I mean, anything. I mean, I’m not joking, there was a Mecca Cola in the UK. But I think rather Islam’s values are universal values, discoverable by reason. They precede revelation. I’m getting into theological territory here.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Oh, this is dangerous territory.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah, here we go.
Mustafa Akyol:
Revelation confirms those values, but those values are universal; justice, fairness, security, coexistence and life. You can name the values of Islam. So I think these values have been articulated … I mean, people ask me, why Muslims wanted a caliphate, for 14 centuries they lived under it? Well, what’s the alternative? I mean, in medieval times, if I was living 10 centuries ago, I would want to live under an Islamic caliphate and nothing else. What’s the alternative? The alternative are the Mongols that come and slaughter you, and the Crusaders that come and slaughter you. There was no idea of a government that treats its citizens equally regardless of religion, and they would give them full religious rights. So politics is an evolving realm for me. Islam’s values are universal, but those values can be articulated in different political settings. The liberal formula, that is challenged by a lot of people these days from right and left, I think still is the best political invention.
Shadi Hamid:
Okay. Well, there’s a lot there in your response, and we’ll get back to some of these questions around reason and rationality later. But maybe now is a good point to get into the key argument of your new book. Again, it’s called The Islamic Moses. We’ll include a link to the book in the show notes, for those of you who want to get a copy or read. You make I think a pretty controversial argument but one that is, yeah, we don’t hear it all that much these days. But if I can maybe sum up part of it, that in the US we talk a lot about a Judeo-Christian tradition, but your argument is that the Judeo-Islamic tradition is in some ways stronger and more historically grounded. That it’s actually a relatively recent invention, and I would say probably mostly in the US, to construct a narrative of a Judeo-Christian tradition. And that if you go back many, many centuries, it was actually Judaism and Islam that had much more common affinities. You talk about a number of them. One is the more legalistic orientation of Islam and Judaism in contrast to Christianity, which you argue is less focused on the law or upholding traditional Old Testament laws, and so forth.
But maybe just start us off with why you think it’s important to argue for a Judeo-Islamic tradition. Obviously, this comes at an interesting time for this point because Jews and Muslims are … let’s say, to maybe oversimplify matters, not getting along as well as they did perhaps a few years ago. Obviously, the Gaza War has raised tensions among these two communities. But you wrote most of your book before October 7th and before the Gaza War, and then you were thrust into this new situation where you’re arguing for something that seems as far away as ever.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. And Mustafa, if I could just throw out my interpretation here of your telling of the Judeo-Islamic tradition. It seems to me there’s three movements going on within your argument or your formulation of it. One is, Judaism and Islam share a lot of similarities. Theologically, ethically, politically, there’s a lot of legal theological similarities between Judaism and Islam. You’re also saying that they influenced one another throughout history, and you tell the story of the different ways in which Judaism and Islam have influenced one another. And then there’s almost a sense of dependence where the two traditions have helped one another, or protected one another or enriched one another. Those are distinct things, but I see those things going on in your argument. Anyways, yeah, if you could just outline for us what you mean by this Judeo-Islamic tradition, and maybe a little bit of what you hope to accomplish by telling the story. And just to reiterate, I think as well this is a really important and needed argument and the relative silence on it is quite stunning. After reading the book I’m like, why don’t we talk about this more?
Mustafa Akyol:
Well, guys, first of all, thank you for all the good things you said about the book. It’s meaningful to hear that from you.
Matthew Kaemingk:
I have some critical stuff coming though. We’re getting there.
Mustafa Akyol:
Well, that is even better.
Matthew Kaemingk:
It’s coming.
Shadi Hamid:
We’re just warming you up right now.
Mustafa Akyol:
Praise is good, criticism is even better, to pick up on your motto, Shadi, and Wisdom of Crowds. Actually, the original title I suggested to my publisher at St. Martin’s Press was The Judeo-Islamic Tradition: A Forgotten story. But we stick with Islamic Moses because I have a book called Islamic Jesus, which did well, so this is a sequel to it. The Islamic Moses is the beginning of the story. That’s why the subtitle says, How the Prophet Inspires. So in the book, when you open, first you learn about why in the whole Quran the most dominant figure by far is Moses, right? You read the Quran … I mean, it begins with the story of a friend of mine who wants a copy of the Quran, a translation from me. He comes back and says, “I was expecting to learn about Muhammad. All I learned about is Moses.” I said, “Yeah, there’s a reason for it.” I begin with that story, and I tell the Quranic story of Moses in the first chapter. Then I show why Moses was so dominant figure for the scripture of Islam. Then I say, because he was the role model for Prophet Muhammad, and then I explain what that role model means. It’s about saving your believers from persecution. We then exodus of some sort, we call Hijra. But then you also start to build a presence, right, I mean, a military presence, and you conquer somewhere.
The conquest of Canaan and the conquest of Mecca and let’s say, Western Arabia in the sense, which also set Islam on a certain historical trajectory. I mean, Muslims say, of course, as we believe it came from divine revelation. But if you look at it from a historical perspective, it’s a major expansion of Judaism to non-Jewish peoples. I mean, there has been historians who called Islam Judaism for Gentiles. I quote them in the book. I mean, actually Sheikh Hamza Yusuf said that as an Islamic scholar. I said, wow, that’s very interesting you have that quote. Why is that? Because we know that Christianity also came out of Judaism in some sense, but Christianity added new things. One was the whole doctrine of Trinity, the idea of a divine Messiah, which didn’t exist in Judaism, which created a theological gap. But also Christianity was based on the abandonment of the Mosaic law in many ways. Islam, no. Islam just sticked with the Jewish precedent in both of those issues, a very staunch monotheism, uncomplicated by, let’s say, arguments of Trinity, and a legalistic tradition.
That’s why the Halakah and Sharia are very similar traditions. Now, people would be surprised to hear this today. Because when they hear about the Sharia, they know the Taliban, they know the Iranian regime. They think of stoning and all that, while the penal code of the Halakah is not implemented anymore for 2,000 years, for the very interesting reason that Judaism didn’t have a state of its own. But actually these are similar traditions. That’s why discussions or conversations about the Halakah in the Jewish tradition are very interesting from an Islamic perspective. Because it’s similar to our discussions about the Sharia, how much of it is historical, how much of it is to be implemented literally, and so on and so forth. So to come back to the question, I’m telling this Judeo-Islamic tradition story at a time when maybe this is the last thing people want to hear. There are a lot of anxiety over the war in Gaza, which has been pretty traumatizing for me too, I should say, to watch. There is great distrust among Muslims towards Judaism, Israel, the broad maybe Jewish presence in the world. Among Jewish people there’s great anxiety about, of course, radicals, Hamas and their supporters and all that.
