Islam and Liberal Citizenship The Search for an Overlapping Consensus

Some argue that Muslims have no tradition of separation of church and state and therefore can't participate in secular, pluralist society. At the other extreme, some Muslims argue that it is the duty of all believers to resist western forms of government and to impose Islamic law. Andrew F. March demonstrates that there are very strong and authentically Islamic arguments for accepting the demands of citizenship in a liberal democracy, many of them found even in medieval works of Islamic jurisprudence. In fact, he shows, it is precisely the fact that Rawlsian political liberalism makes no claims to metaphysical truth that makes it appealing to Muslims.

Preface; Section One: Justificatory Comparative Political Theory: The Search for Overlapping Consensus through "Conjecture"; Chapter I: Purposes: The Place of Justificatory Comparative Political Theory; Chapter II: Methods: The Ethics of Comparative Ethics; Section Two: Islam and Liberal Citizenship: Patterns of Moral Disagreement and Principled Reconciliation; Chapter III: Islamic Objections to Citizenship in non-Muslim Liberal Democracies; Chapter IV: Identifying Equilibrium: An Ideal-Typical Islamic Doctrine of Citizenship; Section Three: Islamic Affirmations of Liberal Citizenship; Chapter V: Residence in a non-Muslim State; Chapter VI: Loyalty to a non-Muslim State; Chapter VII: Recognition of Non-Muslims and Moral Pluralism; Chapter VIII: Solidarity with Non-Muslims; Conclusion: Tradition and Creativity in Grounding Moral Obligation to Non-Muslims; References; Index