Corona & Attitude of Ulema of Pakistan - Point to Ponder

Faith is entirely a personal matter, which cannot be measured or quantified. Anyone who declares to believe in 6 Fundamentals and 5 Pillars of Islam is considered as a Muslim even if he lacks in practice.

 کرونا اور علماء پاکستان کا رویہ - لمحہ فکریہ:پاکستان اس وقت  تک ترقی نہیں کر سکتا  جب تک ہم اس جاہل ، مزہبی انتہا پسند طبقے کی اس زہنیت سےچھٹکارا  نہیں حاصل  کر لیتے جو مساجد ، مذہب کو کنٹرول کرکہ  زیادہ جاہل عوام کو گمراہ  کرتے ہیں۔  اسلام کو ان جہلا کے شکنجے بچایا جانا صروری ہے۔ .....[....]

We find many people looking "more Muslim" than others due to their outlook and activities in display, yet it's not a measuring  tool for their level of faith , which is only known to Allah. However they consider ONLY themselves  to be entitled to  exercise control on religion, which is contested because authenticity of any opinion on religious matter is conditional to the reference and authority from Holy Scripture. 
Allah has not authorized anyone to present their personal opinions to be Divine. The Jews and Christians were condemned for taking their scholars indulging in such practices as Lord (Rabb) (9:31). (Hence such blind following is Shirk,  polytheism)

To control the spread of Corona Panadamac, experts advise preventive measures like social distancing and Quarantine. This have been out rightly rejected by Pakistani religious contractors. No amount of  references from Holy Books or logic could convince them to temporarily  suspend the prayer (Salah) congregations, though in the two Holiest Mosques,  in Middle East,  Turkey,  Far East and all around the world  these measures has been implemented without any debate. 

The President of Pakistan contacted Al-Azhar which issued Edict (Fatwa) to suspend prayer congregations for public safety. Even this has been resisted by our  Holy (Hollow)  Men, who have no regard for public life. 

There is need to deeply analyse this religious mindset of Pakistani clergy,  which is fatal for this nation and country. 

The Powerful Religious Establishment ( yes don't be surprised,  it's reality ) mafia supported TTP, overtly and covertly (many big names)  resulting in public sympathy despite huge loss of public life (over 70,000 lives lost in terrorism and over  $100 Bn loss to economy). Some genuine Scholars opposed and were martyred by terrorists.

We cannot move forward as Pakistani and Muslim, unless we tackle this menace of this ignorant , extremist class who are in full control of religion and mislead more ignorant  public. Islam is to be rescued. 
Those who claim to be genuine Scholars of Islam should not sit home in silence like hypocrites. They must come forward and debate to convince ignorant ulema.  

This requires deep study and concrete  result oriented short term and long term measures  at  intellectual, governmental and societal level. 
Keep reading full >>>>> <<here>>
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The problem with ‘Islamism’, the Political Islam

A valuable contribution to recent critical analyses of Islamism as it is not limited to its ideology. Taking human rights and Islamic law as the context of the Islamist discourse, it has been able to observe the significant tension between idealism and activism. Activism pushed the Muslim Brotherhood to come into conflict with the Al Azhar Ulema who had been at the forefront in Tahrir Square, not to challenge but to replace its authority. The author concludes that this activism is among the factors that have obstructed Islamic law reform and the expansion of human rights. Reading this book I was reminded of similar tensions and compromises in Pakistan between Islamism and modernism on the one hand and with orthodoxy on the other.

Exploring: "Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam" (by Dr.M.Iqbal)

Islamism, especially the ideology as formulated by the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) in South Asia and the Muslim Brotherhood in the Arab world and that called for an Islamic state, has been attracting critical attention from scholars. The JI in Pakistan and Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt both began political life as critics of the traditional approach to politics, stressing upon the sovereignty of God and enforcement of Sharia. In practical politics, they gradually adopted the concepts of the nation-state and democracy where they differed with traditional Islamic thought, but with reference to Islamic law they not only incorporated traditional fiqh into the concept of Sharia, but also its sectarian interpretation. The tension between sectarian and national conceptions of law posed crucial challenges to the concept of democratic rule of law, but Islamists justified it because they defined democracy as majority rule, even if it meant tyranny of the majority.

