Bridging Traditions: Jesus, Moses, Islam: Feat. Mustafa Akyol

In this episode, Avraham Burg speaks with Mustafa Akyol, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington DC, where he focuses on the intersection of public policy, Islam, and modernity. The pair speaks about Akyol’s upbringing in Istanbul, his career as a journalist and author, and the place of both Jesus and Moses within the Quran and Muslim thought. Throughout, Akyol explores the lengthy history between Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, highlighting the many ways that these religions and cultures have impacted each other, both positively and negatively. Akyol also addresses the modern history of Islam and its various moves towards and from liberalism, emphasizing the similarities between this theological journey and those taken by both Christianity and Judaism.

With gratitude to the production team - Daniel Schwake, Gabriel Mitchell, Ben Wallick, Nathan Steinmeyer and David Turjman for making Jerusalem Talks possible.

Transcript

Mustafa Akyol: There's already a very liberal Western European Islam already existing in Europe that's not in Western Europe, but is in Eastern Europe. If you look at Bosnia and Herzegovina, where my wife is from, if you look at Albania, Kosovo, these are Muslim majority societies who are liberal democracies and, you know, who don't have any of the extremism or that kind of problem we have.

Avrum Burg: So, before you wrap, can I assume that the hidden agenda, may be the overt agenda behind your writing, is to create the paradigmatic framework for this kind of Islamic thinking?

Mustafa Akyol: Indeed, both within the West and both in the Muslim majority world.

Daniel Schwake: I'm Daniel Schwake, the director of Notre Dame's Academic Center in Jerusalem. And you're listening to Jerusalem Talks. In this episode, Avrum Burg Speaks with Mustafa Akyol, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, DC, where he focuses on the intersection of public policy, Islam and modernity. The pair speaks about Akyol's upbringing in Istanbul, his career as a journalist and author, and the place of both Jesus and Moses within the Quran and Muslim thought. Throughout, Akyol explores the lengthy history between Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, highlighting the many ways that these religions and cultures have impacted each other both positively and negatively. Akyol also addresses the modern history of Islam and its various moves towards and from liberalism, emphasizing the similarities between this theological journey and those taken by both Christianity and Judaism.

Avrum Burg: Peace on you, Mr. Akyol.

Mustafa Akyol: Peace on you, Mr. Burg. Thanks for having me.

Avrum Burg: Merhaba Mustafa.

Mustafa Akyol: Merhaba. As I said, your Turkish is impressive.

Avrum Burg: That's the entire vocabulary. You are a lot of things. You are a journalist, a world journalist. You are a philosopher or intellectual. You write a lot, both short essays, media-wise and magazine-wise, and books. And mainly, you offer alternatives, right?

Mustafa Akyol: I try. Thank you so much for your kind words. I try to offer a kind of religious thought from the Islamic perspective that is tolerant, liberal, at peace with other traditions, other worldviews, and ethically upright, and still true to the fundamentals of the faith.

Avrum Burg: You are originally from Istanbul.

Mustafa Akyol: I'm originally from Turkey. Well, actually, I was born in Ankara, the capital, but most of my life was in Istanbul. We moved to Istanbul when I was a kid, and yeah, my parents are still in Istanbul. That's my hometown.

Avrum Burg: I mean, people, I think it's a mistake to say that Ankara is Washington, Istanbul is New York, but Ankara is the city of the government; is establishment quite secular. Istanbul is much more global, hectic, noisy, beautiful.

Mustafa Akyol: Yeah, Istanbul is the more beautiful, crowded, and difficult but interesting city. Ankara is more of a bureaucratic town, smaller than Istanbul. Still, it's big, but there's a little bit DC too, I think and New York. But also, but I live in DC now. I like DC with all the greenery, so I don't want to be unfair to DC.

Avrum Burg: Oh no, God forbid I teach there. So God forbid we have to be nice to them, especially with the current regime in Washington. You already said that, I mean, just at a very few words that we already have, that you have a different approach to something that is branded differently in the Western discourse, and this is the whole idea or the whole profile of Islam in the eyes of the West. You already said when I said you want to reform or you want to change things, a statement, can you repeat it? Can you go deeper into it, please?

Mustafa Akyol: Sure. I mean, I'm a Muslim myself, and I grew up in the Ottoman, Islamic tradition and Turkish tradition, and I strongly believe in the fundamentals of my faith. Like I'm a believing Muslim. I've studied the Quran for decades in my life, and. But I also see the need for reinterpreting the religious tradition in the light of the modern age. And there's a whole tradition of people who've been trying to do that since the 19th century.

Avrum Burg: Especially in Turkey.

Mustafa Akyol: Especially in Turkey. I mean, it begins with Tanzimat reforms in the Ottoman Empire. The Young Ottomans, who kind of tried to synthesize Islamic belief with political liberalism. They brought concepts like constitutionalism to the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century, which include equal citizenship for Jews and Christians.

Avrum Burg: The alphabet.

Mustafa Akyol: The alphabet came. I mean, the alphabet change came later under Mustafa Kemal. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was more of a secularist, so he was not interested in synthesizing religion with modernity. He was just willing to bring, you know, a very European modernity. What I'm talking about is a little bit earlier generation, late Ottoman Empire, that was respectful to the religious tradition but tried to find new interpretations of it, build new interpretations of it.

Avrum Burg: What is called the 19th century, the New Order?

Mustafa Akyol: They were called New Ottomans. There's a nahda in Arabic world at the time, the Arab Awakening, and thinkers like Abduh in Egypt, the beginnings of Islamic modernism, Syed Ahmed Khan in the subcontinent. So actually in the 19th century, Albert Hourani has a great book, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age.

Avrum Burg: Stop here for a second. Okay?

Mustafa Akyol: Sure.

Avrum Burg: You took us back 200 years. But it's not 200 years in the same place, at a sense. The then the Ottoman Empire was the organizing political system of the entire region. So Egypt, but few eruptions, the entire Middle East, Syria, Lebanon, what is today known as Israel and Palestine, and even further Iraq of today were part of the greater Turkey.

Mustafa Akyol: Yeah,

Avrum Burg: At the same time and at the same time, but with the turn of the century, something new was entered. And Istanbul, which is Asian and European, may be the only city in the world which is a bi-continental, was introduced with a European, Western secularism, rationalism and the collision never stopped. The collision and the tension is there up until today between the Western, I would say, secular values and the traditional Muslim ones.

