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| Irshad Manji |
We are bombarded
with plenty of news about Islam being stretched to the extreme of making a
peace loving religion into a hate loving religion. I had several Muslim friends
in my school and college. Most of them are still in touch with me. Sometimes I
am enticed to ask my close Muslim friends as to what is their opinion about
making a secular state into a Muslim state. I am sure most of my friends would
negate that concept of Caliphate because most of them are born and brought up
in a secular environment.
Why then a group
of people have to struggle with violent crusades to make a secular state into a
religious state in this technocratic world? It mesmerises me about that group
which promulgates the ideologies of hatred and violence. Most often I wonder whether
they are driven by religion or religion is just shield to spread their own
crooked ideologies. Why cannot we live as brothers and sisters because
ultimately what matters is, whether I have loved God and whether I have loved
my neighbour (the greatest commandment that Jesus proposed).
Quran also teaches
about love of our neighbour, “Serve God, and join not any
partners with Him; and do good - to parents, kinsfolk, orphans, those in need,
neighbors who are near, neighbors who are strangers, the companion by your
side, the wayfarer (ye meet), and what your right hands possess [the slave]:
For God loveth not the arrogant, the vainglorious” (Q:4:36). Hence, if anyone
has ever read Quran would know, what it teaches and promotes, indeed love of
neighbor. Then why do some of the brothers who instill violence on their
neighbor?
Prolific and controversial Canadian
Muslim writer Irshad Manji, in her book, ‘the
trouble with Islam’, expresses her concern for a reform of her faith
(Islam) with her own life experiences especially oppressiveness that made her
to take up this task of reform. According to Manji, tyrants have hijacked Islam
and gotten Muslims to stop thinking critically about their religion, their
traditions, and their practices. She further says, the trouble with Islam is
not simply the tyrants who have hijacked it, but the average Muslims who have
allowed this to happen and have retreated into self-pity and victimhood. My
take on this is, why would anyone allow my faith to be hijacked by someone
else? If so, I am being controlled and filtered what God is trying to tell me
or what God wants me to do. One must not allow one’s faith to be hijacked by
someone who is ‘false prophets.’ Jesus had warned about false prophets or who
use the side gate to steal the sheep. I would say the trouble with religion is,
one does not recognize the false prophets because they can look ‘real’ than
genuine prophets. Hence, any religion must not allow these false prophets to
take root in our society. If we allow them, we will have plenty more troubles
in our world. It is a Hercules task to identify the trouble and uproot it
before it can spread its roots. It is the task of every faithful to identify
the real and non-real prophets in our society.
Same author in her second book, ‘Allah, Liberty and Love’, mentions how
one can reconcile faith with freedom and thus discover Allah of liberty and
love – a universal God who gives us enough capacity to choose. Our faith must
be free from conditions and boundaries. I am not underestimating the teachings
of the religion but I am hinting at forced and instilled faith in someone, in
which case it might become opium of the poor (Karl Marx). If my faith is only
indoctrinated then it can crumble like the house built on the sand. If my faith
is based on my experience of God and complemented by the teachings of a
religion, then one’s faith can become strong and might move mountains.
My initial concern about creating a
religiously run state would not help our neighbor to be free. One might take any
means to achieve this goal of state religion. In our world today we need a
free-to-practice religion. One must be confortable to find God in their lives.
One cannot find God through force and power but we can find God in our hearts
whilst we are serene and tranquil. If that is disturbed then there will be thin
layer that will block us from seeing God in our day today life experiences. We
will be like trying to look at the bottom of the well in a stirred water. It is
crucial for the human person to find God but not through force and power rather
through love and liberty.
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