Faith Street.com: In a famous 1863 speech, President Lincoln said, “We have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace . . . and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.”
President Lincoln made this declaration against the backdrop of the Civil War as both sides bled tens of thousands of soldiers. War and terrorism and unbridled crimes rage in the world today. ISIS, Boko Haram, and mutually complicit, resentful alliances between the powers all point to the arrogance of man and his demented ways.
In America, hate crimes, broken homes, alcohol abuse, and violent gun deaths are rampant despite our secular Constitution. China is a world leader in human-rights violations as an anti-theist state. Consistent in all these scenarios is the absence of the role God plays in our lives. In our nation, God is facing expulsion from our lives in preference for absolute secularism. Each nation believes its approach will lead to peace. Yet no nation has found peace, and each engages in horrific human rights violations — whether suicide bombing, torturing children, abducting women, or illegal wars.
Ayesha Jalal nails this and I agree that Governance has to be secular, societies need to be both secular and pluralistic or multi faith. Interesting debate and very relevant.
The Muslim Times promoting secularism in every country of the world