Mustafa Akyol: That is true. And I believe in the original synthesis that began to appear in the 19th century with Islam and liberalism in the political and economic sense. That's why I still write about ideas of liberty, and human rights, and dignity, or free markets, you know, in Islam. But one thing, though, ideas that came from the West included not so nice ideas.

Avrum Burg: Nationalism?

Mustafa Akyol: Nationalism! and I think nationalism, sometimes people see nationalism and liberalism as the same thing or compatible. Well, in a nation state you can definitely have liberalism, but national and militant nationalism, like xenophobic, expensive, genocidal sometimes, nationalism has also swept the region. And actually, I believe it destroyed the 19th-century spirit of liberalism, tolerance, and pluralism. There's a period of Ottomanism in the Ottoman Empire, where the Sultan says, you know, Jews are in the synagogue, Christians are in the church, and Muslims are in the mosque. There is no difference between them other than that. So, like equal citizenship, embracing all the colors and religions of the empire that was replaced by nationalism in the early 20th century, which is I think has swept the whole region, created terrible ethnic cleansings, genocide, killings, massacres, oppression, persecution in the Balkans first.

Avrum Burg: Because the old Turkish Muslim order was forced to contain so many nuances because there were so many segments, and definitions, and identities, and faith and rituals all over the the empire, and the minute the national definition walked in, either you belong or you do not belong.

Mustafa Akyol: Yeah, exactly. I mean, the thing is, the Ottoman Empire was not a Turkish state. It was a multi-ethnic, multi-religious state. And, you know,  stretching from Vienna to Yemen, you know, at some point in its largest borders. I mean, he included these dozens of different religious and ethnic groups. Jews were one of them. Arabs, Albanians, Bosnians, Serbs, Bulgarians, many Turks themselves. And when it started to disintegrate, certain groups said, this is our land. This is our country now, now, this is Greece, now this is Bulgaria and this is Serbia. And there's a slogan famous in the 19th century. They said, Greece is for the Greeks, Serbia is for the Serbs, Bulgaria is for the Bulgarians. Now, that sounds nice until you realize you're not Bulgarian, but you're in Bulgaria. And if you're Greece, in Greece, but not Greek, which happened to be Jews included Jews, by the way, Jews suffered at the hands of Balkan nationalism.

Avrum Burg: Without going into nationalism in this conversation. But this tribal democracies or tribal regimes echoes up until today. I mean, the white supremacy in North America is the Jewish state in Israel, East Germany to the Germans, Hungary to the Hungarians. Up until today.

Mustafa Akyol: Exactly.

Avrum Burg: Not yet resolved, but let's go different places before we dive into the pool of your writing. And it's an ocean. It's not just a pool.

Mustafa Akyol: Thank you.

Avrum Burg: For whom it was the most difficult to accept your break away from the ranks, your family, yourself. Because this kind of. I put it like this. Turkey and the Turkish people, it's a fascinating group of people, and it's a fascinating culture, and very even fun to be with. But there is a certain moment or a certain line you should not cross. When you cross this line with your writing?

Mustafa Akyol: Well, I mean, I for almost 25, maybe 30 years, almost now, I mean, 25, I have a career of writing in the Turkish language and also in the English language. I was a columnist in a Turkish-language newspaper and an English-language newspaper. Then I started writing for international outlets in New York Times and just, you know, brought me all the way to us right now. Within Turkey, I touched upon some hot-button issues, and I got really heated reactions by certain camps. For example, I have a book in early 2000s about Turkey's Kurdish question, you know, and it's titled Rethinking the Kurdish Question. And as a Turk, I criticize many aspects of state policies towards the Kurds, banning their language, forcing assimilation, not allowing them to retain their culture, and all that. At the same time, I criticize the PKK, the militant Kurdish armed group, and I, some Turkish nationals didn't like that. You know, I was thrown a noose in one public conference in Istanbul, like noose to hang people. A far right, you know, party said we will hang you people when we come to power. And luckily they never did. But. Or the fact that I criticized the government and its policies led to, you know, some me losing jobs, you know, getting calls from the top that this guy shouldn't, you know, write in this paper anymore. That kind of thing. So in Turkey, I got this kind of intolerant attitude from certain groups in the broader Muslim world, I mean, I've been writing about issues on Islam a lot on the past 15 years. I mean, I wrote more about Turkey topics maybe 15 years ago. Until 10 or 15 years ago. Then I switched to broader issues of Islam, and I see Turkey as a part of that. I see the whole Islamic world as one big ummah and try and think about that. I mean, I got into trouble sometimes for my reformist views in Islam,

Avrum Burg: In Malaysia.

Avrum Burg: Malaysia?

Mustafa Akyol: Yeah. In Malaysia in 2017, I was invited to give a few lectures based on the Malay edition of my book Islam Without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty. And after the second conference, it was on the issue of apostasy in Islam, which is, you know, giving up your religion, and it is considered as a crime in some Muslim religion.

Avrum Burg: To switch religion. Yeah,

Mustafa Akyol: Yeah. And I said, you know, this should not be a crime. It's a matter of conscience. And, you know, we should respect freedom of conscience and we cannot police religion. And then the religious police came and arrested me right after that, and they detained me and took me to.

Avrum Burg: I had a feeling reading some of your I call them reformist ideas, because I don't have a better definition, that in a way both camps were challenged by you. The traditionalists, for sure, and the secular to say, hey, you don't come all the way towards us. It's a kind of an in between. But let's go further. Okay. The envelope of this podcast has a Christian dimension because it's the Holy Land, it's a Notre Dame University etc.. And I for years, I'm fascinated by Turkey and Christianity. In what sense. When you talk to an average intellectual or Self-appointed intellectual in the West. So the Roman Empire, with the Christianity as its religion, ended by the end of the fifth century. But you, the Turks, you know that it lasted a thousand years more till the 1453. I mean, the fall of Constantinople, now Istanbul. So you had a thousand years of Christian prominent presence in Turkey till it ended. What of these thousand years of the Byzantine Empire are still felt in the Turkish spirituality or Turkish identity card of today?

