Many years ago, I saw Sam Harris on CNN. He was speaking amidst renewed and continuous tensions between the West and radical Muslims. I'm not sure the timing of the interview, but the book he had published, called "Islam and the Future of Tolerance," was published in 2015. This was after the bombings in London, the Charlie Hebdo office attack, and the fatwa issued against ISIS. The discussion intrigued me, so I added the book to my wishlist at Amazon. There it sat for a couple of years, and I finally picked it up. Then it sat on my bookshelf for a number of years and now, about nine years after its publication, I finally got around to reading it. It is still insightful and relevant today. As much as it had been in 2015, actually.
It's almost disheartening that it is still relevant because that suggests that the toxicity that deters honest conversations about this topic is still quite present. There has been and continues to be a narrative that the West and the United States especially is at war with Islam. This is completely untrue, but it's difficult to tell that by the behavior of the participants on both sides of the conflict.
The book is characterized and presented as a dialogue and very much fits that as it includes an exchange between Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz. The latter is a proponent of improving democratic movements, liberalism, and tolerance in predominantly Muslim countries. It took him awhile to adopt that mindset, though, and understandably so. He had grown up in the UK amidst a lot of racial tensions and had even been the victim of their manifestation.
I was struck that he was the same age as me. I noticed when he noted how old he was when 9/11 occurred...I Googled his date of birth and, sure enough we're roughly the same age.
The conversation between Harris and Nawaz is very candid and they don't hesitate to challenge one another's premises or conclusions, albeit in a respectful and productive way. I found myself wanting more discussion after the conclusion of the book.
One of the catalysts for the misguided narrative that the West is at war with Islam is, I believe, due to our inability or unwillingness to discuss it openly. The West doesn't want to do it because doing so could incite additional conflict, isn't politically acceptable, and is contrary to our presumption of innocence that borders on righteousness. Muslims don't want to do it due to risk of repercussions from other Muslims who have a cultural or a dogmatic resistance to questioning certain widely held beliefs within the religion. Indeed, in some countries one can be killed for questioning these matters.
Later in the book, Nawaz is being reasonably critical of George W. Bush's and Barak Obama's handling of the war on terror. Bush made a litany of mistakes. Obama declined to learn from them and refused throughout his presidency to openly describe the true enemy. He and his predecessor would characterize them as extremists, but, according to Hawaz (and I agree with him) that is an oversimplification. The issue isn't extremism, but extremism is a symptom of a larger issue: specifically Islamism. To be clear, this is not referring to Islam as a religion but to the mindset that Islam as a religion should be imposed on other people. This imposition can take many forms, the most extreme of which is jihadist terrorism.
Nawaz also discussed how the very interpretation of the Qur'an is being handled in ways that are potentially arbitrary and one-sided. For example, he notes that Muhammad demonstrated tolerance for other people and that one's 'people' can be validly interpreted to mean fellow humans rather than strictly adherents to the Muslim religion. In that light, at least one of the legs that Islamism stands on becomes weaker or even non-existent.
This book was just over a hundred fantastic pages, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in pursuing understanding and tolerance with or as Muslims. I love the dialogue...both its content and its existence. We need to talk more. All of us. There's a lot of work to do, and it starts with dialogue.