On June 29, the Italian national newspaper La Repubblica published an interview with me by the prominent Italian journalist Giancarlo Bosetti. The main theme was my new book, Reopening Muslim Minds: A Return to Reason, Freedom, and Tolerance.
I said what Muslims need to “return” to is the universalist spirit of their golden age:
My argument is that the Islamic world was magnificent and creative because it was cosmopolitan, because Muslims were open‐minded for their times; they didn’t shy away from learning Greek philosophy, or from other pre‐existing traditions – the Christians, the Jews, the Hindus, etc. Essentially, they had this universal vision that there is wisdom within Islam, but also outside of Islam. Also, within Islam, there were sects, there were tensions, conflicts, even civil wars, but there was not a monolithic understanding of Islam imposed by the State. There were Sunnis and Shiites, proto‐Sunnis and Shiites, and there were different schools of thought. We lost that cosmopolitanism, and Islamic thought gradually stagnated.
Bosetti also asked me if I were too “optimistic” about the future of the Muslim world. I said:
If somebody was sent back to 17th century Europe, to announce that the continent is bound to become a beacon of tolerance, where everybody will be free and respected, Catholics and Protestants will stop slaughtering each other, where even Jews will be fine, wouldn’t he or she be dismissed as an incurable optimist? When John Locke wrote his A Letter Concerning Toleration, it was in fact a radical idea, and certainly not everybody thought that it would be a successful idea. It became a successful idea because people pushed for it. And the same applies now.
Meanwhile I added that a battle for freedom is needed today not just in Islam, but also the West:
What is important though, is to keep freedom alive in the West as well. Because if freedom becomes compromised in the West, if authoritarian populists seeking to crush the independent media gain power, or if racism spreads and Muslims are not tolerated, what kind of examples will be able to point out to as sources for inspiration? That is why I think we need a battle for freedom within Islam today and at the same time we need one within the Western world, too.
You can read the whole interview, in English, here.
And you can read the Italian version in La Repubblica here.