Mustafa Akyol: Sadly, not too much. I mean, of course, when you drive around Istanbul today, you will see the great Hagia Sophia, which is of course.

Avrum Burg: What is it today? Church? Mosque.

Mustafa Akyol: It's a mosque today. So it was reverted back to a mosque in 2020. I criticized that, by the way, in an article in New York Times.

Avrum Burg: They charge an entry.

Mustafa Akyol: They charge an entry to tourists. But if you're going there as a Muslim to pray, I think you can pray. I mean, you can still see the Christian past, but it was, I think, when it was a museum. I mean, it was a place of worship for no one. So that was also lost. But also you had both traditions right in front of your face. You could see all the Islamic calligraphy and the heritage, and you see the Christian iconography. Now the Christian images are a little bit covered with curtains because of the prayer. One thing I see as a triangle, the Abrahamic triangle I speak about. I actually find Islam and Judaism closer in this triangle to each other theologically, and because of their emphasis on law, the halakha and the Sharia. Christianity is a little bit different than us in certain ways in terms of imagery. The idea of a Trinitarian God and but also Islam is similar to Christianity in its universalism. Anyway, so regarding the Byzantines, you can see that. But Turkey in the 20th century very interestingly lost the pluralism of the Ottoman Empire. Like, I'll give you one number About a hundred years ago, or let's say in the early 20th century, 120 years ago or something, one third of Istanbul's population was non-Muslim. One third. There are like population account censuses showing that that included big portion of Greeks, Armenians, and Jews. So the three major, you know, non-Muslim components of the empire, which meant that when you went to Istanbul, there were these very active churches and synagogues and Armenian there, Catholic Armenians, and of course the traditional Orthodox Armenians, and all those institutions and their lifestyle and their neighborhoods was all there. Now Istanbul is 99%, 9.9 Muslim. Like, there are 5000 Greeks remaining, a bit more Armenians, but still very little, and some 20,000 Jews all across Turkey I think in Istanbul.

Avrum Burg: If.

Mustafa Akyol: Yeah, maybe it's a little less than that around maximum. What happened is people say, you see, Islam destroyed all these minorities. I said, like, well, Islam was there for for centuries. This is nationalism. This is a different thing. Turkey's tensions with Greece as a country, over Cyprus, over other border issues, led to distrust of Turkish citizens who happen to be Greek by language and religion. And there has been systematic discrimination against them. There was a pogrom in 1955, terrible event, and many of them fled Turkey and went to Greece. In the meantime, a lot of Turks in Greece came to Turkey. There was actually even a population exchange back in 1923. So Istanbul became more homogenous as Old Turkey itself, as Turkish, which reads Muslim. And we lost the non-Muslim, that is, Jewish, and Greek, and Armenian, and Jewish, big populations of the empire, which made it more diverse, more lively, interesting and colorful, and it became a more homogenous country. And I think that was a loss of pluralism and loss of richness, as it happened back in the Balkans, with the loss of Turks, in some cases, Jews as well, like in Salonika, you know, in Greece.

Avrum Burg: But it's interesting, you know, at the time that Istanbul is losing its others and becoming quite monolithic in its population, though the diversity of the city between the various kind of Turks, religious, non-religious, modern feminists, traditionalists is all over the place at the time. You find it important to write about those who are absent from the landscape. You wrote two books. The first is Jesus in Islam and the second is Moses. I mean, I would have said 16th century. I understand why you write it. 17th century I understand. 21st century when it's all empty. So let's begin with your motivation for this, and then let's explore the argument. Because in each book with Jesus, you have a different analysis of the importance of Jesus to the soul of Islam, then the importance of Moses. Let's begin with your motivation. Why do you write something like that?

Mustafa Akyol: Great question. I mean. The books are the Islamic Jesus and the Islamic Moses, literally, and the Islamic Jesus was 2017 Islamic Moses last year, actually more recent there were both printed in the United States, so I didn't write them for mainly the Turkish audience. I wrote them for a more international audience, including American readers, and who are interested in religious issues. I think there's a great interest in religion in America, intellectual interest, and I appreciate that. I mean, I wrote the Islamic Jesus at a time when Islam was on the news as the scary religion ISIS, al Qaeda, of course, those extremes are there. But I wanted to say, look, I mean, Islam is not that alien to you as a religion. I mean, if you're speaking of a Judeo-Christian tradition, but there's a Judeo-Christian Islamic tradition, in my view, this is a big one. Abrahamic three and many Christians might not be aware of the fact that Jesus is highly appreciated in the Quran.

Avrum Burg: This is an apology from your point of view.

Mustafa Akyol: Not an apology. This is just showing some very interesting fact about Islam to an audience that might not be aware of it. Also, though, I just wanted to say, hey, we have Jesus in Islam. I mean Islam, the Quran respects Jesus highly, calls him the Messiah, has a chapter on Mary the Mother. The Quran confirms virgin birth at the same time because it's closer to Judaism, Islam, theologically it rejects Trinity.

Avrum Burg: Let us be a bit more accurate.

Mustafa Akyol: Sure.

Avrum Burg: It recognizes Jesus as a prophet, as a messiah, but not as the Son of God. It is about the Trinity, because maybe Trinity goes to the concept of monotheism, that in Islam, you say like in Judaism: La Elaha Ila Allah, I mean, there is no God but God, and the Trinity is a challenge to the oneness of God. So they accept Jesus as a fantastic, inspiring human being, but accepting the Christian dimension of the Christian theology as the Son of God.

Mustafa Akyol: Yes, exactly. I mean, maybe a Christian should explain us better what Trinity exactly means. I think it's not out of monotheism, but it's a complicated view from the Jewish and Islamic perceptions of monotheism.

Avrum Burg: God is one and thats it. 

Mustafa Akyol: Period, we don't think that there's more to that about that. I mean, the mainstream Christian theology brings more nuance, complication to that which is not, you know, our thing. One more thing, though. But in the book, I showed that wait a minute, by the way, Islam takes this very interesting view, calls Jesus Messiah not just a prophet, but Messiah, Messiah, and also confirms the virgin birth, tells about his miracles like Islamic teachings about Jesus actually resonates very strongly with some early Christian sects.

Avrum Burg: Well, hang on, hang on, hang on. Slow down, slow down.

Mustafa Akyol: Slow, slow. Sure.

