Al-Huda
the Message Continues ... 4/17
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ISLAMIC
SECULRISM vs. EXTREMISM
by Dr.Radwan Masmoudi
This interesting article endeavors to very skillfully explain that the Islamic
ideals of justice, tolerance, compassion and peace are more in line with
democracy in sharp contrast to their distorted and repressive
interpretation by the Extremists in the Muslim World
- Al-huda Editor
Says Dr.Radwan Masmoudi,founder and president of the Center for the Study of
Islam & Democracy (CSID), a Washington D.C.-based organization dedicated to
promoting democracy in the Muslim world.
<< The experience of the Taliban in Afghanistan also constitutes an
exemplary lesson. Its attempt to adhere to out-dated interpretations of Islam
and to force those interpretations on an entire population was stupid,
destructive and anti-Islamic. The Taliban regime has been a disgrace to all
Muslims, and has been a wake-up call for many religious people.
The fact is that when a government tries to rule in the name of religion or God,
terrible things are likely to happen. Freedom and dignity are often the first
victims. Self-proclaimed religious regimes have time and again demonstrated
their inability to provide social stability or achieve economic development
because their methods simply do not work. Furthermore, since
such regimes insist that they are unaccountable to anyone -- except God -- there
is no mechanism to provide criticism and correct mistakes.
Caught between secular and religious extremisms, the world's 1.3 billion Muslims
are struggling to find a middle ground. They are looking for a government that
respects their religion but does not force it down their throats. Like
non-Muslims and people everywhere, they desire governments of the people, by the
people, and for the people. What Muslims most
emphatically do not desire are governments led by tyrants who insist that they
are always right, and that anybody who opposes them or even disagrees with them
is a traitor or a disbeliever. The truth is that the vast majority of Muslims
today want governments that honor the basic teachings of Islam -- love, respect
for others, and justice, tolerance, compassion and peace - are at the same time
modern, effective and efficient in solving a myriad of
economic, political and social problems. >>
ISLAMIC
SECULRISM vs. EXTREMISM
By Radwan Masmoudi
The recent and surprise election victory in Turkey of the conservative Justice
and Development Party constitutes good news for democrats in the Muslim world.
Moreover, it suggests what future trends throughout the Islamic world may be.
Clearly, the majority of governments in the Arab and Muslim world are out of
touch with their people and have become increasingly oppressive and unpopular.
Out of despair, anger and frustration, legions of Muslims, especially the youth,
have turned to the minority of fundamentalists as a way to feel proud, strong
and secure.
However, most of these radical, extremist movements have until now failed to
improve the economic and social predicament of anyone, nor have they offered any
real hope of doing so. Repression of all Islamists by non-democratic Arab
regimes, and lack of maturity on the part of many Islamists themselves, have
resulted in an outburst of violence which those regimes have used to justify
further repression and crackdowns. Is there any way out of this
terrible cycle of violence?
The answer coming from Turkey is yes -- and that answer lies in more, not less,
democracy.
Ten years ago, a moderate Islamist movement won the first round of a democratic
election in Algeria. The Algerian military, with encouragement from France and a
green light from the United States, intervened and prevented the second round of
voting, which would almost certainly have brought moderate Islamists to power.
Rather than respect the will of the
people, the Algerian army removed an elected president and embarked on a
campaign of military repression that has proven to be an abject failure.
Worse, repression has radicalized an Islamist movement that formerly was
primarily moderate. Today, civil war is still raging in Algeria. More than
200,000 innocent civilians have been killed to date, the economy is in shambles
and fundamentalist parties are still strong.
The principal lesson to be learned from the sorry case of Algeria is that
authoritarian regimes, over time, simply cannot succeed. After so many failures
and so much bloodshed, the Algerian government seems to have finally learned
this hard lesson. As a result, it is today trying to reform itself. However, old
habits die hard and the damage that has been done to
Algerian society has been devastating.
The experience of the Taliban in Afghanistan also constitutes an exemplary
lesson. Its attempt to adhere to out-dated interpretations of Islam and to force
those interpretations on an entire population was stupid, destructive and
anti-Islamic. The Taliban regime has been a disgrace to all Muslims, and has
been a wake-up call for many religious people.
