fatman17
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Editorial: Using religion to kill
The United Nations was the venue of an 80-state conference on religious tolerance at the end of which a declaration called Culture of Peace has been issued. It expresses concern over serious instances of intolerance, discrimination, expressions of hatred and harassment of minority religious communities of all faiths. Everybody talked of promoting dialogue during the conference, thinking that its failure in the past should not discourage those who champion it in the midst of violence.
All religions were mentioned in the speeches made during the conference but it was Islam whose followers were mainly addressed under the heading of religion while the word justice was used when addressing the secular states of the West now presiding over the international economic and political order. Saudi Arabias King Abdullah was the driving force behind the conference. Since he presides over Sunni Islam and to some extent Shia Islam too because of his custodianship of Hajj the gathering was not without significance.
In response to an appeal for justice, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the creation of a Palestinian state side-by-side with an Israeli state can be achieved by goodwill. His country represents the European consensus that disagrees only in detail with the way the US handles the dialogue in the Middle East, but goes along passively with the drift that has characterised American diplomacy in the region. Europes compulsion to go along with the US a compulsion equally felt by the Muslim states of the Middle East on other global-strategic matters incapacitates them from delivering on justice. Europe and the US also have their problems with expatriate Islam: Europe surprisingly has more of them than the US.
The expatriate Muslim in the West has integrated into the host culture less and less over the years. The two approaches to expatriate workers assimilation and integrationism or multiculturalism have failed. Assimilation insists that the expatriate person should accept the local culture in public places to become a full-fledged citizen. Multiculturalism believes that Islam is a deep-seated culture too and will not fade away as new generations come and go, and so its practises may remain side by side with those of the host country. One approach opposes separation; the other allows separation to achieve integration.
Assimilationist France doesnt allow the wearing of the veil to Muslim girls in public places, and has provoked protest. Multiculturalist UK, Belgium and Germany are poised to also follow France and restrict the wearing of the Muslim veil because allowing Muslim citizens to remain separate has not led to integration as originally envisaged. European scholars critical of their governments seek resolution within the matrix of Western values and observance of human rights and think that current remedies sought officially are all wrong.
But Islamic scholars have not succeeded as intellectuals because of the use of violence by the orthodox and the extremist who dominate Islam these days. Intellectual interpretations of the faith are still not popular in the Muslim world mainly because of low levels of literacy and the consequent concentration of power in the hands of the clergy. Muslim intellectuals, like Muhammad Arkun, Abdul Karim Soroush, Khaled Abu El Fadl and Abu Zayd, who believe that early Islam was a free-wheeling adaptive Islam that was gradually arrested by a specific culture, have been forced to live abroad. The absence of the intellectual in Islam makes the faith impervious to change in the light of the kind of consensus expressed by the UN conference.
Looking at Pakistan in the light of this observation one can say that it is not Islam that is destroying Pakistani culture through Talibanisation but a certain interpretation of Islam that is frozen in a specific culture. Iranian intellectual Abdul Karim Soroush actually appeals for a contraction of religion (qabz-e-din) away from the political sphere as well as culture. The greater problem is that as terrorism in Pakistan spreads through the vehicle of religion, a new religion unfamiliar to Pakistans South Asian Muslim tradition is coming into existence. Therefore the modern state is hurting more than society because it is less resilient to ideas that place sovereignty outside the state with such concepts as jihad and munkiraat (prohibited practices).
Most lethal is the tendency to use violence in pursuit of the sect. This is the internal conflict that all Muslims condemn but do nothing about. This obfuscates the meaning of Islamophobia as used by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in his address. If a Shia fears a Sunni, what should one call it, if not Islamophobia? Similarly, the spread of suicide-bombing has been condemned by Muslims of all sects, but some Muslims continue to practice it against fellow-Muslims. So it is worth asking: as the Muslim state retreats in front of these trends of violence, how can it offer any assurances of peace to the world? *
The United Nations was the venue of an 80-state conference on religious tolerance at the end of which a declaration called Culture of Peace has been issued. It expresses concern over serious instances of intolerance, discrimination, expressions of hatred and harassment of minority religious communities of all faiths. Everybody talked of promoting dialogue during the conference, thinking that its failure in the past should not discourage those who champion it in the midst of violence.
All religions were mentioned in the speeches made during the conference but it was Islam whose followers were mainly addressed under the heading of religion while the word justice was used when addressing the secular states of the West now presiding over the international economic and political order. Saudi Arabias King Abdullah was the driving force behind the conference. Since he presides over Sunni Islam and to some extent Shia Islam too because of his custodianship of Hajj the gathering was not without significance.
In response to an appeal for justice, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the creation of a Palestinian state side-by-side with an Israeli state can be achieved by goodwill. His country represents the European consensus that disagrees only in detail with the way the US handles the dialogue in the Middle East, but goes along passively with the drift that has characterised American diplomacy in the region. Europes compulsion to go along with the US a compulsion equally felt by the Muslim states of the Middle East on other global-strategic matters incapacitates them from delivering on justice. Europe and the US also have their problems with expatriate Islam: Europe surprisingly has more of them than the US.
The expatriate Muslim in the West has integrated into the host culture less and less over the years. The two approaches to expatriate workers assimilation and integrationism or multiculturalism have failed. Assimilation insists that the expatriate person should accept the local culture in public places to become a full-fledged citizen. Multiculturalism believes that Islam is a deep-seated culture too and will not fade away as new generations come and go, and so its practises may remain side by side with those of the host country. One approach opposes separation; the other allows separation to achieve integration.
Assimilationist France doesnt allow the wearing of the veil to Muslim girls in public places, and has provoked protest. Multiculturalist UK, Belgium and Germany are poised to also follow France and restrict the wearing of the Muslim veil because allowing Muslim citizens to remain separate has not led to integration as originally envisaged. European scholars critical of their governments seek resolution within the matrix of Western values and observance of human rights and think that current remedies sought officially are all wrong.
But Islamic scholars have not succeeded as intellectuals because of the use of violence by the orthodox and the extremist who dominate Islam these days. Intellectual interpretations of the faith are still not popular in the Muslim world mainly because of low levels of literacy and the consequent concentration of power in the hands of the clergy. Muslim intellectuals, like Muhammad Arkun, Abdul Karim Soroush, Khaled Abu El Fadl and Abu Zayd, who believe that early Islam was a free-wheeling adaptive Islam that was gradually arrested by a specific culture, have been forced to live abroad. The absence of the intellectual in Islam makes the faith impervious to change in the light of the kind of consensus expressed by the UN conference.
Looking at Pakistan in the light of this observation one can say that it is not Islam that is destroying Pakistani culture through Talibanisation but a certain interpretation of Islam that is frozen in a specific culture. Iranian intellectual Abdul Karim Soroush actually appeals for a contraction of religion (qabz-e-din) away from the political sphere as well as culture. The greater problem is that as terrorism in Pakistan spreads through the vehicle of religion, a new religion unfamiliar to Pakistans South Asian Muslim tradition is coming into existence. Therefore the modern state is hurting more than society because it is less resilient to ideas that place sovereignty outside the state with such concepts as jihad and munkiraat (prohibited practices).
Most lethal is the tendency to use violence in pursuit of the sect. This is the internal conflict that all Muslims condemn but do nothing about. This obfuscates the meaning of Islamophobia as used by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in his address. If a Shia fears a Sunni, what should one call it, if not Islamophobia? Similarly, the spread of suicide-bombing has been condemned by Muslims of all sects, but some Muslims continue to practice it against fellow-Muslims. So it is worth asking: as the Muslim state retreats in front of these trends of violence, how can it offer any assurances of peace to the world? *
