Jacob Williams

The Modus Vivendi is over. In Towards a Western Muslim Political Philosophy, Jacob Williams (@JacobP_Williams) articulates the unspoken contradictions at the heart of Muslims' political and civic engagement in the West: a pragmatic agreement to respect the same political ground rules and obey the law, without believing that these rules represent the principles we would ideally choose to live under. It may have worked when Muslims were a small minority who could pass under the radar. Those days are over. Increasingly, many Muslim organisations and politicians appear to understand that the foundation cannot hold. They are unconvinced by the modus vivendi, but they lack an alternative theological framework or any coherent vision for Muslim political life. The solution is to create a robust Islamic political philosophy suited to Western life in the 21st century. This requires engagement with the Islamic tradition that rejects blind imitation of earlier scholars’ conclusions, draws on the tools of analytic philosophy to achieve desperately needed conceptual clarity and argumentative rigour, and tests arguments against counterarguments with a precision that the current discourse entirely lacks. Read more on Kasurian. Link to the article in reply below:

The Modus Vivendi is over. In Towards a Western Muslim Political Philosophy, Jacob Williams (@JacobP_Williams) articulates the unspoken contradictions at the heart of Muslims' political and civic engagement in the West: a pragmatic agreement to respect the same political ground rules and obey the law, without believing that these rules represent the principles we would ideally choose to live under. It may have worked when Muslims were a small minority who could pass under the radar. Those days are over. Increasingly, many Muslim organisations and politicians appear to understand that the foundation cannot hold. They are unconvinced by the modus vivendi, but they lack an alternative theological framework or any coherent vision for Muslim political life. The solution is to create a robust Islamic political philosophy suited to Western life in the 21st century. This requires engagement with the Islamic tradition that rejects blind imitation of earlier scholars’ conclusions, draws on the tools of analytic philosophy to achieve desperately needed conceptual clarity and argumentative rigour, and tests arguments against counterarguments with a precision that the current discourse entirely lacks. Read more on Kasurian. Link to the article in reply below: