This is a Kator Daily Podcast for Wednesday, February 22nd, 2017. I'm Keele Brown.

What conflicts exist between liberalism and Islam, and can they be reconciled.

Mustafa Akyol is author of Islam without extremes, a Muslim case for liberty.

We spoke last week.

For a lot of people who consider themselves fundamentalist Christians,

people who go to the text of the Bible first and most especially the words in red, those are the words

of Jesus.

You get a pretty clear picture of how one ought to conduct themselves in the world, and it is, in many ways, very out of step with how people do conduct themselves, even people who are self-professed Christians.

There is an idea floating around that any time Islam has something of a reformation, that going back to the core of the faith is actually

a negative thing, that it promotes more radical ideas and potentially more violence.

So what do you say to that?

Well, that's a very good question first of all.

Secondly, this idea of going back to the source, especially the scripture,

which has been influential in Christianity is of course

influential in Islam it is not necessarily a bad thing it can be a bad thing I

mean if you're it depends on why are you going back to like that the scripture, the source.

If you have an intention, if you have an idea like that,

the religion has become too dilute and too moderate and liberal.

We should go back to toughen up.

I mean, that's one approach.

Then you know, you can go there and find some texts to justify some strong positions you have.

That is the trend we see in the trend called Salafism in Islam. Maybe that term is, you know, heard or unheard.

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