Posts filed under ‘Islamic religion’
Why do many Muslims mistrust secularism?
Jorgen S. Nielsen
852 words
7 May 2007
(c) 2007 THE DAILY STAR, BEIRUT, LEBANON.
Beirut — Some years ago, the exiled Tunisian Islamist leader Rashid Ghannoushi wrote a book on public rights in Islam. He pointed out that there were particular historical reasons why Europe had separated religion and state. The church had misused its powers, had stood in the way of scientific progress, and the state had made religion a tool of oppression. That’s fine for Europe, he said, but in the Muslim world people didn’t share that history; they had to find their own way of doing things.
This is a pretty mild Muslim response to the concept of Western secularism. In sharper versions, secularism is one of a list of unfavorable Western inventions which include materialism, Zionism, promiscuity and imperialism – to mention but a few in no particular order. At the extreme, Osama bin Laden has his own list of evils.
Why is it that Muslims appear to find it so difficult to see anything positive in Western secularism? Are we so different after all?
There are some Islamic movements that are serious in their call for the complete integration of religion and state, with religion predominating in public life as in private. Additionally, in the languages of some Muslim populations, the discussion is made almost impossible by the fact that the word used for secularism translates into English as “no religion” or “without religion.” This is the case, for example, in Urdu, whereas the original meaning of the word was simply “that which has to do with this world, as opposed to the next.”
Once one gets underneath the surface of the topic, though, things become more complicated. And they differ from country to country. Saudi Arabia is not Egypt is not Iran is not Pakistan is not Syria, and so on.
Certainly, Muslims do not like a lot of what they view as being Western: the loneliness of the individual, the breakdown of the family, the destruction wrought by drug addiction, random violence, recreational sex. Of course, they are not alone in feeling these concerns, and it is natural to conclude that they are the result of the decline of religion. But this interpretation has also been popularized by Western media, especially by American films which everyone can now see on satellite television.
But there are other perspectives. In the mid-1920s, the Egyptian scholar Ali Abd al-Raziq, a professor at Al-Azhar, published a book entitled “Islam and the Roots of Government.” In it he argued that the Prophet Mohammad had founded a religion, not a state, so religion should not determine state structures today. The book was immediately condemned and, we are told by most Islamic scholars, is no longer of interest. But it has remained continuously in print since then and can still be bought in Cairo bookshops. So someone must be reading it.
In a conversation with a group of Islamic scholars in the United Kingdom recently from one of the more conservative movements, we got on to the topic of an “Islamic order.” Clearly, it was not enough that a government or economic system should call itself Islamic. It had to be Islamic. But what did that mean? For the scholars such a system had to offer social justice, a reliable legal system, personal liberty, equality, popular participation, accountable rulers and the like. One of them ventured that northern European welfare states were arguably a good deal more “Islamic” than any state in the Muslim world.
If such important values are shared, then why are there such mixed feelings about the idea of secularism in Muslim societies? Clearly the attack on secularism is encouraged by clerics. If religion in its traditional forms is pushed to the margins of public life, what remains for the clergy? But that on its own is an unsatisfactory explanation for the mistrust of secularism. After all clerics have a receptive audience for their views.
On the so-called Arab street, secularism is more often than not seen as a foreign import. It was brought in by foreign colonial powers as a way of limiting the power of Muslim religious institutions which often were at the forefront of resistance against the colonial powers. Many modern Muslim states are regarded as the heirs of the colonial powers by their people. Secular politics are associated with secular military dictatorships that were established during the years of the Cold War, and supported by one or the other of the secular superpowers.
Today, the only effective challenge to this inheritance, many Muslims believe, comes from Islamist movements, and people arguing for a secular perspective run the constant danger of being accused of collaboration with the West. It is this that makes it more likely that many will tilt away from modern, pluralistic secularism toward a religious political system.
Jorgen S. Nielsen is director of the Danish Institute of Damascus and a professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. This article is part of a series on secularism and Muslim-Western dialogue distributed by the Common Ground News Service.
I wasn’t sure I liked this artice. It was more opinion and less fact. Even if it is in the opinion section it assumed quite a bit… and was really biased. I added this story because it links together opposite things, secularism and islam.. They aren’t usually seen in the same sentence.
Add comment May 9, 2007
‘Christian Muslims’ welcome, says Hanson
By Ben Packham
March 30, 2007 12:00am
Pauline Hanson has invented a new religion where Muslims and Christians can pray togetherThe former One Nation leader, who is having another tilt at politics, said she was wary of allowing Muslims to settle in Australia.
But she would welcome some Muslims, she said.
“There are Christian Muslims – there is no problems about that,” she told ABC radio yesterday. But if people believe in the way of life under the Koran, that concerns me greatly.
The comment – an apparent reference to Arab Christians – revives memories of her famous “Please explain” gaffe during her early days in Parliament.
In another curious statement, Ms Hanson said Malaysia had been “taken over by Muslims, despite a long history of Islam in that country”.
She also said she had no sympathy for confessed terrorist collaborator David Hicks, saying he was “prepared to blow himself up to kill other people”.
But there is no suggestion Hicks ever planned to be a suicide bomber.
Despite her apparent confusion, she said she had learnt a lot since her first stint in Parliament. “I think I’m a little bit older, wiser, a lot more mature, and my knowledge of politics is a lot broader,” she said.
