I received the following article through the Party for Islamic Renewal’s mailing list (one of the “benefits” of being an activist is that all sorts of people and organizations subscribe you to their mailing lists, once in a while with interesting results). In it, a self-described “Muslim student of Political Philosophy” constructs an attack on the perceived “clash of civilizations” thesis, which might explain the Muslim response to the Mohammed cartoons published by a Danish newspaper, and on secular liberalism in general. He calls on liberals for their alledged hypocrisy in supporting freedom of expression in some contexts but apparently not in others, and questions the rational bases for freedom of expression itself.
Though, as a secular liberal, I don’t agree with much of the article and I find the author’s reasoning fallacious and partial in many ways, I still found the article very interesting. Some of his criticisms of liberalism deserve at least some thought, but most importantly, the article provides a window as to how Muslim intellectuals understand this particular conflict.

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