Islam’s New Faces Part – II
Posted on 29. Oct, 2010 by Raja Mujtaba in Faith and Religion
Quantum Note
By Dr. Muzaffar Iqbal
Islamphobia is both real and imaginary; it is real in the sense that those who suffer from it, are really concerned about the rise of an imaginary Islamic Europe or Islamic America within a foreseeable future. Figures vary, but there are some website claiming that by 2020, that is within the next two decades, there will be some 150 million Muslims living in Europe and the current population of Muslims in North America will at least triple and there will be some 30 million Muslims in America and Canada. When exploded and combined with inherent, historical, long-standing demonic images of Islam in the Western mind, this demographic explosion of the Muslim population fuels Islamphobia.
And when the political leadership—a Tony Blair, an Angela Merkel—also suffers from the same disease, it becomes plausible that this leadership will try to enact laws, which will violate even the most basic human rights, in order to “protect” what it deems to be “their way of life”, as opposed to Muslims’ way of life. The recent outburst of the German Chancellor Merkel against German Muslims is a typical, but by no means a singular, example of this trend. Merkel, the daughter of a Protestant pastor, brought up in East Germany, who now leads a predominantly Catholic party, can only see “Judo-Christian” roots of Germany, which—she believes—are not compatible with Islam, although in her case it is obvious that “Judo” is thrown in merely because of the Nazis past of her country, otherwise, her declarations are based on a fundamentalist Christian dogma: “Multikulti does not work,” Merkel recently told a meeting of the younger members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party at Potsdam near Berlin. To be sure, this is far from all the teachings of Jesus, upon him peace. To be equally sure, this is nothing but bigotry, but the point is not what it is, but how she sees the “Muslim problem”, just as it was the case with Hitler, how he saw the “Jewish problem”.
One fails to understand how someone can be so insolent in this twenty-first century after the birth of Jesus Christ, upon him peace, to demand that Muslims should “integrate and adopt Germany’s culture and values” if they want to live in Germany. Yet, this is not just the German Chancellor, who is obsessed with this idea of a hypothetical and static German culture; it is the case with all such conservative leaders across Europe and America. What they want Muslims to do is simply give up their way of life and dissolve in the secular culture even though they falsely claim that their vision is informed by Christian values and Christian culture.
For any Muslim to adopt that utterly devastating secular culture and the set of values which has created untold human suffering in the Western world is simply to give up Islam, for it demands that they eat and drink what non-Muslims eat and drink, they send their children to the schools where values and customs are utterly against the fundamental dictates of their religion, that they participate in crypto-religious rites which contravene their beliefs, and that they partake of all the ills and spiritual, emotional and psychological diseases of the land where they have immigrated out of historic necessities.
This is obviously an unacceptable proposition for any Muslim who is mindful of a life to come when he or she will be asked about all the deeds he or she committed while on this Earth. This is also utterly against our understanding of what it means to be free citizens of a country. What is being asked is not only against fundamental charter of human rights accepted by almost all states at the UN level, but it also contravenes basic human dignity.
Yet, that is the level of challenge faced by Muslims living in the West. This is a unique situation for both Islam and Muslims and it will take at least three generations before it would settle in some stable form. In the meanwhile, what Muslims need to do is a task unparalleled in their entire history: they have already established a network of mosques across Europe and North America; they now need to establish educational institutions and raise a new generation of scholars who are at home in the traditional Islamic sciences as well as equipped to deal with the social, economic, and political realities of the twenty-first century.
This is not an easy task; it is made even more difficult because there are not sufficient links between the main body of Muslim polity in the traditional Muslim lands and the large Muslim minorities now living in Europe and America. Not many Muslims in the traditional lands of Islam realize the tremendous task faced by the Muslim minorities in the West and the ruling elite of these lands is not sufficiently aware of the importance of the new situation for their own good. They have not understood that a vibrant and authentic Islamic polity in the West can be of tremendous benefit to the entire Muslim world. This is so because this new polity is multi-racial, multi-cultural, and multi-lingual in the true sense of these terms, it represents, more than anywhere else, the true universality of Islam. And this will help to settle many basic questions faced by them in a world that is increasingly becoming global. Furthermore, because the new polity in the West is situated in the materially advanced societies, it is going through the process of assimilating the good of the modern world and rejecting its evil aspects at a much advanced stage than Muslims living in the traditional lands of Islam and this means that if there are sufficient organic links between the two polities, the Muslim world can be saved a lot of destruction as it comes to terms with modernity.
Muzaffar Iqbal is the founder-president of Center for Islam and Science (www.cis-ca.org), Canada, and editor of
Islam & Science, a semi-annual journal of Islamic perspectives on science and civilization. He received his Ph.D. in chemistry (University of Saskatchewan, Canada, 1983), and then left the field of experimental science to fully devote himself to study Islam, its spiritual, intellectual and scientific traditions.
Born in Lahore, Pakistan, he has lived in Canada since 1979. He has held academic and research positions at University of Saskatchewan (1979-1984), University of Wisconsin-Madison (1984-85), and McGill University (1986). During 1990-1999, he pursued his research and study on various aspects of Islam in Pakistan, where he also worked as Director, Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) Committee on Scientific and Technological Cooperation (COMSTECH) between 1991-96 and as Director, Pakistan Academy of Sciences (1998-99).
