Thanks for this. Akyol recovers a Judeo-Islamic tradition without falling into nostalgia or despair, and he shows us that shared histories can still teach us something even when things look pretty bleak today. He takes episodes from Moses in Mecca to Maimonides in Cairo and frames them as complicated moments when people actually tried pluralism, adapted it to their circumstances, and sometimes had to abandon it altogether.
The big lesson here is how fragile these arrangements really are. When tolerance is just based on political deals, it can fall apart fast. Liberalism might not be built into either faith, but it's turned out to be a more durable framework than those old contractual agreements. What Akyol doesn't really dig into is how Jewish and Muslim communities have often ended up on very different paths through modernity, facing different kinds of pressures along the way.
But his main point still works! You can actually strengthen a tradition by going back and looking at the past with clear eyes, paying attention to what conditions actually made coexistence possible when it worked.
Based on this review, I want to read the book. And the review did what good reviews are supposed to do: you elucidated the hard parts. I especially appreciated the way you parsed 2 big problems: liberal religion's struggle with assimilation, and the fetishization of Jewish diaspora as a solution to Jewish power. It's not for a review to solve these problems, all you can do is raise them. Thanks.
A wonderful piece. Thanks for writing it and thanks to the UnPopulist for hosting it and giving it a bit more of an audience.
I've read Menocal and Lowney on the convivencia so those parts were familiar to me. But there was a lot of new (for me) and relevant material to ponder here.
Also, I hope Mr. Belvedere happens by - I gather that he follows developments in Indonesia, which has (sometimes, at least) been an example to the world of what a more moderate, liberal Islam might look like (and, since I've drifted over to Indonesia, I can't leave without saying: Hail VoB!)
Thanks for this. Akyol recovers a Judeo-Islamic tradition without falling into nostalgia or despair, and he shows us that shared histories can still teach us something even when things look pretty bleak today. He takes episodes from Moses in Mecca to Maimonides in Cairo and frames them as complicated moments when people actually tried pluralism, adapted it to their circumstances, and sometimes had to abandon it altogether.
The big lesson here is how fragile these arrangements really are. When tolerance is just based on political deals, it can fall apart fast. Liberalism might not be built into either faith, but it's turned out to be a more durable framework than those old contractual agreements. What Akyol doesn't really dig into is how Jewish and Muslim communities have often ended up on very different paths through modernity, facing different kinds of pressures along the way.
But his main point still works! You can actually strengthen a tradition by going back and looking at the past with clear eyes, paying attention to what conditions actually made coexistence possible when it worked.
Based on this review, I want to read the book. And the review did what good reviews are supposed to do: you elucidated the hard parts. I especially appreciated the way you parsed 2 big problems: liberal religion's struggle with assimilation, and the fetishization of Jewish diaspora as a solution to Jewish power. It's not for a review to solve these problems, all you can do is raise them. Thanks.
A wonderful piece. Thanks for writing it and thanks to the UnPopulist for hosting it and giving it a bit more of an audience.
I've read Menocal and Lowney on the convivencia so those parts were familiar to me. But there was a lot of new (for me) and relevant material to ponder here.
Also, I hope Mr. Belvedere happens by - I gather that he follows developments in Indonesia, which has (sometimes, at least) been an example to the world of what a more moderate, liberal Islam might look like (and, since I've drifted over to Indonesia, I can't leave without saying: Hail VoB!)
Right on, Robert.
We included it for that very reason in this piece: https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/contrary-to-western-understanding
Thanks for reading!
Fascinating. I knew some of this, but only a scant, superficial bit. On order.