(Panel Presentation) In the wake of the Arab Spring, the theoretical writings of leading Arab Islamists have taken on new significance. Such writings are now potentially a source of guidance for practice, and understanding them has taken on a sense of urgency. My paper focuses on two influential yet understudied scholar-activists who have written (and spoken) extensively on Islamic political thought: Ḥākim al-Muṭayrī and Muḥammad ‘Umāra. Yet, in the case of both scholars, little to no academic attention has been afforded these aspects of their work. Ḥākim al-Muṭayrī (b. 1964) is a one-time leader of the Kuwaiti Salafī movement. A relatively conservative scholar, he has authored two imposing monographs over the past decade totaling over a thousand pages, and is often seen on the Al Jazeera Arabic network. His two works, al-Ḥurriyya aw al-Ṭūfān and Taḥrīr al-Insān wa-Tajrīd al-Ṭughyān both focus their attention on the question of political liberty. Muḥammad ‘Umāra (b. 1931) is perhaps the most prolific Islamist thinker alive today. An Azhar graduate, a member of its Islamic Research Academy, and the current editor-in-chief of its monthly academic journal, he has written at great length on the nexus of religion, politics, and governance from an Islamist perspective. Despite his importance and prolificacy, his political ideas have been surprisingly ignored in the secondary scholarship. Though these scholars are not liberals in the widely accepted scholarly sense in use today, they are clearly influenced by contemporary philosophical liberalism. Their project is one of reconstituting Islamic law, which they conceive of as what Brinkley Messick calls a “total discourse,” into one that is thoroughly informed by the “political advances of the West.” My paper explores the writings of these scholars from slightly different angles. In the case of ‘Umara, using some of his most recent writings, it explores the idea of the Sharī‘a’s role in democratic governance and his somewhat radical notion of popular sovereignty as a check on scripture. In the case of al-Muṭayrī, I will analyze his somewhat contradictory approach to the Islamic tradition, which in keeping with his Salafī background, is a thorough-going scripturalism that disregards the later tradition with very few exceptions. Yet at the same time, he makes a forceful case for borrowing from Western traditions in arguing for the centrality of liberty in political thought.