So there is a big … it’s a time of tension. But maybe there’s something good in it, that the book is coming out at this time, which is reflected in the book. I mean, I say, I gave this book … in the epilogue I say to my publisher, hoping that it will add to peace in the Middle East. A week later I woke up to October 7th, and the horrors of that. I tried to address it a little bit in the end of the book as well. So yeah, at a time of I think bitter conflict and great tension I’m trying to say, hey look, Jews and Muslims, let’s understand that we have very similar religions. We were actually pretty good together for many centuries, and with that inspiration maybe we can try to still hope for peace in the Middle East as well.
Shadi Hamid:
I think one of your arguments that stood out to me is that Judaism wouldn’t be Judaism if it wasn’t for Islam, that Judaism developed as a theological tradition under Muslim rule. You quote Bernard Lewis who says this, the quote here is, the emergence of a Jewish theology took place almost entirely in Islamic lands. Can you maybe just say a little bit more about that, how dependent was Judaism on Islam?
Mustafa Akyol:
First of all, Islam historically saved many Jewish people from persecution, and even maybe from being destroyed. Because when Islam came into the world scene, Christianity was not today’s liberal Christianity. You had the Byzantine Empire, which had pretty harsh laws against Jews. You had the Visigoths in Spain, which were deeply, deeply oppressive, brutally oppressive on the Jewish people in Spain. Muslims came out with an idea that, we conquer people and if they’re people of the book, Jews and Christians, we take an extra tax from them. There are some limitations but we allow them to practice their religion, which was a very good deal for the Jewish people. That’s why Islamic conquests … and I go through them gradually, I mean, one by one. Islamic conquests in Syria, in Palestine and then North Africa and Spain, were welcomed by Jewish communities, even actively assisted by the Jewish communities. Especially we see that in Spain. I go through the Israeli sources and Jewish sources and all that. When Muslims conquered Jerusalem from the Byzantine Empire in 638, during the time of Caliph Umar … the second caliph, successor of Prophet Muhammad, this was a blessing for the Jews, because the Byzantines had banished Jews. The Romans had banished Jews from Jerusalem for centuries, and Islam brought them back into Jerusalem.
That’s the beginning of the Jewish Quarter in the old city. I go through these historical episodes. The Ottoman Empire saved Jews when they were forced to either convert to Christianity, or expelled in Spain during the end of the Reconquista, the time of Christopher Columbus. So historically there are many cases that Islamic Empires came as a blessing to Jews. People will say, oh, they were not equal. I’m not saying, yeah, they were equal. I prefer the liberal equality under the law, which ultimately the Ottoman Empire reached, by the way, at the end of the 19th century. But for its time I think historically we should look at things not with presentism, but understanding its historical context. Now also, when Jewish people were under Islamic rule, there were some bad periods too, and I mention them as well. But generally, Jews engage with the Islamic tradition. Islam had more people, more institutions and more money, and more things and more scholars and all that. The Jewish tradition were influenced deeply from the Islamic tradition on two areas. One is theology, the other one is philosophy. On theology, as Bernard Lewis says … and a few other Jewish scholars also made that point, the Jewish theology had certain giant big names like Saadia Gaon and later Maimonides. They developed theological ideas with Islamic influence.
I also show an irony there. They were very influenced by the Mu’tazilah, which are known, the rationalist theologians in Islam, which later in Islam actually became a little bit marginalized. But their influence actually became bigger on Judaism. It is an historical irony that today we have some Mu’tazilah texts that didn’t survive in Arabic, but survived in Hebrew. Now there’s an effort to translate them, which I also mention in the book. The second influence was Greek philosophy. Both Islam and Judaism are religions based on divine revelation. Muslims and Jews didn’t think they’d have any reason to study Aristotle or Plato or Galen, or all these infidel Greek thinkers. But at some point you see in Islamic civilization … in especially Abbasid times in Iraq, in this cosmopolitan cities of the time, Muslims beginning to get interested in Greek philosophy, translating these books into Arabic, which actually brought Greek tradition, Greek philosophy to world heritage. From that on, it went into through Spain, to Europe. Jews also were very influenced by this, and that’s why Jewish philosophy also emerged with Islamic influence. Again, an irony, we have some books of Ibn Rushd, the greatest Aristotelian philosopher in Islam of the Middle Ages … some people would define him as probably the greatest Islamic intellectual that influenced world history.
Averroes, known in Latin. We have a dozen of his books, not in Arabic, but in Hebrew translations today. Those Hebrew translations have been translated to English recently. From those texts, we learn more about Ibn Rushd, which shows, Judaism learned a lot from Islam. But also as Muslims, we owe it to the Jews that they kept some of our important texts that we ourselves lost. Why did that happen, is an interesting question.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Mustafa, along those lines, I’d love for you to share … This is my last softball, and then I’m going to start pushing a little bit.
Mustafa Akyol:
Yeah, I’m looking forward to those.
Matthew Kaemingk:
I’d love to hear just a little bit about your own process of discovery as you were working on the book. In terms of, how did your mind change about Judaism in and through your research and your work on this book? And maybe, what sorts of gratitude might you have for the Jewish people, the Jewish tradition, that maybe you didn’t have before you worked on this book?
Mustafa Akyol:
Well, if you’re asking for my own interest in this issue, again, it goes to my maybe Turkish and Ottoman background.
Matthew Kaemingk:
No, I think it’s less interest. It’s more of, how has your mind changed and maybe, what are some things that you’re grateful for that you learned in and through your research, that you’re like, man, Muslims should be more grateful to Jews for this? Or Muslims really need to know this about Judaism, that they might respect and honour this about it.