During 1999-2001, Dr. Iqbal was Program Director (Muslim World) for the Science-Religion Course Program of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS), Berkeley, USA.
Dr. Iqbal has published books and papers on the relationship between Islam and science, Islam and the West, the contemporary situation of Muslims, and the history of Islamic science.
His publications include Islam and Science, God, Life and the Cosmos: Christian and Islamic Perspectives , Science and Islam, Dawn in Madinah: A Pilgrim’s Passage , The Making of Islamic Science (IBT, 2009) and a few more titles.
He is the General Editor of the forthcoming seven-volume Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qur’an, the first English language reference work on the Qur’an based on fourteen centuries of Muslim reflection and scholarship. He is a regular contributor to Opinion Maker.
(Concluded)
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World of Islam » Blog Archive » World of Islam Episode 17 1 of 6
29. Oct, 2010
[...] Islam's New Faces Part – II | Opinion Maker [...]
World of Islam » Blog Archive » World of Islam Episode 17 1 of 6
29. Oct, 2010
[...] Islam's New Faces Part – II | Opinion Maker [...]
Blue
29. Oct, 2010
Very good article. Muslims now need true unity across the globe such that any divide and rule attempt on the basis of ethnicity, sect or status is not plausible. Also, we need to improve our overall moral characters and follow Islam in true spirit. We need to demonstrate that Islam is not only visible in veil or beard but it out-shines when followed in education, technology and philosophy which acquire basis from this religion.
World of Islam » Blog Archive » Note to President Obama. For Muslims worldwide, actions speak louder than words
29. Oct, 2010
[...] Islam's New Faces Part – II | Opinion Maker [...]
World Spinner
29. Oct, 2010
Islam's New Faces Part – II | Opinion Maker…
Here at World Spinner we are debating the same thing……
Ross
30. Oct, 2010
the’learned ‘ sheik writes:
“For any Muslim to adopt that utterly devastating secular culture ……….. that they eat and drink what non-Muslims eat and drink, they send their children to the schools where values and customs ………. is also utterly against our understanding of what it means to be free citizens of a country. What is being asked is not only against fundamental charter of human rights accepted by almost all states at the UN level, but it also contravenes basic human dignity.”
So if muslims have to eat and drink normal food which has sustained westerners for thousands of years – and have to go to schools with westerners to get an education to lift them out of the poverty and ingnorance endemic in the muslim community – that is against human rights??
What an idiotic statement – but quite typical.
Human rights do not apply to religious groups or cults – however large they may be. They apply to individuals
Jesus is the only way
30. Oct, 2010
Islam and its followers will only know at the end that their religion is false and was created to tear away believers in Christ.
Only at the end, when the truth is finally revealed, will you stand and realize “I’ve been lied to. And I was wrong.”
Accept Jesus Christ while you still have time my brothers.
World of Islam » Blog Archive » DR MUHAMMAD TAHIR UL QADRI( Part 11.Muhabbat )IN KARACHI.BY Visaal
30. Oct, 2010
[...] Islam's New Faces Part – II | Opinion Maker [...]
Draconius Horribilis
30. Oct, 2010
I say to the whining Muslims, if you don’t like life in the West, then crawl back to the barbaric Muslim shitholes you cralwed out of. Understand, the West will NEVER adopt barbaric Sahri’a law, we will kill all of you long before your primitive culture takes hold. Remember that.
steve
30. Oct, 2010
First we are (gleefully) pointed to demographics that plainly predict a Muslim takeover of Europe, then we are told that is an ‘imaginary’ fear.
While I am in agreement that God’s love can be seen among the people of Islam and that the ‘West’ suffers from many ills, I feel called to remind you that Muslims (as well as Jews) also have a problems with immorality of all kinds,including alcohol and drug use, homosexuality and other sexual perversions, race hatred, cruelty and avarice.
Jesus said, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”.
Self-determination is a wonderful thing – good for you and good for us. The people of Europe did not invite you into their countries (their corrupt and undemocratic ‘leaders’ did), do not need you, and you have no right to colonize there. Go home.
Personally I will fight this attempted takeover with tooth, nail and bullet if need be and feel it is Just to do so.
Just the same as I support your liberation wars against the zionist entity, so must you grant Europeans the right to live peacefully in their own homelands.
May God bless you and let us ask His help in a peaceful resolution.
God is indeed Great.
David Palmer
30. Oct, 2010
Islam is false but so is Christianity. The world does not religion but a direct connection to the Divine.
The Holy Temple in Jerusalem is a technological device that provides a link between our physical reality and the upper worlds. In the era of the Temple it is impossible to deny the presence of God because His miracles are physical. Right now, the amount of uncreated Light entering our dimension is limited and this is experienced as lack, disease, fragmentation and darkness.
Regretfully, Islam has become the biggest enemy of humanity by preventing the building of the Third Temple by having established a mosque on that site. Let’s all petition Islam to relinquish the physical control of that site to Jews.
Dr.A.K.Tewari
30. Oct, 2010
@ blue .the day muslims will start to follow the true spirits of Islam then they will become acceptable to both Hindu and Christians to the extent that their mutual exchange of good thing of the religion will make them Identical .The radicals do not want this to happen and emphasising to observe all thouse superficial practices such as cutting of penis to make a mark of permanent difference . For all those who wish for the emergence of the new face of Islam should come forward and lounch a revolt against such out dated practices being observed on the name of Islam .