Is Islam Undemocratic?

Basing arguments on contentious vacuous generalization, I am informed, is not a healthy habit. The very first paragraph `informs` us that `` It [modernity] has suppressed
the truth of the Soul for the harmony of the City.`` Without defining what truth or Soul is in the first sentence renders this second sentence vacuous. It would help to understand that a sentence is there to project your thought accurately and not to project your vocabulary.

A good attempt at philosophising a religion which confines rationalism (aql) only to the extent it supports its `truth`. Beyond that is all Satanic to be warded off by reciting `La houl..`.

Mr. Parvez forgets that the State is now actually withering away, as Karl Marx had predicted in his Communist Manifesto, by the oslaught of globalizaion. The question now is how the Islam is to fit in this globalization, dominated by America, a super military and political power and the UN, as an adjunct to that power. What the muslims would do if they are got declared as terrorists by the UN to be vanquished from the face of the earth and sent to heaven where Hoories are waiting for them. In Pakistan the blasphemic and sectarian mullah coupled with the WAPDA are already doing the same, with the only difference that they are releasing people from hell. Rest later.

#12, yagacho: I agree with you. Simple fact is that all religions and Islam doubly so -since the states are colluding with the Mullahs - are anti-democratic. Munzoor`s sophistry and rigmarole are for those who do not see forrest for trees.
Religions - all of them - present the humanity with a convoluted fait accompli which is totally indefensible except as a sop for bearing the harshness of life without taking responsibility. Shifting the source of misfortunes - personal or societal - to unverifiable assumption of God. If Allah of Mohammad was all powerful why did Mohammad have to fight 37 military battles?
Democracy requires taking charge by the dint of the will of the majority in a group. Of course, the slimmer the majority, the more questionable the blinding adherence to it. Also, it should not be herded majority. That majority is not the majority of democracy it is the camouflage of the autocrat.
On the contrary religions ask the populus to be come sheep and obey the Priest/Mullah because they have incorporated the ruffians who for their own gain would do the bidding of the Church/Masjid/Temple.

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are Parvez sahab, itni bhaari angrezi likhne ki kya zaroorat hai. Maana ki aapko firangi zabaan par badi maharat haasil hai lekin hum gharibon ne aapka kya bigada hai.

quiet frankly, it takes a genius to make a complex thing simple and not vice-versa. one key principle of software development is KISS (keep it simple stupid). i think this principle applies to any field of study.

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I am doing a project for school on the differences between Modern Islam and Fundamental Islam. If anyone can send me any info it would be a great help. You can e-mail me at jddoll@facstaff.wisc.edu

Thanks a lot

(The project is due on April 20, 1999, so there`s no need to send anything after that:)

Please! ``keep it simple.``

To the very end I was`nt sure, what you were upto. Did you create this enigma, to prevent ignorant mullahs from understanding what you were saying? I would understand, that you feared a fatwa.

Maybe you want us to recognize you as an intellectual - I think you over did yourself. Unwittingly though I do agree with your conclusions which if I can decipher were - individual freedoms and seperation of church and state.

Fundamentalism in the grab of modernity

`It (modernity) has suppressed the truth of the Soul for the harmony of the City :

Totally wrong. Let us see how the author is trying to impose ``superior`` truth. Modernity has enabled to understand the universe around us in terms of verifiable observations through the use of ``tools`` which are universally accessible. It tries to understand cosmos (including soul) with the help of various tools (different disciplines of science, reason, & logic). There is NO issue/question which the modernity forbids to investigate. So to say that IT HAS SUPPRESSED TRUTH OF THE SOUL is a total lie. The approach of the modernity and its tools is open, universal and there are no restrictions on ANYBODY to what type questions one want to investigate. Enough of spiritual issues like consciousness, meditation are being investigated with the help of Govt. funding and data published in the scientific journals of repute. One example off hand is mind-body interactions and its medical implications. So to say the modernity is suppressing the truth is just not true.

Modernity does not claim any TRUTH. It attempts to understand the universe. So the process of discovering TRUTH is continuous and as tools are invented, tested & applied, aspects of truth (facts), perceived and modified. Hence the responsibility of justifying the revealed truth lies with the believer.



As I understand, truth (according to the author) is the revealed and should be trusted. (Without asking any questions) How this concept of ` truth `` can be understood in the framework of modernity?

With regards to ideals that author expects believers to understand the battle needs to be fought in the premises of religious schools, Islamic universities and ulemas. It is the curricula makers of these institutions and propagators of faith needs to be convinced (in the framework of revelation according to the author) with reference to ideals of faith as author understands. Secular west and unbelievers are well aware of the choices they have in relation to the mechanisms available for understanding cosmos. It is the communities of the believers, where the choices are minimal.

With regards to sentiments and motives of author for wellbeing of the believers, total agreement

Why must the Muslims beat their heads against the wall erected on the sands of Arabia 1400 years ago?