Mustafa Akyol:
I was fascinated by the discussions within Judaism about the Halakah, their Sharia, and how much reason plays in reinterpreting that. There’s a chapter, the Jewish Haskalah and the Islamic Enlightenment. I look into how before the modern era Jews were not a part of Europe, in the sense that they were living there but in ghettos and as closed societies. But in the 18th century, you have this Haskalah or Jewish Enlightenment movement where people like Moses Mendelssohn … which I write a lot about in that chapter, come out and say, hey, we Jews should be a part of society. They’re giving us equal citizenship right now. At this time it was not even fully realised yet, but he was trying to work for it. Let’s just study all these secular sciences. I mean, a lot of Jews were actually not interested in secular sciences. So he opened up Jewish minds to the secular universal reality out there, thanks to the liberal order that was beginning to arise. But then he called on Jews to rethink some issues in their tradition. Judaism was accused at the time to be a legalistic religion, which began with a theocracy. It’s a dangerous religion. That’s how some Enlightenment figures look at Judaism, which is very similar to how they look at Islam today.
Not the same people but let’s say, their descendants. I show how Moses Mendelssohn, as the John Locke of the Jews, as some people have called it, reinterpreted certain things in Judaism in a way that it would make it compatible with a liberal society, a coercion-free Judaism, I can say. Now, those are very interesting for me, because as a Muslim these are the issues we’re discussing today. That’s why I go back and forth between the Jewish Enlightenment and Islamic history. Then as an Ottoman, that’s really probably my most important identity, I feel grateful to the Jewish people for always standing up at the Ottomans. There’s a chapter I write about how the Jewish lobby in UK, Britain, was so pro-Ottoman when the Ottoman Empire was fighting Russia for its own survival and Russia was coming after the Ottomans. I mean, these are chapters that people forgot. What most people remember is, oh, the Ottoman Empire was collapsing and then came Zionism and the British. Well, that’s just the last maybe 10 years. But there is a long history of Jewish people also appreciating the Islamic civilization, and I appreciate the good Orientalists that I discuss in the book.
These were 19th century Jewish German scholars of Islam, who at a time when Islam was seen quite negatively in Europe brought a much more fair and I would say sympathetic outlook on Islam to Western ligature. People, again, recall the bad Orientalists, the biased ones, that’s why I have a chapter, The Good Orientalists. So I talk about these Jewish contributions to Islamic societies, Islamic civilization a lot, and I’m saying, we can even have more of that if we engage in a conversation.
Shadi Hamid:
Okay, now I also want to push a bit. Because I think some of your critics might say that what you find most appealing about Judaism is basically that in some sense you want Islam to become more like what Judaism became. Insofar as Judaism emphasized reason, rationality, non-coercion, it moved away from the role of the state and focused on the role of individuals and the role of the community because there was no Jewish state. That deep down this project for you is really, it could be seen as using Judaism to push Islam in a different direction, in a liberal direction. That as you’ve said, you want Islam to be more open to liberalism, perhaps you even want Islam to be liberalized. I don’t know if that’s how you would put it exactly. So how would you address that fear? Because certainly for some people it’s a fear, that they don’t want Islam to follow the same path that Jewish theology did. Because they might say, well, look at what happened. You had the Jewish Enlightenment, then you have the secularization of Jewish identity. Especially in the US you have a movement away from orthodoxy towards Reform Judaism, which de-emphasizes Jewish law considerably, so much so that you might even say that Jewish law doesn’t really play much of a role in Reform Judaism. That is not a very encouraging model for Muslims who want to hold on to what makes Islam distinctive.
They might say, we actually like that Islam is resistant to secularization. We like that Islam plays an outsized role in public life. We like that Islam has something to say about governmental affairs, and it’s not just a question of individual piety or communal organisation. So they might see your book as a cautionary tale, an example of what not to do and of what not to pursue.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. I mean, to be sloppy about it, to just say that the Jewish minority in the West has in many ways assimilated into modern liberal life. It has lost its religious distinctives, its religious strangeness, and has capitulated to a Western rationalism.
Mustafa Akyol:
And also built a lot of influence over it too, I would see it as that way too. Now, I told this to your point, and yes, do I want Islam to go to a more liberal direction? Definitely, that’s what my whole work is about. But let me specify what I mean by liberalism here. It’s a dirty word in the Muslim world today. When you say, I want Muslim to be liberal, they would say, oh, you don’t want them to pray. You don’t want them to fast in Ramadan. You want them to, I don’t know, do cocaine parties or something like that. No. What I mean is, I want Muslims to be as observant that they would want as pious people. I just don’t want them to have political systems that enforce this on people. My liberalism is very political in the sense that it’s about non-coercion in the religion. So I’m not asking for Muslims to give up their piety. It’s just, piety should not be enforced. If you don’t do that in any given Muslim society or community, there will be some people who are more pious. There will be people who are pious a little bit, but also the other way too, there will be some people who are not observant at all. The pious people should do preaching and other civil society activism and persuasion, and all that, to keep the tradition alive.
But that’s normal. That’s the way things are. When you enforce piety … as we see in Iran, as we now see in Afghanistan, as we’ve seen in Saudi Arabia for long, it actually even is counterproductive in the modern world. Because this is not your medieval world anymore, people know they have options.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yes. But isn’t this the modern enlightenment thing, which is essentially to make religion a private, personal spiritual practice and then everything else belongs to secularism?
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. I mean, what if Islam isn’t meant to be a private-
Mustafa Akyol:
I didn’t say private.
Shadi Hamid:
… individual-
Mustafa Akyol:
I didn’t say private, I said non-coerced.
Shadi Hamid:
You’re basically like, I want them to pray, but other than personal piety-
Mustafa Akyol:
I want them to pray because they want to pray, because they believe in God and they think, this is my religious obligation. I think that’s a healthier religiosity than praying because there is a religion police force checking whether you’re praying or not, which is the case in Afghanistan today.
Shadi Hamid:
Okay, but that’s a bit of a binary. I mean, obviously we can look at the extreme examples of Iran and Afghanistan, and I think the vast majority of reasonable people like us are going to say, of course, that’s terrible. But there is something in between where there is a more real public expression of Islam, that it plays some role in government and people can disagree on what that looks like. But what you seem to be suggesting here is a secular outlook, a separation if you will, to some degree between-
Mustafa Akyol:
Yeah. I want a secular outlook in the sense that … Actually, again, I’ll tell you, despite all its political problems … you cannot criticise the president and know whether you’ll be safe or not, but Turkey is actually not a bad model for Muslim majority societies. In the sense that, it’s a secular republic for 100 years. It went too secular and oppressively secular, and I was critical of that. But today, there’s no Sharia in the legal system. Religion is very vibrant. You have mosques everywhere and it influences politics too. I’m not against religion influencing politics. I’m against religion using the state as a coercive mechanism. Abdullah Naeem makes a distinction between, we have to separate Islam from the state. It doesn’t mean we have to separate Islam from politics, to get in foreign politics. I mean, you know Rached Ghannouchi has certain perspectives on this I value a lot. So I’m not saying Islam as a religion should have no say on world affairs or public issues. Islam as a religion will inform and motivate its believers and that’s totally normal and fine, and it’s a contribution in many ways.
