03-26-2004, 06:19 PM
Salaam Alaikum!
I’m not sure everyone will agree with me, but I believe (whole heartedly) that this whole conflicted has given the Islamaphobes serious weaponry. Reason being? The conflict (draped in a nationalistic cloth) has reduced Islam to pure politics. That’s a grave step, indeed! Islam is beyond politics and nationalism. There’s a whole smorgasbord of interesting things that Islam brings forth to the world than a one-sided—partisan—political machine. Upon reading Phatmonkey’s posts, I believe he was headed in the right direction with some of his points.
One of the dangers of Islam being completely political is that it lacks the moral imperative. Let me give one example. Take Iran, for instance. You had a political ideologist in the Ayatollah Khomeine (political Islamologues I call them) who wanted to implement a zealous-political Islamic state. He got one. But, what has become of this ‘Islamic state’? The state was set up on political ambitions and the result was the suspension of values, humanity and the moral imperative. No one I know would want to live in his assumed utopian Islamic state. It lacked everything that we seek in an Islamic state: social welfare (pace the economic welfare). Say for the sake of argument that the Palestinians get a state---or better yet---say Israel was wiped off the map—then what? Would that end the crisis that’s going on in the Islamic world? Would that end honor killings and rape that’s prevalent in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh? Would that make Saudi Arabia end their “so-called” religious police and treat non-Saudi’s peacefully? Would that end secularism? Would that end the vogue of post-modernist thought? Nay! What’s a stake in this whole situation is the moral imperative. When Islam is stripped of it’s moral imperative, political Islamologues come to scene and interpret Islam to their likings and use any form of violence to convey their point.
Let me quote a Pakistani intellectual to sum up my whole point:
‘What we are concerned with are the universal values of Islam that emphasize justice, unity of thought and ideas, a holistic approach to the study of nature and social relevance of intellectual and scientific endeavor. In this framework, fragmentation, meaningless and endless reduction and appropriation of god-like powers of monopoly of truth and marginalisation and suppression of other forms of knowledge are shunned.’
I apologize for this post being rather chaotic—I have lack of time. Once again, if there are any discrepancies, please advise the author.
Ibn Kumuna