Avrum Burg: Early Christianity. Early, early Christianity. It was a family. I mean, you could have a family that one member of the family was old rabbinical Jew. And a brother or a cousin or an uncle or a sister. Could have been the new Jew which followed the rabbi, Jesus.

Avrum Burg: You, Mustafa, you take it a step further and you say, listen deep, there inside, there is a polemic or there is a cleavage between Paulose and Jacob.

Mustafa Akyol: Yes. You checked The book. Okay, good. So...

Avrum Burg: Habibi, I come ready, I read it.

Mustafa Akyol: I appreciate that. Yeah.

Avrum Burg: So go deep there, because I have a feeling that if we understand your distinction between Paulose and Jacob, the brother of Jesus Christ, it would be much easier to understand the relationship of the way you understand Islam and Islam and Christianity. So explore it a little bit for us.

Mustafa Akyol: Okay, sure. Well, in early Christianity in the first few centuries, there are many views, many sects, and Christians don't have a state. So they just, you know, go into different directions, which actually is pluralistic and nice.

Avrum Burg: But my knowledge is so important for the spreading.

Mustafa Akyol: Of exactly this is happening in my country, like in the southern coast of Turkey. Part of it, Paul comes there and preaches and all that. Now, what is interesting is that the nature of Jesus, that's a complicated idea, right? I mean, God becoming man and incarnation and all that. It goes all the different directions. And there are certain groups that are having a low Christology, as later Christians would say. They don't necessarily think Jesus is fully divine. And now there are some Gentile versions of that, like Arianism, which is known as a heresy. But even aside from that, even before that, there are so-called Jewish Christians. Now, what does a Jewish Christian mean? These are some Jewish people at the time living in historical Palestine. They think Jesus is the Messiah, that Jews were waiting. He's dead, but still the mission goes on. So they accept them as the Messiah. But they're still Jews, so they observe the Sabbath.

Avrum Burg: Yeah.

Mustafa Akyol: They eat kosher. You know, they do everything that is required by the halakha. And they see the brother of Jesus, Jacob, as you said, who's called James in English. And there's a letter of James from him in the New Testament towards the end, which I find very interesting. They see him as their patron saint, like he's the, he's the leader of the community, the Jerusalem church after Jesus. And he himself is a Jew, a halakhic Jew. This tradition is there. But then Paul comes to the scene. He's a late disciple. He actually becomes a disciple after the death of Jesus. He's actually an enemy of the movement in the beginning. But then he has his road to Damascus. So he converts, and then he starts to preach the message of Jesus to the Gentiles, to the uncircumcised.

Avrum Burg: Stop here when Jesus says, I didn't come in order to change anything in the Torah.

Mustafa Akyol: Yeah,

Avrum Burg: Came Paul and said, yes, I came to change. It's between changing and not changing, or conservative and reform.

Mustafa Akyol: Paul, in Paul's understanding the message of Jesus is so profound that it should not be just a Jewish thing. It should be taken to the whole world, the Gentiles. And he starts to preach this message, which initiates and ultimately creates what we know as Christianity today. It becomes a religion of these non-Jewish people believing in this Jewish Messiah. And from all over the Roman Empire, it's just a Paul initiates this whole Gentile Christianity, which becomes the Christianity. Now what happens is the Jews who accepted Jesus are not a part of this, because their halakhic Jews and other Jews don't look at them as favorably because they believe in something that most Jews don't believe in. They it's like a, you know, messianic movement that is not appreciated by the majority. So historians say they died out. But there are also later groups in the first ten to second century, like Nazarenes, Ebionites, Christian fathers are speaking about them. They said, "oh, these are people who say they believe in Christ, but they still don't appreciate his divinity, or" I'm just paraphrasing, but there are Jews. Actually, they're not real Christians. So there is something remaining out there, and it is called Jewish Christianity. And historians have written about this, and it is generally assumed that they kind of disappeared in a few centuries. You don't hear much about them in the fifth century anymore.

Avrum Burg: and you argue in a way, maybe that disappeared officially, but in a way we can discover them in our Islam. It's the concepts of theirs.

Mustafa Akyol: Yeah. I argue that the theology of Jewish Christianity had a rebirth in Mecca in early seventh century Arabia.

Avrum Burg: In what sense? Elaborate a little.

Mustafa Akyol: In the sense that what Islam teaches about Jesus is very similar to this early Jewish Christian perception of Jesus as the Messiah, but still not divine. Messiah is not a God that you will worship. He's still a servant of God, sent by God for redemption, of course, but.

Avrum Burg: Let me summarize it in order to move on, because otherwise you and me can be there for the entire night and it won't be enough. You say that the Jacobian, not the French Jacobian, but the Jacob's Christianity, which early Judaism, the way they interpreted both Judaism and later on the contribution of Jesus into it. This is what eventually was absorbed into the Muslim comprehension of Islam, not the later on version of Paulus and on.

Mustafa Akyol: Yes, the teachings about Islam, about Jesus quite remarkably match with the beliefs of these early Jewish Christians. Now this was noticed by other theologians. I mean, there's a German scholarship on this. Other scholars, Patricia Corona had a fascinating article about Jewish Christianity and Islam. Hans Küng mentions that in his book and says, it's very interesting, but just moves on to something else. So a lot of people notice. This is wow, very interesting that I just looked more into it. That's why the subtitle of the book, The Islamic Jesus, it reads how the King of the Jews became a prophet of the Muslims.

Avrum Burg: King of the Jews. This is how.

Mustafa Akyol: King of the Jews, they put on the cross.

Avrum Burg: The cross.

Mustafa Akyol: And by that,  I mean the Jewish Messiah, as believed by these unorthodox, heretical Jews of the first few centuries. Because it is the same way Islam sees Jesus very respected Messiah, but still a Jew, still halakhic, and still you're not going to supposed to worship him, but he calls you to worship God, which is not a triune God, but the God of the Old Testament and the Quran. And I see a very similar connection there. So that is one plot in the book. And I discuss how this rebirth happened. Of course, some people try to trace Jewish Christianity surviving into seventh century Arabia. That's kind of a historical link between these things. There are some rock inscriptions that sounds like Jewish Christianity found in Negev in a later date, maybe closer to Islam. Wow, is there a connection? And of course, there's a theological answer to this. A Muslim can say, well, God revealed the same truth to them. It's revealed the same truth to Prophet Muhammad. So that's a matter of faith. But what I'm saying is that there is this very intricate connection between Islam and some early Christian movements. I mean, and I can see how Christians looking at this today can say, oh, I understand one of our heresies influences Islam. Muslims can say, oh, you see, even Christians knew that this was the true religion, but they went wrong after that. And those polemics are possible. But I just wanted to show this fascinating connection between our religion so people can look at each other with more severe and maybe respect too, hopefully.