Scholars such as Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im (Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Sharia) faulted Islamists for their rejection of the secular state and found it problematic for the future of Sharia in Muslim countries. For the same reasons, but interpreting them differently, Wael Hallaq (The Impossible State: Islam, Politics, and Modernity’s Moral Predicament) concluded that the Islamic state based on Sharia as law is an “impossible state.” Most other academic studies also found Islamism paradoxical in its approach to the modern state. Hallaq, however, missed some very important inner developments in Muslim societies.

Humeira Iqtidar (Secularising Islamists? Jamaat-i-Islami and Jamaat-ud-Dawa in Urban Pakistan) observed that despite their vehement opposition, Islamists have been, in fact, facilitating the secularisation of Muslim societies. She argued that Islamists placed religion in the public life and forced Muslims to engage critically with it. By focusing on the state, Islamist movements accelerated the process of secularisation further. Projects to Islamise laws and knowledge could not resolve the tensions between sectarian Islam and secularising societies and added to the frustration of religious politics. These frustrations led to not only local, but also international faith-based and sectarian violence. Calls for an Islamic state eventually turned into clashes between the sects.

The ideology is detrimental to the progress of Islamic law argues a new book
The Arab Spring in 2010 was commonly regarded as a revolt against tyrannical regimes in the Arab world. Contrary to general expectations, it was Islamism that gained prominence in this revolt. Islamist parties in the Arab world adopted slogans of democracy and liberty and emerged more powerful than the others. They took it as an opportunity for establishing an Islamic state, but failed as soon as they came into power. According to Bassam Tibi (The Sharia State: Arab Spring and Democratisation), Islamists hijacked the Arab Spring with their rhetorical commitments to democratisation in order to win elections. They failed because rather than reducing, they quickened the tension between Islamic law and human rights as they imposed their conception of limited religious freedom. Rached Ghannouchi, the leader of al-Nahda, had already moved to separation between religion and state (Public Liberties in the Islamic State). Al-Nahda, which came to power after the Arab Spring in Tunisia, opted for a secular interpretation of an Islamic state. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt failed to resolve that tension. Moataz El Fegiery explores the story of this failure in his book Islamic Law and Human Rights: The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

El Fegiery finds that Islamism retarded the progress of Islamic law and human rights. The Muslim Brotherhood came into political prominence during the post-Hosni Mubarak era, winning half of the seats in the 2011 elections. They formed a government with Mohamed Morsi as president in June 2012. The Muslim Brotherhood enjoyed unprecedented political freedom until 2013, but Morsi was dethroned by a popular uprising that ended with military dictatorship. Examining its thinking on the relationship between Islamic law and human rights in Egypt, El Fegiery finds that the Muslim Brotherhood failed because it justified democracy in terms of a tyranny of the majority.
El Fegiery explains that Islamism is based on two assumptions: first, that Islam mandates Muslims to establish an Islamic state in which Islamic law regulates all aspects of state and society and, second, that the normative content of Sharia must comply with the methods developed by mainstream traditional Muslim jurists. The Muslim Brotherhood legitimised human rights in the traditional framework of Islamic law; it benefitted in coming to power but failed in the cultural practice of human rights.

This book offers a thorough analysis of the conceptual and theoretical issues about religion and human rights in general and studies major issues such as the supremacy of Sharia, political pluralism, freedom of opinion, minority rights, conversion and apostasy, and family law. The book concludes that management of political diversity is not possible in the Islamist framework.

El Fegiery finds the Muslim Brotherhood’s approach to human rights too theoretical to proceed within the framework of traditional Islamic law. Human rights developed historically with the evolution of international law and treaties. They adjusted universality with cultural diversity. Islamism failed to adjust with the concept of human rights because Islamists believe that the nature of Islamic law is not compatible with the idea of the nation-state. In fact, Islamic political theory has been quite pragmatic since the first four caliphs and has been adapting to changes in the Muslim body politic. Islamic law has limited the boundaries of Sharia and the doctrine of Siyasa [political science] has given more privileges to the rulers than the Islamists allow.