It is giving up coercive power in the name of Islam, that’s how I define it.
Shadi Hamid:
But what you call coercion, other Muslims might just say, hey, we want Sharia to play some role in the legal system. We don’t want the Turkish example that you just mentioned, where Sharia is essentially removed from having any kind of legal force. That brings us back to the changes that happened to Jewish law over time, and maybe you could say a little bit more about that. But it’s really interesting to look at how, as you’ve alluded to, not having a state had such a profound influence on the evolution of Judaism and Jewish thought. When you don’t have a state for many, many centuries … and this is really since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, Jews did not have a state to rule, and that meant they had to focus on individual piety and communal obligations and so forth, and Jewish law, it became something other than what it was prior. So there’s a really important lesson here on the importance of context, that context can change law over time. And then you can imagine a situation where if there were no distinctly Muslim or Islamic states, that maybe Muslims would start to see the law in a different way. But ultimately, I think that’s the rub, that many Muslims would see this as a not positive development. It’s not just me claiming that, many Muslims would see it this way.
Most of the polling we have in Muslim majority countries in the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia make very clear that very large majorities of Muslims don’t want Sharia to be removed from the legal system. So if that’s what you find most appealing about the Jewish evolution and Judaism’s relationship to the state, and grafting that on to Islam and the Muslim experience, isn’t there a risk that in some ways you might even be … some people might come out of your book and say, well, actually this Judeo-Islamic tradition is pretty negative. It’s actually frightening because it might mean that Muslims will lose some of their Sharia, or their traditional relationship to their own law.
Mustafa Akyol:
I think Muslims should lose some of their Sharia. In the sense that, I don’t think there should be any apostasy laws, for example, which is historically considered a part of the Sharia, which is, you give that penalty for apostasy. I’m also a Reformist when it comes to the Sharia anyway. I think those blasphemy laws, apostasy laws … the interpretation of commending the right and forbidding the wrong as religious coercion, right? I mean, enforcing hijab as it’s happening, the headscarf as it happening, I think we should lose those indeed. Do some Muslim majorities disagree with me on this? Yes, sure they do. I’m not saying I follow the majority here. I follow what I think is the right thing to do, and these are new ideas for some Muslim societies. I mean, it was a new idea in Christianity when John Locke wrote a letter on toleration and saying that the state should not punish the heretical churches. It was a new idea but I think it was the right idea. So I do believe. Now, one good question is, when we get into this road of liberalism, let’s say, will we end up becoming secular? I’m making a distinction between these things. I’m making a distinction between secularity of the state and the secularity of the individual. I believe a secular state, individuals and communities, voluntarily formed communities, can be very pious.
Actually, I don’t think there’s a necessarily correlation. America has been a secular state from its very founding for over two centuries, it’s been a very religious society.
Shadi Hamid:
Until recently.
Mustafa Akyol:
Until recently.
Shadi Hamid:
That’s no longer the case.
Mustafa Akyol:
Yeah. But I don’t think that comes from the First Amendment, the founding of the America. I think that comes from other social dynamics, maybe the mistakes of Christians and religious people themselves played a part of this. There is a progressive ideology that defames religion, or sees religion is always a negative force. I’m not with those forces and I would like to preserve piety in society. I believe in its value. But just like it was in America for a long time, that should be coming not from the state but from the sincere belief and efforts of individuals and the communities they form.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Okay. I’m going to break in here because you two are not going to be able to work out Islam and liberalism in the next 20 minutes. So I’m going to get my question in here for you, Mustafa. It seems to me that one of the big underlying goals of this particular book around the Judeo-Islamic tradition is clearly a desire for peace, a desire for peace between Jews and Muslims. It seems to me that your strategy or your pathway to peace is by really emphasizing the similarities in theology and ethics and history, the sense of mutual influence and dependency, inspiring a sense that we’re actually siblings. We’re not identical twins. I think one of the quotes goes, we’re fraternal twins, Jews and Muslims, children of Abraham.
Shadi Hamid:
Well, we’re technically cousins.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Cousins.
Shadi Hamid:
That’s actually a very common phrase that’s used in Arab countries, where Muslims would refer to Jews as their cousins. Unfortunately, it’s not always said in the most positive way.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. But I think my question for you is … I’ve got to say, in my own life some of my toughest fights are not with strangers or even friends, but with family members. Sibling fights can be some of the most painful ones. We talk a lot about pluralism and deep difference on this show and in this book we’re working on. I have to say that the very common argument that we need to focus on our commonalities in order to cultivate peace, it rings a little hollow to me that if we focus on what we have in common, we will get along. Because so much fighting we’re seeing right now, obviously in Gaza, is between siblings. The fighting can be the nastiest amongst those who have similarities. So I’m skeptical that this argument will cultivate peace between Jews and Muslims, the argument, hey, we actually have a lot in common. I’m wondering if you could speak to that skepticism, that commonality can breed a level of peace.
Mustafa Akyol:
First of all, in this book I’m not trying to offer a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, right?
Matthew Kaemingk:
That’s good.
Mustafa Akyol:
I’m not saying, this is how you should divide West Bank and Gaza and two-state solution land swaps. I mean, people have been working on this for decades, and it hasn’t worked well so far. Inshallah, I would hope to see some sort of a two-state solution. I’m not speaking about that. I’m speaking about the theological side of things. I would argue that Islam and Judaism are the two religions which are less likely to have a theological war, a religious war. Islam is theologically at peace with Judaism, and Judaism is theologically at peace with Islam. Unlike in Christianity, they’re not trying to convert each other. I mean, from an Islamic point of view, Jews are monotheists as well and they have their Sharia. Yeah, if they convert, they’re fine. There are being some Islamic converts. But Islam and Christianity, they’re both universalistic religions that actually try to convert each other, so there are some tensions there. There’s a tension over the nature of God questions. Islam and Judaism are theologically at peace. I show that that theological piece at times, many times in history, also brought them together politically as well.
