Squaring the Circle in the Study of the Middle East Islamic Liberalism Reconsidered

Abstract

"Hail to thee blithe spirit, Bird thou never wert!" It was with a note of
elation that the Muslim reader greeted the publication of Islamic Liberalism
in anticipation of a feat that was not to be. It looked as if Professor Binder,
who has successfully engaged the sympathies of many Muslims, was about
to crown his thirty-year-odd career on the study of the Middle East with
a breakthrough. Expectations were heightened by a timely coincidence. With
the appearance of another compact masterpiece constituting the refinement
of a craft by an old guard of the castle, it looked as if Islamic Liberalism
was poised to storm the castle from within. There was evidently somebody
at the Chicago University Press (which published both books) who combined
a keen feel for the market with a flair for irony. To an audience drilled to
the tune of militant Islam and its sombre variations, the mere conception
of the idea of an Islamic liberalism promised a shift in the paradigm of
understanding a political Islam. Introduced on a note beckoning to the
significance, the necessity, indeed the possibility of a dialogue between Islam
and the West, it would moreover raise all kinds of expectations about the
canon in both the Western academy and the civilizational encounter. These
expectations can only be gauged by the persistent undertones of a countertenor
that seemed to be forever churning out more of the same. Instead of
succumbing to the seductive discourse on the "rage of Islam" and feeding ...