Lew Rockwell interviews Mustafa Akyol

Is Islam compatible with free markets? Turkish journalist Mustafa Akyol points out that the vast majority of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims are tolerant, peaceable and reasonable people whose lives do not make the news. The blowback of terrorism is the result of Western colonialism and the CIA’s promotion of fundamentalism in its Afghan war on the Soviets.

Islam was founded by a successful merchant, and the religion was largely pro-market until the colonial disease of socialism infected the Muslim world. The Koran calls the merchant the most honorable man, saying that nine of ten of God’s bounties come from trade.

See on Mustafa’s website (the site is intermittently blocked) http://www.thewhitepath.com (the meaning of his name in English) his:

• Islamocapitalism
• A Governing Shari’a
• Render Unto Ataturk
• Bolshevism in a headdress: Islamic fundamentalism has more to do with hatred of the West than with religion.

Mustafa’s five YouTubes on Islam & Freedom: The Turkish Experience:

• How to understand Islam in the 21st Century
• Turkey’s Muslim intellectuals accept liberal democracy
• How Turkey has become a modern state
• Praises US Constitution on freedom of religion separate from the state
• Compulsion is wrong