Avrum Burg: So after you stop the the place that many people passed by, you moved on deeper into mythology. And after you explore early Jesus, Judaism, Islamic interconnection, you move into Moses.

Mustafa Akyol: Then, okay, so what happened is.

Avrum Burg: Okay, talk to us about your Moses and then I'll talk to you. I'll talk to you about your Jesus and your Moses. Okay?

Mustafa Akyol: Sure. What happened is my publisher, San Martin's Press. Was very happy with the Islamic Jesus. And they said, why don't you make a sequel to this book? And I said, well, what can I do? Well, I can write about the most prominent prophet in the whole Koran. Who's that? I said, that is Moses.

Avrum Burg: Mentioning the Quran more times than Muhammad himself.

Mustafa Akyol: Definitely. His name is mentioned more than 130 times. The most mentioned human being in the whole Quran is Moses. The name Muhammad is mentioned just four times. So when you read the Quran, you learn about Moses more than anything else, more than anybody else. He's the most dominant figure. And also, there's another interesting after Moses, the second figure that is most mentioned, most second mentioned human being. Do you know who who is it? Can you guess?

Avrum Burg: Ishmael.

Mustafa Akyol: Not Ishmael. Some people guess. Abraham. Some people say maybe Noah. These are good guesses. Abraham is probably the third, but the second most mentioned figure is the pharaoh.

Avrum Burg: Really?

Mustafa Akyol: Yeah. The enemy.

Avrum Burg: The enemy? The adversary defines us.

Mustafa Akyol: So Moses and the Pharaoh. Moses and Pharaoh. So the Quran heavily features the story of Israelites being persecuted in Egypt, and Moses saving them out of that persecution through the Red Sea, you know, departing very similar to the biblical story, with little interesting nuances. So in the Islamic Moses, I looked into that aspect and I said, why Moses is. I mean, I tell that story why Moses is so important for Islam in the beginning. And my explanation to that, as pointed out by some academics, is, well, the story of Moses and the Israelites being persecuted in Egypt and finding a way out through the Exodus resonated strongly with the experience of Muslims in Mecca led by Muhammad, who were they were persecuted by polytheists as the Egyptians were. And God told them, I mean, as if you believe in revelation as the Quran, because the Quran told them the stories of Moses to inspire them. Look, you are being persecuted here, but just like the Israelites, at the end, God will save you and you will have a exodus which will take you out of this. And that Exodus is called Hijrah in Islam. That's a migration.

Avrum Burg: Migration from.

Mustafa Akyol: Migration from Mecca to Medina. And when they go to Medina, they are now more powerful. But there are now there's the conquest of Canaan or conquest of Hijaz. So after that migration, there are some conflicts with the tribes.

Avrum Burg: The history of the prophet and his first disciples is a reflection to the ancient mythological story of Exodus.

Mustafa Akyol: Exactly.

Avrum Burg: And therefore this way draws it's, maybe not legitimacy, but it's spiritual power.

Mustafa Akyol: Spiritual and in a sense, a little bit of a military and political legal power, too. Because, I mean, what happens after the Exodus? Of course, Moses and then Joshua, you know, they conquer the land. They kind of somehow establish a halakhic, you know, polity there. The blasphemers or Sabbath breakers are punished. So there's a kind of a beginning of a political even form. I mean, the ancient kingdom of Judea ultimately comes out of that, which is very interesting. Again, Patricia Corona, she said, Moses is the paradigmatic prophet for Muhammad. He starts in persecution, takes his people out of persecution and goes there and then wins some conquests. You know, he wages war against some enemies, the Amalekites or Jericho and all that. And that's why in Islam, in the life of Muhammad, you have some battles in this second phase in Medina. Now, what do we make of these battles today is a very important question. Do we think that the battle with the Amalekites in Judaism still relevant today? Or do we believe Prophet Muhammad's battles with the pagans and even the Jewish tribes there in Medina, which we can talk about.

Avrum Burg: Resolved it all?

Mustafa Akyol: I mean, they still commandments today, and I know some extreme people in Israel think it is. And I know extremists in Islam who say that that is and want to bring those commandments into active war situations, active conflicts today. But I'm in favor of a more historical reading of these things. These are one time events that happened. It's in our religious tradition. How do we understand them? And I was fascinated, for example, to read Moses Mendelssohn. A figure I value a lot. Making the argument that this was a one time event back there. It doesn't mean Jews need theocratic states. It was a one time theocratic experience.

Avrum Burg: Maybe later on, in one of the next conversations of ours, we can talk about Freud and Edward Said interpretation of Moses. Two different interpretations, but leave it now. Let me go. Let me try to to digest. I mean, all of this wisdom. Did I understand Akiva's teaching? Okay, let's see if I understood it. I begin earlier that the cleavage between Paulus and Jacob is not just an historic, factual debate or split. It's the key to understand the relationship between Christianity and Islam, in the sense that Paulus maybe gave birth to the church. But Jacob, in a very deep sense, gave birth or gave the seeds to the birth of Islam. Then I move on and I say, for you, Moses, which was earlier chronologically, is not just a Jewish prophet. This is why he is mentioned so many times in the scriptures of Quran. He's the prophet of entire humanity who teaches each and every one under each and every circumstances how to go out, how to self-redeem from slavery to liberty, and how to make this liberty into a covenant of justice. Then comes Jesus, and he is not law and order like Moses, like Sharia, like commandments like do this, do that. He is about compassion and mercy. And therefore Moses is the ethos of law. And Jesus is about compassion and Islam, the way you understand it, is the fusion of them both. A legal, normative system with emotional compassion, desire for justice and values.

