(Spectator-UK) Ed Husain - Bassam Tibi has been fighting Islamist fundamentalist ideas for the past four decades. His speeches, essays, and more than 40 books detail the ways in which Islamists are inimical to most of Islam's history. He once wrote, "Islamists invented the formula of 'Islamophobia' to defame their critics." The word "serves as a weapon against all who do not embrace Islamist propaganda, including liberal Muslims." "The Enlightenment started in medieval Islam," Tibi tells me. He makes an important distinction between mufti Islam, the world of the fatwa-givers, and the world of Enlightenment Islam. The mufti world of Islam is "leading Muslims backwards," Tibi says. He seeks to explain, revive, and promote the Islam of the early Enlightenment - the "Islam of Light" - which he defines as advocating the primacy of reason. He has long thought it interesting that Arabs constitute only a fifth of the world's Muslims, yet seem to direct most modern Muslim thought.
2020-09-17 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive