“Enlightened
& Moderate Islam”
By Dr. Mohiuddin Waseem
Gulshan Iqbal, Karachi
As President Bush is facing
problems in democratizing the Muslim countries
so would President Musharraf in his dream to “enlighten
and moderate Islam”. It is because both
these leaders lack a clear vision of how to accomplish
these goals.
There is an old Arabic saying that “masses
follow the religion of the ruler” and to
advance your religion and in his case of “enlightened
moderate Islam” President Musharraf has
to be well versed in Islamic ideology or at least
find out learned Islamic scholars who can give
“kosher” connotation to his concept
which is severely lacking until now.
So far, he has loosely associated his concept
of enlightened moderation to Jinnah’s vision
of a welfare state and shunning of terrorism.
Clearly no one can disagree with these noble intentions
but to appease the anxiety of traditional Islamists
and attract the ‘silent majority’
a better example would be Prophet Mohammad’s
(PBUH) revolutionary leadership which did not
totally abolish the old Abrahamic faith and established
customs of Arabia but transformed the pagan religion
of the time to an enlightened and acceptable one.
The sprit of anticipated change, if based on Qur’an
and Sunnah and presented by learned scholars,
will be more appealing to the masses than presenting
ones case through the liberal left, which actually
is damaging this legitimate cause because of their
bona fide reputation of being anti-Islamic.
I think the best people for the job are the ones
from the “Islamic ideology council”
who can effectively look into the Islamic aspect
of enlightened moderation and help the government
formulate a modus operendi. Also, Muslim enlightenment
should not be confused with the European experience
which threatened the very existence of religion
in post-enlightened Europe because history is
witness to the fact that by design the Semites
of Middle East and their offshoot nations are
more religion-oriented and received almost all
the prophets and sustained many transforming experiences
without repulsion to the religion than their European
counterpart.
Lastly, no vision of enlightenment is complete
without a constructive dialogue between the different
Abrahamic faiths, including Islam, Christianity
and Judaism, with the sole purpose of alleviating
misunderstandings and bridging gaps between these
faiths. Exploring the commonality between these
religions I hope will be more rewarding than probing
differences which all of us have been doing for
centuries to no avail. It will also help foster
a global community with better understanding of
each other’s point of view. For the last
1400 years we Muslims have been commanded in the
Holy Qur’an to invite Jews and Christians
to “come to common terms between you and
us” (3:64) and I think it is high time that
Muslims should start doing that.
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