The demands of citizenship: Translating political liberalism into the language of Islam

Abstract

Political liberalism is presently the dominant philosophical theory of liberalism. Its main features are the beliefs that the state should remain neutral between the various conceptions of the good existing in society, which requires that the state not intentionally seeks to advantage any particular ethical or religious doctrine, but rather protect individual citizens' rights to freedom and equality in their choosing of their conceptions of the good. Furthermore, it is an essential feature of political liberalism that it aspires to a justification of this order that itself does not rely on any controversial theory of truth or good. Ideally, political liberalism should only require citizens to affirm the reasonableness of liberal policies at the political level (hence, political liberalism) and not their truth at any metaphysical level. Theorists of political liberalism believe that citizens will be able to endorse such institutions regardless of their comprehensive ethical doctrine because they do not seek to unfairly disadvantage such doctrines. In addition, however, some theorists suggest that political liberalism might enjoy additional support from the values advanced by comprehensive doctrines and thus be the subject of an ‘overlapping consensus’. In this article I explore what precisely Muslims would have to assert (and how) on the basis of Islamic sources in order for Islam to support a politically liberal ‘overlapping consensus’.