Editors' Note: Dylan Matthews is a summer 2008 Prospect editorial intern.
The annual Foreign Policy/Prospect list of the "World's Top Public Intellectuals" is out, and the top ten, for the first time, is composed entirely of Muslims. Topping the list is Philadelphia-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen, followed by Nobel laureate and microcredit pioneer Muhammed Yunus, Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yusuf al-Qaradawi, and Turkish novelist and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk. In a development sure to frustrate Paul Berman, Swiss theologian Tariq Ramadan (#8) bests Dutch-Somali anti-Islam activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali (#15), and a third Nobelist, Iranian human rights activist Shirin Ebadi, rounds out the top ten.
Perhaps even more surprising are the countries of origin of the Muslim intellectuals in the top ten. Only two, al-Qaradawi and televangelist Amr Khaled, come from an Arab country (Egypt). Two (Gülen and Pamuk) are Turkish. Two -- Yunus and Pakistani bar association chairman Aitzaz Ahsan at #5 -- are from the Indian subcontinent. Two, theologian Abdolkarim Soroush (#7) and Ebadi, are Iranian. Africa and Europe claim one each (Ugandan anthropologist Mahmood Mamdani at #9 and Ramadan respectively).
Whilethe popular perception of the Muslim world conflates it with the Arab world, the Foreign Policy/Prospect list shows that to be as much of a fallacy among thinkers as it is generally.
In any case, given the amount of debate about the Muslim world from Western writers both left (Gilles Kepel, Olivier Roy) and right (Bernard Lewis, Daniel Pipes) it's encouraging that Foreign Policy and Prospect, through the votes of their leadership, are raising awareness of thinkers who actually live in it.
--Dylan Matthews
