You hit the nail on the head with this one. The almost irrational fear of "secularism" is not suggestive of people confident of their faith but quite simply the opposite. If they are so sure of their faith, why would it matter if the state remains out of it. The argument almost suggests that without the active intervention of the state, there exists a fear in the minds of anti-secular group that fissiparous tendencies lie dormant within & would show up the moment people have freedom of choice. The only freedom of choice that these people would agree with is similar to the famous quip of Henry Ford - "They can have any colour (of car) that they like, just as long as it is black".
Dear bang galore, it seems as if you have no idea what islam is?
I already explained that islam is a deen not a religion.
Islam is not about pleasing god but god guiding people how to interact with each other as well as how to make best use of the land and resources for their own good.
Allah was the only one there before he created the creation. He decided to create the universe and people. We were not there to object, just as we were not there to object when our parents decided to have little ones.
The quran tells that god decided to create us as people who do as they please ie creatures with ability to choose to do as we please.
The reason islam needs organisation is because that is what it is for ie to help people use what god created for them. If I do not have control of land where do I get my living from? The same is true in your case.
If I control the land and tell you off, would that be ok with you? Or vice versa? Islam is no use if it does not have control over things and that control is god given to all equally. You have no right to cut off my livelihood nor do I as per the quran.
Even animals have right according to the quran because people are made responsible to care for them.
Allah created everything and he deciding to do certain things without needing permission of any of us. All we can do is do as he says or do things our own way. Whatever we do consequences will follow.
So if we want better world then we all must learn to agree to some dos and some don'ts.
The reason is we were not here all by ourselves nor can we live without each other. I need you as much as you need me ie we are interlinked and interdependent regardless we love it or hate it. We are therefore stuck with each other. so we can decide between us whether we want to sink or swim or keep on fighting to try and drown each other.
The secularism that you are talking about is therefore nothing because it does not have any moral authority. We can see the might is right policy through out the world, can we not?
This is why it is better for people to understand islam and try and educate muslims as well so that they could interpret the quran as it ought to be interpreted.
Please get out of mullah type mindset about islam. Islam is not what mullahs say but what is in the quran and the quranic islam needs decoding. Muslims on one hand are not educated enough to decode it and on the other they are suffering from dogmatic indoctrination. So it will be difficult for them to recover from all this on their own.
It should be clear from my explanation that independence you are talking about does not exist in reality. We humans are born and depend on our parents. By the time we are grown up we run for husband or wife and want kids for ourselves, can you see how much independence is really there for us in life? Not much at all. We are most of our lives dependent on each other, so why run away from each other instead of working together to make our lives better that we can?
There are lot of thing you don't know about islam nor do muslims. Not only that but by knowing about islam one also becomes aware of lacks in other ideologies.
Islam is not a faith nor faith based, it is the real stuff ie evidence based rule of law.
Truth can be categorized in five ways.
1)The truth as it is, independent of observer. This does not concern us.
2)self evident truth.
3) proven truth, based upon reliable testimony
4)probable truth, not self evident nor reliable witness based
5)possible truth.
Islam is reliable divine testimony based truth.
Islam can be tested for its truth using scientific method. This is why I said it is not mythical, legendary or superstitious.
Here are rules for interpretation of the quran.
1)It must not be interpreted against laws of nature deliberately.
2)It must not be interpreted against rules of judgement deliberately
3)It must not be interpreted against self evident facts
4)it must be interpreted within its grammatical limits
5)it must be interpreted with in its wider context and according to its purpose.
6)It must be interpreted according to its own explanations ensuring that interpretation does not introduce contradictions in its message.
So long as one sticks to these rules one's interpretation is likely to be the correct one or at least as close to its intended message as possible. All this due to possibility of human error that cannot be eliminated 100%.
These rules have been ignored by mullahs either because they wer ignorant of them or that they deliberately did not use them because if they did then they could not turn the quranic message in to nonsense that they did.
These rules are vitally important because each word has different meanings and which meaning should one choose and why become important for reaching the proper sense of the message.
I can give various examples of wrong interpretations of the quran but I shall leave it for now.
regards and all the best.
You just reminded me of an old Hutch Ad. BTW, don't you have to go and play your video games?