Mustafa Akyol: It is. And, you know, I didn't figure it out that way. But yeah, it is. And Alia Izetbegovic would agree with you. He's a, he was this great leader of the Bosnians I admired a lot. He has this book, Islam Between East and West. And he there he puts Islam between Judaism and Christianity, getting somewhere in the middle of the road between them in their emphasis of the law and Jesus more spiritual teachings. I think so. And one thing though, there's we all can a little bit of something from Jesus if even if you're not Christians. I say this because and I actually I have a chapter in the last chapter of my book, Islamic Jesus. There's a section, there's a part which says, what can Muslims learn from Jesus today? Now, both Moses and Muhammad, peace be upon them. Both of them. They initiated a whole new religious tradition, a whole new religious law. Moses initiates the halakha, the Ten Commandments, and Leviticus and all the biblical commandments. And Prophet Muhammad initiates Islamic law. Right. I mean, it starts with him. And then, of course, developed by scholars, the ulama and the rabbis. And so we both have legal traditions in Islam and Judaism.

Avrum Burg: In North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula, during the Middle Ages were actually the exchange ground between these two huge civilizations.

Mustafa Akyol: Exactly, exactly. That's why, I mean, Jews found Islam very interesting and studied Islamic law and theology. Maimonides, Saadia Gaon before him, they got ideas from Jewish or Muslim theologians like the Mu'tazilites. And the law is very interesting. I mean, Maimonides actually uses the term Sharia for Jewish law in his Judeo-Arabic writings. So we both have a legal tradition. Jesus is a very interesting figure. He's not the initiator or creator of the tradition. He comes onto the tradition, and as a reformer, and he calls on his fellow Jews to take the commandments of the Halacha, less literally, understand the ethical purposes behind it. Paul would later totally, you know, take a few more further.

Avrum Burg: get rid of the norms and just.

Mustafa Akyol: But we don't have to go that far. But we can say, still the Jesus perspective, like the Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath. I mean, the idea of the law is actually to help human beings and, you know, serve their interests and values and so on. And or like there are teachings in the New Testament which we can see as a reformist perspective on religious law, which can be appreciated from a Jewish point of view, which can be appreciated by an Islamic point of view. Again, Moses Mendelssohn makes that point. I was fascinated to read that in his book Jerusalem and in Islam, people like Muhammad Abduh, that I mentioned 19th century reformers. They actually said that we can take an idea from Jesus into looking at the law in not in a rigid, literalist, blind obedience way, but understanding the ethical purposes of that. So in this triangle, we are, there are things to learn from each other. And I think the perspective of Jesus, regardless of Christian theology, is valuable.

Avrum Burg: Mustafa Bey, I want to push back. Okay,

Mustafa Akyol: Sure.

Avrum Burg: At least for the sake of the discussion, not, God forbid, out of no respect. Because I'm fascinated by what you say. I understand the 19th century Muslim thinking, wow, the world is open. I mean, the Western Empire is after so many, since Saladin may be coming back to the region and since the 13th century last encounter between the Crusades and the Muslims. Finally, we talk to each other somehow because the Middle East opens slowly but surely. So I understand the need for respond, for maybe not liberal ideas, but the secularization of the human condition. But when you look today, at the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, at least in the Muslim world, I do not want to talk here about the Jewish and the Christian one. But in the Muslim world, what took over is a pushback against these ideologies. I mean, the 20s of the last century, the Muslim Brothers concept was born, which is the concept of political Islam. And when you look today, Turkey is in a way, the regime, forget about the politics of it, but the concept is political Islam, politics in power. In Egypt, it's not political Islam as a party, but as a concept. It's a very religious oriented or driven. And I can go on and on and on and on. And at the same time, where you see closer relationship between religion and state in Muslim political entities, you see a deeper cleavage between church and state in the secular West. Two models are drifting apart from each other a merger of fusion of church. not church and state, religion and state on the Muslim world, and a separation or deeper separation at the Western secular Christian one. Why is that?

Mustafa Akyol: Well, hard to speak about the West that much, I mean. But I can definitely speak about the state of Islam that you described very well.

Avrum Burg: In Turkey that was so secular for a while.

Mustafa Akyol: Exactly. But I'll try to a few nuances to that. It is true that the more liberal trends in second half of the 19th century, in the Muslim world, in the Ottoman Empire, and the Arab world declined. That's why Hourani speaks of a liberal age as a bygone era. And they were replaced by more, you know, rigid ideologies, strident, reactionary Islamism, as you describe. You know, politics is one of those maybe the latest of those, but they also include nationalism and Arab socialism, which was also, you know, sweeping the region and during the time of Abdel Nasser and all that.

Avrum Burg: So which were both nationalist and socialist.

Mustafa Akyol: Nationalist and socialist, and they combined the worst combination possible. And in Syria, the Assad regime. And there still was a remnant of that until very recently. But this happened in a context which is the Muslim world in the 20th century found itself cornered by, first of all, Western colonialism. The Ottoman Empire was trying to liberalise then it collapsed tragically, and all Muslims found themselves across the I mean, most of them colonised by the French and the British and the Italians, and Russia has crushed the liberal trends in Central Asia, which people don't know much about. There was a Jadid reform movement in Central Asia. Then the Arab-Israeli conflict added another sense of insecurity, which is still going on. Societies or civilizations don't tend to liberalize when they feel insecure.

Avrum Burg: This is actually Bernard Lewis argument.

Mustafa Akyol: The Muslim world has been feeling very insecure for 100 years for very understandable reasons, so that the sense of being cornered empowered the more radical figures. Still, it's still going on. And one more thing. You mentioned secular models like Turkey's secularism. I would maybe slightly differ on that. Yeah, I believe in a secular liberal state, but also the secularism examples we had in the Muslim world were also illiberal. They were not tolerant. They were actually sometimes oppressive on religion, which added to the problem. Like Ataturk's, Turkey, Shah in Iran, the first Shah I mean, he came and banned the hijab of Muslim women.

 Avrum Burg: Alliyehes.

