Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

At school we were barely introduced to such a valuable novel by Ibn Tufayl. “Ibn Tufayl’s message was clear — and for its times, quite bold: Religion was a path to truth, but it was not the only path. Man was blessed with divine revelation, and with reason and conscience from within. People could be wise and virtuous without religion or a different religion.“ “ When there was a conflict between these two, Ibn Rushd argued, written laws of religion should be reinterpreted because they were inevitably bound with context.” Speaking of context, the liberal writer forgot to mention the current context in end of his article. The Muslim who inspired Spinoza, Locke and Defoe

From the archive For what Tuck has established is that modern natural-law theory was forged in integral connexion with "the kind of militarist and imperialist expansion in which the Dutch and English writers gloried." The commercial and colonial expansion of the Dutch and English states in the seventeenth century could be considered, from the angle of the European international order at the time, as something of a sideshow. But Tuck demonstrates with great erudition and theoretical acuity that it was absolutely central to the substance of the modern natural-law tradition, out of which contemporary rights-based liberal individualism has grown. His book might more properly be called "The Origins of Anglo-American Liberalism in the Legitimation of Imperial Expansion." The Origins of Atlantic Liberalism