If one reads the Koran, in the language he understands, he comes out feeling that the Koran’s main audience is a small group of seventh century desert Bedouins among whom ignorance, corruption and immorality are prevalent. Is that true of today’s most Muslims?

To say that today’s Islam is an Arab religion is to say that today’s Christianity is Middle Eastern. It is a matter of debate whether the Koran’s ultra conservatism and its strict set of rules governing daily life that were necessary for an isolated small desert tribe in the seventh century Arabia can be applied in its literal form to an integrated world entering the third millennium. This is not a lively debate, nor is likely to be, among the Muslim intellectuals for fear of an appearance of blasphemy and thus religious persecution by the socially powerful religious zealots. It is, in my opinion, the tragedy of Islam that the guiding principles of the Koran, its teachings and its interpretation are hijacked by the ignorant mullahs who feed their ignorance to the ignorant populous. Ignorance forces people to think not with their heads but with their emotions. Ignorance has no room, patience or tolerance for logic. Islamic Intellectual revolution in the middle centuries that produced great Muslim scientists, historians, art and literature was not to be. If the revolution had not died in its infancy at the hands of the ignorant, self-proclaimed guardians of the Koran, Islamic civilization would have been as scientifically advanced, rational, prosperous, and at peace with itself as the western civilization of today. Western world was fortunate that the followers of logical reasoning defeated the Church hundreds of years ago and Western renaissance was born. Exact opposite happened to Islam. And look what the Muslims got stuck with!

Islam may be infallible. Man is not. Trying to conform today’s Muslims of CNN, the Internet, and Quantum Mechanics world to the “harmonious land of milk-and-honey” of 7th century Mecca and Medina is both ludicrous and an exercise in futility. Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Taliban are living proof of that.

Today’s enlightened, libertarian and secular-minded Muslims must take--nay, snatch--the reins from the ignorant, self-proclaimed “guardians” of Islam who, with their rigidity and intolerance, have put Islam, and its followers, to shame. If that is not done, Islam would forever be relegated by the non-Muslim world to a religion of the ignorant, emotionally-unfit and unstable, criminals, and zealots; a disease from which the non-Muslim world must protect itself by any and all means. One does not need to look around very hard to see this is already happening.

The author puts forth his arguments with great eloquence and demonstrates a sophisticated, albeit arduous `style`. Yet the `substance` of his elaborate argumentation is simplistically flawed, albeit well intentioned. To derive any benefit from his `progressive` views, one has to be unquestioningly predisposed to the divine dogma forwarded by an imaginative Arab runagate-turned-vanquisher of fourteen hundred years ago.

The fundamental shortcoming in the author`s declamations is his a priori bias. He questions the value of secular and unpretentiously human ideas, but devotedly follows the ancient dictums that have a divine pretense. His acceptance of Islamic cosmology is so blindly uncritical that it cannot claim credibility in his denunciations of the secular.

Credit should be given, however, to his apparent tolerance. In matters of governance he appears to be saying that `a separation of church and state` are the values that a truly Islamic society should adopt in practice. Or did I misunderstand?

Does the author denounce the proposed Fifteenth Amendment in the tattered Constitution of Pakistan? Does the author deem the Hudood Ordinance contrary to the spirit of Islam and an unnecessary temporal infringement in the guise of religion? Or is his tolerance more figurative?

...SR

Your article was very thought provoking. Thank you.

You have raised an important issue which one of the respondents to your article failed to grasp. That is the issue of the ability of a democracy to realize the lofty goals it sets out to achieve. Rosseau, though a profound champion of human reason and the right to exercise self-will, declared that in the end, the definition of the aims of a democracy have to be defined by, what he termed as, people of lofty or ``divinely inspired`` intellect. The role of a ``Divinity`` or a ``spirituality`` in a society cannot be denied.

You have rightly remarked that ``modernity`s mistresses - freedom, democracy and secularism - are all ideologies of method.``

Foucault, present as a reporter during the Iraninan Revolution, was surprised to see the role played by ``spirituality`` in mobilizing people, and in defining the goals of a society. That contrasts sharply with the claims of some Western scholars who feel comfortable to dismiss the role of a religion to be merely an opiate. Upon his subsequent return to France, he was so moved by this realization, that he started to investigate the role of spirituality in this arena.

The faithful protagonists of democracy are in many ways not unlike their ``fundamentalist`` counter-parts. While they point to the pathological cases of ``theocratic-absolutist`` societies for the support of their arguments, they fail to see the equivalent morass of lack of direction and exploitation in ``atheistic-democratic`` societies.

At last a move in the right direction, to selectively emphesise aspects islam for the good of all, to recognise the temporal aspects of koran, and to interpret it for the modern times. I recognise the caution, the deliberate mincing of words, who wants a fatwa.

Refreshing.

i think any state that assumes the power to interpret and implement religion will become undemocratic and despotic, whether or not the spirit of islam is not despotic. i highly recommend abdolkarim soroush (iranian scientist and muslim scholar)`s writing on the subject.

The conlusion to the article was well articulated and it does raise some interesting questions !