Ms Hanson, who is making a run for a Queensland Senate seat, launched her new biography, Untamed and Unashamed, yesterday.
The book includes details of a romantic liaison with her one-time staff member David Oldfield, who failed a lie detector test this week after claiming he did not have sex with Ms Hanson.
The former fish and chip shop proprietor said Mr Oldfield should have come clean.
“I think the biggest problem here is that he has apparently lied to his wife,” she said.
“He should have been up-front and honest – there wouldn’t be any problem. So that’s his problem, not mine. My life has moved on.”
Ms Hanson said her affair with Mr Oldfield was her one regret in her life, which included a marriage at 16, child at 17, two marriage breakdowns, 11 weeks in prison for an electoral fraud conviction and starting up the One Nation party.
“I regret my association with him in the bedroom,” she said.
Ms Hanson appeared nonplussed when comics from TV’s The Chaser turned up at her book launch with a stained dress they said was proof of her affair.
She said she had had enough of the Oldfield episode.
“I don’t intend to bring him up any more,” she told reporters at the Sydney book store hosting the launch. “I am so over it, and I think everyone else is. I’ve had enough of it.”
She said the next federal election, which she hopes heralds her return to Parliament as an independent senator, would be a big test for both major parties.
“I personally don’t have a lot of time for either one of them,” she said. “I think it’s the same old rhetoric.”
Ms Hanson said she was not racist, and was simply proud of Australia.
But Roland Jabbour, chairman of the Australian Arabic Council, said Ms Hanson had damaged Australia’s reputation.
“I think her comments are a reflection of someone who is totally ignorant,” he said. “It would be a sad day if she ever succeeded in gaining a seat in Parliament again.”
This story is yet another interesting article, which touches religion and then veers away again. The story begins with the statement that Pauline Hanson doesn’t mind Christian muslims, but she didn’t think the other type of muslims should be allowed. A quite ridiculous notion in itself really. The article then switches focus, first to Ms Hanson’s affair with Mr Oldfield, the n to her book launch and finally to politics. A rather uneventful religion story after all, as it seems simply to be used as a front for a story on another aspect of Pauline Hanson.
Add comment March 30, 2007
Minister gives schools right to ban Muslim veil
Patrick Wintour, political editor
Tuesday March 20, 2007
The Guardian
The education secretary Alan Johnson will court controversy today by announcing that he expects head teachers to ban schoolchildren from wearing the full Muslim veil on “safety, security and teaching” grounds.He will tell headteachers that they will have the right to stop pupils covering their faces under a new uniform policy to be distributed to schools.
The policy will be put out to consultation. In practice, few children wear the full veil and the guidance does not appear to stop girls wearing a head scarf.
Mr Johnson, one of the many candidates for the Labour deputy leadership, will defend the new policy guidance to schools on the grounds that safety security and effective teaching must be paramount, coming ahead of the tolerance of religious and cultural beliefs of children.
The consultation, leaked in advance to the Sun by Mr Johnson, states it will be for headteachers to consult widely among parents before introducing the policy. It will suggest it is for teachers to judge whether the ability to see a child’s face is necessary for them to teach effectively and safely.
Controversy arose last March when the House of Lords overturned an appeal court ruling that a Muslim teenager’s human rights were violated when she was banned from wearing a head-to-toe Islamic dress to school. Shabina Begum, 17, argued that banning her from wearing the jilbab at Denbigh high school in Luton, Bedfordshire, breached her rights to education and to manifest her religion.
In November 2006, Aishah Azmi, 24, a Muslim teaching assistant who refused to remove her veil in school if a man was present, was sacked. Mrs Azmi lost an employment tribunal case after refusing a male teacher’s request that she remove the veil when helping children in her role as a bilingual support assistant at Headfield Church of England junior school in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire.
Earlier the leader of the Commons, Jack Straw, caused anger by writing an article in his local paper in his constituency in Blackburn, Lancashire, revealing he had been asking Muslim women not to cover their faces when they came to see him for constituency surgeries.
He wrote in the Lancashire Evening Telegraph that he feared “wearing the full veil was bound to make better, positive relations between the two communities more difficult”. Asking women to consider showing the mouths and noses could lead to true “face-to-face” conversations with constituents, enabling him to “see what the other person means, and not just hear what they say”.
He said the full veil had become a statement of difference and separateness,
Mr Straw was defended by cabinet colleagues but attacked by some Muslims for undermining the religious integrity of Muslim women and imposing his cultural values upon them. The Protect-Hijab campaign condemned Mr Straw and the subsequent cases, saying they showed “a deep misunderstanding of the significance of the face veil”.
Backstory
In Britain the controversy has focused on the niqab or face veil. Teaching assistant Aishah Azmi was fired for refusing to remove it in November, while earlier Shabina Begum, 17, lost a legal battle to wear the jilbab, a full-length garment including headscarf, to school. In the Netherlands, full-length burkas are banned in some schools and headscarves can be banned under certain circumstances. In France, “conspicuous” religious symbols are banned in schools. Several German states have banned hijabs among pupils.
I think that this story is rather interesting. The story itself doesnt really describe why the burkas, niqab or jilbab are banned in schools. It only outline the reason for the decision as being a matter of safety, security and teaching. The story focuses more on previous issues concerned with the head scarves. Most of the story speaks of the termination of jobs, suspensions from schools and other issues. I find it amusing that the news is mainly focusing on the past…
Add comment March 23, 2007
