Daily Times: Many years ago, the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) and other bigots drove out the Muslim modernist, Dr Fazlur Rahman Malik, a great scholar of Islam and the head of the Central Institute of Islamic Research, from Pakistan because he favoured the Maqasidi approach to Islam
Much of that interview does not square off. It finds no mention in Azad’s papers. There is no original copy of the interview. The interview itself has Azad, an authority on Islam, confusing Jang-e-Jumal with Jang-e-Siffin.
How far the grand Ahrari agitation that began against Jinnah’s Pakistan soon after partition has now taken over the narrative and discourse on Pakistani nationality is self-evident in the nation’s laws. Physical manifestation of Ahraristan is found in our passport offices where to get a passport you have to resort to choicest abuse against Ahmedis and their religion — if indeed it is a separate religion. Ahrar’s ugly history against Pakistan and its founding father is well documented. Needless to say, the epithets Kafiristan and Kafir-e-Azam were invented by these uncles of Islam in the subcontinent. The great irony: pre-partition Ahrar had championed composite Indian nationalism; in Pakistan they became advocates of Islamist sectarian bigotry. Now that our Baba-e-Bum (bomb), Dr A Q Khan, has taken to journalism, such willing national suicides are more likely to seep into our national consciousness.
The real fight for the soul of Islam and the Muslim world has always been between those who believe in a straitjacket ‘models’ approach to Islam versus those who want to extract from their Islamic heritage the higher ethical principles of social justice and equity (the erstwhile Maqasidi tradition within Islam, which is as old as Islam itself). The former want form over substance, while the latter argue that ethical objectives of social justice trump form; therefore, the former want straitjacket Islamic rule, while the latter argue that a just and egalitarian society is, by definition, Islamic. To the former, secularism in a Muslim majority country is anathema even if it is desired in non-Muslim majority countries. In India they are hypocritically the proponents of secularism. To the latter, an inclusive democratic state is the higher ideal of Islam, call it secular or Islamic, for a Muslim majority state to follow.
Categories: Asia