The Egyptian constitution recognises Islam as the religion of the state. The Muslim Brotherhood believes that Islam does not separate religion from politics, rather Islam is state. To them, the only legitimate method of interpreting Islamic law is traditional. The problem is that state law is a modern project, but not all human rights are normative in Sharia. This tension became obvious in the changed political context in the post-Mubarak era. Islamist policies to dominate and impose limitations on public liberties created mistrust in society. Freedom of religion and expression in the modern state requires pluralism. The Egyptian constitution also allowed the establishment of political parties. A focus on the unity of the Ummah in classical Islamic political theory prohibited dissent and considered it fitna and sedition. Although Islamists were divided on this issue, the political discourse by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt generated hate and violence against liberals, the left, the secular, and NGOs. Questioning their sincerity and piety, the regime declared these groups heretic and ignorant. Equal rights for non-Muslims as citizens also remained questionable. The Muslim Brotherhood evoked conflict between Islam and the West to justify restrictions on freedom.

El Fegiery finds that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt had two different positions on religion and freedom of expression depending on whether they were in opposition or in power: while in opposition they operated as a pressure group that proclaimed freedom but restricted it on issues such as modesty for women and censorship of artists and intellectuals. In power, in 2012 the regime imposed further restrictions, persecuting writers and artists in blasphemy cases.

This created tension for the Muslim Brotherhood in practice. They adopted orthodox criteria and targeted those who challenged Sharia as state law, and used censure to restrict arts. Activism, informed by this unclear and ambivalent criterion, made Morsi’s regime intolerant towards intellectual pluralism and gender equality.

The book is a valuable contribution to recent critical analyses of Islamism as it is not limited to its ideology. Taking human rights and Islamic law as the context of the Islamist discourse, it has been able to observe the significant tension between idealism and activism. Activism pushed the Muslim Brotherhood to come into conflict with the Al Azhar Ulema who had been at the forefront in Tahrir Square, not to challenge but to replace its authority. The author concludes that this activism is among the factors that have obstructed Islamic law reform and the expansion of human rights. Reading this book I was reminded of similar tensions and compromises in Pakistan between Islamism and modernism on the one hand and with orthodoxy on the other, but that is beyond the scope of the present review.

NON-FICTION: The problem with ‘Islamism’
MUHAMMAD KHALID MASUD-
Islamic Law and Human Rights: The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt By Moataz El Fegiery Cambridge Scholars Publishing, UK ISBN: 978-1443894791 340pp.

The reviewer is a former chairman of the Council of Islamic Ideology

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, February 26th, 2017
https://www.dawn.com/news/1316817/non-fiction-the-problem-with-islamism

Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Modernism

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Islam And Modernism By: Mufti Taqi Usmani : Free Download ...

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Jul 2, 2011 - Islam And Modernism By: Mufti Taqi Usmani. Topics Islam, And, Modernism, By:, Mufti, Taqi, Usmani,. Mediatype texts. Identifier ...

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Modernism in Islam - ilaam.net

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Islam and Modernism by Abdus Sattar Ghazali

ghazali.net/book4/

An online book by Abdus Sattar Ghazali; examines movements of regeneration and/or revival in the Muslim world from the 18th to the 20th centuries; includes an ...

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Deoband variations

HERE’S a tale of two madressahs: one Deoband north of Delhi, the other in Akora Khattak, Pakistan.

Today in Deoband, at the madressah where it all began in 1866, the 4,000 students focus on religion. The institution was created to preserve a purist, back-to-basics interpretation of Islam and it has remained true to that purpose. Whenever the Indian government offers the madressah funds the clerics decline the money: they don’t want changes to the curriculum that would come with government funding.

In 2008, some 20,000 Deobandi clerics from around India agreed on a declaration condemning terrorism. And for good measure they threw in a pledge of loyalty to the Indian state. The seminary has even instructed all Muslim households to hoist the Indian flag over their homes each Independence Day. A recent fatwa said that while it would be wrong to worship the Indian motherland, it was permissible to love it.

Akora Khattak’s Deobandi Islam is different from the Indian variety.
That’s not to say that the Deoband seminary is a moderate institution. The madressah has specific departments dedicated to the rejection of Christianity, Judaism, even Shia Islam and Barelvism. Not to mention a whole postgraduate course dedicated to loathing Ahmadis.

To protect their faith, Deoband’s clerics have retreated into a citadel of literalist and exclusionary doctrine. Some of the students would like a little more mainstream teaching to improve their job prospects. But the institution prefers that its protégés study religion, graduate and then go on to propagate the Deobandi worldview by establishing new madressahs in India and around the world.

