“Enlightened & Moderate Islam”
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” of
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.
Editor's Note: This article was
originally published at PakistanLink.com You can
access the article at http://www.pakistanlink.com/Opinion/2005/May05/20/06.HTM
