Mustafa Akyol
The new Cato book, No Compulsion in Religion—No Exceptions: Islamic Arguments for Religious Freedom, edited by Senior Fellow Mustafa Akyol, is being launched this week with a public book forum. And just days ago, on February 5, the book’s first scholarly review, titled “No Compulsion in Islam,” came out in Law & Liberty magazine.
The reviewer was Jacob Williams, an Oxford PhD candidate researching postliberalism and head of domestic policy at the UK think tank, Pickthall House. He found the book as “a strong case for religious liberty in Islam” and a “bold challenge to … the authoritarian movements seeking to create ‘Islamic states’ of various kinds.”
Williams, who has himself studied classical liberal perspectives in Islam inspired by natural law, examined the book’s chapters thoroughly, finding “fascinating” and “remarkable” insights. He also observed:
The essays do not shy away from directly confronting traditionalist arguments on what are, for Muslims, highly controversial issues—indeed, the most controversial issues out there. Between them, the contributors discuss apostasy and blasphemy, “Ramadan laws” that ban public eating and drinking in the holy month, female dress codes, and the legitimacy of the Iranian regime.
In the end, Williams concluded:
Akyol’s edited volume is, taken as a whole, a vitally needed contribution to a vexed debate. While grounded in the Islamic tradition, the arguments—both philosophical and scriptural—are informed by principles with which persons of any religious convictions or none urgently need to engage. As Western societies increasingly reject the excesses of progressive liberalism and “woke” extremism, it is vital that they recover their commitment to religious liberty, rather than falling back into illiberal religious coercion. Muslims who embrace the ideal of “no compulsion” can and should be part of this re-commitment. And Akyol’s volume has shown that, sometimes, the specifically Islamic arguments for liberty resonate outside the house of Islam and need to be heard by the West, too.
Read the whole review here on Law & Liberty. For other updates, follow our new Cato Institute Project, “No Compulsion in Religion.”