liberalism by definition it has two core concepts on which it is founded equality and liberty .all the other ideas like tolerance,equal rights for every race,gender equality,freedom of speech,freedom of religion and even democracy stems from these two core believes.the idea behind liberalism is it is not static and it continues to evolve with the time, morals and new issues but for one to be called a liberal he has to believe in these two core concepts.
liberals were always the most hated bunch of society throughout the history and many of were even send to gallows and lost their most valuable possession.why?because they were the first one to challenge the deeply rooted social norms or religious believes of their societies.the believes like the flat earth or geocentrism.But had they or no one else challenged such believes in their time we would still be living in medieval era.No matter how much they were hated in their time It was always the liberals who challenged and changed their societies who brought forward the new ideas like democracy in front of people living in a monarchy or gender equality in a patriarchal culture.conservatives of that time hated them but now the whole world is reaping the benefit of the forward thinking of few minds.
while west now has the balanced amount of liberals and conservatives in their populace who can openly and easily challenge each others ideas .same can't be said about Pakistan or many other Muslim countries.here the conservative population is more dominant who consider liberals and their believes a threat to their society.which is halting the growth of these countries.
when ever someone talk about oppressed groups, gender equality blasphemy law or minority rights whole society instantly assumes that he is here to spread vulgarity in their women and destroy foundation of Islam etc and instead of engaging him in a proper debate people become defensive and start hurling personal insults or fatwa e kuffar at the guy.why is it like that when even Islam it self was the most liberal religion(also the reason of it spreading so quickly) of the period which gave the minority and women the rights which were unheard at the time and promoted a healthy debate culture.answer is because these guys or the guy teaching them islam has nothing to do with Islam all they want to do retain as much power over the other groups as they can.they don't care if it is immoral or even unislamic. same was the case with the Church they didn't put Galileo to house arrest for life just because he was disagreeing with them he was imprisoned because he openly challenged the church's power by repeatedly publishing his work on heliocentrism while he was told to abandon the opinion,inciting people to think against the geocentric teaching of the church and ridiculing a pope in the process.
so when ever these imam masjid and so called Islamic scholars like fazul rehman feel threaten by an idea which can loosen their grip on the masses. they use their fatwa power to turn the people against the idea.even if it is totally in accordance to Islam i.e tolerating other sects and minorities or women working outside the house .
ever increasing terrorism and radicalization of Muslim countries can only be ended if they adopt to the tolerant and liberal values of modern word .other wise they will be left behind isolated and devastated.its time we move forward and break these chains of century old mindset.
