Speech by Anwar Ibrahim, Parliamentary Opposition Leader of Malaysia at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), Berlin, 30th September 2010 Let me begin with the poet and philosopher Muhammad Iqbal, a towering figure in the landscape that we are about to traverse this evening, a bridge, if you will, over the gulf that is said to separate the East and the West, between Islam on one side, and freedom and democracy on the other. In his poetic answer to the West, the Paya?m?e?Mashriq, Iqbal sets up the epiphanous encounter between Jallaludin al-Rumi and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe not on earth but up in the heavens. Reciting Faust, his magnum opus, Goethe convinces Rumi that here is one enlightened soul who understands the Great Mystery.
See original here:
Political Freedom and Liberal Democracy in the Islamic World
