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April 30, 2007
War of Wills
by Tina Grazier
Our future depends on who wins.
This battle is about power. One side is determined to establish a worldwide Islamic State under sharia law…the other side fights for governments that respect basic human rights and afford basic freedoms. One story today reveals, like a snapshot, what life would be like if the enemies of freedom win.
Imagine a world where your haircut is determined by your government and your job is regulated and made possible only at the whim of the government. Imagine the oppression and control such government would bring to every single aspect of your life:
Deutsche Presse-Agentur, by Staff
Tehran - Iranian authorities are clamping down on barbers in Tehran, ordering them strictly to avoid making hairstyles for men considered by the administration as 'Western' and not in accordance with Islamic norms, a press reports said. The daily Etemad quoted a spokesman of Tehran's Barber Association as saying that offenders of this new instruction would lose their licence and the association's support.
A story by Ameer Ali, published in the Australian, offers an emerging solution. His proposal suggests that both East and West are mired down in mistrust of each other through opposing “imagined” mind-sets.
In the minds of many Muslims, an imagined West is the source of all or most of the problems afflicting the world of Islam. Similarly, in the West, an imagined Islam, purposefully structured and popularly propagated, has created a perception that this religion is a threat to Western civilisation. Between these mutually exclusive mind-sets a new phenomenon is emerging in the real West, laying the foundations for a new wave of Islamic rationalism in the 21st century.
I don’t agree with Mr. Ali that the western mind-set has determined that the religion is a threat, it is the extremist views of terrorists, interpreting the religion for power and dominance, that is the threat. His proposal, an Islamic renaissance, is exactly what is needed. The following excerpts will demonstrate the rising reformation that is happening and, if I may be so bold, establish this movement as yet another important and vital front in the war on terror.
The Islamic resurgence of the post-1970s strengthened the hands of the religious orthodoxy and engendered the spectre of political Islam but failed to rekindle the spirit of intellectual rationalism that once pushed Islam to the frontiers of science and modernity. That failure was compounded and worsened by the rise of tyrannical regimes in the Muslim world. The absence of democracy and lack of popular support forced these regimes to look for legitimacy elsewhere. One happy outcome of this tragic situation was the voluntary exodus of Muslim intellectuals to the West. From an inhospitable environment of political tyranny and ideological oppression Muslim scholars migrated to find refuge in the West, where the mind enjoys more freedom to think, debate and express.
Mohammed Arkoun, an Algerian Muslim, is an emeritus professor of Islamic thought at the Sorbonne, Paris, who approaches the Koran and other classical texts in Islam from historical, social, psychological and anthropological angles. The methodology of his research, the sharpness of his arguments and conclusions of his writings are dynamite to traditional Islam. **** Bassam Tibi, a political scientist, who writes mostly in German, applies sociological and anthropological theories to study Islam and finds that the cause of Muslim underdevelopment lies not in the West but in Islam as understood and preached by the orthodox clerics. *** Abdelwahab El-Affendi, a former Sudanese diplomat based in London, published Who Needs an Islamic State? in 1991, in which he questions the theological arguments advanced by the protagonists of an Islamic caliphate. **** Abdullahi An-Naim, a law professor at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, questions the inadequacies of Islamic sharia and its suitability for a pluralistic society.
There are too many of these scholars to enumerate and the number is increasing. All these cases underline the revolutionary thinking among Muslim intellectuals that is setting the pace for a new wave of Islamic rationalism radiating from the West…. The situation is changing fast. The internet and electronic communication technology have revolutionised the production and distribution of knowledge. Sources of information that were only remotely accessible to a selected few are readily available to many at the click of a mouse. Inquisitive Muslim minds do not have to wait for a cleric to arrive for consultation on theological issues…. This revolution in information gathering has become a subversive tool and is eroding the power base of traditional clerics. The authority of the pulpit is collapsing by the hour.
This war can be won and all that is required of the average US citizen is a firm and resolute will to win.
Posted by Post Scripts at April 30, 2007 06:20 PM