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Promoting Critical Islam: Controversy, Civil Society, Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2013

Nicholas Tampio
Nicholas Tampio*
Affiliation:
Fordham University
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Nicholas Tampio, Department of Political Science, Fordham University, 665 Faber Hall, 441 E. Fordham Rd., Bronx, NY 10458. E-mail: tampio@fordham.edu
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Abstract

Critical Islam is an intellectual orientation that prizes timeliness and broad-mindedness and a political sensibility that tends to honor majority rule, minority rights, and the good of pluralism. This essay considers how an important European Muslim scholar, Tariq Ramadan, promotes critical Islam in his call for a moratorium on stoning, his argument for the reformation of fatwa committees, and his analysis of the Arab Awakening. The essay argues that the art of controversy and the building of civil society—more so than political revolution—can cultivate a critical sensibility among Muslim scholars and publics.

Type
Articles
Information
Politics and Religion , Volume 6 , Issue 4 , December 2013 , pp. 823 - 843
Copyright
Copyright © Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association 2013 

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