Now, what is happening in the Holy Land between Israel and Palestinians since 1947 … or it goes back to the Balfour Declaration, you can go back like 100 years before, that is a national conflict to me. It’s like two peoples, Israelis and Palestinians, are claiming the same land and they’re fighting over that. We would have the same conflict if the Israelis happened to be Hindus and the Palestinians happened to be Buddhists. These are two people, two nations. Now, those nations, of course, have religious identities and those identities bring in other people to the fore. In Palestine actually we have Christian Palestinians too. That is not much noticed in America in a bizarre way. So I’m trying to dereligionize the conflict so it can be understood as what it is, which is a land dispute basically between two peoples. Now, I’ve seen these conflicts all over the Ottoman territories, and between Bulgaria and Greece, and Serbia and of course Bosnians. It was not a war over religion, it was a war over land and a nation state.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yes. But it does seem that your particular book is trying to cultivate peace between Muslims and Jews. One of the ways in which you do that is by emphasizing the similarities, right?
Mustafa Akyol:
Emphasizing the similarities, and what I’m saying is that people have religionized the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on both sides and I oppose that. There emerged these Islamic narratives about that, at the end of time the Jews will hide behind trees, and Muslims will go after that. Based on a illegit reported, let’s say saying, attributed to Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. But how accurate they are, I also bring some doubt about that in the book. On the Jewish side, of course, the Christian Zionists, so the whole idea … I’m very disturbed by the term Amalek appearing in this conflict by some Israeli hawks to refer to the Palestinians, or at least to Hamas. So there is a religionization of the conflict. What I’m trying is to dereligionize the conflict, put it there as a dispute, not too different from the war between the IRA and the British government, which was a Catholic-Protestant war. But it was not a war over religion, it was a war over the control of a certain territory between two peoples.
Matthew Kaemingk:
A pointed question for you, do you believe that the Jewish people are in any way special to God?
Mustafa Akyol:
Good question. I think it’s fair to say, Abrahamic monotheism that we all come from, was revealed first to the Jewish people. They spearheaded in history for a long time alone. So there is a special case with the Jewish people, which is acknowledged in the Quran. But I also believe that that Abrahamic tradition had two major expansions. One is Christianity, one is Islam. Jewish people brought it to the world, so I don’t think there is a special theological status for Jewish people today. We are all children of Abraham. Now, I’m not denying the same dignity or equality of non-Abrahamic peoples, or stuff like that. But if you look at just from an Abrahamic theology, I think we’ve all become Israelites, right? We believe, we worship the God of Abraham.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah. Listeners will want to refer back to the debate Shadi and I just had about, if we worship the same God.
Shadi Hamid:
Which we will also include in the show notes. That was a good one. Matt, do you want to say a little bit more about where you were going with that question? I feel like there was something underneath it that I’m intrigued by.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Well, there is something. There’s a number of things underneath. I mean, for many Christians today, we will say that the Jewish people are in an important sense God’s chosen people and have a level of theological value. We’re pretty vague and mysterious about what that exactly means, but there’s a preciousness to God’s people. My own family comes from the Netherlands, and obviously we were invaded by the Nazis, and many Jews within the Netherlands were killed or in some cases they were hidden. There were two groups of people in the Netherlands that hid a lot of Jews. One was the Communists and the other was the Calvinists, the Reform folks. For the Calvinist Christians, they have this love of the Old Testament and appreciation for God’s covenant with the Jewish people. That inspired a number of them to protect the Jews, out of this sense of the specialness of the Jews. But what this connects to for me, Shadi, is my earlier point about really emphasizing the similarities between Islam and Judaism out of a desire to cultivate peace. The point I’m nervous about is kind of subtle, which is essentially to say something like, Jews are worthy of protection and peace and respect because they’re similar to us, or because we share a common tradition, or because our theology is quite similar.
As opposed to an ethical argument that I think … the Christian argument for religious freedom or just freedom in general is based upon human beings. All human beings are sacred. They are made in the image of God and are valuable regardless of their theology, regardless of their history, regardless of their tradition, regardless of if they are children of Abraham or not. I have to respect people regardless of my long tradition with them. So I get worried when we’re arguing for peace, or whatever, from the point of similarity, as opposed to grounding it in humanity. This is where Western liberalism, I would argue, emerged out of a Christendom type assumption that human beings are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, all human beings, regardless of their tradition. So all being children of Abraham, that doesn’t have an ethical meaning to me. I want to treat Islamic citizens in the same way that I want to treat atheist citizens, because they’re all children of God as opposed to children of Abraham.
Sometimes with this Judeo-Christian thing or this Judeo-Islamic thing I start to think, oh, we’re creating levels of proximity that can bring trouble politically and so forth. Anyways, Mustafa, could you speak to that a little bit?
Mustafa Akyol:
Sure. I would agree with everything you just said, that human rights come from our belief that God has created all humans with equal dignity. I certainly do not say, the Jews and Muslims are on this good side and Christians too maybe, and others are … I’m not saying that. I totally agree with you on that. That’s why I call myself a liberal, right? I mean, I defend the rights of atheists of any persuasion. But that’s different from saying, we have also a religious tradition which has incredible commonalities. Let’s look at these things which will bring us more understanding. I mean, Christians and Jews are doing this, right? I mean, that’s why we’re speaking of a Judeo-Christian tradition. As Shadi said in the beginning, this emerged in the 20th century. Until the 20th century people were not speaking of a Judeo-Christian tradition. In Christianity there were pretty negative views towards Jews, and among Jews too, Christianity was seen as a threat. I mentioned some of the historical episodes that highlight that. But at some point Christians, instead of seeing Jews as Christ killers, they said Christ was a Jew. Jesus was a Jew. Oh, my God, so the Jewishness of Jesus became an emphasis.
In my book, what I try to do is, such a connection also exists between Judaism and Islam, sometimes even more powerful. Let’s just look into this. Yes, there’s a terrible national conflict in the Middle East, and, of course, holy places took a religious also color too, but that should not cloud our understanding. In the book, I also remind that Muslims and Jews have similar religious freedom issues in Europe to get halal and kosher food, or to wear a kippah and a hijab. So if we can somehow magically resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, actually Jews and Muslims have a whole world to discover together and to do many things together, with Christians too and with others too, all children.
