Ron’s Questions: Segment One

Welcome to The Soul of Enterprise: Business in the Knowledge Economy, sponsored by Sage, transforming the way people think and work so their organizations can thrive. I'm Ron Baker, along with my good friend and VeraSage Institute colleague, Ed Kless, and on today's show, folks, we're thrilled and honored to have Mustafa Akyol on the show, talking about his books. Hey, Ed, how's it going?

Ed

It's going great, Ron.

Ron

So I'm really looking forward to this after reading his latest book. So let me read his bio, just briefly: A Turkish journalist and author Mustafa Akyol studied political science and history at Bogazici University. Since the early 2000s, he has been writing regular opinion columns for Turkish publications. He's a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute since 2018. He's published six books. We're going to discuss two of them today. Ed's going to take his 2011 book, Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty. And I'm going to take his latest book from 2021, Reopening Muslim Minds: A Return to Reason, Freedom, and Tolerance. Mustafa, welcome to The Soul of Enterprise.

Well, before we dive into your book, your Introduction to Reopening Muslim Minds, the title is, “A Night with the Religion Police.” And this was from a lecture that you gave in 2017. If that doesn't draw you into your book, Mustafa, I don't know what would. Can you tell that story?

Well, Mustafa, I found your book incredibly enlightening and historically fascinating. You're a gifted writer. But I loved the way you weave in some of the history of Islam and quoting these various scholars, and there's a lot of caricatures of Islam out there, as you're more aware of than I am, and you correct the record. You taught me a lot about it. I was really impressed with the scholarship of the book. And the way I would sum it up is you chose the word “reopening” Muslim minds. It's like you're arguing we need to get back to our roots, because it's all there?

That's great, Mustafa, you're asking the right question. I think it's like the study wealth, right? We don't need to study poverty, we need to explain how wealth is created. And that's what you're trying to do by looking back 1000 years. Unfortunately, we're up against our break.

Ed’s Questions: Segment Two

And we are back with our guest, Mustafa Akyol. And Mustafa, I wanted to build on the conversation that you had with Ron and talk to you a little bit more about the whole notion of Islam and its relationship to democracy and liberalism. And I wonder if you would take us through…there's a very “scary phrase” that the American right tends to use when talking about Muslims, and that is “Sharia law.” That’s all you have to do is throw out Sharia law, and it sends people scattering into the woods. But Sharia law has a very strong foundation of property rights. And I wonder if you would take us through that?

I grew up in New York, and there is case law in New York, with New York State deferring decisions to the Jewish courts in certain circumstances. In fact, so much so that I was divorced about 25 years ago, a standard part of a divorce in New York includes, even though I'm not Jewish, that I will not resist what's called a get [in Hebrew, Gett], because that's part of the standard language.

I was having a conversation with my mentor this morning, and one of the things we talked about was religion, spin, and he said, it has taken Christianity almost 2000 years to embrace the concept of hate the sin love the sinner. But I wanted to just jump back. You mentioned this earlier, you say the Quran defines the Prophet as God's bounty, which I think is fantastic. And then later on in your book [Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty], you say that Muhammad is quoted as saying, “He who makes money pleases God.” Is that the Quran, or was that one of the sayings?

I wanted to ask you about this because I think this is important. We've had Rabbi Daniel Lapin on and he oftentimes goes back to the origin of words in Hebrew, and gets insight from them. The translation of the saying, “He who makes money pleases God.” I wanted to ask you about the verb “makes.” Is that verb in Arabic, is it in the sense of create a new? Is that the same kind of word? Because what I think is so significant is that it's not “takes” money. It's “make,” we actually create new stuff. So I just wanted to ask you about that word, if you had any insight there?

Well, this is fantastic stuff, Mustafa, but we are against our break.