The fact is that when a government tries to rule in the name of religion or God,
terrible things are likely to happen. Freedom and dignity are often the first
victims. Self-proclaimed religious regimes have time and again demonstrated
their inability to provide social stability or achieve economic development
because their methods simply do not work. Furthermore, since
such regimes insist that they are unaccountable to anyone -- except God -- there
is no mechanism to provide criticism and correct mistakes.
Caught between secular and religious extremisms, the world's 1.3 billion Muslims
are struggling to find a middle ground. They are looking for a government that
respects their religion but does not force it down their throats. Like
non-Muslims and people everywhere, they desire governments of the people, by the
people, and for the people. What Muslims most
emphatically do not desire are governments led by tyrants who insist that they
are always right, and that anybody who opposes them or even disagrees with them
is a traitor or a disbeliever. The truth is that the vast majority of Muslims
today want governments that honor the basic teachings of Islam -- love, respect
for others, justice, tolerance, compassion and peace -- and are at the same time
modern, effective and efficient in solving a myriad of
economic, political and social problems.
In the Muslim world, history has proven that radical secularism does not work.
Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt and of course Saddam
Hussein in Iraq instituted radically secular regimes, and the results are long
since in. Each of these rulers became a secular dictator. Bourguiba ordered his
subjects not to fast in Ramadan, Nasser made war on all Islamists and Saddam has
made war on everyone. All of them proved to be spectacularly undemocratic, and
all were or are confronted with a strong religious backlash.
For Muslims, secularism means that the state and the government are neutral in
personal religious matters. What Bourguiba, Nasser and Saddam have done is not
"secular," as Muslims understand that term, but radically
anti-religious. Each of those rulers has given secularism a bad name. In a
recent visit to Morocco, Egypt and Lebanon, I was surprised to find
non-religious parties and organizations mostly refusing to associate themselves
with secularism for fear of being seen as anti-Islamic. In the Muslim world,
secularism carries a virulently anti-religious meaning in a way that it does not
in the West.
In Turkey today, we at last have a group of Muslim conservatives who are trying
to develop a version of secularism that is acceptable to Muslims. Theirs is not
the anti-religious sort of secularism that has been practiced in many quarters
of the Muslim world, but an Islamically acceptable secularism, which says that
the government belongs to the people and that
religious practices and views should not be enforced by the state. Members of
the Justice and Development Party and their leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, refuse
to call themselves either Islamists or secularists. Rather, they call themselves
Muslim democrats, and have adduced the influence of Germany's Christian
Democratic Party on their views. The recent, overwhelming victory of the Justice
and Development Party at the polls may be the harbinger of a new day not only in
Turkey, but elsewhere in the Islamic world.
There are many Muslim democrats, and they are everywhere in the Islamic world.
Such democrats are sincere and genuine Muslims. They are proud of their religion
and its teachings. At the same time, they realize that Islam, like any other
religion, should not be forced on people. Religion is a matter of choice, and is
always open to varying interpretations, schools of thought and degrees of piety.
Muslim democrats do understand that it is against the will of God to try to
force anyone to practice a faith, or to interfere with the way that any religion
is practiced.
Furthermore, Muslim democrats believe that the Qur’an is indeed the word of
God, but that it is interpreted and practiced by people and not by saints. They
comprehend that there is always room for differences of opinion, and that no one
can claim to represent God on earth. Muslim democrats are therefore willing to
abide by the rule of the majority and respect the rights of minorities.
Today, more than ever, there is a need to adapt the ideals and principles of
Islam to the ever-changing needs of society. This process, achieved through the
use of reason on which the Prophet Muhammad himself placed such great emphasis,
is well rooted in Islamic jurisprudence but has not been practiced for the last
500 years. It is not a coincidence that the Muslim world has been lagging behind
other cultures for the last several centuries -- after being one of the most
open, most developed, and most tolerant civilizations for a thousand years
before that. When one closes one's mind, or begins to blindly imitate others or
previous generations, one is surely destined to regress.
There is no question that Islam and democracy are compatible. Likewise, there is
no doubt that a new, modern and democratic interpretation of Islam is needed to
solve the endemic problems of the Muslim world. The European Union has played a
positive role in nudging Turkey toward real democracy. Americans need to
understand what ought to be one major lesson of the September 11 attacks:
namely, that support for dictators and oppressive regimes in the Islamic world
is a recipe for disaster.
Today there is a pressing need for the United States to support genuine Muslim
democrats everywhere, who will prove among our most important allies in the
on-going quest for a more stable and more prosperous world.
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