This article tries to develop a moderate reading of political liberalism applicable to post-Islamist, Muslim-majority societies. Contrary to the strong reading, which considers political liberalism as limited in its scope to those societies that already have a strong liberal tradition, I argue that Rawls' project does have something to offer to reasonable post-Islamist, Muslim individuals. In part I of the article the idea of a post-Islamist, Muslim-majority society is conceptualized and explained. Part II focuses on the Rawlsian ideas of justification, demonstrating that the conceptions of justification available in political liberalism, i.e. political constructivism, wide reflective equilibrium and a wide view of public reasoning with its ideas of declaration and conjecture, can justify the political conception of justice for reasonable individuals living in any society, including post-Islamist ones. Focusing on Rawls' notions of stability in part III, I argue that the idea of overlapping consensus should not be considered as the only account of stability offered by political liberalism. Put another way, notwithstanding the strong reading of political liberalism in real western and post-Islamist democracies, liberal stability is always a mixture of overlapping consensus and modus vivendi.
KeywordsModerate reading, political liberalism, post-Islamist/Muslim-majority societies, John Rawls, reasonablenessIn the last two decades, a substantial body of scholarly literature has emerged on the relationship between Islam and democracy, produced by African, Middle Eastern, Asian, European and North American scholars. However, most of these works are indifferent to Rawls' idea of Political Liberalism (1993) as one of the most recent accounts of liberal political theory, and the small, though significant, body of literature which addresses