Squaring the Circle in the Study of the Middle East

"Hail to thee blithe spirit, Bird thou never wert!" It was with a note ofelation that the Muslim reader greeted the publication of Islamic Liberalismin 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 aboutto crown his thirty-year-odd career on the study of the Middle East witha breakthrough. Expectations were heightened by a timely coincidence. Withthe appearance of another compact masterpiece constituting the refinementof a craft by an old guard of the castle, it looked as if Islamic Liberalismwas poised to storm the castle from within. There was evidently somebodyat the Chicago University Press (which published both books) who combineda keen feel for the market with a flair for irony. To an audience drilled tothe tune of militant Islam and its sombre variations, the mere conceptionof the idea of an Islamic liberalism promised a shift in the paradigm ofunderstanding a political Islam. Introduced on a note beckoning to thesignificance, the necessity, indeed the possibility of a dialogue between Islamand the West, it would moreover raise all kinds of expectations about thecanon in both the Western academy and the civilizational encounter. Theseexpectations can only be gauged by the persistent undertones of a countertenorthat seemed to be forever churning out more of the same. Instead ofsuccumbing to the seductive discourse on the "rage of Islam" and feeding ...