ET: An academics and a journalist have underscored the need for establishing a democratic egalitarian society based on pluralistic values through civil discourse.
They were giving lectures separately at Fatima Jinnah Women University (FJWU) and National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) on Thursday, organised by the Centre for Research and Security Studies (CRSS) in collaboration with Heinrich Böll Stiftung (HBS), a German foundation.
Dr Shabana Mir, an assistant professor at Millikin University, Illinois, USA, said that the religion could have a multiple roles in politics while sharing the Americas perspective of dealing with the multicultural diverse society.
“Religion should be separated from state affairs. State has nothing to do with the religion in the US as a measure of accommodating the American diversity”, she added.
She said there was a dire need for the development of civil discourse embedded into the universally-acknowledged democratic values ensuring no voice remains unheard.
“A pluralistic discourse is a must to achieve a democratic society”, she stressed.
She clarified that Americans did not believe in religion and that’s why they separated religion from politics.
“Secularism is more consistent with Islamic history than modern Islamic state movements because Islamic history was not fundamentally different from Western societies regarding the relationship between religion and the state”, she added.
Categories: Answers to Anti-Islam, Asia
a Birmingham school […] was branded inadequate by Ofsted inspectors for doing “too little to keep students safe from the risks associated with extremist views””
Just what are the risks that Ofsted judged to be so great that the school has been deemed inadequate, I wonder? Whilst the ‘risk of extremism’ is indeed a part of the current framework, it’s a murky area, much less easy to quantify and judge than the quality of teaching…and we already know how much HMCI has had to say about the quality of inspectors’ judgements on that allegedly more straightforward aspect! If inspectors can’t agree on what good teaching looks like – something they must surely encounter in every school – how can they evaluate the ‘risk of extremism’ which must feature in a relative handful? Further evidence, if any were needed, that the inspection framework, as applied by a cadre of inspectors of variable quality, is no longer fit for purpose.
Extremism starts with the NATO clandestine services and the IMF and world of banking. War is profit nothing more. Don’t send your kids to die for their bank accounts! Traditional British value = racism. NO, Traditional English value = racism. Tories should know there is a diversity in your state! Asian, middle east, other European must be respected the way they are. The way to stop extremism is to stop invading other ppls countries and supporting US foreign policy, simple as Dave
Thousands of Iraqis dead in Iraq. Thousands of Afghans dead in Afghanistan. Drone Attacks in Yemen and Pakistan, hundreds dead. Maybe that’s a clue perhaps? who did all that ? nahhhhhh, its got nothing do with the UK Colonial foreign policy….eh ? Wake up Pal, get a grip, get some reality in ya. Muslim countries (civilians and troops) are the biggest victims of terrorists. I think people should bare that in mind. After Blair and Iraq the swap is so enormous we couldn’t possibly drain it. There’s only one way to deal with extremists, through dialogue. Let me see how things have faired so far, using military intervention – fail. Economic sanctioning against countries who are perceived as threats – fail. Using draconian terror laws – fail. Putting people into prisons without trail or court and thus trying to put fear into a community – fail. May and Gove can talk till the sun dies the only way they will change extremists is by changing the cause of extremism which isn’t religion but
You try invading their lands and stealing their wealth, see if they still meet your definition of ‘peaceful’! But lets not look at the actions of the West and longer term plans for the Muslim world, especially the Mid East, that have been put into action since 9/11, an event the thorough investigation of which was blocked by none other than G.W Bush…why do you think that was? Or is your mind so conditioned with hate that you choose to only look at ‘evidence’ that supports your view of Muslims & Islam!perverse foreign policy which is being cited time and time again but ignored time and time again.
If they really wanted to tackle extremism, which they don’t, they would stop interfering militarily in Islamic countries, like arming and training extremists to fight in Syria. They would also stop the Islamic fundamentalist gulf states like Saudi Arabia from building and running mosques in Britain, where they are promoting their extremist Wahhabi brand of nonsense. However, they don’t want to tackle extremism because it divides the country. If we are arguing amongst ourselves about Islamic extremism, then we’re not arguing about how shit the government is and we’re not talking about important things such as climate change. Because it doesn’t matter what’s going on in the world, floods, monsoons, tornadoes, fukushima etc just put a story about some girl getting executed for apostasy or a Nigerian extremist group kidnapping school girls, in their echo chamber newspapers, with F-all context behind it and suddenly all the EDL types come out the woodwork, were arguing about Islam and nobody cares about any of that other important stuff.
IA
London School of Islamics Trust