Harvard Prof: 'Islam is Not the Major Obstacle . . . for Democratization in Muslim Societies'

Harvard Prof: ‘Islam is Not the Major Obstacle . . . for Democratization in Muslim Societies’

Jocelyne Cesari

There’s no shortage of Middle East studies academics eager to absolve Islam of any responsibility for the region’s ills, despite all evidence to the contrary. In the latest Campus Watch research, Andrew Harrod reports on a recent lecture from Harvard and Georgetown University professor Jocelyne Cesari that featured this sort of delusional thinking. His article appears today at Jihad Watch:

“Islam is not the major obstacle . . . for democratization” in Muslim societies,” declared Jocelyne Cesari, a Harvard and Georgetown University professor of Muslim politics, on January 27 at George Washington (GW) University. Cesari’s presentation of her book, The Awakening of Muslim Democracy, before an audience of about thirty failed to justify her overconfident contention that the Muslim world’s authoritarianism has no basis in Islamic doctrine.

. . . She asserted counterfactually that, for legitimating liberty under law, the “resources in the Islamic tradition are the same” as “in the Jewish tradition or the Christian tradition.” Contradicting Islamic history, she stated that, “nothing in Islam” demands an “Islamic state” and that “not even one part” of the “totalitarian project” in the current Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) “existed historically.” “The idea that Islam subsumes everything is a modern . . . not a traditional idea,” she later elaborated. In her imaginary conception of Islam, the “role of religion is not about state institutions,” but “improving the common good of the people.”

To read the entire article, please click here.

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Cinnamon Stillwell

Cinnamon Stillwell analyzes Middle East studies academia in West Coast colleges and universities for Campus Watch. A San Francisco Bay Area native and graduate of San Francisco State University, she is a columnist, blogger, and social media analyst. Ms. Stillwell, a former contributing political columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, has written on a wide variety of topics, including the political atmosphere in American higher education, and has appeared as a guest on television and talk radio.