I have come across two interesting articles on the current row over the issue of vulgarity and obscenity in the society. First one is my Orya Maqbool Jan which can be read here and the second one by Saroop Ijaz, here. These articles were also published in the same order as they have been mentioned over here.
Of course an endless debate would wage on the definitions and you have the right to make up your own mind. I am naturally inclined to the former one but there is a dire need to chart out a comprehensive plan because unlike the latter approach, this one has boundaries to set and fears to alleviate. People especially women are afraid because they are the easy targets. Taliban's concoction of religion and culture or Zia's version of backside saving religious front, both are unacceptable. Turkey seems to have a 'pretty' model where both thoughts are able to live side by side but I feel our society is eons away before it is sufficiently evolved to accept that system. Perhaps the argument will never end but yes there is a visible degradation of our minds and souls which has to be addressed sooner or later.
2 comments:
What Muslim governmetns have demonstrated, notes Dr SH Nasr, is that they can't go beyond paying lip service to secularism in which govt divorces itself from religion and cuts the voice of God (all Muslims all can agree on many many points in Quran o Sunnah; modernized self-hating anti-Muslim muslims are welcomed to disagree). Nowhere one will find extreme secualrism; and Turkey is the best example of militant secularism that comes to my mind. And it demonstrates the assertion that politics is the realm of compromise. In 1996s when the first Islamic-minded PM ruled, he tried to undo the horrors of secular-fundamentalist regimes and was kicked out in a polite martial law in a year. That comes to my mind.
As for Taliban, what Abdal Hakim Murad says befits: "In senescence, religions have two possibilities: Alzheimers (the amnesiac option of the secular elites) and manic-depressive (the false Salafism)." Surely they make a really bad case for Shariah, and the anti-dote to them is within centuries old systematized fiqh. There's a dearth of classical scholars given the explosion of Wahhabi/Salafism thanks to petro-dollars.
As for Zia's version: the Hadud Ordinance and other purely Fiqhi ordinances debated and composed by ulema are not his products. There are horrible myths about these in the air. And the core issue, as most ulema and rational people would identify, is that of immoral, and corrupt system, like that of Gotham. Gotham's laws are not scrutinized; only Bane and LoS would condemn their notion of right and wrong and concrete. Our secularists are on Bane's side.
That militant secularism (as you call it) was a reaction to the degenerating caliphate. Our problem is not secularism rather it is not having 'adl' in the society (something you agree with I guess) as without it even shariah based system would fail. A society needs to be educated and has to evolve before it implements such a system. Erdogan has been able to take a stand where most Muslim nations sheepishly back down...I think.
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