THE LEADING EDGE
Peace-Seeking Muslims
I have a personal history with the Turkish writer Mustafa Akyol and his quest for a Muslim case for liberty, which seems worth relating here. The story begins with the devastating terrorist attack on the Twin Towers of New York City’s World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. After that enormity, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S. President George W. Bush made statements, evidently for the purpose of calming angry Americans, that Islam is a religion of peace, which in no way condones terrorism. The implication was that the terrorists were merely deranged individuals, and the fact that they were Muslims merely coincidence.
I thought that those statements, however well-intentioned, were at best half-truths, and I published something suggesting that the terrorists were probably more nearly correct in their understanding of Islam than were the Western politicians who found it politic to deny that Islam bore any responsibility for the attack.
I received in response an email from Mustafa Akyol, a name then unfamiliar to me, saying that, as a Muslim, he had admired my writings about evolution, but he thought that my post-September 11 comment had contained a misunderstanding of Islam. I thought his criticism might contain a valid point, so I replied that I would be glad to learn more about his own understanding of Islam.
This reply led to further email exchanges and eventually to a personal meeting at a Muslim conference in San Francisco, after which Mustafa came to my house in Berkeley for dinner. By then we had become firm friends, and I have encouraged American magazines to publish articles by Mustafa. Our relationship is very much on a first-name basis, so I refer to him that way in this article.
Two Contrasting Stories
In the introduction to his book Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty, Mustafa tells two family-related anecdotes that, together, go far to explain what motivated him to seek out the basis for a Muslim argument for liberty. Mustafa received his basic instruction in Islam from his kindly grandfather. One day he found a book in his grandfather’s library, which had two quotes on the cover. One of the quotes inspired him. It said that since God had created man and endowed him with many gifts, it should be an easy matter for man to return thanks. Upon reading this quote from the Qur’an, Mustafa resolved to be more regular in giving thanks to God (Allah).
Reading the second quote, from the Hadiths (the reported sayings of Muhammad, from Muslim tradition), Mustafa felt dispirited. It said that if your son turns ten years old and still does not pray, beat him. Contemplating how kindly and patient his grandfather was, Mustafa was shocked to learn that some Muslims believe that Muhammad himself had instructed his followers to beat their sons in order to get them to pray. What value would such prayer have if the son prayed only to escape a beating?
The second defining event of Mustafa’s childhood occurred when, at the age of eight, he was taken by his mother to visit his father in a Turkish military prison in 1981. Although his father bravely tried to show cheerfulness to his son, Mustafa later learned that the prisoners, including his father, were routinely tortured. Mustafa’s father had been sent to prison because he was an outspoken journalist who supported freedom so strongly that the military rulers marked him down as an enemy of the regime. Subsequently, Mustafa learned that his father had been executed.
Here was a crime in an overwhelmingly Muslim nation that could not be blamed on Islam. The military rulers were strong promoters of a secular Turkey, and were enforcing a strict secularism on a religious people.
Phillip E. Johnson is Professor of Law (emeritus) at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of Darwin on Trial, The Wedge of Truth, The Right Questions (InterVarsity Press), and other books challenging the naturalistic assumptions that dominate modern culture. He is a contributing editor of Touchstone.
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