Alexandre Silva

“Other problems in the Shariah, such as misogyny, come from the fact that Islamic law incorporated a great many medieval attitudes, customs, and traditions during its formative centuries. Stoning, which has no basis in the Qur’an, probably came from Judaism.”
― Mustafa Akyol, Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

“Some liberal theorists have seen a parallelism between this function of Islamic law and the “natural law” tradition of Europe, on which the liberal political tradition rested.”
― Mustafa Akyol, Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

“Gerber, who studied seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Ottoman court decisions, points to examples of Ottoman muftis (official jurists) who, despite being paid by the government, “did not hesitate to speak out against the government when [they] came face to face with an injustice.”
― Mustafa Akyol, Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

“The medieval Islamic world . . . offered vastly more freedom than any of its predecessors, its contemporaries and most of its successors. —Bernard Lewis, historian of the Middle East1”
― Mustafa Akyol, Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty