Khaled Abou El Fadl is a genuinely liberal Muslim intellectual who has courageously endured harassment and death threats from Islamists. I greatly respect Abou El Fadl as a man and as a thinker. It’s important to encourage Muslim liberals like About El Fadl. At the same time, it’s hard to take Abou El Fadl’s revisionist picture of Islam’s tolerance at face value. Beacon Press has just published, The Place of Tolerance in Islam. The book features an essay by Abou El Fadl, followed by critiques from writers as politically diverse as Marxist Tariq Ali, John Esposito, and myself. Abou El Fadl then replies. This book was discussed last Saturday in Peter Steinfels religion column in The New York Times.