Mustafa Akyol: Exactly that. If you ban hijab or Muslim women, what do you think they will do? Well, they started hiding their homes and the Ayatollah supporting them said, we will topple this tyranny, which is exactly what happened several decades later on. And then Khomeini said, now they will all wear it. Right. So the liberal solution let them do what they want to do, got lost. So it's a perfect storm of Islamic world having owned its own religious problems, intolerance, and sometimes on that with liberal trends pushing forward with all these foreign attacks coming onto the religion which made the Muslim world cornered. That's why we started to pop up these. You mentioned the Muslim Brotherhood. I mean, when did it come? In 1927. What happened in 1920s? Oh, the Ottoman Empire collapsed in 1924. The caliphate was abolished. People thought, you know, we're lost. We are just a civilization.

Avrum Burg: Here, an explanation. The caliphate was the global Islam political system, which included all the political entities which were part of the Muslim world. That was the empire.

Mustafa Akyol: Yeah.

Avrum Burg: And the Legal, not the legal. The the perceived followers of the ancient Caliphate was the Ottoman Empire. The minute the Ottoman were replaced by the Turks and it declared, we are secular and therefore we do not continue the ancient Caliphate. A vacuum was created. Who do I belong, said the individual in today's Jordan, today's Iraq, today's Egypt. Up until for thousand years, I was a citizen of the caliphate. Now. So you say into this vacuum that walked in?

Mustafa Akyol: Yeah. I mean, I think the sense of besiegement, the sense of your tradition being attacked and humiliated by outside powers or hardcore secularists within, killed the more liberal trends and empower the more reactionary ones, which is still going on in various manifestations around the world. But I'll tell people, look, it wasn't easy for Christendom to come to a liberal solution.

Avrum Burg: It took some bloodshed.

Mustafa Akyol: They had an effort with Renaissance, which is very good. But then you had the Reformation, and comes the Reformation, post-Reformation conflict and violence and bloodshed and 30 Year War, like almost 150 years of drama. Then comes some liberal ideas. John Locke, you know, talking about with the kind of thing I'm talking about. That's great. But then you have nationalism, fascism, Nazism. I mean, it's only after Second World War. I mean, Europe emerged as a liberal continent, right, of liberal democracies started to form. And when you look into the centuries before that, wow. I mean, Europe was a terrible place and with some exceptions, and Jews know that better than most people. I think they had to escape from this Christendom several times, came to the lands of Islam, came to the Ottoman Empire because it was much safer, much more tolerant.

Avrum Burg: The Ottoman Empire is the one that opened its gates to Jews. When we were expelled in 1492 from the Iberian Peninsula, and later on during the Second World War and the horrors of the Holocaust, that's for sure.

Mustafa Akyol: Exactly. Exactly. There were even some Ashkenazis coming to the Ottoman Empire from Germany in the later periods as well. I tell people, look, I'm a Muslim. I'm proud of my faith. I belong to this civilization. I'm a child of the Islamic civilization, and I accept that it is in a very difficult time. Civilizations have their own difficult times, and eras, and epochs. I mean, Christianity had terrible times. Judaism had many crises and 5000 years of history. So this is a difficult time. But we have to work in this time for better ideas for the future and those outsiders who are looking into the world of Islam. If they want to help, they will help by not making Muslims more insecure, but making them a little bit more secure, and respected, and dignified.

Avrum Burg: And let me challenge you here. Okay, I hear you. I mean, who am I? I mean, if this is the feeling I accept and respect for sure. And as I said, Bernard Lewis explored it for a while and many others. But today we have a situation we didn't have, maybe for maybe 500 years, since the middle of the end of the 15th century. And this is for the first time after so much time. We have a serious Muslim component in the midst of the Western liberal, liberated liberal democracies, North America. I think number wise, you have more Muslims than Jews in Europe. You have numbers that since the end of the Byzantine Empire you did not have. What are the chances that from these clusters, which are huge in numbers, will emerge what I call here for the sake of our conversation, western World Islam. I understand Muslim world Islam, but Western Islam might be a different one.

Mustafa Akyol: Yeah.

Avrum Burg: What is the chance of it?

Mustafa Akyol: I think there is a pretty good chance for it. I already see it happening. I mean, I think I see a lot of Western Muslims living in Western societies, especially in North America, well integrated. They're happy with the Constitution and the freedoms of this country. They criticize foreign policy of this country, very, a lot, as I would myself do, or Western countries. But that's okay. That's what citizens do. So I mean, there are, of course, some hardcore figures too. You can hear one imam speaking in a, you know, radical mosque, saying, oh my God, Muslims will conquer here.

Avrum Burg: The Blind Imam.

Mustafa Akyol: And that Imam is picked up by people who want to say, oh, you see, these Muslims are so dangerous people out there. And then it becomes viral. And a lot of people think so. There are pockets of people like that. And I debate with those people, by the way, as much as I can. But also, I see a Muslim appreciation of democracy in the West. I mean, I had a conversation about this with Sheikh Yasir Qadhi, who's a very prominent American imam, much more conservative than me, on whether the Western liberalism can be a model for us in Muslim majority societies. It's online, people can see it. And I initiated that conversation by reminding a sermon of his in which he said, he's one of the top three, maybe Imamss in America. He said to his Muslim audience, we Muslims should be thankful to have a constitution like the American Constitution that protects our freedom. Like we can say whatever we want. We can open the mosque, whatever we want. This is not the case in most countries in the world. We should thank Allah for this Constitution. And I said, I love that. That's more. That's why I would love to bring this kind of constitutional liberal regime to Iran, Saudi Arabia. Then we had a, you know, a little bit of disagreement on that. But I think many people are appreciating these Western liberal values, and I think it is initiating, if you ask me, something like the Haskalah in Judaism, the Jewish Enlightenment back view, then Jews were more living in closed communities. Liberalism came with a new promise, so they kind of adjusted to it. I would worry that the Haskalah was cut short by European fascists, right? I mean, Nazis at worst. So I would worry that something like that can cut the Muslim experience of integrating in Western societies. One more thing to that question, by the way. There's already a very liberal Western European Islam already existing in Europe that's not in Western Europe, but is in Eastern Europe. If you look at Bosnia and Herzegovina, where my wife is from, if you look at Albania, Kosovo, these are Muslim majority societies who are liberal democracies and, you know, who don't have any of the extremism or that kind of problem we have.

Avrum Burg: So before you wrap, can I assume that the hidden agenda may be the overt agenda behind your writing is to create the paradigmatic framework for this kind of Islamic thinking?

