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Mustafa Akyol explains why his new book explores the history of apostasy laws, the sayings of Muhammad, and the prospects for greater pluralism in the Islamic world.
In 1900, 7 million Christians lived in countries that were majority Muslim; in 2020, 84 million Christians did.
Also in 1900, 9 million Muslims lived in countries that were majority Christian; in 2020, 154 million Muslims did.
Meanwhile, Christians and Muslims have grown from comprising a third of the world’s population in 1800 to more than half today and are projected to comprise two-thirds by 2100.
These statistics from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity (CSGC) at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary underscore the need for Christian and Muslim minorities to better flourish in each other’s contexts.
CSGC codirector Todd Johnson interviewed Turkish journalist Mustafa Akyol about his new book, Reopening Muslim Minds, and about how an honest examination of the best and worst of Islamic history offers lessons for improving religious freedom and pluralism today:
What was your main motivation for writing this book? Did current events give an urgency to the project?
I have been thinking about the state of affairs in the Muslim world for about almost three decades now. I call myself a “born-again” Muslim, [having rediscovered my faith] in my college years. In my late twenties, I became a public writer in Turkey, and I’ve traveled around the Muslim world. I’m a Muslim, proud of my faith, and I see the deep problems in the contemporary Muslim world.
I rely on the Islamic modernism tradition that began in the 19th century, but I wanted to explore these issues in accessible language. There’s a world out there that our traditional scholars couldn’t imagine, where Muslims are more free in their worship than they are in Muslim-majority countries. There is liberal democracy and a universal ...
from Christianity Today Magazine
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