Islamic Liberalism What? Why? How?

What is this thing called Islamic Liberalism? (1) What is Islam? (1) An Ideology? A Tradition? A Civilisation? A World-view? A System of Government? A Nation? A Way of Life? A Faith? A Religion?

What is this thing called Islamic Liberalism? (2) What is Islam? (2) Islam or Islams? Orthodoxy, Traditionalism, Fundamentalism, Modernism, Critical Rationalism Islam and our understanding of Islam Islam: basic tenets

What is this thing called Islamic Liberalism? (3) What is Liberalism? (3) A Political Tradition? A Political Philosophy? A General Philosophy? An Ideology? A Way of Life?

What is this thing called Islamic Liberalism? (4) What is Liberalism? (4) Liberalism or Liberalisms? British, French, Scandinavian, American, Australasian , … Models of Liberalism Liberalism: basic tenets

Liberalism: A Brief Introduction (1) the Fundamental Liberal Principle: freedom is normatively basic, and so the onus of justification is on those who would limit freedom. It follows from this that political authority and law must be justified, as they limit the liberty of citizens. Three Concepts of Liberty: Negative: the absence of coercion by others Positive: to be able to act according to one's true will Republican: not having to live in servitude to another; not being subject to the arbitrary power of another. Unlike the positive liberty, republican liberty is not primarily concerned with rational autonomy, realizing one's true nature, or becoming one's higher self. Unlike the ordinary negative conception, the mere possibility of arbitrary interference constitutes a violation of republican liberty.

Liberalism: A Brief Introduction (2) Liberalism as a Political Philosophy Liberal political philosophy explores the foundations of the principles most commonly associated with liberal politics. In politics, the term ’liberalism’ denotes a family of positions centred around constitutional democracy, the rule of law, political and intellectual freedom, toleration in religion, morals and lifestyle, opposition to racial and sexual discrimination, and respect for the rights of the individual. It refers also to a heritage of abstract thought about human nature, agency, freedom, and value, and their bearing on the functions and origins of political and legal institutions.

Liberalism: A Brief Introduction (4) Liberalism as a Political Philosophy (Cont.) Individualism Liberals believe that the individual person is what matters for the purposes of social and political evaluation. individualism is not the same as egoism. But individualism excludes social and collective entities from the realm of ultimate goods. Belief in the importance of freedom. A commitment to equality. People are entitled to equal concern for their interests in the design and operation of their society’s institutions; and they have the right to be equally respected in their desire to lead their lives on their own terms. An insistence on the rights of individual reason. This involves not just freedom of thought, conscience or discussion, but a deeper demand about justification in politics: the demand that rules and institutions of social life must be justified at the tribunal of each individual’s reason.

Liberalism: A Brief Introduction (5) Liberalism as a Political Philosophy (Cont.) Liberals hold that political organizations are justified by the contribution they make to the interests of individuals, interests which can be understood apart from the idea of society and politics. They reject both the view that cultures, communities and states are ends in themselves, and the view that social and political organizations should aim to transform or perfect human nature. People have purposes of their own to pursue, either economic or spiritual (or both). Since those purposes do not naturally harmonize with one another, a framework of rules may be necessary so that individuals know what they can count on for their own purposes and what they must concede to the purposes of others. The challenge for political philosophy, then, is to design a social framework that provides this security and predictability, but represents at the same time a safe and reasonable compromise among the disparate demands of individuals.

Liberalism: A Brief Introduction (6) Liberalism as a Political Philosophy (Cont.) Liberal political theory fractures over the conception of liberty. But a more important division concerns the place of private property and the market order. For classical liberals liberty and private property are intimately related: all rights, including liberty rights, are forms of property; property is itself a form of freedom For classical liberals private property is the only effective means for the protection of liberty. Here the idea is that the dispersion of power that results from a free market economy based on private property protects the liberty of subjects against encroachments by the state.

Liberalism: A Brief Introduction (7) Liberalism as a Political Philosophy (Cont.) ‘welfare state’ liberalism challenges this intimate connection between personal liberty and a private property based market order on three grounds: Doubt about the ability of a free market to sustain a ‘prosperous equilibrium’: if a private property based market tended to be unstable, or could get stuck in an equilibrium with high unemployment, then it is doubtfule whether it is an adequate foundation for a stable, free society. The Importance of Government far from being ‘the guardian of every other right’ property rights generated an unjust inequality of power that led to a less-than-equal liberty (typically, ‘positive liberty’) for the working class.

Liberalism: A Brief Introduction (8) Liberalism as a Political Philosophy (Cont.) The social contract: In its classical form - in the writings of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and to a lesser extent Kant - the argument from liberal premises to the legitimacy of something like the modern state was presented in terms of the social contract. The argument goes something like this: Imagine people living outside any framework of political authority, exercising the right to direct their own lives and their own dealings with one another, in what liberal philosophers have called ‘the state of nature’. Using this as a baseline, try to model the development of political institutions as a way in which individuals exercise their freedom not as a way in which their freedom is abrogated.

Liberalism: A Brief Introduction (9) Liberalism as a General Philosophy Personhood and Human Nature: Liberals believe that individual persons are ontologically prior to social groups and relations and, so, persons and their identities are distinct, and that central to personhood is a capacity to choose among alternative ways of living. The perennial issue in liberal theory is the extent to which this basic individualism can be combined with a recognition of the social nature of humans, and the importance of one's social environment in the formation of personality. A Theory of Knowledge

Liberalism: A Brief Introduction (10) Liberalism as a General Philosophy (Cont.) Liberal Ethics: Liberalism is not just a theory about politics: it is a substantive, perfectionist, moral theory about the good. And, on this view, the right thing to do is to promote development, and only a regime securing each individual extensive liberty can accomplish this. Liberal Theories of Value: Values or ends are plural, and no interpersonally justifiable ranking among these many ends is to be had. A person values rests on experiences that vary from person to person Values are Objective and (in principle) commensurable

Liberalism and Islamic Liberalism (1) Is it possible to reconcile Islam and Liberalism? How? An example from Iran: Abdolkarim Soroush and his challenge to Traditionalists & Fundamentalists: A between any religion per se and our understanding of that religion. A distinction concerning ‘the essential and the accidental’ aspects of ‘Islam’. A distinction concerning ‘the minimal and the maximal interpretations’ of ‘Islam’. A distinction concerning internal and external value systems for a religion. A distinction concerning the differences between religious faith and religious belief. A concerning dissimilarities between religion in the sense of a combination of both religious faith and religious belief system on the one hand and religion as an ideology on the other.

Liberalism and Islamic Liberalism (2) Why is it desirable to reconcile Islam and Liberalism? Or is it? Liberalism as a Social Construct Liberalism, Islam and Democracy? Liberalism with Islamic tenets? Islamic Liberalism or Liberal Muslims? Liberalism and Islam: The Possibility of a Dialogue?