Shadi Hamid:
I’ll just add that Matt and I are pluralists, in the sense that we value difference and we were suspicious maybe of sameness, especially the American tendency to want everyone to get along according to the same measures. In our ideal world we wouldn’t be like that. But I think whether we like it or not, emphasizing points of sameness does seem to be effective with people. Just as you brought up, the Jewishness of Jesus, emphasizing that made it easier for Christians to feel more comfortable with Jews. Maybe it shouldn’t be that way, but that’s the way it often turns out. So I think there’s just simply a pragmatic argument here, what is effective at persuading people to think differently about people they might otherwise be suspicious of? I mean, this is maybe just a little follow-up to Matt. How would you respond to that, the idea that this is effective, even if it’s not the way we want the world to be, this emphasis on similarity?
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah, I’m in favor of effectiveness, whatever gets us to stop killing each other is great. But I’m concerned about the fragility of the case. Because if you’re trying to ingratiate Muslims to me by emphasizing all the things that Muslims and Christians have in common, you’re creating a situation where the Muslim has to behave the way I want them to behave in order for peace to exist. So the Christian has to walk, talk, and act more Christian … I’m sorry, the Muslim is forced to walk, talk and act more Christianly in order for peace to exist, as opposed to cultivating within ourselves the ability to navigate these deep differences. I think this comes out for me, Mustafa … just to turn our attention back to your really wonderful and interesting book, the ways in which it seems to me you’re emphasizing the commonalities between Islam and Judaism around … I mean, monotheism is a big one for you. Obviously, legalism, the focus on the law and obedience, and then liberty. So Moses for you is that figure, a liberator, right? He liberates the Israelites from slavery and Islam also has a liberative force.
And then reason, you talk about the way that reason played a role in medieval Judaism and in medieval Islam. So we’ve got monotheism, legalism, reason, liberty, I think you’ve found all of those in Islam and Judaism in your research. But it does feel a little bit, after reading that I’m like, this all sounds a lot like Mustafa. In that it does feel a little bit like you’re creating a Judeo-Islamic tradition that sounds a lot like the things you care about, which is liberty and reason and monotheism and law. So I’m wondering, how much are you projecting into history a liberalism that might not be in Moses, in the Jewish Moses or in the Islamic Moses and so forth?
Mustafa Akyol:
A very good question, Matt. Among those four things you emphasize, I think everybody, including the most conservative Muslims and the ultra-Orthodox Jews, would agree on two things, monotheism and law are fundamental in these two religions. I think that’s a very important fact.
Matthew Kaemingk:
You’re on solid ground now.
Mustafa Akyol:
I’m on solid ground. Well, by the way, I’m also interested in liberalism and how did Judaism look into liberalism? Did it help Judaism? How were they before liberalism? How did they come up to terms? Did it help them? Did it, for example, help Jews to stop demonizing each other because of their religious differences? Some are reformed, some are conservative, some are ultra-orthodox, how can they all get along well? Maybe they’re not always in love with each other, but they don’t have blasphemy or heresy courts. I mean, that’s great. Well, how did that happen? Or also, there are Jews that are non-practicing, which are not necessarily coerced and demonized, and so on and so forth. Well, some forces in Israel may be going back to that direction, by the way. Let’s also bring that. Now Judaism has its own state for the first time and it’s having interesting impacts there, which is another discussion. But I think the Jewish experience in the West is to me interesting, as someone who also believes that the Islamic civilization should take a more liberal direction. Liberal, again, in the sense of toleration, non-coercion and religion based on voluntary choices and not impositions.
So there is a ground there which is factual. On top of it, yes, I’m highlighting, I’m studying Moses Mendelssohn, because he’s the liberal pioneer-
Matthew Kaemingk:
So let me pick up on one piece of, we’ll call it Jewish strangeness that doesn’t show up in the book. Out of this desire to focus on commonality, which is in the first five books of the Bible for the early Israelites, the practice of sacrifice for the atonement of sins is a really important thing for the Israelites.
Mustafa Akyol:
Judaism and Christianity.
Matthew Kaemingk:
And Christianity, the atonement of sins. That’s a big, big deal. That gets left out in your book, right? It’s-
Mustafa Akyol:
True, yeah.
Matthew Kaemingk:
… monotheism and law. So the shedding of blood, the renewal of the covenant, the forgiveness of sins and atonement, gets left out in your book. I think, of course, if you were to have a chapter on that, that would slow you down and it would confuse the argument. I understand why as an author you would leave that out. But I think that highlights for me one of the problems that I have with modernity, with liberalism, with the desire for unity, what can happen is, we start to take out the parts of religion that feel strange, that feel weird, that don’t fit in with the modern world. In ancient Israel they’re killing cows and blood is going everywhere. It’s messy and it’s smelly and there’s fire. It’s a weird part of ancient Israel, but it’s critical to who they understand themselves to be, even today. It’s a critical part of the Christian tradition as well. You left it out of the book for reasons that I understand. But I see this as something that happens within modernity all the time, is the weirdness of religion, it makes us uncomfortable in the public square so we make it smooth. I think of the hijab as this wonderful example. It’s a strange, awkward thing that doesn’t fit. In modernity, it seems like we want to get rid of it.
I don’t want to get confused with the hijab, but this thing of, for Moses in the Bible atonement rituals are really critical, central to how we relate to God.
Mustafa Akyol:
It’s such a great Christian question, because I know how important it is for Christian theology.
Matthew Kaemingk:
We Christians are going to talk about blood.
Mustafa Akyol:
Yeah. By the way, it’s only us Muslims who are doing those sacrifices today, right? Not burning them, but sacrificing an animal in the path of Abraham, so that’s a very Islamic thing to do. Now, there are things that are theologically important for Judaism and Christianity, but Islam didn’t continue them. The idea of a sacrifice is there in Islam, but not as an atonement. Another one, Sabbath. I mean, we don’t have a day of Sabbath in Islam. We’re proud that we can even work on Friday too. It’s just, you should go to a mosque. But then actually the Quran says, then go out and do shopping and buying and selling, let’s say. So there are differences, yes. I mean, I emphasize commonalities, yes, true. Because I’m speaking of a Judeo-Islamic tradition here, and I’m trying to go against the tide here. Among Jews probably there are people who would not want any association with Islam, and there are many Muslims who would not want any association with Judaism. Sayyid Qutb has this book, Our War With the Jew, beginning from Mecca to today. Well, that’s not the way I see things.