Mustafa Akyol: Indeed, both within the West and both in the Muslim majority world. I believe Christianity really had a major change with the enlightenment by accepting religious freedom, begins with Locke and other thinkers. Catholic Church was late in catching up, but they did in the 20th century with the Second Vatican Declaration and Human Dignity Declaration in the 60s.

Avrum Burg: The Nostra Aetate

Mustafa Akyol: The Nostra Aetate, yeah, that was the one.

Avrum Burg: Yeah.

Mustafa Akyol: And Judaism also had to reinterpret itself, as I understand, with the whole Jewish enlightenment. And I think in Islam we are in that historical moment. I mean, I see this as big one Abrahamic three. Jews were there before us. Then came Christians. We Muslims came later. And we all have similarities and differences, but we can imagine still a world. We can all live in peace as equal human beings with other faiths and no faiths, of course, too. But we had to reinterpret things in our religious tradition in some. I can see how that can happen. I'm working on all the technical arguments on how that can happen. I work with the people who already work with these things. It's a long-term battle, but I think it should be given a chance. And one thing that would make things much more difficult is forces outside of Islam, especially in the West, thinking that the extremists in our world represent all of us. So this is a whole a threat, therefore, they should expel all Muslims and close all the mosques in the West and that kind of stuff. That will only empower the extremists illiberals among us which say, this is all a lie. We will never, you know.

Avrum Burg: What do you say is if this extreme Fundamentalist Christian supremacy ideologies will prevail, it will reintroduce the defensiveness of mobs of back home in the West, in which they should have been much more secured.

Mustafa Akyol: People will say the Taliban is right. They've been telling us that the only safe place for Muslims is an Islamic emirate.

Avrum Burg: So let's go back home. Let's go back to Istanbul. Okay. From the neighborhoods of Istanbul. Which one you love the most

Mustafa Akyol: Well, I love the Boas, the Bosphorus, of course. I mean, walking next to the water in Arnavutköy. The Albanian.

Avrum Burg: I love Ortakoy.

Mustafa Akyol: Ortakoy, Bebek, Tarabya. Yeah, or, or the old city, of course. I mean, going through that actually, here, I mean, the.

Avrum Burg: Oh, yeah, that's that's.

Mustafa Akyol: That's the Galata Bridge over the two sides. Yeah. Anything around I mean, anything that is the old city reminds us beautiful. And it's a bit crowded, Istanbul, of course, these days I go in the summers now to visit family. But yeah, I stumble to stumble. I mean, it's just a fascinating city and and going there and to find a Byzantine church at the corner that nobody actually noticed when people passed through or going, finding a synagogue, the Neve Shalom Synagogue, which I had the chance to visit a few times, shows you all those lives in Istanbul that existed, and remnants are still there. It was a more pluralistic place, and at least honoring that legacy will make more people more open-minded, today, I think on both sides.

Avrum Burg: And this Turkish version of Islam, maybe the Islam of the big cities, because the rural country is a bit different, can be a model for a better dialogue between the three Abrahamic religions that is not being offered by Islam emerging from other places?

Mustafa Akyol: There is this Turkish model talk, Two decades ago, and it looked more shining back then. Today it's in a very populist, authoritarian mood, Turkey these days. But, you know, it happens in Europe, too. Look at Hungary. Look at other populist movements today. I still think, with all its flaws, with all its endless internal fights and, you know, narrow-minded populism, nationalism, Turkey still has something to show. Today, you mentioned Turkey as a political Islam case. I mean, the ruling party definitely has that sort of narrative, and sometimes it may be more narrative than in reality. It's more pragmatic in many cases. But I would say still today, Turkey is a secular state. There's no Sharia in the legal tradition. Turkey is still a country where you can choose to go to the greatest nightclubs or the greatest mosques. You know, it's still your choice. It's still a country with a large secular population and pious ones too. just the pious ones, became more powerful in bureaucracy and this and that. But. Or at least conservative. Maybe they're not that pious always. But I mean, it's Turkey is going through these battles within Israel to, you know, the religious right ascendance.

Mustafa Akyol: And, you know, others are worried about the future. But I think Turkey still is a country that shows that a country with 150 years of some democratic experience and secular law. And I think I tell people, look, I mean, you can be like Turkey. You don't have to have a Sharia in the legal system to live as a good Muslim. You can still live as a community, as an individual, but you can live under a secular state. And I don't think that people are pessimistic scenarios about Turkey. People think that the current party president will drag Turkey so deep into Islam. I don't think like that. I mean, I have issues, I have problems, I have criticized it. But countries don't change that dramatically. There's still a history of modernization, secular law, there is still a segment of society I don't see Iran like scenario in Turkey. It's more like a populist, you know, scenario, which you also have in some Western democracies these days.

Avrum Burg: It's fantastic. You say secular doesn't change so much, and still when you say bye bye or farewell in, in nowadays Turkey, it's a Allahsmarladik, right?

Mustafa Akyol: Allahsmarladik. Yeah. Which is...

Avrum Burg: God be with you.

Mustafa Akyol: Give it to the safe hands of God.

Avrum Burg: Which means. So thank God for Allah, Jesus, God. Lord. It was a very, very fascinating conversation, Mustafa Bey. It left me with a lot of food for thought, and I really hope that we shall have a next chapter, because maybe the next one you will write about somebody more contemporary.

Mustafa Akyol: Yes. I'm working on a new book on religious freedom, Conversations in Islam. There's a Quranic verse, no compulsion in and religion like, al-habadin. But what's the full interpretation of that? So there's actually an edited book on that issue. But I would love to talk about that, or anything. Yeah, I this was a lovely conversation. Thanks for having me. And I would love to have another chat. And when you come to DC, let me know. Maybe we can have coffee or Turkish tea. Turkish coffee. Which one would you prefer?

Avrum Burg: Yeah. Without sugar. Thank you very much, Mustafa. Bye bye. God be with you.

Mustafa Akyol: My pleasure. Allah smaradic.

Avrum Burg: Allah smaradic.

Gabriel Mitchell: Jerusalem Talks is brought to you by the University of Notre Dame's Academic Center in Jerusalem, and was made possible by the efforts of Avraham Burg, Daniel Shwake, Gabriel Mitchell, David Turgeman, Ben Wallach, and Nathan Steinmeyer. Learn more about us at Jerusalem.nd.ed.