Muqtedar Khan |
Middle East studies professors not infrequently coat their Islamist sympathies with reasonable-sounding, even liberal rhetoric, the better to hoodwink their audiences. After all, if every tenet of Islam is compatible with Western pluralism and democracy, then Islamism is a Western canard and there’s nothing to fear from its encroachment into the public sphere. But as Campus Watch Fellow Andrew E. Harrod demonstrates in a report at the New English Review‘s Iconoclast Blog, University of Delaware professor Muqtedar Khan couldn’t outrun his own record of bigotry and illiberalism.
University of Delaware Professor Muqtedar Khan had a “very bad mix” of Islamic terminology and Western liberalism in his October 9 Georgetown University book presentation, according to Iranian scholar Amir Mohammad Soori. A Visiting Researcher at Georgetown’s Saudi-founded Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU), Soori’s comment from the audience accurately judged the superficiality and pitfalls of Khan’s attempted progressive Islamism.
While ACMCU Professor Jonathan Brown moderated, Khan discussed his new book, Islam and Good Governance: A Political Philosophy of Ihsan. His small audience of about twenty-five included, along with Soori, past and present ACMCU professors John Esposito and John Voll as well as Georgetown’s Muslim chaplain Yahya Hendi. Former State Department adviser Peter Mandaville also attended.
