At five in the afternoon, Cairo time (62).. Islam and Freedom of Opinion and Expression (1)

Why do we open this file now?

In April 2004, I accepted an offer presented to me by Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, within the framework of cooperation between the Ibn Khaldun Center — which he chaired and directed — and the Arab Center for Research and Studies that I had established in 1998. The project was to publish a series of introductory booklets on Islam directed to the West, the first of which would address “Freedom of Opinion and Expression in Islam,” to be issued in Arabic, then translated into English, and distributed in the United States and Western Europe.

My acceptance of the offer was based on the premise of presenting an objective scholarly articulation of authentic Islamic discourse and responding to the negative stereotypical image that had become associated — in Western consciousness — with sweeping generalizations linking Islam to extremism and violence, which was escalating at the time, amid widespread confusion and ignorance regarding many authentic Islamic values.

It was agreed that the book would be completed within a maximum of six months, for a fee of ten thousand pounds: three thousand upon signing the contract, and seven thousand upon delivery of the final manuscript.

I prepared the book in three chapters:

• The Qur’an and Freedom of Opinion and Expression
• The Prophetic Sunnah and Freedom of Opinion and Expression
• Freedom of Opinion and Expression among Enlightened Islamic Thinkers

The core idea was clear: that authentic Islam believes in intellectual pluralism, recognizes the freedom of others to retain their differing beliefs, upholds the value of honest intellectual struggle free from vulgarity and trivialization, and does not endorse coercion, oppression, or forcing people to adopt any creed.

However, the surprise came in the Ibn Khaldun Center’s comments on the manuscript after review. The comments did not treat the text as a subject of research, but as material to be refined so that it would conform to a preconceived image they wished to export to the West.

What was required — quite clearly — was that Islam should emerge tailored to a ready-made political and cultural taste, not to its own text, history, and method of managing disagreement.

At that point, I realized that the question itself is not always innocent, and that some institutions are not searching for the truth so much as they are searching for a “comfortable” version of the truth.

When the disagreement ceased to be scholarly and became methodological and ethical, the decision was clear: to refuse to continue and to restore a safe distance between academic research and the conditions of cooperation with Western research centers and their directive requirements.

I immediately published a well-known article at the time in Rosa Al-Youssef magazine, which occupied the entire front cover, under the title:

“Islam Tailored to Ibn Khaldun’s Measure”

In it, I explained precisely what had occurred, announced my refusal to cooperate with the center, returned the amount I had received, and submitted the book to my friend Farid Zahran, director of Al-Mahrousa Center for Publishing and Distribution, who published it in the same year under the same title:

“Islam and Freedom of Opinion and Expression.”

Today, after more than twenty years, I return to this file/book — not to recall the Ibn Khaldun incident as a personal story, but because it reveals something deeper: how the question of freedom of opinion in Islam can shift from a legitimate epistemic inquiry into an instrument of pressure, and how the answer is sometimes expected to be written before the question itself is asked.

For this reason, this series of articles appears in Ramadan 2026, drawn from that book we published at the time — not in a spirit of polemic, nor as an emotional defense, but as a calm reconsideration of a fundamental question:

What remains of the essence of religion after it has become entangled in political conflicts and the noise of competing discourses?

The Arab world has for years been living through a compound crisis:

• a crisis of the state,
• a crisis of consciousness,
• and a troubled relationship between religion and freedom.

At the heart of this crisis stands the question of freedom of opinion and expression in Islam — not as an abstract juristic issue, but as an existential question touching the image of religion, the future of the state, and the boundaries of coexistence.

This series does not proceed from assumptions claiming that Islam is against freedom, nor from allegations that every critique is a fully formed conspiracy. Rather, it proceeds from a simpler — and more painful — reality: that a large part of the crisis was made by our own hands, when text became confused with interpretation, religion with authority, and jurisprudence with politics.

In these episodes, we will return to the text before it was weighed down by interpretations, to experience before it was distorted by conflicts, and to the Islamic mind when questioning was a virtue rather than a crime, and disagreement a sign of vitality rather than a cause for exclusion.

We are not seeking to absolve the past nor to condemn the present, but to understand: how did we move from a religion that opened the door to questioning to a reality that constricts it? How did disagreement shift from a field of independent reasoning to an accusation? How did freedom — in some practices — become a privilege granted and withdrawn by authority, rather than a right affirmed at the foundational level?

Before asking whether Islam is against freedom of opinion, we must first ask: How was the question itself distorted?

When the issue of freedom of opinion in Islam is raised, it is often not presented as a genuine inquiry but as a ready-made accusation — one intended to condemn the religion, pressure its adherents, or impose a single interpretation that satisfies a particular political or cultural context.

Ironically, Islam as a foundational text did not begin with repression but with questioning:

• Reflection: “Do they not reflect?”
• Contemplation: “Do they not contemplate the Qur’an?”
• Observation: “Do they not look?”
• Inquiry: “They ask you … Say …”

The problem has never been the text itself, but the readings that transformed questioning into a threat, disagreement into deviance, and independent reasoning into a charge. Over time, this transformation was not held accountable but exploited: politically to justify authority, ideologically to suppress dissent in the name of protecting the creed, and externally to portray these practices as the essence of Islam rather than deviations from it.

In Ramadan — a month of reflection and reassessment — we attempt to read calmly what was written in agitation, and to reorder the questions before seeking ready answers. This series is neither a religious lesson nor a political manifesto, but an open dialogue with reason, a candid reckoning with the self, and a recovery of a meaning lost amid shouting and guardianship.

We continue tomorrow…

To be continued…

Paris — 5:00 PM Cairo time.