Squaring the Circle in the Study of the Middle East

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 ...