I hope you noticed Mustafa Akyol’s excellent article in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal. Note that the AKP even won a majority in Kurdish areas, outpolling the Kurdish nationalist parties.
People thinking about the future of Islam and its relations with the West should study the case of contemporary Turkey. What Mustafa Akyol of the Turkish Daily News describes as “liberal Islam” versus “illiberal secularism” is an insight that is pivotal. At least one obvious alternative is “anti-liberal Islamic extremism.” Secularism does little to combat the extremists, while “liberal Islam” offers a bridge between the Muslim world and the West.