Ron’s Questions: Segment Three

Welcome back, everybody. We're here with Mustapha Akyol. We're talking about his book, Reopening Muslim Minds: A Return to Reason, Freedom, and Tolerance, his 2021 book. I did love the reference to [the philosopher, sociologist and historian] Ibn Khaldun, the originator of the Laffer Curve. He didn't draw it on a napkin either I thought that was pretty good. In chapter 11 of the book, you title it, “Freedom Matters.” And you ask, What is freedom? What does it mean? Let me give you one of my favorite definitions of this and I just want to get your reaction to it. I think that liberty is the absence of coercion. But I think freedom is a choice. If I choose to live under the edicts of Islam, or Kosher if I'm Jewish, whatever. I mean, that's a choice. Marriage is a choice, even though it restricts my freedom, but it's not coercive. What's your reaction to that definition?

Mustafa, you quote, Bernard Lewis, and he's about the only person of any serious scholarship that I've ever read about Islam. And he said, “The medieval Islamic world offered vastly more freedom than any of its predecessors.” And I guess my question is, are there liberal Muslim countries—you just mentioned a few—that you can point to as achieving what you're advocating?

Can you describe, and I hope I don't butcher this word, Irja. Because when you explain that, I just thought that was beautiful.

You also quote another verse from the Quran, the Qur’anic sura Ma’ida: Jews follow the Torah, Christians the Gospel. you Compete in doing good here in the world, and then, “You will all return to God and He will make clear to you the matters you differed about.” That was great.

Well, Mustafa, this has been excellent. Ed is going to take you home, but I just wanted to say thank you so much for appearing on The Soul of Enterprise. I thoroughly enjoyed your book, and we will promote it as best we can here. So thank you.

Ed’s Questions: Segment Four

And we are back with Mustafa Akyol, author of Reopening Muslim Minds: A Return to Reason, Freedom, and Tolerance as well as the book that I'm talking with him about, Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about—again, I'm a language person, my dad instilled this in me—a quote from [Fernand Braudel], who's a French historian, and you have this in your book, “Anything in Western capitalism of imported origin undoubtedly came from Islam.” And you take us through a couple of different terms: Sakk for check, mudaraba, which ultimately became the limited company, and of course, the word tariff. So there's just so many things and terms to build on from Islam that have made their way into our language today. So talk a little bit about that relationship.

One of my favorite quotes from your book is, “Islam, one could say, has produced the seeds of freedom. Regrettably, they were just not rooted in fertile soil.”

Well, we've only got about two or three minutes left, and speaking of autocratic states, I wanted to completely shift gears on you, to a place where Muslims are now oppressed. And that, of course, is the Uyghurs in China. Ron and I have talked a lot about this, we talk about Jimmy Lai and his experiences in Hong Kong. But what are your thoughts? Why does it seem that so many Westerners seem to be willing to talk a great game here in the States about freedom, but when it comes to the Uyghurs in China they completely ignore what's going on over there?

All right. Well, we still have so many questions for you, and of course, we didn't even touch your third book, which I haven't had a chance to read yet: The Islamic Jesus: How the King of the Jews Became a Prophet of the Muslims. We have 30 seconds left. Very quickly, are you working on another book?

Mustafa Akyol

Yes, a new one is coming out. You will like it, I think. It's titled, Why, as a Muslim, I Defend Liberty [due out September 28, 2021]. So it will put all my arguments about liberty in a nutshell, and with new arguments and new episodes from history. Hopefully, we can discuss that, too.

Ed

Yes, we would love to have you back on and do that. So Ron, what do we have coming up next week?

Ron

Next week, I'm taking the week off. We have project management in the subscription business model, so it's going to be your show.

Other Resources Mentioned

In Mustafa’s recent book, Reopening Muslim Minds: A Return to Reason, Freedom, and Tolerance he references Nathan the Wise, a play published by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in 1779. It is a fervent plea for religious tolerance. https://www.amazon.com/Reopening-Muslim-Minds-Freedom-Tolerance/dp/1250256062

Mustafa not only recommends his own books (of course) but also Early Islam and the Birth of Capitalism, by Benedikt Koehler.

Mustafa wrote an article about China’s gulag for Muslims over two years ago.

Bonus Content is Available As Well

Did you know that each week after our live show, Ron and Ed take to the microphone for a bonus show? Typically, this bonus show is an extension of the live show topic (sometimes even with the same guest) and a few other pieces of news, current events, or things that have caught our attention.

This week was bonus episode 346 - Tolerating intolerance and Subscription Air travel. Here are a few links that helped drive the conversation: