A critical assessment of the approach of liberal Islam

In this study, the basic arguments of liberal Islamic thought are examined and the limits, possibilities and limitations of a political thinking and regulation shaped around these ideas are evaluated. Despite the claim that this type of thinking will realize basic values such as freedom, justice and equality for Muslims in the form of political liberalism, it has tried to reveal how it disciplines, controls and transforms religion and religious subjects by transforming into comprehensive liberalism. In the first part of the study, different conceptualizations of liberal Islam were discussed and after revealing the problems inherent in these conceptualizations, a new conceptualization was proposed. In the second part, within the scope of liberal Islam approach, the thoughts of the thinkers of the Liberal Islam Network (Jaringan Islam Liberal/Liberal Islam Network) from Indonesia, the Sudanese thinker Abdullahi An-Naim and the political scientist Nader Hashemi are discussed. The arguments and propositions that these thinkers resorted to while grounding the secular liberal democracy thought in relation to Islam and liberalism were revealed and examined under various headings. In the last part of our study, while evaluating the liberal understanding of these thinkers within the scope of political liberalism, how the liberalism built within the framework of this understanding/thinking transformed into comprehensive liberalism and the problems caused by this transformation were discussed. In addition to these, this study also includes criticisms of the thinkers' perspectives shaped around the political. These criticisms have been made by Carl Schmitt, Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Marcel Gauchet and Jacques Rancier, who have different perspectives on the nature of the political, on the basis of the distinction between politics and the political. The rationale/reason behind putting forward and emphasizing the nature of the political or the distinction between the politics and the political is to prevent Muslims from limiting the horizon of political thought with political liberalism by enabling them to realize the contingency of politics and the constitutive nature of the political. This emphasis on the founding role of the political always provides an opportunity for an alternative political thinking.