Reopening Muslim Minds Quotes

“the problem was not that the religious conservatives were not pious enough. The problem was that theirs was a piety that did not make them moral people.”
― Mustafa Akyol, Reopening Muslim Minds: A Return to Reason, Freedom, and Tolerance

“So instead of seeing anything outside of Islam as darkness, we Muslims should accept that there are objective values of “good” and “bad,” and the human struggle to discover, articulate, and advance them is a universal cause in which we have a place—but not the only place. Only then can we break our self-containment and reconnect with the rest of humanity.”
― Mustafa Akyol, Reopening Muslim Minds: A Return to Reason, Freedom, and Tolerance

“The problem became more acute over time, especially with modernity: modern life produced many new areas of human activity and knowledge, whereas Islamic jurisprudence kept offering the same old rules that were now too archaic or too inadequate. The ethical rules humanity developed for these new areas were “un-Islamic,” so they were unaccepted. The result was ethics-free zones in which one could surf at will.”
― Mustafa Akyol, Reopening Muslim Minds: A Return to Reason, Freedom, and Tolerance

“Accordingly, Abraham’s dream was not a divine commandment to sacrifice his son. Abraham had just misinterpreted the dream’s lesson, and God had “rescued his son from Abraham’s misapprehension.”41 Today, more than a billion Muslims around the world recall Abraham’s ordeal every year in the Eid al-Adha. Only very few of them are, however, aware of this alternative interpretation of the story. For just”
― Mustafa Akyol, Reopening Muslim Minds: A Return to Reason, Freedom, and Tolerance