When students have been tempted to stray into militancy, the Indian state has been quick to lay down the law. For example, when the Kashmir insurgency was at its height, some of Deoband’s Kashmiri students flirted with using violence to advance their cause. The Indian state did not hesitate to give them long prison sentences. By all accounts the justice meted out to them was pretty rough and ready — but it served its purpose: today Kashmiri students in Deoband steer clear of politics.

I recently met a Kashmiri student in Deoband and asked him if he wanted Kashmiri independence.

“Yes,” he said.

“Would you fight for it?”

“No,” he replied. “I will go back to Kashmir only to teach the Quran.”

When I suggested that Kashmiri students in Pakistani Deobandi madressahs might be a little more assertive than that, he shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know anything about that,” he said.

Such quietist attitudes can also be found amongst some of Pakistan’s Deobandis. But there is also a militant strain of Pakistani Deobandism. Take, as perhaps the prime example, the Darul Uloom Haqqania in Akora Khattak.

In 1947, Sami ul Haq’s father, a cleric from Deoband who got stuck in Pakistan during Partition, started out with just eight pupils. Today, there are some 3,000 students. Sami ul Haq recently published a book in which he lays out his views on global affairs. These include the claims that the Afghan Taliban provided good government, that Osama bin Laden was an “ideal man” and that Al Qaeda never existed. He has said that if his students wish to take a break from their studies to fight alongside the Afghan Taliban, then it is not for him to stand in their way. He awarded Mullah Omar an honorary degree. And let’s not forget that key conspirators in the plot to assassinate Benazir Bhutto met in advance in Akora Khattak.

When it comes to militancy, then, Sami ul Haq’s Deobandism is very different to the Indian version. The question is why Pakistani Deobandism as represented by Akora Khattak has so quickly diverged from the attitudes prevalent in the mother institution in Deoband itself.

The answer lies in the contrasting attitudes and policies of the Indian and Pakistani states. Where­­as the Indian state has controlled militancy in Deo­bandi institutions, the Pakistani state has done the opposite. As a senator for many years, Sami ul Haq can even be considered a member of the Pakistani establishment. He has always taken care to work with, rather than against, Pakistan’s deep state.

There are some signs that Delhi is becoming increasingly aware that the Pakistani strain of militant Deobandi Islam poses a threat to peace and security in South Asia as a whole. After years of forbidding foreigners to study at Deoband, the Indian authorities recently relaxed the rule and granted visas to some Afghan Deobandi students. Given a choice between having Afghans educated in Pakistan or India, Delhi has decided that the quietist madressah at Deoband is preferable to letting them be influenced by the politicised and sometimes militant Deobandi madressahs in Pakistan.

Deobandi militancy might look like a force that cannot be controlled. But India’s experience suggests that the degree of militancy espoused by some Deobandis is a function of state policy.

BY: OWEN BENNETT-JONES , a British journalist and author of Pakistan: Eye of the Storm.
http://www.dawn.com/news/1253337/deoband-variations

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Open letter to Muslims and Scholars:

Presently the society is in a state of ideological confusion and degradation. Materialism, terrorism, ignorance and intolerance has threatened the humanity, peace and religion. These circumstances demand special response from the learned men of religion. Objective is to draw your attention towards pressing issues which need urgent resolution. With little  attention and effort we can make an endeavour to take the society out of this quagmire. Keep reading >>> http://goo.gl/xNolSV

مسلم وعلماء کے نام کھلا خط : 

آج کے حالات میں مسلم معاشرہ نظریاتی  ابتری اور انحطاط کا شکار ہے. مادہ پرستی، دہشت گردی، عدم برداشت، اور جہالت انسانیت، امن اور مذھب کے لیے خطرہ بن چکے ہیں. ان حالات میں صاحب علم و ذی فہم حضرات سے ممکنہ حل کی توقع کی جا سکتی ہے. ہمارا مقصد ہے کہ آپ کی توجہ ضروری حل پذیر مسائل کی طرف مبذول کرنا ہے تاکہ جلد حل تلاش کیا جا سکے. آپ کی توجہ اور مدد سے ہم کوشش کر سکتے ہیں کہ معاشرہ کو اس  گہری دلدل سے نکال سکیں. مکمل خط اس لنک پر پڑھیں : http://goo.gl/y2VWNE

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