Mustafa Akyol
On March 15, Dawn, Pakistan’s oldest and most influential English-language newspaper, ran a review of the new Cato book, No Compulsion in Religion—No Exceptions: Islamic Arguments for Religious Freedom. Titled “Freedom in Islam, and penned by Farah Adeed, a PhD candidate at Boston University, the piece praised the book as a source of “clear, persuasive answers grounded in Islamic tradition” that addresses the thorny question of freedom.
Adeed began by explaining why this question can be thorny, or at least uncomfortable, among some Muslims today:
There are certain subjects that many Muslims cannot discuss casually — or frankly — anywhere in the world among themselves. These include apostasy laws and their implementation, blasphemy prosecutions or anything related to women’s empowerment with a focus on their autonomy. Bring these topics up in drawing rooms in Lahore or Los Angeles, and you are likely to encounter a kind of strategic silence. There are long pauses, careful language, deflective smiles and layers of sugar-coating. Most of us do not feel comfortable sharing our thoughts, out of fear of being judged and, in some instances, being accused of heresy. In other instances, there is outright rejection of the very premise of questions about individual freedom and dignity, and it is termed nefarious or veiled Western modernity.
However, Adeed wrote, “The conversations we have been avoiding must finally happen” — and “No Compulsion in Religion—No Exceptions provides the scholarly foundation to begin them.” After summarizing some of the arguments in the book — in chapters by Mustafa Akyol, Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, and others — he captured the volume’s key message:
The book’s central argument is as simple as it is powerful: the Quranic verse: “There is no compulsion in religion” (2:256) should be understood, interpreted and applied comprehensively — with no exceptions — to all people, irrespective of their religious affiliation and geography. The authors argue that this verse must be used not just to protect non-Muslims from forced conversion, as is common in most conservative interpretations. Instead, it should be used to challenge — and ultimately dismantle — all forms of religious coercion within Muslim societies.
Adeed added that the book’s articulation of explicitly Islamic arguments — not Western ones — is important for Muslims today, because many of them see freedom as a “foreign imposition”:
My conversations on these subjects in Pakistan and the United States suggest that many Muslims, particularly those in comfortable positions within Western societies or in positions of power in Muslim-majority countries, dismiss freedom-centred arguments as “Western-inspired interpretations of Islam.” These arguments portray Islam and its history as if individual rights and religious liberty were foreign impositions, incompatible with authentic Islamic civilisations. One contribution of this book is that, by drawing on Quranic exegesis, hadith [sayings of Prophet Muhammad PBUH] analysis, classical scholars and historical precedents, it demolishes that excuse. On the contrary, it demonstrates that arguments for religious freedom exist within Islamic intellectual tradition itself.
You can read the whole review here on the Dawn website. You can get No Compulsion in Religion—No Exceptions, with a free download, here at the Cato Institute.