I see people tweeting online, saying that Islam has oppressed us for 1,400 years. Well, that’s not the truth as I see. So I’m emphasizing certain things here. But on the strangeness of religion, please do not mistake me for a French secularist or someone who wants to take hijab off from Muslim women, or even want to promote that. I’m all for the strangeness of religion. I’m all for the assertion of a truth. I’m all for walking out in the public square and saying, “You’re all sinners and you’re going to burn in hell. The truth is here, the end is near.” I love that. I love that assertion-
Matthew Kaemingk:
You love that?
Mustafa Akyol:
… of religion. I might not agree that. I agree with the self-confidence and the sincerity of that belief. Well, I would not like that if that guy also had a sword or a lash, just coming after you. I love Muslim woman wearing hijab. My mom in her youth did, then later she didn’t. That’s fine. My grand-mom certainly did. I’m against hijab laws. I love the Ramadan. I’m against Ramadan laws, which we have in some Muslim majority societies. Because I think that takes the sincerity, the piety, the genuineness of religion. So again, I’m not arguing for, let’s all be secular liberal people who do yoga and this and that, and maybe not go to the mosque or once a year or something. Nobody should wear hijab, or hijab should be a fashion statement. I’m not promoting those things. What I’m promoting is that be really, just be proud of it, be assertive, but do not do unethical things in the name of religion. That happens. That’s violence, that’s coercion. That is extremism.
Shadi Hamid:
But there still is that risk with stuff that once you go down this path of liberalization, even if it’s not the intent, it can end up in a very secular place.
Mustafa Akyol:
Then you deserve it. I mean, then a tradition deserves it.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Oh, I like this.
Mustafa Akyol:
If a tradition cannot sustain itself without coercion, then it deserves to-
Shadi Hamid:
Okay. But I’m not so much talking about coercion here as much as …
Mustafa Akyol:
It’s a free market of religions and non-religious worldviews.
Shadi Hamid:
But it’s not just a choice between liberalism and coercion. I think sometimes I get the sense that you’re presenting that as a binary choice. There are a lot of shades in between liberalism as a choice and the kind of coercive models that you’ve been mentioning in Muslim majority countries, where laws are used in a very punitive way by the state. Presumably there’s something in between that.
Mustafa Akyol:
Yeah, of course, there’s something in between. Yeah. I said Turkey is not bad as a model, or there are other Muslim societies where you don’t have Sharia in the legal system but the society is pretty conservative in many ways. That’s totally fine and I’m in favor of that. I mean, I’ll give you actually one thing. I’ve been always fascinated by the fact that in New York … which is the city of Sex and the City, I mean the modern citadel of vices, and there is this amazing ultra-Orthodox community who doesn’t care about any of that, but preserves itself in Brooklyn and sustains itself. I have great respect for those people. I don’t know their political views on certain things these days, but I have great respect for those people, that they live in the centre of the modern world … you can get as free as you want, that’s America, you can go, but they preserve their religious tradition. There are many Muslims like that too, I have great respect. But if they establish a Halakhic state, that would not be a good thing.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Would you be in favor of pluralistic forms of law, where you could get an Islamic marriage or a Catholic marriage or a Jewish marriage that would be backed up by the state in some sort of way?
Mustafa Akyol:
Yeah, I’m in favor. I mean, I’m sympathetic to the Sharia courts in the UK because that’s voluntarily observed. As I also mentioned-
Matthew Kaemingk:
That’s not a very liberal thing. That’s not a very liberal thing for you to say.
Mustafa Akyol:
That’s a very liberal thing because they’re going to the Sharia court out of their choice. It’s not, the state is imposing them on that part.
Shadi Hamid:
But there is still a communal pressure when you have courts like that.
Mustafa Akyol:
That’s fine.
Shadi Hamid:
Because if there’s an expectation in your community that you-
Mustafa Akyol:
To me, that’s very compatible with my liberalism, right? I’m happy that some British Muslims go to Sharia courts and they think that’s the right thing to do. I’m very happy for them. A lot of British Muslims don’t because they’re less observant and less traditional.
Shadi Hamid:
But what if they feel pressured to, and they’re not actually taking part voluntarily?
Mustafa Akyol:
Well, that depends on the nature of the pressure there. I mean, if pressure means social expectations and approval and disapproval, that’s totally normal. It happens in every society, and there are secular expectations from people too today. I mean, oh, you shouldn’t say that word, that’s inappropriate, and so forth. So those pressures are normal and it organically happens. If it is a violent coercion, it’s about enforcement, I have a problem with that.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. The last thing I want to end on is just to go back to this I think profound point that you made, Mustafa, that if a religious tradition can’t sustain itself in the face of liberalism, then they get what they deserve. I think another way of looking at it is to say that liberalism is so powerful, it’s so ideologically resonant, even if we don’t really see it as an ideology, it’s in the air that we breathe. It seeps into us even when we don’t realise it. Part of that is because it’s an ideology that oftentimes claims to be neutral, so it’s able to play on both levels quite effectively. It lulls you into this sense of complacency and before you know it, you’re transformed. Yeah, maybe we get what we deserve and if religions can’t resist the pull of liberalism, then that’s the free market. Whoever wins in the end, they win. If liberalism wins, all the better. But another way of looking at it is to acknowledge that because liberalism is so powerful and so influential in this almost psychological social sense, that we have to preemptively put up guardrails. We have to put protections against this deep appeal that liberalism has. Especially if you’re trying, I hear this a lot from observant Muslims who are trying to … you’ve probably heard of these examples, of people in some cases even leaving the US to form intentional Muslim communities, including in Istanbul.
I think we’ve talked about an example of a mutual friend who actually exited the US, and is trying to build this alternative lifestyle in Istanbul. But it’s just very hard to build intentional communities, even in the US, let’s say the ultra-Orthodox in New York. There’s various intentional Muslim communities that have sprouted up throughout the US, but it’s very hard to do that effectively because of the power of liberalism around you. It’s almost like an uphill battle and sometimes it’s a losing battle. I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of these concerns from people who are trying to raise their kids in a more religiously observant environment. And then we get into the whole debate about public schools in various parts of America that are promoting a certain conception of the self when it comes to gender and those sorts of things. How do you resist that? So I would just say, maybe just end with a reflection on that. If liberalism is so powerful, maybe it’s not okay to just say, well, we’ve got to let things play out.
Maybe these people want to fight liberalism in a more active way. What would you say to them?
Mustafa Akyol:
Shadi, this is so helpful to me because I’m realizing that when we discuss about liberalism, we’ve been speaking about different things all along.
