Sharia Versus Freedom by Andrew G. Bostom

Author:Andrew G. Bostom
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publisher Services
Published: 2012-12-19T05:00:00+00:00

If I had a choice of what intellectual path Muslims should follow—a choice I do not have looking at Islam from outside—I would start over again at the points where the early jurists and the Mutazilites left off, and work to develop a system of Islamic law which would openly make use of judgments of equity and public interest, and a system of ethical theology which would encourage judgments of right and wrong by the human mind, without having to look to scripture at every step. The Mutazilites were correct in their doctrine that we can make objective value judgments, even if their particular theory of ethics had weaknesses, which would have to be revised by modern ethical philosophers and theologians. So I think this is the best way for Muslims to revive Islam, and I wish them success in a formidable task.23

Who can deny the nobility of Fazlur Rahman's sentiments, at least as expressed by these words, even if one understands—and rejects—his ahistorical premise, based upon a thoroughly bowdlerized view of “Mutazilism”? But we also have Rahman's own additional writings—apparently unknown to Reilly, and regardless not cited by him—to gauge how Rahman, this paragon of the modern Muslim philosopher, “revised” the admitted “weaknesses” in the ostensibly noble, rationalist legacy of his Mutazilite forbears, to comport with “modern ethical philosophy and theology.” Unfortunately, Fazlur Rahman's Weltanschauung, expressed for example in his 1986 essay “Non-Muslim Minorities in an Islamic State” is profoundly disconcerting.24 Rahman declines, specifically, to discuss Koran 9:29 and its classical, mainstream exegesis for almost 1,400 years.25 Moreover, in lieu of such an honest discussion he repeats the dishonest modern Muslim apologetic that,

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