Shadi Hamid:
No. But just to clarify, I’m talking about what liberalism becomes over time.
Mustafa Akyol:
No. You’re speaking about having a lifestyle here, a worldview, anything goes, do whatever you want. Find yourself, enjoy, libertinism almost. I’m speaking of a political system of a limited, neutral government under which people can be conservative, pious, unpious.
Shadi Hamid:
But that’s an idealization. I get that’s what you’re-
Mustafa Akyol:
No. I’m just saying, okay, you might say this is also liberalism. That’s also liberalism. There are endless discussions about that. I know Patrick Deneen makes the argument that this actually came from that. I mean, you end up at “wokism” beginning with John Locke. So I know that argument, but I don’t fully agree with that. There are other people I think who do not agree. I know many conservative Christians in America who want a very limited state. So they are classical liberals, but they’re not buying into what you’re describing. Here’s the thing. First of all, there is a challenge … now I’m living in America I see that more clearly, of being a religious minority in a majority society, where the society is not from your religion. If I was raising my kids in Turkey, they would hear the athan, the call to prayer five times a day. Here they don’t. So there’s a challenge to that, but that’s a minority issue. Regarding this attractiveness of this modern world, I mean, I would call that secularization. I would not call that liberalism but secularization of the society.
Is that a drive? Yeah, there’s everything out there, right? I mean, there is all the vices. There’s all the drives and all that. I would defend liberalism by the way though there, against what you just mentioned as these coercive things in the schools and forced progressivism monkeys. I don’t see that as liberalism, by the way, I should say that. That is I think coercive progressivism that goes against classical liberalism as they understand and its state neutrality. Regarding this modern world and its attractions, well, that is a challenge. But what is the solution that you find? Well, Iran found a solution, ban all the websites that you can and force people to behave a certain way. It actually produced more secularization. What I’m saying is that this is a challenge. You cannot reverse it. You cannot go back to medieval times where people lived in closed communities. In this modern world, how do you survive, sustain and flourish as a religious community? I think the Jewish tradition has good answers. I mean, look at all the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox communities around the US.
Shadi Hamid:
But they’re a very small minority.
Mustafa Akyol:
I’m sympathetic to the reformed Jews too. Actually, there’s a discussion about Reform Judaism in the book too. Because actually Reform Judaism has kept many Jews who would otherwise not be interested in religion, still in a religious spiritual framework. Maybe that is something you need. Maybe you need different versions of your religion, so you can cover a bigger audience there, right? Some people will be happier there. I mean, modernization is a challenge but I think the right answer is not challenging liberalism, therefore, asking for and going towards integralism, as people like Adrian Vermeule and some Christian integrals are saying. I think it’s important to not allow secular progressivism seep in as the new state ideology, and trampling on people’s rights. There I am a liberal and that’s why I’m opposing that. Again, here’s a complicated terminology here. But I think this is a new challenge, by the way. It’s a new challenge for all the religious traditions. Thousand years ago, everybody had communities, nobody had Internet. There was no Richard Dawkins book spreading around, and so on, and so forth. Now you have these things, what do you do with this?
I think it requires a new effort, which by definition must be a modern effort, and the pre-modern ways of sustaining your society might not work.
Shadi Hamid:
Mustafa, thank you so much for being with us.
Mustafa Akyol:
Thank you, guys.
Shadi Hamid:
I have 10 more questions for you.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Yeah, honestly, this was incredible. It’s just so rich.
Mustafa Akyol:
Thank you.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Thank you, Mustafa.
Mustafa Akyol:
Thank you, thank you.
Shadi Hamid:
We’re going to have to have you back. I want to just commend you for being a stand-up guy, we’re throwing up some tough questions for you. I want to commend you for this book. I really do mean it when I say, this is a needed book. This is a new and fresh argument. It is stunning to me, after having read it, that there’s not more attention paid to the Judeo-Islamic tradition.
Matthew Kaemingk:
And now hopefully there will be.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. I think just finally, Mustafa, you are a man of principle. You’re a man of courage and you speak out of those principles-
Mustafa Akyol:
Thank you.
Shadi Hamid:
… in a really wonderful way. I am sure, I’m confident that you have gotten a lot of hate mail in your life from a variety of different people.
Mustafa Akyol:
Even more than that.
Shadi Hamid:
Yeah. I just want to commend you for … I mean, it is clear that your scholarship comes out of a sense of mission and a sense of principle. You have some goals that are important to you and you’re sticking to them. I just really appreciate what you had to say today, and I hope we can get you back on. Because this was a lot of fun, man.
Mustafa Akyol:
Thank you.
Matthew Kaemingk:
I also like ending the episode on just honouring Mustafa, and just saying nice things about him for several minutes. So that’s a good way of ending and well deserved.
Mustafa Akyol:
I’m humble enough. Thank you. But thank you Matt, and thank you Shadi.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Absolutely. We’ve had a Catholic socialist on the show and now we’ve had a Muslim libertarian. I just love this show. This is so much fun.
Mustafa Akyol:
Yeah. I mean, I’m a big fan. Anyway, I’ll be more so even from now on. But thank you, guys. This was wonderful. Thank you for paying attention to the book and really, also thank you for the soft questions and the hard questions. They were all great. The second was even better.
Shadi Hamid:
That’s what we do here at Zealots at the Gate.
Matthew Kaemingk:
You just lure them in and then you just give them hell. I’m kidding.
Shadi Hamid:
Well, thanks again, Mustafa, and thanks to our listeners. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as we did. Just a reminder, do check out Mustafa’s book, The Islamic Moses. Again, we’ll include a link in the show notes. If you like what you heard, do check out our other episodes and also check out our host Comment magazine at comment.org. We want to hear from you. Find us on Twitter, @ShadiHamid, that’s my handle, and @MatthewKaemingk. Please note the Dutch spelling. Or you can use the hashtag #zealotspod. You can also feel free to send us an email at zealots@comment.org.
Matthew Kaemingk:
Thanks as well to Fuller Seminary’s Mouw Institute of Faith and Public Life for sponsoring the show. Zealots at the Gate is hosted by Comment magazine, produced by Allie Crummy, audience strategy by Matt Crummy, and editorial direction by Ms. Anne Snyder. Until next time, guys, I’m Matthew Kaemingk.
Shadi Hamid:
And I’m Shadi Hamid. Thanks for joining us.
Matthew Kaemingk:
See you.
